150 word reply post
Humanities
I believe it would be naïve to think that religious factions who disagree about anything would not lead to violence. History has shown how divisive and violent human beings have been regarding religion. Now we ask, do we think that a religious faction, who wants to separate from their nation, will lead to violence?
University of Central Florida and the University of Colorado researchers completed an anthropological study. The study involved a number of archaeological sites in Mexico that date back to 700BC. It was a long-lasting belief that early state societies were united by religion, however the study concluded that the opposite was the case, (Horton, 2018). Horton (2018) informs us that “Professor Joyce from the University of Colorado said ‘In both the Valley of Oaxaca and the Lower Rio Verde Valley, religion was important in the formation and history of early cities and states, but in vastly different ways. Given the role of religion in social life and politics today, that shouldn’t be too surprising.’ “
According to Roskin, Cord, Medeiros and Jones (2014), “Separatist violence, sometimes and outgrowth of primordial conflict, aims at independence for the group in question.” If we look back at history we can see more examples of different groups trying to break away. Approximately 60,000 people were killed in northern Sri Lanka when the Tamils fought to break away from 1983-2009. A long and expensive war was fought by the Ibos during the 1960’s. They attempted to form their new state Biafra and break away from Nigeria. In the 1990’s, fighting erupted when Bosnia and Croatia battled Serbia when they wanted to separate from Yugoslavia, (Roskin et al., 2014).
Given the examples above I do believe that violence would ensue. The government in the scenario above claim that the only source of drinking water is in the territory that wishes to separate. I believe we would need to look further into their history in order to come to a more concrete decision.
Horton, H., (2018) Religion has been dividing human society for 2000 years say scientists. Retrieved from
Roskin, M. G., Cord, R. L., & Medeiros, J. A., Jones, W. S., (2014). Political Science: An Introduction (13th ed.). Pearson
