Religious dynamics (e.g. actors, worldviews, and cultures) infused numerous conflagrations in the 1990s including Bosnia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Sudan. Without giving credence to the notion that religion is the “problem” causing all today’s conflicts, how best can we understand the role that religious dynamics play in contemporary war and peace?
Secularism has long been the language of most public servants and many scholars in the Western world, enabling both groups to work and live as though religions were irrelevant to their respective fields. This perspective has meant that religious phenomena have been ignored or reduced to other categories such as civil society, humanitarianism or as part of a definition of “civilization.”
Warnings against the political construction of the Self through opposition to a negative-valued, dangerous or threatening Other are common at a time when the discourses of the clash of civilisations have acquired a worryingly prominent place in the public spheres of many different countries. But do we actually need ‘more’ religious and cultural traditions rather than less in order to oppose religiously-inspired political violence?
National religious lobbies and advocacy organizations represent a growing phenomenon of political life in America. One of the striking recent developments is the globalization of the focus, constituencies, and vision of this religious political advocacy. From the beginning of the republic, national religious interest groups have focused periodically on international relations.
In recent years, there have been a number of challenges to international order emanating from various entities, including ‘Islamic extremists’ and, more generally, those ‘excluded’ from the benefits of globalisation; sometimes they are the same people.
The recent attacks in India suggest that the specter of religiously-motivated violence is not just back on the global agenda, but will be part of international affairs for years to come. Given what appears to be a jump in religiously-motivated violence over the last several years, what can we learn from past instances of religiously-motivated warfare to help us understand the present and future?
It has been suggested that the rise of religion confronts IR theory with a theoretical challenge comparable to that of the end of the Cold War or the emergence of globalization. I agree. To understand why we need to turn to the politics of secularism. How might we think about secularisms, in the plural, as forms of political authority in contemporary international relations? What does this mean for IR theory and the resurgence of religion? What kinds of politics follow from different forms of secular commitments, traditions, habits, and beliefs?
There are many reasons people choose to convert. Some do so for love and marriage, others because they are looking for spiritual meaning. However, there are also those who convert to Islam as an alternative to the current liberal ideology. Especially after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, converts tend to lean more towards political choices rather than spiritualism and personal choice.
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