Religious Political Movements Research Articles

Juristocracy vs. Theocracy: Constitutional Courts and the Containment of Sacred Law

AbstractOne of the fascinating yet seldom explored phenomena in predominantly religious polities in the Middle East and elsewhere is the growing reliance on constitutional courts and their jurisprudential ingenuity to contain the spread of religiosity or advance a pragmatic version of it. In this article, I explore the scope and nature of this phenomenon. I proceed in several main steps. First, I define what may be termed "constitutional theocracy" with its often conflicting legal commitments, political interests, and social realities. Second, I examine the main epistemological, juridical and political reasons why constitutional law and courts are so appealing to secularist, modernist, cosmopolitan, and other non-religious social forces in polities facing deep divisions along secular/religious lines. Third, I look at various modes of interpretive ingenuity drawn upon by constitutional courts in Egypt, Pakistan, Israel, and Turkey in order to contain, limit, and mitigate the resurgence of religiosity in their respective polities. All of these countries have experienced a growth in the influence of religious political movements, with a commensurate increase in the levels of popular support that they receive. Despite the considerable differences in these countries' formal recognition of, and commitment to, religious values, there are, however, some striking parallels in the way that the constitutional courts in these (and in other similarly situated countries) have positioned themselves as important secularizing forces within their respective societies. I conclude by drawing some general lessons concerning the political construction of judicial review and the secularizing role of constitutional courts in an increasingly religious world.

Catholic and Muslim Politics in Comparative Perspective

The contemporary global discourse on Islam as a fundamentalist antimodern and undemocratic religion shows striking similarities with the old discourse on Catholicism that predominated in Anglo-Protestant societies, particularly in the United States, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The essay draws some comparisons between old Catholic and current Muslim politics at three different levels: (1) at the level of the transnational structures of Catholicism and Islam as world religions; (2) at the level of religious political parties and movements in national politics; and (3) at related issues of immigrant incorporation of Catholics in Anglo-Protestant societies in the past and of Muslims in ”secular-Christian” Western societies today.

Islamism in Turkey: beyond instrument and meaning

The purpose of this essay is to show that strictly materialist or culturalist approaches are inadequate for the theorization of religious political movements. Drawing from the insights provided by these approaches, I contend that Islamism is a novel form of counter-hegemonic politics, which I call religio-moral populism. Like every hegemony, it has to be handled as an articulation of conflicting interests and aspirations. By deploying Castoriadis' model of the institution of society in my reading of the Islamist press in Turkey, I argue that the imaginary and imagination have to become part of the vocabulary utilized by the analysis of religion in order to deal with the tensions generated by such an articulation. I demonstrate my cases through an interpretation of discussions among Islamists on poverty, capitalism and justice.

Religious Politics and Israel's Ethnic Democracy

What is the significance of Yosef s statement? Is it simply another example of the ongoing chain of hostility between the leaders of the secular and religious parties dating back to the earliest days of the pre-state Zion ist Movement, or a sign of more serious conflict that is not manageable within the existing political framework? When is the antagonism between religious and secular politicians an actual threat to the democratic system? These questions take on greater significance in the wake of the Rabin assas sination by an extremist religious Zionist in 1995, and the unprecedented 27 seats gained by religious parties in the 1999 election. For the social scientist, the problem is not religious politics of one kind or another, but the theoretical framework we use for determining the significance of Yosef 's statement, or, for that matter, the significance of the actions of other religious political actors for Israeli democracy. Several dated works provide overviews of the historical development, theological positions, and political behavior of the religious political movements.1 To date, however, no theoretical paradigm exists to enable an informed debate about the consequence of particular religious actions for the larger political system. To build a paradigm for the study of the interaction between religion and democracy requires us to grapple with the meaning of both concepts

Toward a Typology of Anticolonial Religious-Political Movements in Tropical Africa

In studying the history of the struggle of the peoples of Tropical Africa for liberation from the colonial yoke, scholars face major difficulties caused by the state of the sources, for they must usually use materials gathered by the colonialists. The bias of these sources complicates the identification of the true character of both various folk movements as a whole and individual currents within them.