Year: 2003
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In the wake of September 11th, policy analysts, journalists, and academics have tried to make sense of the rise of militant Islam, particularly its role as a motivating and legitimating force for violence against the US. The unwritten assumption is that there is something about Islam that makes it bloodier and more violence-prone than other religions. This dissertation seeks to investigate this assertion by considering incidents of Islamically motivated terrorism, violence, and war, and comparing them to examples of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu bellicosity. In doing so, it aims to evaluate if religious violence is primarily the product of beliefs, doctrine and scripture, or if religious violence is the result of other factors such as cultural, political, social and economic circumstances. This dissertation focuses on religious wars—wars, terrorism, and violent conflicts that have saliently religious goals, specifically battles to defend holy nations, sacred spaces and revolutions aimed at creating religious governments—and tests three variables for their ability to explain the conditions under which religious wars arise: threat perception,
Author: Heather S. Gregg
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1491404563