Islamic politics, Muslim states, and counterterrorism tensions

Abstract

Peter S. Henne examines how tensions and cooperation in international security policy between the United States and Muslim countries are shaped by religion–state relationships, differing objectives and Islamic politics. Employing a quantitative analysis of data from 1996 to 2009, he explores US relations with Pakistan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates in order to understand varying state support for the US global ‘war on terror’. Henne argues that religion–state relationships are ‘inextricably’ tied to security policy on religious issues, and where governments have ‘close ties to religion’ they find it ‘difficult to cooperate extensively’ with US counterterrorism policy (p. 13). Moreover, he presents a theory that religion serves as a ‘transformative force in politics’ and a regime's main goal is to ‘survive’, which means ‘religion will only influence a regime's behavior if it affects regime elite's survival calculations’ (p. 14). His data support the argument that nations with closer religion–state ties are more likely to be less cooperative with counterterrorism.