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The Worldwide Rise of Religious Nationalism
The Worldwide Rise of Religious Nationalism
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The Worldwide Rise of
Religious Nationalism
Mark Juergensmeyer
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
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
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
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Mark Juergensmeyer
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
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Mark Juergensmeyer
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, interview with author, Gaza City, 14 January 1989.
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Journal of International Affairs
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
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Journal of International Affairs
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
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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Journal of International Affairs
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 ).
12
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Mark Juergensmeyer
fious apocalypse
hinrikyo, that will
borrowing usherideas
Christian in a from
new age. The leader of Aum
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
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.
13
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Journal of International Affairs
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.
14
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Mark Juergensmeyer
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).
15
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16
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Mark Juergensmeyer
17
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18
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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.
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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
20
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