Winner of the Religion and International Relations Book Award of the Religion and International Relations Section of the International Studies Association

Liminal Minorities addresses the question of why some religious minorities provoke the ire of majoritarian groups and become targets of organized violence, even though they lack significant power and pose no political threat. Güneş Murat Tezcür argues that these faith groups are stigmatized across generations, as they lack theological recognition and social acceptance from the dominant religious group. Religious justifications of violence have a strong mobilization power when directed against liminal minorities, which makes these groups particularly vulnerable to mass violence during periods of political change.

Offering the first comparative-historical study of mass atrocities against religious minorities in Muslim societies, Tezcür focuses on two case studies—the Islamic State's genocidal attacks against the Yezidis in northern Iraq in the 2010s and massacres of Alevis in Turkey in the 1970s and 1990s—while also addressing discrimination and violence against followers of the Bahá'í faith in Iran and Ahmadis in Pakistan and Indonesia. Analyzing a variety of original sources, including interviews with survivors and court documents, Tezcür reveals how religious stigmatization and political resentment motivate ordinary people to participate in mass atrocities.

Güneş Murat Tezcür is the Director of the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey and the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics.

This elegantly written and carefully crafted book explores some of the world's most maligned victims of dogmatism and intolerance. Based on extensive fieldwork and personal knowledge, the author leads us into the dark world where groups such as Yazidis in Iraq, Alevis in Turkey, and Baha'is and Ahmadis around the world are persecuted for their faith. These cases raise a larger issue: how diversity can survive in a world bent on homogenizing societies. It is must reading for anyone concerned about the fate of global culture.

Vineeta Yadav, The Pennsylvania State University:

Why do some religious minorities become victims of more brutal and frequent mass violence than others? In this timely book, Güneş Tezcür provides a compelling theory backed by extensive historical evidence to explain how religious beliefs regarding liminal minorities combine with state weakness during periods of political turbulence to precipitate mass violence against them. By doing so, it provides important new insights into the relationship between religion and political violence of interest to scholars of religion, political violence and Muslim politics alike.

Senem Aslan, author of Nation-Building in Turkey and Morocco:

This book is a thought-provoking study on social violence against religious minorities. Through a nuanced categorization of religious minorities and rich empirical analyses from the Muslim world, Tezcür convincingly shows how deeply rooted religious beliefs can be a distinctive cause of mass atrocities against unorthodox minority groups. It is a major contribution to the literature of religious conflict.