Irish Religious Conflict in Comparative Perspective Catholics, Protestants and Muslims

By setting the Irish religious conflict in a wide comparative perspective, this book offers fresh insights into the causes of religious conflicts, and potential means of resolving them. The collection mounts a challenge to widely held views of 'Irish exceptionalism' and points to significant historical and contemporary commonalities across the Western European and North Atlantic worlds. In so doing it enriches understanding not only of the cultural and political legacies of Christendom's internal divisions, but also of the factors currently hampering the peaceful assimilation of Muslims in Western societies. The 'on the ground' experience detailed in several of the chapters shows, however, that religion can be part of the 'solution' as well as part of the 'problem', and the book develops conclusions and implications that are important for practitioners and policy-makers as well as for academics.

John Wolffe is Professor of Religious History at The Open University, UK, and between 2009 and 2012 was an Ideas and Beliefs Fellow in the Research Councils UK Global Uncertainties programme. He has published widely on the history religion.

Introduction: Analysing Religious Conflict; John Wolffe
PART I: IRELAND
1. 'A Solid and United Phalanx'? Protestant Churches and the Ulster Covenant, 1912–2012; Nicola Morris and David Tombs
2. Social Structure and Religious Division: Comparing the Form of Religious Distinction in the Two Irish States; Jennifer Todd
3. Can Churches Contribute to Post-Violence Reconciliation and Reconstruction? Insights and Applications from Northern Ireland; Gladys Ganiel
4. Alternative Ulster: Punk Rock as a Means of Overcoming the Religious Divide in Northern Ireland; Francis Stewart
PART II: EUROPEAN COMPARISONS
5. The Case against Northern Ireland Exceptionalism: The 'Academy', Religion and Politics; Brian M. Walker
6. Churches and Communal Violence in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: A Comparison of Ireland and Scotland; Stewart J. Brown
7. Protestant–Catholic Conflict and Nationalism in German and Irish Historical Narratives; Shane Nagle
8. Comparing Protestant–Catholic Conflict in France and Ireland: The Significance of the Ethnic and Colonial Dimension; Joseph Ruane
PART III: ANTI-CATHOLICISM, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMOPHOBIA
9. The Multiculturalism Backlash and the Mainstreaming of Islamophobia Post-9/11; Humayun Ansari
10. Muslims in Britain: Researching and Addressing Conflict in a Post-Secular City; Philip Lewis
11. Religion, Detraditionalization and Backlashes against Multiculturalism in Northern Europe: A Comparison of Dutch, Northern Irish and English Cases (2001–2011); David Herbert
12. New Variation, Old Theme: Parallels between Islamophobia and Anti-Catholicism in the United States; Katy Scrogin
Conclusion: Overcoming 'Religious' Conflict: History and Practice; John Wolffe