This second chapter explores the nature of the conception of conscience. It provides a broad definition of conscience as requiring only that a decision be about an individual’s conduct, be based on a moral belief, and be inward-facing. The chapter also explores some of the major misconceptions about what is necessary for something to be a decision of conscience. It provides an overview of the role of conscience within moral reasoning as well as how conscience operates.

This chapter introduces constructed languages (conlangs) by first differentiating them from natlangs and then debunking common misconceptions about them. Along with defining major types of conlangs, one of the goals of this chapter is to identify the linguistic features that make conlangs languages. By the end of this chapter, you will make some important initial decisions about your conlang and conlanging goals.

This chapter surveys contemporary contextual Christologies that have adopted the explanatory and constitutive genres of contextual theologizing. It focuses on aspects of Māori, Pacific, Indigenous Australian, Native American, and African receptions of Christology.

The Introduction sets the stage for the detailed intellectual history of salafism to follow by introducing key analytical concepts in political theology and Axial theory. It frames modern salafī theonomy within a general understanding of the developed Abrahamic traditions as a meeting-ground for two competing conceptions of transcendence. Both the ancient Israelite and Greek Axial revolutions are described as differing responses to the model of sacral kingship characteristic of the archaic states in the region: The former assigned true kingship to God alone, who then stands in competition with mundane sovereigns and demands exclusive allegiance to Himself, while the latter, in a process starting from the Late Bronze Age collapse, dissolved issues of sovereignty and power into ontological and metaphysical formulations. These originally distinct conceptions are analyzed through their contrasting tenets in five categories, the most important of which is the distinction between ‘monolatry,’ on the one hand – the restriction of worship to one God – and conceptual monotheism, on the other. This analysis provides the basis for the typological study of Taymiyyan theology undertaken in Chapter 1, and more generally for the treatment of monolatry and theonomy in the salafī tradition throughout the book.

In this chapter, I will use the Great Khan’s dreams of the white knight as the starting point to examine the problematic figurations of idolatry, fetishism, orality and whiteness within late medieval travel writing, especially Mandeville’s Travels and Marco Polo’s Le Devisement dou monde. Seemingly unrelated among themselves or to whiteness, these material and performative manifestations of faith nonetheless intersect in important ways in medieval perceptions and representations of the Tartars. The kind of cultural and textual ‘whitening’ of Genghis Khan’s dreams that Hetoum and the Mandeville-author engage in points to the power of artistic manipulations. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, in his Poetria nova, argues that art ‘plays about almost like a magician, and brings it about that the last becomes first … black white, and vile precious’. Jacqueline de Weever argues that such a belief in art’s capacity to transform black into white (nigra candida) is also a belief in the possibility of erasing alterity through whitening. Whitening, in its attempt to mask anxieties and assimilate differences, ignores the origin of alterity. The act of whitening, in fact, posits a new origin.

The mandate informs the mediators about key issues required to be able to design a peace accord with lasting qualities. This chapter discusses some of the procedural issues, such as the timing of ceasefires and questions of partial versus comprehensive agreements: Should all issues be negotiated or some left for future processes? A particular issue is the demand for territorial self-government or even complete independence. It seems that Nordic mediators have been influenced by previous experiences in this regard. Examples are given from the Oslo Process, Kosovo, Guatemala, Sudan, and Northern Ireland. The chapter addresses matters of power sharing and the importance Nordic mediators give to the role of women in negotiations and implementation. Human rights, justice, and security for the parties are discussed.