Suchergebnisse

Does religion cause violence? -- A brief history of religious violence -- Searching for the roots of "religious" violence -- What psychology has to offer -- Religious violence through the lens of psychoanalysis -- Knowing God, knowing ourselves -- Concluding reflections : we must become more more than our gods

2007 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleAt the funeral of Matthew Shepard—the young Wyoming man brutally murdered for being gay—the Reverend Fred Phelps led his parishioners in protest, displaying signs with slogans like "Matt Shepard rots in Hell," "Fags Die God Laughs," and "God Hates Fags." In counter-protest, activists launched an "angel action," dressing in angel costumes, with seven-foot high wings, and creating a visible barrier so one would not have to see the hateful signs.Though long thought of as one of the most virulently anti-gay genres of contemporary American politics and culture, in God Hates Fags, Michael Cobb maintains that religious discourses have curiously figured as the most potent and pervasive forms of queer expression and activism throughout the twentieth century. Cobb focuses on how queers have assumed religious rhetoric strategically to respond to the violence done against them, alternating close readings of writings by James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, Jean Toomer, Dorothy Allison, and Stephen Crane with critical legal and political analyses of Supreme Court Cases and anti-gay legislation. He also pays deep attention to the political strategies, public declarations, websites, interviews, and other media made by key religious right organizations that have mounted the most successful regulations and condemnations of homosexuality

My involvement in the study of religious terrorism began with the Sikhs. I had lived in the Punjab for several years, and in the early part of my academic career I had focused on the relationship between religion and politics in India in general and the Punjab in particular. During the 1980s, therefore, I watched with mounting horror as a spiral of violence developed between Sikh militants and the government. How could such affable, intelligent people be swept up in an encounter that was so vicious, so unforgiving?

Sri Lankan military forces and government authorities have succeeded to counter measure terrorism by defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, their initiatives and efforts to restore peace and harmony among different ethno-religious groups in the post-war context are highly complex. The additional space given to the reemergence of radical religious groups has negatively influenced the process of fostering religious tolerance and harmony, which have been maintained for centuries in the country. Ethno-religious minorities became the major targets of religious hatred and violent attacks. At both the societal and political platforms, majoritarian religious sentiments and discourse have established a dominant presence in opposing the existence and practice of the religious fundamentals of minorities. This study has attempted to investigate the nature and impact of majoritarian religious violence in post-war Sri Lanka, as well as the efforts made by the government authorities to control them in order to foster religious tolerance and harmony in the country. This study argues that religious violence under the shadow of religious nationalism has been promoted by many forces as a mechanism by which to consolidate a majoritarian ethno-religious hegemony in the absence of competing ethnic-groups context in post-war Sri Lanka. In many ways, state apparatuses have failed to control religious violence, maintain religious tolerance and inter-religious harmony, particularly of accommodating minorities in nature. The study concludes that the continuous promotion of majoritarian religious hegemony through anti-minority religious hatred and violence would further promote religious intolerance and radicalism challenging the establishment of religious harmony in the country.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Foreword -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Questions/Problems: Contemporary Perspectives -- 'Strategic Appraisal' of Religion in International Armed Conflicts -- 'Resurgence' of Religion on the International Arena -- Religion as a 'Threat to International Peace and Security' -- Tripartite Perspective of Analysis -- 3 Correlates: Illustrative of Contemporary Perspectives -- Types of Religious Violence -- Examples of Religious Violence -- The First Terrorists: The Assassins -- Political Religion: Holy War in the Sudan -- 'Religious Politics': Sri Lanka's Civil War -- Pre-existing Religious Narratives: The Sepoy Mutiny in British India -- Imposed Religious Narratives: The Conflict of the Karens in Myanmar -- Types of Peaceful Religion -- 4 Prerequisites: Philosophical Prerequisites for Contemporary Perspectives -- Definitional Prerequisites -- Definition, Conceptualisation and Use of the Term 'Religion' -- Definition and Use of Other Words and Concepts -- Distinction between 'Explaining' and 'Understanding' -- Assumptions, Presuppositions and Bias -- Ontological Considerations -- 5 Causation: Historical Causation of Contemporary Perspectives -- Rationality: Rational Actor Model vs. Religious Rationality -- Legacy of Westphalia -- 6 Origins: Religious Origins of Contemporary Perspectives -- The Logic of Religious Violence -- The Concept of Religious Truth -- Cosmic Dualism -- The Concept of Evil -- The Concept of Fear -- The Concept of Anthropomorphism, Vices and Virtues -- The Concept of Survival -- 7 Conclusions: A Framework for Conflict Transformation -- Bibliography -- Index

'Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo' by Ian Reader is reviewed.

This article talks about the reason driving people to involve in religious violence

Since the downfall of Suharto's authoritarian government in 1998, Indonesia has witnessed a variety of violent conflicts, intergroup tensions and Islamist radicalism, which in turn pose threats to the country's security, safety and peace. This article examines various forms of religious violence, particularly Islamist violence, and ways of overcoming them tactically or strategically in post-Suharto Indonesia. This article underscores the need to go beyond the liberal peace framework, underlines the significance of the implementation of tactical peacebuilding and highlights the central roles of domestic religious actors in the peace and reconciliation processes. This article suggests that tactical peacebuilding requires multiple approaches that utilise various sources, including religion and culture, and needs a strategic collaboration among manifold actors—religious and secular, state and society, domestic and foreign. The Indonesian case shows that religion is not only a source of conflict, violence and 'violence-building' but also a useful resource for reconciliation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Radicalization is a major challenge of contemporary global security. It conjures up images of violent ideologies, "homegrown" terrorists and jihad in both the academic sphere and among security and defense experts. While the first instances of religious radicalization were initially limited to second-generation Muslim immigrants, significant changes are currently impacting this phenomenon. Technology is said to amplify the dissemination of radicalism, though there remains uncertainty as to the exact weight of technology on radical behaviors. Moreover, far from being restricted to young men of Muslim heritage suffering from a feeling of social relegation, radicalism concerns a significant number of converted Muslims, women and more heterogeneous profiles (social, academic and geographic), as well as individuals that give the appearance of being fully integrated in the host society. These new and striking dynamics require innovative conceptual lenses.

Radicalization in Theory and Practice identifies the mechanisms that explicitly link radical religious beliefs and radical actions. It describes its nature, singles out the mechanisms that enable radicalism to produce its effects, and develops a conceptual architecture to help scholars and policy-makers to address and evaluate radicalism—or what often passes as such. A variety of empirical chapters fed by first-hand data probe the relevance of theoretical perspectives that shape radicalization studies. By giving a prominent role to first-hand empirical investigations, the authors create a new framework of analysis from the ground up. This book enhances the quality of theorizing in this area, consolidates the quality of methodological enquiries, and articulates security studies insights with broader theoretical debates in different fields including sociology, social psychology, economics, and religious studies.

The present study tries to investigate the causal model of religious violence using SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) approach. Previous quantitative research in social movements and political violence suggests that there are, at least, three factors, that caused violent collective actions, including religious violence: 1) the more fundamentalist people are, the more likely they justify violence, 2) people with lower trust in government is more likely to justify violence, and 3) opposing the second argument: only people with low trust in government and high political efficacy are more likely to justify violence. Based on the data of 343 respondents, the activists of Front Pembela Islam, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, this study confirms that the more fundamentalist people are, the more likely they are to justify violence regardless of their organizational affiliations. On the contrary, this study does not support the argument for the relationship between trust in government and violence. Similarly, the relationship between violence and the latent interaction of trust and political efficacy is not supported by the data. Therefore, this study suggests that fundamentalism, a type of religiosity, is a salient factor to explain religious violence.[Penelitian ini berusaha mengkaji sebab kekerasan keagamaan dengan menggunakan pendekatan Model Persamaan Struktur (SEM). Penelitian kuantitatif terdahulu dalam bidang gerakan sosial dan kekerasan politik menunjukkan bahwa setidaknya ada tiga faktor yang diduga kuat menjadi penyebab kekerasan kolektif, seperti kekerasan agama, yaitu: 1) semakin fundamentalis seseorang, maka ia akan semakin cenderung menyetujui pernggunaan cara kekerasan, 2) semakin rendah kepercayaan seseorang terhadap pemerintah, maka ia akan semakin menyetujui penggunaan kekerasan, 3) berbeda dengan pendapat ke-dua, hanya orang yang rendah kepercayaanya kepada pemerintah, namun mempunyai semangat politik tinggi, yang akan menyetujui penggunaan cara-cara kekerasan. Berdasarkan pada data yang diambil dari 343 responden dari para aktivis, Front Pembela Islam, Muhammadiyah dan Nahdlatul Ulama, penelitian ini mengkonfirmasi bahwa semakin fundamentalis seseorang, maka ia akan semakin cenderung menyetujui kekerasan, terlepas dari afiliasi organisasi mereka. Namun demikian, penelitian ini tidak mendukung hubungan antara kepercayaan terhadap pemerintah dan kekerasan. Demikian juga, hubungan antara kekerasan dan interaksi antara kepercayaan pemerintah dan semangat politik tidak dapat dibuktikan dari data dalam penelitian ini. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa fundamentalisme, sebagai salah satu bentuk keagamaan, merupakan faktor yang sangat penting dalam menjelaskan kekerasan keagamaan.]

While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots--in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists--the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a "pure" India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world