Lecture: Religious violence, modern citizenship and theoterrorism
Professor Paul Cliteur (Leiden & Gent)
Tuesday, 14th October 2014, 7 p.m.
Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz (Conference Room)
Organized by the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG) and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)
Comment by Dr Claudia Baumgart-Ochse (PRIF)
Contemporary religiously motivated violence (or “theoterrorism”) has reignited the debate on the roots of this phenomenon. In the United States, abortion physicians have been killed by religious fanatics, who consider abortion an abomination in the eyes of God; in 1995, the Jewish extremist Yigal Amir killed the Israeli politician Yitzak Rabin for having conducted peace talks with the Palestinians; in the Middle East, we witness violent jihadists fighting for what they consider the honor of God. These actors all place their religious worldviews before the laws of the nation-states in which they live. Drawing on the backlashes that international religious conflict and the fear of it has on modern politics, including less violent cases such as the Rudi Carrell affair (1987) in Germany, Professor Cliteur will probe how believers deal with the potentially contradictory demands that religious adherence and modern citizenship place on individuals.
The lecture is presented in the series of lectures "Religion and violence: An ambivalent relationship in the past and present". It is organized by the DFG-funded Emmy Noether Junior Researcher Group residing at the IEG.
For more information: www.ieg-mainz.de/glaubenskaempfe (German only)