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Confronting Religious Violence begins with the premise that violence committed in God's name is always an act of desecration. A range of contributors come together to consider how a re-reading of the hallowed texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam might mitigate the militancy whereby group identity can lead to deadly conflict.

"Twelve international experts from a variety of theological, philosophical, and scientific fields address the issue of religious violence in today's world"--Jacket

Religion and violence are both ambiguous categories but in the cultural mosaic that pits human against human, religion is a reoccurring justifier. There is no religion exempt from this tendency toward violence. Further, based on Milgram and Zimbardo's experiments with students who were convinced that it was necessary to inflict torture on subjects for the greater good, it is apparent that ordinary people may commit heinous acts, given a sense of overarching emergency. Examples of religiously justified atrocities and violent rhetoric are summarized in this essay. In each case there is the mindset that violence is justified due to an extraordinary set of circumstances which require the suspension of behavioral norms.

The Indonesian democratic era has provided hope for the growth of mutual social practices established upon diversity of ethnicity, religions, race, and inter-group relations. Yet, in the last decade, various forms of violence were often carried out on behalf of religion instead. These acts of violence were not only physical but also psychological (cultural), in the forms of discrimination, abuse, expulsion, insult, and threat. The Ahmadiyya and Shia cases, for instance, provide an outlook regarding the prevalence of violence within social practices in the community in response to differences. Why does such violence remain to occur in Indonesia? The work finds that, aside from a 'failed understanding of religious texts', excessive truth claim also triggers acts of religious violence in the current era of Indonesian democracy. It is of utmost importance that people's understanding and interpretation of differences be set straight so that any response to differences can be considered as an embryo of national power that serves as an instrument employed for uniting the people of this nation instead of disuniting them. It is also strongly indicated by the work that religious violence may be avoided by changing the understanding of the meaning of differences.