The Hedgehog Review articles from March 2004

The Hedgehog Review archives from March 2004

The puzzle of religion and violence.
March 22, 2004... Perhaps the only thing more puzzling than senseless violence is violence that is carried out in the name of high ideals. The role of religion is a particularly difficult part of this puzzle. Religious ideals, and the institutions and...

Violence and religion: cause or effect?
March 22, 2004... THE QUESTION OF VIOLENCE AND RELIGION AROUSES a great deal of justified interest today. It is a difficult and complex question. If we simply ask, "is this or that religion violent or peaceful?," we do not take into account the fact that...

Is religion the problem?
March 22, 2004... RELIGION'S ROLE HAS BEEN HOTLY DEBATED IN THE PUBLIC discussion after September 11 among journalists and policy makers, and among academic researchers and observers. Yet there is seldom agreement about the most basic issue, whether religion...

Sins of omission: what "religion and violence" arguments ignore.
March 22, 2004... WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A TRUISM IN ONE AREA OF THE study of religion meets up with an uncertainty in another area? The truism in question is the idea that religion has a dangerous tendency toward violence. It is treated as a truism both in...

Religion, collective identity, and violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1).
March 22, 2004... Introduction IT IS COMMONPLACE TO USE "RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM" To explain how religion incites, perpetuates, or justifies violence in recent world conflicts. (2) This is particularly true in studies of the former Yugoslavia and of the...

Speaking, killing, and loving in God's name.
March 22, 2004... THE TOPIC I WILL ADDRESS IN THIS ESSAY IS A DIFFICULT one because it is multi-faceted and multi-layered. But it is also difficult because I cannot claim to be distant towards it. I cannot claim to be an objective engager analyzing the topic...

A conversation on religion and violence with Veena Das.(Interview)
March 22, 2004... One of the more interesting ideas in human rights these days is the idea that the goal of the human rights movement is to provide agency to those who don't have it, presumably because of cultural repression. This seems to me to be a loaded...

Peacemaking among the Abrahamic faiths: an interview with Peter Ochs.(Interview)
March 22, 2004... In his book, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence, and Peacemaking, Marc Gopin suggests that: "There have always been exclusive religious visions of a peaceful world. Never before in history, however, have so...

A review of Anna Lannstrom's Promise and Peril.(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... Lannstrom, Anna, ed. Promise and Peril: The Paradox of Religion as Resource and Threat. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Religion and violence are certainly not strangers, yet the relationship between them is more complex...

Religion and violence: a bibliography.
March 22, 2004... THE LITERATURE ON RELIGION AND VIOLENCE WAS already substantial before the Sept. 11 attacks, and it has swelled at an increased pace since then. I have not seen abundant evidence, however, that the serious reflections on violence expressed in...