The Institute for Interdisciplinary Cypriot Studies at the University of Münster (Germany), the Friedrich- Ebert-Stiftung office in Nicosia and the Department of Politics and Governance of the University of Nicosia, had organised, with the support of Agora Dialogue, an international conference in Nicosia under the title “Religion, Religious Spaces and Conflict: Cyprus, Lebanon, Bosnia”.
The purpose of the conference was to analyse the contribution as well as the impact of religion on conflict, in three conflict-affected zones (Cyprus, Lebanon, Bosnia), and the fate of religious spaces in the context of inter-religious strife. The participating academics and researchers, with distinct expertise on religiously related conflicts, presented the intermingled complexities of religions and sacred spaces with intra-national ideologies and politics as well as extra-national antagonisms that led, in the recent past, to catastrophic conflicts and bloodshed. The presentations explored various dimensions of religiously related conflict, such as the contribution of ethnicity, social and economic status, radicalisation and historical burden on religious violence as well as their impact on post-conflict efforts for reconciliation and the soothing of past traumas. The conference also aimed at encouraging a dialogue among scholars and researchers as well as religious authorities and the civil society, about the role of religion in conflict and particularly its impact on coexistence in multi-cultural societies.