Religion and violence are both ambiguous categories but in the cultural mosaic that pits human against human, religion is a reoccurring justifier. There is no religion exempt from this tendency toward violence. Further, based on Milgram and Zimbardo’s experiments with students who were convinced that it was necessary to inflict torture on subjects for the greater good, it is apparent that ordinary people may commit heinous acts, given a sense of overarching emergency. Examples of religiously justified atrocities and violent rhetoric are summarized in this essay. In each case there is the mindset that violence is justified due to an extraordinary set of circumstances which require the suspension of behavioral norms.

This chapter locates Buddhist perspectives and influences on the violence in the conflict area of southern Thailand. Southern Thailand has been the home of a conflict between Malay Muslim separatists and the Thai government (2004–present). The conflict is predominantly political, with economic and environmental factors. However, in addition to these factors religion has played an important role in both sustaining the conflict and elevating the stakes. Most analysts have examined the role of Islam, but this approach provides access to only one side of the conflict. Over 20 percent of the residents in southern Thailand are Buddhist and the Thai government has had a vested interest in supporting Thai Buddhism. In the early years of the conflict, most southern monks became insular. They eschewed their traditional role as community leaders and avoided the wider community and interfaith opportunities. In addition, the Thai government stationed soldiers in Thai Buddhist monasteries and commissioned a covert group of military monks: Thais who clandestinely serve dual roles as both soldier and Buddhist monk. This chapter reviews the methods that made it possible for a researcher to gain access to these Buddhists and gain a better understanding of Buddhism's impact on the violence.

This chapter reviews the doctrinal and historical controversy surrounding the ordination of women in Buddhist traditions. In the contemporary period, Theravāda female monastic orders have attempted to create a female monastic order (bhikkhunī order) in Thailand. The Thai government and its monks have rejected such efforts. In addition to official resistance, people have exhibited violent backlashes to such attempts. While both sides of the polemic provide doctrinal justifications for their arguments, these justifications do not remove the harm caused to women occluded from ordination or those ridiculed and threatened once they ordain. This chapter tracks the violence of the gender discrimination through both monastic practices and the larger Thai society. Finally, it reviews three Buddhists justifications for gendered violence through Buddhist doctrine.

This chapter reviews Buddhist approaches to war and violence. Because ethics is the basis by which people make choices, the chapter’s focus is not purely on scriptures, but rather on the wider field of lived choices and the doctrine that relates to such choices. Buddhists have decided to go to war and have committed various acts of violence. The chapter begins with a brief chronological overview of Buddhist-inspired conflicts, wars, and the ethical debates and decisions surrounding these events. It then addresses the ambiguous subject matter of violence. Applying the Buddhist interdiction of ahimsa (non-harm/non-injury), it reviews doctrinal and historical cases in which Buddhist doctrine or Buddhists have justified harm/injury by means of murder, torture, capital punishment, and discrimination. The chapter ends with an examination of the ways in which Buddhists respond to war and violence.

In the twenty-first century, nation-states such as Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka rely on Buddhist monks for political legitimation. Some of these Buddhist-influenced governments are dictatorial and/or autocratic. While this state-sangha relationship has been well researched on the ways in which these governments exert overt and subtle Buddhist influences, very little work has been on the political power of the Buddhist monks in these countries. This chapter explores the ways in which Buddhist-influenced governments provide monks with potent political influence to support to destabilize autocratic governments. Buddhist scriptures emphasize the political influence of Buddhist monks, but they provide very little space for lay political power. The lack of a lay model for political influence does not support the advent of democracies. Rather, this doctrinal background provides conditions for autocratic governments and their state violence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This chapter traces the Buddhist valences toward conflict and peace building. The first section reviews Buddhist roles in conflicts. Buddhists have been involved in conflict as far back as written accounts of Buddhist activity. Prior to the 1800s, conflicts were steeped in millenarian and revolutionary rhetoric, but this tendency has changed over the last century. The next section focuses on the postcolonial period. As nation-states formed and transnational influences increased, Buddhist-inspired conflicts became more influenced by issues such as nationalism and identity conflicts. The last section examines notable contributions by Buddhists toward peace building in the contemporary period. Many leaders of these peace-building efforts model their work on scriptural examples of the Buddha’s conflict-resolution strategies, and some drew inspiration from Mohandas Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha (true-force) and advocacy of nonviolence.

This special issue is devoted to the work and legacy of Rene Girard. One of the most prodigious scholars to work on religion and violence, Girard produced scholarship that has stimulated thousands of scholars for over forty years. On November 4, 2015, Rene Girard died at his residence in Stanford, California. He had served as the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization, from 1985-1994 and had continued as Professor Emeritus of French Language, Literature, and Civilization. While there are scholars who support Girard’s work and see much of his work as a launching point for further work—and carry the reference as “Girardians” – there are notable critics who disagree with Girard, even his most foundational concepts. Regardless of their positions, the advocates and dissenters of Girardian theory evince Rene Girard’s widespread impact. This commemorative issue hosts a compilation of essays by some of the most influential scholars to write on religion and violence. Some authors advance Girard’s work, some authors critique it; collectively, their work pays tribute.

Through the example of contemporary Buddhist nationalist groups in Myanmar, this article draws attention to the cultural authorization of religio-political discourse. The symbolic power of a monk's pronouncements is amplified because of the cultural reverence attached to his vocation as a Buddhist monk, even without doctrinal references or ritual practices. A monk's cultural position within Burmese Buddhism particularly strengthens his authority when he frames his preaching and actions as a defense of Buddhism. Without attention to these cultural institutions and the religious authority they confer, the resonance and influence of monks' words cannot be completely understood. Furthermore, without directly responding to the logic of these authorizing discourses, responses intended to counter the violence emerging from Buddhist nationalism and promote tolerance will be ineffective.

Over the last two hundred years, Buddhists have witnessed incredible transformations, and often they have participated in making them. Throughout history, religious systems have been intimately connected to economics, politics, and societies. These relationships were profoundly affected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the loss of monarchies and the advents of print technology, capitalism, socialism, and the nation-state. Such transformations had enormous impacts on Buddhism. The changes manifested both within Buddhist populated countries and beyond through Buddhist transnational organizations and Buddhist diasporas. The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism tracks these changes to Buddhists, their rituals, and beliefs in the colonial and postcolonial world. Leading scholars in Buddhism have authored 41 chapters, divided into two parts. Part I contains chapters on the historical transformation of Buddhist traditions around the world and their interactions with globalization. Each chapter provides a background for the Buddhist tradition and then the ways in which it has changed with modernity. These chapters range from the more familiar traditions, such as Tibetan Buddhism, to the less familiar, such as Buddhism in Latin America and Africa. Part II contains chapters devoted to particular themes and their interactions with Buddhism, such as Buddhist approaches to gender, sexual orientation, and race. These chapters also examine the impacts of subjects such as technology, music, and architecture on Buddhism, as well as changes to the academic study of Buddhism itself.

Within the last several decades, there has been a surge in Buddhist-influenced conflicts in places like the Tibetan region of China, Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Every religious system has had violent instances. In many ways, the phenomenon speaks more about the nature of humanity than it does about religion. People have violent tendencies making violence present in all religious traditions. One prominent challenge in the study of religion and violence is defining the parameters for violence. As perpetrators of violence rarely locate themselves as aggressors or see themselves as deficient in moral justifications, this essay treats violence as the act of harming oneself and/or others. However, it also outlines the ways in which Buddhists see intentionality as influential in the ethics of such acts. Although scholars of religion and violence have critically shown how religiously-motivated violence is multidimensional and a multi-determined phenomenon (e.g., Aho 1994; Juergensmeyer 2000; Jones 2008), there persists global patterns to align religious traditions like Islam as a cause for violence and others like Buddhism as an explanation of peace. Such wide-sweeping comparisons are at best superficial assessments that draw upon limited evidence. There may be a rash of contemporary examples of Buddhist-inspired violence in places like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, and China, but this does not make Buddhism any more violent than other religions. However, incidents like recent Buddhist attacks in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand are important pieces to the puzzle of Buddhism and violence. On the most basic of levels, they dispel the ahistorical myth that Buddhists are wholly peaceful.

As an intensely social engagement for peace-making, psychological coping strategies, and fiscal habits and political persuasions, religion is also inextricably tied to individual and communal acts of violence. There has been a long history of Buddhist-inspired revolts, state-sanctioned punishments, suicides, and war rhetoric; however, contemporary popular discourse portrays Buddhism as the antidote to violence. This misperception clouds the study of Buddhism as an academic subject matter. More importantly, it interferes with contemporary analyses of current conflicts that draw upon Buddhist principles and actors. This guide provides an approach to teaching about religion and violence that redresses such misperceptions and outlines a method for integrating Buddhism into the discussion.