Religious Politics and Secular States: Egypt, India, and the United States

Notes

Notes Introduction Epigraph: Michael Sells, “Pilgrimage and ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ in Herzogovina.” 1. Cited in Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the Pharoah (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 192. 2. See, for example, Mark Juergensmeyer, Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to al-Qaeda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Similar arguments about religious activists and modernity can be found in Michael Mazarr, Unmodern Men in the Modern World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 3. By illiberal religion I am referring to interpretations of religious tradition that place an emphasis on scriptural literalism, conservative morality, and an exclusive claim on religious truth. 4. For a discussion of these trends in Malaysia and Pakistan, see Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). On Turkey, see M. Hakan Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). On Sudan, see Francis Deng, War of Visions: Conflicts of Identities in Sudan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1995). On Sri Lanka, see David Little, Sri Lanka: The Invention of Enmity (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1994). 5. In this book, I use religious fundamentalisms—admittedly a contentious term—to refer to those religiously inspired political movements that are defined by a commitment to a more central role of conservative or illiberal interpretations of religion in political life. The defining feature of fundamentalisms is the combination of religious and political motivations, which accounts for their dynamism and appeal. See Gabriel Almond, Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 6. “Liberal” in this context is used narrowly, to identify patterns of society that place a premium on individual liberty and are otherwise consistent with Enlightenment norms. 7. I am indebted to Zoya Hasan for both her terminology and her thoughts on this transformation. See Zoya Hasan, “Changing Orientation of the State and the Emergence of Majoritarianism in the 1980s,” in Communalism in India: History, Politics, and Culture, ed. K. N. Panniker (Delhi: Manohar, 1991). 8. I am indebted to Ahmer Nadeem Anwar, Delhi University, and David Little, Harvard University, for their thoughts on this topic. 260 Notes to Pages 5–19 9. Religion is defined here as “a complex of socially prescribed beliefs and practices relating to a realm of reality conceived as sacred.” Gianfranco Poggi, Forms of Power (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2001), p. 63. 10. Secularism is here defined narrowly, as a political doctrine that prescribes the separation of religious authority and political authority. This can be interpreted alternately as an hostility to religion, as official state neutrality, or as an inclusiveness that tolerates all religion in the public sphere. These distinctions are elaborated in chapter 1. See also Charles Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” in Secularism and Its Critics, ed. Rajeev Bhargava (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). 11. Liberal or “modernist” understandings of religion are defined by their tendency to read scripture as metaphor and not literal truth. They employ reason as a guide for interpreting religion and are more inclined toward religious pluralism. More on these distinctions are found in chapter 1. Salafist Islam is a literal reading of the tradition that looks to the early Muslim community as an example of piety. The term literally means “of the ancestors.” 12. A literalist, or Salafist, rendering of Islam based on the teaching of Mohammed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. 13. See Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vols. 1 and 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). 14. R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), p. 27. 15. The reference is to Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative Revolution,” in Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Geertz (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1963). 16. See James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds., Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 17. I am deeply indebted to David Little and Scott Appleby for their work in this field and for their theoretical insights, from which I have drawn heavily in writing this book. 18. Geertz makes a similar argument about what he refers to as “ideological re-traditionalization ” in Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in Ideology and Discontent, ed. David Apter (New York: Free...