The paper sheds light on the kind of violence that is invoked and justified by religion. In the Western world, this type of violence is linked (only) to the Islam, therefore, the first part, based on the examples of Buddhism and Hinduism, shows that religious-based violence may erupt anywhere. The answer to why this is the case is explored in the second part. Firstly, it shows some of the prevailing interpretations of this violence and their weaknesses, and then offers an interpretation that relies on the bipolar structure of the ideological systems. Because of this bipolarity, religion can slip either into fundamentalism, which in an extreme case generates violence, or into dissolution of identity, which could lead to a devastating indifference. As far as religions are the soul of civilizations, they can lead to barbarism in the case of pathological functioning of its structures. Therefore, the third part poses the question whether the thesis of the clash of civilizations, which attaches the decisive role in the conflict to the religions, can withstand the critical investigation or not.
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