Volume 3. Issue 1, Fall 2009

Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas. David Cortright. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

“Warmakers are often wrong. ... Peace advocates are sometimes right, especially when their ideas are not only morally sound but politically realistic” (4).

Book Reviewed by: 
Jodok Troy, University of Inssbruck, Austria

The National Anthem Debate at Goshen College

Dissent and Hospitality, Tradition and Inclusion
Joseph Liechty

This editorial is unusual, but it is based on what is both an editorial principle and a principle of peacemaking at the Journal of Religion, Conflict, and Peace: while some controversies within religious communities are best contested behind closed doors, among the people most immediately affected, sometimes opening a door to the public can be beneficial.

Good and Bad Lessons from “The Good War”

David G. Rowley

The most widely “learned” lesson of World War II—that evil should be nipped in the bud—is a bad one. To justify the lesson “if you want peace, work for justice,” this article shows that the Versailles treaty established a patently unjust international order and gave Hitler a ready-made strategy for initiating war. To substantiate the lesson “there is no way to peace, peace is the way,” it argues that appeasement was a just policy and that preemptive war would have been no solution at all. Moreover, appeasement worked; it was military deterrence that precipitated the war. Even in 1939, the pursuit of peace and justice was a practical and hopeful policy.

Globalization, Religious Change and the Common Good

R. Scott Appleby

This article is expanded from a presentation at the International Interfaith Initiative forum in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 2009. It recovers the importance of cultural and religious trends in world events, which have been too long ignored, and challenges policymakers to educate themselves on world religions to improve the effectiveness of political engagement.

“Islamic” Violence in Context and Perspective

John Renard

Since the horrific events of September 11, 2001, American understandings of “terrorism” have narrowed, congealed and hardened. Many Americans now regard terrorism as a tactic employed distinctively, if not uniquely, by “jihadist” Muslims. Many have been further persuaded that Islam is an inherently violent ideology, and that, therefore, the term “jihadist” rightly applies to Muslims as a category—all 1.57 billion of them.

Eclipse of the Greater Jihad

Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi

This paper contextualizes the ascendance of the concept of armed jihad at the expense of the peaceful, moral or greater jihad in Islam. An empirical assessment of the decline of the moral jihad is undertaken, along with a reasoned analysis of the epistemological grounding of the concept in Islam, compared with the rising acceptance of the concept of armed jihad, or lesser jihad, due to the use of selective textualism by fundamentalists. I argue for an intellectual revival as a counterbalancing force to the ascendancy of armed jihad.

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Journal of Religion, Conflict, and Peace. Copyright © 2013.
Published by Plowshares: a Peace Studies Collaborative of Earlham and Goshen Colleges and Manchester University. Supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.
Readers may duplicate articles and quote from the journal without permission, provided no changes are made in the text and full credit is given to the author.