Contents

From the Editor

World Cup Reflections: Religion (But Mostly) Conflict and Peace

by:

Joseph C. Liechty

That sport can function as a kind of civil religion is both a truism and a subject of scholarly analysis.

Essay

An Ethical Critique of the United States-Israel Alliance

by:

Daniel C. Maguire

The relationship of the United States and Israel is at the heart of Mideast tensions as well as U.S. and Israeli relationships with the Arab world and other nations. Theological claims influence policy decisions in both the United States and Israel. The usual and simplistic explanation of this close alliance, so close that Israel has been called the fifty-first State, is a shared love of democracy. This claim calls for serious prophetic and factual critique with particular emphasis on the stratagem of enforced forgetfulness that blocks efforts at reconciliation and peacemaking.

Articles

Conflicts and Peace Initiatives between Minority Muslims and Thai Buddhists in the Southern Thailand

by:

Osman Abdullah Chuah

Malaysia consists of two parts, East Malaysia and West Malaysia. East Malaysia sits geographically atop the Island of Borneo (Indonesia) and is divided into two states, Sabah and Sarawak. West Malaysia, across the Java Sea, is also known as Peninsular Malaya and in the north shares a border and a history with Thailand. In 2010, the country of Thailand had a population of 66 million, 87 percent of which is Buddhist and only 3 percent Muslim. The Muslims are mostly at the extreme southern and northern ends of the country. In the northern region, Muslims and Thais co-exist peacefully without conflict; however, in the southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Patani where 80 percent of the people are Muslim and 20 percent Buddhist, conflicts between Muslims, non-Muslims and Buddhist Thais have occurred regularly. This article examines some of the many causes contributing to the conflict in the region, focusing mainly on causes rooted in religion, ethnic identity, and nationalism.

The former Sufi Centers of Learning and Their Contemporary Courts

by:

Meron Zeleke

This article argues against the dominant, generalized discourse on religion and religious institutions as the latent sources of conflict, emphasizing the need to address equally vibrant religious institutions that play significant roles in conflict mitigation and reconciliation. An ethnographic case of a Sufi shrine in north central Ethiopia supports this claim. This shrine is involved in conflict resolution both in direct and indirect ways. Weekly court sessions held at the shrine itself and a mobile Court of the Sheikh that travels to different areas on an ad hoc basis serve direct needs for reconciliation in communities. More indirectly, the shrine offers regular, multidimensional rituals that create forums of interaction for people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. These religious institutions of conflict resolution, defined as exclusive mandates of the state legal system, are crucial in handling both interpersonal conflict and criminal matters.

The Irony of the Secular

by:

Ryan T. O'Leary

This essay juxtaposes common understandings of secularism and religion to make three main points. First, secularity is a religious phenomenon, incorporating and hiding fundamental Protestant assumptions. Second, religiously motivated violent resistance to the ideology of secularism as it is manifested in American expansion reveals these assumptions and their effects. Third, the conflict between an America engaged in a struggle for global domination and violent resistance to that dominance, both domestically and globally, should be understood as a conflict between two fundamentally opposed religious worldviews. Finally, the essay recommends that public discourse needs to reflect this understanding.

Book Reviews

Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas

by:

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

Fractured Land, Healing Nations

by:

The Bosnian War and the process of peacebuilding that followed remain the core issue of numerous academic studies about conflict resolution. Stephen R.

Religion as a Conversation Starter: Interreligious Dialogue for Peacebuilding in the Balkans

by:

Ina Merdjanova

Patrice Brodeur

These two books consider the contentious religious factor in the Balkans by seeking the ways in which the often-mentioned social divisiveness of religions can be countered by peace

The Aryan Jesus

by:

Adolf Hitler did not stand alone as the spokesman for the “dejudaization” of Germany.