Religion on the Battlefield - by Ron E Hassner (Hardcover)

About the Book

In Religion on the Battlefield, Hassner focuses on the everyday practice of religion in a military context: the prayers, rituals, fasts, and feasts of the religious practitioners who populate the battlefields of modern wars.

Book Synopsis

How does religion shape the modern battlefield? Ron E. Hassner proposes that religion acts as a force multiplier, both enabling and constraining military operations. This is true not only for religiously radicalized fighters but also for professional soldiers. In the last century, religion has influenced modern militaries in the timing of attacks, the selection of targets for assault, the zeal with which units execute their mission, and the ability of individual soldiers to face the challenge of war. Religious ideas have not provided the reasons why conventional militaries fight, but religious practices have influenced their ability to do so effectively.In Religion on the Battlefield, Hassner focuses on the everyday practice of religion in a military context: the prayers, rituals, fasts, and feasts of the religious practitioners who make up the bulk of the adversaries in, bystanders to, and observers of armed conflicts. To show that religious practices have influenced battlefield decision making, Hassner draws most of his examples from major wars involving Western militaries. They include British soldiers in the trenches of World War I, U.S. pilots in World War II, and U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hassner shows that even modern, rational, and bureaucratized military organizations have taken--and must take--religious practice into account in the conduct of war.

Review Quotes

As a former Marine and combat veteran, I was pleased by Hassner's ability to bring up the complexities of religion on the battlefield.... Overall, this book is a wonderful introduction to the complexities of religion and war. It uses historical examples alongside theoretical analysis to show that religion is a far-reaching and important topic in the study of war.

Finely crafted and timely monograph.... Hasner has produced a thoughful and interesting survey that is of immediate political and strategic importance.

Hassner makes significant strides in both description and prescription.

Hassner's Religion on the Battlefield offers a welcome contribution to the body of literature on religion and conflict.... What sets Hassner's work apart is that it is much less focused on why actors internalize religious ideas and identitiesand more on what they actually do with these ideas.... Religion on the Battlefield should be considered a must-read work.

This short but thoughtful book invites readers to reconsider their ideas about the role of religion in war. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, the intersection of religion and organized violence has been understood in ideological terms, with a focus on extremism; unsurprisingly, Islam has attracted most attention of this kind. Hassner wants readers to instead think of religion as a set of practices that appear in a variety of forms but have something to do with the sacred--and serve as sources of motivation and inhibition and also exploitation and provocation.

About the Author

Ron E. Hassner is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of War on Sacred Grounds, also from Cornell, and editor of Religion in the Military.