Research On Religion » al Qaeda

Religious Liberty and Violent Religious Extremism

tonygill — Sun, 05 Mar 2017 09:00:32 +0000

Can religious liberty serve as an antidote to religious violence extremism? This was the question posed to a panel of four scholars at a symposium sponsored by the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs (Georgetown University). Thomas Farr, the current director of the Religious Freedom Institute, moderates a lively discussion that includes Daniel Philpott (Notre Dame), William Inboden (UT-Austin), Allen Hertzke (Oklahoma), and Sahar Aziz (Texas A&M). The discussion ranges widely with a focus on human rights, the Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood and the possibility of democratic governance. Prof. Dan Philpott begins the conversation by noting an empirical pattern between the lack of religious liberty and violent extremism that has arisen amongst Islamic nations in recent decades, but cautions individuals against thinking this relationship is related to Islam per se. Instead, he places an emphasis on the lack of freedom and democratic governance. Prof. Inboden then turns the discussion to the issue of radicalization and terrorism, pointing out that the U.S. has not yet developed an effective policy of counter-radicalization. Thomas Farr then turns to Dr. Hertzke who argues there is a strong empirical linkage between religious repression and violence. Prof. Sahar Aziz then joins in to clarify some of the dimensions of what “terrorism” means and asserts that religious freedom is actually connected to a wide range of other freedoms. The discussion takes off from there and includes a number of interesting theoretical and empirical observations. An audience question & answer period follows the interchange of scholars. Recorded: November 15, 2016.

Religious Freedom Institute.

Video of the panel discussion on YouTube.

Thomas Farr’s bio at the Religious Freedom Institute.

Daniel Philpott’s bio at the University of Notre Dame.

William Inboden’s bio at the University of Texas, Austin.

Allen Hertzke’s bio at the University of Oklahoma.

Sahar Aziz’s bio at Texas A&M University.

RELATED PODCASTS

Is Religious Freedom Good for Growth? A Panel Discussion.

Religious Liberty & Economic Prosperity: A Panel Discussion.

Religious Freedom & Political Flourishing: A Panel Discussion.

Proselytism, Humanitarianism, & Development: A Panel Discussion.

Proselytism, Social Stability, & Development: A Panel Discussion.

Dan Philpott on Defending Religious Freedom.

Dan Philpott on Religious Resurgence and Democratization.

William Inboden on Religious Liberty, Foreign Policy, and the Arab Spring.

Allen Hertzke on Religious Liberty.

Thomas Farr on Religion, Religious Liberty, and Foreign Policy.

Monica Toft on Religion, Terrorism, & Civil War.

John Owen on Confronting Political Islam, Historical Lessons.

Sean Everton on Dark Networks.

David Patel on Religion & Social Order in Iraq.

Eli Berman on Religious Terrorism.

Matthew Derrick on the Geography of the Umma (Encore Presentation)

tonygill — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 06:35:24 +0000

As the staff at Research on Religion takes a short break to upgrade some equipment and catch up on other duties, please enjoy this “best of…” episode from our archives.

Is the Islamic notion of “the umma” — i.e., the general community of Muslims — consistent with the modern concept of the nation-state and territorial sovereignty? We discuss this issue with Prof. Matthew Derrick, an assistant professor of geography at Humboldt State University, and author of “Containing the Umma?: Islam and the Territorial Question” that recently appeared in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (see link below). Reacting to scholars such as Berenard Lewis, Samuel Huntington, and other scholars associated with the “cultural turn in geography,” Prof. Derrick argues that territory remains an important defining concept in how people organize their life even among religious believers who belong to a transnational faith. Our discussion starts out with a short detour to Tatarstan where Matthew has conducted extensive fieldwork and he lays out what is unusual about that area within Russia. He also corrects Tony on his misunderstanding of tartar sauce. We then move on to a definition of “the umma,” an essential theological concept within Islam that represents the community of all believers. This raises the question of whether a transnational faith can be squared with the territorial state that dominates our world system. Matthew takes us on a tour of the issue of territorialism and how it evolved, with the Peace of Westphalia marking an important milestone in how we conceive of nation states in the modern world. Tony presses Matthew on his more ideational notion of statehood that revolves around issues of sovereignty (e.g., cuius regio eius religio) as composed to a more political economic approach to defining territory based upon the ability to tax a population. This discussion takes us askance of the religious question for awhile, but it is very important in understanding how modern scholars view the compatability or incompatability of Islam with modern territorial states. Matthew reviews the thinking of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis who do not see Islam as being compatible with our modern state system and then shares his critiques of these two scholars bringing us to a discussion of how European imperialism carved borders into the Islamic world. We investigate the rise of pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism, including the attempts by thinkers such as Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and Sayyid Qutb to craft a general Islamic identity. Examples of how these attempts have fared are examined including work by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Pashtun movement within Pakistan, the nationalism that seems apparent in the Arab Spring and how Iran has supported Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan. We close by revisiting the area of Tatarstan that has appeared to be able to manage well its regional territory within Russia despite its ethnic and religious pluralism. Recorded: January 25, 2013.

“Containing the Umma? Islam and the Territorial Question,” by Matthew Derrick in the Interndisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (free with registation).

RELATED PODCASTS

Nathan Brown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

William Inboden on Religious Liberty, Foreign Policy, and the Arab Spring.

Monica Toft on Religion, Terrorism, and Civil War.

Daniel Philpott on Religious Resurgence and Democracy.

Sean Everton on Religion & Dark Networks (Encore Presentation)

tonygill — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 16:06:37 +0000

While the cast and crew of RoR takes a short spring break, we present you with one of our favorite episodes from deep in our archives. Remember, we have over 225 episodes shelved in our library, so please feel free to search or browse to find a topic that might be of interest to you. We will return next week with some new tasty morsels.

Dark networks are clandestine organizations that often, but not always, engage in nefarious behavior. Over the past several decades, scholars and minitary strategists have become increasingly interested in how these dark networks operate and how they can be disrupted. Prof. Sean Everton, assistant professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), discusses how he has used network theory to understand such clandestine organizations. We begin by chatting about how a graduate student in sociology with no military background ended up at the NPS and also what the NPS is all about, including who the students are and what they are taught. We then go on to define “dark networks,” noting that although they are mostly associated with nefarious activities such as drug smuggling or terrorism, sometimes such underground organizations can have beneficial purposes. As for the latter, Prof. Everton points to the efforts of Catholic nuns to shelter Jewish children in Germany during the Holocaust. We then discuss how and why religious groups often enhance the effectiveness of dark networks, noting the work of Larry Iannaccone and Eli Berman on this subject. We then turn to Prof. Everton’s research with Nancy Roberts on how such networks can be disrupted, focusing on two general strategies: kinetic and non-kinetic. The former (kinetic) strategy includes the direct targeting and (often violent) removal of key individuals from networks with the intent of disrupting its operation. We also talk about how militaries around the world are trained to identify and break apart dark networks, a process known as “capacity bulding.” The non-kinetic approach to network disruption includes various tactics such as psychological operations, misinformation campaigns, institution building, and the rehabilitation of members within these dark networks. Our conversation finishes with a few observations on one of Sean’s other passions, baseball. Recorded: December 13, 2011.

Common Operational Research Environment (CORE) Lab on Facebook.

God, Politics, and Baseball – Sean Everton’s personal blog.

RELATED PODCASTS

Sean Everton on the Jesus Seminar.

Eli Berman on Religious Terrorism.

Larry Iannaccone on Sacrifice & Stigma, and the Economics of Religion.

Monica Toft on Religion, Violence, and Civil War.

Ron Hassner on Sacred Space and Conflict.

Ann Wainscott on the Politics of Islam in Morocco.

Byron Johnson on More God, Less Crime.

Ani Sarkissian on Religious Liberty in the Post-Soviet World

tonygill — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 08:00:46 +0000

Help us get to 400 likes by May on our Facebook Fan Page, where you can see your host — Tony Gill — wearing a traditional Kyrgyzstan hat whilst in his normal cowboy garb!

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 heralded what many thought would be a new era of liberty in a region of the world that has known little freedom for most of its history. However, many of the new regimes that emerged from the Soviet rubble have slipped back into autocracy. We review these political developments and what it has meant for religious freedom in the region with Prof. Ani Sarkissian, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University. Our discussion begins with some reflections on the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the decade of optimism that it ushered in to the former Soviet world. Prof. Sarkissian then discusses the “creeping authoritarianism” that has beset the region over the past decade or so, focusing on Russia as a classic example of what is occuring in other regions while also highlighting some of the differences in regime types that have emerged. Ani mentions that while most scholars have spent time examining how elections and party systems have been manipulated by aspiring autocrats, looking at how groups in civil society — namely religious organizations — are treated is also a first indication of where the government is headed. She reviews four different patterns of church-state relations that impact religious liberty: 1) states repressing all religions; 2) states repressing all but one faith tradition; 3) states repressing some religions but not others; and 4) states who appear to have wide-ranging religious freedom. To explain why such variation has emerged, Ani focuses both on factors affecting the religious composition of society, the nature of the authoritarian regime, and the historical church-state relations that existed prior to the Soviet Union and that emerged during Soviet domination. She reviews a typical country in each of these categories letting us know what is happening in countries such as Uzbekistan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Albania. Tony notes that he recently met with a Kyrgy delegation interested in implementing religious freedom policies and that he was given a traditional Kyrgy hat that he has to this day. (A picture of Tony wearing this hat with his favorite Western waistcoat can be viewed on our Facebook Fan Page.) We finish with Ani’s thoughts about the future of the region and whether there is reason for optimism or pessimism. Recorded: March 6, 2013.

RELATED LINKS

Ani Sarkissian’s home page at Michigan State University.

Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War, by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way (mentioned during the podcast).

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty, by Anthony Gill (mentioned during the podcast with some prodding).

RELATED PODCASTS

Catherine Wanner on Religion in Russia.

Jonathan Fox on Religion & State around the World.

Karrie Koesel on Religion & Politics in China.

Thomas Farr on Religion, Religious Liberty, and Diplomacy.

Timothy Shah on the Case for Religious Liberty.

Monica Toft on Religion, Terrorism, and Civil War.

Daniel Philpott on Religious Resurgence & Democratization.

Kevin Cooney on Religion and Rule of Law in China.

Allen Hertzke on Religious Liberty.

Matthew Derrick on the Geography of the Umma

tonygill — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:00:36 +0000

“Containing the Umma? Islam and the Territorial Question,” by Matthew Derrick in the Interndisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (free with registation).

RELATED PODCASTS

Nathan Brown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

William Inboden on Religious Liberty, Foreign Policy, and the Arab Spring.

Monica Toft on Religion, Terrorism, and Civil War.

Daniel Philpott on Religious Resurgence and Democracy.

Sean Everton on Dark Networks

tonygill — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:00:48 +0000

Common Operational Research Environment (CORE) Lab on Facebook.

God, Politics, and Baseball – Sean Everton’s personal blog.

RELATED PODCASTS

Eli Berman on Religious Terrorism.

Monica Toft on Religion, Violence, and Civil War.

Ron Hassner on Sacred Space and Conflict.

Byron Johnson on More God, Less Crime.

Monica Toft on Religion, Terrorism, and Civil War

tonygill — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:00:38 +0000

A week before the 10th anniversay of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Prof. Monica Duffy Toft of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government joins us to discuss what we have learned about religiously-motivated violence over the past decade. This podcast represents our second discussion on the book God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (co-authored with Daniel Philpott and Timothy Shah), the first being focused on the role of religion in promoting democracy. Our attention here turns to why religious groups and individuals would be prompted to violence. The discussion is far-ranging, looking not only at Islamic terrorism, but includes an examination of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, Hindu nationalism in India, and the influence of Buddhism on the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Prof. Toft provides definition of terrorism and “informal violence,” the latter which encompasses such “spontaneous” events as ethn0-religious riots. She argues that looking at, and including, informal violence in the analysis of terrorism is crucial for understanding the phenomenon of religiously-motivated violence. Prof. Toft lays out her explanation for the increasing salience of religious violence, focusing both on institutional factors such as how states regulate religious organizations and the importance of political theologies. The confluence of these institutional and ideological factors helps explain why religious terrorism and civil war has increased since the 1970s. Our conversation also considers the recent rampage of Anders Behring Breivik in Norway. We also discuss the role of religion in civil wars such as Sudan, Yugoslavia and other parts of the world. Prof. Toft finishes the interview with her thoughts on whether religious violence is likely to subside in the future. Recorded: August 29, 2011.

RELATED LINKS

Monica Duffy Toft’s website at Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government.

Initiative on Religion in International Affairs at the Belfer Center (Harvard University).

God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics, by Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah.

Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars, by Monica Duffy Toft.

The Geography of Ethnic Conflict: Identity, Interests, and Territory, by Monica Duffy Toft.

RELATED PODCASTS

Dan Philpott on Religious Resurgence and Democratization.

Eli Berman on Religious Terrorism.

Ron Hassner on Sacred Spaces and Conflict.

Nathan Brown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Eli Berman on Religious Terrorism

tonygill — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:00:09 +0000

Prof. Eli Berman, professor of economics at UC-San Diego and Research Director of International Security Studies at the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, discusses his new book Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (MIT Press). Contrary to popular notions that suicide bombers are pyschologically-distressed or economically-disadvantagted individuals, Prof. Berman discusses how radical religious groups are rational in their selection of tactics. Using Laurence Iannaccone’s theory of strict religious clubs, Berman argues that radical religious groups excel at providing social services to their members, while simultaneously filtering out “free riders.” Here we discuss the case of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel as well as the Amish. We then discuss how successful insurgency operations require that groups limit membership defection, since a defector could easily compromise the secrecy of an entire organization. Adherence to strict religious requirements (e.g., intensive religious training, dietary restrictions, distinct clothing) provides behavioral signals about the loyalty of an individual to a group, making radical religious sects an ideal recruiting ground for rebels. We do not discuss the particular grievances of various terrorist organizations; rather the discussion focuses on the organizational aspects of terrorism and insurgency. Recorded: August 3, 2010.

RELATED LINKS

Eli Berman’s website at UCSD (includes various working papers).

Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism by Eli Berman (Amazon.com)

Radical, Religious, and Violent website (with reviews and teaching material).

Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.