I think it is misleading to categorise the conflict in Northern Ireland as religious. There are two different ethnic/national identity groups that happen to be

I think it is misleading to categorise the conflict in Northern Ireland as religious. There are two different ethnic/national identity groups that happen to be predominantly of different Christian denominations. However, there are atheists and protestants ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Irish_nationalists#During_the_Troubles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Irish_nationalists#... ) in the "catholic" IRA, and the IRA killed British soldiers regardless of religion (and there are lots of Catholics in the British army) etc. and British Catholics were not often sympathetic to the IRA (nor Catholics from the rest of the world) and we were just as likely to get bombed by them as anyone else in Britain. A book I have on Irish history quotes a study that found that the more often Catholics in the Republic went to church the less likely they were to support Sinn Fein (the political party linked to the IRA).