Despite that notion of many that religious beliefs can stimulate acts of violence and conflict, a new study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers suggests that these beliefs can actually promote interfaith cooperation.
The team examined the moral choices of Palestinian youths from both their own perspectives and the perspective of Allah and found that Muslim-Palestinians exhibited the belief that Allah preferred that they value the lives of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis with equality, prompting the researchers to claim that religious beliefs can resolve bias against other groups of people and help promote peace.
"Our findings are important because one precursor to violence is when people believe that the lives of members of their group are more important than the lives of members of another group," Jeremy Ginges, who participated in the research, said in a press release. "Here, we show that religious belief - even amidst a conflict centered on religious differences - can lead people to apply universal moral principles similarly to believers and non-believers alike."
The study put 555 Palestinian youths between the ages of 12 and 18 through the "trolley dilemma," which involves a Palestinian man killing himself in order to save the lives of five Jewish-Israeli or Muslim-Palestinian children. The team found that even though the Muslim-Palestinian subjects valued their own group's lives over others with differing beliefs, they still acknowledged that Allah preferred them to value all groups equally. Furthermore, they found that subjects that thought of situations from Allah's perspective exhibited a decrease in bias toward their own religious group by approximately 30 percent.
"Beliefs about God seem to encourage an application of universal moral rules to believers and non-believers alike, even in a conflict zone. Thus, it does not seem to be beliefs about God that lead to outgroup aggression," said Nichole Argo, a member of the research team.
"There may be other aspects of religion that lead to outgroup aggression," she added. "For instance, other work done in conflict zones has identified participation in collective religious rituals and frequent attendance at a place of worship to be associated with support for violence. This study, however, adds to a growing literature on how religious belief can increase cooperation with people from other faiths."
The findings were published in the Nov. 25 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
