Religion and Genocide: A Historiographical Survey

Abstract

The first problem in discussing the historiography of religion and genocide is to define the parameters, a difficult task, because all of the categories involved are open to interpretation. According to the definitions used, one will either find that almost nothing has been written about religion and genocide or that the body of relevant material is endless. What is Religion? Are we talking about organized, institutionalized religion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha’i and the like? Or about religious impulses: belief, tradition, spiritualism, transcendence and ethical systems linked to some notion of divinity? Are we talking about a communal phenomenon or an individual matter? This discussion focuses on institutionalized religion but also pays attention to religion as it functions at the level of individuals and groups involved in situations of extreme violence -- as perpetrators, targets/victims, witnesses/bystanders, but also as resistors/rescuers, beneficiaries and people left to deal with the aftermath. As for genocide, given the scope of this volume, I follow the legal definition associated with Raphael Lemkin and the 1948 United Nations Convention,1 but I also consider some cases of state-sponsored, extreme violence that are not legally and formally genocide or have not been widely acknowledged as such.