Worldviews in Transition: An Investigation into the New Age Movement in South Africa

✍ Scribed by Rosalind I.J. Hackett

• Book ID: 102620618
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 44 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-721X
• DOI: 10.1006/reli.2000.0258

✦ Synopsis

what she calls 'the Godless genocidal tendencies of modernity' (p. 218), while downplaying the religious roots of these tendencies. She blames the Holocaust on secular modernity, thus neatly severing it from the roughly two millennia of Christian hostility towards Jews that preceded it. She contends that the Qur'an 'condemns all warfare as abhorrent, and permits only a war of self-defense' (p. 243). She ignores Qur'anic verses like 'fight those who do not believe in God or the last day, and who do not forbid what has been forbidden by God and His messenger' (9:29).

In short, although Armstrong tackles important issues in The Battle for God, the book is weakened by her failure to substantiate her assertions as well as by her failure to distinguish the radically different social historical contexts that have spawned the various movements she discusses.