Cross, Crescent, and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Tradition

(Hardback)

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This book, together with its companion volume, "Just War and Jihad - Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions", examines the topics of the relationship between Western and Islamic religious and cultural traditions on war, peace, and the conduct of statecraft. The ten essays contained here provide scholarly analyses and interpretations of Islamic traditions and of areas of relationship and commonality between these traditions and those of the West. The diffilculties inherent in such analysis are compounded by the lack of correspondence between the two religious and cultural traditions, particularly those concerned with defining when war is justified and what limits ought to be observed in justified warfare. The first four essays assess justifications for war and retraints on its conduct, including a discussion of the concept of "Jihad". Two additional groups of essays address specific questions that are especially pressing in the current historical context. The nine chapters range braodly over the historical development of the two traditions, seeking individually and collectively to open up the unfamiliar and to bring elements of the two traditions to bear on contemporary moral problems of armed violence and war.

Author Bio

JAMES TURNER JOHNSON is Professor of Religion, University Director of International Programs, and a member of the graduate faculty in political science at Rutgers University. A former Guggenheim Fellow and Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellow, his previous books include Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War, Can Modern War Be Just and The Quest for Peace: Three Moral Traditions in Western Cultural History. Johnson has also published over forty articles in various American and European scholarly journals. JOHN KELSAY is Assistant Professor of Religion at Florida State University, Tallahassee. His previous works include Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures (1988) and The Sacred Quest (forthcoming). He has also written articles for the Journal of Religious Ethics and Harvard Theological Review.