227 16 ‘THOSE WHO HAVE THE SIN . . . GO TO THIS SIDE’ Genocide and religion Kate Temoney ‘Those who have the sin’ is how a Hutu man identifed Tutsis, Tutsis who were singled out for extermination during the Rwandan genocide. The use of the words ‘the sin’ is telling, as it conveys that Tutsis are immanently wicked, marred in some deep way that only the religiously infected word ‘sin’ can communicate. In this phrase, religion and genocide meet. The terms ‘genocide’ and ‘religion’ are both as charged as they are multivalent and misunderstood, for there is no consensus among scholars as to what these terms mean. Scholarly debates abound regarding the utility and exclusiv- ity of their defnitions, normative and prescriptive implications, and relationship to each other. Most defnitions and categories are fraught with limitations, tainted with normative commitments, and subject to accusations of essentialization. Nonetheless, defnitions and categories do help us think through complex ideas and clarify com- plex realities, with the caveat that we are mindful not to mistake these defnitions and categories as identical to or capable of accounting entirely for the very phenomenon they seek to explain. We use defnitions for ‘genocide’ and ‘religion’ no matter how contested, problematic, and open to revision they may be, because we fnd it useful. What is at stake in understanding these concepts goes far beyond academic battles over nomenclature, as regardless of how we choose to delineate ‘genocide’ and ‘reli- gion’, these are not reifed ideas but are phenomena that occur in our world and are of grave consequence. There is no doubt that society at large has an understanding of these terms, and if we allow this fact to be overwhelmed by scholastic disputes, we do so at our peril. One might anticipate that a discussion of genocide and religion would further com- pound the intricacy of these discourses as well as further problematize their study, and in fact it does. In addition to the aforementioned challenges, there is no singular discussion of religion and genocide that is capable of being exhaustive. Inevitably, our discussion will be attended by omissions. These challenges notwithstanding, they are not so utterly formidable as to occlude the two proposed approaches herein for examining the intersection of genocide and religion both in scholarship and in their commission. To this end, we will briefy review the defnitional debates in the feld of genocide, religion, and genocide and religion; identify four nexuses of religion and genocide as informed by case studies; and, in the conclusion, profer pathways for the future development of genocide research and genocide and religion research, which includes not only how religion potentiates genocide but how religion can act as a bul- wark against genocide. © Carmichael, Cathie; Maguire, Richard C., Jan 01, 2015, Routledge History of Genocide Taylor and Francis, Florence, ISBN: 9781317514848