By Tom Deignan

It’s tempting to look around the globe and think we live in an age of extreme religious conflict. Many have described the war in Iraq — and the war on terror in general — as a “clash of civilizations,” and religion is a central aspect of the civilizations which are clashing.

Meanwhile, enraged Muslim immigrants are torching the suburbs of Paris and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to roil.

But a new book shows us that religion has always been a violent topic, even in the U.S. More specifically, the Irish in New York City were thought to be particularly violent, as author and historian Jill Lepore shows in her new book New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth Century Manhattan (Alfred A. Knopf).

The book reminds us that New York’s first waves of Irish were not looked upon as merely foreign but as destructive rabble-rousers and traitors.

Then again, Lepore’s new book, which explores a supposed conspiracy between Irish Catholic and rebellious African slaves, is just one recent item which illustrates the enduring passions of religion.

After all, what has been on the History Channel all week? A new documentary about the Crusades, exploring the wars of Christian and Muslim domination which were waged nearly 10 centuries ago.

Meanwhile, what anniversary did England celebrate (if that’s the right word) earlier this week, but the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day.

Americans are not very familiar with Guy Fawkes Day, which is a kind of July 4th with anti-Catholic undertones.

As one website describes it, “November 5 is known as ‘Bonfire Night’ or ‘Guy Fawkes Night,’ and all over Britain people fire off fireworks, light bonfires, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes was an Englishman who ... tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament with barrels of gunpowder. He was caught, imprisoned, tortured on the rack, and finally executed.”

Fawkes, of course, was the leader of a conspiracy known as the “Gunpowder Plot.” He and his Catholic co-conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill the Protestant King James I after the king allegedly failed to stem the persecution of Catholics.

Naturally, the English Protestants and Irish Catholics who came to the U.S. imported their intense tensions.

In Manhattan in 1741, with the inflammatory addition of racism and slavery, such conflicts erupted in a spasm of paranoia and death.

As Lepore describes it in her book, the Protestant middle class in New York City was always tense about African slave rebellion. When rumors spread that Irish Catholics and African slaves were aiming to topple the establishment, it seemed like a nightmare to city leaders.

Then came a series of destructive fires which city leaders knew, just knew, were started by traitors — Irish Catholics and blacks — in their midst.

After the arson charges, Irish-born soldier William Kane was said to be a leader in the Irish-African arson conspiracy. Under questionable circumstances, Kane confessed and then named names.

“Kane and most of the men he named were Irish...and formed the overwhelming number of the city’s poor, many of them recent arrivals. Soldiers like Kane...had probably been driven into the British Army by the Irish famine of 1740-41, the bliadhain an air (year of the slaughter),” writes Lepore.

“That Kane named poor Irishmen to the conspiracy was new, and especially gratifying to (Protestant) prosecutors.”

They “made much of the Gaelic origins of their suspects,” noting that several of the damaging fires took place on or right after St. Patrick’s Day.

The belief that Irish Roman Catholics were teaming up with slaves to destroy New York’s social structure led many to call the conspiracy a “priest’s plot”

Such a label could literally be a death sentence since, as Lepore notes, “to be a Roman Catholic priest was illegal in New York in 1741, a crime punishable by death.”

In a scene right out of the Salem With Trials, numerous people were ultimately hanged — Irish Catholic, black and Protestant as well — while others confessed to various questionable crimes to save their own necks.

Tonight, Paris is burning. Sadly, Lepore’s new book and the so-called Irish “priest’s plot” reminds us that religion has been exploited as a force of division for centuries.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)