My favorite books on human rights that focus on religion, including some things you’d rather not know

One of the most popular historians of religion, this book examines each of the great religions over time and reveals the context for the warrior traditions that emerged in them. One of her key insights is that every religious movement is rooted in the fear…"that modern society is out to destroy not only their faith but also themselves and their entire way of life.… When people fear annihilation, their horizons tend to shrink and they can lash out violently.”

This book relates the suspenseful and twisted path through which two of the world’s worst human rights abuses finally came to be recognized following World War II and the Holocaust. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer who lost dozens of family members in the Holocaust, led the campaign for genocide to be recognized as a crime under international law. The banner for crimes against humanity was carried by Hersch Lauterpacht. Although both men lobbied the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal to recognize the particular form of human rights that they espoused, they never actually met. But Sands makes it clear that genocide and crimes against humanity are based on fundamentally different, and at times, opposed concepts of human rights. One is focused on the rights of individuals and the other on the rights of entire groups. Sands’ book is one of the best analyses of the complexities of remaking international law, one of the issues with which my co-author and I grapple in our own book.

Ever since I’ve been engaged in interreligious and peacebuilding work, I’ve struggled with the question of whether religion is the cause of violence or its solution. This book on proceedings of an Auschwitz conference in Poland does a deep dive into religion being both a cause and victim of violence. It examines where religious violence fits into other forms of violence as well as the roots of peace in various religious traditions. Its nuanced and revealing essays were an enormous help to me in formulating my own thinking and helped educate me in the roots of international human rights law. Not being a historian myself, the essays gave me a grounding in events about which I had only superficial knowledge. I personally know and have worked with a number of the contributors. As such, I can vouch for their authority and the esteem in which they are held.

With all that has been written about religion as a cause of violence, here are two volumes of case studies about how religion is used by individuals on the ground to stop violence. The case studies feature the heroic individuals in the Peacemakers in Action Network of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. They operate in conflict zones around the world and this book reveals the methods and techniques they use to transform conflicts. I founded Tanenbaum in 1992 and this signature program was inspired and guided by the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

The late Rabbi Sacks served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. This was one of the last books he wrote before his death. He makes the case that religion is not only the cause of violence but also part of the solution to violence. In each chapter, he deeply analyzes a different religious text and evinces eye-opening interpretations. Perhaps most prescient are his notions of “altruistic evil” and “pathological dualism.” Pathological dualism operates in three ways: first, it dehumanizes and demonizes your enemies; second, it portrays the perpetrator as the victim; and third, it leads the perpetrator to commit altruistic evil—killing others as a perceived favor to humanity. As Sacks so movingly asserts, “When religion turns men into murderers, God weeps.”