Despite the widespread trends of secularization in the 20th century, religion has played an important role in several outbreaks of genocide since the First World War. And yet, not many scholars have looked either at the religious aspects of modern genocide, or at the manner in which religion has taken a position on mass killing. This collection of essays addresses this hiatus by examining the intersection between religion and state-organized murder in the cases of the Armenian, Jewish, Rwandan, and Bosnian genocides. Rather than a comprehensive overview, it offers a series of descrete, yet closely related case studies, that shed light on three fundamental aspects of this issue: the use of religion to legitimize and motivate genocide; the potential of religious faith to encourage physical and spiritual resistance to mass murder; and finally, the role of religion in coming to terms with the legacy of atrocity.
This book studies the role of Christian churches in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Timothy Longman's research shows that Rwandan churches have consistently allied themselves with the state and engaged in ethnic politics, making them a center of struggle over power and resources. He argues that the genocide in Rwanda was a conservative response to progressive forces that were attempting to democratize Christian churches.
The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide explores the many and sometimes complicated ways in which religion, faith, doctrine, and practice intersect in societies where mass atrocity and genocide occur. This volume is intended as an entry point to questions about mass atrocity and genocide that are asked by and of people of faith and is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, historical events, and heated debates in this subject area. The 39 contributions to the handbook, by a team of international contributors, span five continents and cover four millennia. Each explores the intersection of religion, faith, and mainly state-sponsored mass atrocity and genocide, and draws from a variety of disciplines. This volume is divided into six core sections: Genocide in Antiquity and Holy Wars The Genocide of Indigenous Peoples Religion and the State The Role of Religion during Genocide Post Genocide Considerations Memory Culture Within these sections central issues, historical events, debates, and problems are examined, including the Crusades; Jihad and ISIS, colonialism, the Holocaust, desecration of ritual objects, politics of religion, Shinto nationalism, attacks on Rohingya Muslims; the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, responses to genocide; gender-based atrocities, ritualcide in Cambodia, burial sites and mass graves, transitional justice, forgiveness, documenting genocide, survivor memory narratives, post-conflict healing and memorialization. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Genocide is essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in religion and genocide, religion and violence, and religion and politics. It will be of great interest to students of theology, philosophy, genocide studies, narrative studies, history, and international relations and those in related fields, such as cultural studies, area studies, sociology, and anthropology.
The Bridge Betrayed reveals the crucial role of the religious mythology of Kosovo in the destruction of Yugoslavia and the genocide in Bosnia. A new preface discusses the deepening crisis in Kosovo - the epicenter of that mythology.
A study of Islamic fundamentalism, its violent and deadly history, and the questions it raises today. This book examines the relationship between jihad and genocide, past and present. Richard L. Rubenstein takes a close look at the violent interpretations of jihad and how they have played out in the past hundred years, from the Armenian genocide through current threats to Israel. Rubenstein’s unflinching study of the potential for fundamentalist jihad to initiate targeted violence raises pressing questions in a time when questions of religious co-existence, particularly in the Middle East, are discussed urgently each day. Praise for Jihad and Genocide “Provocative, important reading for all interested in Arab-Israeli peace and religious coexistence worldwide. Highly recommended.” —Choice Reviews “Rubenstein’s analysis stands the test of time. Thus, attention must be paid to Rubenstein's new work, Jihad and Genocide, which offers a searing analysis of Islamic thought and bleak predictions of its impact. Even those of us who do not share his pessimism, his sense of the inevitability of the path to genocide and war, or his predilection for the political right, must confront the issues he raises.” —Foreword Reviews
A Financial Times Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Book of the Year A Spectator Book of the Year “A landmark contribution to the study of these epochal events.” —Times Literary Supplement “Brilliantly researched and written...casts a careful eye upon the ghastly events that took place in the final decades of the Ottoman empire, when its rulers decided to annihilate their Christian subjects...Hitler and the Nazis gleaned lessons from this genocide that they then applied to their own efforts to extirpate Jews.” —Jacob Heilbrun, The Spectator Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region’s Christian minorities. By 1924, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, once nearly a quarter of the population, had been reduced to 2 percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. The Thirty-Year Genocide is the first account to show that all three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia’s Christian population. Despite the dramatic swing from the Islamizing autocracy of the sultan to the secularizing republicanism of the post–World War I period, the nation’s annihilationist policies were remarkably constant, with continual recourse to premeditated mass killing, homicidal deportation, forced conversion, and mass rape. And one thing more was a constant: the rallying cry of jihad. While not justified under the teachings of Islam, the killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation. “A subtle diagnosis of why, at particular moments over a span of three decades, Ottoman rulers and their successors unleashed torrents of suffering.” —Bruce Clark, New York Times Book Review
Front Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Memory, Body, and Power: Women and the Study of Genocide -- 1. The Gendered Logics of Indigenous Genocide -- 2. Women and the Herero Genocide -- 3. Arshaluys Mardigian/Aurora Mardiganian: Absorption, Stardom, Exploitation, and Empowerment -- 4. "Hyphenated" Identities during the Holodomor: Women and Cannibalism -- 5. Gender: A Crucial Tool in Holocaust Research -- 6. German Women and the Holocaust in the Nazi East -- 7. No Shelter to Cry In: Romani Girls and Responsibility during the Holocaust -- 8. Birangona: Rape Survivors Bearing Witness in War and Peace in Bangladesh -- 9. Very Superstitious: Gendered Punishment in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-1979 -- 10. Sexual Violence as a Weapon during the Guatemalan Genocide -- 11. Gender and the Military in Post-Genocide Rwanda -- 12. Narratives of Survivors of Srebrenica: How Do They Reconnect to the World? -- 13. The Plight and Fate of Females During and Following the Darfur Genocide -- 14. Grassroots Women's Participation in Addressing Conflict and Genocide: Case Studies from the Middle East North Africa Region and Latin America -- Selected Bibliography: Further Readings -- Index -- Back Cover
This work is an analysis of the ideology, causal patterns, and means employed in the Nazi genocide against the Jews. It argues that the events of the genocide compel reconsideration of such moral concepts as individual and group responsibility, the role of knowledge in ethical decisions, and the conditions governing the relation between guilt and forgiveness. It shows how the moral implications of genocide extend to linguistic and artistic presentations of the Nazi extermination of the Jews.
Pioneering study of the role of the Christian churches in the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi; a key work for historians, memory studies scholars, religion scholars and Africanists.
