Um - inOBU - I beg to differ with your differing with me... Where you say "In reality, most wars do not have a religious basis... the war in Ireland, and many other 'religious wars' were in fact, collateral wars of the cold war, and the 'religious' issue was a smoke screan to hide the real politic behind the war." When Catholic children kill other children whom they believe to be Protestant, or vice versa, I don't see how it isn't religious. Certainly there were political aspects to the original British move to cut off Northern Ireland, as well as to the British desire to stay there, but what keeps the conflict going in the streets of Ireland and the minds of the folks who participate in this ongoing violence is the religious difference. You don't have children killing other children over politics, but you do over religion. The reason the Serbs hate the Bosnians is that they (the Bosnians) converted to Islam back during the Ottoman occupation lo these many centuries ago, and have never been forgiven. I know, my Momwas raised Serbian, and she doesn't think Milosevic did anything wrong. The only current conflict that has no religious overtones that I can find is the Hutus/Tutsis in Rwanda, which really seems tribal rather than religious. However, nobody reports on what the tribal religions are, so we don't know if there are any religious underpinnings as well. My old home town, Abidjan, is currently undergoing some Moslem versus the Christians versus the Animists, I have Moslem kin there who are afraid to leave their home, even to go shopping. Yes there is political vying for power in Côte d'Ivoire, but the violence at the street level is religious in nature. Governments never succeed in fomenting such violence without playing the religion card, and inflaming the bigotry of their people. And any religion is bigotry, almost by definition, as soon as it claims to be more "true" than any other religion, which I have to admit the Quakers never did, at least not mykith or kin.