Dr Stella Rock, co-ordinator of the Religion and Extremism seminars at the University of Sussex, will edit a special issue of Patterns of Prejudice to be published in June 2004 that will explore the relationship between religion and political extremism and conflicts.

In the contemporary world, for the first time in over a century, most of the ongoing international conflicts are religiously inflected. And, from the Crusades of the Middle Ages to the contemporary political Islamist perpetrators of 9/11, religions have played a role in inspiring, legitimating and facilitating extremist organizations and violent conflict. This special issue will attempt to explore the complex relationship between religion and the historical, cultural and political context of such organizations and conflicts. As we have received proposals concerning both Christianity and Islam, we would like to encourage proposals that address forms of fundamentalism or extremism in other religions, particularly Judaism. Contributors might address the following questions:

• what role does religion, or a religious organization, play in ethnic conflict?
• what use do extremist or radical groups make of religion or religious institutions?
• what is the relationship between religion and aggressive nationalism, antisemitism, racism, xenophobia or Islamophobia?
• to what extent do religions rely on the construction of an unbelieving or heretical Other?
• what is the relationship between national identity and religion in ethnic conflict?
• what is the significance of the re-emergence of religiously inflected conflicts in the twenty-first century?