Politics of Religion

Presentation bySaeed Memon

Madam Uzma Shuja’atArea Study Centre for Europe

• It is a centuries old phenomenon• Greek Mythology that regarded their gods the

architectures, designers and even destroyers of their destinies.

• Roman Empire also held Christianity in high regard and even the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (306–337 AD), made Christianity the dominant religion of the Roman Empire.

Politics of Religion

• Hindu Mythology and the philosophy of ‘Hindutva’ tell us the importance of Religion in the politics of India. The five fundamentals of Hindutva revolve around the Hinduism as the dominant force in Hindustan tarnishing the image of ‘the Secular Socialist Republic of India.’

• For Muslims, Islam has also been given the central place in public and private life as being the complete code of life.

• Europe witnessed the Dark Age when Church held the strong control on every aspect of public and personal life, even people had to ask the Priest’s permission for marriage and child birth.

• The Period of Reformation and Renaissance followed by Industrial Revolution, Europe separated the Church from Politics, and the role of religion was privatized as a personal matter of individual person.

• Post Westphalia world -> Secular -> traditional decline of traditional values and the religion was inevitable casualty.

Impact of Religion onInternational Relations

• The relationship between religion and international relations is both dialectical and interactive: each shapes and influences the other.

• Religion has an impact on international relations in two main ways. First, governments may make issues linked to religion a focal point of their foreign policies. Second, non-state actors inspired by religious concerns may engage politically with governments, whether within countries or across state borders.

• How and under what circumstances might religion influence a state’s foreign policy, including in relation to national interest goals?

• The question can be approached in two separate ways:

• First, it can refer to politics a state adopts in order to deal with religious actors it encounters in trying to put into effect its foreign policy beyond the country’s borders.

• Second, it can refer to actions and policies of domestic religious actors seeking to influence state foreign policies.

• No longer, as in centuries past, is religion a dominant force in the determination of State boundaries or even in the creation of States. In the Twentieth century the partitions of Ireland, Syria, India and Palestine were all designed to create separate political units for Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Muslims, Muslims and Hindus, and Jews and Arabs, respectively. (Glasner,Pol.Geo.pp.535)

• Only a few governments have foreign politics and more generally international relations ostensibly or significantly motivated by religion.

• For example, in Iran in the late 1970s, and in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, leading religious institutions and figures shifted – apparently abruptly – from support to opposition of incumbent authoritarian regimes.

• This led in Muslim Iran to a theocracy, while in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa religious actors, notably Roman Catholic figures, were in the forefront of moves towards popular, democratically elected governments. Later, during the 1990s and early 2000s religious actors from numerous faiths became involved in both domestic and international attempts to resolve conflicts and build peace (Bouta et al., 2005).

Post Iranian revolution and 9/11

• The Iranian revolution of 1979 is an important point for seeing a re-insertion of religion into international relations. Before the revloution, international relations experts took little or no account of religion in their understanding of world affairs.

• Later, other events, most obviously 9/11, also nudged IR scholars to examine the role of religions, mainly because of how it affected the USA.

• The perceived unimportance of religion in IR before Iran’s revolution was closely linked to the prominence of secular international security issues during the Cold War, between the late 1940s and late 1980s.

• Religion’s impact on international relations is not clear or straight forward.

• Since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, there have been a number of national and international conflicts with roots in religious, cultural and ethnic divisions. On the other hand, religion is also an increasingly important source of co-operations, often focusing upon conflict resolution and peace building, as well as human and social development.

• Over times, especially after the Second World War, secularism became an ideology of domination, implying the marginalisation, downgrading and, in some cases, belittling of religious ideas, in the pursuit of ‘progress’ and modernisation’.

• The post-Cold War era, is characterized both by a widespread religious resurgence and, more tentatively, by a gradual, patchy post-secularisation of international relations.

• “Since September 11,2001, religion has become a central topic in discussions about international politics. Once terrorism put religion in the international spotlight, this realm suddenly seemed to teem with lively issues i.e. :

• the foreign policy predilections of the (US) Christian Right towards Israel and Southern Sudan, the complications of faith-based Western activism abroad, the Dalai Lama and the Falun Gong as potential destabilizers of officially atheist but increasingly neo-Confucian China, and the Myanmar military regime’s fear of a potential alliance of Burmese monks and international refugee organizations. Perhaps religious international politics had been there all along, but it suddenly became harder to ignore.” (Snyder :2011)

• Snyder mentions four of the world faiths in this quotation - Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, and Islam. The influence of Hindusim in India’s foreign policy, especially in relation to (Muslim) Pakistan during the rule of the Hindu nationlist Bharratiya Janata Party in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and that of Jewish political paries in Israel particularly regarding the Palestinians and the status of Jerusalem.

• There has been a significant shift in world politics, necessitating more consistent attention paid to religion as a result of a perceived shift to ‘post – secular’ international relations (Habermas, 2006; Barbato and Kratochwil, 2009).

• The assumption that the religious revival in today’s world heralds a new era is not supported by the evidence. Data and analysis both suggest a continuing, complex, hierarchical and multipolar, but also interdependent and multilateral, global system. Those acting under the inspiration of a creed will, in the long run, have to adapt to the secular concepts that underpin the foundations of the world order rather than the other way round. ( Merlini, 2011 : 127 )

• There is a little evidence that the fundamentals of international relations have suddenly changed as a result of the current religious resurgence.

• There appears to be no compelling evidence that post-secular international relations is clearly different from earlier secular international relations which evolved over the centuries following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

• We still live in a ‘hierarchical and multipolar, but also interdependent and multilateral, global system’ (Merlini, 2011: 127).

References:

• Bouta, T., Ayse Kadayifci-Oreelana, S. and Abu-Nimmer, M. (2005) Faith-Based Peace-Building: Mapping and Analysis of Christian, Muslims and Multi-faith Actors, The Hague: Netherlands Institute of International Relations. Synder, J. (2011) ‘Introduction’, in J.Synder (ed.), Religion and International Relations Theory, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 1-23.

• Merlini, C. (2011) ‘A Post-Secular World?’, Survival, 53, 2, pp. 117-130

• Telhami, S. (2004) ‘Between faith and ethics’, in J.B.Hehir, M. Walzer, et.al, pp.71-84

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