The association between religion and violence has raised much interest in both academic and public circles. Yet on the individual level, existing empirical accounts are both sparse and conflicting. Based on previous research which found that religion plays a role in the support of political violence only through the mediation of objective and perceived deprivations, the authors test Conservation of Resource (COR) theory as an individual level explanation for the association of religion, socio-economic deprivations, and support for political violence. COR theory predicts that when individuals’ personal, social or economic resources are threatened, a response mechanism may include violence. Utilizing two distinct datasets, and relying on structural equation models analysis, the latter two stages of a three-stage study are reported here. In a follow-up to their previous article, the authors refine the use of socio-economic variables in examining the effects of deprivation as mediating between religion and political violence. Then, they analyze an independent sample of 545 Muslims and Jews, collected during August and September 2004, to test a psychological-based explanation based on COR theory. This study replaces measures of deprivation used in the previous stages with measures of economic and psychological resource loss. Findings show that the relationship between religion and support of political violence only holds true when mediated by deprivations and psychological resource loss. They also suggest that the typical tendency to focus on economic resource loss is over-simplistic as psychological, not economic, resources seem to mediate between religion and support of violence.

This study examines the associations between religious affiliation and religiosity and support for political violence through a nationwide sample of Israeli Jews and Muslims. Based on structural equation modeling, the findings show that by and large Muslims are more supportive of political violence than Jews and more religious persons are less supportive of political violence. Deprivation, however, was found to mediate these relations, showing that the more deprived -whether Muslims or Jews, religious or non-religious persons -are more supportive of political violence. The explanatory strength of religion and deprivation combined in this manner was found to be stronger than any of these variables on their own. The findings cast doubt on negative stereotypes both of Islam and of religiosity as promoting political violence. They suggest that governments which want peace at home, in Israel as elsewhere, would do well to ensure that ethnic and religious differences are not translated into, and compounded by, wide socio-economic gaps.For many years scholars have been searching for explanations of political violence. The abundant factors examined to date range from biological to psychological, cultural, social and political issues. Favored explanations have varied in accordance with both research findings and social and political trends. Still, the view that religion leads to political violence resurfaced in the 1980s, and gained prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s. This claim has been tendered with respect to several different, though related and non-exclusive, forms of political violence: localized violence driven by religious-based intolerance (Beatty and Walter, 1984; The view that religion is a major source of political violence is underpinned by the many historical occasions on which political violence was explicitly carried out in the name of religion or religious values, from the Muslim conquests and Christian Crusades in the Middle Ages; the Spanish Inquisition and Europe's many religious wars from the Renaissance to the seventeenth century; to the more recent sectarian conflicts in Ireland and the Indian sub-continent and international terrorism explicitly carried out in the name of Islam.

This study examines conditions of peace and war to find whether the "rally 'round the flag" effect is indeed attributed to rising levels of social collectivism. Reserve service motivation in peacetime and wartime was compared among 1,004 Israeli reservists. Levels of motivation and the factors that affect them were examined during the optimism of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process (February 2000) and about a year and a half into the second Intifada (October 2000). Findings suggest that motivation to serve in wartime is indeed higher than in peacetime. However, they also suggest that similar factors predict motivation in both times, although their relative impact is altered by the situation. Reservists were more likely to be motivated by individual rather than collective incentives (in both peacetime and wartime situations), thus suggesting that "rally 'round the flag" occurrences are not necessarily reflective of the social cohesion and collective reasoning.

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