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Those not well acquainted with Karl Marx often believe that the founder of "scientific Communism" was a militant atheist who considered the extermination of religion and, in particular, of Christianity one of his major tasks. This belief is, to say the least, inexact.

In an article published in September 1939, in the very eye of the storm of twentieth-century Europe's 'age of extremes', the British historian Christopher Dawson attempted to get to grips with the temper of his times. Opining on what he saw as the failure of nineteenth-century liberal individualism and its deleterious encroachment on spiritual values, he wrote:
Now the coming of the totalitarian state marks the emergence of a new type of politics which recognises no limits and seeks to subordinate every social and intellectual activity to its own ends. Thus the new politics are in a sense more idealistic than the old; they are political religions based on a Messianic hope of social salvation. But at the same time they are more realist since they actually involve a brutal struggle for life between rival powers which are prepared to use every kind of treachery and violence to gain their ends.
When not researching medieval Christian encounters with the Mongols, Dawson wrote history with a grand narrative sweep such as he admired in the work of the German historian Oswald Spengler. His output has recently sparked a revival of interest, with claims that he was one of most significant Catholic historians of the century. Yet this Augustinian pessimist was only one of a broader band of contemporary intellectuals – not all of them religious apologists – to brandish the label of 'political religion' as a descriptor, and as a moral warning. Seventy years on, the same moral seriousness characterises several of the books under review here, especially those addressing the more terrifying consequences of political religion in its various forms. For as A. James Gregor declares when introducing his intellectual history of Totalitarianism and Political Religion, 'the unnumbered dead of the past century' are surely owed some posthumous explanation:
Amid all the other factors that contributed to the tragedy, there was a kind of creedal ferocity that made every exchange a matter of existential importance. The twentieth century was host to systems of doctrinal conviction that made unorthodox belief a capital affront, made conflict mortal, and all enterprise sacrificial (Gregor, xi).

This article deals with the role of criminal law in dealing with defamatory expressions about religion or belief. Defamation of religion and belief is a form of indirect defamation 'via identification' which, as the discussion about the Dutch group defamation law shows, stretches up the notion of 'group defamation' — a crime which requires that (groups of) persons are insulted because they belong to a religious group. This contribution investigates whether European states can legitimately criminalise (certain forms of) defamation of religion and belief, in light of the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations framework (particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) and legal theoretical considerations. The article shows how problematic it is for the criminal law — in light of the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of religion, as well as the ultima ratio principle — to combat such speech.

Emil Cioran (1911-1995) gilt als einer der profiliertesten Essayisten, Aphoristiker, Kulturkritiker und Philosophen des 20. Jh. Oftmals verstellt dabei die Kennzeichnung als Nihilist und Pessimist den Blick auf ein sehr facettenreiches Werk, aus dem Aspekte in der vorliegenden Monographie herausgearbeitet werden. Nach einer generellen Einführung und einer biographischen Skizze, die das Leben eines Wanderers zwischen verschiedenen kulturellen Einflußsphären porträtiert, soll dabei seine lebenslange Auseinandersetzung mit den Religionen beleuchtet werden. Hier ist insbesondere seine Gegenüberste

Emil Cioran (1911-1995) gilt als einer der profiliertesten Essayisten, Aphoristiker, Kulturkritiker und Philosophen des 20. Jh. Oftmals verstellt dabei die Kennzeichnung als Nihilist und Pessimist den Blick auf ein sehr facettenreiches Werk, aus dem Aspekte in der vorliegenden Monographie herausgearbeitet werden. Nach einer generellen Einführung und einer biographischen Skizze, die das Leben eines Wanderers zwischen verschiedenen kulturellen Einflußsphären porträtiert, soll dabei seine lebenslange Auseinandersetzung mit den Religionen beleuchtet werden. Hier ist insbesondere seine Gegenüberste.

AbstractA common complaint from political scientists involved in the study of religion is that religious issues have been largely overlooked by political science. Through a content analysis of leading political science and sociology journals from 2000 to 2010, this article considers the extent of this claim. The results show that political science publications involving religious topics have been significantly fewer than those engaging with subjects typically regarded as being more central to the discipline, and markedly less numerous than religious articles in leading sociology publications. Where political science publications have engaged with religious issues, these articles have also focused on a limited number of subject areas and been concentrated in specific disciplinary subfields. The proportion of articles covering religion has shown no real increase since the turn of the century. These findings underpin calls for political scientists to take religious issues more seriously.