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Atalia Omer: A Response to Jan-Werner Müller


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I was very intrigued by the tension Müller articulated between Christian ethical impulse and Christianity as identity politics. Müller posits illiberalism as a critique of capitalism, which invites further conceptualization of the interconnections between economic and religiocultural and political developments. In particular, such interconnections tell a story about the complex relations between economic and other forms of “under-development” and the conditions for chauvinistic and populist politics of identity and exclusions. Hence, I welcome the boldness of Dr. Müller’s provocation: “If something called liberalism can look like it’s only good for winners, liberals have to think again.”

This provocation opens the door for a critique of political liberalism and its complicity in various forms of domination and marginalization, without disposing of its pluralistic insights. Müller did not so much engage in such an undertaking but his critique of the label “illiberal democracy” (often employed to describe democratically elected ethnocentric and authoritarian regimes) as a misnomer and as such a dangerous one that offers a license to populist and undemocratic leaders to celebrate their illiberality as the choice of the demos. Illiberality, Müller is clear about it, is not democratic. A “democracy” that lacks a fundamental value commitment to pluralism opens the door to totalitarianism and is, in effect, not democratic. Populism, Müller argued, is necessarily anti-pluralist—a context where “religion” is reified as a rigid and exclusionary “flag.” To label certain regimes “illiberal democracies,” therefore, is to employ an incorrect label because such regimes damage rights that are constitutive of democracy. The label “fake” is much more accurate.

Müller, accordingly, stressed the conceptual delinking of liberalism and democracy and that this delinking is not particularly novel. In fact, it has been pivotal to various forms of critique of “bourgeois democracy”—whether Marxist or Schmittian. Schmitt’s work, Müller proposes, foresees and offers frames for analyzing contemporary transitions to authoritarianism under a democratic façade. Finally, he employed Chantal Mouffe to argue that the ever expanding logic of neoliberalism and the related lack of real political choices within this discourse and liberalism’s rationalist obsession with consensus building rather than healthy agonistic conflict explain the emergence of right-wing populism and anti-liberal movements.

Before turning to the economic dimension of the argument, I would like to ask what the relations between liberalism and secularism may be, and conversely between illiberalism and religion, in this narrative and critique of the “illiberal democracy” label. This pondering stems from an effort to broaden the discussion of liberalism to liberalism’s inbuilt mechanisms for revision and the complex relations of the tradition of political liberalism to religion. In other words, while we recognize the populist equation of liberalism with unfettered capitalism and radical individualism and that this connection offers ingredients for the recipe of populist nationalism, I am interested both in the “product” itself, namely how does chauvinistic interpretation of nationalism (identity politics or cult of authenticity) draw upon religion and what may be the role of intra- and inter-religious engagement and deepening religious literacy in countervailing such manipulations of identity?  This question is relevant to the conference’s focus on inter- and intra-religious engagement and especially to the kind of agency that the supposed targets of such populist manipulation by elites might have in cultivating resources to resist it.

Emma Tomalin, from the University of Leeds, questioned in a post-conference correspondence Müller’s suggestion that “a focus on multiculturalism is no longer at the forefront of European politics.” “This may be the case at the level of the state,” she wrote. However, it does not apply to her “observations at the local level (e.g. local councils in the UK) that are very much the opposite.” On the local grassroots level “there is a great interest in and focus on how to make multiculturalism as a strategy work in practice through increased engagement with faith actors and moves to do this in ways that do not create further marginalization of under-represented groups (e.g. women).” One needs ponder the apparent “disconnect between what is happening at the national and international levels around multiculturalism/diversity/pluralism and what is going on at the local level,” Tomalin concludes. Much of her research focuses on ‘local democracy’, suggesting a need to link the study of grassroots democracy where interreligious and inter-group action and engagement happen daily on the ground, with that of nation-state and international (democratic) populist discourses.

The findings of CM’s Working Group “Global Migration and the New Cosmopolitanism” may offer some insights pertaining to Tomalin’s critique. Global Migration and the New Cosmopolitanism examined neighborhood-level dynamics of inter-communal and inter-tradition engagement in various urban centers in western Europe and North America, with a focus on examining the possibilities of scaling up patterns of pluralistic engagements that challenge in lived and embodied ways the monocultural logic of nationalism and the populist engine of culture wars and identity politics. It is important to note that many of the instances of inter-religious and inter-communal work at the neighborhood level of the cacophonous urban centers of the west also present case studies in socioeconomic marginalization and neglect. This is an important point to underscore in order to avoid discussing challenges to pluralism solely in terms of religiocultural difference. Such a limited explanatory frame would reinforce the populist logic Müller is critiquing and tracing.

The connection between liberalism as capitalism run amok and maximization of personal freedoms provides a pretext for the emergence of “religious” and “illiberal” populist alternatives that underscore ethnonational conceptions of nationalism as a reactionary mechanism. Effectively, Müller stressed that such reactionary forces (as he observed in the case of Viktor Orbán in Hungry) position themselves against “liberalism” (which they ridicule as “political correctness police”). They promote a platform of market and moral restrictions: calls for imposing constraints on capitalist greed go hand in hand with appeals to conservative “family values” and restraints on sexual freedoms and expressions of sexual identities. “In short,” he told us, “anti-capitalism, cultural nationalism and authoritarian politics become inextricably linked.”

In consideration of the theme of interreligious engagement and how it could be linked to the discussion of populism articulated here, I would like to think about the intersections between religion and nationalism and the elastic ways in which the “elective affinities” between conceptions of ethnicity, nationality, and religion play out. We heard from Müller about the role of chauvinistic interpretations of religion and their roles in constructing reactionary illiberal political visions but what about the role of religion in liberal hermeneutics that does contribute to maximizing inclusivity? This is where liberalism as a tradition with inbuilt self-revising mechanisms can be elaborated upon as a framework to revisit the sociological and theoretical challenges of pluralism. Indeed, and to return to the ills of liberal democracies, it is important to take into account the various layers of marginalization that liberal democracies have generated.

Finally, Professor Müller’s account of populism and defective democracies was silent on the question of gender. Women are often the immediate and direct target of chauvinistic politics and so it would be beneficial to analyze patterns of religion’s relevance to identity politics through a gender lens that no longer presupposes the normative “citizen,” the subject of democratic theory, as a man. It is crucial to integrate into our analysis feminist critiques of normative political theory as well as to explore further the connections Müller identifies between critiques of unregulated capitalism, on the one hand, and targeting radical individualism, women and LGBTQI rights, on the other. Religious hermeneutics and literacy are certainly critical in combating such illiberal currents.

 

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Atalia Omer
 Atalia Omer is Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Politics (2008) from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her research focuses on Israel/Palestine; religion, violence, and peacebuilding; as well as theories and methods in the study of religion. Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, resulting in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2023). Among other publications, Omer is the author of When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (University of Chicago Press, 2019). She is also a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2015). 
Contending Modernities article

Michael Driessen: A Response to Jan-Werner Müller’s Remarks


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Thank you for this invigorating and refreshing lecture which, I think, does much to frame our opening discussion here of the conference.

I find myself in particular agreement with Müller’s analysis of Merkel, Orbán, and Kaczynski, in which he observes a current struggle over the legacy of Christian Democracy and the renewal of Catholic and Christian inspired politics in Europe. In many ways, this struggle has been re-ignited by the immigration crisis (which is, itself, an experience of religious encounter) and has pitted a project that clings to Christian identity as a bulwark for defining national projects of sovereignty against one that affirms compassionate Christian values as a way to strengthen democracy, pluralism and peace. I would not want to reduce the characterization of this struggle to a conservative-progressive one, particularly in the case of Italy, where we have seen similar trends already in motion for some time: the conservative Italian Lega Nord could easily fit into Müller’s first category, but the Italian inheritors of the Christian democratic tradition, who are on both the right and the left of the spectrum, could easily fit into Müller’s second category.

The identity politics at work here are dangerously illiberal. They run counter to the hopes of the great, religiously-inspired statesmen who helped build postwar national and transnational European institutions in the name of promoting, protecting, and extending powerful ideas of Christian humanism or what Maritain called integral humanism (by which he really meant Catholic Humanism, at least in his earlier writings).

I want to make a few comments about the struggle over this legacy, which I think tells us something about the renewal or reconstruction or continuing evolution of religiously inspired politics in both Europe and the Middle East and the purpose this evolution might serve. I want to then pose a couple of questions for our further conversation.

The first comment is that Merkel’s attempt to put the “C” back into the CDU reminds us that Christian inspired politics are not dead and that secularism, or, better, some form of hegemonic secular liberal thinking, is not the only game in town in Europe, and never has been. As Müller has put it elsewhere, and here I am again in full agreement, this assumption of a secular European polity and politics represents a teleological trap that both empirical social scientists, who tell the sociological and political story of the rise and decline of Christian democracy, and political philosophers, who theorize the triumph of the liberal democratic project, have too often fallen into.

Rather, recognizing the fact that Christian inspired democratic politics never became fully secular or liberal helps us to understand the historical political ideology and vision of Christian Democracy better (as Müller does eloquently in his work). In my reading, and here I think I differ from Müller, this recognition also allows us to trace the ways in which religious actors remain deeply embedded in the political and social life of the polis. They do so, however, in remarkably changed ways and in different formats, mostly outside of the channels of formal party politics.

In what I think is a usefully (but not unproblematically) described “post-secular” reading of European politics and society, we can recognize just how much religious movements, religious civil society, and, what I have found helpful to talk about as “everyday religious citizens” have taken on and remain key generators of civic life and leadership, particularly in the spaces of informal politics. Because it taught Catholic individuals how to be comfortably religious and democratic at the same time, within or without a specifically Catholic party, the Christian democratic project, and the religious idea of democracy that we can ascribe to it, continues to live on, even as the party itself has declined or disappeared as in the case of Italy. The rise of religious democratic citizens who hold this sensibility is a new and powerful phenomenon, and their full impact on politics and society, I believe, has yet to be fully realized or studied.

The support for Merkel, or Pope Francis, I think, can be registered in this Tocquevillian key (as Müller names it elsewhere) in which the active, civic-minded religious citizen plays a central role in the making of good democratic politics. In this reading, the religious life of the nation can work to create essential and necessary “springs of moral conduct” (as Müller puts it), the “social capital,” as Putnam would write, that makes democracy work, or as Pope Pius XII put it in his Christmas message in favor of democracy, “the ultimate foundation and directive norm in any democracy.”

Here I want to quickly pitch to contemporary Muslim politics in which we see very similar dynamics occurring: political parties, but more importantly perhaps, Muslim political philosophers, religious intellectuals, and, crucially and probably most widespread, Muslim individuals are making democracy their own as well. Asef Bayat has written convincingly of the post-Islamist sensibilities of everyday religious Muslim citizens who assume, through reconciliation, negotiation and perhaps a bit of amnesia for their positions in the 1980s, rather fluid ways of being democratic and religious.

In doing so they, too, define themselves as illiberal, but in a different way than, for example, President Erdogan illiberally acts. In an interesting parallel, their illiberalism, like the illiberalism of early and contemporary forms of Catholic and Christian politics, represents a rejection of materialism, individualism, selfishness, and moral corruption, but not of democracy itself or the institutional uncertainty it engenders or the loyalties its requires of its citizens to play the role of a faithful losing opposition. Here I think it is very useful to note, again, the Tocquevillian, or Putnam-esque understanding of democracy with which many Muslims in the Middle East describe their democratic commitments, more or less through the conviction that a religious citizen is a good citizen, a good neighbor, one who thinks and acts for the common good. We see this in Ghannouchi’s understanding of Islamic democracy in a very articulate way; in Muhammadiyah’s evolutions; and the Hizmet/Gulen movement, which has specifically articulated out a conservative social democratic self-understanding of Islam in society.

The dramatic break between Gulen and Erdogan is also usefully understood in this sense.

This brings me to my final comment. What Müller has described, and what I have commented on, represents a distinctive, alternative, religiously-understood project of democracy which, in many ways, is being forged, crucible-like, by the experience of immigration, religious pluralism and violence, and the return to illiberal authoritarian nationalism. Müller has located this new counter-Christian political project primarily in stateswomen like Merkel, that is to say, in elites and leaders themselves. I would like to shift the location of that project more towards the everyday religious citizen and religiously-inspired civil society who actually desire such politics and who are often, it should be noted, not happy with what their elites or political parties have to offer, in Italy as well as in Turkey, Egypt, or Algeria. Their synthesis, their everyday practice of religious democratic politics, is powerful, full of specific political potential for facing new religiously related challenges, including immigration and extremism. But they remain under-represented politically.

This is also a project that would seem to be in need of new thinking – a new political vision or idea which is capable of giving political orientation, a coherent meaning and narrative, to our contemporary events. And here begin my questions: The project Müller has described is not quite Christian Democracy, or is it? More interesting, perhaps, it is not really a specifically Christian project. It is, perhaps, a new form of Religious Humanism or, as our colleagues from Notre Dame put it, Integral Human Development, that seems quite beyond Maritain’s integral humanism (which, again, was basically Christian humanism). What do we make of this? Do we have contemporary thinkers who can give us direction in this sense, a new Maritain, if you will? Müller mentions Taylor at several points in his work. I think, too, about Dallmayr’s concept of Integral Pluralism. Do we have a guide or idea in the making for this project?

I want to conclude here by going back to the conference note and suggest that the language and practice of interreligious dialogue might be very useful for responding to this question. We might be able to say that instead of “making democracy one’s own,” (as many religious citizens already have) the challenge for religious communities today is how to “make pluralism one’s own.” I do not think that the intention of interreligious dialogue practitioners was to come up with a new political vision to guide political debates today. Nevertheless, their experience and their search to approach religious others in a spiritually authentic and convincing and sustainable way has led them to formulate new ways of thinking and seeing things. These new formulations, I urge, deserve our enquiry and attention. They might be uniquely useful for understanding how to do what is effectively a much deeper form of humanistic religious pluralism.

 

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Michael Driessen
Michael Driessen is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. He teaches courses on Religion and Politics and co-direct the University’s Interfaith Initiative. His research interests include the nature of public religions in Catholic and Muslim societies and the role of interreligious dialogue in contemporary global politics.
Theorizing Modernities article

From London to Rome: Changing the Conversation about Religion


 

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The conference “Making Democracy One’s Own: Muslim, Catholic and Secular Perspectives in Dialogue on Democracy, Development, and Peace,” held in Rome from May 30 to June 1, 2016, sought to theorize and, where advisable, nurture and strengthen the positive relationship between religion and democracy. Under consideration were the possibilities for inter-cultural and inter-religious engagement, collaboration, and productive contentions as they pertain to deepening democratic virtues and practices. Secular actors and institutions also partner in this undertaking.

This was the second in a series conferences dedicated to “Changing the Conversation about Religion,” with each intending to tackle various interconnected facets of this ambitious task.

The first conference, “Changing the Conversation about Religion: Partnerships for Global Development,” held in London on November 12-13, 2015, focused on how religious actors and institutions, with their various interpretive and intra-religious complexities and contestations, are pertinent for the tasks of development. It became clear in the course of the dialogue that religious actors— who are already engaged, and have for decades been engaged, in accompanying, educating and providing health care for the poor—might begin by challenging the premises underpinning secular paradigms of development, not least the assumption that economic growth alone is the solution or even the primary model for advancing and evaluating human flourishing and social stability. The themes that emerged in our structured conversations in London are germane to the scope of the present discussion. We would like to highlight a few of these themes.

First, in a public roundtable culminating the conference at the Royal Horseguards Hotel in London, Turkish novelist and scholar Elif Şafak stressed that inter-religious collaboration, engagement, and action already unfold in a highly intercultural and global context, where the operative descriptive words are porousness and hybridity. In this milieu, religions are invited and, indeed, expected to give priority to the fluid, growing aspects of the tradition, rather than insist on its boundedness and ‘purity.’ Şafak herself works energetically within her own tradition to transform sociopolitical and cultural norms organically from within and yet also through engagement with other norms, including those associated with the “secular” as a discursive tradition.

This focus on the vulnerability of hard-and-fast claims about supposedly stable and even unchanging religious or ethnic and national identities in light of the undeniable fluidity of modern subjectivities and self-understandings informed our conceptualization of “Making Democracy One’s Own.”

Indeed, among the various interlocutors in Rome a central question was the degree to which a modern religious movement’s awareness of the theological, philosophical, and historically embodied depth of its host religious tradition is relevant, if at all, to how we understand the ways such a movement draws on the tradition for political or ideological purposes. Conversely, to what degree do violent manifestations of religiosity (as in the case of Da’esh, or ISIS) constitute a departure from “authentic” conceptions of tradition?

The tension raised by this question became evident in an exchange among panelists in a semi-public event on May 31, 2016 in the library of the Italian Senate. Graeme Wood of The Atlantic firmly defended the thesis of his widely circulated article, which argued that Da’esh’s theological imagination is indeed Islamic and needs to be analyzed as such. On the other hand, Fabio Petito, from the University of Sussex and a co-convener of the conference, resisted classifying Da’esh as “very Islamic.”

This debate drew in interlocutors who urged attention to the role of explanatory frameworks that focus on the material and economic context that provided fertile soil for Da’esh, as well as those that point to the relevance of enduring legacies of missionary work, colonialism, neo-colonialism, neoliberalism, and geopolitics to understanding the rise and spread of such extremist movements. Shaun Casey, from the US Department of State, underscored that “religion is always embedded in specific and complex contexts.” “Without this principle,” Casey continued, “policy makers can all too easily reduce religion to stereotypes in the CVE [countering violent extremism] space.” Katherine Marshall, from Georgetown University, likewise foregrounded the urgency of pondering the interconnections between under-development and religious extremism. She posed a related question: How might interreligious work and engagement be productive for the goals of peace and development?

Our conversations in Rome underscored why it matters that we think clearly, taking into account the history and other relevant contexts of a given case, about how religions align or intersect with political formations. They also pointed to the need to engage in analysis of the debates within religious communities, which reveal the historically embedded and embodied nature of religiosity and the porousness and fluidity of identities.  This recognition foregrounds the need for interdisciplinarity in approaching the question of inter- and intra-religious action or “diapraxis”.

Critically, the subtitle of our conference “Muslim, Catholic and Secular Perspectives in Dialogues on Democracy, Development & Peace” linked the discussion of religion and democracy to the earlier and interconnected questions of development and peace. Şafak’s stressing of fluidity presents the need to consider the humanities and the realm of cultural and artistic production as sites of contention and transformation. These sites resist the risk posed by interreligious or inter-traditional work that, while emphasizing collaboration across traditions, may also contribute to reinforcing elitist, official, male-centric interpretations of religious traditions—given that many if not all interreligious dialogue is conducted by male religious leaders. Indeed, the word “secular” in the subtitle intentionally suggests the need to open up the discussion to the many voices emerging from a condition of (deep) pluralism. We also intended to pay attention to the complex ways in which both secular and religious forces construct and reproduce political identities, practices, and structures. Şafak’s words, therefore, remind us to interpret and contend with modernity, secularity, and the problems at hand of democracy, religious extremism, and underdevelopment as well as security and peacebuilding in ways that take into account historical fluidity, the patterns and resources of change, innovation, and reform within religious traditions. Finally, we recognize that intra-traditional work is already in conversation with secular and other inter-cultural and inter-traditional forces.

The second thread in our conversation in London focused on the convergences between the objectives of peacebuilding and conflict transformation and the development agenda. Unfortunately, within the bureaucracy of the U.N., the two foci of security/peacebuilding, on the one hand, and development, on the other, were long isolated one from another. However, the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) signal an important departure from this problematic bracketing of conflict analysis and peacebuilding mechanisms and the capacity of development efforts to alleviate extreme poverty as well as to achieve broader systemic societal and political changes. Religion and religious actors are instrumental in both the development and peacebuilding arenas, and there is a need for collaboration and cross-fertilization among those interlocutors and actors. The World Bank discovered religion some years ago, and its engagement with religion has become increasingly more nuanced. However, the broader discussion of religion and development offers challenges to the World Bank’s instrumental approach to religion and religious actors, a critique that is carried forward to the explicit incorporation of religious engagement as a dimension of the making of American foreign policy.

The challenge of using religion as an instrument of foreign policy (or any other political goal) and, with it, the crucial question of who gets empowered through various partnerships and granting agencies is one of great importance. Among other things, this kind of power dynamic affects the possibility of intra-tradition contestation, reform, innovation, and change. These concerns about instrumentalizing religion and thereby empowering some people while marginalizing or deepening the marginalization of others, bear heavily upon the possibilities of “structures of dialogue and collaboration within and across religious traditions,” as the concept note for “Making Democracy One’s Own” promises. These are issues that Casey highlighted in his address at the library of the Italian Senate. As the Special Representative for Religion and Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, he identified guidelines for engaging religious institutions, actors, and communities in ways that avoid instrumentalization.

These concerns are, of course, intricately related to the questions of history, historical memories, and geopolitics. In London, the examination of development’s intersection with peacebuilding and religion kept returning to the lingering consequences of colonialism, missionary expansion, and neoliberalism, as well as the realities of geopolitics.  This web of historical factors overshadows contemporary development efforts—as Cecelia Lynch demonstrates. This kind of historical lens challenges the inclination to shift to ahistorical and culturalist arguments when discussing religion and religious communities.

Also in London, the emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi —a man with a complicated profile as an outspoken critic of corruption—adamantly contested what he perceived as the imposition of LGBTQI rights as strings attached to aid. Likewise, he vividly drew our attention to the interconnections between corruption, poverty, sociocultural and political marginalization, and the emergence of Boko Haram. In other words, the case of the rise of Boko Haram stresses the importance of our subtitle, threading together development, democracy, and peace as well as inter-cultural, inter-traditional engagement.

The emir opposed homosexuality as non-Muslim, while recognizing the empirical reality that homosexuality is not a western invention, though its acceptability is currently promoted by the west. However, other voices in our conversation in London precisely stressed the need to tackle the issue of gender as foremost. Here the focus was not so much on homosexuality but on women and girls and their education, empowerment, protection, and inclusion in change processes. With respect to this site of contention, two of our key interlocutors in London, Katherine Marshall and Emma Tomalin, also joined us in Rome and continued to deepen those connections. The feminist thread of the discussion in London underscored the need to overcome the assumption that feminism is not religious. There is a concern that the previously mentioned empowering of certain religious actors over others (with an understanding that official religious leaders are mostly men) can contribute to further marginalizing girls and women and violating their rights, preventing their opportunities to live fully to their capabilities (à la Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach).

Ziba Mir-Hosseini (one of the founders of Mussawah, a global movement for equality in the Muslim family), in particular, exemplifies the possibility of working deeply within the tradition in order to illumine its feminist potentialities. Mir-Husseini’s participation in London enhanced the relevance of feminist religious hermeneutics in a robust conceptualization of development.

This mode of engagement is likewise relevant to the discussion of “Making Democracy One’s Own”. If our discussion does not bring to the fore feminist lenses (including in the examination of feminist critiques and reframing of normative political theory) then it will be in tension with the demands of development and peacebuilding understood as the pursuit of security and sociocultural and political justice. In other words, to speak across and within traditions is not an invitation for reifying certain narratives, structures, and resources. Neither is it an invitation to establish a certain interpretation of religiosity as normatively superior to “secular” foundations.

Instead, it is an opportunity to offer a robust account of normative pluralism and the possibilities of dialogue and collaboration, sensitive to the traps of ahistorical culturalist narratives as well as the central relevance of intra-tradition interrogation in explicating the connections between religious extremism, insecurity, corruption, and “under-development.”  Indeed, “Making Democracy One’s Own” constitutes a discussion that needs to be fundamentally sensitive to gender if by “democracy” we do not simply revert back to theorizing the citizen as a male. Religious hermeneutics is highly relevant to such a gender sensitive contestations. All these issues emerged to the fore in various threads of our conversation in Rome in June 2016.  A fuller report is forthcoming.

 

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Atalia Omer
 Atalia Omer is Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Politics (2008) from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her research focuses on Israel/Palestine; religion, violence, and peacebuilding; as well as theories and methods in the study of religion. Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, resulting in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2023). Among other publications, Omer is the author of When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (University of Chicago Press, 2019). She is also a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2015). 
Contending Modernities article

Democracy Blues: Reflections from Rome 2016


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The two rich days of discussion in Rome complicated the questions that I wrestle with daily, both confirming concerns and irritations and illuminating emergent issues that demand my attention. In particular, I was struck by the need to continue to root our analysis in the actual dilemmas encountered in development, democratic, and peace practice, dilemmas that require us to engage robustly with the dynamics of gender, secularism, and religion.

Complicating dialogue: Any academic or policy encounter that does not pose questions in new ways, complicating what might seem straightforward, is hardly worth its salt. The recurring commentary about dialogue fit that category for me. Some suggestions (largely implicit) about differing types and approaches to interreligious or intra-religious dialogue, and the effort to distinguish inter-faith from multi-faith were useful. On two fronts, however, I left with the impression that there is still work to be done both to be persuasive about dialogue as an approach and to ensure that it achieves its intended results. First, the dialogue doubters need more robust examples of meaningful engagements that show what the contemporary policy world lumps together as “results” – that is, genuine progress as a result of conscious dialogue efforts. We need more than metaphors and platitudes if we are to convince policymakers that dialogue is a necessary part of democratic practices: one speaker referred to dialogue with the image of cucumber sandwiches, for example; another participant described long discussions with a rather token-ish group that concluded that all involved love one God. These are just two examples of the aura of skepticism surrounding interreligious dialogue that are a reality we cannot ignore. Second, the complicating elements encourage me to focus more sharply on the fact that dialogue is the means, not the end. Clarity on this point requires both greater attention to defining what the ends might be as well as focus on the processes involved in dialogue. As a means dialogue has many faces but two essential features are the effort to combine the objectives of humanizing contacts and allowing essential flexibility to create new approaches and results. Both are part of excellent processes. Dialogue for dialogue’s sake is not likely to garner much support or take us very far.

Fragile states and gender are two topics that deserve more attention in our academic reflections. First is the conundrums that go with democratic processes in the large and possibly growing group of what are termed fragile states. Yes, all states are fragile in some sense but some are plainly more fragile than others and the host of governance demands that are common everywhere–whether attracting inspired leadership, assuring personal security, resolving conflicts, assuring transparency of governmental processes in a meaningful way, and working fast and effectively to curtail corruption and gross inefficiency–take on new significance. A major lesson from recent development experience is that the traditional array of approaches, whether economic or social, do not work in fragile or failing states, so modified and even radically different approaches are needed. A similar comment applies for democracy. But the specific, workable models of the “radically different” approaches are few and far between.

The second topic centers on women’s roles, agendas, and leadership. Emma Tomalin challenged the group to probe the distinctions between gender equality and equity and their real-life implications. She and I agree that compromising on basic rights is not the right way, nor is pushing efforts towards equality into the future. Evidence that women’s roles and agendas are crucial in a multitude of ways to peace and development is robust. The complications but also advantages of “starting where people are” and addressing what are legitimate questions and concerns should be front and center in reflecting on how to deal with rampant inequality. The fact that gender issues are a central facet of engagement between religious and secular actors where peace, development, humanitarian, and climate change are concerned is too often buried in our discourse.

One irritation I recall was sparked by frustration at how rarely discussions made meaningful efforts to ground discussions in practical cases and issues. As with families, unhappy countries and tense interreligious relations tend to exhibit different characteristics. Until we face the differences it is difficult to move from theory to action and engagement. An example was the rather circular discussions around moderation in religion and especially Islam. Where do we come out, and how and why does the conclusion matter in terms of needed action? By remaining rooted in the practice of development, democracy, and peace, we might be able to clarify our differences while still finding areas of common work and, more significant to my mind, identify areas that are actionable.

Intersectionality came up quite often. At one level it is a deeply familiar concept for the development practitioner that I am – many aspects of development and peacebuilding, for example, are so tightly intertwined and overlaid that the common siloed separations distort reality and professional practice. But the way the concept of intersectionality was used has set me to thinking about what the interlinking implies for thought and action, for gender approaches but also for other topics, among them tackling elements of governance (corruption, for example) that are part and parcel of governance challenges.

Let me conclude with a call for more robust thinking about religious and secular literacy. It is an acknowledged fact that many professionals and academics have large knowledge holes where religious matters are concerned that stymie them in exploring their work’s important implications. But what kinds of training will truly appeal and truly help? And for religious actors, a similar question applies. What competencies, skills, and training do religious practitioners need for engaging an increasingly complex field of action? The topics of peace, pluralism, social, political, democracy and economic development are profoundly transdisciplinary, stretching the limits of any individual’s capacity. That implies attention to the what, the how, and the stages of approaches to address religious and secular literacy. Can we experiment with some challenging models and see how they work and how they need to be reinforced? My hope is that the conversations started in Rome will continue in order to push these challenging questions forward, building our capacity to engage constructively these pressing issues.

 

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Katherine Marshall
Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, where she leads the Center's program on Religion and Global Development, and Professor of the Practice of Development, Conflict, and Religion at Georgetown University. After a long career in the development field, including several leadership positions at the World Bank, Marshall moved to Georgetown in 2006, where she also serves as a visiting professor in the School of Foreign Service. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue.
Contending Modernities article

The Ongoing Mission of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs


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Minister Ferrara, Senator Casini, Dean Appleby, and esteemed guests, it is my honor and privilege to be with you this evening. I bring you greetings from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. It was my pleasure over two years ago to accompany Secretary Kerry on his first official visit to the Vatican when he met Cardinal Parolin. I think it is safe to say that Secretary Kerry is deeply invested in maintaining our strong relationship with the Holy See and along with the work of my estimable colleague Ambassador Ken Hackett, we enjoy as strong and fruitful a diplomatic relationship as we have ever had.

My task tonight is to do two things: first, I want to describe the mission and evolution of the work of my office, the Office of Religion and Global Affairs, over the short almost three years of its existence. Second, I want to describe two specific areas of our work, the global refugee crisis and countering violent extremism in order to give you a more concrete look at what we are doing.

Luckily for me Secretary Kerry gave a speech late last month on why he established our office and what our mission is. Speaking at Rice University he noted that historically the State Department has tended to downplay the role of religion or pay attention only when religion is deemed a problem, a threat, a challenge. Despite the fact religion is pervasive, complex, and consequential, he noted that we have not traditionally had the resources or made the necessary commitment to systematically analyze the importance religion holds for the success or failure of U.S. foreign policy.

He observed that one of his predecessors, Madeleine Albright, pointed out that when she entered the office of secretary of state, she had advisors on political, military, economic, developmental issues, but none of the key topic of religion. The purpose of his speech to was to declare that now has changed and to explain how we do things differently and why those differences matter.

Time doesn’t permit me to give you a comprehensive roster of our work. If time allowed I would tell you about our work on issues such as global climate change, anti-corruption, the Sustainable Development Goals, anti-microbial resistance, and the counter ISIL space. I would detail our country specific work in places like Cuba, Cyprus, Ukraine, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Burma, to name a few examples.

But I will be content with the simple claim that I believe we are now in a new stage in the intersection of religion and international affairs. The last stage was one in which scholars and activists promoted the idea that religion matters, and governments and scholars needed to take note. The current stage is one in which more governments and scholars have taken note and are actively integrating the insights drawn from the first wave of analysis.

I should hasten to add that I fully embrace my mentor, Fr. Bryan Hehir, when he observed that such work as we are doing can be compared to brain surgery – a necessary task, but fatal if not done well.

So let me address the question Scott Appleby told everyone yesterday that I would be answering tonight, and that is what is the future of our office in the next administration. This is easily the most frequent question I get asked these days. I have three answers, the first two come as a pair: Madeleine Albright and John Kerry. What I mean to say is that two of our living secretaries of state vigorously support what we do and how we do it. I’ll take them in any fight.

The third answer is that the most powerful argument for our sustainability after I leave is the high quality staff and work they produce. We have over 20 graduate degrees in religion or a cognate field among our 30 staffers. I like to believe we have won the hearts and minds of the career staff at the State Department and they understand and appreciate the work we contribute to the strategic success of our diplomacy.

To give you some more specificity about our work I would like to discuss our approach to religion in our efforts to counter violent extremism in three ways by looking at the drivers of violent extremism; how violent extremists exploit religion; and engaging religious communities and leaders for CVE.

First, on one of our primary functions of our office – assessing religion and religious dynamics – we strive to right size the role of religion in our policy priorities. This means we try to recognize when religion is an important factor in understanding how we engage with a partner or approach a priority. And in those areas where it is a factor, we seek to determine whether it is a driving variable or a contributing variable. We do not take an essentialist approach that presumes religion to somehow be at the core of every issue or do we assume that religion is inherently violent or peaceful.

Violent extremism is one problem set where the role of religion is often highlighted – and causality presumed – by policymakers, in political discourse, and in the media. This presumption can lead to the impulse to instrumentalize religion in a crass and reductive ways if it is not checked. But, we have found that religion is rarely the only or primary driver of violent extremism. A variety of factors can be the source of grievances including localized conflicts, state-sponsored violence, corruption, political and/or socioeconomic marginalization, to name a few.

Applying a research-driven approach can inform how best to engage on CVE – whether through religious communities and leaders or other institutions and civil society. In some instances, the cause may be corruption and human rights abuses, in others, persistent violations of human dignity, including discrimination, marginalization, and the inability to access economic opportunities may drive actors to violence. Just as Pope Francis has noted, lasting solutions must be found that tackle the root causes of violence. Understanding context is clearly a critical component to the success of any CVE initiative. We believe religion is always embedded in specific and complex contexts. Without this principle policy makers can all too easily reduce religion to stereotypes in the CVE space.

What drives someone to join a violent extremist group in Syria is very different from what drives another in northwestern Pakistan or even in parts of Western Europe. Before deciding on any type of CVE engagement our experience shows that research should be conducted to better understand drivers of violent extremism in a geographic area, among a specific target audience. Applying a data-driven approach can inform how best to engage on CVE – whether through religious communities and leaders or other institutions and civil society.

Second, when considering a CVE response, it is also helpful to understand how violent extremists instrumentalize religion. Violent extremists groups sometimes use religion as: a source of collective identity; a narrative for disaffection; a vehicle for mobilizing violent activity; and a means of imbuing worldly conflict with an eternal purpose. Often, the instrumentalization of religion is an effort to mobilize new and old adherents behind a perceived grievance.

To be clear, this is not to say that all violent extremists use religion in these ways or even at all, but some do. Many don’t, but some do, and understanding this helps to put the role of religion in a more proper context.

Third, we recognize that in an effort to subdue what we as policy makers might consider “extreme” responses to these perceived grievances, we sometimes seek a “moderate” voice. This sort of either/or disjunction is problematic.

While we frequently hear calls to support “moderate” religious traditions, in point of fact, do we not want to support religious traditions that are more than “moderate” in their commitments to justice, equality, and pluralism – all of which can be pursued without resorting to violence or coercion? Moreover, a call for moderation does not recognize that those attracted to violent extremism may not find “moderate” voices appealing. These voices may be perceived as being disengaged or uninvested in questions of dignity that matter deeply to those looking for religious voices that resonate.

Our attitude with and engagement with various groups is thus governed not by labels such as “moderate” or “extreme” but rather by the substance of what these groups say and do. We need to approach designing CVE activities with more sophistication, looking beyond instrumentalizing religious leaders to provide theological “antidotes” to extremism.

Religious leaders play roles in their societies and communities far beyond speaking out against radicalization or extremism. We engage religious actors on priority issues, which can then address fundamental and shared social challenges.

Third, based on our experience, we have identified a few general guidelines for engaging religious institutions, leaders, and communities.

Broader engagement: Religious leaders often play broad societal roles and should not only be engaged on CVE issues or be viewed exclusively as generators of counter-narratives or theological antidotes to terrorism. Rather, engaging religious leaders on a broader set of topics such as corruption or socio-economic marginalization or promoting human rights can also yield CVE-relevant outcomes.

Respect religious leader independence: When engaging religious leaders, one must take great care to respect their independence and avoid instrumentalizing them. Countries in which the state coopts religious authorities often leaves no space for independent leaders to credibly challenge violent extremist views.

Protect Human rights: Protection of human rights, including religious freedom, freedom of expression, and freedom of association and of assembly, are central to effective CVE engagements. CVE activities should not be allowed to serve as covers for restricting peaceful political and religious activities. Restricting these peaceful practices in the name of CVE is counter-productive. Moreover, creating and protecting space for peaceful expression and activities allows for an environment that encourages the development of civil society, which can complement government-initiated CVE activities.

Engage women: Religious leaders tend to be older males, thus it is imperative to include women when engaging religious communities on CVE. Focusing on the role of men can reinforce the male domination of religious communities and miss the key role women play in countering violent extremism.

Understand their relative strengths and limitations: Religious institutions, leaders, and communities can and do play an important role in building resilient communities, but they are not a panacea.

For example, religious institutions affiliated with the state may have the reputation of being government mouthpieces, and thus less credible. That said, these same institutions sometimes possess significant institutional infrastructure and have enduring reputations as centers of religious scholarship. Transnational clerics are often limited in their effectiveness on CVE issues because religious communities view local or provincial level clerics as more credible than their national or transnational counterparts. On the other hand, religious leaders with international reputations may be uniquely placed to lead longer term efforts such as education reform or efforts to convene religious leaders globally around pressing issues.

Another issue affecting religious leader credibility is his/her stance regarding the West. Religious leaders more critical of Western policies are sometimes more credible among religious communities than their counterparts who are sympathetic to Western policies. I point this out to say that CVE engagements should not be limited to those with whom governments are most comfortable working. Governments should have a broad based engagement with key actors even if they are critical of government policies.

In the current political environment in the United States, there have been numerous voices and media stories that have intimated there is a direct connection and correlation between refugees and terrorism. Those who want to tap into deep-seated fear suggest that refugee resettlement, or in the case of Europe, immigration from Syria and elsewhere compromises the safety and security of host countries and populations.

It is understandable that citizens would have safety concerns in the wake of tragic attacks in cities like Paris, Brussels, and San Bernadino. Over the past few months, I have visited six different cities in the United States to learn about our refugee resettlement process at the local level. During my trip to Dallas, Texas, I spoke with a man who erroneously believed that the U.S. government was essentially handing out plane tickets to the United States on street corners in Syria and Iraq. He was concerned that the U.S. was cavalierly letting all Syrians and Iraqis through our borders, and was completely unaware of the intensive security screening process for refugees who come to the United States.

The fact is, we can care about security, and about resettlement and integration simultaneously. We need not deny the common humanity we share with refugees – many of whom have fled horrific violence themselves. We can accept refugees without jeopardizing our national security.

The refugee resettlement process in the United States is a unique public-private partnership that involves international organizations like the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the International Organization on Migration, the U.S. Department of State, and partnership with nine national resettlement agencies. But the success of the program really relies on an array of local networks – religious leaders and communities, non-governmental organizations, social service providers, schools, police departments, municipal government leaders, and individual volunteers. The success of the refugee resettlement process in the U.S. has required a “whole of society collaboration.”

In the United States, it is local communities – NGOs, local resettlement offices, religious communities, schools, volunteers, and others – that have devised innovative programs and support to help refugees. They have developed physical and mental wellness programs to ensure refugees have health support needed to thrive. They have converted donated farmland into a community garden and agricultural incubator program. They have started English classes for youth, sewing classes to empower women, or senior programs so refugees feel part of the community and don’t become isolated.

Local community groups in the United States, especially religious communities, are empowered to reach out to resettled refugees to show hospitality and welcome. They are doing this not because it is simply a nice gesture, the moral thing to do, or a prescribed religious action. They are doing so because they understand that this has a positive and beneficial impact in empowering the refugee (and his/her family) and creating a culture of acceptance and integration.

This gives me considerable hope. I have hope because despite the ugly anti-refugee rhetoric that persists in the U.S. media and political discourse, local refugee resettlement offices report that continue to receive calls from community members offering support or asking to volunteer. I have hope because in places like Chicago, almost every refugee or refugee family has a co-sponsoring group – a church, a synagogue, a mosque, another family – and there is a waiting list for those interested in sponsoring a refugee. I have hope because I believe that refugees enrich new communities economically and culturally. What makes America strong and great is its diversity, and along with that, its resilience.

There is still work to be done, though. One American faith-based development and humanitarian organization reported that it took three years to raise $2.5 million for Syrian refugees, but that it took only a week to raise almost three times that amount following the earthquake in Nepal. We must continue to counter hateful rhetoric and anti-Muslim bigotry in some American communities. And we must push back against forces in the United States that seek to build up walls in communities by inflaming conversations in the media about refugees.

Some of you may know twentieth-century American poet, Robert Frost. Frost is probably most recognized for his poem, “The Road Not Taken,” but I wanted to take a moment to discuss another of his works, “Mending Wall.” The poem begins with the line “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” and goes on to explore the distances and tensions between individuals, of making and breaking boundaries. Frost says, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know, what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”

I would argue that it is generally antithetical in American culture to love a wall. It represents confinement. Division. Loss of freedom. In our collective imagination, we like to think of ourselves as the ones who tear down walls and instead build bridges.

We are facing unprecedented numbers of displaced people in the world – the likes of which we have not seen since World War II. Currently there are approximately 20 million refugees worldwide, and 40 million internally displaced persons. To break it down, one in about 122 people in the world is displaced.

The international community is currently witnessing a refugee crisis of global proportions and it requires a global response from religious leaders. I have described “bottom-up” efforts in my country to assist refugees, and I know similar actions are being taken throughout Europe. But there also must be a “top-down” approach. This includes a global conversation and consensus among top religious leaders on how religious groups partner to settle migrants. It involves coordinating funding, training, and the sharing of best practices so that we can effectively assist the world’s most vulnerable populations. This conversation can also inspire governments to do more as the crisis may be deepening before our eyes.

Part of my office’s work is to try and build a bridge between our domestic partners, secular and religious, and other governments so that our partners can share their practices of engaging local religious communities globally in order to make global refugee resettlement efforts more effective.

Let us not love a wall. May we collectively desire it be down, and work together to open doors: that all who come and go through them – both those who live in comfort here and those who visit under stress – be blessed. May they find welcome and love, share hospitality and hope, and come and find peace.

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Shaun Casey
Shaun Casey is director of the Berkley Center and a professor of the practice in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He previously was U.S. special representative for religion and global affairs and director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs. He has written on the ethics of the war in Iraq as well the role of religion in American presidential politics. He is working on two writing projects: he is co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Political Theology with Michael Kessler of Georgetown University and he is writing a book on ethics and international politics tentatively titled Niebuhr’s Children.
Theorizing Modernities article

‘The Truth is an Encounter’: Dialogue as a Self-Critical, Self-Transformative Risk


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Let me begin by offering my understanding of “what we are about” in this conference. We share 3 goals: At the most general level, we aim to explore and test the proposition that the practice of inter-religious dialogue [IRD] and inter-cultural dialogue [ICD] constitutes a bridge that will carry us from our current situation of societal or ‘civilizational’ tension and destructive conflict—conflict, that is, which finds expression in structural, cultural, or physical violence—to the far shore of a global reality in which ordinary cross-cultural and international interactions are characterized by a vibrant pluralism inclusive of religious as well as secular perspectives and commitments, and in which the inevitable conflicts are managed through the continual striving for mutual understanding and even by something approaching empathy for the Other.

Second, and more specifically, we will explore how democracies might be informed by this so-called ‘dialogue of civilizations.’ This requires us to ask, in turn, how religious actors in the political arena might contribute to a discourse of inclusivity that would seem necessary for the kind of ongoing engagement in the political and civic order required of all citizens in any democracy that deserves the name. Such a democracy necessarily goes beyond ‘one vote, one time,’ to cultivate and even demand of its citizens the attitudes and participation of genuine stakeholders with competing and sometimes converging interests.

Finally, at the most geographically specific and politically concrete level, we ask how IRD and ICD might contribute to conflict resolution, conflict management, and conflict transformation in the Mediterranean region; and, how Italian and U.S. foreign and domestic policies and processes might fruitfully reflect and also advance the dialogue of religious and cultural actors on the regional and global stage.

My job, as I see it, is to usefully nuance, challenge, and deconstruct these goals, or at least this formulation of them. I’ll focus mainly on the first two.

Let’s begin by briefly rehearsing what we think we know about modern religions, about dialogue, about destructive conflict and its resolution, and about democracy—perhaps the most mystical as well as mysterious of these social constructs!

RELIGION

About religions operating under the conditions of modernity, 468 years after the Peace of Westphalia we are fairly confident that we know that multigenerational, transnational religions to be internally plural (ethnically, culturally, politically); internally contested, as one would expect from traditions that are inescapably interpretive (of sacred texts, exemplars, hallowed practices, etc.); and internally anxious, to one degree or another, about the turn that the world has taken.

This religious anxiety is perhaps the less obvious of these markers, but it bears significantly upon our understanding of what ‘dialogue’ across culturally distinct communities can and cannot be expected to achieve. Modern religious actors—indeed, modern religions—are anxious about their own inevitable secularity, which has always been a condition of their existence, in any case, but now looms as a literally maddening doppelganger striding alongside religion’s equally self-defining otherworldly orientation. With the ascendance of a globalizing, infecting, and infectious mode of secularism predicated on the tenets of Western-imported liberal materialism and radical individualism, the religions’ own worldliness, their own secularity, has become an internal threat, a potential demon lurking within.

The seemingly irresistible allure of this hegemonic mode of neo-liberal technocratic secularism became increasingly apparent to the most insightful Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist sages with the dawning (about midway through this Westphalian era) of their own critical self-awareness as being actors within history, with all of its attendant contingencies. Once securely at home among their own, these vibrant religious cultures came to feel increasingly vulnerable and even “in exile” from the world, as the modern world has become its own comprehensive symbol system of meaning that rivals the religions’ own once-dominant cosmologies.

And so some of these religious cultures have anxiously attempted to reduce themselves to mere enclaves. Their embeddedness within an open-ended, contingent and often transgressive history is a fate they try to ignore, an epistemological prison they try to escape, but cannot. Confronted with, culpable in creating, the Enlightenment project, their options in the struggle to remain stable and “traditional” have seemed agonizingly few:

  • They can attempt an awkward mimesis of the regnant techno-scientific empiricism. (“We’ll out-science the scientists by “proving” the inerrancy of the Scriptures by carbon-dating that fossil to support the young earth theory!”)
  • They can try to withdraw into the enclave, name the infidel and flee into isolation, but this proves well-nigh impossible in an economically interdependent, socially interconnected, cyberspace milieu. They keep coming back to the need for the internet if they are going to recruit the next generation, and the stinger missile or dirty bomb if they are to sufficiently provoke and then, eventually, silence the infidel.

And so some of the self-anointed true believers are compelled by the awful logic of violence. Among the things we think we know about modern religions is that the violent extremist movements that erupt within or around them are precisely the dysfunctional expression of this existential insecurity and anxiety I’ve sketched. These violent religious extremism are the ironic product of the very radical individualism, spiritual rootlessness, religious illiteracy, and selective, politicized self-appropriation and narrowing of the tradition, which the extremists rail against.

  • For the frustrated, anxious traditional believers who cannot bring themselves to violence, there is another, far less strenuous path. They can quietly give up, lovingly beat their swords into plowshares and take refuge in a culture-ratifying, non-scandalous version of liberal Protestantism, Unitarianism, Reconstructionist Judaism or nominal Islam. However, in polite company their fundamentalist co-religionists deride this path as abject capitulation; in vast swaths of the Middle East, tragically, they literally decapitate the infidel as well as the apostate.
  • And then, finally, there is another option, one that is most intriguing for the inchoate project that is being tested at this conference. Rather than cling desperately and even hysterically to the “Tradition,” forge it into a weapon, or reduce its mystery to a formula or blueprint or ideology, the religious can inhabit their traditions more freely, and free-ingly, perhaps than ever before. In this sense, they can “go deeper” into their historic and still-sacred tradition and traditions, bend their surprisingly elastic boundaries, explore their unplumbed and ever-shifting depths, learn to live without closure and with ambiguity, and in this self-liberation from Tradition, paradoxically, deepen their own purchase on who they are and what they are called to be.

 

DIALOGUE

This brings me to the next pivotal term/concept/practice in our conference, namely, “Dialogue.” What do we think we know about dialogue at this stage of the conversation, and about IRD in particular? Further, what has dialogue to do with conflict resolution, conflict management, conflict transformation, and peacebuilding—those different but overlapping moments within a continuous feedback loop?

As to these questions, I think we know from the best experience and practice-based, theoretically rich literatures and conversations, that dialogue in its fullest sense is a risk-laden, potentially self-transformative, sustained encounter with the Other. That is, the partner in any dialogue across seemingly vast gulfs of understanding and appreciation takes the risk of hospitality—the risk of welcoming the Other into her home, as it were, into the place of solemnity and joy and even confusion or turmoil, where a glimpse of the heart and soul is possible. This is a precious space, and it takes courage to invite anyone there. The host offers nothing less, then, than an encounter with the Other, who after all may one day become a friend and worthy confidant, but begins most likely as a stranger, perhaps in some way an intruder, or even an enemy. An encounter, moreover, implies some level of mutuality: I am open to Thou. Not only do I seek understanding, I offer it.

May we also risk genuine empathy? If so, I run the destabilizing, frightening risk of being personally altered by the encounter.

Enacting such risks, the peacebuilders tell us, takes time. If the attempted dialogue come after waves of mistrust that have cascaded into violence, the trust that is required may take many years, even generations to build.

And when we focus this fullest form of dialogue on matters of religious conviction or practice, matters that make explicit claims to ultimacy—this is my soul, remember, it is not up for compromise—well, one can see how arduous this task can become if it is not to be trivial.

 

DEMOCRACY

Three rather practical (which is to say political) questions arise at this juncture, which bear on our third term, democracy:

  • Question #1: How, then, can this exacting form of dialogue have on-the-ground implications in the short-term, which is the narrow temporal window of politics? Perhaps it cannot. These ‘dialogue of civilization’ exchanges are not superficial, they are not merely or even primarily about “getting-to-yes” in order to resolve an immediate conflict. Rather, they are about the underlying disease that separates us, not the symptoms.
  • Question #2: How can such forms of dialogue move from a play of words, often exchanged among elites, to an actual encounter that is not limited to the few but extends to and includes the many?
  • Question # 3: And, closely related: how does dialogue move from encounter to collaboration?

At Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, we have long grappled with these pivotal challenges to effective peacebuilding, and our responses have taken concrete, quasi-institutional shape in the formation first of the transnational Catholic Peacebuilding Network, and, subsequently, the Contending Modernities Initiative, which is one of the hosts of this conference. The CPN focuses on grassroots dialogue and collaboration, with a necessary ingredient of elite participation in the person of some high-ranking Catholic bishops (though in the places like Colombia, Great Lakes Africa and Mindanao, Philippines, where the CPN has concentrated its activities, these bishops do not arrive at the project sites in limousines with an extensive military escort).

CM has attempted to address the second question: how does dialogue move beyond sharing of words to sharing of action and activism?

What, then, are the limits of even the robust form of IRD, as it has been described by theorists like Gadamer and scholar-practitioners like Volf?

First, a fair question arises: why even bother with IRD? Why attempt to translate this airy concept into a politically relevant discourse, or, rather more modestly, why ask it to inform political discourse and policymaking in any way?

An answer to the ‘why bother?’ question may be that IRD, surprisingly, is the primary means by which modern religions can become more traditionally religious, more themselves, as it were. Only in the risky (but ultimately rewarding) encounter with the Other can religions reveal to themselves, and take fuller purchase of, the human and yet still sacred depths of meaning and wisdom they embody. For this embodiment proves inclusive, finally, of the experiences, attitudes, biases, blind spots, and also startling, life-giving insights of the believing, practicing community—the people, the demos— who have borne the tradition across generations and ages, intermittently ignoring it, distorting it, traducing it, reifying “it.”

Can religions deepen their capacity for constructive internal contestation through the risk of self-critical, self-transformative dialogue? Can religions come to terms with their gaps, blind spots, and biases and move beyond them? Can religions harness the rapid pace of transformation characteristic of modernity and not, in the end, lose their souls?

Affirmations in this direction could well have relevance for systems of self-governance that grow beyond the superficial to engage the people of a democracy more consistently and meaningfully.

What, then, is necessary for IRD to realize its potential?

First, the dialogue must be intra-religious and intra-cultural as well as inter-religious and inter-cultural. Second, religious dialogue must unfold as a cultural dialogue, with the variety of secular cultures participating just as keenly as the variety of religious cultures do. Third, religious/cultural dialogue in practice must in these ways become a primary means for religious traditions to become self-critical and truly, actively dialogic in nature.

To elaborate on these prescriptions: Earlier I suggested that whenever we use the terms “the secular” and “the religious” we must imagine invisible scare quotes surrounding them, rather than imply that they are separate, distinct, separable conditions and modes of being in the modern world. Even at the extremes—the hardened atheist, the equally dogmatic true believer—the binary does not begin to describe the nuances of our co-imbricated religious and secular identities.

Which is to say that “dialogue,” if it is to be sufficiently robust across religions and cultures as to be meaningful, must also be sufficiently robust within religions and cultures. It is to recognize “the secular” both as a quasi-independent cultural configuration on its own, essential as a participant in any so-called “dialogue of civilizations,” and as an often unacknowledged but nonetheless very active partner within the religious mode of dialogue.

Self-interrogation is the pivot point upon which the turn from isolable contemplation to active engagement and collaboration depends. If religions are incapable of, or reluctant to, retrieve the full history of their active exclusion and exploitation of others in the service of some supposedly divinely mandated obligation, the cherished dialogue partner—the Other who is becoming less objectified and more interpersonal—is trusted to cast a harsh and dreadful light upon the eclipse of memory and offer a vigorous reminder that “the transcendent” and “the human” can never be set in opposition. Concrete episodes such as the complex histories of mission, for example— including missionary schools’ roles in generating fierce nationalisms and disseminating particular conceptions of democracy and liberalism—cannot be replaced by an assertion of common shared values across so-called civilizations. 

To return at the end to our fundamental question: If my framing of a genuine dialogue of cultures as a self-purifying encounter with the Other is correct, how can it be made relevant to foreign policy and national self-interest? How can such an intimate and transformative encounter escape the fate of instrumentalization by those not directly engaged in the dialogue, those not taking the risk of self-disclosure? Where are the places of convergence between these seemingly disparate practices: sustained religious self-interrogation, the achievement of deeper intra- and cross-cultural understanding, the growth of more fully inclusive and participatory democracies, and the formulation of wiser foreign policies?

Our colleagues Petito, Driessen, and Ferrara have suggested that one thread with the potential to bind these multiple and seemingly divergent goals together is, to quote Michael, “the role being played in all of this by the rise of the everyday religious citizen, [including] the new interactions created between religious individuals who have been empowered by democracy.” In light of this emergent phenomenon, he calls for “a new language to understand these new interactions and to advance them.”

Yes, we need to learn more about this new everyday religious citizen and her potentially transformative role in disrupting the gross imbalance of power and voice that has plagued and, sadly, continues to plague democracies and religions alike. For it is a rare and courageous voice that holds power and still will proclaim: The Truth is an Encounter!

May 31, 2016

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Scott Appleby
Scott Appleby (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1985) is the Marilyn Keough Dean of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. Appleby, a professor of history at Notre Dame, is a scholar of global religion who has been a member of Notre Dame’s faculty since 1994. He graduated from Notre Dame in 1978 and received master’s and Ph.D. degrees in history from the University of Chicago. From 2000-2014, he served as the Regan Director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Appleby co-directs, with Ebrahim Moosa and Atalia Omer, Contending Modernities, a major multi-year project to examine the interaction among Catholic, Muslim, and secular forces in the modern world.
Field Notes article

Contending Modernities at UNESCO


On 19 May our research on community organizing in East London was presented to an audience of around 300 people at a UNESCO Conference on Alternatives to Extremism: Cooperation Among the Communities of Different Religious Faiths in Multinational Cities in the organization’s Paris headquarters.

The event was co-sponsored by the Permanent Delegations of Lithuania and the U.K., and the Woolf Institute in Cambridge. It brought together scholars, expert stakeholders, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and ambassadors to UNESCO from five continents. While it had been planned for many months, the recent terror attacks in Paris and Brussels gave the discussions an added sense of urgency.

In my presentation, I drew out three key messages from the research the Centre for Theology & Community has been doing in east London, as part of the University of Notre Dame’s Contending Modernities programme:

– Firstly, action on “bread and butter” issues of common concern – issues such as low pay and affordable housing – is the often more effective than inter-faith dialogue at building relationships with more conservative and/or isolated religious groups.

– Secondly, there is a danger in demanding that conservative groups pass “progressive tests” before one works with them. As David Barclay has argued in Making Multiculturalism Work, this excludes the very people it is most important to draw into relationships across difference.

– Thirdly, there is still an important place for inter-faith dialogue – but it may be more fruitful to engage in the difficult conversations on issues of deep difference after there has been action on issues of common concern.

The presentation ended with an invitation to ongoing conversation. Not only would a continued conversation enable others to learn more about the potential of community organizing  (and not just in east London, but in a growing range of countries and contexts), but it would also help those of us engaged in community organizing to engage more effectively with our local diaspora communities, drawn from all across the world. I hope to be able to report again soon on how that conversation develops.

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Angus Ritchie
Canon Dr. Angus Ritchie is an Anglican priest. For over twenty years, he has served in parishes in East London involved in community organizing, playing a leading role in campaigns for the Living Wage, affordable housing, and a cap on interest rates. He is the founding director of the Centre for Theology and Community. His latest book, Inclusive Populism: Creating Citizens in the Global Age was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2019, and was recently discussed by Pope Francis at a conference of Catholics involved in community organizing.
Theorizing Modernities article

Tentacles of the Leviathan? Nationalism, Islamophobia, and the Insufficiency-yet-Indispensability of Human Rights for Religious Freedom in Contemporary Europe


Full article may be found at the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (paywall may apply)

In multiple cases across Europe, a growing list of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) converges on an apparent consensus: the expanding presence of Islam throughout Europe presents a pronounced challenge to Western conceptions of secular law and human rights. Several analysts have argued that behind this apparent consensus lurk various strains of European nationalism (Asad 2003: chap. 5; Asad 2006; Scott 2007;Bowen 2012). These nationalisms manifest tendencies to reify the identity of an internally distinct yet putatively inassimilable “other.” They then, in effect, scapegoat that other—in the present cases, through the socio-cultural, political, legal, and religious construction of Islamophobia (Springs 2015).

The most conspicuous strains of European nationalisms take form in unapologetically xenophobic, chauvinistic, self-identified nationalist voices. This poses a deceptive complication for understanding and adequately responding to nationalist reactions to Muslims in Europe. It is illusorily straightforward to limit one’s conception of nationalism to its most extreme manifestations, such as abhorrently radical fringe elements (e.g. the case of Anders Breivik in Norway), political groups that clearly deviate from the politics of the mainstream (e.g. Marine Le Pen and the National Front Party in France), self-avowedly less extreme but nonetheless vocally xenophobic public figures (e.g. the legacy of Pim Fortuyn and politics of Geert Wilders in Holland), or those who declare that Islam’s increasingly visible presence in Europe vindicates the inexorability of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis (e.g. Ayaan Hirsi Ali). The attention commanded by such pronounced examples draws attention away from forms and effects of nationalism that interpose themselves in the reaction to Muslims in Europe in less conspicuous ways. The latter occur more subtly, at times surreptitiously, as modes of exclusion, inequality, and humiliation. And these may crop up within even the languages and norms that have been developed to protect against nationalism’s more egregious effects.

What options are available for illuminating and protecting against effects of nationalism when, for instance, nationalist strains of Islamophobia become subtly articulated and enforced in the application of human rights norms and institutions? It is this question to which the following paper poses an answer. I examine the 2004 law banning the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in contemporary France, taking as a test case the ECHR upholding that ban in 2008 in Dogru v. France (ECHR 2008). I argue that international human rights norms and institutions, while insufficient alone, are nonetheless indispensable for protecting against the encroachment of subtle forms of religious nationalism and for the protection of religious freedom in contemporary European contexts. I propose to illuminate and then critically assess the ways that human rights discourse (and recent adjudications by the ECHR, in particular) has come to subtly collude in anti-Muslim currents of European nationalism. At the same time, my critical exposition aims to lead to a refined understanding of the constructive roles that human rights might play in European contexts. I seek to demonstrate that human rights discourse can be, and needs to be, applied in conjunction with analytical tools that guard against its unjust applications.

Part I of this paper places my engagement with the French headscarf law and ECHR ruling within the context of recent debates over human rights and religious freedom. These debates question the viability and/or incapacity for human rights adjudication regarding religious freedom to cut against the influence of Islamphobic tendencies inscribed in European state interests. Yet these debates, I argue, are prone to excessive discursive analytical tendencies. They risk concluding that human rights, and religious freedom more specifically, serve (however tacitly) purely as means by which modern states impose and reinforce the regulatory powers of their sovereignty (as tentacles of the Leviathan, one might say).1 I unpack the case at hand, examining how the banning of headscarves in French public schools relied upon quite specific conceptions of French national identity and French state sovereignty. I then examine the abortive effort to challenge the headscarf ban on the basis of human rights norms as codified in the “freedom of religious expression clause” of Article Nine of the ECHR (ECHR 2008). Article Nine appears to directly counter the ban’s legal justifiability. On what grounds did the ECHR application of principles of freedom of conscience and religious expression as codified in Article Nine—ultimately justify upholding the ban on religious symbolic dress in public spaces? Answers to this question become available, I argue in part II, only when one includes the influence of national culture, and particularly the impact of the laic ethos of French society as a form of ethno-religious nationalism, in assessing this case. Attending to the subtle dynamics of French religious nationalism illuminates tendencies toward a secularist cultural hegemony in the current ECHR ruling. Within this hegemony, the valorization of human rights (and application of the “conscience clause” itself) ultimately comes to perpetuate forms of social exclusions, inequality, and humiliation.

The purpose of my critical analysis, however, is to forward a corrective approach to human rights. Such an approach aims to enrich and alter it as a normative discourse by illuminating its inevitably political and cultural dimensions. Such an approach factors into its analyses the context-specific interests and purposes that inevitably influence adjudication of human rights cases. The results of attending to nationalism, I argue in part III, do not necessitate abandoning or vilifying human rights as inexorable tools of state power dressed in nationalist trappings. I propose, rather, to reconceptualize nationalism as interdependent with, and yet simultaneously distinguishable from, state purposes and interests. This permits recognizing the multiplicity of ways that, in practice, processes of selective cultural and religious negotiation constitute national identities and associations. These might afford multidirectional resources for immanent critical resistance to, and imagining constructive transformation of, state interests and human rights applications.

Click here to read the full article at the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (paywall may apply)

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Jason Springs
Jason A. Springs is professor of religion, ethics, and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. Springs is particularly interested in ethical, philosophical, and religious dimensions of restorative justice, attending specifically to its potential to intervene in racialized and class dimensions of the U.S. prison-industrial complex. He works on questions of structural and cultural violence, conceptions of religious toleration and the challenges posed by religious pluralism for transforming conflict, Islamophobia in Europe and North America, and democratic theories and practices. These concerns are oriented by his broader research interests in American Pragmatist thought. Springs’s most recent book, Resurrection in Back of the Yards: Restorative Justice and Lived Religion on Chicago’s South and West Sides (2024), examines the effectiveness of restorative justice initiatives in responding to structural forms of racism and injustice (e.g., the New Jim Crow). He is the author of Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary (2018), Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology (2010), and coauthor (with Atalia Omer) of Religious Nationalism: A Reference Handbook (2013). His articles appear in Journal of Religious Ethics, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, The Journal of Religion, Modern Theology, and Contemporary Pragmatism, among others. 
Field Notes article

Women Strengthening Pluralist Co-Existence in Contemporary Indonesia: Analyzing the Role of Komnas Perempuan and the Koalisi Perempuan

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This research project examines the role of women in interreligious dialogue and peaceful co-existence in Indonesia, focusing on the activities of two organizations: Komnas Perempuan, or Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan (National Committee against Violence against Women) and the Koalisi Perempuan untuk Keadilan dan Demokrasi (Women’s Coalition for Justice and Democracy). Both organizations were born out of pre-existing grassroots activism, launched after the 1998 collapse of Suharto’s New Order regime, and especially focused on protesting acts of violence against women. When large-scale communal violence erupted in May 1998, women, many of them ethnic Chinese, were among the primary victims. Although the society around them was still deeply rooted in misogynic ideas, the battles these women had waged for legal, religious, economic, social, and other forms of equality since the 1980s had started to bear fruit; new opportunities had opened to women, and debates about their legal rights had reached the public press and political platforms. In particular, women’s legal status—for example, in situations of domestic violence—had become stronger as activists convinced the general public of the negative consequences of such violence.

After 1998, as the nation transitioned to a democratic model, incidents of interreligious violence continued to break out across Indonesia. Radical Muslim groups vied for power and launched campaigns focused on religious beliefs, often targeting women’s social position and rights. While these groups failed to gain official political power, their ideological discourse has had significant impact and continues to fuel pervasive local conflicts. With government decentralization, local by-laws replaced the failed attempts to apply Shari’ah nationwide. Although in many cases these laws contradict Indonesia’s Constitution and national laws and have led to a plurality within the legal system, local governments (district/municipality, region, or province) can and do issue their own Shari’ah-inspired laws. In particular, these laws sometimes discriminate against women; a Komnas Perempuan report (2010) on 154 such laws found that 63 directly restricted women’s rights. Furthermore, their sheer presence has thrown debates on such issues as domestic violence back decades. This regression moved Indonesia’s diverse religious women’s groups to take action, and a variety of women’s organizations gathered under the umbrella of the Komnas Perempuan and one of its partners, the Koalisi Perempuan.

Facing the risk of being accused of importing Western feminist ideas, Komnas and the Koalisi stressed the fact that their work was based on the teachings of their respective religions. This approach resulted in women of different religious backgrounds working together, and sharing in serious religious reflection on how to address initiatives that strengthened women’s basic human rights.

Research findings and individual observations have since confirmed that women played a vital role in reconstructing the nation and building stronger, more durable interreligious relations. For example, during his work as a member of the Komnas Perempuan subcommittee for gender and minorities, famous Indonesian women’s rights activist Kiai Husein Mohammad found that religious pluralism has to be learned and is often undermined by a local leadership that refuses to apply national rules of law. He found that political identities trumped the demands of living in a religiously pluralist environment and that women were the strongest forces in trying to break these pervasive patterns. Recent research by the members of the Shari’ah Department at Islamic State University (UIN) in Yogyakarta confirms that, especially at the grassroots level, male leaders will apply rules and laws they deem beneficial, even when they contradict national rulings or guidelines. Further, inconsistent application of local rules and by-laws disadvantages mostly women. How radical discourse has influenced public opinion can be seen in the June 6, 2015 Jakarta Post, which observed that, nowadays, more Indonesian Muslims are concerned about interreligious marriage than the harmful practice of child marriage.

Komnas Perempuan and Koalisi Perempuan are both national, interreligious organizations with local chapters across the nation that address women’s challenges. Their activities range from publishing research reports, academic analysis and reflection about local activities (e.g., Adeney-Risakotta), to grassroots initiatives. The Koalisi currently focuses on poverty, while Komnas deals with violence against women, legal pluralism, and poverty, among other problems. Komnas tailors its activities to national and local needs; for example, it has focused on women’s role in elections since 1999 and on the recent death sentence for female drug smugglers. Both organizations have been structured to strengthen women’s rights, promote religious equality, and break through such barriers as religious fanaticism, poverty, discriminating policies, and lack of legal clarity.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

For this Contending Modernities project, our guiding research question is:

How do these two Indonesian women’s organizations negotiate religious differences when addressing violence against women (e.g., domestic violence), legal pluralism, and poverty?

Consequently, sub-questions include:

What specific strategies do these women design to address issues of systemic violence, legal pluralism, and poverty?

How do these strategies connect to local and national programs and policies?

How are they translated into the relevant discourses of local and national leaders and policy makers?

How do the strategies contribute to the issues of interreligious living, interreligious dialogue, and civic peace making activities? Do they strengthen interreligious living?

The fact that these two organizations conduct activities at the national, provincial, and local levels makes them the ideal venue to study women’s strategies and instruments to translate local concerns into national contexts, and to see how the different levels of governance interact. In remote rural areas, in cities, and in developing areas, their work is defining the position of women in modern Indonesia and forging stronger bonds between religious communities.

This project is based on two premises: the reality that certain definitions and practices of interreligious dialogue are specific to the Indonesian context, and that women often play specific roles in this dialogue.

Existing literature on interreligious dialogue often discusses theoretical practices such as exchanging knowledge about each other’s religions. At the grassroots level such exercises might be too sophisticated, and populations tend to use religious symbols to support the integration or segregation of religious communities.

Women are among the most invisible actors in interreligious dialogue and civic peacemaking activities, in part because they often work primarily at the grassroots level. While solving social problems at the complex intersection between religion and culture, women are faced with pervasive biases, regardless of religion. Double burdens, ambivalent attitudes, and unrealistic expectations about women’s work and duties exist across religious lines. This project aims to map women’s influence as agents who strengthen interreligious relations while dealing with domestic violence, legal plurality, and poverty.

Despite the challenges they face, for many decades the Indonesian reality has proved that, faced with blatant conditions of injustice, women will not stay silent. Organized in a wide variety of religious and nonreligious organizations, they construct initiatives to counter the forces that diminish their rights and general wellbeing. The very existence of the two organizations under study testifies to this determination. For the Contending Modernities project, studying these two organizations will benefit the larger discussions of women’s roles in interreligious dialogue and yield information about specific strategies and methodologies. It will inform our understanding of the mechanisms underlying successful civic and interreligious peacemaking initiatives in the twenty-first century.

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Nelly van Doorn-Harder
Professor of Islamic Studies at Wake Forest University. Van Doorn-Harder was born and raised in the Netherlands, were she earned her PhD on the topic of women in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. Before moving to the USA, she was director of a refugee program in Cairo, Egypt, and taught Islamic Studies at universities in the Netherlands (Leiden) and Indonesia (Yogyakarta).
Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta
Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta received her Ph.D. in anthropology and Indonesian studies from Nijmegen University in the Netherlands. Farsijana also holds a Master of Arts degree in religion and society from Satya Wacana University in Salatiga, Indonesia, and a bachelor’s degree in theology from the Theological Seminary, Jakarta. Farsijana has worked as a field researcher on social change in the Moluccas for the University of Amsterdam (1999–2000). She was a lecturer for the Institute for Integrated Village ministry (1995) and assistant director of the Center for Analysis and Training in Rural Development in Tobelo, North Moluccas, Indonesia (1990).
Field Notes article

Changing Dynamics of Peaceful Coexistence in Lombok: Contending Authorities and Muslim-Hindu-Christian Relations


 

The proposed research marks an attempt to understand and explain conditions for peaceful co-existence among Muslims, Hindus, and Christians in Lombok, an island in the eastern part of Indonesia known as the “island of a thousand of mosques.” The presence of majestic mosques both in urban and rural areas signifies a strong influence of Islam in shaping the identity and socio-religious life of the Sasak, the indigenous people of Lombok. However, Lombok possesses a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Muslims comprise a majority of the population at 95%, with Hindus adding 4%, and Christians making up less than 1% of the total population. The remainder includes other minorities, such as Buddhists. The Sasak, Mbojo-Samawa, and other migrants from Java (including Arabs and Bugis) are mostly Muslim. The Hindus are descendants of the Balinese, who conquered and ruled Lombok from the second half of the seventeenth until the end of the nineteenth century. Christian migrants, many of whom are Chinese, come from other parts of the country.

Located in northwestern Lombok, the capital of West Nusa Tenggara province, Mataram, is perhaps the island’s most dynamic location for the unfolding of inter-religious engagement, competition, and potential conflict. Mataram offers some examples of inter-religious convergence and harmony, including the annual gathering by both Muslims and Hindus for a religious and cultural festival in a shared sacred place within the Lingsar Temple. The festival continues despite new tensions emerging in Lingsar due to increasing strict local interpretations of Islam. Positive Muslim-Hindu relations are also indicated by the existence of a mosque in the Mura Temple area in Cakranegera, Mataram. The Hindu annual parade of ogoh-ogoh (a theatrical war against evils symbolized by giant statues of demons) is another example of shared public religious interactions, as Muslims, Christians, and others may take part in the parade in albeit minor ways.

Nevertheless, conflicts and violence have occurred. Some Muslim kampongs have been involved in conflicts with neighboring Hindu kampongs in central Mataram and its northern suburbs. The conflicts themselves are commonly instigated by personal, social, or economical issues, but become “religious” when religious symbols and identities are used to distinguish and strengthen the identity of the respective conflicting communities. The fact that Hindus and Muslims commonly live in segregated kampongs in Mataram strengthens community division on the basis of ethnicity and religion, allowing inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict to potentially escalate more easily when minor conflicts emerge. Balinese rule in Lombok, as well as the wars between the Balinese and their Muslim Sasak subjects during those periods, also remains an important historical driver for conflict. In addition, fading traditional values of neighborhood and the lack of public spaces where community members can interact with one another constitute other crucial roots of the conflicts.

However, in other areas of Mataram Hindus and Muslims live side-by-side harmoniously, such as in Pagutan and Pagesangan, two major Hindu enclaves in the city. Interestingly, a number of Islamic schools (madrasa/pesantren) also exist here, run by Muslim religious scholars (tuan guru). However, studies on Muslim-Hindu relations hardly focus on these peace zones, and the roles that of tuan guru  authorities in other religious traditions play in inter-religious relations have also rarely been analyzed.

Muslim-Christian relations in Lombok show a different pattern. In general, Muslim-Christian religious coexistence has long been harmonious. However, Christians became the victims of communal riot in 2000. The violence broke out after an Islamic gathering in Mataram Square to protest Muslim-Christian inter-religious and ethnic conflicts in Maluku. From the gathering, the participants staged rallies on main streets in the city that turned violent as they passed churches. Several churches were burned, dozens of Christian homes were destroyed, and stores were looted. Although the violence has not reoccurred, and the Christians have rebuilt their churches and resumed their religious services peacefully, there has been no systematic study of the peace process and post-violence social reconciliation between Muslims and Christians.

Competition over religious symbols and formation of religious-cultural identity marks the other feature of interreligious interactions in Lombok. According to the data from Mataram Statistical Bureau, up to 30 new mosques and 61 temples have been built since the last ten year. In contrast, Christians lost one church in the same period; they now have 16 churches in the city. While Muslims and Hindus often stage religious festivals or processions on streets, such as pawai takbiran and ogoh-ogoh, Christians rarely hold religious street parades. Moreover, the educational system in Mataram plays a role in either fostering or marginalizing a particular religious identity. Students at state schools in Mataram are instructed to wear school uniforms that reveal their ethnic and/or religious affiliations every Friday. On the one hand, this policy helps preserve a particular cultural and religious identity, but, on the other, may foster either integration or seclusion.

Based on these backgrounds, this research will focus on the three major issues. First, it will examine majority-minority relations and the dynamics and changing interactions between Muslims and Hindus and Muslims and Christians. By comparing localized examples of conflict and peace between Muslim and Hindu communities, this study will analyze the complex roles of contending authorities, communities, and identities in both the maintenance of peaceful coexistence and the transformation of conflict resolution. A study on peace areas helps understand why a particular place is susceptible to conflicts while another is not. Special attention will be also be given to the current state of Muslim-Christian relations and instances of post-violence reconciliation since the 2000 riot.

Second, this research will analyze the roles of religious as well as secular (state) authorities and their impacts on localized peace and conflict settlements. Lederach argues that the state, religious authorities, and social institutions are key factors for peacebuilding. This study will thus examine the role of the state in the management of religious diversity and the social standing of religious leaders such as tuan guru (Muslim), pedande (Hindu) and pendeta (Christian) and their role in conflict settlements. It will also look critically at engagement by NGOs, religious organizations and the state (including both local and regional government) in peacebuilding and the dilemmas in managing a pluralistic society. It is of utmost important to critically engage these three forces–the state, religious leaders, and civil society organizations (both secular and religious)–and to understand the ways in which these three forces negotiate, collaborate, contend, and contest with one another.

Third, this research will analyze the formation and institutionalization of religious symbols and identities in public schools, and their impacts on minority student integration or seclusion. This finally element is particularly important, as schools often become a medium through which ethnic and religious identities are established, renegotiated, and reshaped through the uses of various symbols and system of representation ascribed to students.

 

 

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Mohamad Abdun Nasir
Mohamad Abdun Nasir is a lecturer at the Department of Islamic Law and Economics at the Graduate School of the State Islamic Institute (IAIN) Mataram. He received a Fulbright Presidential Scholarship and Emory Laney Graduate School Scholarship for his doctoral degree at Emory University, where he earned his PhD in Islamic studies in 2013. His recent publications have appeared in the Asian Journal of Social Science and Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.