While the English government was preoccupied with World War I, a group of approximately 1,500\u00a0Irish rebels attempted to take control of strategic points across Dublin and thus spark a general rebellion against English rule in Ireland. Although the\u00a0rebels were quickly put down, the rising and the subsequent crack down, which included 16 executions<\/a>, eventually led to an awakening of Irish nationalism and the start of a brutal Guerrilla war led by Michael Collins.<\/p>\n The war and political pressure from the U.S. eventually led to the negotiation of an agreement with England for its withdrawal from the 26 counties of the South in exchange for allegiance to the Brittish Crown and acceptance of the 6 northern most counties remaining as part of England. The Irish civil war then ensued as not all of the republicans including the nominal head of the movement,\u00a0\u00c9amon de Valera, and many of the fighters accepted the treaty.<\/p>\n Well before the Rising, there were parliamentary attempts to achieve home rule for Ireland as there were a large number of Irish Members of Parliament in the Westminster led by Charles Parnell. According to Tim Pat Googan, an Irish journalist, \u00a0William Gladstone’s Liberal party was ready to approve home rule in 1880s and it was the conservatives who deliberately played “The Orange Card” and to use fear of Catholic control over protestants living in the North to block it.<\/p>\n In 1913, as Home Rule was again being discussed, Edward Carson formed a paramilitary organization,\u00a0\u00a0the Ulster Volunteer Force, to forcible resist any attempt to impose Home Rule on the 6 northern counties. A mirror image was then created on the Catholic side which was a forerunner to\u00a0the Irish Republican Army.<\/p>\n One aspect of the new Irish Free State was the apparently deep religious conviction of many of its political leaders who seemed to go out of their way to pass legislation to show their piety despite opposition from the Protestants who lived in the South such as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In a 1925 debate\u00a0on outlawing divorce, for example, Yeats made a compelling speech<\/a>\u00a0urging the Irish Parliament\u00a0to refrain from passing laws that the Protestant North would not find acceptable as it would only drive the communities farther apart and make re-unification impossible. Yeats and others were ignored in this and other \u00a0sectarian issues and Ireland has lived with the consequences ever since.<\/p>\n The North, of course, went further than simply protecting Protestant interests and essentially disenfranchized Catholics in the six counties leading eventually to\u00a0the sectarian “troubles” of the 1960s and 70s.<\/p>\n![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2016\/04\/michaelcollins1919-222x300.jpg\")
<\/a>The Politicization of religion<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"W.B.](\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2016\/04\/MTE1ODA0OTcxODMxNTU5Njkz-300x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Lessons for the Middle East<\/strong><\/h3>\n