Remainders of Religion in the Globalizing World
Those who adhere to the discourse of globalization argue that the emergence of a global culture is inevitable but the rise of national, religious and ethnic cultural movements which resist to the homogenizing influences of globalization makes this claim unclear. In this sense, a description of an irresistible globalization process and the idea of an upcoming global village may not be entirely convincible. Under this framework, I will focus on the conflict in the Northern Ireland and Irish Republican Army (IRA), which is an armed nationalist organization devoted to the integration of Ireland as a complete and independent unit. In Northern Ireland, also called Ulster, there are two major groups of community-the Protestants and the Catholics. The Protestants make up the majority of the population of Northern Ireland and they want to remain under British rule as a part of the United Kingdom. On the other hand the Catholics, who were often treated unequally by the Protestants, want a united island of Ireland that is ruled by a government in Dublin. The conflict between the Irish and the British goes back to 12th century when the English defeated the Irish. After this defeat, for seven hundred years the English maintained the rule of
" This was the end of the British authority in Northern Ireland and it was the first time that Britain had taken away power from the Protestant population and from their political leaders. McCaffrey explains the difference between two sides in this way: "Although Ulster Protestants insist on a cultural and religious uniqueness and a Britishness that separates their community from Catholic Ireland, politicians in the South have reinforced the psychological border that divides the two Irelands by fostering a Gaelic Irish identity and a confessional state that reflects the values, ethos, rules and regulations of the Catholic church". Until 1968, the Catholics and the Protestants in the Northern Ireland were treated unfairly under the British laws. Paul Arthur explains the reasons for this protest as: "The civil rights marches began in 1968 when Catholics, who for years had been trying to get some sort of equality under the law as they saw it, decided to try to adopt a different tactic, which was to adopt the policy of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the United States. It is the event that occurred when thousands of Catholic people were on the streets for protest and the British troopers shot 14 of them although they were unarmed. He says that: "So, targets were very carefully specified. " But of course, these do not prove whether the actions of Irish Republican Army were acceptable or not. Paul Arthur believes that none of attacks of IRA were mindless. The words are Gaelic and it means "ourselves alone". On the other side, Protestants have a sense of history which goes back to at least the seventeenth century, where from the time of the plantation of Ulster at the beginning of the 1600s, they have had to look to their own resources to ensure that they remained in control in the north of Ireland because they'd lost control in the rest of Ireland. Because of this semi-British identity of Northern Irish people, the British decided to partition the island of Ireland into two parts. Meanwhile, the radical movement started to lead the mainstream into a militant action with violence against the unequal system and people started supporting IRA for achieving their rights. The Catholics were demanding the rights that were given to the Protestants and their one of the most important demands was the right to vote.
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