“Religious fundamentalism” is a term that, for several decades now, has been a staple of writing about the general involvement of religion in politics. “Religious fundamentalism” is nearly always associated with “traditional,” “conservative,” or “right-wing” understandings of the world. It is articulated and pursued by those who appear to believe that the world would be a better place if all people lived by the word of (their) God, as articulated and set forth in their particular faith’s holy scriptures. In addition, for many, “religious fundamentalism” implies a rejection of modernity and a wish to return to the past, to a—perhaps mythical—time when people lived by God’s jurisdiction.
Despite what some believe, it is clear that religious fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, although with historical antecedents. As a concept, “religious fundamentalism” has been widely employed since the late 1970s, especially by the mass media and many scholars. It has been used to describe and explain quite a few, sometimes rather diverse, religious movements around the globe with political aspirations to change society. The designation “fundamentalist” was first applied by some American Protestants to themselves in the 1920s. In the early 21st century, as a generic term, it is now widely applied additionally to a multitude of groups outside the corpus of American Protestantism.
Generally speaking, the character and impact of fundamentalist doctrines is located within a nexus of moral and social issues revolving, in many contemporary countries and religions, around state–society interactions. “Modernization” has affected many people’s lives in profound and sometimes disconcerting ways. For some religious fundamentalists, this was manifested in an initial defensiveness, which eventually developed for many into a political offensive that sought to alter the prevailing social and political realities of state–society relations. That rulers were performing inadequately and/or corruptly, led many—but not all—religious fundamentalists to relate contemporary developments to a critical reading of their faith’s holy texts. The significance of this from a political perspective was that it could serve to supply an already restive group with a ready-made manifesto for social change. Many religious leaders saw the opportunity and began explicitly to use a selective reading of religious texts both to challenge secular rulers and to propose a program for often radical societal or sociopolitical reforms. Under these circumstances, it was often relatively easy for fundamentalist leaders to gain the support of those who felt that in some way the development of society was not proceeding according to God’s will or their community’s interests. In sum, various manifestations of what are generically referred to as religious fundamentalisms have appealed to different groups for different reasons at different times.
Article
Fundamentalism as a Cross-National, Cross-Traditional Concept
Jeffrey Haynes
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Civil War and Religion: An Overview
Isak Svensson
The relationship between civil war and religion is a complex one. Civil wars are influenced in many different ways by religiously based factors. Different religiously based factors influence the onset, dynamics, and termination of civil wars. Religious factors have been examined both as causes of war and their dynamics and as factors behind how violence is prevented, conflict is managed, and peace is built. Whereas research on peace and conflict has often tended to neglect religiously focused explanations in favor of explanations based on strategic, economic, or other factors, research on religion and conflict has seen a resurgence in recent years. Research can be organized based on three different levels of analysis: (a) explanations relating to the religious group level, (b) explanations relating to the level of interrelationships between different religious groups, and (c) explanations relating to the level of the group’s relationship to the state. On the group level, religious beliefs, religious practices, religious constituency, and religious institutions play a role. On the intergroup level, two main debates center around the “clash of civilization” and religious demography. On the state-religion level, religious grievances and state favoritism can be seen as explanations for civil wars. As religiously defined conflicts are becoming more common, understanding more about the conditions under which religious factors influence civil wars’ onset, dynamics, and termination is vital.
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Strategic Violence Among Religious Parties in Pakistan
Niloufer Siddiqui
Islamist parties in Pakistan are theologically diverse but grouped as such because of their belief in the state enforcement of religious law (shariah). While they have only achieved modest levels of electoral success, the country’s Islamist parties are considered important due to their ability to mobilize street power, lobby the state and judiciary from outside of parliament, and serve as key electoral allies of mainstream parties. In addition, these Islamist electoral groups employ a range of violence strategies. Many of these parties maintain militant wings, possess linkages with extremist Islamist outfits, and/or engage in violent politics on university campuses through their affiliated student groups.
Existing literature suggests that violence by political parties has certain electoral benefits. First, it serves a coercive function, by intimidating voters to stay home on election day or compelling them to vote a certain way. Second, it can serve to polarize the populace along identity-based lines. However, given the limited success of Islamist parties in elections, it seems unlikely that their involvement in violence serves only an electoral purpose. In particular, much of the parties’ violent activity seems, at least at first glance, unrelated to electoral activity.
Why, then, do Islamist parties utilize violence? Violence wielded by Islamist parties in Pakistan serves three functions. First, Islamist electoral groups are able to leverage their unique position as a part of the system with close linkages to militant actors outside of it to effectively pressure the state on a range of policy matters. That is, violence works to advance the party’s strategic goal of lobbying the government from outside of the legislative system. Second, the use of violence serves an ideological function by, for example, targeting specific sects and minority groups, fighting Western influence, and supporting the liberation struggle in Kashmir. The use of violence also helps prove to ideologically aligned militant actors that the parties are on “their side.” Finally, the use of violence can also serve purely electoral purposes. Like other identity-based parties, making salient a particular schism at opportune times can work to increase one’s own vote bank at the expense of other secular parties.
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Terrorism and Religion: Palestine
Arie Perliger
In its early stages the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was dominated by two secular nationalist movements, which marginalized religious practices and institutions. However, since the early 1980s, it has gradually become a struggle that includes, and some may argue also is led by, fundamentalist parties that justify their national aspirations via religious texts, principles, and practices. It is no wonder then that a conciliation seems less and less of a realistic endeavor. On the Palestinian side, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are the main forces that dominant the violent Palestinian struggle, while aspiring to establish a Palestinian state that will operate as a theocracy. In Israel, Religious Zionist militant organizations engaged in violent campaigns to solidify Israel’s control over the West Bank as part of a theological framework that sees such a control as a crucial phase in the re-creation of a Jewish kingdom. Moreover, Jewish ultra-orthodox parties, which in the past refrained from engaging with the conflict with the Palestinians, in the last couple of decades became strong opposition to any conciliation efforts which will include territorial concessions by Israel.
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Protest and Religion: An Overview
Yasemin Akbaba
After decades-long neglect, a growing body of scholarship is studying religious components of protests. Religion’s role as a facilitator, the religious perspective of protesters, the goals of religious actors as participants, and faith-based outcomes of protests have been examined using quantitative and qualitative methodology. Although it is now a thriving research field, due to recent contributions, incorporating faith-based variables in protest research is a challenging task since religion travels across different levels of analysis; effortlessly merges with thick concepts such as individual and collective identity; and takes different shapes and color when it surfaces in various social contexts across the globe. Therefore, at the religion and protest nexus, there are more questions than answers. Research in the field would improve by investing more on theoretical frameworks and expanding the availability of qualitative and quantitative data.
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Homosexuality in Francophone West Africa: The International Context of Local Controversies
Christophe Broqua
Since the mid-2000s, certain expressions of hostility against homosexuality in Africa have received wide international media coverage. In different countries, one of the main targets of this hostility is gay mobilizations. At the same time, these expressions of hostility often promote the development of gay mobilizations. Thus, taken together, these opposing mobilizations form a system, as shown in the cases of Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa.
Each of the two contexts presents specific local characteristics. In Senegal, the 2000s saw a rise in political Islam. In this context, the gay man gradually became a figure used variously in public debate, with power struggles within political and religious spheres influencing positions on homosexuality. In Côte d’Ivoire, the situation must first be understood through the political crisis affecting the country since the early 2000s and its ambivalent relationship with France, particularly since the post-election crisis of 2010–2011.
In both countries, the opposing mobilizations are not limited to “social movements” in the strict sense but involve myriad heterogeneous actors (including at least one or more quasi-official gay groups) focused on a single problem, who sometimes work haphazardly and generally in opposite directions. Added to this heterogeneity of actors are their public positions which offer few clues to easily separate them into pro- and anti-camps. The fact remains that a disconnect often exists between the most prominent actors. However, this distinction is also ambiguous in that it subjects the opposing mobilizations to an interdependence: not only that the actions of one side can largely depend on another’s, but that another’s actions can also benefit actors. Finally, the controversies playing out in and dependent on specific national contexts are also largely constructed in relationship with the “international,” both as a context and an actor, and more generally as a reference figure.
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Foreign Policy and Religion: U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Israel
Daniel G. Hummel
Religion has played a constant role in the United States–Israel relationship. Christian and Jewish interests have shaped U.S. foreign policy, especially after the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The role of religion Israel has historically depended on three interlinking factors: the influence of domestic political considerations in the calculations of American policymakers, the prominence of the Middle East in U.S. diplomatic and strategic thinking, and the beliefs and attitudes of individual policymakers, both their own religious convictions and their assessment of how important religious beliefs are to the American people.
Religion has alternately strengthened and strained the U.S. relationship with the Zionist movement and the state of Israel. At some moments, such as the 1930s, religious attitudes and prejudices worked against closer cooperation. At other times, such as the Israeli–Egyptian peace summit of 1978, religious forces played a prominent role. As a state with special religious significance for many Americans, Israel provides a window into how religion functions in U.S. foreign policy, how its function has changed over time, and how religion has acted as an independent variable in political and policy outcomes.
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Genocide and Religion in Times of War
Manus I. Midlarsky
To understand the relationship between religion and genocide in time of war, one needs to distinguish between sacred and secular political religions. Among the genocidal events inspired by political religions based on sacred texts are the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the Sack of Magdeburg, the British Civil War in Ireland, and Bosnia. I also examine several groups pursuing a genocidal agenda claiming religious justification: al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Civil religions and secular political religions discussed are the French Revolution, Italian Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinist Communism. Lacking the restraints found in traditional religions, secular political religion is most dangerous. Large-scale genocides are best explained by diachronic processes entailing subordination followed by gain and then loss by the perpetrators. The presence of loss in various forms is found in virtually all cases. Emotions that typically do not influence routine politics—such as anger and fear—are engaged. All of the cases, even those of minimal loss, are influenced by international events. Without the presence of war, genocides like the Holocaust, and those of the Armenians and Tutsis, are inconceivable. Even as an exclusionary ideology, traditional religion is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for all forms of genocide in time of war. But religion can be an enabler that together with other antecedents can lead to genocide. Sacred religious sites can be sensitive locations whose violation inspires violence. Radicalization of religious leaders can occur when their religion appears to be under attack, especially during or following a period of widespread violence.
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The Political Economy of LGBT Rights
Scott N. Siegel
Equal treatment for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community has improved at a rapid pace around the world since the gay rights movement first rose up to become a salient global force for change. With important regional exceptions, laws criminalizing same-sex sexual relations have not only come down in multiple countries, but same-sex couples can now also construct families in many advanced industrialized countries. Public acceptance of homosexuality, even in some non-Western countries, has increased dramatically. Yet, within those general trends hides the remarkable unevenness in the spread and adoption of policies fostering legal, social, and economic equality for LGBTQ communities around the world. Policy change toward more equal treatment for sexual minorities is concentrated in the developed world and within the cisgender gay and lesbian communities in particular. The existing literature in policy change shows the importance of transnational activists, changing international norms, and increasing levels of secularization have made this possible. But the effectiveness of these factors rests on an underlying foundation of socioeconomic factors based on economic and social development that characterizes advanced industrialized states. There is an uneven distribution of resources and interests among pro and anti-LGBT activist groups alike, and the differing levels of economic development in which they operate that explains the decidedly uneven nature of how LGBTQ human rights have advanced in the past 50 years. In addition, new political parties and activist organizations have emerged to lead the backlash against LGBTQ rights, showing progress is neither inevitable nor linear. In addition, serious gaps in what we know about LGBT politics remain because of the overwhelming scholarly focus on advanced industrialized states and policies that benefit the cisgender, gay and lesbian middle class in primarily Western societies. The study of LGBT politics in non-Western and developing countries is woefully neglected, for reasons attributed to the nature of the research community and the subject area. In the developed world, greater attention is needed to inequality within the LGBTQ community and issues beyond same-sex marriage. Finally, issues of intersectionality and how different groups within the LGBT community have enjoyed most of the benefits of the gay rights movement since its takeoff more than 50 years ago.
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War and Religion: The Iran−Iraq War
Peyman Asadzade
Religion has historically played a central role in motivating rulers to start and individuals to participate in war. However, the decline of religion in international politics following the Peace of Westphalia and the inception of the modern nation-state system, which built and highlighted a sense of national identity, undermined the contribution of religion to politics and consequently, conflict. The case of the Iran−Iraq War, however, shows a different pattern in which religion did play a crucial role in motivating individuals to participate in war. Although the evidence suggests that religious motivations by no means contributed to Saddam’s decision to launch the war, an overview of the Iranian leaders’ speeches and martyrs’ statements reveals that religion significantly motivated people to take part in the war. While Iraqi leaders tried to mobilize the population by highlighting the allegedly Persian-Arab historical antagonism and propagating an Iraqi-centered form of Arab nationalism, Iranian leaders exploited religious symbols and emotions to encourage war participation, garner public support, alleviate the suffering of the people, and build military morale. The Iranian leadership painted the war as a battle between believers and unbelievers, Muslims and infidels, and the true and the false. This strategy turned out to be an effective tool of mobilization during wartime.
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Civil War and Religion: Turkey
Gülay Türkmen
Out of the 111 armed conflicts that took place worldwide between 1989 and 2000, only seven were interstate conflicts. The others were intrastate in nature. As a result, the last decade and a half witnessed a boom in the publication of works on civil wars. While the percentage of civil wars involving religion increased from 21% to 43% between the 1960s and 1990s, scholars have been rather slow to integrate the study of religion into the overall framework of conflict in general, and of civil wars in particular. Operating under the impact of the secularization thesis and treating religion as an aspect of ethnicity, the literature on civil wars has long embraced ethnonationalism as its subject matter. Yet, since the early 2000s there has been a rapid increase in the number of works focusing on religion and civil wars. While one branch treats religion as a trigger for and an exacerbating factor in conflict, another focuses on religion as a conflict resolution tool.
Turkey is an apt case to ponder the latter as several governments have deployed religion (namely, Sunni Islam) as a tool to suppress ethnic divisions for years. During the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, religion has gained even more visibility as a conflict resolution tool in the 33-year-long armed ethnic conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). Yet, the role of religion in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict still remains understudied. Increased attention to this topic could deliver important insights not only for those who conduct research on the Kurdish conflict in Turkey specifically, but also for those who explore the role of religion in civil wars more generally.
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War and Religion: An Overview
Jason Klocek and Ron E. Hassner
Although largely ignored by international relations scholars until the 21st century, religion has been and remains a pervasive social force both on and off the battlefield. It affects how combatants mobilize and prepare for war. It regulates how they fight, including unit organization and strategic decision making. In addition, religious identities, beliefs, practices, and symbols shape how and when combatants pursue peace. The study of religion and war seeks to discover and understand these varied influences, even when religion is not the pretext for fighting.
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Identity, Internal State Conflict, and Religion
John F. McCauley
Social science literature does not identify a direct effect of religion on the occurrence of intrastate conflict. Yet religion as a sociopolitical identity does have several fairly unique features that render religious differences particularly useful to political entrepreneurs in the course of conflict. First, religions often have codified guidelines, typically written, that convey normative behaviors—what one should do to attain salvation, for example. The presence of such guidelines can reinforce the organizational strength of particular groups and underscore the nonnegotiable status of their beliefs, both of which can be useful in the course of conflict. Second, the religious identity includes multiple levels of division that do not exist within other identity types—including interfaith differences, differences between sects within religious traditions, and divisions between secularists and strong religionists. Such divisions create opportunities for outbidding that exacerbate tensions and conflict. Third, religious group membership confers nonmaterial benefits, such as perceived access to salvation, that can motivate behavior in very tangible, this-worldly ways, for example by encouraging fighters to choose martyrdom over negotiated settlements. Finally, religious networks link adherents transnationally in a manner that no other identity type can, creating opportunities to mobilize resources and support from abroad for a conflict within borders.
These features suggest that, whereas religion is no more likely than other types of identity divisions to cause conflict, it can be particularly powerful for political entrepreneurs to wield as a tool in conflict settings. In some cases, conflicts are viewed as religious because the religious labels of competing sides differ, even if the conflict itself has nothing to do with religion. In other cases, conflicts may be described as religious if the content over which adversary sides fight is itself religious in nature; violence over the imposition of Islamic sharia law in a religiously mixed country may be one such example. Even when intrastate conflicts are fought over religious content, however, from the perspective of political scientists the matter is still one of political choice. This underscores the critical role that political entrepreneurs play in the shaping of conflicts as religious. Understanding the power of codified behavioral guidelines, multiple layers of division, non-material payoffs, and transnational networks that religious identity provides, political entrepreneurs can use religion to exploit the (sometimes unrelated) grievances of their supporters and thus escalate conflict where doing so pays political dividends. In this way, scholars recognize that intrastate conflicts with various causal foundations frequently become fights in the name of God.
