Mona Kanwal Sheikh’s research while affiliated with Danish Institute for International Studies and other places

This article deals with the definition of the religion sector of securitisation theory, and seeks to strengthen the contribution of securitisation theory to the study of religious violence and doctrinal conflicts. It is argued that the original elaboration of the security sector leans too heavily on a West-centric notion of religion as apolitical and of faith as a distinction between the sacred and the profane. These leanings limit the theory’s global applicability, consequently leading to a challengeable formula for the desecuritisation of conflicts with religious dimensions. Two alternative ways of integrating religion within a securitisation framework are suggested, one of which is based on a multidimensional concept of religion that embraces the different dimensions of religion defended by religio-political actors around the world. The second way focuses on doctrines in order to embrace equally the securitisation of doctrines conventionally designated as secular. It is also maintained that convincing reasons exist for treating religion/doctrine as a separate sector, despite the fact that religion appears to have cross-sectoral relevance. A religion/doctrine sector has strong defining characteristics that, in addition to the referent object(s), also include the criteria for survival and successful securitisation, the narrative structure of religious/doctrinal securitisations and the proclivity of religion/doctrine towards macrosecuritisation.

Violence has always played a part in the religious imagination, from symbols and myths to legendary battles, from colossal wars to the theater of terrorism. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence offers intersections between religion and violence throughout history and around the world. Its forty chapters include overviews of major religious traditions, showing how violence is justified within the literary and theological foundations of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of violence and warfare have been justified by religious ideas. They also examine patterns and themes relating to religious violence, such as sacrifice and martyrdom, which are explored in cross-disciplinary or regional analyses; and offer major analytic approaches, from literary to social scientific studies.

Violence has always played a part in the religious imagination, from symbols and myths to legendary battles, from colossal wars to the theater of terrorism. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence offers intersections between religion and violence throughout history and around the world. Its forty chapters include overviews of major religious traditions, showing how violence is justified within the literary and theological foundations of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of violence and warfare have been justified by religious ideas. They also examine patterns and themes relating to religious violence, such as sacrifice and martyrdom, which are explored in cross-disciplinary or regional analyses; and offer major analytic approaches, from literary to social scientific studies.

In what ways does religion matter as justification for violence? Based on a larger study of the Pakistani Taliban and their communication and recruitment materials, this article presents some of its main findings in a condensed form. It summarizes the lessons learned about the various roles religion plays in providing justification for taking up arms, namely: as an object to be defended; as a threat; as the purpose of armed struggle; as a (blurred) limit on war; and, finally, as imagery and myth. Although this article specifically looks at the case of the Pakistani Taliban and their religious justifications of violence, the findings might also find resonance in other cases of violent religious movements. The final sections of the article briefly discuss the potential implications of the findings for an overall understanding of the ‘nature’ of religious violence.

This article contributes to the growing subfield of research on religion and International Relations (IR) by discussing ways to take substantial and sui generis aspects of religion into account. It is argued that IR scholars need more critical methodological and conceptual reflection on how to integrate religion in order to navigate between two typical analytical positions: either focusing on the instrumental relevance of religion only or treating religion as an unchangeable meta-category and delinking it from its practitioners or context. The article first discusses why there is a need to be attentive to distinctive aspects of religion and then moves on to scrutinise three IR-relevant pathways to include these aspects of religion in analysis, namely religion as belief community, religion as power, and religion as speech act. It appears that future research along these lines can contribute significantly to the way IR scholars habitually think about key issues such as parameters of behaviour, standards of legitimacy, and the dynamics of conflicts.

This article reviews the Aarhus approach to the study of Islamism as presented in a series of articles by Mehdi Mozaffari and Tina Magaard. The core contribution of the Aarhus approach—the argument that islamism constitutes yet another form of totalitarianism—is found to be forceful and thought-provoking. The academic utility of this approach is difficult to evaluate, however, since empirical evidence in the form of structured comparisons is not provided. This is partly due to the lack of a definition of totalitarianism to facilitate comparisons with Nazism, Fascism and Stalinism, and partly due to a lack of interest in comparisons along other relevant dimensions, including manifestations of radicalized/securitized religion drawing on the vocabulary of religious traditions other than Islam. It is argued that the definition of Islamism as totalitarianism is upheld by methodologically privileging texts over practice and definitional claims over empirical evidence. As such, the approach reflects an anthropological and sociological deficit excluding analyses of practices from textual reading and a hermeneutical deficit excluding various existing interpretations. Most importantly, these criteria for demarcating Islamism have important consequences for security political strategies for uncoupling the relations between Islamism and violence.