Suchergebnisse

This open access book brings into dialogue emerging and seasoned migration and religion scholars with spiritual leaders and representatives of faith-based organizations assisting refugees. Violent conflicts, social unrest, and other humanitarian crises around the world have led to growing numbers of people seeking refuge both in the North and in the South. Migrating and seeking refuge have always been part and parcel of spiritual development. However, the current 'refugee crisis' in Europe and elsewhere in the world has brought to the fore fervent discussions regarding the role of religion in defining difference, linking the 'refugee crisis' with Islam, and fear of the 'Other.' Many religious institutions, spiritual leaders, and politicians invoke religious values and call for strict border controls to resolve the 'refugee crisis.' However, equally many humanitarian organizations and refugee advocates use religious values to inform their call to action to welcome refugees and migrants, provide them with assistance, and facilitate integration processes. This book includes three distinct but inter-related parts focusing, respectively, on politics, values, and discourses mobilized by religious beliefs; lived experiences of religion, with a particular emphasis on identity and belonging among various refugee groups; and faith and faith actors and their responses to forced migration.

This study demonstrates how profoundly Turkey's main social clevage –Islam versus Secularism – is produced and reproduced by political parties in their attempts to form coherent sociopolitical bloc as a basis of mass support. The main purpose is to challenge the paradigm which understands social cleavages to be part of a 'social structure' that exists prior to political articulations. According to this standard perspective, social cleavages create the demand for political parties.

Recently, there has been a revival of interest in 'clerical fascism' & the belief that fascism, especially in its Nazi & Italian variants, were forms of 'political religion'. Both approaches reveal insights into the dynamics & nature of fascism. However, relatively few leading members of churches can be considered true fascists. Moreover, the political religion interpretation of generic fascism focuses unduly on culture & form over belief & function. It overstates the affective side of fascist support compared to its more rational appeals. The latter were in part linked to serious fascist ideological views about creating a new Third Way (neither capitalist nor socialist) state, & to scientific views about geopolitics & race. Adapted from the source document.

In contrast to mainstream historiography, secularisation was not a distinct process in nineteenth-century Europe, since the century was a period of religious revival. In the late nineteenth century, in spite of weakening church attendance and rising agnosticism brought on by urbanisation and migration, religion remained attractive for the middle class and social movements related to church membership emerged in politics. In this chapter the diversity of religion in Europe is treated. The author distinguishes between hierarchical and nonhierarchical types of Christian churches, and between four religious regions in Europe. This situation had effects on the relationship between state and religion.

Examines the important place given to religion in cultural, socioeconomic, & political explanations of ethnic conflict; the pervasive presence of religion in most ethnic conflicts of the last decade; & the absence of religion as a factor in Rwanda's recent horrific ethnic conflict. It is argued that the presence of religion in a broad array of conflicts does not mean it is the best explanation for them or even that it is the predominant factor. An exploration of two common methodological problems, a priori underdetermination & posteriori overdetermination, illustrates some of the inadequacies of religion as an explanation of ethnic conflict. A discussion of definitional difficulties calls attention to the confusion that results when the core element of ethnic identity is religious identity, as is the case in contemporary conflicts in Northern Ireland & Yugoslavia. The impact of religious secularization is discussed, along with differences between modernist & postmodernist perspectives of religion, secularization, & ethnic conflict. The potential of religion to help in finding solutions to ethnic conflict is explored. J. Lindroth