Many scholars have argued that orthodox Muslims harbor attitudes that are more economically communitarian and politically illiberal, since individuals are seen as embedded within a larger community that places a premium on social order. Yet most studies have ignored the potential of Islam as an ideological platform for political reformers. Religion in general and Islam in particular has mostly been treated as a predictor rather than a derivative of political-economic preferences. This article suggests that, in the absence of credible secular political ideologies and representative political mechanisms, reformist-minded individuals are likely to use religion as a political platform for change. When Muslims are a minority in a repressive non-Muslim society, Islamic orthodoxy can serve as a political platform for politically and economically liberal forces. We test these conjectures with original micro-level data from the Russian North Caucasus and find strong support for them.

In recent years, measures have been taken to ban the use of international legal principles in state courts. While these international laws vary in terms of the specific restrictions they place on state legal practices, many of these laws have been aimed implicitly or explicitly at banning Sharia law practices. While dozens of states have attempted to pass anti-Sharia policies, thus far, only eight have been successful. In this article, we apply a policy diffusion framework to help explain the agenda placement and adoption of these measures. We find that both internal state determinants and external regional diffusion factors influence the interstate agenda placement and adoption of anti-Sharia practices. However, the regional effect is negative, meaning that these policies follow an atypical diffusion pattern. This study adds to the growing body of literature that examines the diffusion of controversial morality policies.

The existing studies on the determinants of the regulation of religion are based on the theories of modernization, clash of civilizations, and economics of religion, which do not properly take into account the potential impact of the political environment. The current study aims to address this gap in the research. It discusses some of the ways in which the differences in the political environment in autocratic and democratic countries might influence the regulation of religion. The results of the descriptive analysis for ca. 150 countries show that there is more variation in regulation of religion among the autocratic countries than among the democratic ones, and that in the autocratic countries there is a clear association between patterns of legitimation and regulation. The results on the association between the constitutional structure of the democratic countries and regulation of religion are ambiguous.

This article examines one aspect of current disagreements over immigration reform — Anglo-Saxon nativist rhetoric — through the lens of civil religion. It argues that the idea of America as a “New Jerusalem” can sometimes take on a nativist and even ethno-centric cast. The analysis uses two case studies to articulate the ways in which this nativism can play out in terms of civil religion: Patrick J. Buchanan's folding of immigration concerns into his culture wars rhetoric and some of the far-right rhetoric coming out of the 2016 presidential race in America. This sort of rhetoric can also be found surrounding President Obama's executive action on immigration. The analysis shows that these fears combine a view of American “chosenness” with a sense of existential threat generated by rapid demographic changes. However, while this rhetoric is grounded in civil religion, it is also a symptom of the corruption of the prophetic core of American civil religion.

Through the example of contemporary Buddhist nationalist groups in Myanmar, this article draws attention to the cultural authorization of religio-political discourse. The symbolic power of a monk's pronouncements is amplified because of the cultural reverence attached to his vocation as a Buddhist monk, even without doctrinal references or ritual practices. A monk's cultural position within Burmese Buddhism particularly strengthens his authority when he frames his preaching and actions as a defense of Buddhism. Without attention to these cultural institutions and the religious authority they confer, the resonance and influence of monks' words cannot be completely understood. Furthermore, without directly responding to the logic of these authorizing discourses, responses intended to counter the violence emerging from Buddhist nationalism and promote tolerance will be ineffective.

This article aims at explaining religious actors' influence on democratic transition in Mali (1987–1992). It argues that it takes more than political theology to effectively influence democratization processes. Although Muslim actors used their political theology during democratization, they had neither the organizational means nor the legitimization to convince others of their preferences for a post-authoritarian institutional set-up. They had very limited influence on the institutions that today are supposed to regulate the relations between religion and the state under democratic rule. In fact, this high path-dependency of institutional factors since the colonial era led to an informalization of non-liberal Muslim politics in the 2000s. It is likely that accepting Muslim actors' demands for institutionalized cooperation between the state and religion during democratic transition would have caused fewer problems for democracy in the long run. The article concludes with general lessons for the study of religion in democratization.

Religious Zionists have been the driving force behind the settlement project in Israel for the past 40 years. They often see settling in the Greater Land of Israel as a messianic activity. It might be thought that when state policy clashes with radical messianic movements, the result would be violent, bloody confrontations. This study seeks to explain why this has not been the case in Israel despite the dismantling of settlements in the Sinai and Gaza and the controversial Oslo process. Although there has been turmoil and resistance, most religious Zionists have refrained from serious violence. We suggest that a “theological-normative balance” prevents all-out de-legitimation of the state and life-threatening violence against it.