The New Cold War?: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State

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University of California Press, Apr 28, 2023 - Religion - 292 pages
Will the religious confrontations with secular authorities around the world lead to a new Cold War? Mark Juergensmeyer paints a provocative picture of the new religious revolutionaries altering the political landscape in the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. Impassioned Muslim leaders in Egypt, Palestine, and Algeria, political rabbis in Israel, militant Sikhs in India, and triumphant Catholic clergy in Eastern Europe are all players in Juergensmeyer's study of the explosive growth of religious movements that decisively reject Western ideas of secular nationalism.

Juergensmeyer revises our notions of religious revolutions. Instead of viewing religious nationalists as wild-eyed, anti-American fanatics, he reveals them as modern activists pursuing a legitimate form of politics. He explores the positive role religion can play in the political life of modern nations, even while acknowledging some religious nationalists' proclivity to violence and disregard of Western notions of human rights. Finally, he situates the growth of religious nationalism in the context of the political malaise of the modern West. Noting that the synthesis of traditional religion and secular nationalism yields a religious version of the modern nation-state, Juergensmeyer claims that such a political entity could conceivably embrace democratic values and human rights.

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Contents

The Religious Rejection of Socialism in Eastern Europe
133
The Ambivalent Relationship of Religion and Socialism
141
Patterns of Religious Revolt
145
The Problems Ahead
151
Why Religious Confrontations Are Violent
153
The Rhetoric of Cosmic War
156
When Cosmic War Becomes Real
160
Religious Sanction for the Use of Violence
163

Models of Religious Revolution The Middle East
45
The Paradigmatic Religious Revolution
50
Egypts Incipient Religious Revolt
57
Religious Revolt in a Jewish State
62
A Revolt within the Palestinian Revolution
69
Political Targets of Religion South Asia
78
Militant Hindu Nationalism
81
The Sikh War against Both Secular and Hindu Nationalism
90
Sri Lankas Unfinished Religious Revolt
99
Religious Ambivalence toward Socialist Nationalism Formerly Marxist States
110
Religious Revival in Mongolia
115
Islamic Nationalism in Central Asia
124
Empowering Marginal Peoples
167
Democracy Human Rights and the Modern Religious State
171
Theocracy or Democracy?
173
The Protection of Minority Rights
178
The Protection of Individual Rights
186
Modernity and the Religious State
189
Can We Live with Religious Nationalism?
193
Notes
203
Bibliography
249
List of Interviews
277
Index
283
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About the author (2023)

Mark Juergensmeyer is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the editor of Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World (1992) and the author of Radhasoami Reality: The Logic of a Modern Faith (1991) among other books.

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