MPN11,
On this, I beg, with respect, to disagree, as I regard this as an almost universally held misconception.
Religion has been regarded as a major component in this whole hellish brew. But in fact it is actually being used as a "flag". An analogy would be: "All Nationalist Irish have brown eyes, all Unionists have blue". Ergo: "all blue eyes are good, all brown eyes bad" (or vice versa, depending on your political leanings (whereas eyes, per se, have nothing to do with it). On the same logic: "All Catholics are good, all Protestants bad" (the fact that most Nationalists are (nominally) Catholic, and most Unionists are (nominally) Protestant, may lend colour to the view, but does not invalidate the general argument).
At the heart of this is a political dispute with such deep roots in history and such an accompanying host of claims and counter-claims (all marinated in blood), that a Solomon would struggle to sort it out. In the end it is an insoluble conflict over land (similar to the Arab/Israeli dispute in many respects), and what the answer is I do not know.
But if you could take religion out of the equation, the problem would not be ipso facto solved. (Remember the long pre-Reformation history of European wars, when all the combatants were [nominally] of the same faith, and the situation in WWII, when German Catholics (or Lutherans) prayed earnestly to the same God for victory as did their British counterparts - leaving the Almighty in something of a quandary).
Now, I rest my case and bow out, conscious that we are violating that wise old rule that (for good reason) prohibits three subjects for discussion in an Officers' Mess (Religion and Politics being two of them !)
Danny.