The Center for Religious Studies at
Central European University

Second Doctoral Conference in Religious Studies

The Sacred in Conflict:
Disagreements between and within Religions

June 28th-30th 2018

Throughout mankind’s history, certain group conflicts have been understood as religious in nature and were expressed in normative terms such as the true and the false, the traditional and the revealed, the orthodox and the heterodox, the sacred and the profane or the sacrilegious. All such distinctions are problematic as descriptive categories, because they have been subject to constant negotiation and boundary work, both by participants in the conflicts and by scholarship. Since disputes on divergent religious beliefs and practices intersect in intricate ways with other fields of human activity (such as politics, culture or social relations), they form, as some might say, co-constructed conflicts. Disagreements arise between different religions, but can also erupt within various branches of the same faith, and the dissociation of external and internal adversaries often appears linked. Religiously motivated confrontation has continuously shaped people’s ideological landscapes and everyday realities, often causing deeply rooted conflicts, violent clashes, and ferocious infighting, which can persist throughout centuries. No less frequently, however, the rich corpus of diverse religious beliefs has encouraged societies to elaborate exegetical compromises or to admit plurality and toleration as a necessity, or even as a virtue. Tracing the historical, social, and theoretical implications of religious disagreement and the diversity of belief is presently an important task for academic research. Which motivations inform the justification for religious beliefs of individuals and groups? What manner of duties do believers assume in the face of impending conflicts? What justifies religious institutions? What is the role of the orthodox-heterodox binary in inter- and intra-confessional disagreements?

PROGRAM

Thursday, June 28th – Day 1

15:00 – 16:30 / Session 1- Religion and Conflict: A Theoretical Discussion
Chaired by: Heather Morris (Central European University)

Panel Speakers:

• The Sacred is Conflict – The twofold Nature of Religion in Mimetic Theory
  Sándor Cserháti (University of Szeged)

• The Terror of History in Mircea Eliade's Thought: Relationships between Religion and Violence
  Gabriel Badea (University of Bucharest)

• Religion without Conflict?  What would religions be like without conflicts?
  Zsuzsanna Szugyiczki (University of Szeged)

Location: CEU, N15 / Quantum Room 101

17:00 – 18:30 / Opening Keynote Address

• Philippe Buc (University of Vienna): Religions and the Shape of Warfare in the pre-Modern World - Of Western Christendom, Buddhist Japan, and some Islams

Location: CEU, Nádor utca 15, Auditorium B

Friday, June 29th – Day 2

9:00 – 10:30 / Session 2: Individual Solutions – Private versus Public Practices
Chaired by: András Máté-Tóth (Central European University)

Panel Speakers:

• Confessional Conflicts in 18th-century Nógrád County
  Zsuzsanna Tabajdi (Eötvös Loránd University)

• Suffering souls or spitting satans? The Protestant banishment of ghosts in early modern Upper-Hungary and Transylvania
  Ádám Mézes (Central European University)

• Wiccans or Neo-Wiccans? The Question of Religious Practice and Initiation in the Hungarian Wiccan Communities
  Krisztina Csényi-Nagy (Eötvös Loránd University)

Location: CEU, N15 / Quantum Room 101

11:00 – 12:30 / Session 3 – Othering in The Middle East
Chaired by: Egor Novikov (Central European University)

Panel Speakers:

• Zindīq, an Epithet for Imagined Other to both Imperial Zoroastianism and Islam
  Sima Fouladpour (Shahid Beheshti University)

• Al-Ghazali’s Faysal at-Tafriqa and the Permissive Approach to Takfir in Islam
  Csilla Gyöngyösi (Eötvös Loránd University)

• Broadcasting from the Edge - Conversion Narratives on Israeli TV 2000-2010
  Yuval Katz (University of Vienna)

Location: CEU, N15/Quantum Room 101

13:30 – 15:00 / Session 4 –Boundary Work and Polemics
Chaired by: Tijana Krstić (Central European University)

Panel Speakers:

• Christians, Jews and pagans in Antioch: About the Quod Christus sit Deus attributed to John Chrysostom
  Anthony Glaise (Centre for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance)

• Disagreements Between Orthodoxy and Islam as Reflected in the Greek Apologetical and Polemical Anti-Islamic Treatises (16th-17th Centuries)
  Octavian-Adrian Negoiță (University of Bucharest)

Location: CEU, N15 / Quantum Room 101

15:30 – 17:00 / Session 5 – Acceptance and Rejection in Modern Islam
Chaired by: Martin Pjecha (Central European Unviersity)

Panel Speakers:

• From Bacchanalia to ISIS: The Rise and Fall, and What We Really Know About It
  Rogier van der Wal (Leiden University)

• Different Practices of Salafi Jihadi Ideology among Radical Islam Groups in Malaysia
  Siti Zubaidah Hj Abu Bakar (University of Technology Malaysia)

• Interreligious Dialogue in Indonesia: Concepts and Ideas About Conflict and Peace Between Religions
  Gabriella Hornung (University of Rostock)

Location: CEU, N15 / Quantum Room 101

17:30 – 19:00 / Closing Keynote Address

• Closing Keynote: Matthias Riedl (Central European University)

Location: CEU, Nádor utca 15, Auditorium B

Saturday, June 30th – Day 3

10:00 – 11:30 / Session 6 – Entangled Conflicts – Religion, Culture and Gender
Chaired by: Barnabás Szabó (Central European University)

Panel Speakers:

• Hybrid Justice Systems in Fragile States
  Menaal Safi Munshey (University of Cambridge)

• The Religious Side of an Ethnical Conflict: How Important Religion Was in the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
  András Knuth (Pázmány Péter Catholic University)

• Categorizing violence and “Religions” in the Middle East: Comparison between Narratives of “Cultural” Violence in Upper Egypt, and “Religious” Violence in the Middle East
  Mohamed Maslouh (Ghent University)

Location: CEU, N15 / Quantum Room 101

12:00 – 13:30 / Session 7 - Strife in Western Christianity
Chaired by: Philippe Buc (University of Vienna)

Panel Speakers:

• The Progress or Degredation? The Hussites’ View of Medieval Church History
  Martin Pjecha (Central European University)

• Against the Conflicts during the French Renaissance, the Religious Concord
  Christine Mengés-Le Pape (Toulouse Capitole University)
• The False Sanctities and Pretense of Vitrue of Lisbon between 1640 and 1771
  Rita Maria Ribeiro Martins Santos Amaral (University Institute of Lisbon)

Location: CEU, N15 / Quantum Room 101  

Organized by:
The Center for Religious Studies
Central European University
https://religion.ceu.edu/