Ron Hassner

In War on Sacred Grounds [7] he argued that conflicts over holy places are difficult to resolve because these sites pose an indivisibility problem: they cannot be shared or divided the way other pieces of land are often shared to resolve conflict.[8][9] The Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque of Mecca function as key case studies as do contested shrines in India.[10]

In this book and in related articles and book chapters he also explains the many motivations for conflicts at sacred sites, including the use of these structured as insurgent hideouts and as prominent targets in civil wars.[11]

His work subsequently shifted to analyzing religion as a factor during war, including such wars in which religion is not a motivator. In Religion in the Military Worldwide[12] he commissioned essays on the many ways in which religion shapes military service around the world, including countries like Canada, Turkey, Japan, and Iran. In Religion on the Battlefield[13] Hassner looks at the effects of religion on tactics and strategy. The focus here is on wars in which religion did not necessarily play a motivating role, to show that even in crucial military settings (such as World War I and World War II) religion enabled and constrained military decision making[14][15]

These essays explore religious rituals, conflicts over religious freedom in the military, how religion affects promotion or unit formation, and how religion in the military affects religion in society more broadly. He shows how sacred time and space, rituals and authority structures, had an impact on soldiers, commanders, and units. Salient examples include the bombing of Rome in World War II, and the Yom Kippur War. In this book and related publications he tries to shift the focus of the study of religion and war away from studying (primarily Muslim) terrorists and insurgents and onto the effects of religion on conventional armies, including Western secular armies.

Hassner's most recent work is on torture. He has dispelled the "myth of the ticking time bomb scenario" as a dangerous yet influential metaphor that bears no relationship to reality.[16] He argues that much of the current debate on torture draws on flimsy and biased sources.[17] Though much current torture criticism relies on the claim that "torture doesn't work", he shows that the evidence to back that claim is weak. Moreover, Americans find the claim to be unpersuasive: they believe that torture is quick and effective. In contrast, Americans find the claim that torture is cruel to be a far more persuasive argument against torture.[18]

In Anatomy of Torture [19] he analyzes hundreds of trials from the archives of the Spanish Inquisition to uncover the causes, character, and consequences of torture. His book analyzes dozens of cases of torture from Spain and Mexico in the 16th and 17th centuries, relying on archival evidence from Europe and the Americas. These files demonstrate that “torture yielded information that was often reliable: witnesses in the torture chamber and witnesses that were not tortured provided corresponding information about collaborators, locations, events, and practices. Nonetheless, inquisitors treated the results of interrogations in the torture chamber with skepticism.” The torture conducted by the Inquisition yielded corroborative evidence that the Inquisition found useful but it did so slowly and at tremendous social, political, and moral cost. Hassner urges caution in applying those findings to current torture debates.