Wolff, S. (2017). “Religion and secularism relevance to US and European foreign policies”. Global Affairs, published online 16 June 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23340460.2017.1336329
Pre-Print Version accepted 26 May 2017
Beyond Religious Freedom. The New Global Politics of Religion
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2015 ISBN: 9780691166094
Securing the Sacred. Religion, National Security and the Western State.
Robert M. Bosco
University of Michigan 2014, ISBN: 978-0-472-11922-6
Secular Wars. Myths of Religion, Politics and Violence
Stacy Gutkowski IB Tauris, 2013. ISBN: 9781780765358
‘Religion plays a role in politics – not always for good, not always for bad. Religion can be part of the process. What makes the difference is whether the process is democratic or not’, declared the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR) Federica Mogherini (Mogherini, 2015). Referring to the role of Islam during the Arab uprisings, this statement proves the rising awareness of European foreign policy-makers for religion in international relations. Although this has been common practice for US foreign-policy makers, where religious groups are more influential, since 9/11 secular European foreign affair ministries are getting to grips with religion. The Foreign Commonwealth Office has developed a toolkit on the Freedom of Religion of Belief (FoRB) and French laïc foreign-policymakers are developing strategic expertise on religious issues. The European External Action Service is also training its diplomats on religious issues (Wolff, 2015) and promoting ‘religious literacy’ (EEAS, 2016) From a research perspective, these developments are rarely being analysed Europe remains indeed the most secularized continent in the world, and its academics were late in acknowledging that modernization does not necessarily leads to more secularization. Globalization, migration and democratization provide religious actors with a rehabilitated voice on the international stage (Cochran Bech and Snyder, 2011). However empirical in-depth studies substantiating these claims are seldom The three books under study fill in this gap and analyse how religion, faith and their corollary secularism impact international relations but also states’ and international organizations’ behaviour. They all consider that religion and secularism are factors of international relations that merit to be further researched.
Stacey Gutkowski’s book provides the most remarkable analysis of British ‘secular’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unlike the massive amount of studies on the war on terror, dealing inter alia with securitization theory, strategic narrative of elites towards Western public opinion or counter-terrorism, she makes a pivotal claim by arguing that British foreign policy makers have acted according to their secular habitus. Following Bourdieu’s understanding of habitus, she argues that religion played a central role in ‘Western security perceptions and policy from 20019’ (p.2) Gutkowski offers a sophisticated and nuanced approach which highlights that the encounter between religion and secularism ‘produces far more messy, ambiguous, fluid and reciprocal results’ (p. 6). In doing so, she builds upon the work of critical scholars such as Hurd, that considers secularism as a specific worldview in international relations Secular habits do not always necessarily have negative consequences. They produce ‘tolerance of cultural difference and a warm reception of ‘moderate’ religious actors among policy-makers and implementers as often as it did suspicion and securitization’ (p. 21). Embedded in the field of war studies, her meticulous, though too long, study dissects the impact of the Western secular habitus on warfare and how reversely Western warfare impacts on ‘the taken for granted secular habits of everyday Western life and politics’ (p. 7). Methodologically sound, the study relies
upon extensive empirical material, archival research and interviews. Chapter 1 discusses the emergence of the British secular habitus within the history of European warfare and how it contributed to construct a myth of religious violence. Chapter 2 examines the British secular habitus within the context of the conflict in Northern Ireland, time during which ‘the British Army internalized the discovery that it was possible to fight a war without paying too much attention, strategically, to religious institutions, social structures and symbolism, despite the mobilization of sectarian-national identities by parties to the conflict’ (p. 31). Chapter 3 unpacks the various elements of the British secular habitus defined as ‘an unstable mix of impulses of liberal political tradition, Christian heritage, post-imperial pluralism and casual indifference towards religion (p. 20). The 2001-2 intervention in Afghanistan is identified as a ‘diagnostic moment’ in Chapter 4 which discusses how the myth of religion violence re-emerged but also how British practitioners had a lack of knowledge on Islam. Chapter 5 offers a case study on how the Brits dealt with the Sadrists, an Iraqi Shia militia while chapter 6 studies the United Kingdom ‘Prevent’ counterterrorist strategy and how it evolved towards building engagement with Islamists in order to counter radicalization. In conclusion, Gutkowski explores how the Western security community, from the British army to NATO and think tanks, has started to question its own secular habitus while developing dramatically its expertise on Islamism. While ‘this has produced some progress, [it has also given rise to] new forms of secular retrenchment’ (p. 33). She concludes that British policy-makers have been ambivalent towards Islamism developing ‘seemingly contradictory working hypotheses’ such as the fact that ‘Islamism endangers human freedom but that Islamists can be guided in the ways of democracy, and that while Islam is a repository for social values, how those values enter political life needs to be carefully monitored by the state’ (p. 34)
In ‘Securing the Sacred’, Bosco studies comparatively how religion has entered the discourse of US, French and British security policy-makers. National security is the main factor explaining why policy-makers have developed religious engagement initiatives, in particular with Islamist actors. For Bosco, religion is a matter of national security. Western political elites have ‘framed the problem of Islam’ as a ‘clash within Islam itself in which Western secular democracies must take sides’. The aim is to engage with religion yet ‘without undermining the legitimacy of the secular state, creating new insecurities for all’ (p. 1). Adopting a realist view of security and religion, Bosco argues that secular states are not only motivated by an unconscious secular habitus, but rather follow a deliberate strategy of to protect their own security. Thus, ‘failure to engage with religious ideas and actor […] appear[s] as a new national security liability.’ (p.4) Yet, this framing, pursued either at the domestic and international level is ‘at their perils’. (p.2). Discussing religion in international relations in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 argues rather conventionally that Islam has been securitized by Tony Blair, Georges W. Bush and Nicolas Sarkozy. Through the analysis of their counter-terrorism public speeches, discourses and documents, Bosco argues that these leaders have aimed at moderating Islam domestically and internationally: ‘since 9/11, […] classifications such as moderate or liberal Islam serve a strategic function for the Western state.’ (p. 5). Chapter 3, 4 and 5 review the cases of Britain, France and the United States. The reader learns that Britain and France have concentrated on domestic moderation of Islam by organising imam trainings and the establishment of new institutions such as the Sufi Muslim Council in Britain in 2006 or the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman in France in 2003. These attempts, Bosco concludes have failed and caused ‘resentment’ in the populations Instead, the US global strategy of Islam moderation aiming at building coalitions with key states and promoting actively religious freedom, is seen as a success Overall the argument developed here is probably the most conventional developed in the three books The framing theory is under-theorised, while the securitization approach endorsed in the book is not particularly novel. In addition, one may wonder if the conclusions were not obvious from the beginning given that the Muslim communities in France and Britain are more numerous and face more precarious socio-economic conditions compared to the US. One may wonder how is it possible to generalise from the findings and if the findings are in fact not influenced by various factors including the relative importance of the Muslim communities, their socio-economic integration, the legacy of post-colonialism, their geographical proximity
with their countries of origin, and the special relationship that France and Britain maintain with their old colonies.
In the third manuscript, critical scholar Elizabeth Shakman Hurd builds on her renowned work on the role of secularism and religion in international relations. Concentrating this time on the ‘new global politics of religion’, she argues that the apparent benign promotion of religious freedom and religious rights can have negative consequences. For her, behind the apparent tolerance and universal value of these rights, it may ‘lead to a politics defined by religious difference, privilege forms of religion favoured by those who write laws, control resources, and govern societies, and marginalize other modes of belief, being and belonging’ (xii). She cautions the reader that North American and European efforts to promote religious freedom are therefore not neutral Concentrating mostly on the US leadership in promoting religious freedom, in particular since the 1998 International Religious Freedom act, Chapter 2 introduces the concept of the ‘Two Faces of Faith’. Religious freedom politics tends to oppose ‘bad religion’ which instils sectarianism, illiberal practices and requires to be governed to ‘good religion’ which sees religion as a global public good that plays a positive role in conflict mediation, humanitarian aid, and helping human rights and transitional justice campaigners (p. 24). US Christian faith-based organisations have been influential in promoting this approach as exemplified in the case of the Sahrawi refugees. Building on the work of Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2014),i Hurd shows how Sahrawi refugees have actively developed an image of ‘ideal refugees’ in order to fit the international community’s expectation to work with ‘tolerant’ communities committed to religious freedom and interfaith dialogue (p. 23). Hurd unpacks very aptly the global governance of religion under US hegemony through three heuristics. First expert religion, which is ‘religion construed by those who generate policy-relevant knowledge about religion in various contexts’ (p. 8); lived religion namely ‘religion as practiced by everyday individuals and groups as they interact with a variety of religious authorities, rituals, texts, and institutions and seek to navigate and make sense of their lives, connections with others, and place in the world’ (p. 8). Governed religion refers to ‘religion as construed by those in positions of political and religious power’ (p.8). Although these categories could have been beter theorised and correlated, there are nonetheless useful to approach religion in international relations. In Chapter 3, Hurd cautions advocates of international religious freedom who tend to over-simplify minority situations and categorise groups according to their religious rights, instead of their social, economic status. The case of the Rohingya, perceived as a Muslim minority in Myanmar, are in fact persecuted due to ‘complex and multifaceted’ factors which are ‘ethnic, racial, economic, political, postcolonial and national’ is discussed extensively (p. 46). Hurd argues that the politics of religious freedom run the risk of privileging some faith communities with legitimacy and credibility while marginalising others. Chapter 4 reviews the politics of US ‘religious engagement’ developed by the US State Department, US federal agencies such as USAID but also the US military. The case of the Alevis in Turkey and how the European Court of Human Rights’ jurisprudence and Turkish policy have led to define Alevis as a religious minority is discussed at length in Chapter 5. This empirically rich chapter shows that this has overlooked ‘the deep multiplicity of Alevism as a lived tradition, while reinforcing the state’s capacity to classify and govern its citizens as religious subjects’ (p. 87).
The three books provide noteworthy contributions in researching and theorising the role of religion and secularism in international relations. The claims are empirically grounded and will help students, academics and practitioners to consider more thoroughly how religion and secularism permeate and impact international relations Three main themes tie the books together, some of which are under-explored. First, religion is constructed by power. Although this is not a major innovation given that the Iranian revolution proved that religion is a powerful soft power instrument, the books under study innovatively discuss religion as constructed by Western secular powers. If for Gutkowski the strength of a secular habitus is unconscious, Bosco shows that secularism is a survival strategy that securitizes religion to safeguard national security. It is used by states ‘to define and shape collective identities and practices, maintain the boundaries of political obligation, and form alliances for national security’ (Bosco, 2014:22) In
showing that the US-led international politics of religious freedom are conducive to further inequalities and polarisation, Hurd also hints towards the role of hegemony and power politics
The way religion is conceived by the US as a Christian secular power in international relations matter. Second, although underdeveloped in the books under study, post-colonial legacies seem to matter greatly in the way secularism and religion interact in global politics, and more specifically in relation to Islam Although Gutkowski briefly discusses the orientalist roots of European warfare, Bosco’s necessarily lead the reader to wonder whether post-colonial legacies in the UK and France might explain the relative success of religious engagement. There is indeed ample evidence that ‘colonialism never left Europe unaffected and is still part of European reality’ (Kinnvall, 2016: 153) It would have been relevant to discuss whether history still frames laïcité leaving ‘no space for postcolonial subjectivities’ nor for ‘a more truly multicultural, diverse and hybrid Europe’ (Kinnvall, 2016: 162) Lastly one missing perspective is to what extent does the ‘revival’ of religion and Western interest for governing religion and gaining more expertise tells us about the secular-liberal identity of Europe and the United States Except for Gutkowksi who develops a more nuanced analysis of the secular British habitus, it would have been useful to the reader to know what these developments mean for Western values. Are Western values translating in the defence of Christian faith and communities worldwide, as suggested by Hurd? Is Western secularism being challenged and reexamined critically, and if so is it taking a post-secular outlook? Or is religious engagement, in the case of Europe for instance, a way to further consolidate European secular identity?
Sarah Wolff Lecturer in Public Policy
School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London United Kingdom
s.wolff@qmul.ac.uk
References
European External Action Service (2016). Religion in International Diplomacy, Promoting Religious Literacy, accessed on 3rd April 2017 at https://eeas.europa.eu/csdp-missionsoperations/eutm-rca/10373/religion-in-international-diplomacy-promoting-religiousliteracy_ar
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2014). The ideal refugees: gender, Islam, and the Sahrawi politics of survival. Syracuse University Press.
Cohran Bech, E. and J. Snyder (2011). ‘Conclusion. Religion’s contribution to International Relations Theory’. In: Snyder, J. (Ed). Religion and International Relations Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 200-209p.
Kinnvall, C. (2016). The Postcolonial has Moved into Europe: Bordering, Security and EthnoCultural Belonging. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 54(1), 152-168.
Mogherini, F. (2015). Remarks by Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union and Vice-President of the European Commission, Conference ‘Call to Europe V: Islam in Europe’, 24th June 2015, accessed on 3. April 2017 at http://collections.internetmemory.org/haeu/content/20160313172652/http://eeas.europa.eu/state ments-eeas/docs/150624islamfepsdeliv.pdf
Wolff, S. (2015),‘U.S. and EU Engagement with Islamists in the Middle East and North Africa’, Transatlantic Academy,PaperSeries,2014-15,NO.3