Interreligious Dialogue and Conflict

Dear Colleagues, 

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to our Special Issue with an article which explores the intersection and interrelation of politics and religion, with a particular focus on the aspects of hostility, threat of aggression, conflict and reconciliation. The international political landscape is rife with types of engagement, as mentioned above. Geopolitical tensions, often drawn from historical perceptions of enmity, antitheses, belonging and sovereignty over territory, are not devoid of the religious element and soft power that it entails. As advocates of war or mediators of peace, religious actors have a significant role in swaying popular views and ultimately offering political legitimacy.

This Special Issue aims to inform scholarship through various disciplines and case studies that fit the intentionally broad description above. To that end, we welcome submissions that deal with issues such as conflict justification (just war), religious spatial/territorial ownership, as well as mediation, interreligious dialogue and conflict resolution.

Case studies may (non-exclusively) focus on the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Yugoslav wars, or the Russian–Ukrainian war, whereby emergent patterns, overlaps and differences may be identified through the juxtaposition of cases, and the extension parallels between religious actors may be drawn on the basis of their attitudes and rhetoric comparatively.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: religious studies and theology, politics and international relations, anthropology and ethnography, sociology and social sciences. Interdisciplinarity is desirable and strongly encouraged. 

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Georgios Trantas
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• religion
• war
• conflict
• reconciliation
• religioscapes
• soft power
• Europe
• Middle East
• Balkans
• Russia