Understanding Religious Violence

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction

   • James Dingley, Marcello Mollica

   Pages 1-5

3. Classical Social Theory and the Understanding of Contemporary Religious Terrorism

   • James Dingley

   Pages 7-38

4. Religious Independence of Chinese Muslim East Turkestan “Uyghur”

   • Chiara Olivieri

   Pages 39-72

5. Women’s Rights Between Civil and Religious Laws: The Lebanese Law on Protection of Women and Family Members from Domestic Violence and the Religious Authorities’ Opposition

   • Benedetta Panchetti

   Pages 73-99

6. Geopolitical Vector of Ukrainian Orthodoxy in the Context of National Security

   • Yevhen Kharkovshchenko, Olena Bortnikova

   Pages 101-128

7. The Case of Northern Ireland

   • James Dingley

   Pages 129-159

8. Terror-Driven Ethno-Religious Waves: Mapping Determinants in Refugees’ Choices Escaping Iraq and Syria

   • Marcello Mollica

   Pages 161-193

9. Being Ezidi in the Middle East

   • Çakır Ceyhan Suvari

   Pages 195-212

10. Conclusion

    • James Dingley, Marcello Mollica

    Pages 213-219

11. Back Matter

    Pages 221-228

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This book addresses the problem of religiously based conflict and violence via six case studies. It stresses particularly the structural and relational aspects of religion as providing a sense of order and a networked structure that enables people to pursue quite prosaic and earthly concerns. The book examines how such concerns link material and spiritual salvation into a holy alliance. As such, whilst the religions concerned may be different, they address the same problems and provide similar explanations for meaning, success, and failure in life. Each author has conducted their own field-work in the religiously based conflict regions they discuss, and together the collection offers perspectives from a variety of different national backgrounds and disciplines.

• fundamentalism
• radical islam
• al qaeda
• suicide bombing
• crusade
• religion and society
• terrorism

“Each case study is clearly and deeply linked to religion—mainly Christianity and Islam. While certain studies provide a portrait of intra-religious conflicts, others emphasize inter-religious clashes. The contexts are always well-described, and the authors discuss how profound the current problems are, and how deeply rooted they are in history. … six cases studies can provide wonderful examples of the ways in which sociocultural elements converge or aggregate around religion in many places …” (Isabelle Lemelin, Reading Religion, readingreligion.org, June 21, 2019) “This volume presents an excellent selection of studies based on complex fieldwork in which the authors very accurately and cogently focus on specific clichés, stereotypes and prejudices about religious violence ingrained in the Western point of view especially. The volume’s multicultural and religious perspective provides an eye-opening range of conflictual situations typical not only of the Islamic world, the Middle East in particular, but also of the Christian European one. Finally, through first-hand data the volume legitimately points up that the secularization conceived by some of Western thought’s abstract tendencies is nowhere near being achieved.” (Christian Giordano, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland)

 “This book delivers a provocative and unsettling analysis that compares contemporary and historical entanglements of religion and political violence to raise uncomfortable questions about how sacred values sometimes inspire radical and violent hostility to change.  It should be compulsory reading for all who take a reductionist view of the place of religion in terrorist violence and other forms of popular resistance to the state.” (Hastings Donnan, Director of The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast, UK)

“Religiously related violence is widely seen – not least by policymakers – as one of the besetting problems of the age. Yet thinking about how religions might be related to violence is often sloppy, riddled with sweeping generalisations and category errors. Here is a welcome alternative. This new book not only shows how to bring some much-needed rigour to these discussions, but also addresses the need to think about how and why such violence occurs, and on what grounds the societies under attack from extremists might more effectively defend themselves.” (Peter Catterall, Professor of History and Policy, University of Westminster, UK)

• Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

  James Dingley

• University of Messina, Messina, Italy

  Marcello Mollica

James Dingley is a political sociologist at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is Chairman of the Francis Hutcheson Institute and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Northern Ireland Security Qualifications Group. He has published extensively in international journals, and has also published five previous books specialising in development, religion, and nationalist conflict.

Marcello Mollica is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Messina. Italy. He has conducted field work in Northern Ireland, Middle East, South-eastern Turkey and South Caucasus.

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