The British Secular habitus and the War on Terror

Abstract

Secularisation and the accompanying rise of non-religion in British society, mediated by the persistence of religious traditions, have had global implications for the so-called ‘wars on terror’. British security attitudes and sentiments have reflected the ambiguities of the secularisation process in this regard. Demonstrative examples from the recent Iraq war and counter-terrorism policy suggest that this has made it difficult for senior British policy-makers, officers, and their advisors to make firm judgements about Islamist actors. This suggests that the study of non-religion and secularisation processes in the West is not a task which happens in a hermetically sealed space, but can illuminate state action in the international arena. The security encounter with ‘Islamic Others’—some violent, some not—has also instigated within the West wider, reflexive cultural conversations about its own modernities, processes of secularisation, and the tenacity of religion and spirituality.

Notes

1. Following Russell McCutcheon I understand ‘religion’ as a discrete activity which is separate from culture and politics to be a recent invention of the modern West.

2. Geography gives little indication of what or where ‘the West’ is. It exists in Beijing and Baghdad as well as in Paris and Washington. As Chris Hables Gray (109) has observed, talking about ‘the West’ is not to pretend that there is one West or that it is easily identifiable or homogenous, “but rather to notice that there is a Western viewpoint that is hegemonic”. For the purposes of this article I understand British society as predominantly Western.