Description

From India to Iraq, from London to Lahore, the relationship between religion and violence is one of the most bitterly contested and casually misrepresented issues of our times. This groundbreaking volume brings together expert perspectives from a variety of fields to probe it. It seeks to shift analytical focus on to the contexts in which violence is expressed, enacted and reported. Ranging from Islam to Buddhism to new religious movements in the West, "Dying for Faith" offers a comprehensive and highly original account of a complex phenomenon that has so far attracted sensational media coverage but scant academic attention.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Between death of faith and dying for faith: reflections on religion, politics, society and violence, Madawi Al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin;
• Part I: Understanding religiously motivated violence;
• 1. Apocalypse, history, and the empire of modernity, John Hall;
• 2. Martyrs and martial imagery: exploring the volatile link between warfare frames and religious violence,Stuart Wright;
• 3. Violence and new religions: an assessment of problems, progress, and prospects in understanding the NRM-violence connection, J. Gordon Melton and David G. Bromley;
• 4. Of 'cultists'
• and 'martyrs': the study of new religious movements and suicide terrorism in conversation, Massimo Introvigne;
• 5. In God's name: practising unconditional love to the death, Eileen Barker;
• 6. The terror of belief and the belief in terror: on violently serving God and nation, Abdelwahhab El-Affendi. Part II: Religiously motivated violence in specific contexts;
• 7. Rituals of life and death: the politics and poetics of jihad in Saudi Arabia, Madawi Al-Rasheed;
• 8. The Islamic debate over self-inflicted martyrdom, Azam Tamimi;
• 9. The radical nineties revisited: jihadi discourses in Britain, Jonathan Birt;
• 11. al-Shahada: a centre of the Shiite system of belief, Fouad Ibrahim;
• 12. Urban unrest and non-religious radicalization in Saudi Arabia, Pascal Menoret and Awadh al-Utaybi;
• 13. Bodily punishments and the spiritually transcendent dimensions of violence: a Zen Buddhist example, Ian Reader;
• 14. Jewish millennialism and violence, Simon Dein. Part III: Reporting religiously motivated violence;
• 15. Sacral violence: cosmologies and imaginaries of killing, Neil Whitehead;
• 16. Journalists as eyewitnesses, Noha Mellor;
• 17. Understanding religious violence: can the media be trusted to explain?, Mark Huband.
• Index

Author Info

Madawi Al-Rasheed is Professor of Anthropology of Religion at King's College London. Marat Shterin is a Lectuer in Theology and Religious Studies at King's College, London.

Bibliographic Info