by Alex Cuffel (CERES) to the panelists of panel Equilibrium - Violence - Entanglement: Interaction between minority and majority religious communities in the Middle Ages
Panel Chair: Dorothea Weltecke (former KHK research fellow)
Religious affiliation and identity has to be repeatedly negotiated, defined, and chosen. The external borders of religions are repeatedly redetermined and penetrated.. Frequently, quantitativerelationships between religious groups are incongruent with prevailing power relationships. Followers of dominant religions continueto quite often be numerically inferior so that nondominant religious communitieshave had to take on subordinate positions. This process has direct consequences for, on the one hand, social, economic, and cultural development and, on the other hand, the development of religious doctrines and convictions themselves. Notrarely, and across a broad societal spectrum, religious minorities have seen themselves subjected to persecution, violence, or exclusion. Models explaining religious violence need theoretical and methodological refinement. This panel will deal with these aspects of interaction between majority and minority religious communities by selecting case studies from diverse cultural milieus ranging from medieval Anatolia to South Asia.
