Lester R. Kurtz (editor) - The Warrior and the Pacifist: Competing Motifs in Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Kevin P. Clements

Lester R. Kurtz

Part I
The Buddhist Tradition

Iselin Frydenlund

Paula Green

Jordan Baskerville and Somboon Chungprampree

Part II
The Jewish Tradition

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, PhD

Paul Scham

Noam Zion

Part III
The Christian Tradition

Nigel Biggar

Pope Francis

Joseph A. Camilleri

Part IV
The Islamic Tradition

Afra Jalabi

Chaiwat Satha-Anand

Mohammed Abu-Nimer

Part V
Addressing the Issues Cross-Culturally

Jehan Perera

Lisa Schirch

Lester R. Kurtz

Mohammed Abu-Nimer, of the International Peace and Conflict Resolution program at American University, served as Director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute. He holds a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. Professor Abu-Nimer has been intervening and conducting training workshops and courses all over the world in conflict zones such as: Sri Lanka, Mindanao-Philippines, Palestine, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Chad, Niger, and Kurdistan-Iraq, as well as other areas including the United States and Europe. He is the founder of Salam Institute for Peace and Justice and co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. As a scholar, he has published many books and articles, including: Nonviolence and Peacebuilding in Islam: Theory and Practice (2003); Post-Conflict Power-Sharing Agreements: Options for Syria (with Salamey, Imad, Abouaoun, Elie, eds., 2017); Peace-Building By, Between and Beyond Muslims and Evangelical Christians (Abu-Nimer and Augsburger, eds., 2009); Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle East (Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty, 2007); Interfaith Dialogue: A Guide for Muslims (with Muhammad Shafiq, 2007); and Reconciliation, Coexistence, and Justice: Theory and Practice (ed., 2001).

Jordan Baskerville is a PhD candidate in religions of Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focusing on the history of socially-engaged Buddhism in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand and Vietnam. He spent more than a year in Thailand completing dissertation research and has published in the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, and Rian Thai: International Journal of Thai Studies.

Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, where he also directs the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. He is a former President of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics (UK). Among his publications are In Defence of War (2013), Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict (2003), and most recently Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation (2014). He has written on the possibility of a truth commission for Northern Ireland for the Irish Times, on the Iraq war for the Times (London) and the Financial Times, and on Scottish independence for Standpoint magazine. His hobbies include reading history, playing cards, and making pilgrimage to military cemeteries.

Joseph A. Camilleri, OAM, is Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and Executive Director of Alexandria Agenda, a new venture in ethical consulting. In a teaching career at La Trobe spanning forty years, he taught some thirty-five subjects at either undergraduate or postgraduate level. In 2005, he founded the La Trobe Centre for Dialogue. Under his leadership, the Centre quickly established a national and international reputation for research, training, and policy development. He has authored or edited over twenty-five books and written some 100 book chapters and journal articles. His research has centered on five key areas: security and peace studies, culture and religion in international relations, international political theory, the foreign policies of the great powers, and the international relations of the AsiaPacific region. Over the past ten years, Camilleri has convened some twenty major international dialogues and conferences, and appeared before several parliamentary and government inquiries, most recently the parliamentary inquiry into Multiculturalism in Australia in 2013. He serves on several editorial and advisory boards and recently coedited a Special Issue of the scholarly journal Global Change, Peace and Security on the recently adopted nuclear ban treaty. For further details, see his personal website: www.josephcamilleri.org.