Books in the Studies in the History of Religious and Political Pluralism series

Examines Pakistan's nuclear behaviour from the 1950s onwards against the background of the emerging global non-proliferation system. This book provides a comprehensive scholarly account of the history of both India's and Pakistan's technological developments leading to their decision to develop nuclear weapons and confront the NPT constraints.

With appendices that offers an analysis of religious-based extremist violence in Kashmir and Pakistan, this book includes interviews with retired military figures from India and Pakistan who accept that with both countries possessing nuclear weapons, choosing war to resolve outstanding disputes is no longer a sensible or realistic option.

In this book, the author assesses the social vision of three western Muslim intellectuals, Seyyed H. Nasr, Bassam Tibi and Tariq Ramadan. He compares and contrasts their ideas in order to show that modern Islamic thought is not monolithic, but pluralistic and they present different social visions for Islam in the West.

Contemporaries and historians have found it difficult to interpret the ambiguous relationship between National Socialism and Christianity. Both the Catholic and Protestant Churches tended to agree with National Socialists in their authoritarianism, their attacks on socialism and communism, and their campaign against the Versailles Treaty; but the doctrinal position of the Churches could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or a domestic agenda involving the complete subservience of Church to State. Important sections of the Nazi Party sought the complete extirpation of Christianity and its substitution by a purely racial religion, but considerations of expediency made it impossible for the National Socialist leadership to adopt this radical anti-Christian stance as official policy. The Kulturkampf Newsletters, which have not appeared in English since the 1930s, were produced by German Catholic exiles in France. They scrupulously document the tensions between various strands of Nazi policy, and the nature of the policy eventually adopted: this was to reduce the Churches¿ influence in all areas of public life through the use of every available means, yet without provoking the difficulties ¿ diplomatic as well as domestic ¿ which an openly declared war of extermination might have caused.

William of Orange's invasion destroyed the king's plans, but given the time, could James have nurtured these 'green shoots' of religious pluralism in what was still a fiercely Protestant nation? This title reveals an endorsement of the general concept of religious toleration.

The Church and wider society in Northeast India have witnessed a number of shifts in ethnic identity and the resultant inter-ethnic conflicts since the 1980s are threatening the peaceful co-existence of various ethnic groups. Caught up in the throes of such ethnic turmoil, people of the region are confronted with two options. On the one hand, there is a need to safeguard their respective ethnic identities against the dominant hegemony; on the other, there is a need to promote a peaceful co-existence amongst diverse ethnic groups. These twin challenges, in their turn, confront the Northeast Indian tribal theologies by posing a series of questions with serious implications: how is one to maintain a balance between these two conflicting identities? What should the priority be: preserved ethnic identity or ethnic blending? In all this, what is the role of tribal theology? Notwithstanding the importance of safeguarding ethnic identity, this book focuses on the urgent necessity of promoting a peaceful co-existence among diverse ethnic groups by exploring their various tribal theologies and cultural standpoints and finding a common base.