The religious freedom peace

Abstract

Around the world, religion's influence on societies and politics is increasing. Arguably religion is today a more salient feature of international politics than at any point in the last 300 years. Yet this increase in religion's prominence comes at the precise time that religious expression has come under unprecedented assault from both state actions and communal hostilities involving religion. At the same time, religious extremism and violence have also been on the rise globally. This article makes the case that these two trends – repression of religion and resistance on the part of believers – are intertwined. Here, I survey four forms of violence: domestic religious terrorism, international religious terrorism, religious civil wars and interstate conflicts. In each case, I outline different pathways through which restrictions on religion lead to violence, marshal data derived and coded from conflict databases, and present brief case studies showing how states that hinder religious freedom are disproportionately more likely to both experience and give rise to all four forms of violence. On the other hand, religiously free countries are far less susceptible to and do not encourage religious violence. The article concludes with some recommendations for policy.

Keywords:

• religious freedom
• peace
• violence

Disclosure statement

The author has not and will not receive any financial benefit arising from the direct application of this research.

Notes on contributor

Nilay Saiya is an assistant professor of political science and Director of International Studies at the State University of New York, Brockport. His research interests include religion and global politics, terrorism and Middle Eastern politics.

Notes

1 Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace’, 1 January 2011, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20101208_xliv-world-day-peace_en.html (accessed 25 October 2014).

2 By ‘religious freedom’, I mean right of people to think freely about the purpose of their existence, to live in accordance with their understanding of ultimate truth, to bear witness to their faith-based commitments, to worship together with those of like mind, to carry out rituals and practices central to their faith, to renounce or change their faith, or to have no faith at all.

3 For example, Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights asserts: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom … to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.' That said, religious freedom, of course, does not mean that anything done in the name of religion is not subject to the rule of law, but rather that political authority creates as much space as possible for religion's free practice. This means accepting the role of religion in public discourse, in shaping politics and policymaking, and in forming a popular moral consensus.

4 Pew Research Center, ‘Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High’, Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life, http://www.pewforum.org/2014/01/14/religious-hostilities-reach-six-year-high/ (accessed 1 June 2014).

5 Alan Hertzke, ed., The Future of Religious Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

6 Allen D. Hertzke, Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 64; Timothy Samuel Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now?: Defending an Embattled Human Right (Princeton, NJ: The Witherspoon Institute, 2012), 21.

7 Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke, The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the 21st Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 205–6.

8 Brian J. Grim, Greg Clark, and Robert Edward Snyder, ‘Is Religious Freedom Good for Business?: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis', Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 10 (2014): 1–19.

9 Ilan Alon and Gregory Chase, ‘Religious Freedom and Economic Prosperity’, Cato Journal 25, no. 2 (2005): 399–406.

10 Correlation tests between the Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) measure of religious freedom and the Polity IV measure of democracy between 1990 and 2008 find the correlation between the two to be only 0.48. There is a positive relationship to be sure, but the measures are far from coterminous.

11 Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke, ‘Religious Persecution in Cross-National Context: Clashing Civilizations or Regulated Religious Economies?’, American Sociological Review 72 (2014): 633–58.

12 The state does this because it derives legitimacy by demonstrating its loyalty to a particular religious dogma.

13 Nilay Saiya, ‘Explaining Religious Violence Across Countries: An Institutional Perspective’, in Mediating Religion and Government: Political Institutions and the Policy Process, ed. Kevin R. den Dulk and Elizabeth Oldmixon (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 209–40.

14 Ani Sarkissian, The Varieties of Religious Repression: Why Governments Restrict Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

15 Grim and Finke, The Price of Freedom Denied, 40–7.

16 See Josè Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Peter L. Berger, The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999); Monica Duffy Toft and Timothy Samuel Shah, ‘Why God is Winning’, Foreign Policy July/August (2006): 39–43; Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah, God's Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011).

17 It is important to note, though, that this claim has become increasingly contested as some scholars have questioned if religious violence is a special category of aggression that is clearly distinguishable from secular violence. For example, scholar of religion William Cavanaugh maintains that ‘the very distinction between secular and religious violence is unhelpful, misleading, and mystifying’. William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 7. That said, scholars who have attempted to distinguish ‘religious’ from ‘secular’ violence within a specific, bounded definitional context – as contested as those demarcations may be – have found significant differences between violence motivated by religion and that which is not. See Monica Duffy Toft, ‘Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War’, International Security 31, no. 4 (2007): 97–131; James A. Piazza, ‘Is Islamist Terrorism More Dangerous?: An Empirical Study of Group Ideology, Organization and Goal Structure’, Terrorism and Political Violence 21, no. 1 (2009): 62–88; Peter S. Henne, ‘The Ancient Fire: Religion and Suicide Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence 24, no. 1 (2012): 38–60.

18 Bruce Hoffman, ‘“Holy Terror”: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 18, no. 4 (1995): 271–84; Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003).

19 Magnus Ranstorp, ‘Terrorism in the Name of Religion’, Journal of International Affairs 50, no. 1 (1996): 41–62; Assaf Moghadam, ‘Motives for Martyrdom: Al-Qaida, Salafi Jihad, and the Spread of Suicide Attacks', International Security 33, no. 3 (2008): 46–78.

20 Of course, situations of religious repression do not always result in widespread religious terrorism. A good deal depends on the nature of the religious actors involved. Where non-privileged or suppressed actors accept the political status quo or hold political theologies of non-violence, we would not expect them to embrace terrorism. For example, sometimes these challenges to the state resulted in peaceable revolutions like the one led by the Solidarity movement in Poland to oppose communist rule. Still, I argue the likelihood of violence increases in states which do not respect the rights of religious individuals.

21 Nilay Saiya and Anthony Scime, ‘Explaining Religious Terrorism: A Data-Mined Approach’, Conflict Management and Peace Science (2014), DOI 0.1177/0738894214559667.

22 Jonathan Fox, ‘The Effects of Religious Discrimination on Ethno-Religious Protest and Rebellion’, The Journal of Conflict Studies 20, no. 2 (2000): 16–43.

23 Daniel Philpott, ‘Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion’, American Political Science Review 101, no. 3 (2007): 518–21; Thomas Farr, World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty is Vital to American National Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 243–72; Roger Finke and Jaime D. Harris, ‘Wars and Rumors of Wars: Explaining Religiously Motivated Violence’, in Religion, Politics, Society, and the State, ed. Jonathan Fox (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 53–71.

24 Lisa Anderson, ‘Fulfilling Prophecies: State Policy and Islamist Radicalism’, in Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform?, ed. John L. Esposito (London: Lynne Rienner, 1997), 17–31; Mohamed Hafez, Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003). None of this is to say, obviously, that religious terrorists fight to achieve religious freedom; rather they seek to restrict such freedom by imposing their religious beliefs upon the rest of society.

25 Toft, ‘Getting Religion?'

26 Monica Toft, ‘The Politics of Religious Outbidding’, The Review of Faith & International Affairs 11, no. 3 (2013): 20–9.

27 Jonathan Fox and Jonathan Rynhold, ‘A Jewish and Democratic State? Comparing Government Involvement in Religion in Israel with Other Democracies', Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 9, no. 4 (2008), 507–531.

28 Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Theocratic Democracy: The Social Construction of Religious and Secular Extremism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 7; Gabriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan, eds, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003), 131.

29 Ben-Yehuda, Theocratic Democracy, 99.

30 An attack was coded as ‘religious’ if it was carried out by a group that (1) conceives its identity and mission in religious terms (by reference to sacred texts or divine commands), (2) holds a discernible religious ideology or motivation that animates its views towards more temporal/political objectives, and (3) comprises a majority of members who belong to that particular religious tradition. The measure for religious freedom comes from the Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) human rights data set. This measure for religious freedom, based on the U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and Amnesty International's Annual Reports, ranges from 0 to 2, with higher scores denoting greater levels of religious freedom.

31 The measure of procedural democracy is taken from the Polity IV database to assess the effect of electoral politics on terrorism. The Polity project codes the authority characteristics of states using a scale that ranges from -10 (strongly autocratic) to +10 (strongly democratic). For the purposes of analysis, states were grouped into three categories: democratic (countries scoring 5 or higher), anocratic (countries scoring between -5 and 5), and autocratic (countries scoring -6 or lower). For more on the Polity database, see Monty G. Marshall and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2010, http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm.

32 According to Toft, for a communal conflict to be considered a civil war, three criteria must be met: (1) the conflict must involve two actors, one of which is the state; (2) the conflict must be over the governance of the state; and (3) the conflict must have claimed the lives of at least 1000 combatants in a year. See Toft, ‘Getting Religion?'; Toft, Philpott, and Shah, God's Century, 147–73.

33 Robert Malley, The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution, and the Turn to Islam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996); Martin Stone, The Agony of Algeria (New York, Columbia University Press, 1997).

34 Data on religious civil wars taken from http://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/monica-duffy-toft#research; Monica Duffy Toft, ‘Religion, Terrorism and Civil Wars', in Rethinking Religion and World Affairs, ed. Timothy Samuel Shah, Alfred Stepan, and Monica Duffy Toft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 137.

35 Mary Caprioli and Peter F. Trumbore, ‘Ethnic Discrimination and Interstate Violence: Testing the International Impact of Domestic Behavior’, Journal of Peace Research 40, no. 1 (2003): 5–23; Jonathan Fox and Nukhet Sandal, ‘State Religious Exclusivity and International Crises Between 1990 and 2002’, in Religion, Identity and Global Governance: Ideas, Evidence and Practice, ed. James Patrick (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011): 81–107.

36 Mary Caprioli and Peter F. Trumbore, ‘Human Rights Disputes in Interstate Disputes', Journal of Peace Research 43, no. 2 (2006): 131–48; David Sobek, M. Rodwan Abouharb, and Christopher G. Ingram, ‘The Human Rights Peace: How the Respect for Human Rights at Home Leads to Peace Abroad’, Journal of Politics 68, no. 3 (2006): 519–29; Timothy M. Peterson and Leah Graham, ‘Shared Human Rights Norms and Military Conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 55, no. 2 (2011): 248–73.

37 James Lee Ray, Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995); Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism and Socialism (New York, W.W. Norton, 1997); John R. Oneal and Bruce Russett, ‘The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence and Conflict, 1950–1985’, International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1997): 267–94; James Lee Ray and John Oneal, ‘New Tests of the Democratic Peace: Controlling for Economic Interdependence, 1950–1985’, Political Research Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1997): 751–76; Bruce Russett and John R. Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence and International Organizations (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).

38 William J. Dixon, ‘Democracy and the Peaceful Settlement of International Conflict’, American Political Science Review 88, no. 1 (1994): 538–54; Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, ‘Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986’, American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (1993): 624–38.

39 Jack Miles, ‘Religion and American Foreign Policy’, Survival 46, no. 1 (2004): 32–3.

40 Eric Patterson, ‘What They Say and Do: Religious Freedom as a National Security Lens', Review of Faith & International Affairs 11, no. 2 (2013): 26.

41 Miles, ‘Religion and American Foreign Policy’, 34.

42 Ozgur Ozdamar and Yasemin Akbaba, ‘Religious Discrimination and International Crises: International Effects of Domestic Inequality’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 10, no. 4 (2014): 413–30.

43 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).

44 Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005).

45 Philpott, ‘Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion’, 521.

46 R. Hrair Dekmejian, ‘The Rise of Political Islamism in Saudi Arabia’, The Middle East Journal 48, no. 4 (1994): 627–43.

47 The stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the first Persian Gulf War can be seen in this light – the backing of a religiously repressive state – in addition to the perceived defilement of Islamic sacred places. It should therefore not be surprising that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were of Saudi origin.

48 Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

49 Robert D. Woodberry, ‘The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy’, American Political Science Review 106, no. 2 (2012): 244–74. On peace and reconciliation, see Daniel Philpott, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

50 Brian Grim, ‘Religious Freedom: Good for What Ails Us?’, The Review of Faith & International Affairs 6, no. 2 (2008): 3–7.

51 Toft, Philpott, and Shah, God's Century, 121–73; Grim and Finke, The Price of Freedom Denied, 61–87.

52 Timothy Samuel Shah, Religious Freedom: Why Now?, 65–8.