Abstract

The current period seems to be characterized by a growing number of ethnic and/or religious tensions, in parallel with the mobilization of collective identity narratives during violent conflicts – whether these narratives legitimate, motivate, or denounce the resort to violence. Most domestic conflicts do have an ethnic or religious dimension which tends to become increasingly salient as the conflict persists, notwithstanding the variety of root-causes that may be involved in these processes. Yet, the terms of the interrelationship between ethnicity and religion on the one hand, and ethnicity, religion, and violence on the other, are far from settled.