Journal of International Affairs Editorial Board
The Worldwide Rise of Religious Nationalism
Author(s): Mark Juergensmeyer
Source: Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 50, No. 1, Religion: Politics, Power and
Symbolism (Summer 1996), pp. 1-20
Published by: Journal of International Affairs Editorial Board
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The Worldwide Rise of
Religious Nationalism
Mark Juergensmeyer
Plalestine
is not completely
free,"
a leader
ofThe
Hamas'
wing remarked,
"until it is an
Islamic
state."1
Hamaspolicy
ac
tivist made this statement in Gaza only a few months before the
January 1996 elections, an event that not only brought Yasir Arafat
triumphantly into power but also fulfilled the Palestinian dream
of an independent nation. Yet it was not the kind of nation that
the Islamic activist and his colleagues had yearned to create. For
that reason, they refused to run candidates for public office and
urged their followers to boycott the polls. They threatened that
the movement would continue to carry out "political actions," by
which they meant terrorist attacks, such as the series of suicide
bombings conducted by a militant faction that rocked Jerusalem,
Politicized religious movements are
the responses of those who feel
desperate and desolate in the
current geo-political crisis.
Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel in February and March of 1996,
jeopardizing the peace process and Arafat's fragile alliance.
On the Israeli side of the border, Jewish activists have also
attacked the secular leadership of their nation, and again a viru
lent mixture of religion and politics has led to bloodshed. Yigal
Amir, who was convicted of assassinating Israel's prime minister
Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv on 4 November 1995, claimed that he
Imad Saluji, Hamas journalist and leader of the policy wing of the movement, inter
view with author, Gaza City, 19 August 1995.1 appreciate the research assistance of
Aaron Santell and Antony Charles for this and other cases mentioned in this article.
Journal of International Affairs, Summer 1996, 50, no. 1. © The Trustees of Columbia
University in the City of New York.
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Journal of International Affairs
had religious reasons for his actions, saying "everything I did, I
did for the glory of God."2 Amir has adamantly rejected attempts
by his lawyers to assert that he was not guilty by reason of insan
ity. "I am at peace," he explained, insisting that he was "totally
normal." His murder of Rabin, he argued, was deliberate and even
praiseworthy under a certain reading of religious law that allows
for a defense against those who would destroy the Jewish nation.3
A few weeks before the assassination, Jewish activists near
Hebron indicated that they shared many of Amir's views. They
were still grieving over the killing of Dr. Baruch Goldstein by an
angry Muslim crowd in February 1995, after he murdered 35
Muslims as they were saying their prayers in the mosque at the
Cave of the Patriarchs, revered by both Jews and Muslims as the
burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Goldstein's grave has
now been made into a shrine. The militant Jews at the site ex
plained that acts such as Dr. Goldstein's were necessary not only
to protect the land but also to defend the very notion of a Jewish
nation — one that for reasons of redemption and history had to
be established on biblical terrain. Religious duty required them to
become involved politically and even militarily. "Jews," one of
them said, "have to learn to worship in a national way."4
This potentially explosive mixture of nationalism and reli
gion is an ingredient even in incidents that might appear initially
to be isolated terrorist incidents: the bombing of the federal builcl
ing in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995, for instance, or the 20
March 1995 nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway station. In the
Oklahoma City case, the Christian militia movements with which
accused bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols have been
associated have adopted a certain conspiratorial view of American
politics: The nation is not free, they reason, because of a vast in
ternational conspiracy involving Jews and Freemasons. They be
lieve that it needs to be liberated through an armed struggle that
will establish America as an independent and Christian nation.5
2 Yigal Amir, quoted in news services utilized in the article, "Rabin Assassin's New
Version," San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January 1996, p. A6.
3 Yigal Amir, quoted in Barton Gellman, "Rabin Assassin Shocked in Court," Washing
ton Post, reprinted in San Francisco Chronicle, 30 January 1996, p. A8.
4 Yochay Ron, a volunteer guard at the grave of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, interview with
author, Qiryat Arba settlement near Hebron in Israel, 18 August 1995.
s For the ideology of the Christian Identity Movement and other forms of right-wing
Christian militancy in the United States, see James Aho, The Politics of Righteousness:
Idaho Christian Patriotism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990) pp. 83-104.
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Mark Juergensmeyer
Strangely, the same conspiracy was articulated by mem
bers of Aum Shinrikyo (Om Supreme Truth), the eclectic Bud
dhist-Hindu religious movement in Japan that has been accused
of unleashing cannisters of nerve gas in a Tokyo subway station,
killing twelve people and injuring thousands. A young man who
was a public affairs officer for the main Tokyo headquarters of the
movement at the time said that the first thing that came to his
mind when he heard about the attack was that the "weird time
had come:" The Third World War was about to begin. He had
been taught by his spiritual master, Shoko Asahara, that
Armegeddon was imminent. He had also been taught that the Japa
nese government, in collusion with America and an international
network of Freemasons and Jews, had triggered the January 1995
Kobe earthquake and then planned the nerve gas attack. He was
surprised when Asahara himself was implicated in the plot; the
spiritual leader had portrayed himself as the protector of Japanese
society, and had begun to create an alternative government that
would control the country after the Armegeddon had ended.6
In all these cases the alleged perpetrators possessed world
views that justified to themselves the brutality of such terrorist
acts: They perceived a need to defend their faiths, and held a heady
expectation that what they did would lead to radically new social
and political orders. The events they staged were therefore reli
gious as much as they were political, and provide examples of reli
gious involvement and political change that might seem, at first
glance, to be curiously out of step with the twentieth century.
Yet these religious rebels against modernity are becoming
increasingly vocal. From Algeria to Idaho, small but potent groups
of violent activists represent growing masses of supporters, and
they exemplify currents of thinking that have risen to counter the
prevailing modernism: The ideology of individualism and skepti
cism that in the past three centuries has emerged from post-En
lightenment Europe and spread throughout the world. For that
reason, and because of the rising tide of violence associated with
movements of religious nationalism in the Middle East, South Asia
and elsewhere, it is important to try to understand what religious
Junichi Kamata, former information officer of the Tokyo office of Aum Shinrikyo,
interview with author, Tokyo, 12 January 1996, with the translation assistance of
Prof. Susumu Shimazono and his graduate students. My information on the move
ment comes from interviews with present and former members, and articles by (and
conversations with) Professors Shimazono and Ian Reader.
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Journal of International Affairs
nationalists want: why they hate secular governments with an al
most transcendent passion, how they expect to effect their revolu
tionary changes and what sort of social and politial order they
dream of establishing in the rubble of what we regard as modern,
egalitarian democracies.
Two Kinds of Religious Nationalism: Ethnic and Ideological
When religious nationalists turn to terrorism they seize a
great deal of public attention, as indeed they intend to do. But
there are less visible, although equally serious, confrontations be
tween religious activists and secular authorities through media
campaigns, public intimidation and the democratic option of run
ning candidates in elections. The methods of religious national
ists vary, as do their aims.
One of the greatest differences between the goals of reli
gious nationalists is the degree to which religion is an aspect of
ethnic identity — the sort of religious nationalism one finds in
Ireland, for example — and the degree to which it is part of an
ideological critique that contains an alternative vision of political
order. The latter is the sort of religious nationalism found, for in
stance, in the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran.
The distinction between the two is significant and warrants expla
nation.
Ethnic Religious Nationalism
This kind of nationalism is linked to people and land. I use
the term "ethnic" in this context to refer to communities bound
by race, history or culture, who feel oppressed or limited within
an old social order and who wish to establish a political identity of
their own, usually in a geographical region of their own. Religion,
then, may become fused with a culture of domination or libera
tion. The struggle of the Irish — both Protestant and Catholic —
to claim political authority over the land in which they live is a
paradigmatic case in point. The recent attempts of Muslims in
Chechnya to assert their independence from the rule of Russia,
and Muslims in Tajikistan to assert a cultural element to Tajikistan's
resurgent nationalism, are examples that have emerged in the wake
of the collapse of the former Soviet Union. In what used to be
Yugoslavia, three groups of ethnic religious nationalists are pitted
against one another: Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Mus
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Mark Juergensmeyer
lim Bosnians. In South Asia, the independence movements of Sri
Lankan Tamil Hindus, Kashmiri Muslims and to some extent the
Khalistan supporters in the Punjab, are also movements of ethnic
religious nationalism. In these cases religion provides the identity
that makes a community cohere and links it with a particular place.
Ideological Religious Nationalism
This second kind of nationalism is attached to ideas and
beliefs. I use the term "ideology" not in a Marxist or a Mannheimian
sense, but in the original meaning of the term as it was created by
the ideologues, a group of revolutionary Frenchmen in the eighteenth
century. They were consciously creating a framework of values
and moral positions that would play the same role in supporting
the new secular social order as had traditional religion in support
ing the old. In a curious way, history has come full circle in the
present day Religious nationalists are now rejecting the ideologi
cal underpinnings of western secular nationalism, the faith in rea
son and the social contract expressed by the ideologues and by
theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, and re
placing it with a new ideological framework of their own, one that
combines traditional religious beliefs in divine law and religious
authority with the modern notion of the nation-state.7
If the ethnic approach to religious nationalism politicizes
religion by employing religious identities for political ends, an ideo
logical approach to religious nationalism does the opposite: It
religionizes politics. It puts political issues and struggles within a
sacred context. Compatability with religious goals becomes the
criterion for an acceptable political platform. The Islamic revolu
tion in Iran, for instance, was a classic example of ideological reli
gious nationalism that turned ordinary politics upside down. In
stead of the western ideal of a nonreligious political order provid
ing space for religious activities, in Iran a religious authority has
set the context for politics. In fact, the new Iranian constitution
provides for a "just ruler," a cleric such as the Ayatollah Khomeini,
who will be the ultimate arbiter in legislating the moral basis of
politics. For that reason the Iranian experience was a genuine revo
For further explanation of this idea, see Mark Juergensmeyer, "Competing Ideologies
of Order," The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berke
ley: University of California Press, 1993) pp. 26-41. The term "religious nationalism"
in that book refers to ideological religious nationalism.
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Journal of International Affairs
lution, an extraordinary change from the westernized nation that
the Shah, prior to the Ayatollah, had imagined for Iran. Because
ideological religious nationalism embraces religious ideas as the
basis for politics, national aspirations become fused with religious
quests for purity and redemption, and religious law replaces secu
lar law as the pillar of governmental authority.
Although the enemy of ethnic religious nationalists is a
rival ethnicity, usually the dominant group that had been control
ling them, ideological religious nationalists do not need to look
beyond their own ethnic community to find an ideological foe:
They often loathe their own kind. As Yigal Amir dramatically il
lustrated when he shot Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, reli
gious nationalists may target the secular leaders of their own na
tions. For that reason tensions have been growing in nominally
Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, where
militant Islamic revolutionaries have identified their own moder
ate Muslim leaders as obstacles to progress. In the United States it
appears that this passionate hatred of government led to the bomb
ing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. In India, a wide
spread disdain for secular politics has propelled the Bharatiya Janata
Party into becoming the largest movement for religious national
ism in the world. Buddhist movements in Sri Lanka, Mongolia
and Tibet have characterized their secular political opponents as
being not just immoral and unprincipled but also enemies of
dhammic (righteous) social order.
Some religious nationalists see their own secular leaders as
part of a wider, virtually global conspiracy, one controlled by vast
political and economic networks sponsored by European and
American powers. For that reason they may hate not only the
politicians in their home countries, but also these leaders' political
and economic allies in lands far beyond their own national bound
aries. Islamic militants associated with Egypt's radical al-Jama'a
al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group), for example, nave attacked not only
Egyptian politicians — killing president Anwar Sadat and attempt
ing to kill his successor, Hosni Mubarak — but also foreigners,
such as the busload of Greek tourists killed near the pyramids on
17 April 1996, allegedly by Muslim terrorists. The movement
literally moved its war against secular powers abroad when its leader,
Sheikh Omar 'Abd al-Rahman, moved to New Jersey and became
involved in a bombing attack on the World Trade Center on 26
February 1993 that killed six and injured a thousand more. The
trial that convicted him in January 1996 of masterminding the
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Mark Juergensmeyer
attack also implicated him in an elaborate plot to blow up a vari
ety of sites in the New York City area, including the United Na
tions buildings and the Lincoln Tunnel. Algerian Muslim activists
have apparently brought their war against secular Algerian leaders
to Paris, where they have been implicated in a series of subway
bombings in 1995. Hassan Turabi in Sudan has been accused of
orchestrating Islamic rebellions in a variety of countries, linking
Islamic activists in common cause against what is seen as the great
satanic power of the secular West. In some cases this conspirato
rial vision has taken bizarre twists, as in the view shared by both
the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo and certain American Christian mili
tia movements that Jews and Freemasons are collaborating to con
trol the world.
Ethno-ideologial Religious Nationalism
A third form of religious nationalism — which one might
call "ethno-ideological" — combines the other two and is both eth
nic and ideological in character. These religious nationalists have
double sets of enemies: their ethnic rivals and the secular leaders
of their own people. The Hamas movement in Palestine is a prime
example. While fighting against Israel they are simultaneously spar
ring with Yasir Arafat; often the attacks leveled at Israelis are also
intended to wound the credibility of Arafat's fledgling Palestinian
Authority. It is not a coincidence that the Hamas suicide bomb
ings aimed at Israelis increased in the months immediately before
and after the January 1996 elections — a poll that Hamas wished
to discredit. The leaders of the movement believed, as their founder
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said several years ago, that "the only true
Palestinian state is an Islamic state."8This means that the move
ment must simultaneously wage war against both Israeli leaders
like Rabin and Peres and secular Palestinian leaders such as Arafat.
Like the militant Muslims in Hamas, the Sikh separatists
that flourished in Northern India until 1993 were both ethnic
and ideological, and like their Palestinian counterparts also had a
double set of enemies. In the Sikh case, the Khalistani side of the
movement aimed at creating a separate nation of Sikhs, and tried
to purge the rural Punjab of Hindus. But there was also a more
ideologically religious side to the movement, the one led by Sant
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, interview with author, Gaza City, 14 January 1989.
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Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, that aimed at establishing the Sikh
religious tradition as authoritative in both secular and political
spheres, and targeted moderate Sikh leaders and secular politi
cians as their foes. Followers of this wing succeeded in assassinat
ing several important secular politicians including Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi in 1984. A spectacular explosion that killed Punjab's
chief minister, Beant Singh, on 31 August 1995, shows that the
movement is still alive.
Other movements of religious nationalism, even ones that
appear to be primarily ethnic, may also have, at some level, an
ideological component. This is so because religion, the repository
of traditions of symbols and beliefs, always stands ready to be
tapped by those who wish to develop a new framework of ideas
about social order. In the case of Bosnia, for example, the anger of
Bosnian Serbs — frequently described in the western media as the
residue of ancient ethnic rivalries — is also fueled by an imagina
tive religious myth. The Serb leaders are Orthodox Christians
who see themselves as surrogate Christ-figures in a contemporary
political understanding of the passion narrative. A drama and an
epic poem have been invented to retell the New Testament's ac
count of Christ's death in a way that portrays historical Serbian
leaders as Christ figures, and the Bosnian Muslims as Judases. This
mythologized dehumanization of the Muslims allows them to be
regarded as a sub-human species, one that in the Serbian imagina
tion deserves the genocidal "ethnic cleansing" that killed so many
in the darkest hours of the Bosnian civil war.9 As the Bosnian case
shows, there is sometimes a fine line between ethnic and ideologi
cal forms of religious nationalism.
In general, ethnic religious nationalism is easier for mod
ern Americans and Europeans to understand, even though it may
be just as violent as ideological nationalism. The London terrorist
bombings by the Irish Republican Army after the ceasefire broke
down in February 1996, and the Sri Lankan Tamils' suicide
tacks that demolished downtown Colombo in January 1996,
recent examples. Yet, to some extent, these acts of violence
understandable because they are aimed at a society that the
at
are
are
ter
rorists regard as exerting direct military or political control over
them.
I am grateful to Michael Sells for letting me see an advanced copy of his revealing new
book on this topic, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley. Uni
versity of California Press, forthcoming in late 1996).
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Mark Juergensmeyer
The violence of ideological religious movements is focussed
on those who are ideologically different — secularists — and whose
control over them may be cultural and economic, and therefore
less obvious. Their enemies seem to most westerners to be both
benign and banal: modern, secular leaders like Yitzhak Rabin or
Anwar Sadat, and such symbols of American prosperity and au
thority as the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City federal
building. The logic of this kind of ideological nationalistic vio
lence is therefore more difficult to comprehend, and the rationale
behind it more profound, for it contains a fundamental critique of
the West's post-Enlightenment culture and politics. For these rea
sons, the rest of this article will focus on ideological religious
nationalism.
The Logic of Ideological Religious Nationalism
Although each movement is shaped by its own historical
and social context, there are some common elements, due in part
to the massive economic and political changes of this moment in
history, an experience that has been shared by people around the
world. What follows, then, is an attempt to identify five crucial
steps in the development of ideological and ethno-ideological reli
gious nationalism that has resulted from this common experience,
beginning with the disaffection over the dominance of modern
Western culture and what is perceived to be its political ally, secu
lar nationalism.
1. Despair over Secular Nationalism
The shifts in economic and political power that have oc
curred following the break-up of the Soviet Union and the sudden
rise of Japanese and other Asian economies in the past 15 years
have had significant social repercussions. The public sense of inse
curity that has come in the wake of these changes is felt not only
in the societies of those nations that are economically devastated
by the changes, especially countries in the former Soviet Union,
but also in economically stronger areas as well. The United States,
for example, has seen a remarkable degree of disaffection with its
political leaders and witnessed the rise of right-wing religious move
ments that feed on the public's perception of the immorality of
government. At the extreme end of this religious rejection are the
Christian militia and cults such as Waco's Branch Davidian sect.
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Journal of International Affairs
Similar movements have emerged in Japan, which is also experi
encing disillusionment over its national purpose and destiny. As
in America, the critique and sectarian experiments with its alter
natives often take religious forms, including new religious move
ments such as Soka Gakkai, Agon-shu, and the now infamous Aum
Shinrikyo.
The global shifts that have led to a crisis of national pur
pose in developed countries have, in a somewhat different way,
affected developing nations as well. Leaders such as India's
Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt's Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir, and Iran's Reza
Shah Pahlavi once had been committed to creating versions of
America, or a kind of cross between America and the Soviet Union,
at home. However, a new generation of leadership is emerging in
countries that were formerly European colonies, and they no longer
believe in the westernized vision of Nehru, Nasir or the Shah.
Rather, they are eager to complete the process of decolonization.
They want to assert the legitimacy of their countries' own tradi
tional values in the public sphere, and build a postcolonial na
tional identity based on indigenous culture.10 This eagerness is
made all the more keen when confronted with the media assault
of western music, videos and films that satellite television now
beams around the world, and which threaten local and traditional
forms of cultural expression.
The result of this disaffection with the culture of the mod
ern West has been what I have called a "loss of faith" in the ideo
logical form of that culture, secular nationalism.11 Although a few
years ago it would have been a startling notion, the idea that na
tionalism as we know it in the modern West is in crisis has now
become virtually commonplace. This is due in large part to the
view that it is a cultural construction closely linked with what
Jürgen Habermas has called "the project of modernity."12 Increas
ingly we live in a multicultural, postmodern world where a variety
of views of nationhood are in competition, and the very concept
of nationalism has become a matter of lively debate among schol
ars.13 It has become a matter of political survival to leaders of
10 For a forceful statement of this thesis, see Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Frag
ments: Colonial and Postcobnial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
11 See Juergensmeyer, pp. 11-25.
12 Jürgen Habermas, "Modernity: An Incomplete Project," reprinted in Interpretive Social
Science: A Second Look, ed. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan (Berkeley: Univer
sity of California Press, 1987) p. 148.
10
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Mark Juergensmeyer
nations that are still struggling to establish a sense of national
identity, and for whom religious answers to these questions of defi
nition have extraordinary popular appeal.
2. Seeing Politics in a Religious Way
The second step in the development of ideological religious
nationalism is the perception that the problem with politics is, at
some level, religious. This means "religionizing" politics, as de
scribed earlier in this essay, in two ways: by showing that political
difficulties have a religious cause, and that religious goals have a
political solution.
If one looks at politics from a religious perspective, it may
appear that secular nationalism has failed because it is, in a sense,
religiously inadequate. As one of the leaders of the Iranian revolu
tion put it, secular nationalism is "a kind of religion."14 He went
on to explain that it was not only a religion, but one peculiar to
the West, a point that was echoed by one of the leaders of the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.15 Behind this charge is a certain
vision of social reality, one that involves a series of concentric circles.
The smallest are families and clans; then come ethnic groups and
nations; the largest, and implicitly most important, are religions,
The academic literature on nationalism has become a veritable growth industry in the
last several years. A new journal, Nations and Nationalism, was launched in 1995 to
appeal to the interest, and several other journals have devoted special issues to the
topic: for example, "Reconstructing Nations and States," Daedalus, 122, no. 3 (Sum
mer 1993); Anthony D. Smith, Guest Editor, "Ethnicity and Nationalism," Interna
tional Journal of Comparative Sociology, 33, no. 1-2 (January-April 1992); and "Global
Culture," Theory, Culture, and Society, 7, no. 2-3 (June 1990). See also these recent
books: Harumi Befu, ed., Cultural Nationalism in East Asia (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993); Gidon Gottlieb, Nation Against State: A New Approach to Eth
nic Conflicts and the Decline of Sovereignty (New York: Council on Foreign Relations,
1993); Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, U.K.: Cam
bridge University Press, 1992); Dawa Norbu, Culture and Politics of Third World Na
tionalism (London: Routledge, 1992); William Pfaff, The Wrath of Nations: Civilization
and the Fury of Nationalism (New York: Simon &. Schuster, 1993); Yael Tamir, Liberal
Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); and Crawford Young, ed.,
The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay? (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1993). I am endebted to Darrin McMahon for research assistance
on the contemporary crisis of nationalism.
Abolhassan Banisadr, The Fundamental Principles and Precepts of Islamic Government, trans.
Mohammad R. Ghanoonparvar, (Lexington, KY: Mazda Publishers, 1981) p. 40.
Dr. Essam el Arian, Member of the National Assembly, interview with author, Cairo,
11 January 1989.
11
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in the sense of global civilizations. Among these are Islam, Bud
dhism and what some who hold this view call "Christendom" or
"western civilization" or "westernism."16 In this conceptualization,
particular nations such as Germany, France and the United States,
stand as subsets of Christendom/western civilization; similarly,
Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and other nations are subsets of Islamic civi
lization. From this vantage point, it is both a theological and a
political error to suggest that Egypt or Iran should be thrust into a
western frame of reference. In this view of the world they are
intrinsically part of Islamic, not western, civilization, and it is an
act of imperialism to think of them in any other way. Those who
hold this view would solve the problem of secular nationalism by
replacing what they regard as a spiritually insufficient and cultur
ally inappropriate religion, "westernism," with Islam or some other
religion related to the local population.
At the same time that religion is solving political problems,
politics can help to solve religious ones. In the view of Messianic
Zionists such as Dr. Baruch Goldstein and his mentor, Rabbi Meir
Kahane, for example, the redemption of the world cannot take
place until the Messiah comes, and the Messiah cannot return
until the biblical lands, including the West Bank, are restored to
Jewish control. "Miracles don't just happen," Kahane said in Jerusa
lem a year before he was assassinated in New York City by Mus
lims associated with Sheikh Omar 'Abd al-Rahman's New Jersey
mosque. Referring to the return of the Messiah, which he felt
could only come after Jews had created the right political condi
tions, Kahane said, "miracles are made."17 Some Messianic Jews
think that the correct conditions for the return of the Messiah
include the reconstruction of the Jerusalem temple on its original
site, as described in the Bible. This site is now occupied by the
Muslim shrine, the Dome of the Rock. Some of these activists
have been implicated in plots to blow up the shrine in order to
hasten the coming of the kingdom. One who served time in prison
for his part in such a plot said that the rebuilding of the temple
16 Prof. Ibrahim Dasuqi Shitta, Professor of Persian Literature and advisor to Muslim
students at Cairo University, interview with author, 10 January 1989.
17 Rabbi Meir ICahane, interview with author, Jerusalem, 18 January 1989. Kahane
was assassinated in a meeting room in the Marriott Hotel in midtown Manhattan in
November 1990. My thanks to Prof. Ehud Sprinzak for arranging the interview. For
a description of Kahane's position in political and historical context see Sprinzak's
The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 ).
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Mark Juergensmeyer
was a "national obligation" for the sake of redemption, a political
position for which Israel should make "no compromise."18
Religious activists who embrace traditions such as
millennarian Christianity and Shi'ite Islam, which have a strong
sense of the historical fulfillment of prophecy, look towards a reli
fious
apocalypse
that will
usherideas
in a from
new age.
The leader of Aum
hinrikyo,
borrowing
Christian
the sixteenth-century
French astrologer, Nostradamus (Michel de Nostredame), predicted
the coming of Armageddon in 1999 in the form of the Third World
War, after which the survivors, mostly members of his own move
ment, would create a new society in the year 2014, led by Aum
trained "saints."19 Activists in other religious traditions may see a
righteous society being established in a less dramatic manner, but
even Sunni Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists have articulated hopes
for a political fulfillment of their notions of religious society. One
activist Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka expressed the hope that
"dhammic society can be established on earth" by creating a reli
gious state.20
3. Identifying the Enemy
Perceiving politics in a religious way leads to the next step,
identifying who or what religious power is at fault when things go
wrong. In a religionized view of politics, the root of social and
political problems is portrayed in religious terms. An opposition
religious group, sometimes a minority group such as the Tamils in
Sri Lanka or the Coptic Christians in Egypt, may be targeted as
the corrupting influence in public life. Alternatively, the foe of
religion may be seen as irreligion, a force opposed to religion alto
gether. The secular state could fit either of those categories, de
pending on whether one sees it as the outcome of a "religious"
tradition, "Westernism," or as the handmaiden of those who are
opposed to religion in any form. A great many religious activists
regard anyone who attempts to curb the influence of religion —
Yoel Lerner, member of a new political party, Yamini Israel, interview with author,
Jerusalem, 1 7 August 1995. My thanks to Prof. Gideon Aran of Hebrew University
for his help in arranging the interview.
Kamata, 12 January 1996. See also Shoko Asahara, Disaster Approaches the Land of the
Rising Sun: Shoko Asahara's Apocalpytic Predictions (Tokyo: Aum Publishing Company,
1995) p. 300.
Rev. Uduwawala Chandananda Thero, member of the Karaka Sabha, Asgiri chapter,
Sinhalese Buddhist Sangha, interview with author, Kandy, Sri Lanka, 5 January 1991.
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Journal of International Affairs
for example, by promoting a civil society shaped by secular values
— to be opposed to religion. Hence anyone who encourages secu
larism is, in a sense, a religious foe.
The most extreme form of this way of thinking is
Satanization.21 Some members of the Christian militia in the
United States refuse to pay taxes in part because they feel that the
government is controlled by an evil foreign power. During the
early days of the Gulf War in 1991, the Hamas movement issued
a communiqué stating that the United States "commands all the
forces hostile to Islam and the Muslims," and singled out George
Bush, who, it claimed, was not only "the leader of the forces of
evil" but also "the chief of the false gods."22 As this communiqué
indicates, this line of reasoning often leads down a slippery slope,
for once secular institutions and authorities begin to loom larger
than life and take on a Satanic luster, the inevitable conclusion is
that secular enemies are more than mortal foes: They are mythic
entities and satanic forces. Even in 1996, Iranian politicians, with
out acknowledging a trace of hyperbole, described America as the
"Great Satan." This rhetoric first surfaced in Iran during the early
stages of the Islamic revolution when both the Shah and President
Carter were referred to as Yazid (in this context, an "agent of Sa
tan"). "All the problems of Iran," the Ayatollah Khomeini elabo
rated, are "the work of America."23 By this he meant not only
political and economic problems, but also cultural and intellectual
ones, fostered by "the preachers they planted in the religious teach
ing institutions, the agents they employed in the universities, gov
ernment educational institutions, and publishing houses, and the
Orientalists who work in the service of the imperialist states."24
The vastness and power of such a conspiratorial network could
21 In this and the next two sections of this essay I repeat ideas first expressed in my
book, The New Cold War?, pp. 22-23, 173 and 197.
22 Hamas Communiqué, 22 January 1991, quoted in Jean-Francois Legrain, "A Defin
ing Moment: Palestinian Islamic Fundamentalism," ed., James Piscatori, Islamic Fun
damentalisms and the Gulf Crisis (Chicago: The Fundamentalism Project, American Acad
emy of Arts and Sciences, 1991 ) p. 76.
23 Ayatollah Khomeyni, Collection of Speeches, Position Statements, [translations from
"Najaf Min watha 'iq al-Imam al-Khomeyni did al-Quwa al Imbiriyaliyah wa al-Sahyuniyah
wa al-Raj 'iyah " (From the Papers of Imam Khomeyni Against Imperialist, Zionist and Reactionist
Power), 1977] Translations on Near East and North Africa, no. 1902. (Arlington: Joint
Publications Research Service, 1979) p. 3.
24 Imam [Ayatollah] Khomeini, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations, translated
and annotated by Hamid Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981 ; London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1985) p. 28.
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Mark Juergensmeyer
only be explained by its supernatural force.
4. The Inevitable Confrontation
Once the enemy of religion has been identified the fourth
step follows naturally: the idea of cosmic war. There are parallels
in many religious movements to the idea of the coming Armaged
don that was feared by both Christian militia members in the
United States and members of the Aum Shinrikyo in Japan. Rabbi
Meir Kahane, for instance, spoke of God's vengeance against the
Gentiles, which began with the humiliation of the Pharoah in the
exodus from Egypt over three thousand years ago and continues
in the present with the humiliation of the Arabs by removing their
control over lands held by the state of Israel, and would come to a
head in what Kahane expected would be a great struggle against
Arabs and other corrupting forces in Israel in the near future.
"When the Jews are at war," Kahane said, "God's name is great."25
Another Israeli activist explained that "God always fights against
His enemies," and that militants such as himself "are the instru
ments of this fight."26
The language of warfare, of fighting and dying for a cause,
is appropriate and endemic to the realm of religion.27 Although it
may seem strange that images of destruction often accompany a
commitment to realizing a more harmonious form of existence,
there is a certain logic at work that makes this conjunction natu
ral. In my view, religion is the language of ultimate order, and for
that reason it must provide those who use it with some way of
envisioning and controlling disorder, especially the ultimate disor
der of life: death. Most believers are convinced that death and
disorder on an ultimate scale can be encompassed and domesti
cated. Ordinarily, religion does this through images projected in
myth, symbol, ritual and legend. The cross in Christianity is not,
in the eyes of the faithful, an execution device but a symbol of
redemption; similarly, the sword that is a central symbol of both
Speech by Rabbi Meir Kahane on the announcement of the creation of the indepen
dent State of Judea (Jerusalem: 18 January 1989).
Yoel Lerner, interview with author, Jerusalem, 20 January 1989.
Mark Juergensmeyer, "The Logic of Religious Violence," in Inside Terrorist Organiza
tions, ed. David Rapoport (London: Frank Cass, 1988); "Sacrifice and Cosmic War,"
in Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World, ed. Mark Juergensmeyer (London: Frank
Cass, 1992).
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Journal of International Affairs
Islam and Sikhism is proudly worn by the most pious members of
those faiths not as weapons of death, but as symbols of divine
power.
Thus violent images are given religious meaning and do
mesticated. These violent images are usually symbols — such as
the cross, historic battles or mythical confrontations — but occa
sionally the image of symbolic violence is not a picture or a play,
but a real act of violence. The sacrifice of animals (and of course
human sacrifice) are examples from ancient traditions. Today con
ceptual violence can be identified with real acts of political vio
lence, such as firebombings and political assassinations.
These religious acts of political violence, although terribly
destructive, are sanitized by virtue of the fact that they are reli
giously symbolic. They are stripped of their horror by being in
vested with religious meaning. Those who commit such acts jus
tify and therefore exonerate them because they are part of a reli
gious template that is even larger than myth and history: They
are elements of a ritual scenario that enables people involved in it
to experience the drama of cosmic war.
For that reason it is necessary for the activists who support
such acts of terrorism to believe that a confrontation exists, even
when it is not apparent to others, and even when the other side
does not seem to provoke it. In Gaza, I felt a tremendous sense of
anticipation among many pro-Hamas activists that the real battle
for freedom was yet to come, coupled with a deep disappointment
over the superficial freedom resulting from the peace efforts of
Yassir Arafat. It is as if the peace that Arafat was entering into had
been purchased too cheaply: It had not come as the result of an
extraordinary denouement. They expected, perhaps even wanted,
that eschatological moment of confrontation: some great war that
would usher in the beginning of their new age. The suicide at
tacks carried out by young and remarkably committed Palestin
ians in the months before and after the January 1996 elections
were in some sense attempts to deny the very normalcy that elec
tions imply. It is as if they wanted to precipitate a confrontation
where none had existed, or rather, in their mythologized view of
the world, to bring to public attention the fact that an extraordi
nary war, albeit an invisible one, was raging all around them. Their
acts would bring this cosmic confrontation to light.
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Mark Juergensmeyer
5. The Goal: Peacefid Nations
In a strange way, the point of all this terrorism and vio
lence is peace. Rather, it is a view of a peaceful world that will
come into being when the cosmic war is over, and the militants'
vision of righteous order triumphs. The leader of the policy wing
of the Palestinian Hamas movement claims that the bombings in
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere would ultimately "lead to
peace."28 The leader of Japan's Aum Shinrikyo — now standing
trial for his alleged masterminding of the subway nerve gas attack
— prophecied that after a colossal global conflict around the year
2000 involving nerve gas and nuclear weapons, a thousand years
of peace would be ushered in, led by the coming of a new Messiah
who would establish a "paradise on earth."29
What is common to these and virtually all other "terror
ists" — as those of us who experience their shocking violent ac
tions usually regard them — is their self-conception as peace
makers. They are soldiers in a war leading to peace. What they
do not agree upon, however, is the kind of peaceful world they
want to create. This difference in political goals is caused not only
by a difference in religious backgrounds, but by an uncertainty as
to what form of politics is most appropriate to a religiously-de
fined nation.
For that reason there are no simple answers to the follow
ing questions: What kind of state do religious nationalists want?
Is there such a thing as a religious politics? Does the ideological
struggle for religious nationalism, and its emphasis on the political
primacy of religious ideas, laws, symbols, identity and leadership,
indicate how a state led by religious nationalists might actually be
defined?
Some of the larger and more active movements for reli
gious nationalism provide clues for answering these questions. Iran,
the only modern nation to be founded on a religious revolution, is
one example, but the religious politics of certain other nations,
including the Sudan, Pakistan, some states in India, and briefly
Tajikistan, provide insights as well. Several other nations, such as
Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Sri Lanka, have, for a time, seemed
on the verge of capitulating to religious revolutions. The plat
Saluji, 19 August 1995.
Asahara, p. 302.
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Journal of International Affairs
forms of the movements propounding religious nationalism in these
countries bear scrutiny as well.
The obvious observation that these examples provide is that
the structures of religious movements — and by extension, reli
gious states — are authoritarian rather than democratic. Yet all
activist movements, especially revolutionary ones, are marked by
a high degree of centralized authority. They are waging wars, after
all, and armies are seldom democratic. Nonetheless, despite their
propensity for strong-minded leadership, many religious national
ists are remarkably enthusiastic about the idea of democracy. Even
those activists most opposed to the secular state affirm the impor
tance of the democratic spirit in politics. Sheikh Yassin, leader of
the Islamic Hamas movement in Gaza, for instance, stated that
"Islam believes in democracy."30 This sentiment was echoed by a
leader of Gush Emunim, a radical Israeli movement, who said that
"we need democracy" even in "a religious society."31
To some extent, however, such enthusiasm for democracy
is self-serving. If what is meant by the term is simply majority
rule, then democracy means letting people have what they want:
If the people want a religious society rather than a secular one,
then they should have it. "Since 80 percent of the people in Egypt
are Muslims," one Muslim activist explained, "Egypt should have
a Muslim state."32 He assumed, of course, that all Egytian Mus
lims would favor such a state. In these cases, democracy means
simply "the will of the majority," without the protections provided
for minorities in most democratic states.
Ultimately, however, it is not the will of the people that
matters in a religious frame of reference, but the will of God. In a
religious context, democracy can operate only within limits. As
Rabbi Kahane said, "you don't vote on truth."33 Most religious
nationalists agree, and regard the discernment of truth as ultimately
beyond the democratic process. Hence the freedom of a religious
nation-state will always be limited by religious law, and the liber
ties of individuals will always be tempered by what is deemed nec
30 Sheikh Yassin, 14 January 1989.
31 Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a leader of the Gush Emunim, interview with author, held as
Levinger was staging a protest fast in front of the Knesset, Jerusalem, 16 January
1989.
32 Prof. Shitta, interview with author, Cairo, 10 January 1989.
33 Kahane, quoted in Raphael Merqui and Philippe Simonnot, Israel's Ayatollahs: Meir
Kahane and the Far Right in Israel (London: Saqi Books, 1987) p. 35.
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Mark Juergensmeyer
essary for the community's good. For this reason, although there
can be a certain synthesis between the ideology of religious na
tionalism and the structure of the nation-state, there can ultimately
be no true convergence between religious and secular political ide
ologies. The most that can be hoped for is, over time, a grudging
respect between the two, and the possibility of mutual coexistence.
The Future of Religious Nationalism
The prognosis for peace in a world increasingly filled with
religious nationalists is therefore guarded. As pointed out in this
essay, ideological religious nationalism, even more than ethnic forms
of religious nationalism, is a strident and difficult force in contem
porary world affairs. The development of an ideological religious
nationalist stance, I maintain, follows a five-step process that be
gins with a disaffection with secular nationalism, then moves to
perceiving politics in a religious way, identifying mortal enemies as
satanic foes, and envisioning the world as caught up in a cosmic
confrontation, which will ultimately lead to a peaceful world or
der constructed by religious nations.
This process of religionizing politics is mercifully rare. Most
forms of religion do not lead to religious nationalism. The reasons
that the process begins and is nurtured are to be found in the
social and historical contexts in which it emerges. That is to say
that the religionizing process described in this essay is largely a
response to some social and political crisis. This is certainly the
case with the phenomenal growth of religious nationalism in re
cent years. The common geopolitical crisis experienced through
out the world explains why there have been so many movements
of religious nationalism in such disparate religions and places within
the last 10 years.
In the present period of social turbulence and political con
fusion — which the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline
of American economic power have created around the world — it
was inevitable that new panaceas would emerge involving religion,
sometimes perceived as the only stable rudder in a swirl of eco
nomic and political indirection. Moreover, as nations rejected the
Soviet and American models of nationhood, they turned to their
own past, and to their own cultural resources.
Politicized religious movements are the responses of those
who feel desperate and desolate in the current geo-political crisis.
The problem that they experience is not with God, but with poli
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Journal of International Affairs
tics, and with their profound perceptions that the moral and ideo
logical pillars of social order have collapsed. Until there is a surer
sense of the moral legitimacy of secular nationalism, religious vi
sions of moral order will continue to appear as attractive solu
tions, and religious activists will continue to attempt to impose
these solutions in violent ways, seeing themselves as soldiers in a
cosmic drama of political redemption.
Can these religious nationalists succeed? Certainly for a
time. They may terrify political leaders, shake regimes to their
foundations and even gain the reigns of power in unstable states
like Iran. It remains to be seen, however, whether nations can
long endure with only the intangible benefits that religious solu
tions provide, sb
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