Religion in World Conflict

This new book tackles two crucial questions: First, how does religion in its various forms and manifestations influence world politics? Second, how will adding religion to the discourse on international relations modify our theoretical understanding?

Each of these leading authors addresses different aspects of these questions in different contexts providing a diverse and multifaceted view of the topic.

Susanna Pearce and Tanja Ellingsen examine the religious causes of conflict on the macro-level. Several of the contributors focus on specific conflicts. The Gaurav Ghose and Patrick James examine the Kashmir conflict from the Pakistani perspective and Carolyn James and Ozgur. Ozdamar examine it from the Indian perspective. Similarly Hillel Frisch examines the Palestinian-ISraeli conflict from the Palestinian perspective and Jonathan Rynhold examines it from the Israeli perspective. Finally, two of the authors examine other important issues. Stuart Cohen examines the evolution of the religious view of war in the Jewish tradition and Yehudit Auerbach examines whether can play a role in conflict resolution and reconciliation. These assessments deliver fascinating conclusions.

This book was previously published as a Special Issue of Terrorism and Violence.

Jonathan Fox (Ph.D. University of Maryland 1997) is currently a senior lecturer in the Political Studies department of Bar Ilan University and a Research Fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. His research interests include the influence of religion on political factors like ethnic conflict, domestic conflict and international relations as well as the "clash of civilizations" theory and separation of religion and states. He has published numerous articles on these topics including articles in the British Journal of Political Science, International Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, and Political Studies, as well as several books including his most recent, Bringing Religion into International Relations (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2004).

Shmuel Sandler earned his PhD from The Johns Hopkins University and is currently The Sara and Simha Lainer Professor in Democracy and Civility, Department of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University. He is the co-author of The Arab Israeli Conflict Transformed, Fifty Years of Interstate and Ethnic Crises, (New York, State University of New York Press, 2002) and Bringing Religion into International Relations (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2004). He is the author of many articles and specializes in international and comparative politics, ethnic and religious politics, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is the editor of Jewish Political Studies Review, and the co-editor since 1984 of the series Israel at the Polls