When people from different cultural backgrounds use the same spaces, is peaceful coexistence possible or will violence result? If violence occurs in such encounters, how do different types of actors understand and relate to it? To address questions such as these, this workshop brought together scholars from the fields of history, history of religion, and religious studies to explore the relationship of violence and intercultural interactions through case studies from across the globe. The organizers JUDITH BECKER (Berlin) and JULIA TORRIE (Fredericton/Freiburg) sought to open up conversations about peaceful coexistence and inter-community violence, as well as the interstices between these two states and, especially, the turning-points between harmony, friendship, community, accommodation and peace on the one hand, and conflict, tension and violence on the other. When people of different backgrounds coexisted peacefully, why did their peaceful coexistence end? What caused relationships to shift from peaceful to contentious (or from contentious to peaceful)? What narratives of the self and others were dominant in such encounters? What did people mean when they spoke of peace, violence, and non-violence in specific contexts? The workshop aimed to shed light on these questions using a series of historical examples from a variety of eras and geographical locations.
EVELINE G. BOUWERS (Mainz) began with a study on the distinctive character of Catholicism in the 19th century and religion-related violence. Bouwers analysed three types of religion-related violence in that context: sectarian violence, Catholic-secular violence, and intra-Catholic violence. She presented a short historical case study for each of these varieties. In addition to the well-known denominational conflict in Ireland in the 19th century, there was also a harsh confrontation between Protestant and Catholic forces in the United States (1830s–1850s). Bouwers illustrated Catholic-secular violence through the clash between secular and counterrevolutionary Catholic forces in France from the 1790s onward. Intra-Catholic violence can be identified in the Religionero revolt in Mexico (1870s), which was not only directed against the secularizing policies of the liberal government, but also against a unifying ultramontane religiosity. The goal was to resist religious homogenization and preserve syncretic practices in Mexican Catholicism. Bouwers showed that these three types of Catholic-related violence in the 19th century not only shared religious roots, but also displayed similar optics and semantics. At the same time, she highlighted the fact that non-religious circumstances often made the difference between violent rhetoric and violent action, and she stressed the strikingly different forms of religious violence that occurred within the same religious context.
JAIRZIHO LOPES PEREIRA (Stavanger) turned to the dynamics of missionary loyalty in the context of colonial violence. He addressed how different dynamics of loyalty shaped missionaries’ narratives on colonial violence in the Congo Free State and in northern Angola. In the Congo Free State, which was granted to Belgian King Leopold II as a private possession, the monarch’s public pronouncements diverged enormously from the violent reality. While Leopold always emphasized his humanistic ideas, the population in the colony was exposed to extreme violence and repression. Catholic missionaries and the Vatican claimed for a long time that they did not know about the inhumane conditions, even when media reports and other sources proved the opposite. Lopes Pereira explained that Belgian Catholic missionaries placed such a high value on their loyalty to their patron, King Leopold II, their homeland, the Catholic Church, and their own missionary interests that they denied that massive violence was occurring. The situation was different in northern Angola in 1961, when the Portuguese colonial government scapegoated and massively persecuted Protestant American Methodist missionaries following a riot. While local catechists and pastors were imprisoned, tortured and killed, U.S. missionaries were merely arrested and forced out of the country because fear of executing American citizens was too great. At this point, missionaries’ loyalty to the colonial power ended. Even if they had previously accepted colonial violence, they now denounced colonial persecutions openly. In both cases loyalties to different authorities, which are called “transloyalities” by F. Ludwig and his team, started to become impossible, because the context of extreme violence left no room for negotiation.
MARGHARITA PICCHI (Cape Town/Freiburg) turned her attention to a Muslim community working for the acceptance of social and religious diversity. The history of the Claremont Main Road Mosque, Cape Town, founded in 1854, highlights the eventful past of the Muslim minority in South Africa. In the post-Apartheid era, the mosque established itself as a place for social justice. It focused on the empowerment of youth, interfaith solidarity, environmental justice, gender justice and the fight against poverty. Within the Mosque community, important concepts of the Islamic tradition are reinterpreted based on Qur’anic exegesis by Islamic intellectuals such as Ebrahim Moosa. Thus, the Claremont Main Road Mosque understands “jihad” as personal work against injustice, such as jihad against poverty or gender jihad. “Fitna” can be understood as structural violence, especially homophobic fitna. Picchi emphasized that the mosque succeeds in taking a strong Islamic stand for social justice that has a global reach.
During an evening panel discussion open to the public, DIETMAR NEUTATZ discussed with MICHAEL ABESSER, ELMIRA AKHMETOVA and OKSANA MYKHALCHUK issues of peaceful cohabitation and conflict before and during the war in Ukraine. After a comprehensive introduction by panel moderator Neutatz, Mykhalchuk spoke about language conflicts in Ukraine. While the Russian-speaking minority experienced suppression of their native language, especially after the Maidan protests, areas with Russian-speaking majorities often exhibited very poor conditions for Ukrainian-speakers. This was true even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and especially in the context of higher education. Equally, Abesser showed in his case study on the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk that cultural cohabitation was possible even in a city that was the product of Russian imperialism. Over the centuries a specifically Ukrainian civil identity arose here through encounters between a Russian-speaking majority and Ukrainian-speaking and Jewish minorities. Akhmetova pointed to the importance of ethnic minorities within the Russian Federation. She pointed out that about 190 ethnic groups live in Russia today for whom education in their languages remains very difficult or even impossible. Ethnic minorities also play a special role in the current Russian war, and such minorities, especially Chechens and Crimean Tatars, make up a disproportionately large share of the Russian army’s soldiers.
On the next panel, FRANÇOIS WASSOUNI (Maroua) drew a comprehensive picture of the socio-economic background, the religious narratives, the paths to radicalization, and the violent extremism of Boko Haram in the Lake Tchad region. He explained some of the reasons why so many individuals in this region have become sensitive to terrorist discourses and joined a group that propagates massive violence. Wassouni characterized the Boko Haram heartland as economically under-developed and neglected by the central governments of the four countries that border Lake Tchad. Environmental crises have exacerbated the situation and allowed Boko Haram to gain a considerable following. The leaders proclaim an extremely violent demarcation from all opponents, who are scorned as “infidels” and identified with a collective “West.” Boko Haram’s recruitment efforts are nourished by its skill at addressing the circumstances, such as poverty, insecurity and hunger, that the population experiences on a daily basis. As a result, and through forced recruitment, Boko Haram has managed to become the largest disruptive phenomenon in the region’s history within just a few years.
JUDITH BECKER (Berlin) presented a case study on the relations between German and French Christian internationalists before, during, and after World War I. She focused on the French and German Christian student associations Fédération française des associations chrétiennes d’étudiants (Fédé) and Deutsche Christliche Studentenvereinigung (DCSV). Historical factors had already led to difficulties in the relationship between Fédé and DCSV before 1914. This relationship was completely ruptured during the First World War. After the war, disagreements and mistrust persisted, but reconciliation was also attempted quickly, encouraged by neutral states. Fédé and DCSV agreed to meetings only on neutral ground and when they were called “privately,” even though the participants were officially mandated to attend. The student associations attempted to reconcile their self-conception as internationalists with the historical circumstances, which tended to strengthen their sense of national identity. They were torn between opposing persuasions. Even though World War I brought a complete rupture of the official connections between the German and French associations, their willingness to participate in meetings after the war illustrates their internationalist self-conception, as Becker pointed out.
JULIA TORRIE (Fredericton/Freiburg) focused on German-French relations too, but in the context of encounters and violence during the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944. She highlighted the fact that occupation was accompanied by both open and covert forms of violence as people from different backgrounds used the same physical spaces. The use of identical spaces, such as cafés, cinemas and streets, simultaneously lead to interactions between occupiers and occupied populations. Despite the fact that both military occupation and resistance by occupied people are, or can be, violent, occupations are thus also characterized by coexistence. Torrie now focused on violence against the occupying power. This was most evident in attacks by French resisters on soldiers, notably in Paris, to which the German forces responded with large-scale executions of so-called “hostages” from the population. In addition, there were more subtle forms of resistance, such as deliberately ignoring occupying soldiers in public spaces – denying them interaction or recognition of (co-)existence. Female auxiliaries in the occupation forces became the targets of specific forms of gendered violence. Perceived less as a threat than men, they were nonetheless often insulted, and occasionally attacked. Their uniforms seemed to protect them less from assault than make them identifiable as targets, and these uniforms themselves were sometimes cut or slashed by members of the population to express anger against the occupying power.
In the last paper of the session, AMAR MOHAND AMER (Oran) discussed the “Evian Accords”, whose goal was to bring peace to Algeria at the end of the war in 1962. This agreement was signed by the French government and the National Liberation Front and ended 132 years of French colonialism and the Algerian War. Mohand Amer spoke about the “spirit of Evian”, which was characterized by the fact that the agreement included the real possibility of peace and that both sides had a genuine interest in ending the war and violence. In this context, the “Evian Accords” are remembered very differently by the two sides. While the French side continues to emphasize that France created Algeria in the first place, the Algerian narrative emphasizes that the Algerian nation existed before French colonialism. In view of this “war of memory”, as Mohand Amer calls the dispute, a precise historical examination of the treaty and the circumstances of its origin is particularly important.
JÜRGEN OSTERHAMMEL (Konstanz/Freiburg) introduced the concluding discussion with a closing comment. He made three overarching observations. (1) The study of violence is a gigantic field that covers the entire history of mankind and in which one inevitably needs to make certain delimitations. Hence (2) the question of a definition cannot be excluded. Does one limit oneself to physical violence? Is intention decisive? How, and to what extent, can the concept of violence remain usable when epistemic or verbal violence are also included? Moreover, (3) there is great interest in researching why violence breaks out and how it ends. Following from this, one can raise the question of whether “non-war” is already “peace”. Here Osterhammel suggested that protection may be an even more fundamental and crucial category than peace. This statement was followed by a lively debate on whether the concept of violence should be limited to physical violence, and what the meaning of epistemic violence might be. There was also intense discussion about the significance of state violence and the question of legitimacy and illegitimacy, based on the early modern distinction between violentia and potestas.
The case studies in this workshop reflected very different settings and eras. However, they returned time and time again to questions about how, and to what extent, cultural encounters themselves may provoke violence and how coexistence may persist even in contexts marked by violence. It became clear that when members of different cultural groups came into contact, there could be both delimiting violence and the attempt, especially during wars, for example, not to break off personal relationships. The various case studies highlighted different ways of dealing with conflicts of loyalty, different perspectives on cohabitation and peace treaties, and different ways to reinterpret religious traditions in various environments. From intercultural contacts in the context of mission and colonialism, through German-French interactions in the context of the two World Wars to the recent terror of Boko Haram in the Chad region, the workshop revealed a complex picture of the changing relationship between violence and cultural exchange.
Conference overview:
Ralf von den Hoff (Freiburg): Welcome address
Julia Torrie (Fredericton/Freiburg) / Judith Becker (Berlin): Introduction
Eveline G. Bouwers (Mainz): Catholicism as a Category of Difference: Religion-Related Violence in the Nineteenth-Century World
Jairzinho Lopes Pereira (Stavanger): Dynamics of Loyalties in the Missionary Accounts of Colonial Violence in the Congo-Angola Region (1890–1975)
Margherita Picchi (Cape Town/Freiburg): Being Muslim in a rainbow society: suggestions from the pulpit of Cape Town’s Claremont Main Road Mosque
Panel Discussion:
Peaceful cohabitation and conflict: before and during the war in Ukraine
Moderator: Dietmar Neutatz (Freiburg)
Panelists: Michael Abeßer, Elmira Akhmetova, Oksana Mykhalchuk
François Wassouni (Maroua): Terrorist narratives, radicalization and Boko Haram’s violent extremism in the Lake Tchad region
Judith Becker (Berlin): Reactions of Christian internationalists to the outbreak and end of World War I
Julia Torrie (Fredericton/Freiburg): Encounters, underlying violence and open violence: attacks on German personnel in occupied France, 1940–1944
Amar Mohand Amer (Oran): How did the “Evian Accords” aim to “pacify” the end of the war in 1962 in Algeria?
Final discussion led by Jürgen Osterhammel