State intervention in religious conflict

Ok. I've been meaning to blog for quite some time here - and here, actually, though neither has happened - so that will likely manifest itself in a few brief posts in a short period of time... ideally.

Thought 1, then:

As we've turned to hopes of peacemaking and different potential methodologies and approaches, both Juergensmeyer and Sellengut list state actions as a viable solution. Sellengut particularly, as noted in class, considers the state use of political/military/police/legal authority to intervene or contain violence, prosecute instigators and/or violent actors, etc, as seen in the case of India and violence containment. [Speaking of, the recent NYT article regarding the prosecution of those implicated in the 2002 Muslim deaths in Gujurat, as mentioned in class, can be found here.]

In any case, my initial responding thought was inspired by a meeting of courses, actually, in that I'd just been explaining Max Weber's definition of the state in an English class, of all places. That is, for a state to be a state, it is essential that it has the monopoly on violence (and is thereby capable of controlling it's own territory) - something that can be taken into consideration when looking at Somalia, uncontrolled areas of Pakistan, etc. The point, however, is this: while of course state response to religious violence is only one part of a resolution, it is a vital one, particularly when we consider what the role of the state is meant to be. (Also debatable, but this one's pretty basic. Citizen safety is more agreed upon than, say, health care. heh) More recent readings have, of course, considered this as tracks 1 and 2 of diplomacy, intertwining both governmental and non-governmental actions, secular and religious, etc.

Potential follow-up thought on that: how do we apply this to religious violence taking place within one nation-state (say, India) versus international issues (say, al-Qaeda)?