This Element reviews the state of the question regarding theories of cultic violence. It introduces definitions and vocabulary and presents relevant historical examples of religious violence. It then discusses the 1960s and 1970s, the period immediately before the Jonestown tragedy. Considerations of the post-Jonestown (1978), and then post-Waco (1993) literature follow. After 9/11 (2001), some of the themes identified in previous decades reappear. The Element concludes by examining the current problem of repression and harassment directed at religious believers. Legal discrimination by governments, as well as persecution of religious minorities by non-state actors, has challenged earlier fears about cultic violence.

The global persecution of Christians is an urgent human rights issue that remains underreported. This volume presents the results of the first systematic global investigation into how Christians respond to persecution. World-class scholars of global Christianity present first-hand research from most of the sites of the harshest persecution as well as the West and Latin America. Their findings make clear the nature of persecution, the reasons for it, Christian responses to it - both non-violent and confrontational - and the effects of these responses. Motivating the volume is the hope that this knowledge will empower all who would exercise solidarity with the world's persecuted Christians and will offer the victims strategies for a more effective response. This book is written for anyone concerned about the persecution of Christians or more generally about the human right of religious freedom, including scholars, activists, political and religious leaders, and those who work for international organizations.

A Westerner's travels among the persecuted and displaced Christian remnant in Iraq and Syria teach him much about faith under fire. Gold Medal Winner, 2018 IPPY Book of the Year Award Silver Medal Winner, 2018 Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist, 2018 ECPA Christian Book Award Inside Syria and Iraq, and even along the refugee trail, they're a religious minority persecuted for their Christian faith. Outside the Middle East, they're suspect because of their nationality. A small remnant of Christians is on the run from the Islamic State. If they are wiped out, or scattered to the corners of the earth, the language that Jesus spoke may be lost forever - along with the witness of a church that has modeled Jesus' way of nonviolence and enemy-love for two millennia. The kidnapping, enslavement, torture, and murder of Christians by the Islamic State, or ISIS, have been detailed by journalists, as have the jihadists' deliberate efforts to destroy the cultural heritage of a region that is the cradle of Christianity. But some stories run deep, and without a better understanding of the religious and historical roots of the present conflict, history will keep repeating itself century after century. Andreas Knapp, a priest who works with refugees in Germany, travelled to camps for displaced people in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq to collect stories of survivors - and to seek answers to troubling questions about the link between religion and violence. He found Christians who today still speak Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The uprooted remnant of ancient churches, they doggedly continue to practice their faith despite the odds. Their devastating eyewitness reports make it clear why millions are fleeing the Middle East. Yet, remarkably, though these last Christians hold little hope of ever returning to their homes, they also harbor no thirst for revenge. Could it be that they - along with the Christians of the West, whose interest will determine their fate - hold the key to breaking the cycle of violence in the region? Includes sixteen pages of color photographs.

Deadly Clerics explains why some Muslim clerics adopt the ideology of militant jihadism while most do not. The book explores multiple pathways of cleric radicalization and shows that the interplay of academic, religious, and political institutions has influenced the rise of modern jihadism through a mechanism of blocked ambition. As long as clerics' academic ambitions remain attainable, they are unlikely to espouse violent jihad. Clerics who are forced out of academia are more likely to turn to jihad for two reasons: jihadist ideas are attractive to those who see the system as turning against them, and preaching a jihad ideology can help these outsider clerics attract supporters and funds. The book draws on evidence from various sources, including large-scale statistical analysis of texts and network data obtained from the Internet, case studies of clerics' lives, and ethnographic participant observations at sites in Cairo, Egypt.

It is a little known fact that as early as the thirteenth century, Europe's political and religious powers tried to physically mark and distinguish the Jews from the rest of society. During the Renaissance, Italian Jews first had to wear a yellow round badge on their chest, and then later, a yellow beret. The discriminatory marks were a widespread phenomenon with serious consequences for Jewish communities and their relations with Christians. Beginning with a sartorial study - how the Jews were marked on their clothing and what these marks meant - the book offers an in-depth analysis of anti-Jewish discrimination across three Italian city-states: Milan, Genoa, and Piedmont. Moving beyond Italy, it also examines the place of Jews and Jewry law in the increasingly interconnected world of Early Modern European politics.

'This is Irish history seen anew, from below, bristling with practical lessons for working-class struggle today' - Eamonn McCann The 32 counties of Ireland were divided through imperial terror and gerrymandering. Partition was borne from a Tory strategy to defend the British Empire and has spawned a 'carnival of reaction' in Irish politics ever since. Over the last 100 years, conservative forces have dominated both states offering religious identity as a diversion from economic failures and inequality. Through a sharp analysis of the history of partition, Kieran Allen rejects the view that the 'two cultures' of Catholic and Protestant communities lock people into permanent antagonism. Instead, the sectarian states have kept its citizens divided through political and economic measures like austerity, competition for reduced services and low wages. Overturning conventional narratives, 32 Counties evokes the tradition of James Connolly and calls for an Irish unity movement from below to unite the North and the Republic into a secular, socialist and united Ireland.

Nestor Makhno has been called a revolutionary anarchist, a peasant rebel, the Ukrainian Robin Hood, a mass-murderer, a pogromist, and a devil. These epithets had their origins in the Russian Civil War (1917-1921), where the military forces of the peasant-anarchist Nestor Makhno and Mennonite colonists in southern Ukraine came into conflict. In autumn 1919, Makhnovist troops and local peasant sympathizers murdered more than 800 Mennonites in a series of large-scale massacres. The history of that conflict has been fraught with folklore, ideological battles and radically divergent cultural memories, in which fact and fiction often seamlessly blend, conjuring a multitude of Makhnos, each one shouting its message over the other. Drawing on theories of collective memory and narrative analysis, Makhno and Memory brings a vast array of Makhnovist and Mennonite sources into dialogue, including memoirs, histories, diaries, newspapers, and archival material. A diversity of perspectives are brought into relief through the personal reminiscences of Makhno and his anarchist sympathizers alongside Mennonite pacifists and advocates for armed self-defense. Through a meticulous analysis of the Makhnovist-Mennonite conflict and a micro-study of the Eichenfeld massacre of October 1919, Sean Patterson attempts to make sense of the competing cultural memories and presents new ways of thinking about Makhno and his movement. Makhno and Memory offers a convincing reframing of the Mennonite / Makhno relationship that will force a scholarly reassessment of this period.

In a thought-provoking and challenging enterprise to rethink inter-human relationships, this book brings together a range of international scholars and peace practitioners who share their expertise and knowledge about the relationship between religion, conflict, and violence. Focusing on images of enmity, they show fascinating possibilities of how these images might be transformed into perspectives of hope and peace. (Series: ContactZone. Explorations in Intercultural Theology - Vol. 15)

Religious War and Religious Peace in Early Modern Europe presents a novel account of the origins of religious pluralism in Europe. Combining comparative historical analysis with contentious political analysis, it surveys six clusters of increasingly destructive religious wars between 1529 and 1651, analyzes the diverse settlements that brought these wars to an end, and describes the complex religious peace that emerged from two centuries of experimentation in accommodating religious differences. Rejecting the older authoritarian interpretations of the age of religious wars, the author uses traditional documentary sources as well as photographic evidence to show how a broad range Europeans - from authoritative elites to a colorful array of religious 'dissenters' - replaced the cultural 'unity and purity' of late-medieval Christendom with a variable and durable pattern of religious diversity, deeply embedded in political, legal, and cultural institutions.

Every day, men and women risk their lives to stop violence in religiously charged conflicts around the world. You may not know their names - but you should. Peacemakers in Action, Volume 2 provides a window into the triumphs, risks, failures, and lessons learned of eight remarkable, religiously motivated peacemakers including: * A Methodist bishop in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who confronts armed warlords on his front lawn * A Christian who travels to Syria to coordinate medical aid and rebuild postwar communities * A Muslim woman, not knowing how Kabul's imams will react, arrives to train them on how to treat women - respectfully. Volume 2 offers students of religious and grassroots peacebuilding informative techniques and methods for organizing community action, establishing trust in conflict, and instilling hope amid turmoil. The book also features updates of case studies presented in Volume 1.

The most devastating attacks against the Jews of medieval Christian Europe took place during the riots that erupted, in 1391 and 1392, in the lands of Castile and Aragon. For ten horrific months, hundreds if not thousands of Jews were killed, numerous Jewish institutions destroyed, and many Jews forcibly converted to Christianity. Benjamin R. Gampel explores why the famed convivencia of medieval Iberian society - in which Christians, Muslims and Jews seemingly lived together in relative harmony - was conspicuously absent. Using extensive archival evidence, this critical volume explores the social, religious, political, and economic tensions at play in each affected town. The relationships, biographies and personal dispositions of the royal family are explored to understand why monarchic authority failed to protect the Jews during these violent months. Gampel's extensive study is essential for scholars and graduate students of medieval Iberian and Jewish history.

'I agree with Professor Ozdemir that there was no genocide of 'Assyrians', but a total migration of Nestorians (with attendant casualties), and a gradual and partial migration of Syrian Monophysites and Uniates, with fewer casualties'. Dr. Andrew Mango, author of Ataturk: the Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey Until the beginning of the 19th century, Nestorians, Chaldeans and Syrian Christians, belonging to various different branches of Eastern Christianity, lived as small, little-known communities within the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. This book examines the situation of these Eastern Christians during the First World War using a wide range of Western and Ottoman archival sources. At the outbreak of the First World War, the Nestorians, Chaldeans, and Syrian Christians found themselves trapped in the middle of the struggle between the Ottoman Empire and the Entente powers. The Syrian Christians and Chaldeans remained faithful to Ottoman rule and were generally quiescent during the war, while the Nestorians, encouraged by Russia, entered the war as the Entente powers' 'smallest ally'. The Eastern Christian communities appeared on the stage at the most critical period of the First World War, and left a tragic story behind them. Owing to modern claims that a mass murder or 'genocide' of the Nestorians and Syrian Christians was committed during 1915, the issue is no longer obscure and has become an international historical and political problem. This book presents interesting new historical material and provides a fascinating perspective on this issue for all scholars and students of Middle Eastern history and geopolitics that is relevant to the regional situation today.

Behind a gruesome ISIS beheading video lies the untold story of the men in orange and the faith community that formed these unlikely modern-day saints and heroes. In a carefully choreographed propaganda video released in February 2015, ISIS militants behead twenty-one orange-clad Christian men on a Libyan beach. In the West, daily reports of new atrocities may have displaced the memory of this particularly vile event. But not in the world from which the murdered came. All but one were young Coptic Christian migrant workers from Egypt. Acclaimed literary writer Martin Mosebach traveled to the Egyptian village of El-Aour to meet their families and better understand the faith and culture that shaped such conviction. He finds himself welcomed into simple concrete homes through which swallows dart. Portraits of Jesus and Mary hang on the walls along with roughhewn shrines to now-famous loved ones. Mosebach is amazed time and again as, surrounded by children and goats, the bereaved replay the cruel propaganda video on an iPad. There is never any talk of revenge, but only the pride of having a martyr in the family, a saint in heaven. "The 21" appear on icons crowned like kings, celebrated even as their community grieves. A skeptical Westerner, Mosebach finds himself a stranger in this world in which everything is the reflection or fulfillment of biblical events, and facing persecution with courage is part of daily life. In twenty-one symbolic chapters, each preceded by a picture, Mosebach offers a travelogue of his encounter with a foreign culture and a church that has preserved the faith and liturgy of early Christianity - the "Church of the Martyrs." As a religious minority in Muslim Egypt, the Copts find themselves caught in a clash of civilizations. This book, then, is also an account of the spiritual life of an Arab country stretched between extremism and pluralism, between a rich biblical past and the shopping centers of New Cairo.

Between Court and Confessional explores the lives of Spanish inquisitors, closely examining the careers and writings of five sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitors. Kimberly Lynn considers what shaped particular inquisitors, what kinds of official experience each accumulated, and to what ends each directed his acquired knowledge and experience. The case studies examine the complex interplay of careerism and ideological commitments evident in inquisitorial activities. Whereas many studies of the Spanish Inquisition tend to depict inquisitors as faceless and interchangeable, Lynn probes the lives of individual inquisitors to show how inquisitors' operations in their social, political, religious and intellectual worlds set the Inquisition in motion. By focusing on specific individuals, this study explains how the theory and regulations of the Inquisition were rooted in local conditions, particular disputes and individual experiences.

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.

Maluku in eastern Indonesia is the home to Muslims, Protestants, and Catholics who had for the most part been living peaceably since the sixteenth century. In 1999, brutal conflicts broke out between local Christians and Muslims, and escalated into large-scale communal violence once the Laskar Jihad, a Java-based armed jihadist Islamic paramilitary group, sent several thousand fighters to Maluku. As a result of this escalated violence, the previously stable Maluku became the site of devastating interreligious wars. This book focuses on the interreligious violence and conciliation in this region. It examines factors underlying the interreligious violence as well as those shaping post-conflict peace and citizenship in Maluku. The author shows that religion-both Islam and Christianity-was indeed central and played an ambiguous role in the conflict settings of Maluku, whether in preserving and aggravating the Christian-Muslim conflict or supporting or improving peace and reconciliation. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews as well as historical and comparative research on religious identities, this book is of interest to Indonesia specialists, as well as academics with an interest in anthropology, religious conflict, peace and conflict studies.

With the theory of secularization increasingly contested as a plausible development at a global scale, this book focuses on the changing significance of the religious element within a context of complex diversity. This concept reflects the rationale behind the deep transformations that have taken place in the dynamics of social change, giving way to a recombination of social, political and cultural cleavages that overlap and compete for legitimacy at a national and supranational level. Far from disappearing with modernization, new forms of religious diversity have emerged that continue to demand specific policies from the state, putting pressure on the established practices of religious governance while creating a series of normative dilemmas. European societies have been a testing ground for many of these changes, but for decades Canada has been viewed as a pioneering country in the management of diversity, thus offering some interesting similarities and contrasts with the former. Accordingly, the book deals with the diverging routes that political secularization has followed in Europe and Canada, the patterns of religious governance that can be recognized in each region, and the practices for accommodating the demands of religious minorities concerning their legal regulation, the management of public institutions, and the provision of social services.

Today's highly fraught historical moment brings a resurgence of antisemitism. Antisemitic incidents of all kinds are on the rise across the world, including hate speech, the spread of neo-Nazi graffiti and other forms of verbal and written threats, the defacement of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, and acts of murderous terror. Contending with Antisemitism in a Rapidly Changing Political Climate is an edited collection of 18 essays that address antisemitism in its new and resurgent forms. Against a backdrop of concerning political developments such as rising nationalism and illiberalism on the right, new forms of intolerance and anti-liberal movements on the left, and militant deeds and demands by Islamic extremists, the contributors to this timely and necessary volume seek to better understand and effectively contend with today's antisemitism.

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.

Fatal words that beckon people to support wars, and to identify with the ?we? opposed to the ?they?. This volume of the socialist register is not about terror, or ?the war on terror', but about the leading causes of terrorism and war today ? racism, religious fundamentalism and politicised ethnicity ? causes that must be clearly understood and addressed if we are to avert the acute dangers the world now conforts.

'Dan's book demonstrates that the future will belong to the peacemakers - the true heroes among us.' - Bear Grylls When thirty-three Chilean miners stepped into the light, alive and well, after sixty-nine days entombed in the earth, the world experienced a rare treat - some good news. Was this an anomaly, or are there other untapped glimmers of hope, hidden behind the headlines? Armed with a camera, a notebook, and a perilous sense of curiosity, Dan Morrice embarks upon a global journey to meet the peacemakers - unsung heroes, forging peace in extreme environments, from war-torn nations to disaster zones. From Chilean miners to Syrian refugees, from ex-football hooligans in Britain, to revolutionaries in Israel-Palestine, Dan discovers how the most unlikely people are rediscovering Christian faith and rewriting the fractured history of our time. At the apex of his journey, Dan's interviews lead him on a five-hundred-mile walk across the Negev Desert to find their source of hope first-hand. In a generation tired of divided nations and negative news, Finding the Peacemakers tells the unreported story of a global movement overcoming the odds to build peace in troubled times. 'One of the most inspiring books I have read for many years.' - Baroness Caroline Cox

How should historians read sources which record inquisitorial trials in the Middle Ages? How can we understand the fears felt by those on trial? By analysing six volumes of depositions in the trial of Cathar and Waldensian heretics in Languedoc between the late twelfth and the fourteenth century, in this 2009 book, Caterina Bruschi challenges old methodologies in the study of dissent. She examines the intrinsic narratological problems related to the sources and, using approaches from the social sciences, analyses the different fears felt by deponents and how those fears affected their actions and decisions. In so doing, she sheds light on itinerancy within the ecclesial structure of non-conformist movements and contextualises the problem of itinerancy as a benchmark for the definition of heresy. Focusing on the lives and attitudes of trial witnesses, this innovative account is a major contribution to our understanding of the nature of religious non-conformity in the Middle Ages.

Religion and Conflict in Modern South Asia is one of the first single-author comparisons of different South Asian states around the theme of religious conflict. Based on new research and syntheses of the literature on 'communalism', it argues that religious conflict in this region in the modern period was never simply based on sectarian or theological differences or the clash of civilizations. Instead, the book proposes that the connection between religious radicalism and everyday violence relates to the actual (and perceived) weaknesses of political and state structures. For some, religious and ethnic mobilisation has provided a means of protest, where representative institutions failed. For others, it became a method of dealing with an uncertain political and economic future. For many it has no concrete or deliberate function, but has effectively upheld social stability, paternalism and local power, in the face of globalisation and the growing aspirations of the region's most underprivileged citizens.

Henry Charles Lea's comprehensive three-volume history of the medieval Inquisition, first published in 1888, was firmly based on primary sources. 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 order to give as full a picture of the Inquisition as possible he examines the jurisprudence of the period. In Volume 1 he presents background information, giving a general account of the Catholic Church in the twelfth century and exploring the events that prompted the Church to set up the Inquisition. He explains the prevalent medieval understanding of the roles of the Church and government in society, and looks at medieval concepts of the relationships between individuals and the Church, the government, one another, and God. Lea shows how these views formed the basis of the Inquisition's structure, organization and processes.

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.