This comprehensive three-volume history of the medieval Inquisition by the influential American scholar Henry Charles Lea, first published in 1888, was firmly based on primary sources, and adopted a rationalist approach that departed from the pious tone of earlier histories of the middle ages. Lea was convinced that the Inquisition was not arbitrarily devised and implemented but was an inevitable consequence of forces that were dominant in thirteenth-century Christian society. In Volume 2 Lea focuses mainly on the Inquisition in France, Iberia, Italy and Germany. He delves into the relationship between religion and State in the Languedoc region and describes how the University of Paris obstructed the Inquisition's activity. Lea notes that there was almost no Inquisition presence in Portugal, while in Italy sporadic popular opposition to the Inquisition was noticeable. He also explains how the Bohemian reformer John Huss fell victim to the Inquisition in Germany.

This comprehensive three-volume history of the medieval Inquisition by the influential American scholar Henry Charles Lea, first published in 1888, was firmly based on primary sources, and adopted a rationalist approach that departed from the pious tone of earlier histories of the middle ages. Lea was convinced that the Inquisition was not arbitrarily devised and implemented but was an inevitable consequence of forces that were dominant in thirteenth-century Christian society. In Volume 3 Lea focuses on particular aspects of the Inquisition. He considers the impact of the Inquisition on scholarship and intellectual life and on faith and culture, and describes how movements including the Franciscans and the Fraticelli gained prominence. He shows how the concept of political heresy was used by the Church and the State, and argues that belief in sorcery and witchcraft in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was stimulated by the Church authorities.

Islamophobia and the Law is a foundational volume of critical scholarship on the emerging form of bigotry widely known as Islamophobia. This book brings together leading legal scholars to explore the emergence and rise of Islamophobia after the 9/11 terror attacks, particularly how the law brings about state-sponsored Islamophobia and acts as a dynamic catalyst of private Islamophobia and vigilante violence against Muslims. The first book of its kind, it is a critical read for scholars and practitioners, advocates and students interested in deepening their knowledge of the subject matter. This collection addresses Islamophobia in race, immigration and citizenship, criminal law and national security, in the use of courts to advance anti-Muslim projects and in law and society.

Islamophobia in America offers new perspectives on prejudice against Muslims, which has become increasingly widespread in the USA in the past decade. The contributors document the history of anti-Islamic sentiment in American culture, the scope of organized anti-Muslim propaganda, and the institutionalization of this kind of intolerance.

Fawaz Gerges book on al Qaeda and the jihadist movement has become a classic in the field since it was published in 2005. Here he argued that far from being an Islamist front united in armed struggle, or jihad against the Christian West, as many misguided political commentators and politicians opined, al Qaeda represented a small faction within the jihadist movement, criticized by other groups who preferred to concentrate on changing the Muslim world, rather than attacking the Far Enemy and making the fight global. In the intervening years, with the advance of the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq, much has changed and, just as Gerges showed, al Qaeda s fortunes have taken a significant downturn. Revisiting The Far Enemy in this new edition, Gerges demonstrates that not only have the jihadists split ranks, but that voices from within the ultra-religious right, those that previously supported al Qaeda, are condemning its tactics as violent, unethical, and out of accord with the true meaning of jihad. In fact, millions of Muslims worldwide have rejected al-Qaeda s ideology and strategies and blame Osama bin Laden and his cohorts for the havoc the organisation has wrecked on their communities. Al-Qaeda is now in the wilderness suffering massive erosion of authority and legitimacy in Muslim eyes and facing a fierce revolt from within. As Gerges warns, the next US administration would do well to use political and socio-economic strategies rather than military means to ensure that it stays there.

Christians are the world's most widely persecuted religious group, according to studies by the Pew Research Center, "Newsweek," and the "Economist," among others.

A woman is caught with a Bible and publicly shot to death. An elderly priest is abducted and never seen again. Three buses full of students and teachers are struck by roadside bombs. These are not casualties of a war. These are Christian believers being persecuted for their faith in the twenty-first century.

Many Americans do not understand that Christians today are victims in many parts of the world. Even many Western Christians, who worship and pray without fear of violent repercussions, are unaware that so many followers of Christ live under governments and among people who are often openly hostile to their faith. They think martyrdom became a rarity long ago.

"Persecuted" soundly refutes these assumptions. This book offers a glimpse at the modern-day life of Christians worldwide, recounting the ongoing attacks that rarely make international headlines.

As Western Christians pray for the future of Christ's church, it is vital that they understand a large part of the world's Christian believers live in danger. "Persecuted" gives documented accounts of the persecution of Christians in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and former Soviet nations. It contains vivid stories of men and women who suffer abuse because of their faith in Jesus Christ, and tells of their perseverance and courage..

Persecuted is far more than a thorough and moving study of this global pattern of violence--it is a cry for freedom and a call to action.

From 1618 to 1648 Christian princes waged the first pan-European war. Brought about in part by the entrenched passions of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the Thirty Years War inevitably drew in the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, who stood at the vanguard of Catholic reform. This book investigates the Jesuits' role during the war at the four Catholic courts of Vienna, Munich, Paris and Madrid and the challenge to the Jesuit superior general in Rome to lead a truly international organisation through a period of rising international conflict. War goals varied and changed at the courts as the conflict progressed. Advocates of 'holy war' contended with moderates, or politiques. This book brings to light the extent to which the Thirty Years War was a religious war and it shows how ideas about the proper relationship between religion and politics shifted under the pressure of events.

Religious terrorism has become the scourge of the modern world. What causes a person to kill innocent strangers in the name of religion? As both a clinical psychologist and an authority on comparative religion, James W. Jones is uniquely qualified to address this increasingly urgent question. Research on the psychology of violence shows that several factors work to make ordinary people turn "evil." These include feelings of humiliation or shame, a tendency to see the world in black and white, and demonization or dehumanization of other people. Authoritarian religion or "fundamentalism," Jones shows, is a particularly rich source of such ideas and feelings, which he finds throughout the writings of Islamic jihadists, such as the 9/11 conspirators. Jones goes on to apply this model to two very different religious groups that have engaged in violence: Aum Shinrikyo, the Buddhist splinter group behind the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system, and members of the extreme religious right in the U.S. who have advocated and committed violence against abortion providers. Jones notes that not every adherent of an authoritarian group will turn to violence, and he shows how theories of personality development can explain why certain individuals are easily recruited to perform terrorist acts.

Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads explores the development of ideas of morally justified or legitimate war in Western and Islamic civilizations. Historically, these ideas have been grouped under three labels: just war, holy war, and jihad. A large body of literature exists exploring the development of just war and holy war concepts in the West and of jihad in Islam. Yet, to date, no book has investigated in depth the historical interaction between Western notions of just or holy war and Muslim definitions of jihad. This book is a major contribution to the comparative study of the ethics of war and peace in the West and Islam. Its twenty chapters explore two broad questions: 1. What historical evidence exists that Christian and Jewish writers on just war and holy war and Muslim writers on jihad knew of the other tradition? 2. What is the evidence in treatises, chronicles, speeches, ballads, and other historical records, or in practice, that either tradition influenced the other? The book surveys the period from the rise of Islam in the early seventh century to the present day. Part One surveys the impact of the early Islamic conquests upon Byzantine, Syriac, and Muslim thinking on justified war. Part Two probes developments during the Crusades. Part Three focuses on the early modern period in Europe and the Ottoman Empire, followed by analysis of the era of European imperialism in Part Four. Part Five brings the discussion into the present period, with chapters analyzing the impact of international law and terrorism on conceptions of just war and jihad.

This book is among the most thorough and comprehensive analysis of the causes of religious discrimination to date, complete with detailed illustrations and anecdotes. Jonathan Fox examines the causes of government-based religious discrimination (GRD) against 771 minorities in 183 countries over the course of twenty-five years, while offering possible reasons for why some minorities are discriminated against more than others. Fox illustrates the complexities inherent in the causes of GRD, which can emerge from secular ideologies, religious monopolies, anti-cult policies, security concerns and more. Western democracies tend to discriminate more than Christian-majority countries in the developing world, whether they are democratic or not. While the causes of GRD are ubiquitous, they play out in vastly different ways across world regions and religious traditions. This book serves as a method for better understanding this particular form of discrimination, so that we may have the tools to better combat it and foster compassion across people of different religions and cultures.

In this illuminating study of a vital but long overlooked aspect of Chinese religious life, Jimmy Yu reveals that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, self-inflicted violence was an essential and sanctioned part of Chinese culture. He examines a wide range of practices, including blood writing, filial body-slicing, chastity mutilations and suicides, ritual exposure, and self-immolation, arguing that each practice was public, scripted, and a signal of certain cultural expectations. Yu shows how individuals engaged in acts of self-inflicted violence to exercise power and to affect society, by articulating moral values, reinstituting order, forging new social relations, and protecting against the threat of moral ambiguity. Self-inflicted violence was intelligible both to the person doing the act and to those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of the various religions of the period: Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and other religions. Self-inflicted violence as a category reveals scholarly biases that tend to marginalize or exaggerate certain phenomena in Chinese culture. Yu offers a groundbreaking contribution to scholarship on bodily practices in late imperial China, challenging preconceived ideas about analytic categories of religion, culture, and ritual in the study of Chinese religions.

This is the first book in English to examine the Mizrahi Jews (Jews from the Muslim world) in Israel, focussing in particular on social and political movements such as the Black Panthers and SHAS. The book analyses the ongoing cultural encounter between Zionism and Israel on one side and Mizrahi Jews on the other. It charts the relations and political struggle between Ashkenazi-Zionists and the Mizrahim in Israel from post-war relocation through to the present day. The author examines the Mizrahi political struggle and resistance from early immigration in the 1950s to formative events such as the 1959 Wadi-As-Salib rebellion in Haifa; the 1970s Black Panther movement uprising; the 'Ballot Rebellion' of 1977; the evolution and rise of the SHAS political party as a Mizrahi Collective in the 1980s, and up to the new radical Mizrahi movements of the 1990s and present day. It examines a new Mizrahi discourse which has influenced Israeli culture and academia, and the nature of the political system itself in Israel. This book will be of great interest to those involved in Middle East Studies and Politics, Jewish and Israeli Studies and Race and Ethnic Studies.

Waging a counterinsurgency war and justified by claims of 'an agreement between Guatemala and God,' Guatemala's Evangelical Protestant military dictator General Rios Montt incited a Mayan holocaust: over just 17 months, some 86,000 mostly Mayan civilians were murdered. Virginia Garrard-Burnett dives into the horrifying, bewildering murk of this episode, the Western hemisphere's worst twentieth-century human rights atrocity. She has delivered the most lucid historical account and analysis we yet possess of what happened and how, of the cultural complexities, personalities, and local and international politics that made this tragedy. Garrard-Burnett asks the hard questions and never flinches from the least comforting answers. Beautifully, movingly, and clearly written and argued, this is a necessary and indispensable book. - Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? "Virginia Garrard-Burnett's Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit is impressively researched and argued, providing the first full examination of the religious dimensions of la violencia - a period of extreme political repression that overwhelmed Guatemala in the 1980s. Garrard-Burnett excavates the myriad ways Christian evangelical imagery and ideals saturated political and ethical discourse that scholars usually treat as secular. This book is one of the finest contributions to our understanding of the violence of the late Cold War period, not just in Guatemala but throughout Latin America." -Greg Grandin, Professor of History, New York University Drawing on newly-available primary sources including guerrilla documents, evangelical pamphlets, speech transcripts, and declassified US government records, Virginia Garrard-Burnett provides aa fine-grained picture of what happened during the rule of Guatelaman president-by-coup Efrain Rios Montt. She suggests that three decades of war engendered an ideology of violence that cut not only vertically, but also horizontally, across class, cultures, communities, religions, and even families. The book examines the causality and effects of the ideology of violence, but it also explores the long duree of Guatemalan history between 1954 and the late 1970s that made such an ideology possible. More significantly, she contends that self-interest, willful ignorance, and distraction permitted the human rights tragedies within Guatemala to take place without challenge from the outside world.

This is a revisionary study of Muslims living under Christian rule during the Spanish 'reconquest'. It looks beyond the obvious religious distinctions and delves into the subtleties of identity in the thirteenth-century Crown of Aragon, uncovering a social dynamic in which sectarian differences comprise only one of the many factors in the causal complex of political, economic and cultural reactions. Beginning with the final stage of independent Muslim rule in the Ebro valley region, the book traces the transformation of Islamic society into mudejar society under Christian domination. This was a case of social evolution in which Muslims, far from being passive victims of foreign colonisation, took an active part in shaping their institutions and experiences as subjects of the Infidel. Using a diverse range of methodological approaches, this book challenges widely held assumptions concerning Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, and minority-majority relations in general.

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.

It has long been recognized that in the Gospel according to St Matthew the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees has been intensified and it has often been suggested that this intensification reflects the continued struggle between the Church and the synagogue. The theme of Jewish persecution of Christians in the Gospel according to St Matthew is examined in this book with two questions in mind: 1. Has Matthew exaggerated the severity of the persecution? 2. How has the persecution influenced Matthew's theology? Professor Hare examines the historical data relating to the suffering imposed upon the Christians and refers to Rabbinic literature and Christian sources other than Matthew in order to evaluate Matthew's portrayal of the persecutions. He concludes that persecution was directed primarily against Christian missionaries, not against rank-and-file Christians.

A compelling history of radical transformation in the fourth-century--when Christianity decimated the practices of traditional pagan religion in the Roman Empire. 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 for 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 past 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.

We may think we know what defines religious fanaticism: violent action undertaken with dogmatic certainty. But the term fanatic, from the European Reformation to today, has never been a stable one. Then and now it has been reductively defined to justify state violence and to delegitimize alternative sources of authority. Unknowing Fanaticism rejects the simplified binary of fanatical religion and rational politics, turning to Renaissance literature to demonstrate that fanaticism was integral to how both modern politics and poetics developed, from the German Peasants' Revolt to the English Civil War. The book traces two entangled approaches to fanaticism in this long Reformation moment: the targeting of it as an extreme political threat and the engagement with it as a deep epistemological and poetic problem. In the first, thinkers of modernity from Martin Luther to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke positioned themselves against fanaticism to pathologize rebellion and abet theological and political control. In the second, which arose alongside and often in response to the first, the poets of fanaticism investigated the link between fanatical self-annihilation-the process by which one could become a vessel for divine violence-and the practices of writing poetry. Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton recognized in the fanatic's claim to be a passive instrument of God their own incapacity to know and depict the origins of fanaticism. Yet this crisis of unknowing was a productive one. It led these writers to experiment with poetic techniques that would allow them to address fanaticism's tendency to unsettle the boundaries between human and divine agency and between individual and collective bodies. These poets demand a new critical method, which this book attempts to model: a historically-minded and politicized formalism that can attend to the complexity of the poetic encounter with fanaticism.

In 680 C.E., a small band of the Prophet Muhammads family and their followers, led by his grandson, Husain, rose up in a rebellion against the ruling caliph, Yazid. The family and its supporters, hopelessly outnumbered, were massacred at Karbala, in modern-day Iraq. The story of Karbala is the cornerstone of institutionalized devotion and mourning for millions of Shii Muslims. Apart from its appeal to the Shii community, invocations of Karbala have also come to govern mystical and reformist discourses in the larger Muslim world. Indeed, Karbala even serves as the archetypal resistance and devotional symbol for many non-Muslims. Until now, though, little scholarly attention has been given to the widespread and varied employment of the Karbala event.
In Reliving Karbala, Syed Akbar Hyder examines the myriad ways that the Karbala symbol has provided inspiration in South Asia, home to the worlds largest Muslim population. Rather than a unified reading of Islam, Hyder reveals multiple, sometimes conflicting, understandings of the meaning of Islamic religious symbols like Karbala. He ventures beyond traditional, scriptural interpretations to discuss the ways in which millions of very human adherents express and practice their beliefs. By using a panoramic array of sources, including musical performances, interviews, nationalist drama, and other literary forms, Hyder traces the evolution of this story from its earliest historical origins to the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Today, Karbala serves as a celebration of martyrdom, a source of personal and communal identity, and even a tool for political protest and struggle. Hyder explores how issues related to gender, genre, popular culture, class, and migrancy bear on the cultivation of religious symbols. He assesses the manner in which religious language and identities are negotiated across contexts and continents.
At a time when words like martyrdom, jihad, and Shiism are being used and misused for political reasons, this book provides much-needed scholarly redress. Through his multifaceted examination of this seminal event in Islamic history, Hyder offers an original, complex, and nuanced view of religious symbols.

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. A tiny country of just two million people, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanians, Kosovo is central-geographically, historically, and politically-to the future of the Western Balkans and, in turn, its potential future within the European Union. But the fate of both Kosovo, condemned by Serbian leaders as a "fake state" and the region as a whole, remains uncertain.
In Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know(r), Tim Judah provides a straight-forward guide to the complicated place that is Kosovo. Judah, who has spent years covering the region, offers succinct, penetrating answers to a wide range of questions: Why is Kosovo important? Who are the Albanians? Who are the Serbs? Why is Kosovo so important to Serbs? What role does Kosovo play in the region and in the world? Judah reveals how things stand now and presents the history and geopolitical dynamics that have led to it. The most important of these is the question of the right to self-determination, invoked by the Kosovo Albanians, as opposed to right of territorial integrity invoked by the Serbs. For many Serbs, Kosovo's declaration of independence and subsequent recognition has been traumatic, a savage blow to national pride. Albanians, on the other hand, believe their independence rights an historical wrong: the Serbian conquest (Serbs say "liberation") of Kosovo in 1912.
For anyone wishing to understand both the history and possible future of Kosovo at this pivotal moment in its history, this book offers a wealth of insight and information in a uniquely accessible format.
What Everyone Needs to Know(r) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

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.

The Crusades and the Christian World of the East Rough Tolerance Christopher MacEvitt "A first-rate piece of scholarship that will have a major impact on the field of crusade studies and medieval history in general. . . . A must for all historians of the Latin East and those interested in relations between the churches."--Jonathan Riley-Smith, author of "The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading" "A superb contribution to understanding the complex interaction of local and occupying Christian populations during the crusading era. . . . Highly recommended."--"Choice" "An important book, which shows that the Western settlers did not remain a foreign presence but became fully integrated in the society of the Levant."--"TLS" In the wake of Jerusalem's fall in 1099, the crusading armies of western Christians known as the Franks found themselves governing not only Muslims and Jews but also local Christians, whose culture and traditions were a world apart from their own. The crusader-occupied swaths of Syria and Palestine were home to many separate Christian communities: Greek and Syrian Orthodox, Armenians, and other sects with sharp doctrinal differences. How did these disparate groups live together under Frankish rule? In "The Crusades and the Christian World of the East," Christopher MacEvitt marshals an impressive array of literary, legal, artistic, and archeological evidence to demonstrate how crusader ideology and religious difference gave rise to a mode of coexistence he calls "rough tolerance." The twelfth-century Frankish rulers of the Levant and their Christian subjects were separated by language, religious practices, and beliefs. Yet western Christians showed little interest in such differences. Franks intermarried with local Christians and shared shrines and churches, but they did not hesitate to use military force against Christian communities. Rough tolerance was unlike other medieval modes of dealing with religious difference, and MacEvitt illuminates the factors that led to this striking divergence. "It is commonplace to discuss the diversity of the Middle East in terms of Muslims, Jews, and Christians," MacEvitt writes, "yet even this simplifies its religious complexity." While most crusade history has focused on Christian-Muslim encounters, MacEvitt offers an often surprising account by examining the intersection of the Middle Eastern and Frankish Christian worlds during the century of the First Crusade. Christopher MacEvitt teaches religion at Dartmouth College. The Middle Ages Series 2007 280 pages 6 x 9 3 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-4050-4 Cloth $49.95s 32.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-2083-4 Paper $22.50s 15.00 World Rights History, Religion Short copy: In "The Crusades and the Christian World of the East," Christopher MacEvitt marshals an impressive array of literary, legal, artistic, and archeological evidence to demonstrate how crusader ideology and religious difference gave rise to a mode of coexistence he calls "rough tolerance."

Christian princes waged the first pan-European war from 1618 to 1648. Brought about in part by the entrenched passions of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the Thirty Years War inevitably drew in the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, who stood at the vanguard of Catholic Reform. This book investigates for the first time the Jesuits' role during the war at the four Catholic courts of Vienna, Munich, Paris, and Madrid. It also examines the challenge to the Jesuit superior general in Rome to lead a truly international organization through a period of rising national conflict.

The subjects in this volume focus on the history of the Latin East and its place in the context of Mediterranean trade and near eastern political developments.

This collection of seventeen essays by leading researchers is published with a companion volume to celebrate the sixty-fifth birthday of Jonathan Riley-Smith, the leading British historian of the Crusades. The subjects focus on the theory and practice of crusading and the contributions which were made by the military orders.