Reconciliation in the Shadow of ISIS MONIKA GABRIELA BARTOSZEWICZ Vistula University, Warsaw In the contemporary world we can observe a great return of religion to public life. Contrary to widespread opinions it had not commenced on 9/11 2001 but already in the 1970s. The Six Day War in 1967 caused an annihilating defeat of pan Arabism. While Naser’s army marched chanting “Land! Sea! Air!”, six years later this battle cry was replaced with “Allah Akbar!”. In 1977 America elected its first born-again Christian President (Jimmy Carter). In 1979 Iran was shaken with the revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini with his mullahs who took the power from the secular Shah Pahlavi. Simultaneously, Zia al-Haq Islamised Pakistan and Buddhism reigned in Sri Lanka. Finally, an anti-Com- munist Pole became the Catholic pope, and, as John Gaddis observed, secular ‘-isms’ started to fall one after the other. In this context Philip Jenkins argues that historians looking at our century will most probably see religion as the most basic, inspiring and destructive force of humanity, steering our ap- proaches to politics, freedom, responsibility, conceptualisations of nationality and, of course, conflicts and wars 1 . Since the year 2000, 43% of domestic wars had religion in the background 2 . One may say that religion rarely is a casus belli. However, many argue that when it enters the scene of conflict, it usually both intensifies and renders it nearly impossible to solve since the dispute is changed into a disagreement about non-negotiable absolutes 3 . It ought to be noted that many conflicts around the world acquired an openly religious character. For example, the 1 P. Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, New York 2011. 2 United States Institute of Peace, Religion in World Affairs Report. Special Report 201, 2008, http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/sr201.pdf. 3 For a detailed account regarding religious violence please see: M. Al-Rasheed, & M. Shterin, (eds.), Dying for Faith. Religiously Motivated Violence in the Contemporary World, London 2009; A.R. Murphy (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence, Oxford 2011; R.S. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred. Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation, New York 2011; C.P.E. Burns, More Moral Than God. Taking Responsibility for Religious Violence, New York 2008; C. Selengut, Sacred Fury. Understanding Religious Violence, Lanham 2004; J. Stern, Terror in the Name of God. Why Religious Militants Kill, London 2003; M. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. The Global Rise of Religious Violence, Berkeley 2003 among others.