Religion and Politics in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa

Jeffrey Haynes, Jeffrey Haynes

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135262099
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Politics

In the early twenty-first century, it is now clear that religion is increasingly influential in the political realm in ways which call into question the principles and practices of secularism. The Iranian revolution of 1978-9 marked the decisive 'reappearance' of political religion in global politics, highlighting a major development which is the subject of this edited volume.

Addressing a highly salient and timely topic, this book examines the consequences of political interactions involving the state and religious actors in Christian, Muslim and Judaist contexts. Building on research, the basic premise of this text is that religious actors – including Islamist groups, the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches – pose various challenges for citizenship, democracy, and secularisation in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The key questions on which the book focuses are: Why, how, and when do religious actors seek to influence political outcomes in these regions?

Providing a survey of what is happening in relation to the interaction of religion and politics, both domestically and internationally, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, religion, European and Middle East studies.

1 Religion and politics in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa

Jeffrey Haynes

The main premise of this book is that religion has left its assigned place in the private sphere in both Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), becoming politically active in various ways and with assorted outcomes. The starting point is to note that from the 1980s, ‘what was new and became “news” . .. was the widespread and simultaneous refusal of religions to be restricted to the private sphere’ (Casanova 1994: 6). This involves a remodelling and re-assumption of public roles by religious actors – which theories of secularisation had long condemned to social and political marginalisation. This is what the chapters of this book collectively seek to accomplish.

While differing in terms of specific issues that encourage them to act politically, religious entities commonly reject the secular ideals that have long dominated theories of political development in both developed and developing countries, appearing instead as champions of alternative, confessional outlooks, programmes and policies. Seeking to keep faith with what they interpret as divine decree, religious entities¹ typically refuse to render to secular power holders automatic material or moral support. They are concerned with various social, moral and ethical issues, which are nearly always political. They may challenge or undermine both the legitimacy and autonomy of the state’s main secular spheres, including government and more widely political society. In addition, many churches and other comparable religious entities no longer restrict themselves to the pastoral care of individual souls. Now, they raise questions about, inter alia, interconnections of private and public morality, claims of states and markets to be exempt from extrinsic normative considerations, and modes and concerns of government. What they also have in common is a shared concern for retaining and increasing their social importance. To this end, many religious entities now seek to bypass or elude what they regard as the cumbersome constraints of temporal authority and, as a result, threaten to undermine the latter’s constituted political functions. In short, refusing to be condemned to the realm of privatised belief, religion has widely reappeared in the public sphere, thrusting itself into issues of social, moral and ethical – in short, political – contestation.

The aim of this book is to examine the current relationship between selected religious actors and the state in Europe and the MENA. Its title, Religion and Politics in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, seeks to capture what its authors believe are the key analytical issues in this context. Overall, the book is concerned with the outcomes of political interactions involving the state and selected religious entities in various countries in both regions. In Europe, the main religious actors on which we focus are Christian churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, while in the MENA Islamic and Judaist entities are the centre of attention.

The key point, however, is not from which religious tradition individual religious actors come. In both Europe and the MENA, all of the religious entities on which we focus share a desire: to change their societies in directions where what they regard as religiously acceptable standards of behaviour are central to public life. Pursuing such objectives, they use a variety of tactics and methods. For example, the Roman Catholic Church in both Italy and Poland and the Jamiat al-Adl wal-Ihsan in Morocco operate at the level of civil society, although their concerns also spill over into the realm of formal politics – that is, political society.

Our examples from Israel and Turkey highlight a different context and form of politics. They focus on what Ben-Porat, following Beck (1994, 1997), describes in his chapter in this collection as ‘sub-politics’. This is where struggles over the role of religion in public life are absent from or marginal to the formal political arena – that is, political society. Instead of focusing exclusively on formal politics, Beck suggests, scholars need also to pay attention to ‘sub-politics’. This is regarded as the ‘new’ politics, often played out not in the formal political arena but instead promulgated at the level of civil society. Ben-Porat argues that sub-politics rises in prominence when significant numbers of citizens lose all or most of their faith in formal political institutions – including political parties and the state.

In sum, these are the main conclusions of the book:

• In both Europe and the MENA, there is a formal, tripartite division of polities into state, political society and civil society.
• According to (Western) conventional social science wisdom, this arrangement ‘should’ inevitably lead to religion’s permanent privatisation, with a corresponding clear and significant political decline.
• However, in the sphere of religion and politics in both regions, there is widespread ‘deprivatisation’ of previously privatised religious entities.
• In European and the MENA, religion’s deprivatisation is expressed politically in a focus on: citizenship, secularisation and democracy.

Defining religion and politics

Before turning to these issues in detail, it is useful to start by seeking to define two of the key terms used in this book: religion and politics. Defining politics is relatively simple: it is about the pursuit of power, and the struggles involved in trying to wield it authoritatively. Defining religion satisfactorily is notoriously difficult. Sociologists use two main approaches. Religion is either: (1) a system of beliefs and practices related to an ultimate being or beings, or to the supernatural; or (2) that which is sacred in a society, including ultimate inviolate beliefs and practices (Aquaviva 1979). For purposes of wider social science analysis, religion can usefully be approached (1) from the perspective of a body of ideas and outlooks – that is, theology and ethical code; (2) as a type of formal organisation – that is, ecclesiastical ‘church’ or comparable entity; or (3) as social group – that is, a religious organisation, movement or party. Religion can affect the temporal world in one of two ways: by what it says and/or does. The former relates to religion’s doctrine or theology, 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 [sic] to the ultimate conditions of his existence’ (Bellah 1964: 359). But to move into the realm of politics, as we do in this book, 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 inter-group 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 political and religious spheres in all their varied aspects and then 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 politics, and that of politics on religion. At the same time, they are interactive: the effect of one stimulates and is stimulated by the other. In other words, because we are concerned with the ways in which power is exercised in society, and the ways in which religion is involved, the relationship between religion and politics is both dialectical and interactive: each shapes and influences the other. Both causal directions need to be held in view.

Second, religions are creative and constantly changing; consequently their relationships with politics also vary over time. In this book, we are concerned with interactions of religious entities and government over the last few decades.

Finally, as political actors religious entities can only usefully be discussed in terms of specific contexts; in the chapters that comprise this book, it is the relationship with government which forms a common 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 largely determined 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 Judaist societies. The contributions to this book explicitly question this assumption. The focus of many earlier studies was to seek to analyse how existing religious beliefs or affiliations affect political actions. In this book, however, we are equally concerned with the reverse process: how do specific national political contexts affect how and what selected religious entities do politically?

Religion and state in comparative perspective

To understand the political importance of religious actors in Europe and the MENA, it is necessary to comprehend what they say and do in their relationship with the state. I mean something more than ‘mere’ government when referring to the state. The state is the continuous administrative, legal, bureaucratic and coercive system that attempts not only to manage the various state apparatuses, but in addition to ‘structure relations between civil and public power and to structure many crucial relationships within civil and political society’ (Stepan 1988: 3). As a result, almost everywhere in the world, apparently regardless of nature of political system and/or level of economic development, states have sought to reduce or at least significantly control religion’s political importance – that is, states have wanted to privatise religion, considerably to reduce its political impact. Sometimes, for example in Poland and Italy (Catholicism) and Turkey (Sunni Islam), states will attempt to erect a ‘civil religion’ arrangement, whereby a certain designated religious format effectively ‘functions as the cult of the political community’ (Casanova 1994: 58). The declared purpose is to try to create and develop forms of consensual – corporate – religion, claiming to be guided by general, culturally appropriate, specific religious beliefs of intrinsic societal significance (Hallencreutz and Westerlund 1996). In short, to develop ‘civil religions’ is an attempted strategy to try to avoid social conflicts and promote national coordination and cohesion.

The chapters of this book illustrate that religious actors’ relationships with the state in Europe and the MENA are by no means limited to attempts to build civil religions. In fact, in many countries in both regions, relations between religious entities and the state are now not only more visible but also increasingly problematic. Why is this the case? First, it may be that recent increases in religious challenges to the authority of the state are merely transitory reactions in the context of the onward march of secularisation. Second, even if the modern state is particularly vulnerable to legitimation crises, it does not necessarily mean that religion is again becoming automatically relevant to state functioning. Third, religion-based challenges to state hegemony have roots in endeavours by the latter to assert a monitoring role vis-à-vis religion, in effect to control it. We can see such a development at three levels: political society, civil society and at the level of the state itself.

Religion and political society

Religion is being liberated from providing slavish legitimacy to secular authority because representatives of religious organisations are now increasingly willing to criticise and challenge the state in various ways in relation to a variety of issues and themes. Yet, even if heightened concern about the state’s policies can be held up as evidence of the regeneration of the socio-political power of religion, we still need to ask further questions. The issues are themselves secular and in so far as religious agencies are active in these areas, this is a radical shift of concern from the supernatural, from devotional acts, to what are largely secular goals pursued by secular means. However, a note of caution is in order: we need to bear in mind that when religious interests act as ‘pressure groups’ – rather than as ‘prayer bodies’ – they are not necessarily going to be effective. This is because, as Wilson (1992: 202–3) notes, the more secularised a society, the less likely religious organisations will be able to play a politically significant role.

At the level of political society – that is, the arena in which the polity specifically arranges itself for political contestation to gain control over public power and the state apparatus – we can note a range of religious responses that are in part dependent upon the degree of secularisation. These include (1) resistance to the disestablishment and the differentiation of the religious from the secular sphere – the goals of many so-called religious ‘fundamentalist’ groups; (2) religious groups and confessional political parties’ mobilisations and counter-mobilisations against other religions or secular movements and parties; and (3) religious organisations’ mobilisation in defence of religious, social and political freedoms – that is, demanding the rule of law and the legal protection of human and civil rights, protecting mobilisation of civil society and/or defending institutionalisation of democratically elected governments. In recent times in pursuit of such goals, we can note Roman Catholic mobilisation in Poland and Spain (Casanova 1994) and activities of Islamic groups in a variety of countries in the MENA, including Morocco and Turkey.

Religion and civil society

Civil society is the arena where various social movements – including, neighbourhood associations, women’s groups, religious entities and intellectual currents – join with civic organisations, including, lawyers’, journalists’, trade unions’ and entrepreneurs’ associations, to constitute themselves into an ensemble of arrangements to express themselves and seek to advance their collective interests. Sometimes, the concept of civil society is used in contrast to political society. Unlike the latter, civil society refers to organisations and movements – not political parties – formally uninvolved in both the business of government and overt political management. Note, however, that this does not necessarily prevent civil society organisations from sometimes seeking to exert or actually exerting political influence on various matters, including democratic outcomes and the content of national constitutions.

Regarding religion at the level of civil society, one can distinguish between hegemonic civil religions – such as Evangelical Protestantism in nineteenth-century America – and the recent public intervention of religious entities, concerned either with single issues such as anti-abortion or with morally determined views of wider societal development, for example in relation to homosexual rights or appropriate days for shops to open. In trying to influence public policy – without themselves seeking to become political office-holders – religious entities may employ a variety of tactics, including, in no particular order: (1) lobbying the executive apparatus of the state; (2) going to court; (3) building links with political parties; (4) forming alliances with like-minded groups, both secular and/or from other religious traditions; (5) mobilising followers to lobby and/or protest; and (6) working to sensitise public opinion via mass media. The overall point is that religious actors may use a variety of methods to try to achieve their objectives.

Religion and the state

Interactions between the state and religious entities are often referred to as ‘church–state’ relations. It is useful to point out, however, that one of the difficulties in seeking to survey contemporary church–state relations is that the very concept of church is a somewhat parochial, Anglo-American standpoint with relevance only to Christian traditions. It is derived primarily from the context of British establishmentarianism – that is, maintenance of 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 religio-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.

The tr...