Religious Violence

This article asks what religious violence is and why it is relevant. It questions common assumptions by focusing on how monastic violence unfolded in premodern Japan. It argues that there was nothing that set this particular form of violence apart in terms of what the clerics fought for, their ideological justification, who fought, or how they fought. Although myths prevail on the largely fictive figure of the s¯ ohei, or " monk-warriors, " closer scrutiny indicates that their depiction first emerged as a coherent literary concept in the early Tokugawa period. Regarding the ideological framework in which incidents of so-called monastic violence took place, the paper demonstrates that the individuals involved in such conflicts—including the clerics—cannot be dissociated from their own socio-historical context. This is because the medieval Japanese setting was based on rules of cooperation that also implied competition among various elites. The paper further complicates our understanding by showing that the central issue is not why specific violent events involving clerics occurred, but rather what constituted the mental framework—or mentalité—of the age, and how it allowed religious institutions to play such a prominent role.

The vast issues that Nigeria faces today are not crafted out of surprise, as they were glaring to the few who chose not to believe in the fancy promises that were made after Nigeria got her independence in 1960. In fact, Frantz Fanon in his book titled “The Wretched of the Earth” foresaw these as if he lives and wrote his book in the present-day Nigeria. After several eras of on-and-off military regimes, Nigeria returned to democratic ruling in 1999, with new hopes for forward movement that will guarantee freedom, security, fairness, justice and liberty, which were much needed for the economic development and sustainability of the country.

Nigeria has been laced with a plethora of security challenges, which goes to show that the optimism was a myth. This is marred by religious violence but beyond it, with others such as kidnappings, armed robbery, political violence, and so on. Particularly, religious violence as a key result of religious extremism has had a toll on the economic development of Nigeria over the years as a result of loss of properties, and loss of precious lives. This research paper examines religious violence in Nigeria by expatiating on what manifests its rise and its eventual impact on the economic development of Nigeria. Thus, the formal question begged from this is, to what extent does the economy of Nigeria take a hit as a result of religious violence in Nigeria.

Points out how religion is power; power will be used by others--even the non-religious; when things go awry, then, religion is then blamed, often by the same ones who have exploited its power. This calls for critical and wary analysis of the rhetorical use of religion as a pawn, followed by its being blamed as a scapegoat.  Published in The Destructive Power of Religion; Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, edited by J. Harold Ellens (4 volumes, Westport/London: Praeger Publishers, 2004), Vol. 2, 265-83.

Jihadist terror attacks in Europe, religious sectarianism in Syria, Iraq, regional power politics of Saudi Arabia and Iran, tensions between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Bosnia: While those phenomena emerge within their own distinct social, political, economic, and cultural context, they also interrelate with another to varying degrees. Accordingly, local socio-political issues intersect with religion and foster dynamics that transcend into the national, regional and international realm, where they intersect anew with further dynamics. With social processes increasingly transcending the geographical and political boundaries in most regions of the world, conflict dynamics do not remain unaffected. A growing transnational interplay seems to concern conflicts with religious dimensions in particular. After all, most religions claim universal truths. This paper sketches a theoretic approach to describe a conflict with religious dimensions and the transnational dynamics that underlie it. In order to do so, it introduces a concept of religious practice which allows to both grasp the subjective significance of religion for the believer and to describe transnational processes.

This collection of essays, edited by Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer, developed from a one-day conference—‘Religion and Violence in Early Modern France: The Work of Natalie Zemon Davis’—which was held in June 2008 at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Five of the papers published here were initially delivered on that occasion, but the conference also sought to learn from the differing perspectives of violence outside sixteenth-century France. This concern is also reflected in this collection, which seeks to offer new insights and approaches to the relationship and significance of religion and violence as well as paying tribute to the immense contribution made in this field by the writings of Natalie Zemon Davis.

So-called New Atheists say that religion is an irrationally held proto-scientific cosmological hypothesis, a primitive theory, supplemented by an equally irrational moral code, that led to the worst evil in the history of the human kind, so that religion itself should be completely eradicated – rational arguments and scientific evidence being the apt instruments to this end. In The Meaning of Belief, Tim Crane rejects all these ideas from an atheist's point of view.

Religious and other communal violence, though they are ever recurring phenomenon in South Asia, in its modern history it is increasing dramatically day by day. People in South Asia are becoming more and more violent. The main cause of communal violence in South Asia is more or less related to religion, ethnicity, and fundamentalist ideology and so on. In this paper firstly I mentioned different scholars thought regarding South Asian communal violence and its historical root. Some of the authors blame the British ‘’Divide and Rule’’ policy and some others argued that Muslim invaders are responsible for religious and communal violence in South Asia. Then I discussed different south Asian counties communal violence from the 20th century to the present time era. I’ve explained also some communal violence incident which occurred in different parts of South Asia.

Preparation for a genocide under way in India: Dr. Gregory Stanton
Internationally acclaimed expert raises concerns about possible mass extermination of Muslims while briefing US Congress on situation in Kashmir and Assam.
Sabrangindia 14 Dec 2019
Dr. Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, addressed an audience of Congressional and Government officials at a briefing titled Ground Reports on Kashmir and NRC in Washington D.C on December 12 where he said, “Preparation for a genocide is definitely under way in India.” He said that persecution of Muslims in Assam and Kashmir “is the stage just before genocide,” adding, “The next stage is extermination — that’s what we call a genocide.”
Dr. Stanton created the world-famous “Ten Stages of Genocide” as a presentation to the U.S. Department of State when he worked there in 1996. According to Dr. Stanton, the ten stages of genocide are as follows:
• The first stage was “classification” of “us versus them”.
• The second stage, “symbolization”, named the victims as “foreigner”.
• The third stage, “discrimination”, “classified [the victims] out of the group accepted for citizenship” so that they had no “human rights or civil rights of citizens” and were “discriminated against legally”.
• The fourth stage, dehumanization, “is when the genocidal spiral begins to go downwards. You classify the others as somehow worse than you. You give them names like ‘terrorists’, or even names of animals, start referring to them as a cancer in the body politic, you talk about them as a disease that must be somehow dealt with.”
• The fifth stage was creating an “organization” to commit the genocide: the role played by the “Indian army in Kashmir and the census takers in Assam”.
• The sixth stage was “polarization”, which is achieved by propaganda.
• The seventh stage was “preparation”
• The eighth “persecution”, where Assam and Kashmir currently were.
• The ninth stage is “extermination” and;
• The tenth stage is “denial”.
[With thanks to Sabrang]

Abstract
This article creates a dialogue between Jōdo Shinshū [Pure Land] Buddhism, the Roman Catholic tradition, and transgender experiences for the purpose of discerning aspects of each tradition that perpetuate systemic and personal violence and those aspects which can challenge that violence. Shin Buddhist attitudes towards same-sex marriage and ordination are evaluated in terms of what its attitude towards gender is, and how this affects transgender issues. In addition, Roman Catholic Church public statements concerning transgender and related issues are also evaluated. The dialogue evaluates potentially mutually corrective aspects of both traditions and suggest guidelines for what the field of comparative theology, theology of religions and interreligious dialogue can say about violence against transgender people, especially trans women.

Resumen
En este artículo busca crear un diálogo entre el budismo Jōdo Shinshū [de la Tierra Pura], la tradición católica romana, y las experiencias transgénero con el propósito de discernir los aspectos de cada tradición que perpetúan la violencia sistémica y personal y aquellos aspectos que puede desafiar esa violencia. Las actitudes del budismo Shin hacia el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo y la ordenación se evalúan en términos de su actitud hacia el género, y cómo esto afecta a las cuestiones transgénero. Además, también se evalúan las declaraciones públicas de la Iglesia Católica Romana sobre las personas transgénero y otras cuestiones relacionadas. El diálogo evalúa aspectos potencial y mutuamente correctores de ambas tradiciones y sugiere pautas sobre aquello que el campo de la teología comparada, la teología de las religiones y el diálogo interreligioso pueden decir acerca de la violencia contra las personas transgénero, especialmente las mujeres trans.

Resumo
Este artigo cria um diálogo entre o budismo Jodo Shinshu [da Terra Pura], a tradição católica romana, e as experiências transgênero com o propósito de compreender os aspectos de cada tradição que perpetuam a violência sistêmica e pessoal e aqueles que podem desafiar essa violência. As atitudes do Shin budismo em relação ao casamento de pessoas do mesmo sexo e a ordenação são avaliadas em termos de como elas são na relação de género, e como isso afeta as questões transgênero. Além disso, as declarações públicas da Igreja Católica Romana sobre questões transgênero e afins também são avaliadas. O diálogo avalia aspectos potencialmente mutuamente corretivas de ambas as tradições e sugere diretrizes sobre o que o campo da teologia comparativa, da teologia das religiões e do diálogo inter-religioso podem dizer sobre a violência contra as pessoas transgênero, especialmente as mulheres trans.

آتوسا صاد

آنچه می خوانید ترجمه آزادیست از روایت یک آخوند از صیغه دختران حزب اللهی در قم که از کتابی آکادمیک در مورد صیغه در ایران اخذ کرده ام. برای محافظت از نویسنده از آوردن نام ایشان و کتاب خودداری می کنم و به ذکر عنوان «نویسنده» بسنده می کنم. راوی داستان را «آخوند قمی» می نامم چون وی اهل قم است.

روایت از آن جا شروع می شود که روزی ضمن جستجو در کتابخانه «مرعشی نجفی» در قم، نویسنده به کتابی بر می خورد که وقتی از کتابدار در مورد نویسنده اش جویا می شود کتابدار «آخوند قمی» را به وی معرفی می کند. نویسنده ملاقاتی با آخوند قمی ترتیب می دهد و از وی در مورد صیغه سوالاتی می پرسد. نحوه ترتیب دادن ملاقات هم خواندنی است، آخوند قمی که نمی خواهد هویتش فاش شود از گفتگو در ملا عام می پرهیزد و خواهان دیدار در خفاست. نویسنده راه های مختلفی را برای دیدار مخفیانه طراحی می کند.

اولین چیزی که آخوند به وی می گوید این است که نویسنده باید به جای «صیغه» در مورد «برده داری» تحقیق کند چرا که در فقه شیعه اصول صیغه و اصول برده داری در بسیاری موارد مطابقت دارند. آخوند قمی صیغه را امری صحیح و «مطابق با طبیعت انسان» می داند. طبق عادت معمول حوزه، انواع داستان ها و استدلال ها به هم بافته می شود تا درستی صیغه ثابت شود (۱). از استدلال های آخوند قمی در اثبات صیغه به چند مورد بسنده می کنم:

⁃ «اقلیم گرم جغرافیایی خاورمیانه نیاز جنسی را تشدید می کند»
⁃ «نیاز جنسی مانند نیاز به آب و غذا باید تامین باشد»
⁃ «در فرهنگ بسته نیاز جنسی قویتر است»
⁃ «زنان به نگهداری و تامین مالی نیاز دارند»
⁃ «صیغه حق مرد است»

در واقع، آخوند قمی لزوم صیغه را با ارجاع به کلیشه های فرهنگی-جنسیتی اثبات می کند.

قسمت اصلی اما داستان هایی است که آخوند در مورد «صیغه گروهی» دختران مذهبی توسط آخوندها روایت می کند. آخوند قمی توضیح می دهد که در ایران دو نوع صیغه وجود دارد، یکی آنچه در سطح جامعه (در خانه های عفاف و زنان خیابانی) شاهد آن هستیم که به قول آخوند قمی «تفاوتی با تن فروشی ندارد و تنها ده درصد واقعیت صیغه است.» و دیگری «صیغه واقعی» که در بین خانواده های مذهبی و در«کلاس های درس (مذهبی)» اتفاق می افتد. «نود درصد» صیغه در ایران به گفته وی از این دست است.

آخوند قمی توضیح می دهد که خانواده های مذهبی در قم مجالس ماهانه ای با «آخوندهای معتمد» خود دارند که در آن کل خانواده من جمله «دختران و زنان» به آخوندها معرفی می شوند. وظیفه آخوند معتمد «جواب دادن به سوالات» زنان و دختران است، اما در اصل، به قول آخوند قمی، «ایجاد رابطه احساسی» و «نفوذ در قلب» آنهاست. آخوندهای معتمد «ولی نعمت» ‌این دختران و زنان می شوند و گاه تا آخر عمر حمایت از آنان را بر عهده دارند.

در جلسات ماهانه زنان و دختران به صورت خصوصی با آخوندهای معتمد صحبت می کنند و آخوندها آن ها را راهنمایی می کنند. برای حفظ «شوونات» ‌معمولن «صیغه محرمیت» بین آخوندهای معتمد و زنان و دختران خوانده می شود. این صیغه به قول آخوند قمی از دو جهت اهمیت دارد: یکی این که عملی شرعی است که ارج و قرب آخوند و زنان و دختران را در چشم خانواده ها بالا می برد، و دیگر این که فاصله ای بین زنان و دختران و خانواده شان ایجاد می کند که بر اختیارات آخوندهای معتمد می افزاید. از عملکرد اصلی آخوندهای معتمد «همسریابی» برای دختران مجرد است. آخوندها معمولن دختران را به صیغه پسران خود، پسران آشنایان خود، یا به صیغه خود در می آورند. آن طور که آخوند قمی می گوید صیغه آخوندها با زنان متاهل هم از نگاه خانواده های مذهبی بی اشکال است.

آخوندها گاهی دختران تحت قیمومیت را در بین خود رد و بدل می کنند و در قبال آن ها پول دریافت می کنند. از این رو هر آخوند دختران خانواده های زیادی را می شناسد و شبکه بزرگی از زنان صیغه ای در اختیار دارد. آخوند قمی داستان روحانی معروفی را نقل می کند که در قم مدرسه دینی دخترانه دایر کرده بوده و آموزش و در عین حال قیمومیت شصت و هفت دختر ده تا بیست ساله قمی و شهرستانی را در آن جا بر عهده داشته است. آخوند مدرس یازده تا از این دخترها را صیغه می کند و همسرش که از داستان با خبر می شود به مراجع قضایی شکایت می کند. راه حل قضایی این است که آخوند باید هر یازده دختر را صیغه کند و به آن ها خانه و وسیله معاش دهد. وی هم همان کار را می کرد. 

به قول آخوند قمی دختران و زنان خانواده های مذهبی طعمه های مناسبی برای آخوندها هستند چون گرایش خاصی به چهره ها و شخصیت های مذهبی دارند و به راحتی به خواست روحانیون تن در می دهند. خانواده های مذهبی هم این نوع معاشرت را به رسمیت می شناسند و از یک طرف از روی اعتماد و تعصب و از طرف دیگر از ترس بی آبرویی در اجتماع یا ترس از مقابله با مذهب رسمی مخالفتی با آن نشان نمی دهند.

صیغه که در زمان شاه اسماعیل صفوی به ایران معرفی شد و در دوره قاجار متداول و در زمان پهلوی تابو شد، بعد از انقلاب و با روی کار آمدن مذهب رسمی بیش از هر زمان در تاریخ رونق گرفت و به قول آخوند قمی به «مافیا»یی تبدیل شد که نه تنها شهوت آخوندها را برآورده کرد بلکه نان «قوادی» آن ها را هم در روغن انداخت و آنان را به خصوص در شهرهای مذهبی به مال و منال زیادی رساند (۲). 


۱- روش استدلال روحانیون شیعه اغلب مثل آکروبات بازی است. شاید «آکروبات بازی ذهنی» توصیف خوبی برای آن باشد.
۲- به تازگی تحقیق میدانی توسط بی بی سی عربی انجام شده که وضعیت مشابه صیغه را در کربلا و نجف بررسی می کند. مستند را می توانید از طریق لینک ببینید
https://www.bbc.com/persian/world-features-49954296
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00098jb

Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876, final chapter The Vanishing) and "The Image Breakers" (1566?) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. In my viaw, both images are related to violence: Destruction of heretics and iconoclastic destruction of religious symbols.

2015-04-18: Pictorial quotes of shapes from the source image already can be seen in Holiday's drawing for the illustration to chapter 8 in Carroll's Snark.

2015-04-19: Only lay-out changes.

Much like our world today, Late Antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries CE) is often seen as a period rife with religious violence, not least because the literary sources are full of stories of Christians attacking temples, statues and 'pagans'. However, using insights from Religious Studies, recent studies have demonstrated that the Late Antique sources disguise a much more intricate reality. The present volume builds on this recent cutting-edge scholarship on religious violence in Late Antiquity in order to come to more nuanced judgments about the nature of the violence. At the same time, the focus on Late Antiquity has taken away from the fact that the phenomenon was no less prevalent in the earlier Graeco-Roman world. This book is therefore the first to bring together scholars with expertise ranging from classical Athens to Late Antiquity to examine the phenomenon in all its complexity and diversity throughout Antiquity.

Stressing that the pronoun "I" picks out one and only one person in the world (i.e., me), I argue against Hunt (and other like-minded Rand commentators) that the supposed "hard case" of destructive people who do not care for their own lives poses no special difficulty for rational egoism. I conclude that the proper response to a terse objection like "What about suicide bombers?" is the equally terse assertion "But I don't want to get blown up."

The current paper examines the issue of medieval war ethics from the perspective of the Byzantine case-study. The starting-point is a critical approach to the theoretical understanding and the methodological employment of modern analytical concepts, such as ‘war ideology’ and ‘holy war’, in the study of war ethics in the late antique, early and high medieval period. The main goal is to circumscribe the modern theoretical distinction between ‘just war’ and ‘holy war’ and to demonstrate the applicability and the limits of its heuristic employment in the analysis of medieval source material. The first part contains a discussion of theoretical approaches to the terms ‘war ideology’, ‘just war’ and ‘holy war’. The second part is subdivided in two chapters: The first chapter attempts a historical re-evaluation of the religious discourse of the Byzantine sources through the prism of the proposed theoretical model. The second chapter contains an analysis of the socio-political role of peace discourse in the justification of imperial war policies.

When the first session of the Council of Chalcedon opens on the 8th of October 451 CE in the Church of Euphemia, the scene looks as follows: supporters of Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, were sat on the one side of the nave, his opponents on the other. The atmosphere was tense, which was reflected in the strict seating arrangements. Many delegates had been present at the Second Council of Ephesus, denounced as ‘Robber Synod’ by Leo, bishop of Rome. In this session, the Acts of that tumultuous council were to be read. The emotions run high, and the imperial officials who preside over the meeting try to keep order. In this paper, I want to demonstrate that there are a variety of coping strategies that were adopted by the imperial officials and the delegates in order to deal with what they witness when the Acts of Ephesus II were being read. How do they try to prevent the debate from escalating into violent conflict, which had been the case in Ephesus back in 449 when Flavian was murdered? For my analysis, I will use a context-sensitive model that has been designed by Katharina Heyden, which is meant to analyse religious conflicts based on coping strategies that aim to re-evaluate stressful situations (Heyden 2019). Three principal coping strategies may be identified – problem-oriented, meaning-focused, emotion-based – which all aim for non-violent conflict management. I will show that strict seating arrangements may be understood as problem-oriented coping to keep order and prevent physical assault; that the detailed reading of Acts and other documents may hint at meaning-focused coping (as does the ensuing debate); and that emotion-based coping may be reflected in the way that delegates come to peace with their part in the disastrous Second Council of Ephesus and the death of Flavian.

While the world witness a huge exodus of refugees from Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Sudan, Rohingya, Iran, and Iraq, the most recent Israel-Palestinian conflict to the secessionist and insurgent uprisings, internal rebellions, religious fundamentalism, intolerance, hate crimes, and international issues of displacement, the stakes for humanitarian stability(-ies) is on the decline. The situation is beyond the control of international missionaries and ~ organizations to provide constructive and futuristic hope on the current situation of several nations including Afghanistan undercut by extensive degrees of a humanitarian disaster. Given the scale of persecution and attack on the intrinsic and fundamental essence of humanity, human rights bodies across the world have become almost dysfunctional. Unable to address massive onslaughts of violence they have thus become mere tokenistic recipients of peace missions in war-torn regions and heavily militarized zones of the world. Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner documents such changing landscapes of violence. It envisions a world of infancy, inarticulation and nostalgia which also parallel the lateral progress of adulthood, inhumanity and the failure of envisioning an immediate future.

This essay was commissioned by the National Council of Churches of Christ Faith and Order Commission, engaged within an ecumenical consultation meeting in Douglaston, New York in 1991 on "The Apostolic Character of the Church's Peace Witness." It was then published in The Church’s Peace Witness, Marlin Miller and Barbara Nelson Gingerich, eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 105-30.

Critics of Christianity in India have frequently accused Christianity of being a predatory, imperialistic religion with absolutist tendencies, and have framed Christian evangelism as an aggressive, uncouth act. More recently, however, and in an idiom that resonates with many contemporary Indians, Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1930-) has made the more controversial claim that the attempt to convert another person is itself an act of violence. In three parts, the paper 1) describes Dayananda’s claims, while bringing them into conversation with the arguments of earlier critics of Christianity (e.g., Mahatma Gandhi, Sita Ram Goel, Ashok Chowgule, Arun Shourie), 2) analyzes and critique Dayananda’s use of the term
“violence,” and 3) demonstrate how the claim that conversion is an act of violence blurs somewhat easily into a justification of acts of violence against those who attempt to convert others. In the end, I argue that whether Dayananda’s claim that proselytization is a form of violence makes sense depends not only on one’s definition of “violence,” but also on one’s definition of “religion.”

This article argues that the Mongol empire's famous religious tolerance cannot be explained solely through its adoption of Inner Asian imperial political traditions of ruling over ethnically and religiously diverse subjects. Instead, this pluralism can be ascribed to a wider religious pattern of the Mongols. The first part argues that the analytical category of immanentist religions explains not only the inter-cultic transparency exhibited by the Mongol courts, but also the few explicit instances where the Chinggisid rulers reacted with 'religious' violence. The article further explores the strategies employed by the religious vectors, mainly Buddhists and Muslims, to address, accommodate, and subvert the Chinggisids' patterns of religiosity and primarily their pluralism, and the Mongols' deified mode of sacralizing kingship. Focusing on the Mongol-Ilkhanid court in Iran, the article examines how religious representatives used conceptual affinities and equivalences between the Mongol traditions and certain principles of their own religious frameworks to gain influence and favour, and persuade the khans to convert or retain their earlier commitment to the new religious affiliation. Employing this assimilative approach, they manoeuvred within the religious, immanentist paradigm of their nomadic patrons while moulding and manipulating it to their own religious, transcendentalist ends. The article further demonstrates how this 'translation' process of Chinggisid patterns became an arena of Buddhist-Muslim rivalry and competition, but also cross-cultural fertilization.

The study analyzes religious and cultural violence, focusing on the Genocide against Yazidis within the broader Kurdish socio-political framework. The ISIL genocidal intent against Yazidis includes forced relocation and practice attitudes that apply to elitism and sexual violence. It is part of the destruction of the group in terms of destruction of the spirit, will live and life itself (members) of the group. However, it should be noted that such views do not mean the legal argument for recognizing cultural genocide but an attempt to clarify the meaning of physical and biological destruction. Violence committed "in the name of religion" belongs to the dark side of religion. Violence (mostly) does not arise from the moral teachings of religions but from a perverted understanding of religion. The killing of members of a religious group is a form of physical genocide, and the threat of murder to ban religion was a way to commit cultural, that is, religious genocide. Sexual violence is different from all other weapons. The global community needs to be united to protect women and children during the war. Religion is used as an excuse for violence when the struggle is to defend the essential identity, when it is inconceivable to lose the struggle and when the struggle cannot be won. Religious support for violence causes the terrorist policy to become uncompromising. Paradoxically, just as terrorism produces fear of violence, so does the fear of terrorism produce violence.

La yihad es un concepto surgido en el islam que ha cobrado relevancia en los últimos años por la actuación criminal de organizaciones radicales que atentan por todo el mundo. La correcta comprensión del concepto a partir de los fundamentos religiosos en los que se apoya resulta fundamental para combatir el terror yihadista. Este trabajo aborda el concepto desde el punto de vista islámico y analiza su presencia en las resoluciones del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos y en la jurisprudencia española. También se investiga el carácter sectario de los grupos yihadistas, a partir de las opiniones doctrinales y judiciales, como vía para constatar los vínculos de esta violencia con las convicciones religiosas, y negarle al mismo tiempo cualquier amparo en la libertad religiosa o de expresión. Se trata de demostrar que se puede comprender el yihadismo sin distorsionar su realidad, y sin criminalizar como resultado a la religión islámica.

Jihad is a concept that has emerged in Islam that has gained relevance in recent years due to the criminal activities of radical organizations that attack the world. The correct understanding of the concept from the religious foundations on which it is based is fundamental to combat Jihadist terror. This paper approaches the concept from the Islamic point of view and analyzes its presence in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and in Spanish jurisprudence. The sectarian character of the jihadist groups, based on doctrinal and judicial opinions, is also investigated as a way to verify the links of this violence with religious convictions, while at the same time denying any protection in religious freedom or expression. It is a matter of demonstrating that one can understand jihadism without distorting its reality, and without criminalizing as a result the Islamic religion.

The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly deliberated and contested. Are religions moral and do they make us more moral? Are religions necessary for morality? Do moral natures develop independently of religious intuitions? We have two contrasting views. "It is simply impossible for people to be moral without religion or God." Laura Schlesinger, 2008. And, "Faith can be very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong." Richard Dawkins, 2006, p. 348. The questions regarding morality and religion are antiquated. In the Euthyphro, Socrates asked whether 'goodness' is loved by the gods because it is 'good,' or whether 'goodness' is good because it is loved by the gods. Though Socrates preferred the former proposal, many have maintained that morality is dictated by-and indeed impossible without-God. So, we could rightly ask, 'Is morality valuable by virtue of its moral nature or is morality valuable because it is valued by the Gods?' And 'are moral activities less moral if they are done for religious reasons and are moral activities more moral if done at great expense to oneself or with no expectation of reward or payment?' Introduction:

Proprietà letteraria riservata. I diritti di traduzione, memorizzazione elettronica, di riproduzione e di adattamento totale e parziale di questa pubblicazione, con qualsiasi mezzo (compresi i microfilm, le fotocopie e altro) sono riservati per tutti i paesi. XIII XXIII EDITORIAL FOREWORD communication medium for scholarly exchanges among the members (here of three different nationalities: Italian, German and Spanish). The second reason concerns the Department of Humanities of the University of Trieste. One of its strategic aims is to foster internationalisation when supporting research projects, in order to reach wider audiences and to encourage dissemination of its members' scholarly results. To achieve this goal, writing in English and publishing both in print and in open access can be advantageous. In my departmental responsibility for internationalisation, I am especially concerned to facilitate these communications. These two reasons underlie my editorial policy regarding the language and manners of publication of this volume; yet they also raise a concern, for to choose the Anglophone readership as context of reference requires caution about culturally sensitive issues. Two such editorial challenges concern the degree of awareness of non-sexist language, and the use of the term 'Holocaust'. The editor is aware that, regardless of an author's intention, the generic 'man' or 'mankind' is not interpreted gender-neutrally in the English-speaking world, as testified by the Guidelines for Non-Sexist Use of Language issued by the American Philosophical Association on 19 January, 2019 10. Yet it would have been anachronistic, uncritical and decontextualised to disregard the original term 'mankind' in the English literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, substituting for it 'humankind' (see Chapter 1) 11 , whereas it would have been too one-sided to write of an educator or of an educator's students only in terms of 'she' and 'her' (as was done in the first draft of Chapter 8). The term 'Holocaust' is commonly used in Anglo-Saxon culture to refer to the genocide of European Jews during the Second World War, whereas in the rest of Europe and in Israel the trend is to use the Hebrew word 'Shoah'. Both words are controversial and have advantages and disadvantages. 'Holocaust' is often used in its wider, more inclusive meaning, to encompass all ethnic and social groups suffering Nazi persecution or who died at their hands. Since the eighteenth century, the lowercase 'holocaust' has been used to indicate the violent deaths of large human groups. Against it stands the Greek etymology of the word, which retains its meaning of a sacrificial victim, whether a religious offering, or due to some measure of guilt. The term 'Shoah', meaning 'calamity' or 'catastrophe', was used to refer to the Jewish genocide in order to avoid the connotation of ineluctable sacrifice, but as a Hebrew word, its standard use risks suggesting that the Nazi extermination project was restricted to a single people.

The historical background of the controversial literature between Christianity and Judaism is always more or less violent (distinctive signs, ostracisation, persecutions, expulsions). However, this does not always show through in the contents and the tonality of these texts. Based on this particular case, this article raises the following question: can a religious debate, with all its implications, be completely devoid of violence or incitement to violence?

Recent incidents of extreme violence unleashed at some of the most celebrated archaeological sites of the ancient world have renewed our sensitivity toward iconoclasm. My contribution presents a parallel reading of two texts separated only by one generation: the account of Hypatia’s killing in 415 CE, as represented in Socrates’ History of the Church (7.15), and Rufinus’ narration of the iconoclastic demolition of the cult image of Serapis during the attack on the Alexandrian Serapeum (HE 11.23). I argue that several features in Socrates’ (and, much later, in John of Nikiu’s) account of Hypatia’s killing and Rufinus’ representation of the smashing of the cult image of Serapis, only a few years prior to Hypatia’s death, feature identical motifs. These motifs include not only the elements of dismemberment and subsequent burning but also the staging of the events as public spectacles. I propose that Socrates draws on literary motifs and on real‐life patterns of iconoclasm, and that Rufinus, when he refers to the cult image of Serapis as an “old man”, makes the iconoclastic act resemble the killing of a living person. My comparison engages two levels of analysis: first, the textual level of each narrative, which takes into account literary themes and stylistic devices; and second, the socio-historical and religious context of these events.

My interpretation challenges alternative scholarly perspectives, which relate Socrates’ narrative to Christian martyrologies or Ptolemaic accounts about the public exposure of well‐known females. The destruction of the cult image of Serapis illuminates the relevance of iconoclasm and the discourses surrounding such acts in Alexandria around 400 CE. I argue that highlighting the resemblance of Hypatia’s death to an act of iconoclasm leads to a deeper understanding of both incidents and their literary renderings.

Joshua Iyadurai analyzes psychologically the mystical turning point in the conversion process and finds that the divine-human encounter entails a cognitive restructuring: a new set of beliefs, values, and desires replaces previously held religious beliefs, values, and desires. By drawing insights from the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and theology, Iyadurai develops an interdisciplinary step model from a phenomenological perspective to explain the conversion process that incorporates the religious practices and social-psychological factors while giving a central place to religious experience.

The word 'madrasa' do generate a lot of curiosity and negative propaganda among scholars of international community. In most of the instances it is considered to be an institution of preaching hatred and violence. Moreover, the madrasas existing in Pakistan are considered to be factories producing religious extremists. But, strangely enough, the basic reason behind the emergence of madrasa-to seek knowledge as enshrined in the principals of Islam are not known. Therefore, fundamental objective or purpose of the study is to understand the changing pattern of madrasa and the role of government in Pakistan to 'modernise' it. The paper is also trying to understand the socio-political context of Pakistan under which the madrasas are operating. The study has been based on the research experience of the writer who has extensively studied the Madrasa Literature of Pakistan while writing her Doctoral thesis. The few core findings of the paper are the fact that over a considerable period of time, madrasas have evolved from an all encompassing educational institution to a centre of religious knowledge; the society of Pakistan to some extent has been segmented into western educated 'modern and fortunate' people versus madrasa educated 'traditional and less-fortunate' mass. Moreover, post 9/11, Pakistani Government did try to 'reform' the madrasa system but could not achieve much success due to shallow approach and non-compliance of various madrasa establishments.

Increasing attention globally is being given to what are broadly termed far-right movements in terms of their potential extremist threat. Amongst these, religious groups occupy a wide range with Christian far-right extremists (CFRE) being one part. Covering a wide spectrum, the extent to which Christianity, in terms of beliefs and doctrines, is central is variable. The marker CFRE may, therefore, hide as much as it reveals in identifying the nature, motivations, and background of particular actors and groups.

Elías Rosner (UBA) 1. Introducción a) Presentación En el año 415 de nuestra era, el obispo Cirilo de Alejandría se encontraba involucrado en diversas disputas con Orestes, el prefecto local. Esta lucha por el poder entre la autoridad política y la autoridad eclesiástica se intensificó cuando Orestes publicó un edicto que regulaba diversas actividades artísticas 1. El objetivo del prefecto era evitar el desorden que generaban ese tipo de exhibiciones, pero la legislación solamente provocó el descontento popular. Cirilo, se dice, envió a sus acólitos para instigar a la enardecida población, generando disturbios en toda la ciudad. Orestes decidió entonces castigar brutalmente a los responsables, lo cual llevó al obispo a lanzar un ultimátum: o se le ponía fin al maltrato contra los cristianos o de lo contrario habrían represalias contra la población judía local 2. Desde la destrucción del Serapeum en el 391 por parte de Teófilo de Alejandría (tío y predecesor de Cirilo), la población pagana local había sido desplazada como primera minoría religiosa, y los judíos ahora ocupaban dicho lugar 3. Tras escuchar las amenazas del obispo, los judíos locales se enfurecieron y llevaron adelante actos de violencia contra los cristianos 4 .

In January 1661 London was the scene of a bloody insurrection. The rebels' intention was to depose the recently restored Stuart monarch, Charles II and replace him with another king: Jesus. But they failed. There were roughly thirty survivors, of which thirteen were publicly executed. These rebels believed in an imminent apocalypse and were called Fifth Monarchists. Their leader was Thomas Venner. Relation auß London vom 4. Febr. 1661, detail showing execution of Thomas Venner Before looking in more detail at the Fifth Monarchist risings of April 1657 and January 1661, it is worthwhile recapping what had happened during the preceding twenty years. Prepublication censorship had effectively broken down, with the result that more than 33,000 printed titles were issued between 1640 and 1660. Courts which had facilitated the exercise of royal power were abolished by act of Parliament. There was bloody rebellion in Ireland and then devastating Civil Wars throughout the British Isles. An estimated 80,000 soldiers were killed or maimed out of a population of probably no more than 5.3 million. The Archbishop of Canterbury was executed, bishops deposed and the Church of England stripped of its authority. For the first and only time in English history a reigning monarch was put on trial, charged with treason and publicly executed.

The present article discusses how, in the legend of Martin of Tours, one of the most popular and significant saints in the history of the latin Church, two different forms of figthing are contrasted: profane military warfare in the service of the Emperor, on the one hand, and spiritual struggle for God, on the other. Both of these concepts are presented in a shared „language of violence“. The legend thus can be seen as an example of the specific narrative constellation of soldier saints, that is to say martyrs who were soldiers, as well as a realization of the early Christian metaphor of the „militia Christi“. The article examines how the semantic potentials of a language of violence are realized in the Late Antique ‚Vita sancti Martini’ and how they were continued in the medieval versions in the ‚Legenda aurea’ and the Middle High German ‚Passional’, in defense of the imperial claims to military service on the one hand, and in the life of Martin as a saint on the other. As the article shows that while the metaphorical meaning of the phrase, „fighting for God“, is always preserved, this metaphor has often also been used as as starting point for attempts at legitimizing actual, physical violence in the name of God. The paper concludes with a set of systematic reflections on, first, the structural connections between religion and a language of violence, and the contextual conditions for their metaphorical or concrete use

The civil war that started in Syria in 2011 began as a series of political disputes between government forces and opposition groups. Tension mounted when citizens of Syria called for their president, Bashar al-Assad, to step down from power. When government forces resisted the will of the people, and instead used force against them, the country descended into all-out war.
Two distinct groups surfaced in opposition to one another, with opposition rebels fighting against the Syrian regime. But as the war progressed these two groups began to display religious characteristics. Opposition groups began to represent a Sunnī Muslim rebel force, while regime forces where represented by the Alawite sect, and as the war continued elements of jihādism began to surface within the fighting.
Syria’s sectarian rifts began to reveal themselves as religious factions became more involved in the fighting. These rifts are a result of centuries of violence and tension between Sunnī Muslim and Alawites in the country. Their theological beliefs differ extensively from one another, and over the course of history these differences have led to clashes between the two groups.
The study looks at the historical interactions between Sunnī Muslims and the Alawites in Syria, and identifies the theological differences between the two groups. The study then uses these two elements to understand the religious violence that Syria is experiencing, and why such intolerance is happening between the religious factions of the country.
Key terms: Syrian civil war; Sunnī Muslims; Alawites; Christians; Secularism; S̲ h̲ arīʿa; Religious violence; Religious intolerance; Jihād; Minority groups.

What was the real story behind Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti’s condemnation, attributed to Cacciaguida in Paradiso, xvi, 136–147? The major Florentine chronicles of Dante’s era (Compagni) and thenceforth (Villani, Stefani) paint a picture of an innocent Buondelmonte, barbarously assassinated thanks to the homicidal rage of his peers – the magnates. However, the harsh treatment of Buondelmonte in the Commedia is the result of the character Cacciaguida (and therefore Dante) adhering to the noble/magnate ethos found in many contemporary sources (for example the chronicle by the pseudo-Brunetto Latini). Indeed, only at a later date would the Popolo’s ethos, expressed in the works of Compagni, Villani and Stefani, become the ‘definitive’ version.

The word ‘propaganda’ derives from the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, a congregation established by Gregory XV’s bull Inscrutabili Divinæ on June 22, 1622 in order to promote the diffusion of Catholicism and regulate Catholic ecclesiastical affairs in non-Catholic countries. Propaganda is a central element of all human groups wishing to maintain and/or expand their domain, be it economic, political, or cultural. Religious groups are not an exception. In some cases, religious propaganda is so effective as to completely revolutionize the life of an individual. After contact with religious propaganda, the individual changes, converts, or radicalizes, and existential turning point brings about a new mission: defending one’s creed, combating the disbeliever, perpetrating the most ferocious violence if necessary. Not every religious proselytizing is conducive to violence, yet some is, and adopts specific words, images, sounds, and other signs in order to convey its message.
Defying frontiers among historical epochs, confessions, and disciplines, the essay develops a cross-cultural, trans-historical, and comparative reading of violent religious propaganda, focusing on messages and media that promote radicalization and the consequent mission to defeat the enemy disbeliever. In particular, the essay puts the current phenomenon of jihadist online propaganda into historical and comparative perspective.