Just a quick note to say thanks and goodbye-for-now to Nate Oman of William & Mary, who blogged with us for the month of April. Nate’s very interesting posts covered markets, same-sex marriage, and the British monarchy, among other topics. We were delighted to have you with us, Nate, and hope you come back soon!
Suny, “‘They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else’: A History of the Armenian Genocide”
In March, Princeton University Press released They Can Live in the Desert but 
Nowhere Else’: A History of the Armenian Genocide, by Ronald Grigor Suny (University of Michigan). The publisher’s description follows:
Starting in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks began deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the first major genocide of the twentieth century. By the end of the First World War, the number of Armenians in what would become Turkey had been reduced by ninety percent—more than a million people. A century later, the Armenian Genocide remains controversial but relatively unknown, overshadowed by later slaughters and the chasm separating Turkish and Armenian versions of events. In this definitive narrative history, Ronald Suny cuts through nationalist myths, propaganda, and denial to provide an unmatched account of when, how, and why the atrocities of 1915–16 were committed.
As it lost territory during the war, the Ottoman Empire was becoming a more homogenous Turkic-Muslim state, but it still contained large non-Muslim communities, including the Christian Armenians. The Young Turk leaders of the empire believed that the Armenians were internal enemies secretly allied to Russia and plotting to win an independent state. Suny shows that the great majority of Armenians were in truth loyal subjects who wanted to remain in the empire. But the Young Turks, steeped in imperial anxiety and anti-Armenian bias, became convinced that the survival of the state depended on the elimination of the Armenians. Suny is the first to explore the psychological factors as well as the international and domestic events that helped lead to genocide.
Drawing on archival documents and eyewitness accounts, this is an unforgettable chronicle of a cataclysm that set a tragic pattern for a century of genocide and crimes against humanity.
“Religion and the Secular State” (Martinez-Torron & Durham, eds)
This month, Complutense University (Madrid) has released an updated version of Religion and the Secular State: National Reports, edited by Javier Martínez-Torrón (Complutense) and W. Cole Durham, Jr. (BYU). The publisher’s description follows:
Recent years have seen religion assume an increasingly visible place in public life, with mixed results that have been aptly described in terms of the “ambivalence of the sacred”. Every state adopts some posture toward the religious life existing among its citizens. That posture is typically contested, leading to constant adjustments at the level of constitutional and statutory law, as well as constantly evolving judicial and administrative decisions. While some states continue to maintain a particular religious (i.e., non-secular) orientation, most have adopted some type of secular system. Among secular states, there are a range of possible positions with respect to secularity, ranging from regimes with a very high commitment to secularism to more accommodationist regimes to regimes that remain committed to neutrality of the state but allow high levels of cooperation with religions. The attitude toward secularity has significant implications for implementation of international and constitutional norms protecting freedom of religion or belief, and more generally for the co-existence of different communities of religion and belief within society. Not surprisingly, comparative examination of the secularity of contemporary states yields significant insights into the nature of pluralism, the role of religion in modern society, the relationship between religion and democracy, and more generally, into fundamental questions about the relationship of religion and the state.
This book contains national reports on the topic “Religion and the Secular State” from 58 reporters representing 43 countries, plus a general report written by Professors Javier Martínez-Torrón and W. Cole Durham, Jr. The reports, originally prepared for the 18th World Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, were published in Interim form in 2010. This final volume, with updated and sometimes extensively modified reports, was prepared to coincide with the 19th Congress in Vienna in July 2014.