Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T04:26:22.148Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Daniel Philpott
Daniel Philpott
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Get access

Extract

The attacks of September 11, 2001, highlight the general absence of attention to religion in international scholarship. The absence is understandable, for it arises from the secularized nature of the authority structure of the international system, described here as the “Westphalian synthesis.” Over the past generation, though, the global rise of public religion has challenged several planks of the synthesis. The sharpest challenge is “radical Islamic revivalism,” a political theology that has its roots in the early twentieth century and that gave rise to al-Qaeda. If international relations scholars are to understand the events of September 11, they ought to devote more attention to the way in which radical Islamic revivalism and public religion shape international relations, sometimes in dramatic ways.

Type
The New Era in World Politics after September 11
Information
World Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , October 2002 , pp. 66 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion (San Francisco:Harper and Row, 1978Google Scholar); Cavanaugh, William, “'A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House'”: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State,” Modern Theology 11 (October 1995CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Griffiths, Paul, “The Very Idea of Religion,” First Things 103 (May 2000Google Scholar).

2 I have been influenced here by Clouser, Roy, Knowing with the Heart: Rekigious Experience and Belief in God (Downers Grove, Ill.:InterVarsity Press, 1999), esp. 11–42Google Scholar.

3 For an assessment of secularization, the concept, the phenomenon, and the literature, see Stark, Rodney, “Secularization, R.I.P.,” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

4 Davie, , “Believing without Belonging: Is This the Future of Religion in Britain?” Social Compass 37 (1990), 455CrossRefGoogle Scholar–69.

5 Martin, , A General Theory of Secularization (New York:Harper and Row, 1978), 69Google Scholar.

6 See Philpott, Daniel, Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2001), 9Google Scholar. The journals are International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, World Politics, and International Security.

7 See Orbis: A Journal of WorldAffairs 42 (Spring 1998); and Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2000). In the Millennium collection, a particularly strong perspective of religion's role in the discipline and the practice of international relations is Scott M. Thomas, “Taking Religious and Cultural Pluralism Seriously: The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation oflnternational Society.” See also the writings of Sohail Hashmi: Hashmi, “International Society and Its Islamic Malcontents,” Fletcher Forum 20 (Winter-Spring 1996); idem, “Interpreting the Islamic Ethics of War and Peace,” in Nardin, Terry, ed., The Ethics of War and Peace (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1996Google Scholar); idem, “Islamic Ethics in International Society,” in Mapel, David R. and Nardin, Terry, eds., International Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1998Google Scholar); Fox, Jonathan, “Religion as an Overlooked Element in International Relations,” International Studies Review 3, no. 3 (2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar); SAIS Review 18 (Summer-Fall 1998); and Rubin, Barry, “Religion and International Affairs,” Washington Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

8 See Huntington, , The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1996Google Scholar); idem, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993). The fact that Huntington's thesis was published in a semipopular journal (Foreign Affairs) and then by a trade press is indicative of how little attention international relations scholars in the field proper have accorded religion.

9 For scholarship that asserts the growing global role of religion in politics, see Appleby, R. Scott, The Ambivalence ofthe Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, Md.:Rowman and Lit-tlefield, 2000Google Scholar); Gerges, Fawaz A., America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Hunter, Shireen, The Future of Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations or Peaceful Coexistence? (Westport, Conn.:Praeger, 1998Google Scholar); Berger, Peter L., The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Washington, D.C.:Eerdmansk Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999Google Scholar); Markjuergensmeyer, , The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1993Google Scholar); Kepel, Gilles, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence ofIslam, Christianity, andfudaism in the Modern World (University Park:Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994Google Scholar); Barber, Benjamin, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World (New York:Times Books, 1995Google Scholar); Friedman, Thomas L., The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York:Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999Google Scholar); Rudolph, Susanne and Piscatori, James, Transnational Religion and Fading States (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1997Google Scholar); Casanova, Jose, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1994Google Scholar); and the essays in Appleby, Scott and Marty, Martin, eds., The Fundamentalist Project (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1991Google Scholar, 1993,1994,1995). For an earlier exception to the general secularization of international relations scholarship, see also Bozeman, Adda, Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1960Google Scholar).

10 See Strayer, J. R., The Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1970Google Scholar); Reynolds, Susan, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1984Google Scholar); Wilks, Michael, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, U.K.:At the University Press, 1964Google Scholar); Ullman, Walter, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (New York:Barnes and Noble, 1966Google Scholar).

11 Berenger, Jean, History ofthe Habsburg Empire, 1273–1700 (London:Longman, 1994Google Scholar); Kann, Robert A., A History ofthe Habsburg Empire (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1974), 1–24Google Scholar; Koenigsberger, H. G., Estates and Revolutions: Essays in Early Modern European History (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1971Google Scholar).

12 Holsti, , Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–1989 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1991), 46–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 The locus classicus for the concept of international society is Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (New York:Columbia University Press, 1977CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For a good discussion of religious pluralism in international society, see Thomas (fn. 7), 819–24.

14 Quoted in Maland, David, Europe in the Seventeenth Century (London:Macmillan, 1966), 16Google Scholar.

15 “Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty),” in Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Northport, N.Y.:Costello Publishing Company, 1975Google Scholar).

16 For broadly material arguments, see Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London:N.L.B., 1974Google Scholar); Downing, Brian, The Military Revolution and Political Change (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1992Google Scholar); North, Douglass C. and Thomas, R. P., The Rise of the Western World (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Spruyt, Hendrik, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1994Google Scholar); Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and European States, 990–1992 (Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1992Google Scholar). For my argument that material explanations are insufficient and that Protestant ideas were a central cause, see Philpott (fn. 6), 97–149.

17 More specifically, it was Protestants of the magisterial Reformation who took this course-Lutherans, Calvinists, the Church of England. In fact, the Reformation was a spate of diverse movements. Some, like the Anabaptists, separated themselves from temporal authority as far as they could.

18 See Vincent, R. J., Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1974Google Scholar).

19 See Hoffmann, Stanley, “An American Social Science: International Relations,” in Janus and Min-erva: Essays in the Theory and Practice of International Politics (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1987Google Scholar).

20 See Meinecke, Friedrich, Machiavellianism: The Doctrine of Raison d'etat and Its Place in Modem History (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1984Google Scholar).

21 See Waltz, , Theory ofInternational Politics (Lexington, Mass.:Addison-Wesley, 1979Google Scholar). Michael Doyle explains the similarity between Waltz and Hobbes, both “structural” realists, in Doyle, Michael, Ways of War and Peace (New York:W. W. Norton, 1997), 111Google Scholar–36. On Hobbes, see also a section of an essay by Stanley Hoffmann on Rousseau; Hoffmann, “Rousseau on War and Peace,” in Hoffman (fn. 19), 25–36.

22 Doyle (fn. 21), 93–110.

23 For an excellent recent study of Morgenthau's early influences and intellectual formation, see Frei, Christoph, Hans]. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography (Baton Rouge:Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 98–102Google Scholar.

24 Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince and the Discourses (New York:Modern Library, 1950Google Scholar).

25 Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Irony of American History (New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952Google Scholar); idem, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953Google Scholar).

26 See Donnelly, Jack, “Twentieth-Century Realism,” in Nardin, Terry and Mapel, David, ed., Traditions ofInternational Ethics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992Google Scholar); Forde, Steven, “Classical Realism,” in Nardin, Terry and Mapel, David, eds., Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992Google Scholar).

27 Waltz (fn. 21).

28 See Doyle (fn. 21), 205–311; and Wolfers, Arnold and Martin, Laurence, The Anglo-American Tradition: Readingsfrom Thomas More to Woodrow Wilson (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1956Google Scholar).

29 See Katzenstein, Peter J., ed., The Culture ofNational Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York:Columbia University Press, 1996Google Scholar).

30 For a survey description of the ambitions of the secularization thesis, see Stark (fn. 3).

31 Berger (fn. 9), 2.

32 Stark (fn. 3), 253–60.

33 On this trend, see Casanova (fn. 9).

34 James Turner Johnson, “Jihad and Just War,” First Things (June-July 2002).

35 See, for instance, Fouad Ajami, “What the Muslim World Is Watching,” New York Times Magazine, November 18, 2001. See also Zogby International's “Impressions of America” poll of April 11, 2002.

36 Hashmi (fn. 7, “International Society and Its Islamic Malcontents,” 1996), 21.

37 Hashmi (fn. 7, “Interpreting the Islamic Ethics,” 1996), 223–24.

38 Hashmi (fn. 7, “International Society and Its Islamic Malcontents,” 1996), 17.

39 Doran, Michael Scott, “Somebody Else's Civil War: Ideology, Rage, and the Assault on America,” in Rose, Gideon and Hoge, James F. Jr., eds., How Did This Happen? Terrorism andthe New War (New York:Council on Foreign Relations, 2001), 34Google Scholar.

40 Hashmi (fn. 7, “Interpreting the Islamic Ethics,” 1996), 223.

41 Armstrong, Karen, The Battlefor God:A History of Fundamentalism (New York:Ballantine Books, 2000), 236Google Scholar–38.

42 Ibid., 220–23; Tibi, Bassam, The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Order (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1998Google Scholar), 58; Russell Watson, “An Army of Eternal Victims,” Newsweek, March 15,1993,2.

43 Karen Armstrong, Islam:A Short History (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 170.

44 Shepard, William E., Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and CriticalAnalysis of Social Justice in Islam (New York:Brill, 1996), xlGoogle Scholar.

45 Armstrong (fn. 41), 241.

46 Arjomand, Said Amir, “Unity and Diversity in Islamic Fundamentalism,” in Marty, Martin and Appleby, Scott, eds., Fundamentalisms Comprehended (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1995), 184Google Scholar.

47 For more on Qutb's thought, see Tibi (fn. 42), 56–63; Armstrong (fn. 41), 238–44; Shepard, (fn. 44), ix-lv; Mousalli, Ahmad S., Radical Islamic Fundamentalism: The Ideological and Political Discourse of Sayyid Qutb (Beirut:American University of Beirut, 1992Google Scholar); Kepel (fn. 9), 18–22.

48 Ibid (fn. 42), 138,152.

49 Ibid., 144–46.

50 Ibid., 101,140–46.

51 Ibid., 55.

52 Kepel (fn. 9), 20.

53 Arjomand (fn. 46), 185–86.

54 Roy, , “Afghanistan: An Islamic War of Resistance,” in Marty, Martin and Appleby, Scott, eds., Fundamentalisms and the State, no. 3 (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1993Google Scholar); idem, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990Google Scholar).

55 Doran (fn. 39), 33–43.

56 Williams, Paul L., Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror (Parsippany, N.J.:Alpha Books, 2002), 76Google Scholar,

57 Bergen, Peter L., Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden (New York:Free Press, 2001), 196Google Scholar.

58 The most prominent constructivist work is Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar). See also the collection in Katzenstein (fn. 29).

59 Keck, Margaret and Sikkink, Kathryn, Activists beyond Borders:Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1998Google Scholar).

60 The locus classicus here is Bull (fn. 13).

61 See Garrett, Geoffrey and Weingast, Barry R., “Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Constructing the European Community's Internal Market,” in Goldstein, Judith and Keohane, Robert O., eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1993Google Scholar)