from Africa Program
from Africa Program

The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Security

Book
Foreign policy analyses written by CFR fellows and published by the trade presses, academic presses, or the Council on Foreign Relations Press.

"Religion and Security in Nigeria," authored by John Campbell, is a chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Security.

The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Security breaks new ground by addressing global security through the lens of religion and examining the role religion plays in both war and peace.

More on:

Religion

Nigeria

Defense and Security

In recent years there has been a considerable upsurge of public concern about the role of religion in contemporary violence. However, other than historical materials, there has been a relative neglect of the subject of religion and security. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Security fills this gap in the literature by providing an interdisciplinary, comprehensive volume that helps non-specialists and experts alike understand how religion is both part of the problem and part of the solution to security challenges.

Featuring contributions from many of the key thinkers in the field, the Handbook is organized into thematic sections, reflective of three basic questions:

  • What does religion think of security?;
  • What does security think of religion?; and,
  • What happens when the two are mixed in specific real-world cases of religious conflict?

This Handbook offers analyses of how nine different world religions have related to issues of war and peace, theologically and practically; overviews of how scholars and practitioners in nine different topical areas of security studies have (or have not) dealt with the relationship between religion and security; and five case studies of particular countries in which the religion--security nexus is vividly illustrated: Nigeria, India, Israel, the former Yugoslavia and Iraq.

This Handbook will be of great interest to students of religion, security studies, war and conflict studies, and IR in general.

More on:

Religion

Nigeria

Defense and Security

Top Stories on CFR

Trade

Trade retaliation looms from Canada, China, Mexico, and the European Union in response to U.S. tariffs. Four timelines lay out their responses, and the experience of American soybean farmers in 2018 shows how damaging this could be. 

Yemen

The U.S. military continues to conduct large-scale strikes on Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen to counter their assault on global commerce and attempts to weaken Israel.

Trade

There was once a broad consensus in Washington that trade was a force for good—a way to connect, grow, and prosper. But today, trade has evolved into something much bigger than just the exchange of goods. It’s become a powerful tool to rewrite the rules of foreign policy, reshape how the United States is viewed by the rest of the world, and steer us toward an increasingly uncertain future. When did this change begin, and where did we go off course?