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WHEN RELIGION DIVIDES THE “COMMUNITY”. DYNAMICS OF VIOLENCE AND PACIFICATION WITHIN ARAB LEVANT

Conference of Marco DEMICHELIS, at the Second International Congress of PLURIEL

Abstract:

Since the nineteenth century, the dynamics of inter-religious conflict within the Arab world accentuated a growing intolerance between Christians and Muslims which has historically been confirmed by the “pogroms” of the 1860 Mount Lebanon Civil War that culminated with the massacre in Damascus against Christians.
Nowadays, the failure of “Arab Springs” in Syria as in Egypt, the historical difficult Islamo-Christian relationship in Lebanon as that in Israel, makes the Levant, a region of rooted religious conflict, in which the belonging to a state, a citizenship as to a nation is by no means sufficient to preserve it from dramatic “civil- religious wars.”
The contemporary onset of IS has further worsened the intra- community relations promoting ethnic cleansing policies within the Syrian – Iraqi area.
This paper would like to deal with the dynamics of inter-religious violence analyzing the historicalreligious reasons, the failure of Arab nationalism as that of a national identitarian building process, but also the incapacity of spiritual authorities in being really “men of peace”.
In spite of this, the analysis would like to introduce dynamics of pacification through perspectives of “religious geopolitics” as well as case studies, but also through Naim Ateek and Marc H. Ellis
Liberation Theology approach, referring in particular to Jerusalem Sabeel Document and the essay Encountering the Jewish Future.
The aim is to deconstruct the “belonging” to a geographic area with that to an Abrahamic faith as historically and culturally identified with a new understanding of “religious belonging”.

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