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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General > Religious intolerance, persecution & conflict > General
Founded in the early twelfth century, allegedly to protect pilgrims
to the Holy Land, the Knights Templar became famous for their
pioneer banking system, crusading zeal, and strict vows of
obedience, chastity and poverty. Having grown to some 15,000 men,
they came to be perceived as a threat by Philip the Fair, who in
1307 disbanded the group and tortured their leaders for
confessions. The French king accused the order of heresy, sodomy
and blasphemy. Recent works of fiction and popular histories have
created a resurgence of interest in the mysterious Knights Templar.
Numerous contradictory and fantastic claims are made about them,
adding to the enigma that already surrounds the warrior monks of
France. In this unique collection of lecture material and writings
from Rudolf Steiner, a new perspective emerges. Based on his
spiritual perceptions, Steiner speaks of the Templars' connection
to the esoteric tradition of St John, their relationship with the
Holy Grail, and their spiritual dedication to Christ. He describes
the secret order that existed within the Templars, and the strange
rituals they performed. He also throws light on the Templars'
attitude to the Roman Church, and the spiritual forces that
inspired their torture and confessions.
The first complete account of Catholic Europe's onslaught on
"unbelievers" in the 12th century The Second Crusade (1145-1149)
was an extraordinarily bold attempt to overcome unbelievers on no
less than three fronts. Crusader armies set out to defeat Muslims
in the Holy Land and in Iberia as well as pagans in northeastern
Europe. But, to the shock and dismay of a society raised on the
triumphant legacy of the First Crusade, only in Iberia did they
achieve any success. This book, the first in 140 years devoted to
the Second Crusade, fills a major gap in our understanding of the
Crusades and their importance in medieval European history.
Historian Jonathan Phillips draws on the latest developments in
Crusade studies to cast new light on the origins, planning, and
execution of the Second Crusade, some of its more radical
intentions, and its unprecedented ambition. With original insights
into the legacy of the First Crusade and the roles of Pope Eugenius
III and King Conrad III of Germany, Phillips offers the definitive
work on this neglected Crusade that, despite its failed objectives,
exerted a profound impact across Europe and the eastern
Mediterranean.
This volume is a tribute to the work of Michael Jerryson, one of
the initiators of the academic discourse on Buddhism and violence
whose intellectual pursuits have resulted in a trailblazing shift
in the academic study of Buddhism. Preconceived in the modern west
as a pacific, chiefly meditative practice aiming for personal
salvation and world peace, Buddhism has been exposed in the last
few decades for its manifold legacy of violence. This is apparent
not only in Buddhist groups' history of support for actual military
aims, but in Buddhism's association with religious nationalism and
in its more subtle expressions of discursive and structural
violence. This exposure is due in significant part to Michael
Jerryson who, in addition to exploring this perhaps surprising
Buddhist history, has investigated the dynamism of Buddhist
authority. Most recently in his critique of U Wirathu, the Burmese
Buddhist monk whose advocacy of Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar has
stirred a boiling pot of anti-Muslim resentments, Michael Jerryson
has shown that reverence for Burmese religious authorities
transcends respect for traditional Buddhist doctrine and monastic
accomplishments. It emanates instead from the phenomenon of
religious authority itself and from the cultural institutions which
support it. His examinations have resulted in heightened
sensitivity to the sociology of religious authority and violence.
The scholarly contributions in this volume include discussions of
Buddhism and violence, religious authority and nationalism, whether
Buddhist, Christian, white, or other.
Religious Pluralism and the City challenges the notion that the
city is a secular place, and calls for an analysis of how religion
and the city are intertwined. It is the first book to analyze the
explanatory value of a number of typologies already in use around
this topic - from "holy city" to "secular city", from
"fundamentalist" to "postsecular city". By intertwining the city
and religion, urban theory and theories of religion, this is the
first book to provide an international and interdisciplinary
analysis of post-secular urbanism. The book argues that, given the
rise of religiously inspired violence and the increasing
significance of charismatic Christianity, Islam and other spiritual
traditions, the master narrative that modern societies are secular
societies has lost its empirical plausibility. Instead, we are
seeing the pluralization of religion, the co-existence of different
religious worldviews, and the simultaneity of secular and religious
institutions that shape everyday life. These particular
constellations of "religious pluralism" are, above all, played out
in cities. Including contributions from Peter L. Berger and Nezar
Alsayyad, this book conceptually and empirically revokes the
dissolution between city and religion to unveil its intimate
relationship, and offers an alternative view on the quotidian state
of the global urban condition.
One of the most pressing issues of our time is the outbreak of
extremist violence and terrorism, done in the name of religion.
This volume critically analyses the link made between religion and
violence in contemporary theory and proposes that 'religion' does
not have a special relation to violence in opposition to culture,
ideology or nationalism. Rather, religion and violence must be
understood with relation to fundamental anthropological and
philosophical categories such as culture, desire, disaster and
rivalry. Does Religion Cause Violence? explores contemporary
instances of religious violence, such as Islamist terrorism and
radicalization in its various political, economic, religious,
military and technological dimensions, as well as the legitimacy
and efficacy of modern cultural mechanisms to contain violence,
such as nuclear deterrence. Including perspectives from experts in
theology, philosophy, terrorism studies, and Islamic studies, this
volume brings together the insights of Rene Girard, the premier
theorist of violence in the 20th century, with the latest
scholarship on religion and violence, particularly exploring the
nature of extremist violence.
Belgium was the second country in the world to introduce same-sex
marriage. It has an elaborate legal system for protecting the
rights of LGBT individuals in general and LGBT asylum seekers in
particular. At the same time, since 2015 the country has become
known as the `jihadi centre of Europe' and criticized for its
`homonationalism' where some queer subjects - such as ethnic,
racial and religious minorities, or those with a migrant background
- are excluded from the dominant discourse on LGBT rights. Queer
Muslims living in the country exist in this complex context and
their identities are often disregarded as implausible. This book
foregrounds the lived experiences of queer Muslims who migrated to
Belgium because of their sexuality and queer Muslims who are the
children of economic migrants. Based on extensive fieldwork, Wim
Peumans examines how these Muslims negotiate silence and disclosure
around their sexuality and understand their religious beliefs. He
also explores how the sexual identity of queer Muslims changes
within a context of transnational migration. In focusing on people
with different migration histories and ethnic backgrounds, this
book challenges the heteronormativity of Migration Studies and
reveals the interrelated issues involved in migration, sexuality
and religion. The research will be valuable for those working on
immigration, refugees, LGBT issues, public policy and contemporary
Muslim studies.
Within the next decade, China could be home to more Christians than
any country in the world. Through the 150-year saga of a single
family, this book vividly dramatizes the remarkable religious
evolution of the world's most populous nation. Shanghai Faithful is
both a touching family memoir and a chronicle of the astonishing
spread of Christianity in China. Five generations of the Lin
family-buffeted by history's crosscurrents and personal
strife-bring to life an epoch that is still unfolding. A compelling
cast-a poor fisherman, a doctor who treated opium addicts, an Ivy
League-educated priest, and the charismatic preacher Watchman
Nee-sets the book in motion. Veteran journalist Jennifer Lin takes
readers from remote nineteenth-century mission outposts to the
thriving house churches and cathedrals of today's China. The Lin
family-and the book's central figure, the Reverend Lin Pu-chi-offer
witness to China's tumultuous past, up to and beyond the betrayals
and madness of the Cultural Revolution, when the family's resolute
faith led to years of suffering. Forgiveness and redemption bring
the story full circle. With its sweep of history and the intimacy
of long-hidden family stories, Shanghai Faithful offers a fresh
look at Christianity in China-past, present, and future.
In the minds of many Americans, Islam is synonymous with the Middle
East, Muslim men with violence, and Muslim women with oppression. A
clash of civilizations appears to be increasingly manifest and the
war on terror seems a struggle against Islam. These are all
symptoms of Islamophobia. Meanwhile, the current surge in nativist
bias reveals the racism of anti-Muslim sentiment. This book
explores these anxieties through political cartoons and film--media
with immediate and important impact. After providing a background
on Islamic traditions and their history with America, it
graphically shows how political cartoons and films reveal
Americans' casual demeaning and demonizing of Muslims and Islam--a
phenomenon common among both liberals and conservatives.
Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Sentiment offers both fascinating
insights into our culture's ways of "picturing the enemy" as
Muslim, and ways of moving beyond antagonism.
Turmoil still grips the Middle East, and fear can still paralyze
post-9/11 America. The comforts and challenges of this book are
thus as timely as when it was first published in 1987. With new
reflections on the future of Judaism and Israel, Ellis underscores
the enduring problem of justice. Ellis' use of liberation theology
to make connections between the Holocaust and contemporary
communities from the Third World reminds both Jews and oppressed
Christians that they share common ground in the experiences of
abandonment, suffering, and death. The connections also reveal that
Jews and Christians share a common cause in the battle against
idolatry - represented now by obsessions for personal affluence,
national security, and ethnic survival. According to Ellis, Jews
and Christians must never allow the reality of anti-Semitism to
become an excuse for evading solidarity with the oppressed peoples
- be they African, Asian, Latin American or, especially,
Palestinian.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States,
religious fundamentalism has dominated public debate as never
before. Policymakers, educators and the general public all want to
know: Why do fundamentalist movements turn violent? Are
fundamentalisms a global threat to human rights, security and
democratic forms of government? What is the future of
fundamentalism? To answer questions like these, "Strong Religion"
draws on the results of the Fundamentalism Project, a decade-long
interdisciplinary study of antimodernist, antisecular militant
religious movements on five continents and within seven religious
traditions. The authors of this study analyze the various social
structures, cultural contexts and political environments in which
fundamentalist movements have emerged around the world, from the
Islamic Hamas and Hizbullah to the Catholic and Protestant
paramilitaries of Northern Ireland, and from the Moral Majority and
Christian Coalition of the United states to the Sikh radicals and
Hindu nationalists of India. Offering a vividly detailed portrait
of the cultures that nourish such movements, "Strong Religion"
describes different modes of fundamentalism and identifies the
kinds of historical events that can trigger them. For anyone who
wants to understand why fundamentalist movements arise and what
makes them turn violent, "Strong Religion" should be essential
reading.
Foreigners and Their Food explores how Jews, Christians, and
Muslims conceptualize us" and them" through rules about the
preparation of food by adherents of other religions and the act of
eating with such outsiders. David M. Freidenreich analyzes the
significance of food to religious formation, elucidating the ways
ancient and medieval scholars use food restrictions to think about
the other." Freidenreich illuminates the subtly different ways
Jews, Christians, and Muslims perceive themselves, and he
demonstrates how these distinctive self-conceptions shape ideas
about religious foreigners and communal boundaries. This work, the
first to analyze change over time across the legal literatures of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, makes pathbreaking contributions
to the history of interreligious intolerance and to the comparative
study of religion.
"The Final Pagan Generation" recounts the fascinating story of the
lives and fortunes of the last Romans born before the Emperor
Constantine converted to Christianity. Edward J. Watts traces their
experiences of living through the fourth century's dramatic
religious and political changes, when heated confrontations saw the
Christian establishment legislate against pagan practices as mobs
attacked pagan holy sites and temples. The emperors who issued
these laws, the imperial officials charged with implementing them,
and the Christian perpetrators of religious violence were almost
exclusively young men whose attitudes and actions contrasted
markedly with those of the earlier generation, who shared neither
their juniors' interest in creating sharply defined religious
identities nor their propensity toward violent conflict. Watts
examines why the "final pagan generation"--born to the old ways and
the old world in which it seemed to everyone that religious
practices would continue as they had for the last two thousand
years--proved both unable to anticipate the changes that imperially
sponsored Christianity produced and unwilling to resist them. A
compelling and provocative read, suitable for the general reader as
well as students and scholars of the ancient world.
This book describes Rondine Cittadella della Pace and its unique
residential peacebuilding program that works with young activists
from some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones. Set in its
own Tuscan village, Rondine invites students to its two-year long
residential program that provides them with a master's degree,
trauma healing, and training in peacebuilding. While at Rondine,
students work in pairs representing "both sides" of a conflict and
prepare projects that they will put into place when they return
home. Half of the book is devoted to an in-depth description of the
Rondine method by its founder, Franco Vaccari, while the remainder
consists of essays by Italian and American experts, including the
two editors, providing the religious, psychological, and political
context for this innovative psycho-social method of conflict
resolution.
The Shi'i clergy are amongst the most influential political players
in the Middle East. For decades, scholars and observers have tried
to understand the balance of power between, Shi'i 'quietism' and
'activism'. The book is based on exclusive interviews with
high-profile Shi'i clerics in order to reveal how the Shi'i
clerical elite perceives its role and engages in politics today.
The book focuses on three ground-breaking events in the modern
Middle East: the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the 2003 Iraq
War, and the 2006 July war in Lebanon. By examining the nature and
evolution of a Shi'i clerical network the book finds that, far from
there being strategic differences between 'quitest' and 'activist'
clerics, Shi'i mujtahid statesmen matured, from 1979 in Iran to
2003 Iraq, by way of a pragmatism which led to a strong form of
transnational and associated whole in Lebanon in 2006. In doing so,
the book breaks down the established, and misleading,
dichotomisation of the Shi'i clergy into 'quietists' and
'activists' and discovers that the decision of Shi'i clerical
elites to become politically active or to stay out of politics are
attributable to their ability to adapt to their political
environments.
Azmi Bishara's book on the Syrian Revolution is one of the most
comprehensive and profound works on the subject published to date.
Translated here into English for the first time, the study examines
the complex roots of Syria's political and sectarian conflicts from
the day revolution erupted on 15th March 2011 to its descent into
civil war in the two years that followed. The book unearths and
discusses the very first signs of protests from across Daraa, Hama,
Aleppo, Damascus, Raqqa, Deir El Zour, Edlib and Homs, and it deals
with Syria's ruralization process and the subsequent economic
'liberalization', which eventually led to the revolt against the
Baath party. The work is based on high-level interviews, analysis
of the country's socio-economic background, and examination of the
Syrian regime's strategy and its political and media discourse.
Syria's revolution is chronicled in two stages: the peaceful civil
stage and the armed stage. Bishara's analysis first centres on the
regime's strategy, unveiling despotism, massacres, kidnapping,
sectarian tendencies, jihadist violence, the emergence of warlords,
and the chaotic spread of arms. He then turns to the role of the
opposition to narrate in detail the events that broke out and
exactly how a peaceful protest turned into an armed struggle. The
book provides a roadmap to how revolution broke out and is a
comprehensive analysis of what drove those early events. Its
publication brings renowned Arabic-language scholarship to the
English-speaking world.
The recent rise of antisemitism in the United States has been well
documented and linked to groups and ideologies associated with the
far right. In From Occupation to Occupy, Sina Arnold argues that
antisemitism can also be found as an "invisible prejudice" on the
left. Based on participation in left-wing events and
demonstrations, interviews with activists, and analysis of
left-wing social movement literature, Arnold argues that a pattern
for enabling antisemitism exists. Although open antisemitism on the
left is very rare, there are recurring instances of "antisemitic
trivialization," in which antisemitism is not perceived as a
relevant issue in its own right, leading to a lack of empathy for
Jewish concerns and grievances. Arnold's research also reveals a
pervasive defensiveness against accusations of antisemitism in
left-wing politics, with activists fiercely dismissing the
possibility of prejudice against Jews within their movements and
invariably shifting discussions to critiques of Israel or other
forms of racism. From Occupation to Occupy offers potential
remedies for this situation and suggests that a progressive
political movement that takes antisemitism seriously can be a
powerful force for change in the United States.
Given the extremely high cost of overseas military operations
today, the author offers readers scholarly insights as to what
motivates kingdoms, countries, and groups to engage in religious
conflict, beginning with those found in the Hebrew Bible. To do
this, he analyzes three related religions, Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, to determine their similarities and differences
regarding the killing of people. The areas of conflict analysis
include Fundamentalism, Proselytization, Sacrifice (to include
martyrdom), and Revenge (to include genocide). The insights of
preeminent religious and political scholars are integrated into
this comprehensive analysis of conflict involving religion, leading
to an answer to the ultimate question: Is the killing worth it?
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