In this book James Turner Johnson explores the cultural traditions of the Christian West and Islam in an effort to encourage a constructive dialogue on the nature of war for religion. No other issue highlights the difference between these two cultures more clearly or with more relevance for their interrelations throughout history and in the contemporary world.

In the West, war for religion is most often dismissed as a relic of the past, belonging to a time less rational and less civilized than our own. From this perspective, Muslims who advocate holy war are seen as religious...

In this collaborative examination two diverse groups of scholars look at Western and Islamic approaches to war, peace, and statecraft from their own perspectives in an effort to bridge the gap of knowledge and understanding between the two traditions. Established scholars in religious ethics and international law--James Turner Johnson, John Langan, David Little, and William V. O'Brien--examine the substantial body of literature on the just war tradition that has been produced over time by historians, theologians, ethicists, and international lawyers. The Islamic tradition, which in both...

The rapid and energetic resurgence of the Islamic religion and the expanded international role played by Islamic nations and political movements provided the impetus for a collaborative examination by scholars of religion and culture intent on bridging the gap of knowledge and understanding between the study of the West and the study of Islam. This book, together with its companion volume, Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (Greenwood Press, forthcoming 1991), examines the topics of the relationship between...

Sovereignty generally refers to a particular national territory, the inviolability of the nation's borders, and the right of that nation to protect its borders and ensure internal stability. From the Middle Ages until well into the Modern Period, however, another concept of sovereignty held sway: responsibility for the common good. James Turner Johnson argues that these two conceptions--sovereignty as self-defense and sovereignty as acting on behalf of the common good--are in conflict and suggests that international bodies must acknowledge this tension.

Johnson explores this earlier...

Sovereignty generally refers to a particular national territory, the inviolability of the nation's borders, and the right of that nation to protect its borders and ensure internal stability. From the Middle Ages until well into the Modern Period, however, another concept of sovereignty held sway: responsibility for the common good. James Turner Johnson argues that these two conceptions--sovereignty as self-defense and sovereignty as acting on behalf of the common good--are in conflict and suggests that international bodies must acknowledge this tension.

Johnson explores this earlier...

The fundamental aims of this book are two: to explore the interaction between religion and secular society in the formation as well as the dissolution of just war doctrine; and to investigate just war doctrine as an ideological pattern of thought, expressive of a greater ideology.

The author reconstructs the development of classic just war doctrine, showing it to be a product of secular and religious forces. From it he traces the growth of the doctrines of holy war and of modern just war. He demonstrates that the blending of two distinct traditions in the late Middle Ages has its...

In this volume, a sequel to Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War, James Turner Johnson continues his reconstruction of the history of just war tradition by analyzing significant individual thinkers, concepts, and events that influenced its development from the mid-eighteenth century to the present.

Originally published in 1981.

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