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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
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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

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References

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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.

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22 Doyle (fn. 21), 93–110.

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31 Berger (fn. 9), 2.

32 Stark (fn. 3), 253–60.

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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.

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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).

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

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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)