Abstract
Social scientists have been involved in systematic research on genocide for over forty years, yet an under-examined aspect of genocide literature is a sustained focus on the nexuses of religion and genocide, a lacuna that this article seeks to address. Four ways religion and genocide intersect are proposed, of which two will receive specific attention: (1) how religious rhetoric and (2) how religious individuals and institutions foment genocide. These two intersections are further nuanced by combining a Weberian method of typologies, the Durkheimian theory of collective violence, and empirical data in the form of rhetoric espoused by perpetrators and supporters of the 1995 Bosnian genocide. This combination yields the three typologies of “othering”, justification, and authorization, which are further supported by a review of genocide literature. The typologies provide a framework for analyzing the synergistic relationship between religion and genocide in the interest of devising a model that can be applied to other genocides for investigative and comparative purposes and reveal that religion is both instrumentalized by individuals and institutionally instrumental in genocide perpetration. Individuals explicitly employ religious rhetoric to prey on the fear of the masses, and religious institutions and individuals are indispensable to lending religious justification and moral authority to genocidal campaigns. These results may serve as a starting point for devising strategies that neuter the destructive links between genocide and religion as well as leveraging the ambiguity of religion in favor of its constructive and obviating potential.
Highlights
Alex Alvarez, author of Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and InterdisciplinaryApproach, observes that there is a lack of contributions by the social sciences to genocide literature.As reasons, he cites social science’s ethnocentrism, its emphasis on empiricism rather than theory, and the “marginali[zation] of state or political crime”, in criminology (Alvarez 2001, pp. 3–9).The enumerated social sciences are sociology, political theory, history, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy; the field of religious studies is conspicuously absent from the conversation
At the center of the ideology of the Bosnian genocide and campaign of ethnic cleansing is the pivotal role that Kosovo plays in Serbian consciousness, the story of which often begins with the 28 June 1389
The guiding typologies of “othering”, justification, and authorization are useful for sifting through the ways in which religious rhetoric and individuals intersected with genocidal propaganda and campaigns in Bosnia
Summary
Alex Alvarez, author of Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary. Observes that there is a lack of contributions by the social sciences to genocide literature As reasons, he cites social science’s ethnocentrism, its emphasis on empiricism rather than theory, and the “marginali[zation] of state or political crime”, in criminology The enumerated social sciences are sociology, political theory, history, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy; the field of religious studies is conspicuously absent from the conversation. This omission in genocide studies has been most recently filled by two edited volumes that focus primarily on the religious aspects of several genocides: Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack’s In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (2001) and Steven Leonard Jacobs’ Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam (2009). “political and economic competition among groups is frequently couched in religious terms, and attitudes toward members of other groups and ways of treating them are themselves understood religiously” (Little 1991, p. xx)
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