Mona Kanwal Sheikh

How does religion matter? Pathways to religion in International Relations

This article contributes to the growing subfield of research on religion and International Relations (IR) by discussing ways to take substantial and sui generis aspects of religion into account. It is argued that IR scholars need more critical methodological and conceptual reflection on how to integrate religion in order to navigate between two typical analytical positions: either focusing on the instrumental relevance of religion only or treating religion as an unchangeable meta-category and delinking it from its practitioners or context. The article first discusses why there is a need to be attentive to distinctive aspects of religion and then moves on to scrutinise three IR-relevant pathways to include these aspects of religion in analysis, namely religion as belief community, religion as power, and religion as speech act. It appears that future research along these lines can contribute significantly to the way IR scholars habitually think about key issues such as parameters of behaviour, standards of legitimacy, and the dynamics of conflicts.

The Religious Challenge to Securitisation Theory

This article deals with the definition of the religion sector of securitisation theory, and seeks to strengthen the contribution of securitisation theory to the study of religious violence and doctrinal conflicts. It is argued that the original elaboration of the security sector leans too heavily on a West-centric notion of religion as apolitical and of faith as a distinction between the sacred and the profane. These leanings limit the theory’s global applicability, consequently leading to a challengeable formula for the desecuritisation of conflicts with religious dimensions. Two alternative ways of integrating religion within a securitisation framework are suggested, one of which is based on a multidimensional concept of religion that embraces the different dimensions of religion defended by religio-political actors around the world. The second way focuses on doctrines in order to embrace equally the securitisation of doctrines conventionally designated as secular. It is also maintained that convincing reasons exist for treating religion/doctrine as a separate sector, despite the fact that religion appears to have cross-sectoral relevance. A religion/doctrine sector has strong defining characteristics that, in addition to the referent object(s), also include the criteria for survival and successful securitisation, the narrative structure of religious/doctrinal securitisations and the proclivity of religion/doctrine towards macrosecuritisation.

Recursion or rejection? Securitization theory faces Islamist violence and foreign religions

This article contributes to the larger debate on how to increase the cultural sensitivity in IR analyses, and particularly how the securitization theory can face some of the criticism relating to i...

Introduction: On Sacred or Secular Grounds and How Would We Know?

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11 2001 had a grave impact on the way the conflict dynamics in world politics have been shaped, structured and interpreted since then. The invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), the US drone programs launched during the first decade of the 00’s in countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and the more recent interventions in Libya (2011), and Mali (2013) have all at some point been related to the concern of combatting international terrorism. To fight or prevent international terrorism still appears as a top-priority for the great powers of the West and questions about the role of religion in explaining the motivations and occurrences of terrorist acts still remain topical. The shockwaves that went through the world in the wake of the 2001 assaults on US territory also influenced the way we as scholars began to look at the world. While blackand-white enemy images were inflated on the political stages portraying the perpetrators and their co-ideologists as nothing less than devilish, in academia the event also created a momentum for revisiting the conceptual schemes that we often use to make sense of the world and human behavior. Scholars of international relations were particularly affected by the event, since it strongly pushed religion into their eyesight – a category that had never made it into the mainstream of scholarly attention on par with the IR disciplines’ central concepts such as power, sovereignty, national interest etc. The scholarly attention was also drawn by the fact that in many European countries as well as in the US the new threat from religious extremists, Muslim fanatics and fundamentalists was debated fiercely and the role of religion or excessive religion became part of both domestic

Sacred Pillars of Violence: Findings from a Study of the Pakistani Taliban

In what ways does religion matter as justification for violence? Based on a larger study of the Pakistani Taliban and their communication and recruitment materials, this article presents some of its main findings in a condensed form. It summarizes the lessons learned about the various roles religion plays in providing justification for taking up arms, namely: as an object to be defended; as a threat; as the purpose of armed struggle; as a (blurred) limit on war; and, finally, as imagery and myth. Although this article specifically looks at the case of the Pakistani Taliban and their religious justifications of violence, the findings might also find resonance in other cases of violent religious movements. The final sections of the article briefly discuss the potential implications of the findings for an overall understanding of the ‘nature’ of religious violence.