How do the rising religious conflicts impact global governance? Following the recent events across Europe and other regions, we asked Prof. Mohamedou, specialist in political violence, terrorism and religion, to share his views on the repercussions on global governance.
How do extremist groups and the related mass protest movements impact global governance?
There are arguably today two dominant dynamics accounting for the three-way interplay between religion, violence, and governance. On the one hand, there is, it seems to me, a globally unsettled question of the place of religion as regards political and societal affairs. This is clearly visible in the case of the Middle East and North Africa – and, beyond, the Islamic world – where the postcolonial moment and more recent crises constitute an environment of political struggles pitting different projects against each other, often violently. Though playing out in a different manner, the issue is equally existential in the West where the long transition since the end of the Cold War has merged with post-globalization and post-2008 financial crisis dynamics leading to societal malaise in a number of countries. In such a context, questions long thought to be solved – the twilight of the Gods and all – are being reopened in unexpected ways, at times also merging with nationalistic tendencies.
On the other hand, religion per se still holds an important place in a number of conflicts around the world. We may not be in a ‘war of religions’ as is often hastily argued (and which ones for that matter?), but religion as a set of beliefs, worldviews, cultural systems, and narratives lends itself to extremist interpretations, and thus to conflict. A January 2014 report by the Washington-based Pew Research Project on Religion and Public Life finds that one third of the countries of the world are experiencing, under one form or another, a ‘religious conflict,’ and that such religious violence has, too, increased in recent years. Therefore, such impact is both a matter of qualitative and quantitative evolution.
Why are we experiencing this shift from tolerance to intolerance? Is this a social or religious crisis?
There isn’t necessarily an actual such shift. What there may be, rather, is generally more visibility of the conflicts, and therefore, more visibility of religion-driven or religion-dominated conflicts. Because religion has come to occupy a more prominent role in international affairs since about the mid-1970s, gradually overtaking ideology in some regions, we logically see its different facets more vividly. A number of specific historical episodes account for this, among which the slowing down and eventual end of the Cold War, the 1979 revolution in Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its related rise of transnational Islamism, 9/11 and its international imprint, and the United States invasion of Iraq and the opening of the Pandora’s box between Sunna and Shia. Such intensified interface between religion and global politics is merely a historical phase where conflicts appear to be driven by religious hatred when, upon closer examination, they feature equally other identity, ethnic, or communal dimensions (witness the Chechen, Tuareg, and Kurdish questions, or the situation in the Central African Republic). A key aspect here is how the context of political transitions impacts the readability of conflicts. Thus, the post-Soviet transition frees up all manners of religious emancipation projects in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are dominated by religious dynamics, often overtaking the counter-terrorism story. And, the post-Arab Spring and Levantine wars are on their way to be overtaken by what is the big regional conflict of our times, the increasingly existential opposition between Sunnis and Shiites.
Having said that, undeniably in several cases the religious aspect is front and centre. Besides the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa examples, looking at Asia for instance, in Sri Lanka in recent years Buddhist monks have attacked both churches and mosques; in China, the Uyghur problem has widened; and in Burma, interconfessional violence in Rakhine has killed thousands. What part of that violence is bred by long-simmering communal tensions, land disputes, and political contests, for instance, and what part of it is meaningfully attributable to different takes on the afterlife?
What then is the role of faith in finding the solutions for global governance issues?
Faith belongs to the private realm. And yet it is manifested in the public sphere (again, even in places where secularism has become dominant) because it corresponds to a readymade narrative recognizable to others, a shared psychological architecture. According to a July 2012 poll by the Gallup Institute, about 60% of individuals around the world consider themselves ‘religious’ in one form or another. And as noted, extremists of all hues instrumentalize it to rationalize their acts of violence. Religion is therefore relevant (not necessary, mind you) to governance because its sacred aspects are consequential as they dictate certain ethics, a morality, and a way of life. This can be built on, alongside other global governance parameters. Specifically, for instance, with a view to neutralize religious extremism in confronting it with its distortion of its own religious tradition. Civism and piety are not antinomic.
Can governments or other authorities dissociate freedom of speech from democracy?
Freedom of speech is one right amongst others. Dissociating it from democracy would strip that democracy, or democratizing polity, of one of its fundamentals, namely the ability to express ideas freely. But, precisely, freedom of speech is ultimately but one such right in a larger set of liberties which, as the human rights credo goes, are interrelated and interdependent. Can it be then that one right is so elevated that it appears to trump other rights? What has been missing sorely in recent years in the interaction between societies and cultures is merely responsibility. Responsibility, respect, and a basic sense of decency in avoiding to trespass onto others’ sensitivities. And we may not need governments or religious leaders to codify or impart such sense of intelligence in our societies, North and South, East and West.
Professor Mohamedou will speak about these issues at a public event at the Maison de la paix on 19 February, organised by the Graduate Institute's Programme for the Study of International Governance and the Global Centre for Security Policy.