We God's People: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the World of Nations

444 Pages·2021·4.239 MB·English

by  Jocelyne Cesari

We God’s People
Cesariarguesthatbothreligiousandnationalcommunitiesaredefined
by the three Bs: belief, behaviour and belonging. By focusing on the
ways in which these three Bs intersect, overlap or clash, she identifies
thepatternsofthepoliticizationofreligion,andviceversa,inanygiven
context. Her approach has four advantages: firstly, it combines an
exploration of institutional and ideational changes across time, which
areusuallyseparatedbydisciplinaryboundaries.Secondly,itillustrates
theheuristicvalueofcombiningqualitativeandquantitativemethodsby
statisticallytestingthevalidityofthepatternsidentifiedinthequalitative
historical phase of the research. Thirdly, it avoids reducing religion to
beliefsbyinvestigatingthesignificanceoftheinstitution-ideasconnec-
tions, and fourthly, it broadens the political approach beyond state-
religion relations to take into account actions and ideas conveyed in
otherarenassuchaseducation,welfare,andculture.
jocelyne cesari Holds the Chair of Religion and Politics at the
University of Birmingham, UK, is Senior Fellow at Georgetown
University's Berkley Center on Religion, Peace and World Affairs and
theT.J.DermotDunphyVisitingProfessorofReligion,Violenceand
Peacebuilding at Harvard Divinity School (2018-2021). Her other
books include: What is Political Islam? (2018) (special mention of the
religion and international section of the International Studies
Association), and The Awakening of Muslim Democracy: Religion,
Modernity,andtheState(Cambridge,2014).
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’
We God s People
Christianity, Islam and Hinduism
in the World of Nations
Jocelyne Cesari
UniversityofBirminghamandGeorgetownUniversity
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“BlessedisHeWhoisgoodanddoesgood”
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Tostudythelawsofhistorywemustcompletelychangethesubjectof
our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and
studythecommon,infinitesimallysmallelementsbywhichthemasses
aremoved.Noonecansayinhowfaritispossibleformantoadvance
in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it is
evidentthatonlyalongthatpathdoesthepossibilityofdiscoveringthe
lawsofhistorylie,andthatasyetnotamillionthpartasmuchmental
effort has been applied in this direction by historians as has been
devoted to describing the actions of various kings, commanders, and
ministers and propounding the historians’ own reflections concerning
theseactions. LeoTolstoy,WarandPeace
Hegel says somewhere that great historic facts and personages recur
twice.Heforgottoadd:“Onceastragedy,andagainasfarce.”…Man
makeshisownhistory,buthedoesnotmakeitoutofthewholecloth;
hedoesnotmakeitoutofconditionschosenbyhimself,butoutofsuch
as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past generations weighs
like an alp upon the brain of the living. At the very time when men
appear engaged in revolutionizing things and themselves, in bringing
aboutwhatneverwasbefore,atsuchveryepochsofrevolutionarycrisis
do they anxiously conjure up into their service the spirits of
thepast. KarlMarx,TheEighteenthBrumaireofLouisBonaparte
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Contents
Listof Figuresand Tables page viii
Acknowledgments x
Noteon Transliteration and Italicization xi
Introduction 1
1 Framing the Question 9
2 State,Islam,NationandPatriotism:Never-EndingTensions 28
3 TheNexus of Secularism and Communalism, or Hinduism
as a Political Project 131
4 Religion and theTranscendent State in China 187
5 Orthodoxy: BetweenNation and Empire 240
6 Patterns of Religion-Politics Interactions 318
Conclusion 357
Bibliography 372
Index 422
vii
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Figures and Tables
FIGURES
2.1 Pew Government Restrictions Index (Turkey,Syria, Iraq,
Indonesia) page 28
2.2 Pew SocialHostilities Index(Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Indonesia) 29
4.1 Societal versusgovernmental discrimination in China
in the past two decades 188
5.1 State and societal religious discrimination in Russia 241
TABLES
2.1 Political violence in 2016 page 29
3.1 Sectarian conflicts in India from 1946 to 2018 133
3.2 Overview ofconflicts in Indiafrom 2004 to 2017 134
3.3 Pew socialreligious hostility 136
3.4 Pew government religioushostility 136
3.5 BJP electoralperformance since its creation 137
4.1 Pew Government Restrictions Index in China
from 2007 to 2017 187
4.2 Government Harassment Index per religion
from 2007 to 2017 187
4.3 Socialhostilities involving religion in China
from 2007 to 2017 188
5.1 Pew government religioushostility 240
5.2 Pew socialreligious hostility 241
5.3 Overview ofrise of terrorist religious group conflicts in Russia 242
6.1 Patterns ofpolitical Islam in Syria 324
6.2 Patterns ofpolitical Islam in Turkey 329
6.3 Tension between communalism and secularism 335
6.4 Power sharing and localpolitics 336
6.5 Contested sacred sites 338
6.6 Contested Female Body 339
viii
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ListofFiguresandTables ix
6.7 Contested Islamiclaw 341
6.8 Patterns ofreligious politics in China 342
6.9 Tension between Orthodoxy and Russian nationalism 345
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Acknowledgments
I am immensely indebted to all the colleagues, friends and students
I have discussed and worked with over the years of researching and
writing this book.
I would like to specially thank the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace
and World Affairs atGeorgetown University for the continuous support
of my colleagues (Tom Banchoff, José Casanova, Shaun Casey, Drew
Christiansen,MichaelKessler)andofourwonderfuladministrativeteam
(Ruth Gopin, Nick Impson, Randolph Peltzer, Amy Vander Vliet,
Claudia Winkler). The statistical part of the research would not have
been possible without the support of Spyros Dimolitsas, the senior vice
president for research at Georgetown University, and the EOS team
(Jeffrey Colman, Peter Luger,Raghu Pemmaraju, Nili Yossinger).
I am grateful to my colleagues at the Edward Cadbury Centre for the
Public Understanding of Religion and at the School of Philosophy,
Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham for their never-
ending help and enthusiasm for mywork.
I have a special debt to the friends and scholars who have given me
invaluable feedback on the different versions of the book: Rajeev
Barghava, Francis Clooney, Ken Dowden, Jonathan Fox, Liah
Greenfeld, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, Kristina Stoeckl. Thank you for
your insights.
Thisbookwouldneverhaveseenthelightofdaywithoutthetremen-
dousworkofyoungtalentedresearchersandstudentswhohaveassisted
mewithresearchandtranslationofmaterialsinChinese,Hindi,Russian,
Arabic and Turkish: Lama Al Jarallah, Sercan Cambolat, Husanjot
Chahal, Katarina Dubrova, Salome Mikadtze, Hao Tian, Majd al-
Waheidi. My gratitude goes also to Siddharth Singh, who brilliantly
created the Python program for the EOS big data and worked with me
to analyze the data. Thanks also to Kathleen Guan, Frederick
O’Loughlin, Michaela Murphy and Samira Mehta, who have edited
numerous drafts of the manuscript.
x
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