Holy Scriptures and War: How Do Practices of Interpretation Contribute to the (De-)Legitimation of Political Violence?

尽管有强有力的理论论据证明宗教差异与集体暴力之间存在联系，但实证研究结果并不一致。这种现象通常被称为“神圣的矛盾心理”（斯科特阿普尔比）：有时宗教和信仰社区确实会加剧冲突，有时他们会为和平而努力。在这一背景下，本次级项目将审查贝宁、科特迪瓦、尼日利亚和坦桑尼亚的冲突管理情况。我们的目标是要确定，在某些情况下，理解和展示圣经-在我们的例子中是《圣经》和《古兰经》-的不同做法是否有助于政治暴力的合法化，而在其他情况下，在其他相对相似的情况下，这几乎是不可能的。与此同时，该项目将分析既定的口译做法是否因暴力冲突而改变，以及在文本选择和文本分期方面是否可以确定路径依赖性。该项目以绝对实用的理论视角工作。在方法上，它结合了同步的国家比较研究设计（“个案间差异”）与历时的国家特定动态（“个案内差异”）的调查。第一步，将分析选定宗教社区的教理问答文献和视频布道，以确定他们对《古兰经》和《圣经》的解释和编排做法。第二步，这些解释和表演的做法将与支持或反对集体暴力的政治动员尝试有关。该分项目属于C工作组“实用化”，因此调查宗教文本被纳入并作为神圣化文本产生影响的实际背景。

Despite strong theoretical arguments for a link between religious differences and collective violence, the empirical findings are inconsistent. This phenomenon is often referred to as the “ambivalence of the sacred” (Scott Appleby): Sometimes religions and faith communities do escalate conflicts and sometimes they work for peace. Against this background, this subproject will examine conflict management in Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and Tanzania. The goal is to determine whether different practices of understanding and staging holy scriptures – in our cases the Bible and the Koran – contribute to the legitimization of political violence in some cases, while in other cases this is hardly possible under otherwise relatively similar circumstances. At the same time, the project will analyse whether established practices of interpretation are modified by violent conflicts and whether path dependencies can be identified with regard to text selection and text staging. The project works with a decidedly practical theoretical perspective. Methodologically, it combines a synchronous country-comparative research design ("between-case variance") with an investigation of diachronic country-specific dynamics ("within-case variance"). In a first step, catechetical literature and video sermons of selected religious communities will be analyzed to identify their practices of interpretation and staging of the Koran and Bible. In a second step, these practices of interpretation and staging will be related to attempts of political mobilization for or against collective violence. The subproject is located in Working Group C "Pragmatization" and thus investigates the practical contexts in which religious texts are integrated and have an effect as sacralized texts.