Secular Leaders Research Articles

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Working with Faith Representatives to address Climate Change: The Two Wings of Ethos and Ethics

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Working with Faith Representatives to address Climate Change: The Two Wings of Ethos and Ethics Natabara Rollosson On November 3rd, 2009 at Windsor Castle in the United Kingdom, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) cohosted a summit that gathered religious and secular leaders from around the world to announce their action‐based commitments to protecting the environment and addressing climate change. Religious participants included representatives from numerous traditions from within nine major faiths: Baha’ism, Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, and Shintoism. Engaging substantively with the faiths on environment and climate change issues was new to UNDP’s work. Even though over the years UNDP had engaged in development projects on different issues that have involved faith‐based organizations (FBOs) as partners, it was not until the direct interaction at Windsor that the opportunities of working on climate change with FBOs came into focus. Instead of bringing religions together to agree upon one collective statement on climate change, the Windsor gathering encouraged each of the faith representatives to develop respective action plans to address environmental issues in their own unique way. As the faiths shared their different approaches, some faiths took note of other plans and openly acknowledged their desire to replicate certain elements of other faiths’ action templates. The overall theme of the gathering was a “celebration” of diverse action plans and appreciation for the natural environment, with some faiths inspired to spontaneously transcend and expand their originally conceived commitments. A month later, in December, a stark contrast played out on the world stage. This time, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change brought governments together in Copenhagen. However, delegates came with a notable difference in approach, and one that has plagued nations for decades. The history of climate change negotiations can be characterized as a mentality of scarcity: governments generally wanting to do as little as possible while pushing others to do as much as possible. In an interesting contrast of philosophies, the FBOs came together with an entirely different mentality of abundance, saying in effect: “this is what we can offer; this is what we are going to do.” They did not say “we’ll only do this if another faith does this, or if the government does this.” It was during preliminary religious events and gatherings leading up to Windsor that UN Assistant Secretary‐General and UNDP Assistant Administrator Olav Kjørven first noticed the dichotomy of the abundance and scarcity mentalities. Kjørven hypothesized the world’s faiths—joined together—could possibly become the planet’s largest civil society movement for change: “[W]ith their unparalleled presence throughout the world, the world’s religions could be the decisive force that helps tip the scales in favor of a world of climate safety and justice for future generations.” One of UNDP’s non‐governmental partners, the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC), a secular organization based in the United Kingdom, played the key role in leading on, harnessing, and encouraging the abundance mentality. Prior to the summit, ARC set out to consult directly with faith representatives to support them in building their own action plans, incorporating a methodology that addressed their internal structures and highlighted the inherent strengths of each faith. Alliance of Religions and Conservation approached the faith representatives with a guide to creating multi‐year plans that emphasized seven key areas, through which many of the world’s major faith traditions can have significant impact on environmental action through their own resources, traditions, and beliefs. These were as follows: 1 Faith‐consistent use of assets: land and forests; construction and buildings; investments (including micro‐finance); water; food and hospitality; purchasing and property. 2 Education and young people: curricula; conservation and recycling policy; school buildings and grounds; youth camps and nature retreats. 3 Pastoral care: theological education and training; liturgies and quotations; sacred places; rediscovering past traditions and wisdom; crisis and climate change adaptation. 4 Lifestyles: environmental audits; simple living traditions; families; pilgrimage and tourism; combined purchasing power. 5 Media and advocacy: internal and external subject matter; circulation and influence. 6 Partnerships & eco‐twinning: links to other groups and projects in...

Military-Civil Administration and Islam in the North Caucasus, 1858–83

Military-Civil Administration and Islam in the North Caucasus, 1858–83 Timothy K. Blauvelt (bio) As the Caucasus War of the 19th century drew to a close, a large population of Muslim mountaineers in the North Caucasus came under the authority of the Russian Empire. Many of these peoples had been resisting Russian rule for decades, and they had now somehow to be brought into the framework of the empire and made into peaceful subjects. Since Islam and the Islamic legal tradition played central roles in sustaining resistance to the empire during the war, tsarist officials had also to decide on an approach to dealing with the religion and its jurisprudence and with Muslim spiritual elites in the region. The tsarist government itself was not of a single mind about how best to approach Islam in the North Caucasus. Some elements of the government favored a continuation of the policy begun in the Volga basin and in the Urals in the 18th century of creating an official Muslim hierarchy for all Muslim territories of the empire. But other officials feared that an institutionalized Islamic system in the North Caucasus would be dangerous for Russian control, especially in the wake of Shamil's success in constructing state structures based on Islamic law and using them as a basis for resistance to Russian rule over such a long period. Therefore in the North Caucasus, after extensive deliberation and internal debate, the Russian government ultimately did not allow the extension of an official Islamic hierarchical organization. Instead, it started to give preference to a policy of supporting so-called "customary" law, or adat, over "Muhammadan law," or Sharia, and of co-opting and strengthening secular leaders over the previously existing Islamic spiritual elite. [End Page 221] The resulting approach of indirect, local, secular control and self-government, with oversight by Russian military officers, came to be referred to as the system of military-civil administration (voenno-narodnoe upravlenie), under the authority of the Caucasus Mountain Administration, which was later renamed the Caucasus Military-Civil Administration (Kavkazskoe voenno-narodnoe upravlenie). This military-civil administration was distinct from the system of civil administration (grazhdanskoe upravlenie) that was implemented in more settled parts of the region, such as the bigger towns and cities of the North Caucasus and most of the Transcaucasus, and it had the ultimate aim of eventually bringing the areas currently under military administration into a unified civil administration. One main goal of this military-civil administration was to create a unified and centralized administrative organization in the conquered territories. Another goal was to weaken the authority of the Muslim spiritual leaders of the village communities and to create a secular administration that had authority among Muslims while fulfilling the decisions of the central authorities. The long-term intention was to "civilize" the mountaineers and reduce their "fanaticism" and aggressiveness, thus making them passive and peaceful citizens of the empire. In so doing, tsarist officials hoped to restrict the spread of hostile forms of Islam and to supplant Sharia, which they saw as a serious threat to Russian control in the Caucasus. Thus local tsarist officials in the Caucasus Mountain Administration in the North Caucasus approached the problem of Islam with a clear conception that the best way to bring the Muslim mountaineers into line with Russian governance and law was to rule indirectly and to restrict the role of the clergy by supporting secular elites and traditional, non-Islamic law. This approach contradicted the earlier imperial policy of creating officially supported hierarchies for the Muslim clergy. Local officials were able to prevent the extension of such hierarchies to their areas of responsibility in the North Caucasus; paradoxically, however, and due in part to their paranoia about Islam, in the end they adopted in practice a very different mode of intervention in, and interaction with, the Muslim community. This article examines how the Caucasus Mountain Administration approached Islam and the role of religion and religious elites in consolidating imperial control, from the start of the institutionalization of military-civil administration in 1858 until the Chancellery of the Viceroy was dissolved in 1883. It examines the interaction of the Russian military administrators and Islam...

HOW FAITH IS REALPOLITIK IN THE HOLY LAND

The American Colony Hotel’s motley crew of VIPs, negotiators, and experts will agree and implement complex security regimes and trade protocols. But they will never succeed in bringing true peace, security, and justice to Israel and the Palestinians without the buy‐in and support of interested faith communities and their leaders. By actively keeping religion on the sidelines, secular leaders have unwittingly ceded authority over religious discourse in the public square to hard‐line ideologues. They have also violated a core principle of realpolitik: We must see the world as it is, not as one might like it to be.

Israel Charny’s Fighting Suicide Bombing: A Worldwide Campaign for Life

We begin with the book jacket photo that commands the reader’s attention as the horror on a Muslim woman’s face reminds us that the terror is not reserved for Infidels only. Then the dedication of the book is “to life,” while the volume’s last words are a plea for peace—in Charny’s words, a “worldwide campaign for life” to be led by religious and secular leaders across the globe. The book concludes with a vignette from Islamic culture that speaks nobly of furthering peace and life, ending with the last word: “inshallah.” What is evident in between is Charny’s humanistic approach to this most inhumane of all modern phenomena.

Marrying Family Law to the Nation

This paper revisits the creation of the modern Greek state in the early nineteenth century and the role that family law played in the process of generating a sense of national identity. According to the mainstream legal historical narrative Greeks managed to survive as a nation during the Ottoman years thanks to the consistent application of family law rules by the Orthodox Church. This paper reinterprets the standard narrative as the result of the institutional compromises struck between the Orthodox Church, westernizing revolutionary Greeks and local leaders at the moment of creation of the Greek state, rather than a reflection of the legal realities on the ground. It argues that competition between the Orthodox Church, Islamic judges, and local secular leaders on precisely the issues that the Church considered under its exclusive jurisdiction (marriage, divorce, inheritance) had resulted in a highly fragmented legal picture right before the creation of the Greek state. Despite this fragmentation, the first regent for judicial affairs of the nascent state, Bavarian Georg Ludwig von Maurer, argued in his seminal book Greek People that Greek Orthodox canon law had been applied consistently throughout the territories of the Greek state and that the Greeks has survived as a nation partly thanks to the efforts of the Church which saved the Greeks from barbarism. The institutional compromise he then fashioned for Church/State relations rewarded the former, by making it an important institutional player on marriage and divorce in the new state. The last part of the paper discusses the importance of revisiting the history of the state's role in generating narratives of national identity for European politics, at a moment when the distribution of resources between European citizens and non European, often Muslim, non citizens living and working in Europe is increasingly justified or tacitly accepted through appeals to notions of concrete, coherent national identities. The dynamics of relying on a named or unnamed uncivilized other against whom identity formation takes place seems to be repeating itself today with a vengeance in the case of Turkey's accession to the European Union, and the thinly veiled vs. barbarism discursive themes emerging there. Not accidentally, they are heavily concentrated in the field of family law. Without suggesting that revisiting history will solve current political problems by deductive magic it can at least help push against the more essentialist, clash of civilization versions of identity that have remade their appearance in political discussions in Europe.

‘At the Horns of the Altar’: Counterinsurgency and the Religious Roots of the Sanctuary Practice

This paper examines the origins and development of the sanctuary practice in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The customs and laws relating to the sanctuary practice underwent a process of institutionalization that exemplified a constant tension between religious authorities, who wished to expand the practice, and secular authorities, who wished to eliminate it. This struggle resulted in an accommodation: the adoption of rules that restrict the practice in space, scope and duration. Contemporary leaders can draw on these rules to confront the challenges posed by insurgents who appeal for the right of sanctuary. Specifically, secular leaders can rely on these rules to reduce the insurgents' freedom of movement, to demand the expulsion of insurgents from sacred sites, and to attempt the peaceful resolution of standoffs with insurgents who seek prolonged refuge in sacred sites.

A Time of Great Confusion. Second-Generation Cluniac Reformers and Resistance to Monastic Centralization in the County of Flanders (c. 1125-1145)

The present article argues that the years between circa 1125 and 1145 witnessed an attempt on behalf of ecclesiastical leaders from the archbishopric of Reims to homogenize and reorganize reformed Benedictine monasticism on a regional basis. Second-generation reformers controversially devised methods of supervision rooted in a Cluniac understanding of internal life but formally inspired by the Cistercian model of monastic organization. Central to the development of this new model of reformed monasticism was the leadership of Alvisus, abbot of Anchin and subsequently bishop of Arras. His interventions led to the creation of some form of regional supervision but failed to organize the Benedictine monasteries in the archbishopric of Reims into a well-structured, hierarchical network. A significant factor in convincing the reformers of the necessity of compromise was the fact that their objectives repeatedly clashed with the political interests of various ecclesiastical and secular leaders.

MAHATHIR AS MUSLIM LEADER

From Malay To Muslim Dilemma At the relatively mature age of 45, Mahathir Mohamad published The Malay Dilemma , an effective formulation of the position taken by many Malay nationalists about the unacceptability of the socio-economic state of the Malays. 1 With it came fame, and infamy. The book was written in haste after his suspension from the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) following his public criticism of Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's first premier, in 1970. After being rehabilitated in 1972 by the succeeding premier, Abdul Razak Hussein, Mahathir quickly rose within the political hierarchy. In May 1981 he became Malaysia's fourth prime minister and stayed in that position until he retired in October 2003 at the age of 77. Along the way he fought and won countless battles against political rivals on all imaginable fronts, and worked to turn Malaysia into an industrialized economy. Alongside the impressive economic progress, an Islamization of Malaysia took place during Mahathir's watch. In 1982 he brought Islamic youth leader, Anwar Ibrahim, who was not a member of any political party at that time, into UMNO, purportedly to help him put an Islamic stamp on his modernization ideas, and to resist the Islamist party, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS). That is the generally accepted interpretation of Mahathir's surprise move. Such conclusions result from the assumption that Mahathir — and UMNO for that matter — is basically a secular leader concerned with the material development of his country and his own ethnic group, the Malays, and that the “Muslimness” of the Malays was of lesser importance. Yet, Mahathir himself had claimed that he did not accept the polarity of secularism and religion, even if this particular conviction appears to have come late in his life. In The Malay Dilemma , for example, Islam is not dealt with centrally. While such a stance may be regarded as a rejection of what is normally considered a Western dichotomy, Mahathir's position was just as much — if not more poignantly so — a criticism of Muslim leaders through the ages who turned their backs on all knowledge that they considered not to be religious.

Moral teachings and religious sensibilities

p discourse about religion and society has come long way. Scholars, pundits, and policy makers of an stripes now take religion seriously as a social tk~rce and, pe,'haps more remarkably, as a potential force for good in political life. This is a happy development. If we take proper advantage of it, we might achieve a deeper understanding of religion, society, and politics. But this moment of enthusiasm also may tempt us to overstate religion's power for good. Professor Turner succumbs to this temptation, tlis main conclusion is this: "The religious voter, who is by moral training well accustomed to separating his own personal valuations and priorities from those of God, and is thus habitually "double" already, may be a better w~ter and citizen than the purely "sinele" secular voter who has no theoretical basis for dividing his view of the world from that of the larger community." lie arrives at this conclusion by combining a sensible normative position with a dubious empirical assumption. His sensible normative claim is that "doubleness"--the capacity to advance our own interests but at the same time "'step outside of our own interests and perspectives," and the willingness to "'algue [one's] position but accept the position of the electorate"---is a virtue of the democratic citizen. But his application of this normalive principle to our current condition is marred by the dubious empirical assumption that religious people are more inclined than nonreligious people to exhibit this sort of doubleness. A world in which religious people were "'habitually double" in Professor Turner's sense would be a world in which religious leaders found it more difficult than they apparently do to identify their own personal and institutional interests with what they believe God is calling them to do. But there are in fact multiple opportunities for self-deception in religious life, as in secular life, and the ease with which religious leaders and their followers conflate rather than distinguish between their wills and God's will is writ large in the historical record. A list of relevant examples would be familiar to all: Crusades, religious wars, persecution of religious minorities by religious mt(iorities, conflicts within American Protestantism over slavery (recall that the Southern Baptist Convention is the Southern Baptist Convention because American Baptists split in the 1850s over slavery), intrareligious conflict over civil rights for African Americans, religious collabo,'ation with oppressive regimes, the initial response of the Catholic hierarchy to accusations of sexual abuse by clergy, and so on. Over and over again leaders of religious institutions large and small seem, like secular leaders, quite capable of deciding that their deepest beliets justify rather than call into question their self-interested action. Similarly, a world in which religious people were "'well accustomed to separating [their] own personal valuations and priorities from those of God" would be a world in which political leaders, when they connect their religious beliefs to their policies, would be given pause rather than greater assurance that they are doing God's will. But this ideal seems far removed from actual instances of political leaders who have connected religion with public policy. George W. Bush's religiosity made him more, not less, convinced that God endorsed war in Iraq. And the President is not a lone-indeed, he is typical-in having a faith that is self-justifying rather than self-denying. Religious critics of the war are just as sure, after all, that God endorses their position. Indeed, God frequently is understood to have endorsed the values and political preferences--even the directly contlicting values and preferences---of those who seek such endorsement. And religious people frequently seem to discover, after prayerful reflection and study of the scriptures, that God favors their own personal desires and plans. A world in which religion worked mainly to inculcate a moral sensibility that inclined people to distinguish clearly between their own interests and those of the collective would be a world in which humility, ahmg with "'the pain and tension of religious doubleness,'"

Shamanism in Inner Asia: two archetypes

The author considers that the term 'shamanism' is inappropriate to designate the phenomenon generally so described. Materials on the shamanism of the peoples of Inner Asia lead to the identification of two separate archetypes, i.e. east-Asian and southwest-Asian. Two traditional cultural codes are discussed - that concerned with the principal 'personages' (the supreme deities), and that with the 'agents' (the performers of the ritual). In the east-Asian archetype, the two principal deities are the Sky and the Earth, and the major socially significant rituals - for example, New Year - are carried out by secular leaders, such as the khan, elders, heads of clans, and others. In the southwest archetype, which developed under the influence of ancient Iranian and Indo-Arian traditions, there was a triad of heavenly beings, of which the major one was the Sun, accompanied by groups of other, lesser deities - those of the 'right' and those of the 'left'. The author concludes that only where the cult of the Sun is observed (later possibly mingled with the Thunder-god) do 'white' shamans perform the sacred functions and rituals.

Lutherans in Russia since 1990

Origins Lutherans formed the most important Protestant group in the Russian Empire. As early as the mid-sixteenth century Tsar Ivan IV, 'the Terrible', called numerous weapon smiths, fortification designers, officers, artists and architects to Moscow from German lands, settling them in the 'German suburb' (Nemetskaya sloboda). With the tsar's permission the first Lutheran church in Russia was established in Moscow in 1576.' Baltic territories with a compact Lutheran population (Latvians, Estonians and Germans) fell to the Russian Empire with the annexation of the former lands of the German Teutonic Order of Knights: Estland and Livland in 171011721, Courland in 1796. Germans reached Central Russia (the lower Volga and Saratov region 1763-69: 23,000) and later Ukraine (the Black Sea region 1804-56: 54,000; Volhynia from 1863: 150,000) and the Caucasus (1814-17). Some three quarters of these immigrants were Lutherans. In the Russian Empire (excluding Poland and Finland) Lutherans numbered 3.3 million before the First World War: 1.1 million Latvians, 1.1 million Germans, 1 million Estonians, 140,000 Finns and several thousand Swedes. The Baltic Germans in Estland, Livland and Courland had built up a well-function­ ing church organisation that integrated the Estonian and Latvian peasant popUlation. In 1802 the German university in Dorpat/Tartu was established with a Lutheran theological faculty that became famous throughout Europe. In contrast to the Baltic Lutherans, the German colonists in Russia did not succeed in building up a church administration, and so in 1832 an imperial decree established the 'Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia' (Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Russland) to oversee all Protestants in the country (including the few members of the Reformed faith). The church leadership, the 'General Consistory' (General-Consistorium), was of course located in St Petersburg. This Lutheran Church, whose official language was German, represented a state church with inferior legal rights to those of the Russian Orthodox Church; its spiritual and secular leaders and the heads of the church administration were appointed by the emperor personally and paid by the state treasury.2 Lutheran ministers, like Orthodox priests, were quasi-state officials who had to maintain state registers (births, marriages, deaths). The church's official language, as well as that of the university in Dorpat, was German. Germans always constituted the majority of the church leadership and of the clergy; Estonians and Latvians entered the pastorate in larger numbers only after 1850. 3

From Oslo to Bethlehem: Arafat's Islamic Message

When town after town of the West Bank and Gaza passed into Palestinian Authority (PA) hands following the Oslo II Agreement (1995) that was designed to facilitate the transition from Israeli occupa tion to Palestinian self-rule, Yasser Arafat, president of the PA, began to manifest some surprising traits in his statesmanship. Most notable for someone viewed as a secular leader is his profound Islamic commit ment, which harks back to his membership in the Muslim Brethren in Egypt during his formative years. The issue of Islam is of particular interest, due to Arafat's attempts to juggle between new-found pragma tism as a statesman (who has, to all appearances, chosen the road of political settlement with Israel, at least prior to the resumption of the intifada in the fall of 2000), and his innate propensity for doctrinal and vindictive rhetoric. Arafat must strike a balance between his pro claimed obligation to compromise—requiring him to set aside some of his long-held Islamic convictions which had helped him mobilize Pales tinian public opinion behind him—and his need to placate his most dangerous opposition, namely, Hamas1 and the Islamic jihad (holy war), which refuse to shed the very same convictions Arafat once held, continuing instead to embrace and profess them openly. This essay will examine whether Arafat is in fact bound by one par ticular set of principles (with the other being merely tactical rhetoric), and whether he espouses any particular ideology only when it appears to him at a particular time to best reflect his and his people's interest. In other words, is there a way to read between the lines of his ambigu

Changing Fortunes: An Analysis of Christian Right Ascendance within American Political Discourse

The status of the Christian Right is usually evaluated by an examination of their successes in the legislative realm, the fate of particular Christian Right groups, and the limiting effects of cultural pluralism on religious exclusivism. These analyses usually conclude that the success of the Christian Right is limited. Despite predictions and arguments to the contrary, the activist Christian Right, whose various groups are now generally summarized as the New Christian Right (NCR), have continued to achieve greater prominence in American political discourse. Factors such as the willingness of some Christian Right groups to accentuate the secular aspects of their agenda, and the embrace of NCR groups by secular political leaders, are evidence of the rising fortunes of the Christian Right. Also, the culture war rhetoric employed by the Christian Right has been highly effective in the appropriation of valued rhetorical symbols in American public discourse. Finally, the authors explore the conditions of a postmodern cultural and intellectual climate of pluralism and relativism which provides fallow ground for the tolerance of even the most extreme of culture war rhetoric. The authors conclude that the status of the Christian Right is best assessed through consideration of evolving social forces with which the Christian Right may find affinity, and from which the Christian Right may benefit.

The Fire of Tongues: António Vieira and the Missionary Church in Brazil and Portugal by Thomas M. Cohen

The Fire of Tongues: Antonio Vieira and Missionary Church in Brazil and Portugal, By Thomas A Cohen. (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1998. Pp. xi, 262. $49.50.) Charles R. Boxer once described Antonio Vicira as the most remarkable man in seventeenth-century Luso-Brazilian world. No less remarkable is neglect of this great missionary in historiography in English. This makes all more significant Thomas Cohen's penetrating, illuminating, stimulating, and often revisionist study of religious and social thought of Vieira. An opening chapter situates Vieira in context of pastoral ideals, practices, and objectives enunciated by Manuel de Noibrega, leader of first Jesuit mission to Brazil. In terms of missionary theorizing, Vicira was Nobrega's successor, and Cohen shows parallelisms between two in terms of attitudes and social thought. A second chapter traces growth of Jesuit missionary activity in Brazil, establishment (1607) of a Jesuit missionary field in Amazon, and events prior to Vieira's arrival in Maranhao in 1653. This, and four subsequent chapters, focus on critical periods in Vieira's life: mission to Amazon (1653-1661): years in prison of Inquisition in Coimbra (1663-1667) and, on his release, in Rome and Lisbon; and his residence in Brazil from 1681 until his death in 1697, This chronological framework permits author to trace evolution of Vieira's missionary strategy, his theology, his Christology, and his social thought, as reflected in his writings, This is also an exercise in compensatory history: focus is on apostolic and pastoral dimension of Vieira, and not political or biographical; Maranhao, not Portugal. is central to Vieira's intellectual and apostolic formation and prophetic vision; Brazilian dimension is paramount. In short, periphery has become center stage. Cohen has captured two aspects of Vieira: his eclecticism and his singlemindedness of purpose. The first is manifest in breadth of his literary opus, his recourse to a gamut of sources including Bible, St. Augustine of Hippo, and populist prophecies in Portugal, and originality of his interpretations of Scripture and his exegetical mode. The second was evinced in his development of a pastoral strategy for Maranhao. This demanded lobbying at court for legislation to advance an Indian ministry and protect authority of Jesuits, use of language and concepts so outrageous that Vieira hoped they would shake Portuguese ecclesiastical and secular leaders out of their inertia. and occasional bouts of compromise and conciliation. The pastoral and apostolic mission in Maranhao and role of Brazil were key components in Vieira's advocacy of his great prophetic vision and millenarian project for Jesuits, for Portugal, and for her empire: that Ignatius Loyola and his successors had been chosen by God to build modern missionary church throughout world; that Christ had entrusted an empire to Portuguese specifically because they-led by a collaboration between crown and Jesuits-had been chosen for universal mission of conversion and salvation of souls of non-Christians; and that Portugal would succeed Jewish nation as temporal locus of Fifth Empire. …

Culture and Ethnic Identity in Daghestan

This field research report summarizes the results of interviews during special research trips to Daghestan from 1992-96. These interviews were conducted with both secular and religious leaders in villages, district centers, and the capital of Makhachkala. We found indigenous cultures, ethnic identities, and the entire North Caucasus region in transition from a Russian sphere of cultural and political influence to that of Islam, epitomized by a split cultural and generational identity of fathers versus sons. Yet indigenous cultures show great resilience toward both the former Soviet influences of atheism and modemization and the contemporary revival of Islam, which seeks to integrate all aspects of individual and community life. Curiously, just like the British Empire, the former imperial Soviet State evokes ambivalent feelings of nostalgia and admiration, mixed with apprehension, while Islam now appears as the major agent transformation of indigenous cultures toward a new geo-political identity.

What Happened in Cairo? A View from the Internet

An estimated 20000 government delegates UN representatives nongovernment organizations and media representatives participated in the 1994 UN Population Conference held in Cairo. Most UN conferences are carefully prearranged in a series of preparatory meetings with the actual conferences simply being ceremonious occasions during which political leaders can read prepared scripts and sign a consensus document. The Cairo conference however was different. The Vatican and its Muslim country allies voiced their firm opposition to abortion cohabitation without marriage and sexual behavior which deviates from their religiously-prescribed norms. Secular leaders countered vigorously and the debate was on. This ideological conflict sparked an enormous amount of attention both in the international media and through word of mouth. A compromise was eventually reached on wording which without condemning abortion stressed that abortion must not be considered a means of family planning. Conference officials may feel that the proceedings were out of control and a general waste of valuable conference time. On the contrary however a far greater international impact will be felt from this Cairo conference compared to other UN conferences without comparable controversy and international media attention. Had not the Pope and his Muslim country allies taken such a firm opposition stand to general consensus at the conference proceedings would have rolled along without controversy and the message of the event would have been disseminated little beyond official circles. The 1994 Cairo conference indeed contributed to a worldwide movement.

Militant Islam and the Politics of Redemption

Militant Islam has emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a major political force to be contended with in the Middle East. It is characterized by its readiness to use violence and by the challenge it constitutes to existing political institutions. This article looks at the conditions under which five militant Islamic movements in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank have emerged as a political force, and the concepts they have used to mobilize public support and to create a mass base for themselves in order to challenge leaders or governments in power. The conditions include political stagnation and the weakening of central authority, economic stagnation leading to the decline in standards of living, deteriorating security conditions, pervasiveness of Western culture, and secular states and leaders perceived as antagonistic to Islamic movements. The leaders of these movements do not portray themselves as revolutionaries trying to create a new society but rather as saviors trying to rescue the old society from self-destruction. Their ideology is an ideology of redemption.

Ideas, Institutions and Political Culture in Western Development

Contemporary Western political culture is characterized by three achievements and ideas: (1) the limitation of government or the rule of law; (2) some institutional separation of the economy and of science from government and religion; and (3) popular participation or democracy. The first two components of Western political culture are prerequisites of the European miracle. In contrast to the great Asian civilizations, Western civilization alone succeeded in overcoming mass poverty. The third component of Western political culture, i.e. democracy, depends on the first two components as well as on a high level of prosperity. Western cultural, political and economic achievements are rooted in political fragmentation, i.e. in the existence of an international system in the West instead of a unified empire, as well as in conflicts between cities and territorial rulers, between secular and spiritual leaders, and later even between crown and parliament. In the twentieth century, however, the most basic Western achievement, i.e. the limitation of government, is threatened by the reassertion and democratization of rent-seeking or creeping socialism. The twin trends towards the growth of distributional coalitions and government reduce Western economic performance without moving us closer to professed egalitarian goals. Western government activities tend to be limited as far as the procurement of public goods is concerned, whether one refers to the maintenance of competition or national security, but increasingly unlimited as far as redistribution is concerned.

Church-State Developments Around the World

This study covers recent church-state develop ments within three broad patterns of interaction. The first pattern involves religious attempts to either eliminate or dominate secular authority. The case of Iran's Islamic republic is examined, as well as the possibility of an "Islamic resurgence" among other Muslim nations. The second pattern represents church-state disagreement over specific public policies. Examples in this section include recent educational, divorce, and abortion reforms in the traditionally conservative states of Italy and Spain, religious opposition to the status quo politics of certain Latin American regimes, and disagree ments over racial policy in white-dominated southern Africa. In the final pattern, the state seeks to eliminate or seriously restrict religious activity. Primary emphasis in this section is placed upon the policies of the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. The persecution of specific religious groups in non-Communist states is also examined. The various cases examined in this study suggest that church-state disputes are quite common within nearly all world regions and among all religious groups. Moreover, controversies are likely to continue as long as secular and religious leaders seek different goals.

Religious Leadership and the Pakistan Movement in the Punjab

In this paper an attempt has been made to delineate the background of the religious support for the Pakistan movement in the Punjab by looking in particular at the connections between the structure of religious leadership and the structure of Muslim politics in 20th century Punjab. Only the rough outlines of these connections have been provided, but nevertheless some important patterns have emerged. From the time of the conversion to Islam of much of the western Punjab at the hands of sufi saints, religious leadership in the rural areas was focused on the hereditary sajjada nashins of the shrines of these saints. The position of these hereditary religious leaders was tied closely into the political organization of the rural areas, and this produced a considerable unity of political and economic interests between the religious and the secular leaders of rural society. Such common interests were strengthened by the British, who, in molding a system of rural administration in the Punjab, recognized the sajjada nashins of these shrines as part of a single ruling class of hereditary rural leaders. When the Unionist Party emerged in the 1920s as a party of rural interests led by this class of rural leaders, the sajjada nashins as a group were strongly disposed, therefore, to support it and to oppose the religious attacks on the Unionists which emanated from primarily urban reformist leaders.As a result of a widespread revival of sufi. influence in western Punjab in the post-Mughal era, however, many of the sajjada nashins in twentieth- century Punjab had also developed very strong religious commitments to spreading a deeper awareness of Islam. This revival had spread initially through the Chishti order but was later widened by the development of the Ahl-e-Sunnat-o-Jamaat group of ulama who gave religious legitimacy to the continuing emphasis on the forms of religious influence centered on the shrines. The sajjada nashins who drew on this revival tradition were not satisfied with the secular basis of the political system developed by the Unionists, but due to their structural grounding as sajjada nashins in the rural political milieu, they did not generally give the Unionists active opposition. The Unionist Party was thus able, with tacit religious support in the rural areas, to build a strong system of political authority based on rural control, and this propelled the Party to its sweeping victory in the 1937 elections.With the emergence of the Muslim League, however, which transcended the political question of rural interests versus urban, the revivalist sajjada nashins saw the opportunity to put rural politics on a more solid religious foundation. The concept of Pakistan was seen by them in traditional terms as the establishment of a religious state, ruled by the traditional leaders of rural society but firmly based on the Shariat. In the elections of 1946 the revivalist sajjada nashins provided the vanguard of religious support for Pakistan and played an important role in carrying the Muslim League to triumph over the Unionist Party. The victory was a sweeping religious mandate for Pakistan and marked the most important step on the road to Pakistan's formation.The important role of the sajjada nashins in the Muslim League's election victory was also an important pointer to the nature of the Pakistan state which was to emerge. Structurally, the revivalist sajjada nashins were themselves deeply rooted in rural society and their support for the Muslim League in no way represented a repudiation of the class of landed leaders who had long wielded power in western Punjab under the Unionist banner. The victory for Pakistan represented only, a call for a new religious definition of the old rural order, not for a new alignment of political power such as the reformist ulama had called for. The further definition of this system, however, remained to be developed in the new Muslim state.