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"Mark Juergensmeyer has written yet another brilliant book on religious violence, addressing the fundamental question of how 'imagined wars' come to an end. His profound and enlightening insights are drawn from deep knowledge of the combatants in conflicts in Iraq, the Philippines, and India."--Martha Crenshaw, Senior Fellow Emerita at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, and Professor Emerita of Government, Wesleyan University
"Juergensmeyer has an extraordinary knack for asking great questions at the right time. In this small tome he asks the important questions about how and why religious wars end. Informed by participants who had dedicated themselves to absolutist religious warfare, he discovers and reports that the imaginary of war in their minds has changed. Although core ideas remain, his interlocutors reveal that warfighting might not be the best method, such that they’ve come to accept that the war must end even if the struggle for righteousness does not."--Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
List of contents
Preface
1. The Trajectory of Imagined Wars
2. The Apocalyptic War of the Islamic State
3. The Militant Struggle of Mindanao Muslims
4. The Fight for Khalistan in India's Punjab
5. How Imagined Wars End
Notes
Interviews
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Mark Juergensmeyer is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. He is author or editor of thirty books, including the award-winning Terror in the Mind of God and the recent God at War.
Summary
A gripping study of how religiously motivated violence and militant movements end, from the perspectives of those most deeply involved.
Mark Juergensmeyer is arguably the globe’s leading expert on religious violence, and for decades his books have helped us understand the worlds and worldviews of those who take up arms in the name of their faith. But even the most violent of movements, characterized by grand religious visions of holy warfare, eventually come to an end. Juergensmeyer takes readers into the minds of religiously motivated militants associated with the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, the Sikh Khalistan movement in India’s Punjab, and the Moro movement for a Muslim Mindanao in the Philippines to understand what leads to drastic changes in the attitudes of those once devoted to all-out ideological war. When God Stops Fighting reveals how the transformation of religious violence manifests for those who once promoted it as the only answer.
