Elizabeth S Hurd

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations

Acknowledgments xi CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 1 CHAPTER TWO: Varieties of Secularism 23 CHAPTER THREE: Secularism and Islam 46 CHAPTER FOUR: Contested Secularisms in Turkey and Iran 65 CHAPTER FIVE: The European Union and Turkey 84 CHAPTER SIX: The United States and Iran 102 CHAPTER SEVEN: Political Islam 116 CHAPTER EIGHT: Religious Resurgence 134 CHAPTER NINE: Conclusion 147 Notes 155 Select Bibliography 213 Index 237

The Political Authority of Secularism in International Relations

Secularism is an important source of political authority in International Relations theory and practice. Secularists identify something called ‘religion’ and separate it from the domains of the state, the economy and science. This separation facilitates a consensus which is sustained by a powerful yet historically contingent set of beliefs, including secularism as the realization of God’s will, secularism as the natural evolution toward universal morality and secularism as a normal consequence of economic modernization. Despite these aspirations, secularism is unequipped to serve as a universal model of public life, either domestically or internationally. The creation of the category of religion and its demarcation from politics is a highly politicized decision that is not subject to a final settlement, and the pretense of a final settlement exacerbates international conflict rather than diminishing it. The religion/politics negotiation is a fluid site of authority with complex relations to the state system, the global economy, international ethics and other more heavily theorized locations of power in international relations.

Negotiating Europe: the politics of religion and the prospects for Turkish accession

This article examines the cultural basis of European opposition to Turkish accession to the European Union (EU). Most observers depict the cultural and religious dimensions of the European debate over Turkish accession as a disagreement between those who see Europe as a Christian ‘club’ and those open to a more religiously pluralistic European identity. However, polls suggest that cultural and religiously based doubts about Turkish accession resonate with a much larger proportion of the European population than those who publicly defend the idea of an exclusivist ‘Christian’ Europe. Both secularists and Christian exclusivists (‘traditionalists’) express hesitations about Turkish membership:

Comparative secularisms and the politics of modernity: An introduction

In mid-nineteenth century England, George Holyoake coined the term “secularism” to name an orientation to life designed to attract both theists and atheists under its banner. Impatient with positions defined in opposition to traditional Christian belief, such as atheist, infidel, or dissenter, Holyoake dreamed of a new formation, rallying around the “work of human improvement,” that would not be splintered by these older divisions.1 He needed a positive philosophy, one that was not parasitic on what was being rejected. His 1854 Principles of Secularism aspired to give voice to such an alternate vision. Its signature features were its appeal to reason, nature, and experience and its passionate commitment to the amelioration of human life. Although it clearly differed from forms of traditional Christianity that invoked clerical or scriptural authorities or focused on supernatural means and otherworldly ends, secularism, as Holyoake fashioned it, was not the antithesis of religion or one side of a religion-secularism binary. It was a canopy large enough to house some forms of religion as it excluded others. Its capaciousness was one of its defining virtues.

Appropriating Islam: The Islamic Other in the Consolidation of Western Modernity

It is nearly impossible to find a contemporary map of the Mediterranean. Maps of southern Europe are easy to find, and one can purchase maps of Palestine, Israel and Egypt. North African maps, as well as continental African maps, abound. Maps of the Middle East, defined as Turkey, Egypt, and the countries to their east as far as the Indian border, are less prevalent, but available. Historical maps of the entire Mediterranean basin, of the Roman Empire, exist. Strangely, however, the only way to view the contemporary Mediterranean and surrounding countries as a whole is to look at a map of the Earth from space, in which political boundaries are invisible, trumped by the wide expanse of the Mediterranean, the ‘boot’ of Italy, and the stark contrast of the North Africa desert. This situation is not coincidental. It is symptomatic of a worldview that reinforces the perception of distance between the West and the Islamic world. It is a view that ‘serves to marginalize the Mediterranean world and accentuate the ancient break between its south-east and north-west.’ 1 It reinforces opposition between the West and Islam by postulating irreconcilable differences between them. Fawaz Gerges has attested to the power of this mindset in the Arab world today:

Politics of Sectarianism: Rethinking Religion and Politics in the Middle East

Allegations of sectarian violence and discrimination saturate popular and scholarly accounts of developments in the mena region, particularly in the wake of renewed violence in Syria and Iraq. These accounts should sound a warning bell to scholars of religion and politics. The discourse of sectarianism is a modern discourse of religion- in-politics authorized by particular authorities in particular times and places. It relies on a fixed and stable representation of the shifting roles played by that which is named as “religion” or “sect” in politics and society. The complex and often conflicting forces that come together in any given episode of violence or discrimination subvert the stable notions of sectarian motivation and causation that form the bedrock in which such accounts rest. This essay disaggregates and politicizes the discourse of sectarianism, drawing on examples from Egypt, Bahrain, and Israel. It argues for distinguishing between religious difference as construed by those in positions of power, and religious difference as construed and experienced — and at times downplayed or ignored — by individuals and communities that are subjected to, and shaped by, sectarian projects, policies, and narratives.

Politics of religious freedom in the Asia-Pacific: an introduction

Abstract This article introduces the main arguments of Beyond Religious Freedom and situates them in the context of this special issue on the politics of religious freedom in the Asia Pacific. It discusses the intensification of state-sponsored global religious interventionism that led me to write the book, and explains how the questions raised by the new global politics of religion came to seem urgent and important. It then presents the book’s central organizing framework of the ‘3 religions’ (expert, lived, and governed) as a set of heuristics for examining these co-productions of religion, law and politics. A final section weaves together insights from other contributors to this special issue with the claims of Chapter 4 of the book to explore the politics of religious freedom in the Asia-Pacific.

Narratives of de-secularization in international relations

ABSTRACT This article explores how a particular narrative of de-secularisation, the ‘restorative narrative,’ is shaping US foreign religious policy and practice. It develops two arguments about efforts to stabilize religion as an object of governance and restore it to international politics and public life. First, this narrative re-instantiates and energizes particular secular-religious and religious-religious divides in ways that echo the narratives of secularisation that it claims to challenge and transcend. Second, it contributes to the emergence of new forms of both politics and religion that are not only subservient to the interests of those in power but marginalize a range of dissenting and nonconforming ways of life. This has far-ranging implications for the politics of social difference and efforts to realize deep and multidimensional forms of democratization and pluralization. The argument is illustrated through discussions of recent developments at the US State Department, the evolving practices of US military chaplains, and the politics of foreign religious engagement in the context of the rise of Turkish Islamist conscientious objectors.

'Iran, in Search of a Nonsecular and Nontheocratic Politics'

The Iranian oppositional movement led reticently by Mir Hussein Moussavi and others in 2009 cannot be captured in a conceptual frame of secular versus religious politics. This was not a secularist opposition, which may help explain why Moussavi was received with suspicion and even disdain in some Western circles. Rather, Moussavi and the protesters offer a glimpse of a third path that departs from the politics of a rigid dichotomy between secularism and political Islam and, in doing so, leads toward alternative, and important, religion-political possibilities, not only for Iran but for other countries. Moussavi and his followers invoked a strand of Iranian politics that is often forgotten, swept away by the authoritarianism and violence of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime, combined with the regrettable tendency to write the history of the revolution from the victors’ perspective. This alternative merits attention at a historical moment when it is again vying for recognition.

After Religious Freedom

politics. While I agree with Hurd in the undesirability in ‘domesticating’ unestablished and local practices I am not sure if the alternative to domestication is ‘approaching these practices and histories on their own terms’. Local practices are to no extent less power ridden than global or official ones, no less exclusive or susceptible to the governing practices described by Hurd on a global level and she is right to point to the ‘risk [of] reifying and romanticizing lived religious practice’ (p. 16). If the aim is to access the unintelligible, I do not believe the framework of the ‘lived religion’ is the place to start, I do not believe it is the locus of the unestablished. The unestablished and unintelligible exist on every level of government, more or less easily overlooked. I will end with a more general point, which Hurd touches upon throughout the book, but which is almost intrinsic to work in critical political theory. And that is the difficulty to work, productively, with a deconstructed, historicized concept. How does one demarcate one’s field of study when the marcation sticks are all wobbly? How does one analyze a constantly moving target? One that moves through time? At one point in the book Hurd writes that ‘Religion is not just any category. It has a history’ (p. 121). The truth is that all categories have histories. But in addition to having a history they also carry histories and people’s self-narratives are heavily invested in them. They are therefore utterly hard to change. This, however, seems to be a challenge Hurd is ready to take on. ‘The challenge, then’, Hurd writes ‘is to signal an interest in a category, religion, which is legible to many, while also arguing for a different understanding of “it”’ (p. 6). Beyond Religious Freedom is, to me, therefore not only a book analyzing the workings of religious engagement, but actively intervening into it. This is a question of epistemological politics, part of the contentious politics outlined in the book.