Religious Causes of Discrimination against Ethno-Religious Minorities Jonathan Fox Bar Ilan University Most existing large-n cross-sectional analyses of ethnic conflict focus on the behavior of the ethnic minority rather than the behavior of the state. That is, they tend to attempt to predict or explain the level of protest or rebellion in which ethnic minorities engage at the expense of determining the causes for the behavior of the government of the state in which these minorities live. Previous studies have determined that discrimination against minority groups is one of the major causes of ethnic protest and rebellion. In addition, much of the literature on ethnic conflict does not sufficiently deal with the religious causes of that conflict. Accordingly this study focuses on the causes of discrimi- nation with a particular emphasis on the religious causes. This study analyzes two populations from the Minorities at Risk dataset: the 105 religiously differentiated minorities and the 163 minorities that are not religiously differentiated. The results show that religious factors influ- ence the process that leads to discrimination and that the causes of religious discrimination are distinct from the causes of other types of discrimination. In addition, the dynamics of this process are markedly different between the two populations analyzed here. All of this, along with other factors, implies that religion is not merely a reflection of general cultural differences, but rather has a distinct and separate influ- ence on ethnic conflict. Most previous cross-sectional quantitative studies of ethnic conflict in general and ethno-religious conflict specifically focus on the behavior of minority groups. That is, the major research question thus far has been why do minorities rebel or engage in other oppositional activities? This is illustrated by the fact that the major project that has gathered data on ethnic conflict is titled the “Minorities at Risk” project and the article that describes the statistical tests of the basic model is titled “Why Minorities Rebel” ~Gurr, 1993a, 1993b! . However, the ques- tion of what motivates the behavior of the majority group has received, at best, secondary attention. That is, the focus of most quantitative research on ethnic and ethno-religious conflict thus far has focused on the behavior of minority groups at the expense of examining the behavior of majority groups ~e.g., Car- ment and James, 1995! . This tendency in the literature is a gap that should be Author’s note : I would especially like to thank Ted R. Gurr for his insights, advice, and criticism without which this work would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Charles Butterworth, Ollie Johnson, Shmuel Sandler, Shlomo Shpiro, William Stuart, and ISQ’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful insights as well as the staff of the Minorities at Risk project, especially Pamela Burke, Mike Dravis, Mike Haxton, Mizan Khan, Steve Kurth, Deepa Khosla, Shinwa Lee, and Anne Pitsch, many of whom assisted in the data collection and all of whom provided useful advice. I alone am responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation that remain. International Studies Quarterly ~2000! 44, 423–450. © 2000 International Studies Association. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.