The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide

Genocide is a difficult topic to cover. It is fraught with complex questions of power, identity, culpability, memory, and closure, each with a deep and emotional charge. Accusations of genocide are currently asserted and denied on the international stage, with the definition of “genocide” an object of constant and heated debate. Covering genocide and mass atrocity while examining its connection with religion both narrows and complicates the discussion. It is notoriously difficult to abstract a single religion from the social, political, and cultural entanglements that shape and support it, so it is unsurprising that piecing out the causal connections between religion and genocide is a delicately intricate task. Religion has been involved in genocide and mass atrocities, but where does one start such a challenging conversation?

The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide, edited by Sara E. Brown and Stephen D. Smith, approaches this task through a collection of essays and case studies. The case studies allow definitions to be queried and challenged without being trapped by official designations of genocide.  One example of this is Isaac Kfir’s look at the violence against the Iraqi Kurdish population in Halabja. The title of the article puts “genocide” in quotation marks to indicate that this event has not been internationally recognized as genocide yet, but Kfir argues that there is still value in studying and “situat[ing] the harm suffered by the Iraqi Kurdish population in Halabja within the context of genocide” (343). This type of nuanced approach allows this volume to survey the broader horizon of religion, mass atrocity, and genocide while acknowledging the complex, uneven, and politically embedded nature of recognizing these events for what they are.

There is also a welcome level of precision and variety in the way religion and its interactions with mass atrocity and genocide are portrayed. This handbook does not just explore the causal connections between religion and incitement to violence. That is an important question that appears throughout the book, but it also looks at religious expressions that have supported rescue and resistance efforts during violent events, as well as how religion has aided recovery and strengthened identity after genocide. Jolene Chu and Tharcisse Seminega’s essay details the ways that the historically formed religious identity and nonviolent ethics of Jehovah’s Witnesses have made them consistent resistors and opposers to genocidal violence, as exemplified by their response to the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide (269-279). Fredy Peccerelli and Erica Henderson describe forensic efforts to locate the graves of victims of the Internal Armed Conflict in Guatemala, which was marked by massacres of Mayan communities by the Guatemalan military (307-319). In the quest to locate and identify victims, care is being taken to ensure that the exhumation and reinterment process is done in accord with the Maya Cosmovision and ceremonies.

The body of this collection is divided into six main sections. The first section offers perspectives on genocide in antiquity and the roots of antisemitism and religious violence. The opening articles describe scriptural depictions of genocide and their interpretation, which dovetail into essays exploring examples of holy wars from the ancient to the modern era. The second section is devoted to genocide involving Indigenous peoples. These treatments elucidate the connections between colonialism, genocide, and the religions of the colonizers and the colonized people. The section ends with Elisenda Calvet Martínez’s valuable study of sexual violence as genocide in the attacks on Mayan women in Guatemala (96-105).

Linkages between religion and genocidal violence perpetrated by the state are the topic of the third section. This section is the largest, with ten chapters covering a wide array of combinations between religions, political ideologies, and targeted groups.  Some of the essays have a historical focus, such as the pieces covering the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal campaign against religion, Nazi-supporting Christian churches, or Catholicism’s influence in Rwanda, while others take on topics that are currently being vociferously debated on the world stage, like the essays on anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar or Uyghur detentions in China. Khyati Tripathi’s contribution on the India-Parkistan Partition Genocide stands out as a haunting example of the way political decisions and religious othering can generate sudden violence against displaced persons. The scholarship presented does a service to its readers here by not shying away from hotly contested topics and providing close examination of these connections between religion and the state, past and present, even when controversial.

The fourth section covers the role of religion during genocide. Several chapters offer poignant reflections on the actions that people took or failed to take in the midst of sustained horrors. Within these, Walter Ziffer, a Holocaust survivor, provides a moving, personal, and complex reflection on culpability and moral duality (237-246). The fifth section considers what happens after genocide. Two chapters cover practical considerations relating to the dignified burial of bodies against the needful intrusions of post-genocide forensic investigation. Melanie O’Brien discusses the targeted destruction of religious practices and symbols as a feature of genocide (371-382). Other chapters take on more abstract topics, like shifts in theology after such events, or what forgiveness could possibly mean to a survivor.  The last section is devoted to the various aspects of remembering the Holocaust, looking at the individuals who are remembered, the people who remember, and how that remembering takes place. Alexis Lerner closes this section with a look at how new quantitative analyses of Holocaust data have a role in the continued study of archived records (443-459). 

As a reference work for use in a classroom, this book provides a good variety of coverage and events. Each essay is compact, sometimes in ways that leave the reader asking for more, but this conciseness is part of what makes these approaches to such complex topics accessible. There are multiple articles that explore angles on well-recognized events like the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, but space is also given to less discussed and currently debated conflicts. Christianity and Judaism are often in focus, as the Holocaust looms over much of the work, but there is a meaningful diversity of religious traditions present, often drawn out through multiple essays on an event. This book is a thought-provoking collection that would be an insightful companion to any nuanced discussion of religion, mass atrocity, and genocide. 

Zachariah Motts is an academic librarian at Iowa State University.           

Zachariah Motts

Date Of Review:

March 20, 2024