Book launch: Religicide - confronting the roots of anti-religious violence

The Cambridge Interfaith Programme welcomes longstanding friend Dr Georgette Bennett, with a UK launch for her book, Religicide, co-authored with Nobel Peace Prize winner Jerry White (Posthill Press, November 2022).

Religion-related violence is the fastest spreading type of violence worldwide. Attacks on religious minorities follow a clear pattern and are preceded with early warning signs. Until now, such violence had no name, let alone a set of policies designed to identify and prevent it.

Religicide: confronting the roots of anti-religious violence is a unique attempt to create a new moral and legal category alongside other forms of persecution and mass murder. The book explores the roots of atrocities such as the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and the Bosnian war, illustrating the definition of religicide with in-depth case studies of contemporary violence affecting Uyghurs and Tibetan Buddhists in China, Rohingya in Myanmar, Yazidis in Iraq, and indigenous peoples.

Join us in Cambridge and online to hear Religicide co-author, sociologist Dr Georgette F. Bennett--and (we hope) co-author Jerry White--, in conversation with CIP Academic Director Professor Esra Özyürek.

About the authors

Georgette Bennett

Dr Georgette Bennett is an award-winning sociologist, widely published author, popular lecturer, and former broadcast journalist. A longstanding friend to the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, she is founder of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding (1992-), the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees (2013-), and a co-founder of Global Covenant Partners. She has served on the U.S. State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group, tasked with developing recommendations to engage religious actors in conflict mitigation. A former faculty member of the City University of New York and adjunct at New York University, in 2021 Bennett was selected as one of Forbes’ 50 over 50 Women of Impact.

Jerry White

Social entrepreneur, diplomat, and humanitarian activist, Jerry White is (since 2021) Executive Director of URI (the United Religions Initiative). His high-impact campaigns have led to three international treaties: the Cluster Munitions Ban, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Landmine Ban Treaty (for which work he shares the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize).

About the interviewer

Professor Esra Özyürek is an anthropologist of politics and religion. Based in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, she is the academic director of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme and Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values. Through ethnography focused on the experiences of individuals who embrace an ideology or belief system they did not inherit from their grandparents, Özyürek's research identifies and explores tensions between the universalism and particularism of globally-appealing religious and post-religious belief and value systems. Her research thus shows the porosity of religious, national and political boundaries. 

Her latest monograph explores the intentions and impact of Holocaust education initiatives among Muslim-background Germans, Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in post-war Germany (Stanford University Press, 2023).

Practicalities

Bookings for this event are now open. Please visit Eventbrite to register (free) for on site attendance or to book a reminder for the livestream.

A limited number of copies will be available to purchase (at a discounted price) for those attending in Cambridge. Copies remaining unsold may be available for remote purchase. Postage and packing will apply.

In Cambridge

This event will take place at the Faculty of Divinity, situated on the Sidgwick Site, just off West Road, Cambridge, UK. The venue is wheelchair accessible. A lift provides access to the lower ground floor.

The event is free to attend. We recommend those planning to join the audience on site in Cambridge register in advance. 

Light refreshments will be provided prior to the event start (from 4:30pm), and there will be an opportunity to ask questions and obtain a signed copy of Religicide.

Livestream

The conversation will be livestreamed. Registration is recommended. We will send a reminder to all registered, together with instructions on how to find the livestream.