Racism and sectarianism makes an important contribution to the discussion on the 'crisis of anti-racism' in the United Kingdom. The book looks at two phenomena that are rarely examined together - racism and sectarianism. The author argues that thinking critically about sectarianism and other racisms in Northern Ireland helps to clear up some confusions regarding 'race' and ethnicity. Many of the prominent themes in debates on racism and anti-racism in the UK today - the role of religion, racism and 'terrorism', community cohesion - were central to discussions on sectarianism in Northern Ireland during the conflict and peace process. The book provides a sustained critique of the Race Relations paradigm that dominates official anti-racism and sketches out some elements of an emancipatory anti-racism. -- .

This new study examines the relationship of atheism to religious tolerance from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment in a broad array of literary texts and political and religious controversies written in Latin and the vernacular primarily in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The main authors featured are Desiderius Erasmus, Sebastian Castellio, Jean Bodin, Michel de Montaigne, Dirck Coornhert, Justus Lipsius, Gisbertus Voetius, the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus, and Pierre Bayle. These authors reflect and inform changing attitudes to religious tolerance inspired by a complete reconceptualization of atheism over the course of three centuries of literary and intellectual history. By integrating the history of tolerance in the history of atheism, Religious Tolerance from Renaissance to Enlightenment: Atheist's Progress should prove stimulating to historians of philosophy as well as literary specialists and students of Reformation history.

This book offers interdisciplinary and cross-national perspectives on the challenges of negotiating the contours of religious tolerance in Europe. In today's Europe, religions and religious individuals are increasingly framed as both an internal and external security threat. This is evident in controls over the activities of foreign preachers but also, more broadly, in EU states' management of migration flows, marked by questions regarding the religious background of migrating non-European Others. This book addresses such shifts directly by examining how understandings of religious freedom touch down in actual contexts, places, and practices across Europe, offering multidisciplinary insights from leading thinkers from political theory, political philosophy, anthropology, and geography. The volume thus aims to ground ideal liberal democratic theory and, at the same time, to bring normative reflection to grounded, ethnographic analyses of religious practices. Such 'grounded' understandings matter, for they speak to how religions and religious difference are encountered in specific places. They especially matter in a European context where religion and religious difference are increasingly not just securitised but made the object of violent attacks. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy, geography, religious studies, and the sociology and anthropology of religion.

This illuminating, in-depth studypresents a wealth of case material, demonstrating the many manifestations of religious violence-not just war and terrorism, which are the focus of so many discussions of religiously motivated violence-but also more prevalent forms. The author, an anthropologist, devotes separate chapters to: * sacrifice (both animal and human); * self-mortification (including self-injury, asceticism, and martyrdom); * religious persecution (from anti-Semitic pogroms to witchhunts); * ethno-religious conflict (including such hotspots as Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia); * religious wars (from the ancient Hebrews' wars and the Christian Crusades to Islamic jihad and Hindu righteous wars); * and religious homicide and abuse (spousal abuse, genital mutilation, and "dowry death," among other manifestations). In the final chapter, "Religion and Nonviolence," the author examines nonviolent and low-conflict societies and considers various methods of managing conflict. This book goes a long way toward helping us understand the nature of violence generally, its complicated connections with religion, and how society in the future might avoid being blindsided by the worst aspects of human nature.

Embracing Epistemic Humility: Confronting Triumphalism in Three Abrahamic Religions builds a case that encourages advocates of world views, especially the children of Abraham Jews, Christians and Muslims to embrace an attitude of epistemic humility toward their world views and thereby defeat the triumphalism which, on the contemporary scene, has infected the world views of all too many in the Abrahamic tradition. Triumphalists see their world view as the ultimate repository of spiritual truth: all other world views are inferior and their adherents need to be converted forcefully, or silenced, or destroyed to prevent their cancerous views from metastasizing.Embracing such epistemic humility is not only the antidote to triumphalism but it is also a powerful motivator to transform world view competitors into comrades engaged in a struggle to combat evil and to promote human flourishing."

On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic Christians, representing over sixty percent of the community. In this collective biography, nine Catholic survivors share personal and compelling stories about the aftermath of the bomb and their lives since that day. Examining the Catholic community's interpretation of the A-bomb, this book not only uses memory to provide a greater understanding of the destruction of the bombing, but also links it to the past experiences of religious persecution, drawing comparisons with the 'Secret Christian' groups which survived in the Japanese countryside after the banning of Christianity. Through in-depth interviews, it emerges that the memory of the atomic bomb is viewed through the lens of a community which had experienced suffering and marginalisation for more than 400 years. Furthermore, it argues that their dangerous memory confronts Euro-American-centric narratives of the atomic bombings, whilst also challenging assumptions around a providential bomb. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki presents the voices of Catholics, many of whom have not spoken of their losses within the framework of their faith before. As such, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese history, religion and war history.

Islamophobic hate crimes have increased significantly following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7. More recently, the rhetoric surrounding Trump's election and presidency, Brexit, the rise of far-right groups and ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks worldwide have promoted a climate where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments have become 'legitimised'. The Routledge International Handbook of Islamophobia provides a comprehensive single-volume collection of key readings in Islamophobia. Consisting of 32 chapters accessibly written by scholars, policy makers and practitioners, it seeks to examine the nature, extent, implications of, and responses to Islamophobic hate crime both nationally and internationally. This volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Criminology, Victimology, Sociology, Social Policy, Religious Studies, Law and related Social Sciences subjects. It will also appeal to scholars, policy makers and practitioners working in and around the areas of Islamophobic hate crimes.

This comprehensive and thought-provoking volume examines the role and function of religion in Hezbollah's political strategy in the context of contemporary Lebanese politics and global security. The book demonstrates how Hezbollah uses religious mechanisms such as taklif shari (religious assessment), ijtihad (interpretation) of jihad, and fatwa (religious verdict) as political tools to mobilise the Shi'a in Lebanon and the Middle East and to build political support. The comprehensive content analysis scrutinised speeches of Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, from 2000 to 2013. The results provide and inform a wide-scoping discussion of Nasrallah's uses of rhetorical devices and context to imbue religious elements into Hezbollah politics to mobilise and motivate supporters. Additionally, a case study analysis of Hezbollah's intervention in the Syrian conflict is also included. This further demonstrates Hezbollah's strategic use of political pragmatism and religious rhetoric to link its political and military agendas and to transition the Party from a resistance group in Lebanon to a regional actor with a regional priority. As such, readers are provided with new and interesting insights into Hezbollah's ideology and identity as a domestic and regional non-state actor, and the social mobilisation of Shi'a in Lebanon and the region. Providing a nexus between religion, politics, and security, the book will be a key resource for students and researchers interested in religious studies and Middle East politics.

Rohingya men, women and children have been fleeing from their homes for forty years. The tipping point came in August 2017, when almost 700,000 were wrung from Myanmar in a single military operation. There are now very few members of this Muslim minority left in the country. Instead, they live mostly in Bangladesh's refugee camps; or precariously in Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia and scatterings elsewhere. With the Rohingya almost entirely in exile, 'I Feel No Peace' is the first book-length exploration of what their existence abroad looks like. Journalist Kaamil Ahmed draws on hundreds of hours of interviews, and on relationships that he has built over years with Rohingya in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand and throughout the diaspora. He speaks to families who have had their children snatched, and people kidnapped to feed a system of human trafficking that is nourished by the community's suffering. Among the most disturbing and under-reported of his revelations is the complicit role of the UN and NGOs in the plight of the Rohingya. But Ahmed also describes stories of resilience and hope, painting a nuanced picture of how a scattered community survives. The characters of 'I Feel No Peace' are complex, heart-breaking and unforgettable.

The first comprehensive analysis of the dynamic interpenetration of religion and war in the West from C4 to early C13. Warfare in all histories and cultures shows evidence of the driving need to sanctify the cause, from the personal devotions of individuals to the grand designs of the architects of battle. In his important study David Bachrach takes a first thorough look at warfare in western Europe and its interaction with Christianity, from the initial appearance of the pacifist sect to the medieval popes' certainty of the crusades as "holy war". Religion played a necessary and crucial role in the conduct of war during late Antiquity and the middle ages. Military discipline and morale depended in significant part on religious rites carried out by priests and soldiers in the field and by their supporters on the home front. Just as importantly, warfare in the late Roman empire and its western successor states had a profound impact on Christian religious practice and doctrine: liturgical developments - in prayer, communion, confession, penance - can be linked to the military needs of the Christian Roman world and the Christian states of medieval Europe. Even more profound was the transformation of Christianity itself from pacifism to a faith which justified and eventually glorified killing on behalf of the Church. This volume provides the first comprehensive analysis of the dynamic interpenetration of religion and war in the West during almost a thousand years, fromthe accession of Constantine the Great in the early fourth century until the eve of the Fourth Lateran Council in the early thirteenth. With its often new interpretations of a vast array of sources, Religion and the Conduct ofWar has much to say to historians and others on the nature of war and its relationship with faith. DAVID S. BACHRACH is Associate Professor of History, University of New Hampshire.

"It incarnates every unclean beast of lust, guile, falsehood, murder, despotism and spiritual wickedness." So wrote a prominent Southern Baptist official in 1899 of Mormonism. Rather than the "quintessential American religion," as it has been dubbed by contemporary scholars, in the late nineteenth century Mormonism was America's most vilified homegrown faith. A vast national campaign featuring politicians, church leaders, social reformers, the press, women's organizations, businessmen, and ordinary citizens sought to end the distinctive Latter-day Saint practice of plural marriage, and to extinguish the entire religion if need be.
Placing the movement against polygamy in the context of American and southern history, Mason demonstrates that anti-Mormonism was one of the earliest vehicles for reconciliation between North and South after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Southerners joined with northern reformers and Republicans to endorse the use of newly expanded federal power to vanquish the perceived threat to Christian marriage and the American republic.
Anti-Mormonism was a significant intellectual, legal, religious, and cultural phenomenon, but in the South it was also violent. While southerners were concerned about distinctive Mormon beliefs and political practices, they were most alarmed at the "invasion" of Mormon missionaries in their communities and the prospect of their wives and daughters falling prey to polygamy. Moving to defend their homes and their honor against this threat, southerners turned to legislation, to religion, and, most dramatically, to vigilante violence.
The Mormon Menace provides new insights into some of the most important discussions of the late nineteenth century and of our own age, including debates over the nature and limits of religious freedom; the contest between the will of the people and the rule of law; and the role of citizens, churches, and the state in regulating and defining marriage.

This book treads new ground by bringing the Evangelical and Dissenting movements within Christianity into close engagement with one another. While Evangelicalism and Dissent both have well established historiographies, there are few books that specifically explore the relationship between the two. Thus, this complex relationship is often overlooked and underemphasised. The volume is organised chronologically, covering the period from the late seventeenth century to the closing decades of the twentieth century. Some chapters deal with specific centuries but others chart developments across the whole period covered by the book. Chapters are balanced between those that concentrate on an individual, such as George Whitefield or John Stott, and those that focus on particular denominational groups like Wesleyan Methodism, Congregationalism or the 'Black Majority Churches'. The result is a new insight into the cross pollination of these movements that will help the reader to understand modern Christianity in England and Wales more fully. Offering a fresh look at the development of Evangelicalism and Dissent, this volume will be of keen interest to any scholar of Religious Studies, Church History, Theology or modern Britain.

Space is dynamic, political and a cause of conflict. It bears the weight of human dreams and fears. Conflict is caused not only by spatial exclusivism but also by an inclusivism that seeks harmony through subordinating the particularity of the Other to the world view of the majority. This book uses the lens of space to examine inter-religious and inter-communal conflict in colonial and post-colonial Sri Lanka, demonstrating that the colonial can shed light on the post-colonial, particularly on post-war developments, post-May 2009, when Buddhist symbolism was controversially developed in the former, largely non-Buddhist, war zones. Using the concepts of exclusivism and inclusivist subordination, the book analyses the different imaginaries or world views that were present in colonial and post-1948 Sri Lanka, with particular reference to the ethnic or religious Other, and how these were expressed in space, influenced one another and engendered conflict. The book's use of insights from human geography, peace studies and secular iterations of the theology of religions breaks new ground, as does its narrative technique, which prioritizes voices from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the author's fieldwork and personal observation in the twenty first. Through utilizing past and contemporary reflections on lived experience, informed by diverse religious world views, the book offers new insights into Sri Lanka's past and present. It will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience in the fields of colonial and postcolonial studies; war and peace studies; security studies; religious studies; the study of religion; Buddhist Studies, mission studies, South Asian and Sri Lankan studies.

This book investigates the response of the Catholic Church in Northern Ireland to the conflict in the region during the late Twentieth Century. It does so through the prism of the writings of Cardinal Cahal Daly (1917-2009), the only member of the hierarchy to serve as a bishop throughout the entire conflict. This book uses the prolific writings of Cardinal Daly to create a vision of the 'Peaceable Kingdom' and demonstrate how Catholic social teaching has been used to promote peace, justice and nonviolence. It also explores the public role of the Catholic Church in situations of violence and conflict, as well as the importance for national churches in developing a voice in the public square.Finally, the book offers a reflection on the role of Catholic social teaching in contemporary society and the ways in which the lessons of Northern Ireland can be utilised in a world where structural violence, as evidenced by austerity, and reactions to Brexit in the United Kingdom, is now the norm. This work challenges and changes the nature of the debate surrounding the role of the Catholic Church in the conflict in Northern Ireland. It will, therefore, be a key resource for scholars of Religious Studies, Catholic Theology, Religion and Violence, Peace Studies, and Twentieth Century History.

Jihadism, Foreign Fighters and Radicalization in the EU addresses the organizational and strategic changes in terrorism in Europe as a result of urban jihadism and the influx of foreign fighters of European nationality or residence. Examining the different types of responses to the treatment of radicalization and its consequences in the recruitment of young urban fighters and jihadists, this book offers a framework for understanding the process of violent radicalization. It critically analyses political and legal responses that have taken place within the European framework, whilst also examining a series of functional responses from social and behavioural psychology. This book then goes on to develop an explanatory model from an economic standpoint, exploring the need to adapt the fight against the financing of terrorism to the changes in the sources of financing jihadist cells and foreign fighters. Furthermore, the volume draws on experience from the prison sector to assess the process of radicalization and the possibilities of intervention. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book will be of great interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, radicalization, European politics, radical Islam and security studies.

Women's role in crusades and crusading examined through a close investigation of the narratives in which they appear. Narratives of crusading have often been overlooked as a source for the history of women because of their focus on martial events, and perceptions about women inhibiting the recruitment and progress of crusading armies. Yet women consistently appeared in the histories of crusade and settlement, performing a variety of roles. While some were vilified as "useless mouths" or prostitutes, others undertook menial tasks for the army, went on crusade with retinuesof their own knights, and rose to political prominence in the Levant and and the West. This book compares perceptions of women from a wide range of historical narratives including those eyewitness accounts, lay histories andmonastic chronicles that pertained to major crusade expeditions and the settler society in the Holy Land. It addresses how authors used events involving women and stereotypes based on gender, family role, and social status in writing their histories: how they blended historia and fabula, speculated on women's motivations, and occasionally granted them a literary voice in order to connect with their audience, impart moral advice, and justify the crusade ideal. Dr NATASHA R. HODGSON teaches at Nottingham Trent University.

Abdullah An-na'im offers a pioneering exploration of American Muslim citizenship and identity, arguing against the prevalent emphasis on majority-minority politics and instead promoting a shared citizenship that both accommodates and transcends religious identity. Many scholars and community leaders have called on American Muslims to engage with or integrate into mainstream American culture. Such calls tend to assume that there is a distinctive, monolithic, minority religious identity for American Muslims. Rejecting the closed categories that determine the minority status of a particular group and that, in turn, impede active, engaged citizenship, An-na'im draws attention to the relational nature of identity, emphasizing a common base of national membership and advancing a legal approach to a public recognition of a person's status as citizen. Rather than perceive themselves or accept being perceived by others as a monolithic minority, he argues, American Muslims should view themselves as American citizens who happen to be Muslims. As American citizens, they share a vast array of identities with other American citizens, whether ethnic, political, or socio-economic. But none of these identities qualify or limit their citizenship. An-na'im urges members of the American Muslim community to take a proactive, affirmative view of their citizenship in order to realize their rights fully and fulfill their obligations in social and cultural as well as political and legal terms. He shows that the freedom to associate with others in order to engage in civic action to advance rights and interests is integral to the underlying rationale of citizenship and not something that must be relinquished to become an American citizen. What Is an American Muslim? provides acute insight into the nature of citizenship and identity, the place of religious affiliation in American society, and what it means to share in a collective identity.

In September 2014, Azad Cudi became one of seventeen snipers deployed when ISIS, trying to shatter the Kurds in a decisive battle, besieged the northern city of Kobani. In LONG SHOT, he tells the inside story of how a group of activists and idealists withstood a ferocious assault and, street by street, house by house, took back their land in a victory that was to prove the turning point in the war against ISIS. By turns devastating, inspiring and lyrical, this is a unique account of modern war and of the incalculable price of victory as a few thousand men and women achieved the impossible and kept their dream of freedom alive.

This new study examines the relationship of atheism to religious tolerance from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment in a broad array of literary texts and political and religious controversies written in Latin and the vernacular primarily in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The main authors featured are Desiderius Erasmus, Sebastian Castellio, Jean Bodin, Michel de Montaigne, Dirck Coornhert, Justus Lipsius, Gisbertus Voetius, the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus, and Pierre Bayle. These authors reflect and inform changing attitudes to religious tolerance inspired by a complete reconceptualization of atheism over the course of three centuries of literary and intellectual history. By integrating the history of tolerance in the history of atheism, Religious Tolerance from Renaissance to Enlightenment: Atheist's Progress should prove stimulating to historians of philosophy as well as literary specialists and students of Reformation history.

While concentrated on the famous Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, this book focuses on an area that has so far been somewhat marginalized or even overlooked by modern interpreters: the recontextualizing of the Passio Perpetuae in the subsequent reception of this text in the literature of the early Church. Since its composition in the early decades of the 3rd century, the Passio Perpetuae was enjoying an extraordinary authority and popularity. However, it contained a number of revolutionary and innovative features that were in conflict with existing social and theological conventions. This book analyses all relevant texts from the 3rd to 5th centuries in which Perpetua and her comrades are mentioned, and demonstrates the ways in which these texts strive to normalize the innovative aspects of the Passio Perpetuae. These efforts, visible as they are already on careful examination of the passages of the editor of the passio, continue from Tertullian to Augustine and his followers. The normalization of the narrative reaches its peak in the so-called Acta Perpetuae which represent a radical rewriting of the original and an attempt to replace it by a purified text, more compliant with the changed socio-theological hierarchies.

In this path-breaking new work, Ali Usman Qasmi traces the history of the political exclusion of the Ahmadiyya religious minority in Pakistan by drawing on revealing new sources. This volume is the first scholarly study of the declassified material of the court of inquiry that produced the Munir-Kiyani report of 1954, and the proceedings of the national assembly that declared the Ahmadis non-Muslims through the second constitutional amendment in 1974. The Ahmadis and the Politics of Religious Exclusion in Pakistan chronicles anti-Ahmadi violence and the legal and administrative measures adopted against them, and also addresses wider issues of the politics of Islam in postcolonial Muslim nation-states and their disputative engagements with ideas of modernity and citizenship.

This book offers interdisciplinary and cross-national perspectives on the challenges of negotiating the contours of religious tolerance in Europe. In today's Europe, religions and religious individuals are increasingly framed as both an internal and external security threat. This is evident in controls over the activities of foreign preachers but also, more broadly, in EU states' management of migration flows, marked by questions regarding the religious background of migrating non-European Others. This book addresses such shifts directly by examining how understandings of religious freedom touch down in actual contexts, places, and practices across Europe, offering multidisciplinary insights from leading thinkers from political theory, political philosophy, anthropology, and geography. The volume thus aims to ground ideal liberal democratic theory and, at the same time, to bring normative reflection to grounded, ethnographic analyses of religious practices. Such 'grounded' understandings matter, for they speak to how religions and religious difference are encountered in specific places. They especially matter in a European context where religion and religious difference are increasingly not just securitised but made the object of violent attacks. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy, geography, religious studies, and the sociology and anthropology of religion.

The subject of this book is the discourse of persecution used by Christians in Late Antiquity (c. 300-700 CE). Through a series of detailed case studies covering the full chronological and geographical span of the period, this book investigates how the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity changed the way that Christians and para- Christians perceived the hostile treatments they received, either by fellow Christians or by people of other religions. A closely related second goal of this volume is to encourage scholars to think more precisely about the terminological difficulties related to the study of persecution. Indeed, despite sustained interest in the subject, few scholars have sought to distinguish between such closely related concepts as punishment, coercion, physical violence, and persecution. Often, these terms are used interchangeably. Although there are no easy answers, an emphatic conclusion of the studies assembled in this volume is that "persecution" was a malleable rhetorical label in late antique discourse, whose meaning shifted depending on the viewpoint of the authors who used it. This leads to our third objective: to analyze the role and function played by rhetoric and polemic in late antique claims to be persecuted. Late antique Christian writers who cast their present as a repetition of past persecutions often aimed to attack the legitimacy of the dominant Christian faction through a process of othering. This discourse also expressed a polarizing worldview in order to strengthen the group identity of the writers' community in the midst of ideological conflicts and to encourage steadfastness against the temptation to collaborate with the other side.

On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic Christians, representing over sixty percent of the community. In this collective biography, nine Catholic survivors share personal and compelling stories about the aftermath of the bomb and their lives since that day. Examining the Catholic community's interpretation of the A-bomb, this book not only uses memory to provide a greater understanding of the destruction of the bombing, but also links it to the past experiences of religious persecution, drawing comparisons with the 'Secret Christian' groups which survived in the Japanese countryside after the banning of Christianity. Through in-depth interviews, it emerges that the memory of the atomic bomb is viewed through the lens of a community which had experienced suffering and marginalisation for more than 400 years. Furthermore, it argues that their dangerous memory confronts Euro-American-centric narratives of the atomic bombings, whilst also challenging assumptions around a providential bomb. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki presents the voices of Catholics, many of whom have not spoken of their losses within the framework of their faith before. As such, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese history, religion and war history.