Deviance and Religiousness: Exploring the Interplay between Religion and Criminality

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to contribute to a Special Issue entitled “Deviance and Religiousness: Exploring the Interplay between Religion and Criminality”.

This Special Issue delves into the intricate and often perplexing relationship between religious beliefs, practices, and criminal behaviors. In doing so, this Special Issue will afford opportunities to analyze how religious ideologies, institutions, and communities intersect with criminal tendencies, both shaping and reflecting human actions throughout history and across cultures, be that at the global, regional, local or transnational level.

Through the publication of new and innovative research, this Special Issue will also examine the multifaceted connections that are known to exist between religion and criminality. Accordingly, this Special Issue will encourage contributions from those currently investigating the social, political, economic, cultural, psychological and emotional dynamics that contribute to the phenomenon of criminal behaviors motivated, justified, or influenced by religious factors. By dissecting historical events, case studies, and contemporary incidents from across the world including those centered in the Global South, this Special Issue will help shed light on the ways in which individuals and groups have used or misused religious doctrine to rationalize criminal acts.

This Special Issue will critically engage a broad range of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, ranging from those that emphasize the potential for religion to foster ethical behavior and reduce criminal tendencies to those that highlight instances where religious beliefs have been manipulated to legitimize violence, fraud, or other forms of wrongdoing. In addition, the Special Issue will also examine the impact of religious extremism, cults, and the role of charismatic leaders in driving criminal activities within religious contexts. In this respect, religiously motivated terrorism cannot be overlooked.

Furthermore, this Special Issue will explore the legal and ethical dilemmas arising when religious beliefs clash with societal norms and legal regulations. It offers an insightful analysis of how legal systems navigate the tension between protecting religious freedom and ensuring public safety. In doing so, this Special Issue seeks to investigate crimes within closed religious communities, and the complexities of addressing international criminal networks with religious underpinnings. Finally, this Special Issue will include studies that focus on the representation of deviance and religiousness that variously occur in the mass media regarding this topic, both textual and visual, as well as the narratives that emerge.

In doing so, this Special Issue has the very real potential to generate new knowledge and thinking about an area of scholarly investigation that is as much overlooked as it is under-researched. This Special Issue will therefore offer a balanced and nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between religion and criminality that is as timely as it is necessary. It will encourage readers to critically evaluate the ways in which religion can both inspire acts of compassion and altruism as well as serve as a catalyst for destructive behaviors. By fostering an informed and open dialogue, this Special Issue will contribute to a more comprehensive awareness of the forces that shape human behavior at the intersection of faith and deviance.

Yours,

Dr. Chris Allen
Dr. Christina Verousi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• religion
• hate
• extremism
• crime
• criminality
• deviance
• prisons
• criminal justice system
• extremism
• terrorism
• violence
• equality
• diversity
• human rights
• prosecution
• communities
• radicalization