CAUSAL ANALYSIS OF RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE, A STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING APPROACH

The present study tries to investigate the causal model of religious violence using SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) approach. Previous quantitative research in social movements and political violence suggests that there are, at least, three factors, that caused violent collective actions, including religious violence: 1) the more fundamentalist people are, the more likely they justify violence, 2) people with lower trust in government is more likely to justify , violence, and 3) opposing the second argument: only people with low trust in government and high political efficacy are more likely to justify violence. Based on the data of 343 respondents, the activists of Front Pembela Islam, Muhammadiyah and Nabdlatul Ulama, this study confirms that the more fundamentalist people are, the more likely they are to justify violence regardless of their organizational affiliations. On the contrary, this study does not support the argument for the relationship between trust in government and violence. Similarly, the relationship between violence and the latent interaction of trust and political efficacy is not supported by the data. Therefore, this study suggests that fundamentalism, a type of religiosity, is a salient factor to e.explain religious violence.