Just War Tradition and Buddhism

Abstract

Just war, a concept stemming from Christian theological scholarship, has become part of the Western social and political lexicon. This article examines how Buddhism as a non-Abrahamic faith has dealt with just war thinking. To this end, it specifically analyzes some of the recent scholarly studies of just war ideology in relation to the civil war in Sri Lanka. It is argued that just war thinking is essentially a question of how issues of religion and politics are handled in Buddhist countries.