Religion, Conflict and Post-Secular Politics

Jeffrey Haynes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367425791
• eBook ISBN: 9781000029000
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book identifies and examines the political activities of selected religious actors, in both domestic and international contexts, in relation to democracy, human rights and civilisational interactions. And it asks why, how and when do selected religious actors seek to influence political outcomes?

The book is divided into two parts. Section 1 examines the controversial issue of how, why and when religious actors affect democratisation – that is, the transition to democracy – and democracy itself. These chapters examine the impact of religion on democratisation and human rights, with particular attention to secularisation, Islam, and globalisation. They indicate that numerous religious actors have had major importance in helping determine democratisation outcomes in various countries. Section 2 examines the relationships between religion, human rights and civilisational interactions in the context of post-secular politics and links to conflict, and it explores how these relationships affect political outcomes in both domestic and international contexts.

This book will be of great interest to postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students of religion and politics; religion and international relations; democratisation and democracy; and global governance, especially studies of the United Nations. It will also interest practitioners and scholars who work on religion and politics, at a domestic and international level.

Section 1
Religion and democratisation

What do we now know?

1 Religion and democratisation

What do we now know?¹

Democratisation is a process of moving from an authoritarian regime to a democratic state. A democratic state has its governance rooted in representative institutions, with office holders chosen by the populace through periodic ‘free and fair’ local and national elections. The relationship between religion, democratisation and democracy centres on three issues:

1. 1 Religious traditions have core elements: some are conducive to democratisation and democracy, others less so
2. 2 Religious traditions are typically multi-vocal: at any moment there will be powerful figures more or less receptive to and encouraging of democracy
3. 3 Religious actors on their own rarely if ever determine democratisation outcomes, and yet they may in various ways and with a range of outcomes be significant for democratisation

This may especially be the case in countries that have a long tradition of secularisation, such as Turkey. This chapter briefly examines these issues and seeks to uncover the significant links between religion and democratisation.

A starting point is to note that around the world, religions have left their assigned place in the private sphere, becoming politically active in various ways and with assorted outcomes. Religion’s re-emergence from political marginality dates from the late 1970s. Then, as Casanova (1994: 6) notes, ‘what was new and became “news” … was the widespread and simultaneous refusal of religions to be restricted to the private sphere’.

The nature of the relationship between religion, democratisation and democracy is a crucial issue in the political life of the contemporary world. Although scholars disagree about their nature and scope, there is widespread concern in many countries regarding the role of religious actors in (1) helping underpin or support authoritarian regimes, (2) inter-communal clashes and (3) transnational extremist networks. In Europe, for example, such phenomena today represent a dual challenge: first, religious communities must effectively integrate into democratic institutions, and second, policymakers must work out and implement new policies and forms of cooperation to cope with previously unexpected threats and issues, some of which come from religious extremist actors.

Theoretically, the issue of how significant religious actors might affect the possibility of successful democratisation and democracy has long been debated. During the decades immediately after World War II, many scholars agreed that political culture – defined here as citizens’ orientation towards politics, affecting their perceptions of political legitimacy – was crucial to explaining the success or failure of democratisation and democracy. The political culture approach focused on how and in what ways religious traditions and actors were believed to feed into and affect a country’s political culture, including citizens’ preferences for or dislikes of democracy. For example, in West Germany, Italy and Japan, cultural traditions – including Roman Catholicism in Italy, Christian democracy in West Germany and a rich heritage of democracy-oriented philosophies and traditions in Japan – were said to be important, facilitating – with external assistance – the (re)making of these countries’ respective political cultures after lengthy experiences of undemocratic (totalitarian) regimes.

By the 1960s, Germany, Italy and Japan were established or ‘consolidated’ democracies. Soon after, a new theoretical orthodoxy emerged. This was linked to the period of sustained decolonisation in Africa, Asia and elsewhere in the developing world. The theoretical focus in relation to democracy in the postcolonial world shifted to institutional and economic factors. The emphasis was on robust, more-representative institutions coupled with sustained economic growth; to have these qualities would make democracy more likely, it was claimed. At this time, the importance of cultural factors, including religion and ethnicity, were marginalised. Later, between the mid 1970s and late 1990s, the third-wave of democracy – which, inter alia, saw the shift from communist to democratic rule in many Central and Eastern European countries – helped to turn attention once again to the role of culture – including, religion and ethnicity – and their role in democratic outcomes, both successful and unsuccessful. For example, in Poland, the Roman Catholic Church played a key role in undermining the country’s communist regime, helping establish a post-communist, democratically accountable government. The perceived pro-democracy role of the Church was not, however, restricted to Poland but instead extended to Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, as several of the contributory chapters to this special issue demonstrate. There was also the contemporaneous rise of the Christian – or ‘religious’ – right in the United States, and its considerable subsequent impact on the electoral fortunes of both the Republican and Democratic parties. Add to this the widespread growth of Islamist movements across the Muslim world, with significant ramifications for electoral outcomes in various countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Morocco; electoral successes for the Bharatiya Janata Party in India in the late 1990s and early 2000s; and substantial, sustained political influence for various (Jewish) religious-political parties in Israel. The overall result was that by the end of the twentieth century, there was significant religious involvement in politics in many countries, sometimes with significant ramifications for democratic outcomes.

Religion and the state

According to Huntington (1996), religions have a crucial impact on democratisation. For him, Christianity has a strong propensity to be supportive of democracy, while other religions, such as Islam, Buddhism and Confucianism, do not. However, focusing on the Central and Eastern European democratising experience, Linz and Stepan (1996) argue that religion was not generally a key explanatory factor explaining democratisation outcomes. In relation to Muslim countries, Halliday (2005) avers that apparent barriers to democracy in some regional countries are rooted in social and political, not religious, factors. They include long histories of authoritarian rule and weak civil societies, and although some of those features tend to be legitimised in terms of Islamic doctrine, there is in fact nothing specifically ‘Islamic’ about them.

Interactions between the state and religious entities are often referred to as church–state relations. However, one of the difficulties in seeking to survey the nature of contemporary church–state relations in many countries around the world is that the concept of church is a somewhat parochial, Anglo-American standpoint with direct relevance only to explicitly Christian traditions. It is derived primarily from the context of British establishmentarianism – that is, maintaining the principle of establishment whereby one church is legally recognised as the only established church. In other words, when we think of church–state relations, we may assume a single relationship between two clearly distinct, unitary and solidly but separately institutionalised entities. In this implicit model built into the conceptualisation of the religious-political nexus, there is but one state and one church; both entities’ jurisdictional boundaries need to be carefully delineated. Both separation and pluralism must be safeguarded, because it is assumed that the leading church – like the state – will seek institutionalised dominance over rival religious organisations. For its part, the state is expected to respect individual rights even though it is assumed to be inherently disposed towards aggrandisement at the expense of citizens’ personal liberty. In sum, the conventional concept of church–state relations is rooted in prevailing Christian conceptions of the power of the state of necessity being constrained by forces in society – including those of religion.

Expanding the problem of church–state relations to non-Christian contexts necessitates some preliminary conceptual clarifications – not least because the very idea of a prevailing church/state dichotomy is bound to culture. As already noted, church is a Christian institution, while the modern understanding of state is deeply rooted in the post-Reformation European political experience. In their specific cultural setting and social significance, the tension and the debate over the church–state relationship are uniquely Western phenomena, present in the ambivalent dialectic of ‘render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s and unto God the things which be God’s’ (Luke 21:25). Overloaded with Western cultural history, these two concepts cannot easily be translated into non-Christian terminologies.

The differences between Christian conceptions of church and state and those of other world religions are well illustrated by reference to Islam. In the Muslim tradition, the mosque is not a church. The closest Islamic approximation to ‘state’ – dawla – means, as a concept, either a ruler’s dynasty or their administration. Only with the specific Durkheimian stipulation of church as the generic concept for moral community, priest for the custodians of the sacred law and state for political community can we comfortably use these concepts in Islamic and other non-Christian contexts. On the theological level, the command–obedience nexus that constitutes the Islamic definition of authority is not demarcated by conceptual categories of religion and politics. Life as a physical reality is an expression of divine will and authority (qudrah’). There is no validity in separating the matters of piety from those of the polity; both are divinely ordained. Although both religious and political authorities are legitimated according to Islamic tradition, they invariably constitute separate social institutions. They do, however, regularly interact with each other. Yet as recent political conflicts have shown in relation to, inter alia, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq and Syria, there are on occasion sometimes serious tensions between Islamist actors of various stripes and the state in regard to democratisation and political outcomes more generally.

Conclusion

Religion can affect the temporal world in one of two ways: by what it says and/or by what it does. The former relates to religion’s doctrine or theology and the latter to its importance as a social phenomenon and mark of identity, which can function through various modes of institutionalisation, including civil society, political society and religion–state relations. It is necessary to distinguish between religion expressed at the individual and group levels: only in the latter is it normally of importance for understanding related political outcomes. From an individualist perspective, we are contemplating religion’s private, spiritual side, ‘a set of symbolic forms and acts which relates man to the ultimate conditions of his existence’ (Bellah, 1964: 359). But to move into the realm of politics, it is necessarily to be concerned with group religiosity, whose claims and pretensions are always to some degree political. That is, there is no such thing as a religion without consequences for value systems, including those affecting politics and political outcomes. Group religiosity, like politics, is a matter of collective solidarities and, frequently, of intergroup tension, competition and conflict, with a focus on either shared or disputed images of the sacred or on cultural and/or class – in short – political, issues. To complicate matters, however, such influences may well operate differently and with ‘different temporalities for the same theologically defined religion in different parts of the world’ (Moyser, 1991: 11).

To try to bring together the relationship between democratisation, democracy and religious actors in all their varied aspects and then to try to discern significant patterns and trends is not a simple task. But in attempting it, three points are worth emphasising. First, there is something of a distinction to be drawn between looking at the relationship in terms of the impact of religion on democratisation and democracy and vice versa. Yet they are also interactive: one stimulates and is stimulated by the other. In other words, because we are concerned with how power is exercised in society and how religion is involved, the relationship between religion, democratisation and democracy is both dialectical and interactive. Both causal directions need to be held in view.

Second, religions are creative and constantly changing; consequently, their relationships with democratisation and democracy can also vary over time. Finally, as political actors, religious entities can be usefully discussed only in terms of specific contexts; it is the relationship with government – whether supporting it or seeking to undermine it – that forms a common, though not the only, focal point. Yet the model of responses, while derived from and influenced by specific aspects of particular religions, is not necessarily inherent to them. Rather this is a theoretical construct suggested by much of the literature on state–society relations, built on the understanding that religion’s specific role is determined largely by a broader context. The assumption is that there is an essential core element of religion shaping its behaviour in, for example, Christian, Islamic or Jewish societies and communities.

Note

1 This chapter is adapted from ‘Religion and democratization: What do we now know?’ Journal of the Practice of Religion and Politics, 2, 2 (May 2016), 267–272 (Published by Routledge).

References

Bellah, Robert (1964) ‘Religious evolution,’ American Sociological Review, 29(3): 358–374.

Casanova, Jose (1994) The Remaking of Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Halliday, Fred (2005) The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huntington, Samuel (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Norman, OK: University Oklahoma Press.

Linz, Juan and Alfred Stepan (1996) Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Moyser, George (1991) ‘Politics and religion in the modern world: An overview’, in: George Moyser (ed.), Politics and Religion in the Modern World. London: Routledge, pp. 1–27.

2 Democratisation in the Middle East and North Africa

What is the effect of globalisation?¹

Introduction

Democratisation in the MENA is a key concern when addressing the wider topic of political change in the region. While some contend that there are inherent factors within the region’s majority religion – Islam – that serve to deny the possibility of widespread regional democratisation, others claim that there is nothing within the Islamic faith to mean that Muslim countries will ‘inevitably’ lack democratic credentials compared with countries with other majority faiths, such as Christianity. How, if at all, does globalisation make a difference in this regard? Does it aid democratisation in the MENA, hold it back or make no substantial difference?

Recently, the issue of globalisation has been notable in many discussions of democratisation. The chapter explains that Muslim countries in the MENA have few structural characteristics conducive to both democratisation and democracy, that things have been this way for a long time and that globalisation does little to alter this state of affairs. Certainly, the situation of a lack of democratisation and democracy in the MENA did not fundamentally change either during the two decades of the third wave of democracy, from the mid 1970s to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Introduction: Religion, conflict and post-secular politics: An introduction
• Section 1 Religion and democratisation: What do we now know?
• Section 2 Religion, human rights and civilisational interactions: Post-secular politics and conflict
• Index