> To an extent they're used as a post hoc justification, but they also play a motivating role (especially if we take the words of Islamist terrorists at face va

> To an extent they're used as a post hoc justification, but they also play a motivating role (especially if we take the words of Islamist terrorists at face value). Absolutely. But that is what I was saying, that religion determines the exact flavor of conflict, but the root causes are rarely religious. If it was different (if the Middle East was Christian and Europe was Muslim for instance) the Middle Ages would have still been a violent chaotic time for Europe, and the Middle East would have still been a violent chaotic time after WWI. > It's also interesting that the only time that the doctrine to action causal path is contested is in the cast of Islamist terrorism I think largely it is because it is so often been used (especially in the post 9/11 era) as a shoulder shrug “well that’s just how Muslims are” excuse. In this very thread, people have said that the post invasion Iraqi chaos was due to “10,000yr of cultural baggage that needs mopping up” when it was directly a result of the US failing to have any plan for post invasion security after collapsing the government. The picture is often painted that these issues in the Middle East are unsolvable because it’s all because of Islam and they have been fighting for 1,000 years and that’s not going to change. To use your Nazi example, it would be like looking at Germany during WWII and saying “well they are religious anti Semites. That’s why they fight and they will always fight and we can’t change their religious beliefs so that’s just the way it is.” Of course I know you aren’t saying this, but enough people are that I feel it needs to be contextualized. How people understand the situation in the Middle East effects what strategies we support in dealing with the Middle East. If people keep believing that the situation is caused by religion (something we cannot change) instead of economic instability, proxy conflict by regional and global powers, power vacuums from collapsing dictatorships, etc., then it will continue to hamper our foreign policy. Even terrorism is primarily a small number of globally focused jihadists infecting and coopting local causes and grievances. > Another example of the causal role of doctrine was when Christians cherry-picked parts of the bible in support of slavery. If the Bible was less self-contradictory in this instance, it's easy to see that it would've been easier to eliminate slavery faster than it happened. Even this I think is overblown in its influence. Many Christian countries gave up enslaved Africans much easier than the US. If the Bible was silent on slavery, I think it would have still gone very similarly for the US. Slavery was propping up the plantation based economy of the southern States, the 3/5th voting rules allowed for the less populated southern states to have outsized electoral power compared to the northern states, and the rapid expansion West (and the proposed rules on slavery for incoming states) threatened to upset that Southern power. In other words, I think people put too much stock in religious justifications, when underlying structural reasons are often what really shape things.