Origins of Religious Violence (eBook)

An Asian Perspective

Nicholas F. Gier (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2014
324 Seiten
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-0-7391-9223-8 (ISBN)

Infos

A scholar of world religions investigates religiously motivated violence that occurred in medieval Tibet and Bhutan, as well as in modern India, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Japan. The fusion of religious and national identity in high lamas and divine kings has caused just as much violence in Asia as it did in Europe and the Middle East.

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Religiously motivated violence caused by the fusion of state and religion occurred in medieval Tibet and Bhutan and later in imperial Japan, but interfaith conflict also followed colonial incursions in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma. Before that time, there was a general premodern harmony among the resident religions of the latter countries, and only in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries did religiously motivated violence break out. While conflict caused by Hindu fundamentalists has been serious and widespread, a combination of medieval Tibetan Buddhists and modern Sri Lankan, Japanese, and Burmese Buddhists has caused the most violence among the Asian religions. However, the Chinese Taiping Christians have the world record for the number of religious killings by one single sect. A theoretical investigation reveals that specific aspects of the Abrahamic religions-an insistence on the purity of revelation, a deity who intervenes in history, but one who still is primarily transcendent-may be primary causes of religious conflict. Only one factor-a mystical monism not favored in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-was the basis of a distinctively Japanese Buddhist call for individuals to identify totally with the emperor and to wage war on behalf of a divine ruler. The Origins of Religious Violence: An Asian Perspective uses a methodological heuristic of premodern, modern, and constructive postmodern forms of thought to analyze causes and offer solutions to religious violence.

Autor

Nicholas F. Gier is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Idaho.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: From Mongols to Mughals: Hindu-Muslim Relations in Medieval India Chapter 2: Hindu Nationalism, Modernism, and Reverse Orientalism Chapter 3: Premodern Harmony, Sri Lankan Buddhist Nationalism, and ViolenceChapter 4: Burmese Nationalisms and Religious Violence against MuslimsChapter 5: Buddhism in Bhutan: From Violent Lamas to Peaceful KingsChapter 6: “Compassionate” Violence in Tibet: 1,000 Years of War MagicChapter 7: Buddhism and Japanese Nationalism: A Sad Chronicle of ComplicityChapter 8: Sikhism, the Seduction of Modernism, and the Question of Violence Chapter 9: Religious Nationalism, Violence, and Taiping ChristianityChapter 10: Hypotheses on the Reasons for Religious Violence Chapter 11: The Gospel of Weak Belief, Overcoming the Other, and Constructive Postmodernism

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.8.2014
• Verlagsort: Lanham
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Öffentliches Recht
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Asian religious history • Buddhist fundamentalism • Buddhist nationalism • constructive postmodernism • Dalai Lama • Hindu fundamentalism • Hindu nationalism • Religious violence • Taiping Rebellion • Warrior yogis
• ISBN-10: 0-7391-9223-X / 073919223X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-9223-8 / 9780739192238