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21. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Beatriz Reyes-Foster Orcid-ID The Devil Made Her Do it: Understanding Suicide, Demonic Discourse, and the Social Construction of ‘Health’ in Yucatan, Mexico
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In the state of Yucatan, Mexico, the suicide rate more than doubles the Mexican national average. This article uses ethnographic data to argue that 1) local understandings of suicide in Yucatán reflect a logic of health among Yucatec Maya people hinging on the belief that spiritual, bodily, and spatial balance must be maintained in order to prevent “illness,” understood as bodily and spiritual suffering; and 2) that Yucatec Maya users of Mexico’s public health system readily adapt the biomedical model to existing paradigms that comingle spiritual, mental, and bodily health due in great part to the inherent contradictions in bothsystems that simultaneously attribute responsibility for suicide and take it away. This apparent contradiction is thus a sympathetic template on which biomedical discourse and its imperfect application can map itself.
22. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Rebecca Moore Rhetoric, Revolution and Resistance in Jonestown, Guyana
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Initial reports of the deaths that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana in November 1978 characterized them as mass suicides. As accounts of the deaths of children and old people emerged, however, the events began to be described as murder, especially by conspiracy theorists. But scholarship in New Religions studies over the last three decades has begun to claim that at least some of the deaths for some of the people were a type of martyrdom. A narrative of martyrdom pervaded life in Jonestown, as well as life within Peoples Temple, the group sponsoring the agricultural commune. Jim Jones, the group’s leader, appropriated and re-interpreted the Black Panther Party rhetoric of revolutionary suicide, calling upon residents to lay down their lives to protest capitalism. This act of protest was rehearsed many times in Jonestown, and in the Temple in the U.S. Some survivors who lived in Jonestown challenge the assertion that residents took these rehearsals seriously, although a number of audiotapes have parents providing the justification for killing their children to save them from torture; others on tape state that they are taking their own lives as a rejection of capitalism. In any event, by killing the children first, the mass suicides of the parents seemed virtually assured.
23. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Lynn S. Neal Suicide and Cultural Memory in Functional Television
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As the central storyteller in and of American life, television has played a profound role in the maintenance and dissemination of the cult stereotype. By emphasizing these stereotypical features, television shows firmly situate cults as abnormal and dangerous entities on the American religious landscape. Many of these televised portrayals include issues of cult violence, specifically suicide. This article analyzes how fictional American television shows from South Park to CSI have depicted the relationship between cults and suicide. In addition to episode analysis, this article addresses the role that popular culture plays in perpetuating anti-cult ideas and attitudes.
24. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Christopher Hartney Why Muslims Kill Themselves on Film: From Girard’s Victimage Mechanism to a Radical Constructivist Explanation
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In this article a methodological approach to representations of suicide on film is developed, sited between the Girardian victimage approach on one side, and a radical constructivist approach on the other. The argument does not start by considering Muslim suicide as a thing in and of itself; rather it contextualises suicide on film through examples ranging from adaptations of Romeo and Juliette by Zeffirelli and Luhrmann, to Ashby's Harold and Maude, Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, and Sono's Suicide Club. With thematics on cinema and suicide identified in this section of the article, the second half of the work demonstrateshow such thematics are developed or distorted when Muslim characters are introduced to the screen. The four case studies in this section include analysis on recent film examples. These include the Hollywood produced The Kingdom (directed by Peter Berg) and Gaghan's Syriana. It is clearly established that where Hollywood pays attention to white people who may be considering suicide and dedicates significant screen time to them, Hollywood presents Muslims as inherently suicidal. This fits into Jack Shaheen's work on racist stereotypes in the presentation of Arabs by Hollywood. To confirm this, the article concludes byanalyzing the place of suicide in Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, and Abu-Assad's Paradise Now. The article concludes with an examination not of suicide per se, but of how suicide is represented generally in film, how layers of Arab and Muslim stereotypes in Hollywood have, almost criminally, distorted representations of Muslims on screen, and how serious and considered work by Muslim directors are not so much redressing this balance, but rather highlighting how impervious the Hollywood system is to redressing its long held biases.
25. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Helen Farley Self-Harm and Falun Gong: Karmic Release, Martyrdom or Suicide
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The teachings of Falun Gong explicitly forbid suicide, yet in 2001, five protesters set themselves ablaze in Tiananmen Square resulting in the death of two. Allegedly, their stated aim was to bring the world’s focus onto the repression of the movement by the Chinese government. Falun Gong spokespeople were quick to speak out in defence of founder Li Hongzhi, saying that the movement strictly forbids suicide in line with the traditional Chinese belief that says that suicide is an affront to the ancestors. They further claimed that the Chinese government had staged the suicides in order to stir up public opinion against the movement andindeed the tide of public opinion did turn against Falun Gong and its founder (Bell and Boas 2003, 285).Even given Falun Gong’s stated opposition to suicide, the movement does encourage its adherents to refuse to take medicine or accept medical treatment and some consider this refusal of treatment could be considered to be suicidal. Chinese state media seized upon Li's writing in which he expressed that illnesses are caused by karma, and claimed that in excess of 1000 deaths were the direct result of adherents following Li’s teachings. Authorities also maintain that several hundred practitioners had cut their stomachs open looking for the Dharma Wheel that turns in response to the practice of the five meditative exercises characteristic of the movement. Indeed, many of their fellow followers had been arrested in Tianjin, following condemnation of their movement by physicist He Zouxiu of the Chinese Academy of the Sciences. He had claimed that Falun Gong had been responsible for several deaths (Bejsky 2004, 190).This paper will examine the complex relationship between FalunGong and the Chinese government, exploring the reality behind the claims and counterclaims in relation to the former’s stated opposition to suicide. This will be contrasted with other Falun Gong writings which encourage adherents to refuse medical treatment and medication in order to rid themselves of karma.
26. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Kjersti Hellesøy Special Issue: Suicide: Why Do People Kill Themselves In The Name Of Religion?
27. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 1 > Issue: 3
Katarina Plank Living torches of Tibet – Religious and Political Implications of the Recent Self-Immolations
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Self-immolation is not an ordinary suicide or self-destructive act, but has a religious dimension since one’s own body is seen as a gift for a greater cause. This article highlights the specific Buddhist ritual and textual heritage when analyzing the recent wave of self-immolations in Tibet, and incorporates the act in a wider Buddhist set of practices called ”gift of the body”. The first political sacrifices made in the 1960s intended to save Buddhism at a time when it was perceived as being threatened in South Vietnam, and later focus shifted towards bringing an end to the Vietnam War. As a result, their sacrifices were addressed to Vietnamese politicians and to the global community. Nearly fifty years later, a new wave of self-immolations have occurred in Tibet – with previously no tradition of self-immolation – and this time, the fiery suicides by Tibetan monks and former monks can be seen as an expression of the nationalist struggle for a free Tibet.
28. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Mia Bloom, Orcid-ID Rachael Rollings Introduction to the Special Issue: Losing My Religion: Evangelicalism and the Gospel of Q
29. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Jeremy D. Beauchamp Evangelical Identity and QAnon: Why Christians are Finding New Mission Fields in Political Conspiracy
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The presidency of Donald Trump saw the rise of a new kind of conspiracy in QAnon. The internet-assembled meta-conspiracy has grown to include elements of other growing conspiracies such as the anti-mask movement and anti-vaxxers. As it has grown, QAnon has attracted significant support for its beliefs from white evangelicals who also supported Trump in huge numbers in both 2016 and 2020. In this integrative review of literature, I explore the reasons that QAnon has performed so well so quickly, finding justification for conspiracy theory support among evangelicals in the theory of cognitive dissonance. QAnon has found a foothold in evangelical circles during worldwide pandemic, which has left many evangelicals unmoored from their spiritual family and susceptible to other realms of community online. The conspiracy theory has infiltrated evangelicalism by using the language and concerns of Christianity in its messaging and by attempting to justify evangelical support of Donald Trump. Although traditional media are quick to point out the theory’s inconsistencies and failed prophecies, this paper finds that the harm QAnon has done to the evangelical community may only be undone through spiritual connection and practice.
30. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Julie Ingersoll America’s Holy Trinity: How Conspiracism, Apocalypticism, and Persecution Narratives Set Us up for Crisis
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Debates over whether QAnon is a “religion” or a “cult” lack theoretical grounding; they depend on unacknowledged definitions and classificatory schemes and ultimately don’t prove useful as an analytical framework for sociological/historical scholarship. Instead, this article suggests we explore the ways one contemporary religious movement helped make widespread acceptance of QAnon possible by weaving their theological commitments to apocalypticism, conspiracies and persecution narratives into the larger American culture.
31. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Mark Juergensmeyer Orcid-ID QAnon as Religious Terrorism
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While the horrific scenes of the invasion and occupation of the US Capitol building played out on television, I happened to be doing a radio interview for my recent book on religious terrorism (Juergensmeyer 2020). The reporter asked if there were similarities between the Trump-incited rioters and the terrorists I have studied. I quickly responded “yes.” It is true that the reasons for religious-inspired insurrections around the world are specific to their contexts—supporters of al Qaeda are not the same as militant Buddhists in Myanmar. Yet there are some striking similarities among the cosmic battles imagined in the apocalyptic scenarios that propel movements of religious of religious violence. This includes ISIS, Christian militia groups, Jewish extremists, and Hindu and Sikh militants. They all bear some common characteristics, and QAnon shares many similarities with them. To begin with, QAnon bears some relationship to religion. To be sure, the conspiracy theory at the heart of QAnon belief is this-worldly. It includes the notion that there is a secret design among liberal politicians and media figures to take over the world for their evil purposes, among which is ritual leeching the blood of innocent children for empowerment.
32. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Shuki J. Cohen QAnon as an Online-Facilitated Cult: Integrating Models of Belief, Practice, and Identity
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Through the examination of QAnon as a religious apocalyptic “digital cult,” this paper integrates individual psychological models regarding the espousal of conspiracy beliefs with sociological and anthropological models of religious cultism, particularly in the context of destructive and violent cults. This integrative model purports to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the extravagant irrationality of the QAnon belief-system with the otherwise normative demographics of its adherents and distinguish—as scholars of religion often do—between the creed, the practice, and the social identity aspects of the movement. Cultic studies (adapted to the digital age) are leveraged to discern the functions that different strata of adherents provide to the movement, and elucidate the mechanisms by which they coexist, collaborate, and avoid splitting along organizational or ideological fault-lines. The model also draws upon studies of apocalyptic cults and violent radicalization to caution against counter-productive over-generalization, over-sensationalizing, and over-pathologizing of QAnon believers.
33. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Tim Rackett ‘States Of Mind And Exception: Enactments Of Buddhist Ontological Truth And Purification In Thai Religious Nationalism In The Mid 20th And Early 21st Centuries’
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The following is a meditation upon a particular nationalist use and performance of Theravada Buddhism. It explores some of the interconnections and interdependencies between religion, identity politics and political violence in Thailand, an exemplary Buddhist nation. Anti-government demonstrators, ‘communists’ in the 1970’s, Muslims in 2004 and ‘Red Shirts’ in 2010, were killed in the name of defending sacred Thai institutions of Nation, Religion and Monarchy. Is Buddhism implicated in such political violence? If so, how does a spiritual practice prohibiting the taking of life lend itself to justifying killing? This article suggests that Buddhism is translated, qua transformed and betrayed, by the Thai State and politics. Buddhist truth, in the thrall of nationalist ideology in times of emergency and national insecurity, can legitimate ‘states of exception’, which suspend the law and moral constraint, making it permissible to kill impureenemies in defense and with good intentions.
34. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Fred Guyette The Book of Eli [motion picture] by Albert and Allen Hughes
35. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Alexandros Sakellariou The Princeton Reader on Religion and Violence by Mark Jurgensmeyer and Margo Kitts
36. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Benson Ohihon Igboin Boko Haram Radicalism and National Insecurity: Beyond Normal Politics
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The main focus of this paper is to interrogate the security challenges that the radical Islamic sect Boko Haram has posed to the Nigerian nation, and how the government has responded to these challenges. Although many positions have been articulated with regard to how best to tackle the insurgency, the thrust ofthis article, however, is to argue that instead of the “normal politics” of security, the government needs to invoke the doctrine of “emergency politics,” which involves the full concentration of state apparatuses in order to restore peace and order. It is the contention of this article that it is only after this measure has beentaken that the fundamental causes can be adequately addressed, through a well-focused program of re-absorption.
37. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Marco Ceccarelli Catholic Thought as Soft-Counterterrorism: La Civiltà Cattolica on non-Violent Solutions to Islamic Terrorism
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This article analyses a particular kind of Catholic scholarship, that of the Jesuit Journal La Civiltà Cattolica, and its discourse on Islamic terrorism in the twenty-first century. While numerous secular political studies have been published on Islamic terrorism since the attacks of 9/11, little attention has been paid to the scholarly debate that has emerged among Catholic intellectuals on this issue. The examination focuses on the works of three La Civiltà Cattolica writers,namely Edomnd Farahian S.J., Giovanni Sale S.J. and Enrico Cattaneo S.J. as well as the discourse of prominent Catholic religious leaders, including the newly elected Pope Francis. The non-violent strategy for countering Islamic terrorism proposed by the contemporary Catholic Church, and echoed by the Jesuits, is framed as a new “soft-counterterrorism” approach based on interreligious dialogue and the creation of bonds of friendship. The article also considers the debate currently taking place among religious scholars on the Catholic Church’s position towards Islam as well as new insights into the need for the West torediscover its Christian roots before engaging with Islam.
38. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Navin Kumar Singh Cruel Creeds and Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence Across Culture and History by J. D. Eller
39. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Mattias Gardell So Costly a Sacrifice Upon the Altar of Freedom: Human Bombs, Suicide Attacks, and Patriotic Heroes
40. Journal of Religion and Violence: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Ryan J. Cook Orcid-ID Absence of Evidence: How Chen Tao Became a “Suicide Cult”
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For new religious movements, is the absence of evidence of the potential for violence ever sufficient evidence of its absence? This article examines the process through which Chen Tao was inaccurately portrayed as potentially suicidal by the news media. After a review of the group’s cosmology and migration fromTaiwan to the United States, it describes the group’s interactions with news media personnel at several key points between the mid-1990s and the 2010s. The article then marshals the scholarship treating minority religions, inwardly-directed violence, and the media to understand why this happened to Chen Tao. From early on, journalists consistently wove rumors about and interpretations of group members’ acts and statements into a narrative of risk that, while unsupported by evidence, resonated with a pre-existing “suicide cult” topos in reporting.