Including the Exclusivists in Interfaith

Abstract

Ultra-conservative religious actors can be marginalized in interfaith engagements, leading to isolation and contributing to more extremist ideologies. The challenge of engaging these exclusivist and fundamentalist voices, which are often resistant to working across religious lines, is significant. Understanding how religion impacts social spaces and individual decision-making, and working to identify key influencers, can prove essential to overcoming these hurdles and effectively drawing these communities into constructive dialogue.

Keywords:

• Interfaith
• religious conservatives
• religious exclusivists
• religion and society
• religious influencers
• religion and conflict
• religious engagement

In January 2014, the Pew Research Center on Religion & Public Life released a multi-year report showing that globally “social hostilities involving religion” were hitting all-time highs, particularly between faiths (Grim et al. 2014). In the United States, for example, half of Protestant Americans felt that Islam was more likely than other religions to cause violence (Mohamed et al. 2017). That number was two-thirds for white Evangelicals. In that same month, as the sun rose over the mist-clogged valleys of the foothills of the Nepali Himalayas, an unlikely crowd was gathering. Conservative Evangelical Christian leaders from the United States were sitting down with conservative Deobandi and Salafi Muslim leaders from Pakistan in an attempt to find common ground. Even in the world of interfaith engagement, it may be hard to imagine these two communities finding space for constructive dialogue. What was the process that brought them together? And can it offer lessons that might ultimately help reduce religious prejudice in the United States?

The journey to Nepal began more than a decade earlier, when The International Center for Religion & Diplomacy (ICRD) began a project in Pakistan’s madrasas (religious schools).¹ ICRD’s preliminary analysis of the context, with input from local experts, suggested that a number of these more conservative madrasas provided fertile recruitment grounds for violent extremist organizations (VEOs), and that the kind of education on offer in these schools was exacerbating the susceptibility of madrasa graduates to extremist recruitment (see Khalid 2014, 30).

Discussions with various stakeholders strongly indicated that pedagogical approaches were a core weakness. Whereas Islamic schools had once been unrivaled centers of multi-disciplinary higher learning centuries earlier, many of the more conservative madrasas had, over time, reduced the scope and diversity of their educational offerings, resulting in a singular emphasis on rote memorization of the Qur’an at the expense of other disciplines, such as social and hard sciences. In poorer areas of Pakistan, in particular, students also did not speak Arabic, the language of the sacred text, and had the material interpreted for them by more ideologically extreme instructors. The pedagogies used in these madrasas dissuaded students from asking probing questions, which, together with the lack of multi-disciplinary education, was leaving students with very little preparation to emerge into and operate within a complex, pluralist society. The Pakistani government and civil society actors with whom ICRD discussed the problem agreed that this narrow education, combined with the schools’ social and geographic isolation that greatly limited exposure to other communities and access to other opportunities, left the students very vulnerable to recruitment by militant groups that “spoke their language.” While specific recruitment numbers are impossible to calculate, Pakistani government and security officials, international observers, and local communities all acknowledged that selected conservative madrasas were a direct conduit for students to join extremist groups, not least of all the Taliban.

In an unprecedented initiative, ICRD’s Pakistani Madrasa Project sought to engage teachers in training programs that: (1) encouraged expansion of the madrasa curriculums to include the social and scientific disciplines, with a particular emphasis on religious tolerance and human rights; (2) encouraged transformation of the pedagogy to promote critical thinking skills among the students; (3) taught conflict resolution and dialogue-facilitation skills; (4) facilitated discussion among leaders of the five Muslim sects that sponsor madrasas on how Islamic principles of peace and tolerance might be better incorporated into madrasa education; and (5) equipped the more capable workshop graduates to become “Master Trainers” who could train other previously uninvolved madrasa leaders in these same subjects.

ICRD’s efforts were initially subject to a high degree of suspicion from leaders of the Islamic community. Despite being led by a Pakistani-born American, there were concerns of a conspiracy from the West to undermine the madrasas and Islam. In response to this, ICRD found that the most effective way to stimulate madrasa leaders to embrace change was by appealing to the same core Islamic values that defined the groups themselves. Madrasa leaders were also encouraged to reflect upon the historic makeup and accomplishments of madrasas. Training workshops emphasized, for example, Islamic values relating to peace and tolerance. For many madrasa leaders, it was their first opportunity to discuss Islamic principles, education, and philosophy with educators from other Muslim schools of thought and to reflect on the past successes of Islamic education.

As it was put into broader practice, the ICRD approach was increasingly well-received by madrasa leaders because they themselves recognized the benefits of reform, were inspired to improve their own education, saw that all suggested changes were grounded in Islamic principles and the heritage of the madrasas, and assumed significant ownership of the process. After more than a decade of work with madrasa teachers and faith leaders, ICRD and its partners had engaged with thousands of these schools, primarily from the conservative Deobandi and Salafi communities. This long-term engagement established the necessary trust and relationships to allow ICRD to explore how to bring Pakistani trainees into more direct interfaith work, which ultimately resulted in the meeting of conservative Pakistani Muslims with conservative American Evangelicals in Nepal.

Over the course of several days, a short ride from ancient Buddhist and Hindu shrines, the participants discussed a range of issues grounded in a shared perception that their own religious community members were suffering the effects of religious prejudice in the other country. Pakistanis shared their concerns about American Islamophobia and Americans about Pakistani persecution of Christians. A few representatives of the Pakistani Christian and American Muslim communities who were in attendance were able to provide insight into their first-hand experience of these issues, lending a more accurate appraisal of the challenges. The different faith practitioners shared excerpts from their sacred texts that compelled them to care for the religious “other,” and developed concepts for programs to protect religious minorities and address persecution and conflict in their home countries. In the following year, those conversations resulted in a program with Evangelical leaders in the US to counter Islamophobia, and a program with Pakistani faith leaders to develop and disseminate a narrative promoting religious tolerance and condemning sectarian violence.

It was notable that conservative American Evangelicals and Deobandi and Salafi Pakistanis sat together, shared stories, and broke bread together. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this meeting, however, occurred on the final day of the discussions. It was Friday and, at mid-day, the Muslim contingent retired to the courtyard for Jumu’ah prayers. By now the group had built a good deal of rapport and trust, and the Christians accompanied them as they conversed, and stood alongside them while they prayed. When the prayers concluded, a number of the Christians asked questions about the prayer practice itself, which the groups discussed openly.

Finally, the Muslims spontaneously invited the Christians into the same sacred space to conduct their own prayer. At one point, a Pentecostal participant kneeled and placed his forehead on the ground. At the end of the prayer, the Muslim adherents likewise asked the Christians about their practice. Referring to the Pentecostal participant, one of the Pakistanis – an individual who had once been associated with militant organizations – commented, “I never knew that you prostrated yourself before God the way that we do.” Not only had these conservatives from different religions and nations found common ground in confronting a shared set of social problems, but they found resonance in their respective faith expressions.

This experience is emblematic of the fact that many religious persons are more alike in their common convictions about faith than they might be with someone who does not have or openly express a faith – despite obvious and significant differences in cultural and religious practices. In many ways, conservatives from different faith traditions share more in common with one another than they do with different interpretations within their own faith tradition. This commonality served to put the participants at ease and opened the opportunity for conversations about faith and society that otherwise might not have happened.

To arrive at this point required a lengthy process that began with isolated communities that feared to trust a discussion about their education system, then eventually led to capacity building of leaders in terms of tolerance and peacebuilding, and ultimately culminated in enthusiastic discussions of faith with other individuals coming from a very different, and previously stigmatized, religious community.

Ideology and the Right to Disagree

The expansive exchanges of populations, information, and ideas that characterize the 21^st century have connected even the most remote corners of the world, producing encounters of ethnic, national, religious, and other groups at a scale that is unprecedented in human history. For some, these encounters represent a perceived existential threat to their own identity, leading to conflict, extremism, and violence.

In the aftermath of social violence, it is natural to cast about for an explanation. Was it a belief system that drove the act? Was it the pressures of material needs? Or was this just some single lost soul? Since the attacks of 9/11, for example, the perception that religious identity is a driver of violent conflict and extremism has proliferated. This has obscured religion’s unique and powerful potential to motivate positive social change, which is particularly salient when considering how to mobilize different faith traditions around common concerns, especially when those traditions are disinclined to collaborate.

Perhaps as a consequence, interfaith work has been increasingly explored as an effective means for deepening mutual understanding among different faith traditions, mitigating conflict, and strengthening social resilience to violent ideologies. It is not uncommon to see religious actors, from local communities to leaders on the global stage, learning about one another’s creeds and values, collaborating to resolve social problems, and even visiting and preaching at one another’s houses of worship.²

Contact theory basically stipulates that the simple fact of positive encounters between individuals of different groups, particularly if they have an interdependent task with a common goal, increases the likelihood that they will develop a greater affinity for one another’s group and that group prejudice will be reduced (Pettigrew 1998). Negative encounters can deepen divides, however, so it is critically important to establish what kind of contact is recommended. If groups experience one another through the lens of their prejudice and have those prejudices confirmed, then “contact” can be a detrimental experience. However, if the circumstances permit groups to find common ground – such as social concerns, shared identities, or similar values – then contact will more likely result in deeper empathy and understanding.

The efficacy of interfaith work to change attitudes and drivers of conflict, however, can vary. In many cases, the voices that are absent in interfaith exchanges are those that hold the most conservative and exclusive views on religious doctrine. When the ultimate purpose of interfaith engagement is to transform the social and institutional frictions that are driving conflicts, particularly those associated with religious identity, it is essential to critically reflect upon which religious actors are being included in those efforts. It is especially important to explore how best to bring into the conversation those who are least inclined to engage with adherents of other faith traditions.

Some group ideologies are fundamentally in conflict with civil and institutional norms promoting a multiplicity of ideas and identities. The social inclusion of these groups is a great challenge facing societies that embrace diversity, such as liberal democracies. This is especially the case with respect to those whose conservative religious beliefs reject the notion of social and religious pluralism. There seems to be an inherent conflict in accommodating ideologies that reject the rights of others to hold different viewpoints while simultaneously protecting freedom of conscience for all.

There is an ongoing debate among scholars, practitioners, and policymakers about the merits and dangers of working with ultra-conservative, but non-violent, religious actors in efforts to resolve major social conflicts, such as countering violent extremism (CVE) (Bokhari and McCants 2015; Mandaville and Nozell 2017). Some argue that they provide a key entry point for reaching communities that are vulnerable to recruitment into extremist groups, and to exclude them contributes to their isolation, resentment, and radicalization. Others contend that such engagement provides these actors with a dangerous public platform to advance rigid views that run counter to basic human and civil rights, particularly with respect to issues such as forms of punishment, democratic participation, and gender equality.

Navigating Religious Exclusivity

Religious truth can be very cut-and-dry. If you agree with it, you are in the divine favor; if you disagree, you are out. And divine disfavor is rarely pleasant. Religion is especially good at drawing the boundaries around those who belong and those who do not. The more rigid these boundaries, the more “exclusive” the belief is.³ Opportunities for formal and informal encounters that increase understanding and collaboration between religious faiths face a major barrier in the isolation of certain religious groups, often with deeply conservative ideologies.

It is important to establish, at the outset, that exclusivity is a common character trait in most social groups, and is not reserved to religious identity. The idea that one group has the “right message” over other groups is evident in sports teams’ fan clubs as clearly as in religions. In and of itself, this is not particularly problematic for society; exclusivity can play a positive social role in ascribing a moral value to a group’s identity, fostering a sense of belonging among its members, and deepening commitment and loyalty to its principles. Intergroup competition can also be a healthy driver for introspection and improvement. Exclusivity devolves into a social problem, however, when it rejects the very right of other groups to exist or becomes associated with or advocates for violence.

Even within a seemingly exclusive identity group, however, nuances exist in terms of where bridges to other identity groups exist. This can be the starting point for empathy and understanding. Many religious traditions that make exclusive truth claims may nonetheless acknowledge similarities among religious sects within a faith tradition, such as Protestant and Catholic Christian beliefs, or between faith communities, such as among the monotheistic, Abrahamic traditions. This kind of flexibility might have an important impact on the most essential beliefs of a group, such as its soteriology, or theory of who may or may not receive salvation or damnation. With respect to interfaith work, how differences and similarities between these communities are dealt with varies greatly depending on the particular community being engaged. Identifying these nuances, therefore, can be a critical step toward finding the common ground that allows for building respect and collaboration.

A distinct but complementary concept to exclusivity is fundamentalism, which may be best described as the conviction that one is embracing the “authentic” or “original” teachings – the fundamentals – of a tradition. Whereas some ideologies are more open to accepting variety in the interpretation of their tenets, fundamentalism is very often accompanied by rigid ideas of how faith should be understood, and is relatively more exclusive with respect to heterodoxy and praxis within a tradition itself. While fundamentalism does not directly equate to anti-social behavior, it is the very nature of fundamentalist groups to believe that there is little room for interpretation with respect to doctrine.⁴

It is easy to see how certain sacrosanct Western social and political ideas become difficult to reconcile with rigid fundamentalism or extreme exclusivism. Liberal democracies thrive on the open exchange of ideas, and the right to hold differing opinions – while still belonging to the same society – is enshrined in law. The political and legal mechanisms that are built to preserve these rights revolve around debate and persuasion. The outright rejection of the validity of any alternative ideas, and more importantly of the rights of others to hold them, runs contrary to both the legal and customary frameworks of these societies.

Fundamentalism can pose a significant challenge to interfaith work and peacebuilding in general, as facilitating behavioral transformation first begins with the exposure to new ideas. At its most extreme, exclusive fundamentalism tends to result in a high degree of self-imposed isolation by the group. This kind of isolation serves as a negative feedback loop for encountering alternative viewpoints, ultimately allowing for internal narratives to more completely dominate than in identity groups that more regularly interact with others. This cycle of self-reinforcing isolation can generate a deepening insecurity about adherents being exposed to other ideas and feed a perception that differences in values or doctrines are not only wrong, but also pose existential threat to the group. All of this makes interfaith encounters more unlikely.

Systems theory (Mels, Pels, and Polese 2010) suggests that it would be erroneous to draw a direct causality between any single social phenomenon and violent behaviors. It would be more accurate to frame the discussion in terms of conditionality rather than causality. That is to say that, rather than any one circumstance leading inexorably to violence, a collection of conditions can arise within social dynamics that significantly increase the likelihood of violence occurring. A basic example of this is poverty: poverty in itself is not a direct cause of violence – there are many poor people who are not engaged in violence. Poverty, particularly severe poverty, can undeniably fuel a sentiment that social norms and institutions are not serving the poor, and that those structures should therefore be rejected. Together with other factors, these sentiments that derive from poverty can contribute to conditions that raise the likelihood of violence.

Following the same logic, it is reasonable to assert that religious fundamentalism and the phenomena that may accompany it—isolation, group segregation and marginalization—are important factors contributing to the conditions that could favor, or trigger, the emergence of identity conflict (Everton 2016, 192). Therefore, any effort at interfaith peacebuilding that disregards these groups and conditions and fails to engage them can at best be considered incomplete, and at worst be seen as contributing to primary drivers of conflict.

In order to fully understand how to overcome these challenges, it is necessary to understand how religion functions as a social force for change, how it is mobilized, and the specific considerations for drawing conservative religious actors into efforts to counter violent conflict.

Religion as a Social Force

There are any number of legitimate concerns about engaging with religion among predominantly secular institutions working on social change, particularly from a Western government perspective. However, according to a 2015 study by Pew Research Center, 84% of the global population is affiliated with a religious tradition (Hackett 2017). This is to say that, regardless of one’s avowed interest in engaging religious considerations when grappling with social issues, religion is almost certainly already in the room. Dismissing or ignoring religious factors when navigating the challenges of human relationships, such as with countering violent extremism, greatly increases the likelihood of pursuing an incomplete, misdirected, or irrelevant approach. This is especially true in those global communities where religion outstrips all other forms of authority or responsibility. Revisiting religion as a pervasive social factor that is at play in human relationships more broadly will allow for more thorough consideration of its positive impact when considering how best to confront social challenges.

There is no question that, as Scott Appleby warns in The Ambivalence of the Sacred, religious adherents who “think only of the needs and rights of their own people” can be a sustained source of conflict and violence (2000, 281). However, all religions exhibit a great deal of internal diversity, and the overwhelming majority of religious practitioners of any faith are not engaged in violence. Despite significant occasions in which religion is utilized to inspire or retroactively justify violent conflict, it is generally a source of social resilience. From Franco-German post-war reconciliation to the abolishment of South African Apartheid, religion has time and again played a central role in conflict resolution processes (Johnston and Sampson 1994). In very important ways, religious identity is a powerful means by which to promote the healing of broken relationships, and has produced both global networks and mainstream peacebuilders.

However, even those who recognize the benefit of engaging with religion are often uncertain how to do so. Religion deals with many seemingly “irrational” elements, such as responsibility to an unseen deity or mystical practices for discerning right behavior from wrong. In order to understand how religion can support conflict mitigation, it is important to first understand how it functions in society. This can present a significant challenge to policy practitioners, who are generally accustomed to negotiating with more tangible interests.

In order to work with religion in the arena of public policy, therefore, the first task is to demystify it. Understanding how faith drives decisions about behavior is a kind of religious literacy that is distinct from validating, supporting, or embracing any particular tradition. If the similarities between the social function of religious identity and other identity groups are better understood, policy practitioners will find it easier to engage with religion, and religious adherents will be better able to practically articulate their own interests and capabilities.

Key areas through which religion realizes a social impact, as with other identity groups, are infrastructures, communities, and individuals. These constituent components provide different points of entry through which to engage religious people and groups in behavioral change.

Infrastructures include the tangible or static elements that support a religious community, such as houses of worship, money, histories, and doctrines. Communities are the interpersonal, relational space of an identity group, including such things as the interpretation of narratives of belonging that define group membership and the leadership empowered to mobilize the group. At their most rudimentary, however, groups are comprised of individuals whose personal decisions about behavior define the greater group dynamics. These decisions often reflect a complex personal value system, including conscious or unconscious calculations about the resulting rewards and punishments. This is not to dismiss the power of social pressure, but rather to acknowledge the importance and uniqueness of individual agency.

While some individuals have more capability to influence group behavior (a point explored in depth below), interfaith work ultimately rests on the decisions of individual faith practitioners to participate, so understanding this element of religion’s influence is crucial. Importantly, it is one area where religion demonstrates a pivotal distinction from how other identity groups function. In most faith practices, behavioral guidance is derived from an otherworldly entity or idea – a God or gods, cycles of rebirth, or other transcendent concepts that function as measures of authenticity and quality of one’s behavior or belief. When the personal values that guide decisions about social behaviors emanate from a divine and immutable source, it makes the negotiation of these beliefs and their related actions very challenging.

There are other factors to take into account when it comes to individual decision-making within a religious context. Individuals belong to multiple identity groups, with overlapping, interwoven, or contradictory values and demands. Each of these may compete with one another for primacy in an individual’s discernment of their own obligations. As Amartya Sen points out, this can be an asset in conflict management, as “the force of a bellicose identity can be challenged by the power of competing identities” (Sen 2006, 4). But religious responsibility regularly demands a singular and overarching commitment to core faith values that, in many cases, are understood to override other, potentially competing values.

Additionally, religious communities are often led by individuals who are granted the authority to translate or interpret the divine, “ultimate” truth. This can lead some individuals in the community to largely entrust the interpretation of their faith to a religious authority figure, making behavioral change very challenging.

Claims of ultimate truth are often conflated with a belief that those outside of the group are flawed or morally corrupt. Most traditions, however, do acknowledge an element of human limitation and fallibility, even as applied to understanding divine truth. Even faith traditions with the most rigid behavioral doctrines may encourage some form of individual discernment, such as prayerful interaction with the divine or consultation with religious authority to clarify values and responsibilities. This has led to great diversity of practice within faith traditions, which is itself a potential strength when seeking to engage faith and religion in supporting social change, as it results in the same doctrine providing different narratives about religious values and obligations. These different narratives might offer a doctrinally-grounded entry point for arguing the merits of interfaith engagement. So how does an interfaith practitioner motivate reluctant individuals from fundamentalist traditions to overcome their resistance to engaging with adherents of other traditions, particularly those that are seen as competitors or adversaries?

Exercising Influence in the Context of Ideologically-Driven Violence

A significant challenge is presented when marginalized communities that reject norms of diversity and inclusion contain individuals who are engaged in ideologically-justified violence. The urgent need for intervention is directly inhibited by group and individual isolation. Revisiting the points of entry for leveraging religion’s social impact—infrastructures, communities and individuals—is instructive. While individuals are the ultimate agents in determining their own behavior, and therefore the ultimate target for efforts at behavioral change, engaging one individual at a time can be onerous and ineffectual, particularly in difficult to reach communities. Similarly, while the leveraging of resources might be utilized to sway a person’s actions, the sort of pragmatism associated with that kind of influence is rarely accompanied by true changes in attitude. Finding a way to effect change in the broader community allows for both an “economy of scale” as well as the ability to change fundamental narratives that define belonging and decision making. Isolation and exclusivism, however, can severely limit the number and type of individuals who might hold that kind of sway in these communities.

An effective approach is to identify and cultivate access to individuals who, in turn, can themselves stimulate significant change within the broader community – a religious influencer. These influencers can come in many forms: formal leaders, informal leaders, family members, media personalities, and the like. When trying to alter the attitudes and corresponding actions of a group, these kinds of influencers might be engaged in ways that transform their own anti-social attitudes or reinforce positive attitudes. These influencers can then, using their natural platforms of persuasion, expansively replicate efforts at social change. The program targeting madrasa teachers, who in turn applied new ideas in their arena of influence, affecting the thinking of generations of students, is an example.

The degree of persuasive influence that a person has within a community, in order to fundamentally alter narratives and beliefs, depends upon three distinct but complementary characteristics. The first of these characteristics is access: having a direct connection with the social group that one wishes to influence. If the person cannot connect to a community, then she or he cannot transfer ideas. In the era of virtual communication and social media, this may not require face-to-face contact, but access of some form is essential. The second characteristic is authority: holding an institutional position that is empowered to interpret a group’s beliefs and doctrines, represent its positions, and formulate its rules.

The third characteristic is legitimacy: being perceived as an authentic member of the group by the group itself, and thereby being internally persuasive. The members of a group must be able to identify with a representative and trust them. Authority and legitimacy are frequently misinterpreted as being the same thing. In a critical way, however, they are distinct. There are many cases where formal authority figures fail at attempts to inspire change in a community because they lack legitimacy in the eyes of the group. This may be due to other internal divisions, such as an older generation speaking for a younger one, or male leaders representing the interests of women. This difference must be taken into account when seeking to engage authentic influencers.

The effort to generate replicable and sustainable change in a community by engaging influencers requires a nuanced understanding of group identity. In interfaith work, or other efforts to develop counter-narratives to ideological exclusion and violence, for instance, there is a tendency to search for moderate⁵ voices when seeking to engage with religious traditions (Rabasa et al. 2007). However, as suggested above, this often proves an inadequate approach to changing extremist ideas emanating from isolated fundamentalist groups and fueling social conflict. Those who hold more mainstream religious convictions often have little or no interaction with their more isolated and fundamentalist co-religionists.

For example, a group of religious leaders from across the globe, led by moderate Muslims, convened at Marrakesh, Morocco in 2016 to articulate a message promoting the protection of religious minorities living in Muslim majority countries. The resulting document, called the Marrakesh Declaration⁶, is an incredibly important step in countering religious and sectarian violence. However, in marginalized communities in the stressed urban peripheries of Tunisia (which has the dubious honor of having sent the largest number of recruits to Syria and Iraq to fight for ISIS), at-risk youth have never been exposed to this message. In other words, these actors lack the necessary access. As a result, inclusive faith narratives developed through engagement with moderate individuals will often simply not reach those who most need to hear them. While these individuals may hold religious authority, if they do succeed in getting their messages heard, they are often dismissed as lacking legitimacy in the eyes of the group in question. After all, the narrative’s provenance would be with a group of moderates, who are perceived to have rejected core truths around which the fundamentalists’ beliefs are organized.

This raises the basic question of who should be in the discussion, and who should convene that discussion, if a goal is persuading members of a marginalized religious group to behave differently or to collaborate on mitigating extremist violence. Exercising influence in the context of ideologically-driven violence mandates a careful consideration of the multiplicity of factors that shape group dynamics, drive perceptions and behaviors, and set the social hierarchy of power through which positive change may be instigated and propagated.

Engaging Conservative Religious Actors

Simple interfaith engagement has the potential to serve as a platform for exploring shared values, which in turn allows for the discussion of more sensitive issues around social behaviors and conflict. In order to grapple with the challenging issues of identity conflict and violence, however, the very communities that are producing violent actors need to be engaged. These are often the hardest groups to reach, and the least open to meeting with those who are different than they are.

The experience of bringing together Pakistani Muslims with American Evangelicals in Nepal and its outcomes served to demonstrate the array of transformative possibilities that would not have been possible if these more conservative groups had not, from the start, been engaged. Building on that experience, and considering the challenge of identifying the right entry point and type of influence in a community at risk of radicalization to violent extremism, ICRD began a series of studies to explore the feasibility and implications of engagement with non-violent, fundamentalist, and exclusivist religious groups, such as Salafi communities, in efforts to combat extremism.

Following a methodological pilot in Pakistan, these studies – an ongoing project of the Center – focused initially on Yemen, Tunisia, and Morocco. The overarching inquiry is meant to explore: 1) how fundamentalist groups perceive CVE work in their context, 2) what role they see for religious leaders in CVE, and 3) what collaboration with others, like the government, means to them. As of the spring of 2018, ICRD had published findings and recommendations on Yemen and Tunisia.⁷

The contexts of Yemen and Tunisia are, of course, very different. In the former, most areas are not only ravaged by violent conflict and humanitarian disaster, but are also characterized by a relative absence of any central government presence. The effect of this instability is greatly compounded by the presence of extremist groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and IS-Yemen. The role of local community and faith leaders is relatively expansive, as the state is absent and outside organizations are viewed with suspicion. In Tunisia, on the other hand, the government is very present, and in large measure controls the official religious sphere. This has meant that Salafi religious influencers are largely marginalized and play a complicated role. They offer a religious outlet to a certain conservative sub-set of the religious community, while existing in the social fringe, broadly perceived to be at odds with the government’s interests with respect to religion. These conservative faith actors are commonly seen as a threat to stable democratic processes.

In either country, however, fundamentalist groups have expressed a marked willingness to collaborate in solving social problems, given the opportunity. Among the impediments to such engagement, they cite the isolation of their communities and the lack of effective engagement with other civil society actors and the government, in particular. In both cases, leaders in these communities have the access, authority, and legitimacy necessary to be persuasive with those who are at the religious fringes of their society, and most at risk of radicalization. It is not difficult to anticipate the positive impact that their contribution to CVE and peacebuilding efforts might produce, if correctly engaged.

Finding and working with religious influencers in these communities is not an easy task, however. In many cases, outsiders are looked upon with suspicion and outside groups are perceived as a threat. Laying the groundwork for building the necessary relationships takes time. If working with these communities is the goal, concrete practical steps need to be outlined to build the necessary trust to be able to have dialogues about sensitive issues, particularly with respect to ideologies and identity.

Ideally, this work would culminate in a convening of the identity groups that are in tension with one another. This is a highly sensitive prospect, with both the potential to generate significant positive change in relationships, as well as the very real risk of deepening group prejudices if handled poorly. A key aspect of preparing for this engagement is to acknowledge the fears and concerns of each group and facilitate a disentangling of authentic issues from identity generalizations. These concerns and fears can be shared by a facilitator working across the group divide, with the intention of identifying common ground. This common ground will then provide the impetus for initial engagement between the groups, which can be narrowly focused on the identified problem.

A timely illustration of how this process could be applied relates to the rising fear of Islamic extremism and the corresponding Islamophobia in the United States. The narratives on either side this issue have become increasingly divisive in American society. On the one hand, fear of Islamic extremism has driven social backlash within some groups in the form of anti-Islamic rhetoric, not least of all in some communities of conservative Christians. This backlash, sometimes culminating in targeted acts of public harassment or violence, has resulted in an increase in social marginalization and a growing sense of persecution within parts of the American Muslim community.

On the other hand, the Muslim community finds itself just as threatened by Islamic extremism as non-Muslims, if not more. Its narrative of religious identity is being coopted and misappropriated by violent extremists. For the American Muslim community, violent extremism in Islam and violent extremism in the form of Islamophobia both represent an existential threat.

This cycle of retributive fear and retributive prejudice, if not interrupted, becomes self-reinforcing as communities grow more distrustful of one another and group narratives grow more and more exclusive and even hateful. Any effort to break this cycle would require not only improving understanding and empathy between the groups, but also acknowledging authentic concerns that hide behind extreme and exclusive narratives.

In this context, fear of Islamic extremism may, counterintuitively, be the very common ground that brings together American Muslims and those who hold prejudicial attitudes toward them, especially some conservative Christian communities. If, through properly managed engagement and dialogue, legitimate fears of extremist violence can be disentangled from identity prejudices that generalize an entire group, these communities might actually find a way to collaborate in programs that reduce the overall likelihood of extremism and violence, a concern that is shared between them. It may be that the power of conservative faith, which is a common characteristic of these two groups, could be the departure point for a more intentional discussion about fears, truths and prejudices surrounding extremism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Patton

James Patton is President and CEO of The International Center for Religion & Diplomacy. He has conducted international development, conflict transformation and social reconciliation for more than two decades across the globe. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Senior Visiting Fellow at Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institution and co-author, with Rev. David Steele, of the forthcoming U.S. Institute of Peace publication, Religion and Conflict Guide Series: Religion and Reconciliation. James holds a Master of Law and Diplomacy degree from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School. He is grateful to the Wheatley Institution for the Fellowship which supported the development of the ideas in this article.

Notes

1 The author is the President and CEO of ICRD, and many of the case studies and field experiences that inform the theories herein are drawn from the work that ICRD has done around the world, engaging with faith actors to mitigate violent conflict.

2 There is some debate about the validity of contact theory, suggesting instead that diversity lowers social trust generally (Putnam 2007).

3 For the purpose of this discussion, exclusivity might best be described as the degree to which the core tenets of one’s ideology reject the validity of any differing viewpoint. Unlike conventional applications of the term in the religious context (such as Alan Race’s celebrated definition, see: D’Costa 1996), I suggest that exclusivism is not a singular static state, but a spectrum with more and less exclusive manifestations.

4 Whereas Scott Appleby and Martin E. Marty argue that fundamentalists are, themselves, interpreters of religion, they agree that fundamentalists claim to be representing the “original” shape of the faith (Appleby and Marty 2009).

5 In truth, “moderate” is a complex and misleading term (see Bokhari 2015). While it is a term that has been popularized in the policy-making world, in many cases, devoutly religious people reject the term as not reflecting the power of their own religious convictions. While their social and political attitudes may be more inclusive, people of strong faith can understand the term to suggest a lack of religious commitment. It may be more useful to use terms like mainstream and fringe, or pluralist and exclusivist.

6 Available online at: http://www.marrakeshdeclaration.org/files/Bismilah-2-ENG.pdf

7 Available on the ICRD website: www.icrd.org. The summary of findings that follows is derived from these studies.