So, in the interest of full disclosure before talking about Christian vs. Muslim violence and whether or not what is happening right now in C.A.R. is ethnic cleansing or not, and because I am just dumber than most of the natural scientists out there, I am a Christian. But this entry in my blog is about whether or not what is happening in the C.A.R. is an ethnic issue or a religious issue. I'll start here by giving a definition of ethic group (borrowed from Wikipedia--and I hear the gasps from my students already--because it is easy to access for all potential readers).
Ethnicity or ethnic group is a social group of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, cultural, social, or national experience.[1][2] Membership of an ethnic group tends to be associated with shared cultural heritage, ancestry, history, homeland, language (dialect), or ideology, and with symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, physical appearance, etc.
Ok, so religion is a part of ethnic identity for some ethnic groups? But simply having a common religious identity is not the same as a shared ethnic identity. Look I know a whole bunch of Christians here in PA. Does that make Christian our shared ethnic identity? Not likely, since I consider most of them to be Yankees, and I am a good example of unrepentant Southerner. Would our shared Christianity be the basis of national identity if building a country? Well, the U.S. is a multinational country, it comes with being a recipient (and I believe the receipt is for the better of us all) of immigrants from many locations around the globe mixing with the original inhabitants (so we have been multinational since the arrival of the first Europeans to land here and stay a few hundred years back). On the other hand, religion can be a seriously large part of ethnic identity (anybody ever heard of Israelis and Palestinians?).
Right, so back to C.A.R. Are the Christians and Muslims of different cultural heritage? Does the mythos of history among the Christians and Muslims show either of these groups to have been negatively differentiated in relation to the other group? Do they have different languages? Are they cultural different in enough ways to show them as truly being different ethnic groups? Honestly, I started searching for answers to these questions a few months back as I used the C.A.R. as an example of intrastate communal violence in Sub-Saharan Africa in teaching about such incidents in African Politics. So, I am not an expert in the C.A.R., but I have spent a few years studying ethnic political conflict and intrastate conflict (wrote a dissertation and a book about ethnic conflict), and I cannot find an answer in the affirmative to any question I would ask to determine that religion is a key identifier of ethnicity in C.A.R. However, I find plenty to indicate that religion is a key identifier of political organization.
So, what does this mean? For my own two cents it means that Amnesty International is stretching definitions in ways in which they should not be stretched to call what is happening in the C.A.R. ethnic cleansing. I would also ask Amnesty where they were when the Muslim dominated, Seleka supporting government recently deposed by politically organized Christians, looked the other way as Muslims engaged in the same behaviors against the Christian population of C.A.R. that we are now castigating the Christians for engaging in against the Muslims? Both sides are wrong in their use of violence to attain their political goals, period. But the violence is not ethnopolitical, it is political and the political organization is based on religious lines.
I am not entirely certain where this leaves the world in determining what to do in C.A.R. Hats off to the French and the African Union forces in the country. I'll pray for their success in ending the political violence in C.A.R. while I consider the question of what actions should be taken to restore positive political life in the country and whether or not those actions necessarily require the active participation or support of the U.S. government and population. (But that will wait until the third part of this conversation).
Ethnicity or ethnic group is a social group of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, cultural, social, or national experience.[1][2] Membership of an ethnic group tends to be associated with shared cultural heritage, ancestry, history, homeland, language (dialect), or ideology, and with symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, physical appearance, etc.
Ok, so religion is a part of ethnic identity for some ethnic groups? But simply having a common religious identity is not the same as a shared ethnic identity. Look I know a whole bunch of Christians here in PA. Does that make Christian our shared ethnic identity? Not likely, since I consider most of them to be Yankees, and I am a good example of unrepentant Southerner. Would our shared Christianity be the basis of national identity if building a country? Well, the U.S. is a multinational country, it comes with being a recipient (and I believe the receipt is for the better of us all) of immigrants from many locations around the globe mixing with the original inhabitants (so we have been multinational since the arrival of the first Europeans to land here and stay a few hundred years back). On the other hand, religion can be a seriously large part of ethnic identity (anybody ever heard of Israelis and Palestinians?).
Right, so back to C.A.R. Are the Christians and Muslims of different cultural heritage? Does the mythos of history among the Christians and Muslims show either of these groups to have been negatively differentiated in relation to the other group? Do they have different languages? Are they cultural different in enough ways to show them as truly being different ethnic groups? Honestly, I started searching for answers to these questions a few months back as I used the C.A.R. as an example of intrastate communal violence in Sub-Saharan Africa in teaching about such incidents in African Politics. So, I am not an expert in the C.A.R., but I have spent a few years studying ethnic political conflict and intrastate conflict (wrote a dissertation and a book about ethnic conflict), and I cannot find an answer in the affirmative to any question I would ask to determine that religion is a key identifier of ethnicity in C.A.R. However, I find plenty to indicate that religion is a key identifier of political organization.
So, what does this mean? For my own two cents it means that Amnesty International is stretching definitions in ways in which they should not be stretched to call what is happening in the C.A.R. ethnic cleansing. I would also ask Amnesty where they were when the Muslim dominated, Seleka supporting government recently deposed by politically organized Christians, looked the other way as Muslims engaged in the same behaviors against the Christian population of C.A.R. that we are now castigating the Christians for engaging in against the Muslims? Both sides are wrong in their use of violence to attain their political goals, period. But the violence is not ethnopolitical, it is political and the political organization is based on religious lines.
I am not entirely certain where this leaves the world in determining what to do in C.A.R. Hats off to the French and the African Union forces in the country. I'll pray for their success in ending the political violence in C.A.R. while I consider the question of what actions should be taken to restore positive political life in the country and whether or not those actions necessarily require the active participation or support of the U.S. government and population. (But that will wait until the third part of this conversation).
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