Monday, May 27, 2013

Just Wars and Jihads

I recently received from Oxford University Press a new collection edited by Sohail H. Hashmi, Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Encounters and Exchanges (2012), 456pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:
Surveying the period from the rise of Islam in the early seventh century to the present day, Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads is the first book to investigate in depth the historical interaction among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim ideas about when the use of force is justified. Grouped under the three labels of just war, holy war, and jihad, these ideas are explored throughout twenty chapters that cover wide-ranging topics from the impact of the early Islamic conquests upon Byzantine, Syriac, and Muslim thinking on justified war to analyzing the impact of international law and terrorism on conceptions of just war and jihad in the modern day. This study serves as a major contribution to the comparative study of the ethics of war and peace.
Perusing the table of contents, I find several chapters directly pertaining to Eastern Christian realities, including the following chapters:

1)  "Religious Services for Byzantine Soldiers and the Possibility of Martyrdom c. 400-c.1000."

3) "God's War and His Warriors: The First 100 Years of Syriac Accounts of the Islamic Consquests."

5) "Ibn 'Asakir and the Intensification and Reorientation of Sunni Jihad Ideology in Crusader-Era Syria."

Other chapters cover various thinkers, and other regions, including India, France, Spain, southern Italy, Israel, and areas such as Ottoman history and international law. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Anonymous comments are never approved. Use your real name and say something intelligent.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.