Research On Religion » Peace of Westphalia

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).

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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.

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David Smith on Religion, International Relations, and Foreign Policy

tonygill — Sun, 25 May 2014 08:00:51 +0000

Does religion affect the way nations interact with one another? Does it affect foreign policy? And if so, why have scholars of international relations ignored the role of religion until recently? David Smith, a lecturer at the University of Sydney in the Department of Government and International Relations and a researcher in the United States Studies Program, provides us with an overview of how religion has played, and possibly still plays, a role in international relations and foreign policy.

We start out with an overview of the field of international relations (IR), a sub-discipline in political science (and one that stretches across other academic fields), and why scholars working in that area have, until recently, ignored religion. David takes us back to 1648 and the Peace of Westphalia to explain this general academic oversight. It is argue that since Western Europe essentially took the “religious question” off the table in the real of interstate conflict and diplomacy following the Thirty Year’s War, it was never considered to be a point of interest to scholars studying IR. Add to this the general tendency to favor materialist and realpolitik explanations in studying nation-states, and religion never seemed to be something interesting to study.

Things begin to change in the IR field with the 1979 Iranian Revolution. We note that although the Peace of Westphalia may have conditioned thinking about the role of religion (and ideas more generally) in diplomacy, the rest of the world really wasn’t party to this worldview. The general pattern of thinking in U.S. foreign policy prior to 1979 was that Islam would always be an ally to America in the battle against communism, thus the popular revolt that swept Islamists to power in Iran caught policymakers by surprise. Prof. Smith notes that the Iranian revolution has had the effect in the US State Department of creating a concern over popular uprisings with religious overtones. He illustrates this with the recent US reaction to the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.

After acknowledging that religious ideas, movements, and organizations need to be taken seriously by IR scholars and diplomats, we then discuss how religion might play a role in international affairs. This is where we pick up the work of Stephen Rock, Eric Patterson, and Andrew Preston, which was the focus of David’s recent review article in The Australian Journal of Political Science. Our first possible method whereby religion impacts diplomacy relates to lobbying. Groups like the American-Israeli Political Action Committee or the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops often try to influence American foreign policy, but David explains how these groups are largely ineffective. We then look at how public opinion, typically expressed institutionally by voting patterns, may influence diplomatic leaders. Again, the relative impact of religious beliefs and preferences get filtered out from the diplomatic corps, although there are times when Congress can use religious issues to press for certain foreign policies.

The third possible mode religion may influence international relations is via the personal beliefs of leaders and diplomats. David, though, notes that there is not much evidence between a president’s religious beliefs and the general patterns of foreign policy. Richard Nixon (Quaker) and Jimmy Carter (evangelical) are used as example of how leaders are constrained in their ability to affect foreign policy. The final pathway relates the general ideological (theological) milieu of the United States and how it acts as “background radiation” on the thinking of political leaders. Examples of this include John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” concept, Jeffersonian isolationism, Wilson’s liberal internationalism, and Reagan’s aggressive nationalism. We discuss the empirical difficulty of explaining how these three different ideas are influenced by America’s religious ideas.

David provides a number of examples of how religion has played a real role in conditioning US diplomacy. We discuss the issue of human rights and Jewish dissidents in the Soviet Union, the creation of the International Religious Freedom Act, Boko Haram, and finish up with how U.S. evangelicals approach climate policy, both domestically and abroad. David also reflects upon the role that religion plays in the diplomatic relations of other countries, most notably Europe and Australia. Recorded: May 8, 2014.

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations, by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd.

Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations, by Daniel Philpott.

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, by Mahmood Mamdani.

Faith and Foreign Policy: The Views and Influence of U.S. Christians and Christian Organizations, by Stephen Rock.

Politics in a Religious World: Building a Religiously Informed U.S. Foreign Policy, by Eric Patterson.

Sword of the Spirit, Shield of the Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy, by Andrew Preston.

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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.

Daniel Philpott on Religious Resurgence & Democratization

tonygill — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 08:00:21 +0000

Over the past four decades, there have been two global trends that have caught the attention of social scientists — the public resurgence of global religiosity and the increasing movement towards democratic governance. Daniel Philpott — associate professor of political science at Notre Dame and fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies — discusses both of these trends and his latest book, God’s Century (co-authored with Monica Duffy Toft and Timothy Samuel Shah). We begin the interview with a historical survey of how church-state relations have changed over the past two or three millenia, a broad sweep of history indeed, but one that is crucial to understanding why religion has made such a strong comeback in recent decades. Prof. Philpott shows how early in human history religious and secular authority split apart and how both types of leadership existed in a situation of mutual dependence — secular leaders required the legitimating endorsement of religious leaders, whereas religious leaders relied upon the material support of secular rulers. During the early modern period (c. 1450-1750) this mutual balance began to tip in favor of secular rulers who exercised greater control over religious groups in a paternalistic manner. Interestingly, this was a global trend. Beginning in the late 1700s, particularly with the French Revolution, we witness a global trend where religion is subjugated (and sometimes decimated) by secular rulers, particular in communist and socialist nations. Ironically, this subjugation gave religious organizations a greater degree of independence from secular government in some parts of the world that allowed new political theologies to develop and the institutional ability to organize against secular rulers. We discuss the formation, nature and influence of these political theologies, from the ideas promoted at Vatican Council II to Hindu and Buddhist nationalism to Islamic fundamentalism. In some areas such as Latin America, Indonesia, and parts of Asia these new political theologies and resurgent religious organizations helped to promote democracy, whereas in other parts of the world (e.g., the Middle East) it has led to less sanguine outcomes. Our discussion also touches upon the role of ideas in motivating human events, and we finish the discussion with some thoughts on the 2011 “Arab Spring” and whether or not that this will result in more democratic nations. This is the first part of a discussion of the book God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics. We will be focusing on the issue of religious violence with one of the other authors of the book in an upcoming episode. Stay tuned. Recorded: July 7, 2011.

RELATED LINKS

Prof. Daniel Philpott’s website at the University of Notre Dame.

Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame.

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

Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations, by Daniel Philpott.

Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation, by Daniel Philpott (forthcoming).

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