Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism (Cass Series--Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions)

RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

Cass Series: Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions Series Editors: Michael Burleigh, Robert Mallett and Emilio Gentile ISSN 1477-058X This innovative new book series will scrutinise all attempts to totally refashion mankind and society, whether these hailed from the Left or the Right, which, unusually, will receive equal consideration. Although its primary focus will be on the authoritarian and totalitarian politics of the twentieth century, the series will also provide a forum for the wider discussion of the politics of faith and salvation in general, together with an examination of their inexorably catastrophic consequences. There are no chronological or geographical limitations to the books that may be included, and the series will include reprints of classic works and translations, as well as monographs and collections of essays. Redefining Stalinism Harold Shukman (ed.) International Fascism, 1919–45 Gert Sørensen and Robert Mallett (eds.) Faith, Politics and Nazism: Selected Essays by Uriel Tal With a Foreword by Saul Friedlander Totalitarian Democracy and After: International Colloquium in Memory of Jakob L.Talmon Yehoshua Arieli and Nathan Rotenstreich (eds.) The French and Italian Communist Parties: Comrades and Culture Cyrille Guiat The Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices Helmut Dubiel and Gabriel Motzkin (eds.) The Italian Road to Totalitarianism Emilio Gentile, translated by Robert Mallett The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919–1929 Adrian Lyttelton

Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism Editors

Leonard Weinberg Ami Pedahzur

FRANK CASS LONDON • PORTLAND, OR

First published in 2004 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS Crown House, 47 Chase Side London N14 5BP, England This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS c/o ISBS, 920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, Oregon 97213–3786 Copyright © 2004Frank Cass & Co. Ltd Website: www.frankcass.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Religious fundamentalism and political extremism.— (Totalitarian movements and political religions) 1. Religious fundamentalism—Political aspects 2. Violence— Religious aspects 3. Religion and politics 4. Terrorism— Religious aspects I. Weinberg, Leonard II. Pedahzur, Ami III. Totalitarian movements and political religions 322.1 ISBN 0-203-01096-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7146-5492-2 (Print Edition) (cloth) ISBN 0-7146-8394-9 (paper) ISSN 1477-058X Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religious fundamentalism and political extremism/editors, Leonard Weinberg, Ami Pedahzur p. cm.—(Cass series-totalitarian movements and political religions, ISSN 1477-058X) Includes index 1. Religious fundamentalism. 2. Radicalism. 3. Religion and politics. 4. Violence—Religious aspects. 5. Terrorism—Religious aspects. I. Weinberg, Leonard, 1939–II. Pedahzur, Ami. III. Title. IV

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Series BL238.R465 2003 320.5′5–dc22 2003016967 This group of studies first appeared as a Special Issue on ‘Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism’ of Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions(ISSN 1469-0764) 4/3 (Winter 2003) published by Frank Cass. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocoying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

Contents

Introduction Leonard Weinberg and Ami Pedahzur

1

The Return of Martyrdom: Honour, Death and Immortality Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi

11

Two Religious Meaning Systems, One Political Belief System: Religiosity, Alternative Religiosity and Political Extremism Daphna Canetti-Nisim

35

Religious Violence and the Myth of Fundamentalism Michael Barkun

56

The Uniqueness of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Fourth Wave of International Terrorism Gabriel Ben-Dor and Ami Pedahzur

72

Jewish Self-Defence and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel: Roots and Traditions Arie Perliger and Leonard Weinberg

94

Counting the Causes and Dynamics of Ethnoreligious Violence Jonathan Fox

122

Reflections on Fascism and Religion Roger Eatwell

149

Abstracts

172

About the Contributors

176

Index

178

1 Introduction LEONARD WEINBERG and AMI PEDAHZUR

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully As when they do it from religious conviction—Pascal The relationship(s) between political religions, totalitarian movements, fundamentalism and political extremism may confront us with something of a contradiction, perhaps an irony as well. These days there is certainly a tendency to link these concepts, especially among Western writers. The source of their inspiration has been the rise of violent Islamist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere. But this linkage hardly captures the historical reality. For important analysts of political or ‘secular’ religions and the totalitarian movements to which they gave birth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these developments were the outgrowths of extreme hostility to religious belief. Certainly in the Western world, democratic opponents of totalitarian movements, and the fascist, Nazi and communist regimes to which they gave rise, came to regard traditional religious institutions as parts of civil society and as barriers to the kind of total control over human thought and behaviour the totalitarian rulers hoped to achieve. In fact, the decline of religious faith and practice, again in the West, precedes the rise of totalitarian movements and political religions. During the Soviet era, Marxists who contemplated leaving their countries’ communist parties over various issues, most commonly the purge trials, the Nazi—Soviet non-aggression pact, Khrushchev’s disclosures of Stalin’s crimes and the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, often restrained themselves by the thought that there ‘was no salvation outside the church’. The communist party, in other words, played the role of church for those who had become devout believers in Marxism-Leninism. The God that

2 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

Failed was the title of a widely read volume in the 1950s whose contributors (for example, the writers Richard Wright, Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone and Stephen Spender) had managed to break with the party because they had lost their faith in the dogma itself as well as with the party organisation. The religious-like atmosphere of totalitarian movements has not been limited to those deriving their inspiration from the Marxist faith. Important observers of fascism (as Roger Eatwell’s account in this collection makes clear) have been struck by the efforts of these movements to invest their symbols, rituals and ceremonies with sacral significance. Fascist emphasis on blood, sacrifice and redemption on behalf of the nation or race has an unmistakable religious quality.1 Despite the religious metaphors, for many observers the origins of totalitarianism are to be found in the eighteenth-century pursuit of Reason not Faith. The reason it makes sense to devote this volume to discussions of links between religious fundamentalism and political extremism, particularly violent political extremism, has to do not with the rise of totalitarian movements and political religions but, rather, with their collapse. During the inter-war period, and particularly during the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s, many came to believe that a ‘managerial revolution’ was underway and that totalitarian movements of the Right as well as the Left represented the way of the future. The democracies simply could not cope with the economic and social strains placed on them. After all, how could a conflict-ridden Third Republic cope with the neighbouring fascist regime whose slogan was ‘Believe! Obey! Fight!’? The answer of course was that the outcome of the Second World War not only brought about the collapse of Nazi and fascist regimes but also discredited the political religions in which their citizens were asked to place their faith. The same may be said, though several decades later, about the Soviet Union and other communist regimes. Loss of faith in the ideology long preceded the collapse of the regimes they were supposed to embody. In other words, if we view the matter over the long run, the recent rise of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia, among other places, has occurred at a time when the millennial hopes placed in the secular political religions had been lost. Marxism was a God that failed on a worldwide basis. The irony is that these developments followed the displacement of traditional religious understandings of the world in the first place.

INTRODUCTION 3

The work of J.L.Talmon is instructive and certainly worth quoting at some length: From the point of view of this study the most important change that occurred in the eighteenth century was the peculiar state of mind which achieved dominance… Men were gripped by the idea that the conditions, a product of faith, time and custom, in which they and their forefathers had been living, were unnatural and had all to be replaced by deliberately planned uniform patterns, which would be natural and rational… This was the result of the decline of the traditional order in Europe: religion lost its intellectual as well as its emotional hold.2 The consequence of the ‘peculiar state of mind’ to which Talmon refers was the demise of the old order, the ancien régime, in the succeeding decades. One result of this collapse was the emergence of liberal democracy, at least in a few places, with its emphasis on natural right, citizenship, individualism and limited government. But modern democracy was just one outcome of the intellectual changes at work in the eighteenth century. The other result, for which Talmon assigns the major responsibility to Rousseau with his conception of the General Will, is the basis of totalitarian rule. If sovereignty resides in ‘the People’, taken in the abstract, then those claiming to discern and act on behalf of the popular will may make a virtually unlimited claim to rule. This totalitarian principle was at work during the French Revolution and was taken up subsequently in the nineteenth century by prophets and messiahs of new political religions. Here Talmon distinguishes between the new political religion of messianic socialism as expressed by SaintSimon, Fourier, Marx and others, and the messianic nationalism of Giuseppe Mazzini and a long list of later prophets of integral nationalism.3 In due course, the former leads to the formation of the communist movement and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The latter, with such other nineteenth-century additions as modern, ‘scientific’ antiSemitism, social Darwinism, race thinking and imperialism, leads to the birth of European fascism in the years following the First World War.4 If the above represent the origins of totalitarian movements and the political religions that they expressed, the next question we need to address concerns the origins of religious fundamentalism, a phenomenon that follows rather than precedes the former. What then are the origins of religious fundamentalism?

4 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

The origins of the term are to be found in the American Christian experience and are based on a series of paperback volumes written by leading conservative theologians called The Fundamentals and published between 1910 and 1915.5 These Protestant theologians sought to defend biblical inerrancy at a time when this outlook was being challenged by competing and conflicting views, for example, the Social Gospel, both inside and outside the church. ‘Fundamentalism’ as a concept has been stretched both in time and space to include contemporary religious movements active on different continents and encompassing not only Christian but also Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and Hindu traditions as well. The appearance of these movements over the latter third of the twentieth century came as a surprise to many observers who conceived a worldwide and irreversible process of modernisation to be under way. Generations of social scientists were trained to believe that the economic development and social modernisation of the ‘new nations’ in Asia, Africa and the Middle East would inevitably be accompanied by a decline in traditional religious belief and practice. Nor was the trend towards the secularisation of society limited to the Third World. Many analysts of the industrialised democracies noticed that the more urban and educated a national population became the less its members reported attending religious services and expressing strong religious beliefs. ‘Students of social development hypothesised that exposure to education, urbanisation, the presence of modern opportunities for employment, technology, scientific advancement, as well as new and more complex social organisations, would inevitably lead to the spread of secularisation, pluralism and political differentiation throughout the world.’6 What was largely unanticipated by most Western observers was the backlash the trend towards secularisation or ‘Westernisation’ would set off. Perhaps nothing quite captures the sense of surprise as the astonished and slightly bewildered reaction shown by the American foreign policy establishment to the revolution (1979–80) that toppled the Shah of Iran, a monarch whose regime had sought to accelerate the country’s modernisation. A revolution in the names of Marx and Lenin was one thing, but a successful revolution mounted and led by bearded mullahs reciting holy texts seemed hard to fathom. Even the Shah apparently had difficulty believing he was going to lose his throne because some ayatollahs and other Shiite leaders had come to loathe his rule.

INTRODUCTION 5

If the Iranian revolution appeared to emerge from thin air, at least for most of us in the West, subsequent developments in the Middle East and elsewhere have not. By the beginning of the twenty-first century fundamentalist groups and movements appeared to be cropping up all over the world. At this point, and since we are now dealing with a worldwide phenomenon, we ought to specify what we mean by ‘fundamentalist’, especially as it has been applied to groups and movements far removed from American Protestantism. In other words, we ought to clarify our terms. First, groups and movements to which the term ‘fundamentalist’ are frequently applied are reactive in character. They characteristically devise new strategies, methods and techniques for rolling back the inroads made by modernising and secular influences perceived as eroding their parent religions. Fundamentalist groups are not practitioners of traditional religion; rather, they selectively adapt traditional texts and practices in such a way as to make them serviceable in the fight against the modern. In other words, the groups practise selectivity, by picking up or putting down aspects of the parent religion as needed.7 Next, fundamentalist movements define the world in dichotomous and Manichaean terms. Things are sharply distinguished between light or dark, good or bad, true or false, saved or damned, the realm of peace or the realm of war. Fundamentalists define themselves then as engaged in an uncompromising struggle to defend the former against the latter of these paired adjectives. Illustratively, in his videotaped address following the attacks of 11 September 2001, Osama bin Laden says, ‘I tell them that these events have divided the world into two camps, the camp of the faithful and the camp of the infidels…’.8 Of course, as bin Laden reminds us, there is a concomitant rejection of moral complexity or ambiguity. Choices between good and bad are always clear-cut and straightforward. Further, as Almond, Appleby and Sivan remind us, for Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Sikh fundamentalists the holy texts of their respective religions are of divine origins and consequently inerrant and beyond questioning. Absolutism is another component of the fundamentalist outlook. Those who do attempt to place the sacred texts in an historical context or subject them to modern forms of hermeneutical criticism are not uncommonly condemned as engaging in blasphemy.9 Fundamentalists also define time and the passage of human history in millennial and messianic terms. That is, they believe that human history

6 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

will come to a miraculous end with the ultimate triumph of the good over evil, usually in the not-too-distant future, and that this end will be brought about by the intervention of a divine force, the Messiah, Saviour, Mahdi or Hidden Imam. Whether or not they separate themselves physically from the surrounding community by living in enclaves, for example, fundamentalists typically separate themselves from those around them by their behaviour. As members of an elect group, they may wear special clothing that distinguishes them from others and they may engage in various religious practices that set them apart. Crucially, given our political concerns, fundamentalist groups are organised along authoritarian lines. Characteristically, special powers of knowing and understanding are imputed to one leader. To express things in the language of Max Weber, fundamentalist groups operate on the basis of charismatic rather than rational-legal sources of authority.10 Several of the contributors to this collection stress the anti- or at least non-democratic basis of religious fundamentalism both in terms of belief and organisation. What impact this fact has so far as the wider society is concerned remains to be seen. In recent years Indonesia, for example, has undergone an admittedly incomplete process of democratisation while simultaneously experiencing an upsurge of Muslim religious fundamentalism. Certainly fundamentalist groups exhibit many of the attributes Lipset and Raab identified many years ago with the politics of extremism.11 Not only are they authoritarian in organisation, but to the extent democratic rule requires the existence of an open society accompanied by freedom of expression and inquiry, bargaining and compromise in reaching political agreements, they also approach the political arena with an anti-democratic outlook. In an American context, Lipset and Raab associate political extremism with ‘monism’, the belief that there is only one correct answer to all questions, and a concomitant ‘moralism’. Extremists are intolerant of ambiguity. There are no shades of grey between black and white. Further, those who hold differing views are not merely in error but they are also evil because of their failure to recognise the truth. Lipset and Raab use the word ‘simplicism’ in identifying another aspect of political extremism. Not only is there a sharp distinction between truth and falsity, but the truth itself is not complicated. It may be reduced to a few clear-cut statements accessible to all. Extremists then wish to shut down the marketplace of ideas we associate with the politics of democracy.

INTRODUCTION 7

It is hard to imagine an entire country where this extremist outlook prevailed sustaining a democratic government for very long. The same may be true in regard to the size of fundamentalist groups in a national population. We might hypothesise, the more powerful the fundamentalists are in a society, the more vulnerable to disruption a democracy would be. But the size and role of fundamentalist groups, in turn, are likely to be related to a country’s level of economic development, though in complex ways. In the wealthy democracies of western Europe, North America and the East Asian ‘tigers’, fundamentalists may win a substantial popular following, but they frequently, though not always, play the role of ‘world renouncers’, retreating to social and psychological enclaves. In countries penetrated but not yet dominated by democratic ideas and modern economic institutions, fundamentalist groups may succeed in transforming themselves into mass movements and play the role of ‘world conquerors’.12 Instead of retreating, in this setting fundamentalists may use a variety of tactics, including extensive campaigns of political violence to remake the world, as they conceive their world, into a place where their values prevail. The various Christian Identity groups (for example, Aryan Nations, Church of the New Israel and JUSTUS Township) active in the United States may serve as an example of ‘world renouncers’ fundamentalist groups, many of whose members consistently express the desire to have their local communities secede from the country or establish a ‘white American bastion’ in the north-west part of what is presently a multiracial and Jewish-dominated United States. Al- Qaeda, with its ambitions to expel crusaders and Jews from the House of Islam and recreate the caliphate on a worldwide basis, clearly represents fundamentalism playing the world-conquering role par excellence. Then there is the matter of violence for us to consider. Certainly totalitarian movements on both the Left and Right have long been associated with violence both for domestic and international purposes. In their insurrectionary phase, such movements used violence to intimidate their opponents and seize power. Once in power, totalitarian regimes characteristically employed violent measures, in police state fashion, for purposes of political repression; and at the international level, totalitarian dictatorships not uncommonly pursued their strategic objectives, from Mussolini’s ‘new Roman Empire’ in the Mediterranean to Soviet expansionism in eastern Europe, through the threat or application of violence.

8 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

Does the same apply to contemporary fundamentalist religious movements and the theocratic political regimes to which they occasionally have given rise? Are they intrinsically violent? The historical record (as Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi reminds us in this volume) does not offer much encouragement. Western history before the French Revolution and the emergence of political messianism abounds with episodes of religious movements using exceptionally brutal forms of violence to eliminate heretics, dissenters and infidels, variously defined. The religious experiences in non-Western regions of the world are not much better. Today, neither the recently deposed Taliban regime in Afghanistan nor the Islamic Republic of Iran provides us with reason to believe things have changed all that much. Similar observations might be said in regard to abortion clinic bombers in the United States, Christian-Muslim confrontations in Nigeria, Hindu-Muslim clashes in India and many other instances. It may be that religions which excite the most basic human feelings and which assert that they possess ultimate truths about man’s fate always have the potential to ignite campaigns of violence— either by themselves or in conjunction with ethnic grievances. To one extent or another, all the essays in this collection focus on the links between religious belief, fundamentalism, democracy and violence. Their authors however do not necessarily agree with one another. The first section of this volume is composed of essays by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Daphna Canetti-Nisim and Michael Barkun. Their work comes first because we think their views are the most general in character. Beit-Hallahmi (‘The Return of Martyrdom’) and Canetti-Nisim (‘Two Religious Meaning Systems, One Political Belief System’) write critically about the place of religion in society, fundamentalism more especially, and about its political consequences. Canetti-Nisim reviews an extensive body of social science literature, from the Authoritarian Personality onwards, to suggest a strong and consistent relationship between the expression of strong religious convictions and support for extremist political attitudes. Beit-Hallahmi, on the other hand, is more selective. He emphasises the triumph of science and the long-term decline of religion in the West, while noting its resurgence elsewhere, in the less modern parts of the world. If Beit-Hallahmi and Canetti-Nisim make an accusation, Barkun (‘Religious Violence and the Myth of Fundamentalism’) issues a denial. From his perspective religious fundamentalism, particularly in America, has been the target of violence more often than not. Barkun pays particular attention to the ‘new religions’ (or ‘religious cults’) so

INTRODUCTION 9

prominently linked to violence, and notes they have usually resorted to violence only when they have felt themselves threatened by some outside agency. More generally, he maintains that for most of its history in the United States religious fundamentalists have chosen to withdraw from the political arena rather than engage in a crusade aimed at transforming it. Again, in the American context, Barkun stresses the fact that religious fundamentalism encompasses a heterogeneous collection of groups and organisations wedded to no one dogma or set of religious views. In the second section of this collection we move from the general to the more specific. Here Gabriel Ben-Dor and Ami Pedahzur (‘The Uniqueness of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Fourth Wave of International Terrorism’) stress the distinctive aspects of Islam that may make Muslims so susceptible to the appeals of extremist movements. They also produce evidence about trends in contemporary terrorist violence. This evidence suggests that terrorist attacks carried out by violent Islamists tend to be more indiscriminate and to kill more people than attacks perpetrated by groups animated by other political or religious principles. In a sense Arie Perliger and Leonard Weinberg (‘Jewish Self-Defence and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel’) turn the tables. Instead of Jews or Israelis as victims of terrorist attacks carried out by Islamists, they consider the historical role of Jews as perpetrators of terrorism. They consider the involvement of Jews living in the Diaspora in terrorist bands in Tsarist Russia as well as the United States. Jonathan Fox (‘Counting the Causes and Dynamics of Ethnoreligious Violence’) makes use of a large database, ‘Minorities at Risk’, originally developed by Ted Gurr. Without going into much detail, Fox employs a number of measures to weigh the role of religion in ethnic protest. Among other things, Fox emphasises that religious differences seem to make things worse but that ethnic discrimination itself represents the underlying source of serious conflict. Fox also follows several other analysts in seeking to rebut Samuel Huntington’s widely discussed view about the impending ‘clash of civilisations’ as the world advances into the twenty-first century. Roger Eatwell’s ‘Reflections on Fascism and Religion’ takes us back to where we started this Introduction. His essay pursues two themes, both concerned with fascism. First, Eatwell uses the term ‘clerical fascism’ to investigate the relationship(s) between fascist and Nazi dictatorships and the churches. Were they bitter rivals, allies of

10 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

convenience or did the relationships change as events compelled them to do so? Second, Eatwell considers the value of conceiving of fascism as a political religion. Here he follows other contributors in stressing the differences between political ideologies and religious doctrines with their stress on the supernatural. The contributors to this volume hardly achieve a consensus regarding the interplay between religious fundamentalism, political extremism and violence. Nevertheless, we believe that readers will find their accounts exceptionally intriguing explorations of problems presently confronting political leaders in many parts of the world. NOTES 1. See, for example, Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp.1–18. 2. J.L.Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Secker and Warburg, 1952), p.3. 3. J.L.Talmon, Political Messianism (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1960), passim. 4. See, for example, Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), pp.158–84. 5. See Jonathan Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), pp.21–2. 6. Quoted in ibid., p.33. 7. See Gabriel Almond, R.Scott Appleby and Emmanuel Sivan, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp.94–5. 8. See Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p.103. 9. Almond, Appleby and Sivan (note 7), p.96. 10. Ibid., p.98. 11. Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), pp.3–25. 12. Almond, Appleby and Sivan (note 7), pp.146–90.

2 The Return of Martyrdom: Honour, Death and Immortality BENJAMIN BEIT-HALLAHMI

The disruptive and violent potential of religion and religiosity has become a topic of concern and interest since the 1990s, in the years leading up to the 2000 ‘Millennium’, where religious violence had been widely expected to erupt, and especially since the events of 11 September 2001. Recent events and attempts to conceptualise them must lead us to ask when and how religious imagination and religious practices present a threat to liberal democracy. In a recent media interview, Richard Dawkins said that while before 11 September 2001, religion had been viewed by many as harmless nonsense, it now must be viewed as dangerous nonsense. The question is, when do beliefs lead to action and have serious consequences? Secularisation means the privatisation of religious beliefs and actions and, in the First World, we have become used to regarding religious involvement indeed as harmless and leading to nothing of consequence. Whenever, and wherever, religion in the West manifests itself in a form which is more than a matter of private faith, it will be defined in most Western societies as disruptive and judged to be marginal and deviant. Any religious conflict is perceived as merely atavistic. We are collectively shocked by the return of religion as a motive for political and violent actions. It seems that a pre-modern monster has come out of the depths to haunt us. Incidents of mass suicide bring to mind ideas and practices of much earlier times and of cultures seemingly vanished. Ideals of purity and devotion have always led true believers to acts of selfsacrifice and martyrdom. We admire those acts from afar when we read about them in holy scripture, but are shocked to witness them at first hand today. What we have been observing in different parts of the world is the return of martyrdom as an ideal and as a motive. We realise that the denial of death is part of all religious belief systems, and as such an integral part of the lives of billions of believers around the world, but

12 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

for the majority of those billions it is kept at the margins. Now martyrdom has come back as an active factor in politics and history. The goal here is to specify some of the psychological mechanisms involved in this dramatic process. The background for our discussion is the historical process of secularisation through which both society and individuals have moved away from the dominance of religious institutions and religious ideation. At the state level this has taken, in a very few cases, the shape of a formal separation between religion and state and, in many other cases, the massive abolition of religious laws and prohibitions once sanctioned by the state. The reality of secularisation can be assessed in the following areas: uniformity versus pluralism, private versus public, ascribed versus achieved, and choice versus inheritance. It is easy to prove that in all industrial societies today, religion, which was once uniform, collectivist, public, ascribed and inherited, is today pluralist, individualistic, privatised, achieved and often freely chosen. Privatisation is the most important change, overriding all other dimensions. In traditional cultures religion is experienced in the collective sphere. The possibility of choice and preference in religious matters is a modern phenomenon, interpreted as a symptom of the decline of religion. In most traditional societies, religion is not a matter of choice, but of birth, leading to automatic acceptance. Our examination of religious behaviour, psychological or other, from a non-religious point of view, is predicated on the historical process of secularisation, which is both pervasive and relative. Our discussion here is first of all a reflection and a product of secularisation. Any academic examination of religious behaviour is predicated on the decline of religion as a social force. This decline has created the space for a secular analysis of religion and for the psychological study of religion. Any scholarly discussion of religion is subversive, deconstructive and reductive—a most serious threat.1 The war between religion and science was just the prologue to the war between psychology and all the human sciences and religion.2 One aspect of the secularisation of the academic world is the turning of religion itself into an object of study. The academic study of religion is in itself a proof and a symptom of the secularisation of culture. Examining the origins of the religious idea means that its authority is no longer taken for granted, or even accepted, and the explanations offered exclude any religious claims. When religion is studied, it is no longer taken for granted. It is put on the same footing as other human

RETURN OF MARTYRDOM 13

activities, as a social and behavioural phenomenon. This would have been inconceivable only a couple of centuries ago. The decline of religion as a social institution has been connected with the rise of science. Historically, higher education (and education in general) was dominated by religion. Universities in both medieval Europe and the Islamic world started as religious institutions. The secularisation of education is one of the most important aspects of secularisation in general. The function of educational institutions was primarily religious, aimed chiefly at producing the clergy as well as members of the professional class and scholars. The clergy has been marginalised in society and theology has been marginalised in the academic world. Nothing demonstrates the decline of religious authority in the West like the changing status of religion in the universities. Theology, once the ‘queen of the sciences’, has been relegated to oblivion, banished from most research universities. For the past 500 years, religion has been dealt severe blows by the developing sciences. Natural sciences have replaced religion’s traditional cosmology with a secular one and biological sciences have demolished the view of humanity as unique in the natural world. The process of the decline of religion and the rise of science has been eloquently described by Frazer: ‘For ages the army of spirits, once so near, has been receding farther and farther from us, banished by the magic wand of science from hearth and home’.3 The course of the struggle between science and religion is unidirectional and consistent. As Wallace states, ‘In these contests, whenever the battle is fully joined, and both parties commit themselves to the struggle, science always wins’.4 But it was left to the social sciences and psychology to examine the nature of religious beliefs and in this way to deal religion a major blow. Approaching Religious Behaviour What do all religious phenomena have in common? The common denominator of all religious actions is a complex system of beliefs and claims tied to such actions, and not the actions themselves or the emotion involved. Religion is clearly an ideology, meaning ‘that part of culture which is actively concerned with the establishment and defence of patterns of beliefs and values’.5 But it is clearly different, in the nature of its claims, from all other ideologies we know, such as leftwing or right-wing world views in politics. But religion is a very particular kind of ideology, involving the individual in a unique

14 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

commitment and in a unique network of relationships, real and imagined. The working definition of religion used here is the straightforward, everyday description of religion as a system of beliefs in divine or superhuman power, and practices of worship or other rituals directed towards such a power.6 The one irreducible belief common to all religions is the belief in spirits inhabiting an invisible world and our relationship with them.7 We will use the presence of the supernatural premise, or the supernatural assumption, as the touchstone for defining certain human behaviours as religious. What is this premise? It is the premise of every religion—and this premise is religion’s defining characteristic—that souls, supernatural beings and supernatural forces exist. Furthermore, there are certain minimal categories of behaviour, which, in the context of the supernatural premise, are always found in association with one another and which are the substance of religion itself.8 (original emphasis) Similarly, William James describes a separation of the visible and the invisible worlds, which parallels the separation between the sacred and profane: Religion has meant many things in human history: but when from now onward I use the word I mean to use it in the supernaturalist sense, as declaring that the so called order of nature, which constitutes this world’s experience, is only one portion of the total universe, and that there stretches beyond this visible world an unseen world of which we now know nothing positive, but in its relation to which the true significance of our present mundane life consists. A man’s religious faith…means for me essentially his faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found explained.9 All religions promote the idea of an invisible world, inhabited by various creatures such as gods, angels and devils, which control much of our behaviour, thoughts and feelings. And if we believe in the existence of the unseen world, then religion as a social institution is for us the mediator between the invisible, supernatural world and the visible, human and natural world; but that institution and its code of behaviour does not exist without the belief in the supernatural. Religious activities

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are organised into rituals, and rationalised by beliefs. Rituals are then organised into institutions. While this description may be too narrow to include some traditions sometimes referred to as religious, it is broad enough to cover what religion means to most human beings through their concrete historical experience. This definition, while being conservative for some tastes, has the advantages of being concrete, historical and close to the direct experience of the proverbial person on the street, the common believer. The psychological definition of religion has to be close to that which real people experience and recognise immediately, and such substantive definitions are in line with the traditions of scholarship in the study of religion. This is a picture of religion that is recognised intuitively by laymen and scholars alike. The universality of our definition is based on the universality of beliefs in the world of the spirits. Despite the cultural variations and the claims for uniqueness, there is a universal common denominator to all religions. The description of supernaturalism is valid not just for Westerners, but also for Shintoists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and members of thousands of other religious groups. At the present time, there are 10,000 species of the genus religion, and this definition covers all of them. Many adherents of numerous religions are offended when their faith, which seems to them unique, is classified in the same way as all others, but we can easily point to behavioural generalisations which are valid for all religions and cultures. The emphasis on the supernatural assumption in defining religion gives us first a clear distinction between religious and non-religious behaviours, and second a valid crosscultural definition. The psychological analysis of religion does not preclude other approaches, and does not mean that religion as a social institution should be disregarded. We realise that social relations are always imbued with questions of power, and that religious beliefs and practices may be connected to power arrangements in a most direct way. Priests, prophets and messiahs desire power over others and then use it or abuse it for many human purposes. Sociological, anthropological and historical approaches cover what our psychological blind spots leave behind. Our observations of living religions demonstrate that there is no intrinsically religious meaning in anything. All actions that are thought to be characteristic of religion, for example, private and collective ritual, devotion or ideological commitment proven by self-sacrifice, can also be found in secular settings. Ecstasy and commitment, measured in a variety of ways, can be found on many secular occasions. Any object,

16 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

person, time or place may become imbued with holiness and thus gain religious meaning. Religious actions are defined solely by their relation to a delineated realm of holiness. Holiness is a realm of arbitrary content, defined by specific traditions, and not of psychological function or structure.10 All religions have created sacred space and time, structuring day-to-day life, and connecting secular activities with gradations of sacrality. What unites all religions in practical terms is the creation of sacred space on earth. We all know sacred space in the form of rites of passage, where important life-cycle transitions are sacralised. Putting death in the sacred space lies at the centre of all religious belief systems. Personal immortality, whether through the rise of one’s soul to heaven, or some form of reincarnation, as well as various promises of resurrection, have been the monopoly of all religions since prehistoric times. And this is indeed the most important function of religion for the majority of believers. As William James put it: ‘Religion, in fact, for the great majority of our own race, means immortality, and nothing else’.11 The denial of death is part of the daily practice of all religions: ‘I can testify to the entire world that I know that life is eternal, that it is everlasting, that the grave is not the end, that those who die young or old shall go on living’.12 This is how the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints expressed his faith, which he shares with billions around the globe, of all religious traditions. Secularisation and Modernity Over the past 500 years we can observe the persistence of humanity’s readiness to espouse supernaturalism, reflecting a longing for the improbable, which seems quite undiminished, together with an opposite process, which is the gradual decline and fall of supernaturalist belief systems. Secularisation, which has taken place in the West, and is in reality de-Christianisation, is the historical process through which both society and individuals move away from the dominance of religious institutions and religious ideation.13 At the state level, this may take the form of the separation of religion and state, and the abolition of religious laws and prohibitions. Thus, the Italians (1974), the Argentinians (1990) and the Irish (1995) have abolished the prohibition on divorce, connected to the historical dominance of the Roman Catholic Church, and adopted the superiority of civil law in marital questions. At the same time, we see religious traditions in many

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countries having an impact on public policies regarding contraception and abortion. Within the contemporary industrialised world, religion is conceptualised and managed mostly as leisure-time activity, competing with other such pursuits.14 The relegation of religion…to ‘leisure’…is symbolic of the profound changes which have taken place…neutralised residues of Christianity…are largely severed from their basis in serious belief and substantial individual experience. Therefore, they rarely produce individual behaviour that is different from what is to be expected from the prevailing patterns of civilisation.15 If it is more than a leisure-time activity, then religion is part of civil society, a voluntary association reflecting the free will and choices of free citizens. Most of what we think of as cultural activities—reading, writing, art, music and drama—used to be religious. Literacy itself was tied to religion, but over the past few centuries, religion has been separated from learning, cultural production and the arts. Only a few centuries ago, cultural activities revolved completely around religion. Most books published before the twentieth century had to do with religion. Today, only a small proportion of printed matter is religious in nature, and most of it is decidedly secular. Most works of art produced throughout history had religious subjects. Today, religious art is simply a rarity. Since 1900, there have been very few major artists who have had anything to do with religion—they have been the exception rather than the rule (for example, Georges Rouault). Sociologists have described secularisation in terms of the change in the interaction between religion and other institutions in society, such as the economy and politics. In traditional societies, religious ideas are pervasive and affect all members of the community. Religion used to be the central institution in society and the religious congregation used to be the most important organisation in any local community. In modern, technologically advanced societies the institution of religion (in the sociological sense) and the religious institutions within society are kept separate from the other institutions of society: politics, the economy, domestic life, art and entertainment. Though religion gains autonomy, this change implies a weakening in its power. It loses cultural hegemony as public life becomes secular. Secularisation means first the relegation of religion to the private sphere, and then the decline in observance. The

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privatisation and psychologising of religiosity leave it confined to the interior life, unrelated to the public sphere of politics and economics. There has been a considerable decline in church attendance and other kinds of religious activity in the West. In West Germany, reported regular attendance among Protestants went down from 15 per cent in 1963 to 8 per cent in 1980; for Catholics, the figures were 55 per cent and 31 per cent respectively.16 In the Netherlands, what has been described as ‘the cultural revolution’, has, since the 1960s, resulted in a radical de-Christianisation. Churches which have served as the heart of communities since the Middle Ages are now locked-up relics. In Great Britain, as well as in other countries in Europe, there are thousands of empty, useless churches, being offered for sale or reuse. Walking down the street in London, one can encounter dilapidated churches surrounded by signs offering them to whoever will convert these vacant buildings to any socially useful purpose. And in March 1996 the prediction was made (by the Church itself) that the Methodist Church in Great Britain, which has been part of the history of Christianity in the West for almost three centuries, would become extinct early in the twenty-first century! We know that the level of religious activity in Europe and North America has fallen during the twentieth century, as far as overall religious activity and the main churches are concerned, and in some areas we know that the effect of religion has decreased. It has been widely assumed, since the days of the Enlightenment, that religion and religiosity are destined to decline into weakened and insignificant forms, if not to disappear completely.17 This assumption has not been beyond dispute, however, especially since the middle of the twentieth century. Historical secularisation apparently started earlier than is usually thought. Modern historians suggest that the thirteenth century was a turning point, when medieval Europe entered a time of prosperity, which reduced other-worldly concerns. Later on, it was the Protestant Reformation, the coming of the nation-state and the rise of capitalism which were the milestones on the roads to secularisation.18 Religion has been linked with the agrarian world of feudalism, declining with the arrival of industrialisation. Secularisation is associated with modernity, a project of intellectual, moral, political and economic dimensions. Modernity is characterised by instrumental rationality, and by social and cultural pluralism, nation-states and science-based technology. Secularisation is connected to major historical turning points and to the formalisation of individual rights in the United States Constitution (especially the First Amendment of 1791) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789. These documents

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signify the decline of monarchy and aristocracy and make possible a secular society in which religion is a private matter, a matter of ‘conscience’. It was Karl Marx who, even before the middle of the nineteenth century, already described the process through which religion was separated and isolated from other realms of life: ‘In a form and manner corresponding to its nature, the state as such emancipates itself from religion, that is, by recognising no religion and recognising itself simply as the state’. Religion then becomes private, ‘the abstract confession of a particular peculiarity, of private whim, of caprice’.19 The context of secularisation and modernity means the privatisation of religious beliefs and religious activities. It is easy to prove that in all industrial societies today, religion, which was once uniform, collectivist, public, ascribed and inherited, is today pluralist, individualistic, privatised, achieved and often freely chosen. Privatisation is the most important change, overriding all other dimensions. Organised religious activities become part of civil society and often take on the characteristics of leisure-time pursuits. Religious beliefs survive and are commonly expressed but they are rarely associated with action or with collective action. A common claim in the age of secularisation is that religious assertions are only symbolic, metaphorical or abstract. This leads to underestimating their ability to motivate, and to discounting any risks stemming from religious belief systems.20 The secularisation of politics in the West has been pervasive, and almost total. Ideas about divine rights and divine laws have been banished from the public debate in political democracies. Religious liberty is a modern idea, reflecting secularisation. Religious tolerance has appeared together with capitalism, science and nationalism, which sought to unify different ethnic communities under a new identity. Nationalism attracts some of the same emotional commitment formerly channelled to religious identity. Until 200 years ago, practically all social conflicts were also religious in nature. Today, religious wars cause amazement and regret and are considered a thing of the past in most parts of the world. Once they were natural, while now they appear most unnatural. Secular wars of nationalist movements and nation-states are regarded as normal in the secular age. It could be suggested that nationalism has replaced religion as an imagined community. Harrington stated that capitalism was responsible for secularisation, as it destroyed traditional society.21 Family, religion and community are undermined by the market and by the ideology of utilitarian

20 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

individualism. Kinship ties have been weakened by urbanisation (tied to social heterogeneity) and industrialisation. The family has changed from a unit of production, consumption and socialisation, to a unit of consumption and socialisation. Production was cut off from the family with the coming of capitalism. In earlier days, staying within the family was a matter of individual survival, under capitalism this is no longer so. Turner stated that under capitalism, religion, as a means of maintaining family integrity, is no longer needed.22 Individualism and materialism are being blamed for the decline of religion and family, but these are indeed the explicit goals of capitalism. The privatisation and compartmentalising of life in the West lead to a pluralist and post-Christian culture. The changes in the Western conception of the family, of the ideals of marriage and in the status of women, are undoubtedly related to secularisation. Changes in the family are the most salient in this context. The phenomenon of divorce, almost unknown in Western societies just a century ago, is now quite common.23 In earlier times, religion was an active party to marriage, which was regarded as a sacrament. Now this third party has been removed with the coming of ‘no fault divorce’ and only the partners are involved. Heterogeneity, pluralism and fragmentation are all aspects of secularisation in most Western countries. In this continuing process, historical belief systems are becoming fragmented, privatised and reinterpreted in more symbolic, rather than literal, ways. Religious organisations are becoming divided and pluralistic. Secularisation appears together with the awareness that social institutions are mutable, not stable or eternal. Culture is desacralised, as many (or most) people are no longer ready to live, or die, for religion.24 The world view of atheistic humanism has become established in twentieth-century civilisation.25 This has been the culmination of a longterm process. The rejection of any notion of the supernatural and the after-life,26 and the realisation that this life is all there is, leads to a humanist call for action. It is that humankind should make the most of life here on earth, and be committed to social justice.27 As Homans suggested, secularisation is not just the decline of religious ideas and institutions, but a traumatic de-idealisation, bringing about new cultural movements.28 Secularisation, seen by some as an unmitigated blessing, has been experienced by many as a loss and requires a mourning process.29 It is the painful loss of community which may lead to a dangerous submission to fascist authority.30 The ideal of self-actualisation has

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replaced the commitments to the survival of family, community and society. The new ideal is expressed through the modern institution of psychotherapy, offering a humanist meaning system to secularised individuals.31 The secularisation of culture and consciousness is what should most concern us. The desacralisation of culture means that religious symbols, language and references in culture are abandoned, or are used without awareness of their original meaning. But cultural secularisation is slow and relative. In most cultures, the first written works were scriptures. Because the process is historical and relative, no human culture is totally secular, given the weight of tradition. Language is everywhere suffused with religious terms, and so we speak of crusades (or jihads) in politics or business, and we use religious exclamations that have lost their power. In the West, blasphemous words used to shock, and it was considered improper to use God’s name in vain. Now any such sensitivities would be considered bizarre. The decline of religion in the West is clearest in public life, where Sunday closing laws have gone the way of dinosaurs. Sunday was supposed to be the Sabbath, a holy break devoted to the Lord. In most Western countries, such laws have been disappearing at an accelerated rate. The process of secularisation is striking in modern folklore. Whereas it used to be filled with witches, good and evil spirits and trolls, over the past couple of centuries it has become ‘rationalised’. Supernatural motifs have been transformed into modern, real objects and creatures.32 A similar transformation has taken place in the content of psychotic delusions. Whereas in the mid-nineteenth century religious ideas were common in delusions, a hundred years later they were replaced by ‘rationalised’ ideas about electrical and electronic forces.33 These changes may be the most significant, because they tell us that humans have left religious traditions behind when they create their most intimate and revealing fantasies. The Secularisation of Death and Violence The secularisation of death and violence in the modern world has been momentous over the years. Death is expected by all humans, and may be conceived as the true extinction of the self (by secular culture) or as a way station on the road to ultimate salvation (by religion). Secularisation, as we have seen, has meant the taming of religion through privatising and marginalising all its messages and functions, including that of dealing with death. Visions of immortality may still be found among many, but their promise has been marginalised.

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In traditional society physical death is ever present, together with the human imaginative response of a belief in immortality. Memento mori ! Remembering death is no problem when it is all around you. Modern society has tried to eliminate death from our everyday experience, and because death has been more successfully denied, the conscious desire for immortality has been reduced. Even such a development as the rise of systematic psychology as an independent discipline represents the decline in the belief in the existence of the soul, a psychological theory which has been a part of every religious tradition. And the soul is always the eternal soul, the instrument of our own immortality. Modern psychology, as Allport stated, is rather proud of being ‘a psychology without a soul’,34 thus expressing a direct departure from religious traditions. Actually, the development of modern psychology would not have been possible without rejecting the idea of the soul. The development of a scientific psychology has meant the naturalisation and secularisation of the soul and finally its disappearance.35 The truth is that we do not expect violence to arise out of religious beliefs, because we expect religiosity to have a limited impact on behaviour outside clearly religious settings. Glock suggested five dimensions for the measurement of religiosity in modern society: ideological, ritualistic, intellectual, experiential, and consequential.36 The so-called consequential dimension of religiosity was soon dropped by Glock himself and is usually absent from the literature dealing with the behaviour of believers.37 The secularisation of death and violence is self-evident when we look at the events of what has become known as ‘the other 9/11’. On 11 September 1973, about 3,000 people died in Santiago, Chile, during a military coup that ended the career and the life of the Chilean president, Salvador Allende. If we examine media and scholarly reactions to this event at the time and later on, they were much more muted than those to the events 11 September 2001. This was not only because the antiAllende coup was long in the making, and a Central Intelligence Agency task force had been working on it since September 1970. The discussion of the 1973 events, regardless of whether the coup was applauded, as happened in the United States, or deplored, took place within the framework of normal, secular violence. The actors’ behaviour, on either side, did not require a specialised explanation. People killed other people, or were killed, demonstrating commitment, courage, cowardice or cruelty, but in our modern perception, there was nothing unusual to ponder. Both sides represented modern, secular

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interests. 11 September 2001 caused shock not only because of the violence involved, but because it looked like a throwback to earlier, more primitive times. The 19 individuals who were the perpetrators saw themselves as martyrs. Did any of those who died on 11 September 1973 in Chile regard themselves that way? To answer that, we need to clarify what martyrdom is. Serious violence, engaged in by only a minority of humans, always comes with a justification. It is always presented as an attempt to redress an imbalance and rectify an injustice. A religious belief system is sometimes used to give such a justification. Sacralised violent death is given a cosmic meaning, while death in the service of a secular ideology, national or supra-national, can have only an historical meaning. Most of the committed victims of violence on both sides in Chile did not conceive of their death as part of a cosmic struggle for salvation. Many, on the Right and the Left, could see their struggle as historical, human and finite. Human history, until recent centuries, is filled with religious violence, but in our secularised mindset, the age of the Wars of Religion is over. The connection between religion and violence, once quite intimate, has become remote. What we observe throughout the world, from Moscow to San Francisco, is a new and improved model of a defanged Christianity. Since the eighteenth century we have been fighting about national liberation, economics and equality, all respectably secular causes. Secular ideologies, as we all know, can be no less lethal than religious ones, but today in the West we are ready to accept democratic ideals as the right justification for violence as the last resort. ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants’, wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1787, and we all admire him for that. We identify wholeheartedly with the violence of the oppressed as they fight for their universally acknowledged rights.38 The preservation of life and limb does not hold the most value in any human culture. All cultures admire self-sacrifice for a non-selfish cause, just as we admire control over one’s bodily desires and weaknesses. We admire those who climb Mount Everest, or run marathons for their victory of ‘spirit’ over ‘flesh’, but we admire even more those whose feats benefit the whole family, community or nation. Altruism is a universal ideal, and it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view because self-sacrificial altruism is adaptive when it preserves the genetic interests of a population of genetically similar individuals.39 So,

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patriotic self-sacrifice makes sense and is idealised but most patriots do not want to die in war and most believers do not want to be martyrs. Belief in immortality, though central to all religions, is kept at the margins for most individuals during most of their lives. It becomes central when death is a real possibility for the individual or moves into close proximity. Epidemics, wars, disasters, individual illness, age and infirmity all give occasion to reflections on our finality. But there are other occasions, when psychological forces within the individual or the power of circumstances may lead to suicide or, in the case of martyrs and patriots, to suicidal idealism. When selfless deaths occur, they are experienced differently in a secular or religious context. The national hero fallen on the field of battle differs from the martyr in the secular reward which is his earned right. That reward is becoming part of collective memory. Modern nationalism can only promise symbolic immortality through the secular mechanisms of memory. The latter, as powerful as they may be, do not promise a return to life. Any fallen hero may also be a religious believer who expects resurrection, but this, in the modern state, is a private transaction between himself and the world of gods and spirits. The idea and the ideal of martyrdom, central to all historical religions, has been marginalised in the modern world, as the creation of sacred space has been narrowed. Death may still be sacralised but it is then just respectable, not honourable. Martyrdom, the most honourable death in religious terms, has lost its honour. Martyrdom is often holy defeat whereby victims, not victors, are the true heroes, who shall inherit heavenly rewards. The Clash of Civilisations The fault lines between civilisations, according to Samuel Huntington, are defined by opposing views of ‘relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy’.40 Psychological modernity is a mindset which is the outcome of the long and painful historical process of modernisation.41 Modernity puts a greater emphasis on the nuclear family (as opposed to the extended family); on egalitarian relationships between the sexes; on status based on achievement…(as opposed to status based on

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birth…or other ascriptive characteristics); and on greater concern with individualism (rather than with doing what is prescribed by authority figures or by social groups).42 Modernity is an attempt to destroy community and communalism, as well as the old structures of the monarchy, feudalism, nobility and the family itself, all those forces which created identity and authority. It is ultimately a rebellion against all authority, but modernity is anchored in different perceptions of the human condition, of death and immortality, as well as in a changed perception of honour and its importance. The clash of civilisations, if this is indeed what we have been witnessing, is between a civilisation of honour and shame opposing a civilisation of dignity, conscience and guilt. An honour culture is ‘a culture in which male strength and power are highly valued and in which men are prepared to kill to defend their status as honourable men’.43 Ayers described the difference between honour and dignity: ‘Dignity might be likened to an internal skeleton, to a hard structure at the centre of the self; honour, on the other hand, resembles a cumbersome and vulnerable suit of armour that, once pierced, leaves the self no protection and no alternative except to strike back in desperation.’44 But an honour culture also means the readiness to die because life may not be worth living in shameful conditions. It is important to note that the emphasis on personal and collective honour was recognised as an element of fascist ideology in the classical psychological study of authoritarianism, conducted in the United States in the 1940s.45 If honour is more important than life, it will inspire violence and selfsacrifice. Modernity espouses self-sacrificial violence in the service of the nation and national honour, but rejects the resacralising of political violence. Sacrificing blood and soul for the nation is still highly commendable, but is less so for a creed. But we should remember that martyrdom was once, not too long ago, a European ideal. Modernity means the marginalisation of honour, death and immortality, which were once so central to humans. The inspiration for martyrdom, both for individuals and for groups, must include not only honour and the belief in immortality, but real despair as well. The Threat of the Pre-Modern Martyr When discussing the psychological aspects of modernisation in the less developed countries of the world, Inkeles and Smith note that ‘religion

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ranks with the extended family as the institution most often identified both as an obstacle to economic development and as a victim of the same process’.46 Any religion which requires a level of high involvement is an invasion of secularised space and on a collision course. It is also a threat to modern sensibilities, and is perceived as a symptom of stress and distress.47 How do you keep the religious imagination under control? It seems to us that civilised humanity decided a few hundred years ago that the age of the Wars of Religion was over. There were to be no more wars, killing and self-destruction carried out in an imaginary negotiation with the world of the spirits. Whenever such atavisms seemed to occur, they indicated that the ideals of civilised humanity had not yet prevailed on earth. Under liberal capitalism, the status of religion has become wellregulated. It has been privatised, abstracted, nebulous and thus truly spiritualised. One meaning of modernity for the individual is that even if one believes in the world of the spirits, it must have no implications or consequences in terms of public life beyond the community of believers. When the call to make religion collective is heard in the First World it is rightly seen as a threat to civil liberties and a return to the pre-modern world. But for about one-sixth of humanity the call for the collectivisation of religion, in the case of Islam, means keeping things as they are. Islam is, in some sense, the last religion taking a stand against modernity (if we do not consider the Hindu radicals of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad [World Hindu Council], who have a vision of a world ruled by their true religion). In the Islamic world we can still observe, for large masses, the pre-modern superiority of religious communities over the idea of nationalism and the nation-state. High levels of modernity and secularisation are being enjoyed by those living in liberal democracies, but they are just a minority of humanity. Most of humanity still lives closer to the traditions of communalism, honour and the belief of immortality. The little dalit (untouchable) girl in India, destined to a life of poverty and ignorance, is more representative of humanity today than the academic in his airconditioned office, writing at his computer and pondering the state of the world. This gap between the modern minority and the pre-modern majority is likely to cause more upheavals, and we can witness numerous movements whose inspiration is the idea of explicit resistance to modernity.

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Resisting the Enlightenment It is only rarely that a religious movement will proclaim itself to be a counter-revolution to the Enlightenment, but this is true in the case of the Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property, an international group founded in Brazil by Plinio Correa de Oliveira. This group, made up of conservative Roman Catholics, is committed to defending ‘Christian civilisation’ against a series of historical revolutions, starting with the Protestant Reformation. Tradition, family and property was coined to counter Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, the slogan of the French Revolution. This combination of political and social attitudes with religious beliefs is an ideological complex that characterises and animates fundamentalist groups. It is about confrontation with modernity, and a strategy that not only rejects any accommodation, but also contains a clear, utopian vision for reconstructing society. This is a vision of decline, degeneration and renewal. The universal movement of resistance to modernity which was recognised decades ago is that broadly named (or misnamed) fundamentalism. Many millions, individuals and thousands of groups around the world, ranging from Protestant churches to the governments of some nation-states, are currently designated by scholars and the media as fundamentalist. The term itself has its origins in American religious history. More recently, fundamentalism has come to be regarded as a global phenomenon, with a movement analogous in some ways to the original American phenomenon appearing in many countries and regions. Using this term outside the American Christian context has been criticised, but it has become so prevalent in both the popular news media and scholarly literature that it now denotes a variety of movements worldwide, both religious and religio-political.48 Fundamentalism as a religio-political ideology can be found all over the world; as a significant political movement asserting the vision of a religious state it can be found in about 30 nations; and as a dominant power it can be found in just a few places. The phenomenon of fundamentalism should be discussed in at least two different contexts. The first is psychological or socialpsychological. As a general social-psychological phenomenon, fundamentalist ideology has been described as the belief that there is one set of religious teachings that clearly contains the fundamental, basic, intrinsic, essential, inerrant truth about humanity and the deities; that this truth is opposed by forces of evil which must be vigorously

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fought; that this truth must be followed according to unchangeable traditions; and that those who espouse this ideology have a special relationship with the deities. Fundamentalists have been described as individuals who feel rightly threatened by urbanisation, industrialisation and modern secular values. Holding this ideology may have no visible social or political consequences as long as it is kept within the religious realm and limited to a relatively small group. Many religious groups have political visions in the sense of a messianic or apocalyptic dream which includes the idea of political domination of a state (or the world) by its membership.49 Many believers take the dreams seriously, and the fantasy of future greatness and domination serves as compensation for current deprivations. In some cases, messianic dreams are transformed into political action plans. The ideology of fundamentalism becomes of importance for politics when it is transformed from a religious belief system into a political ideology embodied in a political movement, and when this movement gains political power or mass support. Fundamentalist movements have been described and describe themselves as movements of religious radicalism, revitalisation and renewal. This description is very much part of their vision. They proclaim a loyalty to sacred texts and to the goal of creating a truly religious state. If secularisation calls for the separation of religion and politics, here we have the resacralisation of politics and the politicisation of religion. Modernity defines itself as committed to the values of free enquiry, the centrality of the individual and to basic individual freedoms. The ideological complex of fundamentalism includes the rejection of modernity, not necessarily of modern technology, but of the ideals of individualism, individual rights, voluntarism, pluralism and the equality of women. Fundamentalist movements everywhere present a cogent critique of late capitalist society, which is portrayed as being composed of alienated, atomistic, selfish individuals, engaged in the obsessive pursuit of pleasure without heed for its consequences for others (or even for themselves). The critique of Western values of materialism, selfishness, tolerance for uncontrolled sexualities, decline of family ties, and urban crime is common to all fundamentalist ideologies, and is presented as the essential critique of modernity. Communalism is one aspect of the premodern, which is central to the reality and ideology of fundamentalist movements. This cultural aspect of fundamentalism does account for some of its clear appeal to not just the downtrodden. The deprivations and stresses

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of modernity, be they economic, psychological or cultural, feed fundamentalist movements, as the crisis of globalised modernity is felt in central and periphery nation-states. Against the nominal ideas of modern liberalism for the individual, such as tolerance, individual autonomy and self-actualisation, and the reality of alienation and dislocation, fundamentalism prescribes a commitment to gender-role, family and community. In the case of women, this implies total or relative domesticity. Fundamentalist ideology has much to say about the lives of women and reproductive rights. The modern technology of contraception separated sexuality from procreation, and together with economic changes undermining the traditional family has had the result of reducing the authority of religion. What seems to be the major issue uniting religious radicals, be they Protestant, Roman Catholic, Hindu, Muslim or Jewish, is the discourse about sexuality, procreation and the status of women. In terms of the lives of both women and men, the global struggle is about the idea of individualism and the right to sexual happiness and expression. In the pre-modern universe, sexuality is tied to procreation and de-individualised. The struggle is taking place, sometimes violently, around abortion clinics in the United States and the use of condoms in Africa. Women’s status is inevitably tied to the centrality of the patriarchal family and their assigned role as the socialisers. At the beginning of the twenty-first century it seems that in the Western world the institution of the family is being transformed, together with sexuality. Fundamentalist movements are usually opposed to contraception. Under fundamentalist regimes, specific regulations have been issued to control the public appearance of women through dress codes and the segregation of the sexes in public. This is in addition to formal limitations on the involvement of women in public life, freedom of movement and legal rights. Male superiority and privilege is formally recognised and the empowerment of women is stopped. All of this raises the question of why fundamentalist movements have attracted so much support from women. First, we know that women are always more religious than men. Second, it is clear that in traditional societies motherhood is a main source of gratification and power, while the female in traditional dress like the Iranian chador is less likely to attract the attention of predatory males. Women in Western attire may be accosted in public, while the head-to-toe cover offers relief from being viewed as a sex object.

30 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

Fundamentalism, like twentieth-century fascism, rejects liberal democracy and proposes an elitist ruling class, made up of religious leaders or leaders sanctioned by the religious authority. Fundamentalist regimes are authoritarian by definition, because a religious state must follow the religious authority invested in clergy who alone can interpret the scriptures. Thus, the clergy will always have a direct role in political decision-making. Some may describe them as totalitarian, because of the nature of religious law when applied to all aspects of life. This anti-modern ideology is quite identical in a great number of fundamentalist movements. A rhetoric of ‘family values’ and patriarchal authority can be heard in Oklahoma and in Tehran at the same time. The fundamentalist ideology everywhere is collectivist and communalist, as individual rights are seen as secondary to the interests of the community. The political struggle against Enlightenment ideals calls for reversing the historical course of secularisation and modernity, and recreating a pre-modern (or pre-colonial) idealised past. Contemporary martyrdom is a challenge to modernity and liberal democracy, but what it raises runs deeper through the foundations of modern politics. What has been ignored or denied until recently is that there is a vital connection between liberal democracy and secularisation, operationalised here as the privatisation of religious beliefs of whatever kind. Terms such as modernisation and secularisation, which seem to have gone out of fashion, have to be brought back, because they have come back to haunt those who were wishing to deny them a real existence. The presence of fundamentalist movements within the industrialised world leads us to a radical question: are religious ideals compatible with liberal democracy? What should be examined here is the meaning of religious discourse within the context of a liberal democracy. Our vision of the citizen in a modern democracy is of someone who sincerely accepts the rules of the game and believes in the ideals of equality and tolerance. This ideal (or utopian) citizen in a democracy actively participates in public life and shows respect for the rights of others, especially minorities. But the idea of tolerance is alien to the spirit of historical religions, and the ideals of equality and human rights are secular. When we look at the findings of hundreds of studies which looked at the relationship between religiosity and anti-democratic attitudes, we must realise that religious people have a hard time being true citizens in a democracy. Fundamentalism, as an expression of religious orthodoxy, not surprisingly, is tied to political conservatism, authoritarianism and prejudice. Studies done all over the world have

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shown that religious orthodoxy (in any tradition) is tied to a particular pattern of reactionary and anti-democratic political attitudes and behaviours. The Future of the Enlightenment What has to be avoided is any idealisation of the pre-modern or the modern. Traditionalism has meant respect for authority, dependence and an attachment to family and community. Community and attachment have meant not only social and psychological support systems, but oppressive authority, abuse and exploitation. Basic human rights simply do not exist in traditional societies and are tied to massive secularisation. In modern life, on the other hand, we have an ideal of complete and total personal autonomy, often tied to alienation and emptiness. The ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity envisions a community, which modernity has failed to create. This is what leads to the dangerous yearning for an idealised pre-modern past.50 Contemporary martyrdom can be viewed as an uprising against the end of history and the final triumph of liberal capitalism. Movements of resistance to modernity will not prevail, but the collision with them may be an inevitable part of politics in the foreseeable future. Religion, any religion, is the enemy of liberal democracy as long as it has not been defanged and privatised. Religion, any religion, is quite explicitly about election and exclusion. We may regard communalism as a more benevolent aspect of these ideas, but still it is a threat to real democracy, which views only the individual as worthy of inalienable and absolute rights. To appreciate that, all you have to do is look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations on 10 December 1948. This document is both a declaration of the triumph of the Enlightenment, and a political programme which is bent on ignoring and destroying traditional human communities. The United Nations, as this document attests, is indeed a secular world government. If we want to support the Enlightenment political project, which is still on the agenda, we will soon realise that it is threatened not just by atavistic martyrdom, but also by some forces in the modern West. NOTES 1. See R.A.Segal, Religion and the Social Sciences (Ithaca, NY: Scholars Press, 1989).

32 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

2. See Raymond B.Cattell, Psychology and the Religious Quest (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1938). 3. See James G.Frazer, The Golden Bough (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p. 633. 4. Anthony F.C.Wallace, Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House, 1966). 5. Clifford Geertz, ‘ldeology as a cultural system’, in D.E.Apter (ed.) Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964), p.64. 6. Michael Argyle and Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Social Psychology of Religion (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975). 7. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Prolegomena to the Psychological Study of Religion (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1989); Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience (London: Routledge, 1997). 8. Wallace (note 4), p.52. 9. William James, The Will to Believe (New York: Dover Publications, [1897] 1956), p.51. 10. Beit-Hallahmi, Prolegomena (note 7). 11. See William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Collier, 1902, 1961), p.406. 12. Gordon B.Hinckley, ‘Messages of Inspiration from President Hinckley’, LDS Church News, published by Deseret News, 2 November 2002. 13. C.f.Richard K.Fenn, Toward a Theory of Secularization (Storrs, CT: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1978); David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (New York: Harper, 1978). 14. W.S.F.Pickering, ‘Religion—a Leisure Time Pursuit’, in D.Martin (ed.), A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain, Volume 1 (London: SCM Press, 1968). 15. Theodor W.Adorno, Elsa Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J.Levinson and R.Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1950), p.729. 16. George H.Gallup, Jr., Index to International Public Opinion (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980). 17. Wallace (note 4), p.52. 18. Steven Bruce, A House Divided: Protestantism, Schism, and Secularization (New York: Routledge, 1990); idem, Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate The Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 19. Quoted in L.Easton and K.Guddat (eds.), The Writings of Young Marx (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), pp.223, 227. 20. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, ‘Religious Explanations and Explaining Religion’, in G.Hon and S.Rakover (eds.), Explanation: Philosophical Essays (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).

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21. Michael Harrington, The Politics at God’s Funeral: The Spiritual Crisis of Western Civilisation (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983). 22. Brian Turner, Religion and Social Theory: A Materialist Perspective (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983). 23. Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1531–1987 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 24. Harrington (note 21). 25. Steven Budd, Varieties of Unbelief: Atheists and Agnostics in English Society,1850–1960 (London: Heinemann, 1977); Paul Kurtz, Eupraxophy: Living Without Religion (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1989). 26. Corliss Lamont, The Illusion of Immortality (New York: Half-Moon Foundation, 1935, 1990). 27. Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949). 28. Peter Homans, The Ability to Mourn: Disillusionment and the Social Origins of Psychoanalysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 29. Ibid.; Peter Homans, ‘Loss and Mourning in the Life and Thought of Max Weber: Toward a Theory of Symbolic Loss’, in P.Homans (ed.), Symbolic Loss: The Ambiguity of Mourning and Memory at Century’s End (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2000). 30. Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom (New York: Rinehart, 1941). 31. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Despair and Deliverance: Private Salvation in Contemporary Israel (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992). 32. James Simpson, ‘Rationalized Motifs in Urban Legends’, Folklore 92 (1981), pp.204–7. 33. F.C.Klaf and J.G.Hamilton, ‘Schizophrenia—A Hundred Years Ago and Today’, Journal of Mental Science 107 (1961), pp.819–27. 34. Gordon W.Allport, The Individual and His Religion: A Psychological Interpretation (New York: Macmillan, 1950), p.v. 35. Jacob R.Kantor, The Scientific Evolution of Psychology (Chicago: Principia Press, 1969). 36. Charles Y.Glock, ‘On the Study of Religious Commitment’, Religious Education 57 (1962), S98–S109. 37. C.f.Charles Y.Glock and Rodney Stark, Christian Beliefs and AntiSemitism (New York: Harper and Row, 1966); see also Benjamin BeitHallahmi and Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience (London: Routledge, 1997). 38. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, ‘Overcoming the “Objective” Language of Violence’, Aggressive Behavior 3 (1977), pp.252–9. 39. Robert Trivers, Social Evolution (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/ Cummings, 1985). 40. Samuel P.Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p.25.

34 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

41. Habtamu Wondimu, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and Jon Abbink, Ethnic Identity, Stereotypes, and Psychological Modernity in Ethiopian Young Adults: Identifying the Potential For Change (Amsterdam; KIT Publishers, 2001). 42. Harry C.Triandis, ‘Subjective Culture and Economic Development’, International Journal of Psychology 8 (1973), pp.163–80, 165. 43. Dov Cohen, James Vandello and A.K.Rantilla, ‘The Sacred and the Social: Cultures of Honor and Violence’, in P.Gilbert and B.Andrews (eds.), Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology, and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.262. 44. E.L.Ayers, Vengeance and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p.20. 45. Adorno et al (note 15). 46. Alex Inkeles and D.H.Smith, Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), p.27. 47. Beit-Hallahmi (note 31). 48. Martin E.Marty (ed.), The Fundamentalisms Project, 5 Vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991–95). 49. See Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Active New Religions (New York: Rosen Publishing, 1998). 50. Fromm (note 30).

3 Two Religious Meaning Systems, One Political Belief System: Religiosity, Alternative Religiosity and Political Extremism DAPHNA CANETTI-NISIM

Introduction Recent reports from Germany depict a growing overlap between the extreme political Right and some esoteric groups involved with occult practices.1 Adolf Hitler, who rejected Christianity, favoured religious paganism. Schutzstaffel (SS) officers learned about pagan religions and the symbols of occult traditions. These and similar beliefs are hereafter referred to as alternative religions, and their relation to the political (extreme) Right is at the heart of this essay. The goals of this study are twofold: first, an analytical distinction between the two religious types— religions and alternative religions; second, a theoretical discussion on their mutual relations, as well as their associations with political attitudes. This essay follows two separate traditions in the psychology of religion. The first questions the content and origins of religious beliefs and practices, to be discussed in the preliminary section.2 The second analyses the social psychology of religiosity, studying the social correlates of religiosity, to be discussed by means of the political correlates of religiosity, which I refer to as the political psychology of religiosity.3 Religions have had considerable impact on societies in every century. They were used to legitimise, suppress or inspire political regimes. This article is about religions as categories based on the ‘stock’ of existing belief systems in Western societies. One includes conventional monotheistic religions, and the other, alternative beliefs. Of these (for example, new religions, cults and occult beliefs), this essay focuses on non-institutionalised alternative religions, which seem to compete with institutionalised religions. The first argument, then, is on the nature of the concept of religion. A question asked by some of the great scholars

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of religion, including Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, concerns the nature of religion and its effect on human behaviour. So, in addition to the institutionalised conventional type of religion, there is another type in Western democracies—non-institutionalised alternative religions. The first kind is fairly clear, whereas the latter is more complicated.4 The raison d’être of the first argument is the second —the unique relationships between (alternative) religious beliefs and political beliefs. A constant finding in politics is that the more individuals are orthodox in religious beliefs, the weaker their attachment to the democratic-liberal line in politics. One might point out a paradox related to the fact that alternative religions are considered as reactions to institutionalised ones. However, their followers present a similar political belief system. It would be reasonable to assume that the belief systems that emerged as alternatives would be different in political terms, but their effect on individual political attitudes is similar. In spite of major differences in the type of belief system, there seems to be a similarity in the association between the two types of religions and the same political lines. The Essence of Religion Democratic thinking does not easily merge with a religious-magical faith. It was often assumed that religiosity would be diminished with the advent of Western democracy. Some individuals confront problems of modernisation and the inability to keep up with the newfangled accelerated pace, and others are more easily drawn into less demanding magical confrontations.5 Freud and Marx saw religion as an immature, childish issue,6 but religion helps us tolerate mundane suffering with the promise of compensation in the afterworld, without the need to take political or social action, as Marx phrased it: ‘Religion was the opium of the masses’.7 I followed Adorno who adopted the Marxian world view regarding alternative beliefs.8 Studies dealing with religion demonstrate the lack of clarification. Some veer towards the sociological tradition of Durkheim, whereas others tend to follow psychologically oriented definitions like those of James, who grasped religion as a belief in an invisible world order where people find explanations to human riddles.9 Allport, following James, suggested that there might be two kinds of ‘religiosities’.10 Those whose religion is intrinsic see religion as an end in itself. They were found to be conservative and committed to ultra-

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orthodox doctrines and self-deception.11 Those whose religion is extrinsic see it as a means to other ends, mainly social or political, and religion has implications in all areas in life.12 Psychological definitions, as opposed to legal, were meant to determine those universal elements in all religious experiences: ‘a system of beliefs in divine or superhuman power, and practices of worship or other rituals directed towards such a power’.13 Alatas offered a more detailed definition which stresses the human relationship with socalled divine entities.14 This treatment brings to mind the starting point of Durkheim, who claimed that religions divide the world into the profane versus sacred.15 Religion as a social institution, which does not exist without belief in a supernatural world, mediates between the invisible world and the visible one.16 Beyond these considerations stands the question of whether one can include alternative religions, the main focus of this study, within the analytical framework of religion, a possibility if we follow a common psychological definition that stresses two elements: the supernatural premise and a meaning system. But conventional and alternative religious beliefs are ‘meaning makers’ which are related to the supernatural premise.17 The inclusion would also be possible when we turn to sociological definitions that not only emphasise the distinction between profane and sacred,18 but also stress the social functions of religiosity.19I therefore argue the existence of two kinds of religions: institutionalised-conventional versus non- institutionalised nonconventional, and discuss them using one framework. The Contempary ‘Religions Market’ It is often claimed that this is a secular age, but such assertions are rather erroneous.20 Perhaps formal membership is declining, but it is only a part of the religious spectrum. The West has experienced a visible presence and growth of a variety of non-Christian and nonorthodox Christian bodies. These religious alternatives compel the still dominant religions to operate in a new pluralistic religious environment. Formal religions stress beliefs and practices, which delineate their borders, and do not tolerate duality in religious affiliations. ‘The stick and the carrot’ mechanism would be one useful bordering tool in mainstream religions, since religious individuals perceive life on earth as meaningless.21 Most great philosophers, such as Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, saw belief in the after-life as a religious escape.22 Christian-Judaeo traditions do not propose identical rules of

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behaviour, but there are generally Holy Days and holidays and church attendance is a leading indicator of religiosity.23 Alternative religions have many labels (for example, superstitious beliefs, non-religious paranormal phenomena, popular occultism, popular mysticism, esoteric beliefs). They encompass beliefs and practices such as the belief in the powers of ghosts, telepathy, faith healing, astrologers, extra-sensory perception (ESP), séances, card reading, dream interpretation or divination.24 These are mostly beliefs that originated in pre-modern and pre-Christian religious eras, comprising a loose network of beliefs and practices where seekers go from one option to the other. They lack the sociological characteristics of conventional religions and even those of the new religious movements. People may be swept into the realm of the occult and magical when in a state of fear and anxiety.25 Israel in particular is an outstanding example of a society which for many decades has drifted towards the occult, partially due to the disillusionment with political leaders, nuclear family and religious institutions, coupled with the constant threat of annihilation.26 Alternative Religions: Their Uniqueness and Relationship with Mainstream Religions Institutionalised beliefs pass from one generation to the other through teachings and holy books. Folk beliefs are transferred orally and informally. Formal religions have a clear organisational structure and hierarchy, whereas alternative beliefs comprise a much looser framework. Although magic and religion are both based on the supernatural premise, magic is also ‘applied’ in the empirical world and thus subject to scientific falsification. Religion adequately addresses issues of ultimate meaning and morality that are difficult to investigate.27 A way to learn about the struggle between mainstream religions and alternative religions is a ‘tour’ through The CulticMilieu.28It is not a theory about cults, but about unorganised amorphous occult beliefs and practices. These beliefs and practices are captured as heterodox or deviant in relation to the dominant culture and, of course, to mainstream religion.29 Teachings are mutually supportive, and the believers-seekers constitute a unifying element of ‘seekership’. All participants are seeking the ultimate meaning in life.30 They have a common ideology of seekership, arising from the deviant status, the receptive orientation and the interpenetrative communication structure. Lofland and Stark define these individuals similarly to others who

RELIGIOSITY AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM 39

define mainstream believers as: ‘searching for some satisfactory system of religious meaning to interpret and resolve their discontents’.31 The route to spiritual enlightenment is contingent on the degree of ‘seekership’, but recently there has been a shift in the sociological profile of seekers, due to a mutual sense of prolonged crisis of meaning in the West.32 These alternative religions have no need for dogmas or institutions. They are individualistic, open-to-all and roughly organised, and only rarely appear in their original form. The most popular organisational form of the cultic zone is the society of seekers. The structural changes associated with secularisation seem to be to the advantage of the religious alternatives. The decline of Christian-Judaeo churches has consequently weakened their role as deliverers of truths. Even when they condemn unorthodox traditions such as astrology and witchcraft, their words go unheeded. What was previously criticised by secular and orthodox institutions has become merely variant, not deviant. The treatment of astrology by the authorities in Israel and witchcraft in Britain are good examples of assimilation and even rehabilitation. A different argument in the secularisation theory is that it rejects both orthodox and unorthodox religions. It emphasises the dilemma of which is the dominant culture—the religious or the scientific. Both religious and alternative religious movements are admonished by secular thought for unscientific ideas, but go unpunished for religious deviancy.33 All in all, secularisation may create comfortable conditions for the spreading of alternative religions and hence these processes may have caused Western society to become mystical, magical and pseudo-scientific. In sum, there are at least two clusters of (alternative) religious beliefs.34 Both have the function of putting things in order and attributing meaning to human existence. These are not necessarily organised groups of believers but ‘seekers’ who share beliefs and practices. Religiosity and alternative religiosity are psychologically and sociologically similar, but different in content and institutional level, and in their popularity. Each can act as a substitute for the other, but in many cases (for example, Israel) they ‘share’ believers. Both types engage in a ‘low intensity conflict’ and compete for believers. Let us now examine how both types are related to political ideas.

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Religious Belief Systems and Political Weltanschauung Political Extremism From the point of view of political psychology of religiosity, I define political extremism not in terms of ideologies, party platforms, political agenda or movements, as we tend to do in political science analyses.35 Political extremism is in many ways expressed by the cluster known as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA).36 It is seen here, then, through the prism of a set of beliefs that express support for less liberal-democratic values, norms and attitudes. Further, it is assumed that these attitudes in favour of anti-democratic world views may, when certain conditions are fulfilled, turn into behaviour. The passive support for anti-democratic, anti-liberal actions may represent other forms of human response. It may be expressed in the polls as support for parties that propose such an ideology as policy. It may be translated into active membership in groups, which choose to act in the name of such values. It may also become an incentive or a mechanism that operates sporadic violent extreme actions. Keeping this transition potential in mind, I mainly discuss political extremism in terms of individual expressions of support for anti-democratic attitudes. Religion and Politics It is well known that the degree to which believers are orthodox in their beliefs and practices has a role in the shaping of their approach to political attitudes. Studies performed all over the world since the Second World War have shown that religious orthodoxy is tied to a particular pattern of attitudes and political behaviours. Religious orthodoxy has been tied to political conservatism, authoritarianism and prejudice. This combination of religious beliefs with political and social attitudes is an ideological complex that characterises and animates many orthodox groups. Many religious groups have political visions in the sense of a messianic or apocalyptic dream which contains the idea of their political domination of a state/world. Many believers take these dreams seriously, and the fantasy of future greatness and domination serves as compensation for current deprivations. In some cases, messianic dreams are transformed into political action plans. Religious ideology becomes important in politics when it is transformed from a religious belief

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system into a political ideology embodied in a political movement, and when this movement gains power or mass support. Religious extremism is inclined to suppress the rights of other religions or secular forces in society and even to organise violence against them. In India, Hindu extremist movements have attacked Muslims and burned mosques. In Israel, Jewish extremists have demanded religious-based laws and practices, and some have violently attacked Palestinians. In the United States, religious extremists have demanded religious prayers in public schools and some have been involved in killing doctors who perform abortions.37 In their book, The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno et al.38 were first to test empirically the relationship between (alternative) religious beliefs, and extreme right-wing politics—the inclination to adopt antidemocratic attitudes. One of the assumptions advanced by Adorno and his associates was that an individual who believes in the existence of an invisible world also tends to succumb to the incitement of demagogues proposing anti-democratic value systems.39 In recent decades, Western democracies have become aware of a growing inclination towards the adoption of alternative religions. Since the beginning of modern democracy, researchers and policy-makers have dealt with the mutual existence of a democratic government and organised religiosity with political inclinations. Democracy is based on pluralistic, public and polemic principles and rule of the majority, whereas religion is based on the belief in the absolute and invisible— eternal truths about God. However, the adoption of alternative religions in the West is accompanied by two other phenomena. First, there is an increase in levels of intolerance towards ‘outsiders’ (for example, ethnic minorities and foreign workers), and the flourishing of extreme-Right parties (in, for example, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Australia and Israel).40 Second, there are feelings of indifference and alienation of the masses towards political processes.41 Given the fact that only half a century has passed since beliefs and attitudes glorifying anti-democratic values emphasised the indifference of the masses and brought about the massacre of millions, these three phenomena may jeopardise the basic values, social life and stability of democratic rule. Democratic perceptions are shaped through a process of education and political socialisation, a process often replete with insurmountable obstacles. One of the obstacles is alternate value-systems, which may clash with democratic values.42 Such alternate value-systems include alternative religious belief systems that may be historically related to

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pre-modern and anti-democratic ideas concerned with royalty, aristocracy and feudalism. However, in the course of time, together with development of scientific ideas and democracy, a certain type of secularisation has begun to disseminate over the West. Notwithstanding, variations of alternative religions are still high on the individuals’ scale of values and priorities. In many industrial societies today, religion, which was once uniform, collectivist, public, ascribed and inherited, is today pluralist, individualistic, privatised and achieved, and often freely chosen. In effect, privatisation is the most important change, overriding all other dimensions. In traditional cultures religion is experienced in the collective sphere. The possibility of choice and preference is a modern phenomenon, interpreted as a symptom of the decline of formal religions. In most traditional societies, religion is not a matter of choice, but of birth and automatic acceptance. However, when religion and religiosity are a matter of choice, it is conceivable to ask whether individuals should adopt religious beliefs and practices. On the one hand, pluralism of opinions and freedom of expression are basic components of democracy and constitute its very quintessence: ‘ the greatest threat to American liberty comes from the disengaged, not the engaged ’ .43 On the other hand, recent findings show that many individuals in Western democracies have undergone a shift in their belief systems, and that many of those who adopt certain alternative religions in fact tend to neglect democratic values.44 One could find devoted believers in many religions who are willing to take extreme measures on behalf of their religious credo. In other words, when newspapers referred to extremist Christians attempting to take over the Republican Party, or religious Jews and Muslims both trying to destroy the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or Hindus attacking a mosque in India, the groups may have been wearing different clothing, but they were all cut from the same cloth—they were all extremists—right-wing authoritarians.45 Religiosity and Political Weltanschauung Mainstream religions tend to support strict preservation of the existing socio-political order.46 It is accustomed to assume that religions can affect their believers’ attitudes towards democracy in two paths. The first is an indirect one—through religious teachings,47 and the second path is a direct one, as some of the political attitudes are a result of belonging to a religious group.48 I will now describe a number of attempts to understand these paths.

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As mentioned earlier, Adorno et al. performed one of the seminal studies on religiosity and political extremism.49 They distinguished between the authoritarian individual and the democratic individual. The first category supports intolerant attitudes towards foreigners and deviants, and needs leading forces—spiritually and politically strong leaders. They ignore weaknesses and aggressive impulses and project them onto others, especially those who do not belong to the in-group, and feel the need for contempt for others, originating from the influence of the authoritative figure.50 The attitudes they adopt match conventional values, aggressiveness and extreme cynicism.51 The others, however, internalise moral values, are open-minded and tend to maintain social relations. In effect, Adorno et al. claimed that authoritarians share a similar psychological construct, which leads them to submit to authority and in particular to strong political leaders and extreme-Right ideologies.52 The authoritarian personality asks for the help of supernatural and political anti-democratic powers. One of the well-established findings of Altemeyer is the relationship between religiosity and RWA.53 He found that Christian authoritarians tend to believe in all Christian beliefs more than the non-authoritarian. In effect, authoritarianism expresses many of the components of extreme right-wing ideology (for example, anti-democratic ideas).54 An empirical study found positive relations between religious beliefs and authoritarianism of the political right-wing among both Jews and Palestinians in Israel.55 Another empirical study in Israel reveals an association between religiosity and RWA.56 One could also look at its practical implication, that is, religiosity and voting for political parties. Longitudinal data shows that 79 per cent of the Israeli ultra-orthodox Jews and 72.6 per cent of the orthodox and only 25 per cent of the secular consistently vote for right-wing parties (including many extreme-right-wing parties).57 Studies have also shown that religious variables have some influence on the willingness to tolerate out-groups of minorities or individuals who hold different political ideologies. Stouffer depicted church attendance on a regular basis as an indicator of political intolerance.58 Although lately the traditional issues on the political agenda of Western countries have cleared the stage in favour of new issues (for example, environmentalism),59 relations between religious orthodoxy and political attitudes are unchanged. Controversies are over attitudes towards outsiders, welfare, abortions, pornography and so on. Findings have revealed that the more individuals are religious, the less tolerant they are, and tend to present harsh attitudes towards criminals, homosexuals,

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single mothers, environmental issues, women in politics and avoidance of physical punishments.60 In 1955, Stouffer claimed that there is something in the nature of religious people that makes them intolerant; only few churchgoers want to allow civil rights to those who do not belong to the major political stream.61 Another finding is that those who are members of more liberal religious orders have more liberal political views.62 And, it is argued that there are two kinds of beliefs in God— God that controls public life versus God that controls more personal aspects of life. Individuals who adopt the first premise are more supportive of conservative, racial and anti-feminist political attitudes.63 Research performed in Belgium found that religious orthodoxy successfully predicts anti-democratic, conservative, nationalistic and racial political attitudes.64 Others have mentioned religious fundamentalism and conservatism as prominent predicators of intolerance. However, more complex study designs have stressed the role of theological conservatism, theocratic beliefs and messianic devotion, which lead to the adoption of anti-democratic political attitudes such as the refusal to allow human rights to certain groups.65 Some see democracy not as a cluster of ideals but as rules of ‘fair play’, through which they could strive for peace, social justice and a religious way of life. Once these goals are given a central role, a decline in obligations to democracy is expected. Studies in Israel, for example, found that the vast majority of those who defined themselves religious and ultra-religious object to democratic ideas.66 When religiosity and democracy clash, most believers would give priority to religion. It seems that the majority of the religious/ultra-religious public in Israel supports a ‘pre-modern’ state instead of a modern democratic state.67 Although not all scholars agree on the direct linkage between religiosity and political right-wing extremism,68 no empirical study has found a positive relationship between religious orthodoxy and political liberalism or radicalism of the political left-wing,69 but the opposite was found.70 The level of religiosity in the United States was found to be negatively related to the rise of radical workers’ organisations.71 One of the hypotheses is that religiosity is related to the support for antidemocratic ideology because religion has always been related to traditional values, authority and hierarchy, and most of the religious organisations in history were of authoritarian orientation. The rise of the ideals of modern democracy—tolerance, equality and human rights—is related to secularisation, that is, the decline in the power of mainstream religious institutions.72

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Studies in the United States have shown that growing abandonment of religious establishments has led to an increase in political liberalism.73 Religious identity creates a unique type of loyalty and group identity, which is the archetype of unconditional tribal and national loyalty. As mentioned earlier, findings on religiosity, prejudice, and authoritarianism have shown positive relationships between religious orthodoxy and extreme-right political attitudes.74 Political movements, which are identified with tradition, conservatism, family values and ultra-nationalism (that is, extreme-Right parties), are supported by religious institutions.75 Of course, one can claim that political attitudes are related to religion only when issues at stake are related to religious values, but findings show that religious orthodoxy has a great influence on political attitudes in general.76 Religious movements sometimes contribute to the political stability in democratic regimes by incitement of the believers’ attention to the ‘carrot’ in Heaven, while they control them through the ‘stick’ in Hell.77 Hence, many religions prevent radical social change and contribute to the preservation of the status quo. Although findings from the 1960s show that most of the clergy held revolutionary world views, a positive relationship was found between low levels of religiosity and left-wing radicalism.78 Other studies have revealed that religious orthodoxy is positively related to hawkish, prowar, militant and political attitudes.79 It was found that orthodox individuals are more militant and tend to support massive military actions.80 Sociological studies tend to stress the role of religion and religious leaders in supporting the socio-political order and preserving its stability.81 Although in times of political turmoil religious factors sometimes rebel against the existing status quo, this is the exception, whereas the rule is that they usually support it to the extreme.82 Indeed, recent sociological studies pointed mainly at the relationship between religiosity and anti-democratic attitudes.83 All in all, although most of the research was done in the Christian world, it is assumed that antidemocratic, or at least less democratic, values are at the core of most religions. In summary, there is little doubt regarding the association between religious orthodoxy and anti-democratic political attitudes and actions. There is something about religious people that makes them lean towards extreme political attitudes that may clash with democratic perceptions. Although conventional religiosity is in decline in Western democracies, religiosity is still depicted as one of the major challenges to democratic societies, and in particular since the events of 11 September. Common

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religious devotees are more intolerant, militant and exclusionist in their political attitudes. Alternative Religiosity and Political Weltanschauung Conservatives do not want innovations, and alternative religious beliefs are some kind of an expression of objection to scientific ideas and rejection of rational thinking.84 It is possible to claim that the adoption of alternative religious beliefs is the mirror view of scientific behaviour.85 People began to feel the by-products of modern science and technology, such as air pollution and over-mechanisation, which led to health and employment problems. These were accompanied by widespread dissatisfaction and an aversion to modern science, which led to the rise in the adoption of occult beliefs and practices and other alternative religions.86 Those who are extremely conservative, including politically, are reluctant to change, and are prone to believe in the power of astrologers, palm readers and other ‘futurologists’. It may be argued that conservatism and authoritarianism are very much alike, as the main characteristics of conservatism are objection to scientific progress and belief in magical powers.87 Another way of looking at the relationship would be through the authoritarian personality theory.88 Superstitious beliefs, like the belief in the power of astrology, were major ingredients of the fascistic archetype; they were also at the basis of national socialism. Superstitious behaviour—a cruel thought or a death wish of an individual towards himself or another person, gives rise to feelings of guilt leading to anticipation of punishment, expressed in the form of superstitious conception of the lack of good luck, or the bringing of bad luck. The tendency of the superstitious individual is to redirect the responsibility from the individual onto external forces. Adorno et al. discussed what they thought to be the forefathers of superstitious behaviour—the belief in astrological forecasts, and the relation to political attitudes.89 They found that individuals who live in a world of fantasies and superstitious beliefs tend to be prejudiced in social issues. In the 1920s there were empirical studies that showed the association between superstitious beliefs and prejudicial attitudes.90 ‘Mystic personalities’ are loaded with fatalistic elements and tend to be authoritarian, and develop anti-democratic Weltanschauung. According to the authoritarian personality theory, strict education practices would lead to perceptions that the fate of an individual is in the hands of external forces—real or imagined.

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Few researchers have empirically tested the claims of Adorno and his associates in that regard.91 Randall and Desrosiers found a positive relationship between the belief in magic and dogmatism (once considered as parallel to authoritarianism).92 Altemeyer tested the ‘superstitious-anti-democratic’ relationship using The Sufficient Evidence Test and the RWA scale, and found that authoritarians were less critical than others, and when it came to supernatural-magical powers, they abandoned their critical thinking.93 The tendency of authoritarians to neglect critical thinking once they deal with alternative religious beliefs is a result of the fact that they have always been rewarded once they placed their belief higher than reason. This tendency is beyond religious belief per se. It is related to the conventional need for authoritarian submission. Altemeyer claimed that the answer could be found in the Weltanschauung of the authoritarians.94 Their over-reliance on consensual validation to their beliefs makes them vulnerable to misconceptions, and this holds true in the democratic scene as well. It was found then, that there is a positive relationship between the tendency to trust other-world deities and the tendency to adopt anti-democratic attitudes. It is all based, as in witchcraft and dogmatism, on extreme and dogmatic thinking mechanisms.95 Another empirical study found that there is a linkage between alternative religions and political conservatism and the denial of democratic elements.96 He did not find, however, associations between alternative religiosity and religiosity. Subjects who said they believe in alternative religious beliefs tended to take the path of protest votes, which exemplify political alienation. This is an escape and a search for an alternative meaning system in both the realms of religious and political beliefs. Positive links between alternative religiosity and extreme tendencies to authoritarianism were also found.97 Another empirical study, based mainly on the theoretical platform of Adorno et al., has found that there are significant differences between those who are alternatively religious and those who are not—the first were highly authoritarian, remote from democratic values and politically alienated.98 In some cases (for example, Israel), however, the alternatively religious were found to be highly authoritarian and anti-democratic even when formal religiosity was controlled. One of the prominent findings was the association of alternative religiosity with components of the RWA—the demand from the government to take extreme measures against socalled ‘trouble makers’ and deviants, or the claim to censure strictly movies and newspapers.99

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Another perspective would be through one of the theoretical bases to authoritarianism—working-class authoritarianism.100 The adoption of paranormal beliefs and authoritarian political powers are fostered in the same social spheres. Lipset found that in the American non-educated working class—‘hard hats’—there is no internalisation of democratic values, but there are aggressive tendencies, intolerance and dogmatism.101 It may be assumed then, that psychological elements associated with the belief in supernatural powers, combined with belonging to a lower social status, affect the adoption of non-democratic norms. Recent sociological empirical studies have found an association between alternative religious beliefs and authoritarianism, and a linkage between magical thought, authoritarian attitudes and anti-democratic values.102 For example, most of those who believe in alternative religious superstitious beliefs voted for the extreme-Right Austrian party (FPO). The effects of alternative religions on political attitudes can also be seen through the lens of false consciousness. Adorno delineated the association between alternative religious beliefs and extreme conservative political forces in his criticism on the indifferent masses.103 He claimed that political forces use alternative religions (for example, astrology) to create false consciousness among the masses. According to Adorno the non-rationality of astrology, tarot cards and the like, and the apparent rationality of modern society are the same— both fill a social role of giving justification and legitimisation to the status quo. The alternative religions market offers books, newspaper columns and television shows. Conformism is the factor that allows the shape and content of the occultism. Negotiation with invisible entities is well combined in the very fabric of submission to social conventions. Astrology columns give advice related to the harsh daily life of the client-believer. The content of popular occultism is ‘pre-digest’.104 The practitioner tells the client what he already knows—it is a non-rational rationalisation of the status quo.105 In sum, scholars offer a central theoretical explanation for the adoption of anti-democratic attitudes—it is The Authoritarian Personality Theory which is visible in all other attempts to relate the two —alternative religions and extreme-Right political attitudes. Although empirical studies are rare, it is usually the approach that one should formulate negative hypotheses in this regard, that is, the more individuals are inclined to adhere to alternative religious beliefs and practices (such as astrology or reading tea-leaves), they are likely to

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adopt extreme right-wing political attitudes which at their very basis are anti-democratic. Conclusion Two goals were identified at the beginning. The first was to distinguish between two types of religions, and the second, to track their believers’ political attitudes towards core democratic principles. The starting point of this article was to look at potential challenges to democratic societies, in particular the religious one. Hence, the article analysed interwoven arguments. The first argument was that, in spite of trends of secularisation, there are two main types of religions in present Western societies—religious traditions and alternative religious traditions. The ‘goods’ in the religions markets were depicted with a focus on mainstream religions and alternative religions. Mainstream religions in the West are Judaeo-Christianity and are meaning systems and meeting systems. Notwithstanding, there is a growing tendency of more and more Western individuals to adopt non-Christian and pre-Christian religions. They are not institutionalised but have ‘institutions’ for clientpractitioner meetings. The alternative religious world exists thanks to the leaflets, books, shows and other information carriers. A paradoxical situation appears once one looks at these religious traditions and tries to guess how they would react in political terms. It could be expected that a type of religious belief, which rebels against mainstream religions, would stress different political values, more moderate and pro-democratic ones. But, orthodox believers who are associated with both institutionalised religions and alternative religions are less likely to adopt democratic attitudes. This, to a great extent, confirms Adorno et al.’s claims, as well as Altemeyer’s presuppositions.106 Hence, religious orthodoxy may not be as potent a force as some believed in previous decades, but it remains an important religious, social and political phenomenon. In a world of wrenching change and uncertainty, millions of people will continue to turn to religious and alternative religious movements in their search for a more secure and morally grounded social order. So, I have demonstrated two points with practical and theoretical implications, which call for further research. First, we can claim that there is a major alternative religious tradition beside the mainstream religions, and that these two types—religions and alternative religions—converge in terms of attitudes towards democratic perceptions. Second, both types of believers tend to incline towards the

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direction of the (extreme) political Right, and thereby challenge the democratic Weltanschauung. NOTES 1. J.Hopper, ‘Black Vampire Wearing a Swastika’, Haaretz, 20 December 2002, p.b9 (Hebrew). 2. S.Freud, ‘The Future of an Illusion’, in J.Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1927), pp.1–56; N.P.Spanos and E.C.Hewitt, ‘Flossolalia: A Test of the “Trance” and Psychopathology Hypotheses’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 88 (1979), pp. 427–34. 3. M.Argyle and B.Beit-Hallahmi, The Social Psychology of Religion (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975); B.Beit-Hallahmi, Prolegomena to the Study of Religion (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1989). 4. It is given a variety of labels: occultism—T.W.Adorno, ‘Theses Against Occultism’, Telos 19 (1974), pp.7–12; T.W.Adorno, ‘The Stars Down to Earth: The Los Angeles Times Astrology Column’, Telos 19 (1974), pp. 13–90; popular religion—M.Truzzi, ‘Definitions and Dimensions of the Occult: Towards a Sociological Perspective’, Journal of Popular Culture 3 (1971), pp.635–46; or the cultic milieu—C.Campbell, ‘The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization’, A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5 (1972), pp.1 19–36. 5. R.Wuthnow, ‘Astrology and Marginality’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 15/2 (1976), pp.157–68. 6. S.Freud, ‘A Religious Experience’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press 21, 1928; 1961); K.Marx, Early Writings (New York: McGrawHill, 1964); B.S.Turner, Religion and Social Theory (London: Sage Publications, 1991). 7. C.J.Nederman and J.W.Goulding, ‘Popular Occultism and Critical Social Theory: Exploring Some Themes in Adorno’s Critique of Astrology and the Occult ’ , Sociological Analysis 42/4 (1982), p.329. 8. Adorno (note 4). 9. E.Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (London: Allen and Unwin, 1912; 1976); W.James, The Will to Believe (New York: Dover Publications, 1897; 1956); W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: New American Library, 1902; 1958). 10. G.W.Allport, The Individual and his Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1950). 11. C.D.Batson, P.Schoenrade and W.L.Ventis, Religion and the Individual (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); G.K.Leak and S.Fish,

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12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

‘Religious Orientation, Impression Management, and Self-Deception: Toward a Clarification of the Link between Religiosity and Social Desirability’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28 (1989), pp. 355–9. B.Beit-Hallahmi and M.Argyle, The Psychology of Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience (London: Routledge, 1997); A.Bowser, ‘Delimiting Religion in the Constitution: A Classification Problem’, Valparaiso University Law Review 11 (1977), pp.163–226. Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi (note 3), p.1. S.H.Alatas, ‘Problems of Defining Religion’, International Social Science Journal 29 (1977), pp.213–34; Beit-Hallahmi (note 3). Durkheim (note 9). A.F.Wallace, Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House, 1966). Beit-Hallahmi (note 3); Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle (note 12). Durkheim (note 9). M.Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963). R.J.Hinnells, ‘Introduction to the New Handbook’, in R.J.Hinnells (ed.), A New Handbook of Living Religions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp.3–8; G.J.Melton, ‘Modern Alternative Religions in the West’, in ibid. C.F.Emmons and J.Sobal, ‘Marginality Hypothesis’, Sociological Focus 14/1 (1981), pp.49–56; J.B.Dixon and R.Kinlaw, ‘Belief in the Existence and Nature of Life After Death: A Research Note’, Omega 13/3 (1982– 83), p.287. M.A.Greeley, ‘Correlates of Belief in Life After Death’, Sociology and Social Research 73/1 (1988), pp.3–8. C.Glock and R.Stark, Religion and Society in Tension (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965); K.D.Wald, L.Kellstedt and D.Leege, ‘Church Involvement and Political Behavior’, in D.C.Leege and L.A.Kellstedt (eds.), Rediscovering the Religious Factor in American Politics (New York: M.E.Sharpe, 1993); B.D.McKenzie, ‘Self-Selection, Church Attendance, and Local Civic Participation’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40/3 (2001), pp.479–88. V.F.Hollinger and T.Smith, ‘Religion and Esotericism among Students: A Cross-Cultural Comparative Study’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 17/2 (2002), pp.229–49. S.M.Sales, ‘Threat as a Factor in Authoritarianism: An Analysis of Archival Data’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 28 (1973), pp.44–57. B.Beit-Hallahmi, Despair and Deliverance: Private Salvation in Contemporary Israel (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992). R.Stark, ‘Reconceptualizing Religion, Magic, and Science’, Review of Religious Research 43/2 (2001), pp.101–20.

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28. Campbell (note 4), pp. 119–36. 29. R.Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s (California: University of California Press, 1998); Campbell (note 4), pp. 119–36. 30. R.Bellah, ‘The New Religious Consciousness and the Crisis of Modernity’, in C.Glock and R.N.Bellah (eds.), The New Religious Consciousness (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 133–52; R. Bellah, W.Sullivan, and S.Tipton, The Habits of the Heart (New York: Harper and Row, 1985). 31. X.Lofland and R.Stark, ‘Becoming a World-Saver: A Theory of Conversion to a Deviant Perspective’, American Sociological Review 30/ 6 (1965), p.868. 32. E.M.Marty, ‘The Occult Establishment’, Social Research 37 (1970), pp. 212–30; J.R. Lewis and G.J.Melton (eds.), Perspectives on the New Age (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992); C.W.Rook and L.Gesch, ‘Boomers and the Culture of Choice: Changing Patterns of Work, Family, and Religion’, in N.T.Ammerman and R.W.Clark (eds.), Work, Family, and Religion in Contemporary Society (New York: Routledge, 1995); Beit-Hallahmi (note 26); B.Beit-Hallahmi, ‘Explaining Religious Utterances by Taking Seriously Super-Naturalist (and Naturalist) Claims’, in G.Hon and S.Rakover (eds.), Explanation: Philosophical Essays (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001). 33. Glock and Stark (note 23). 34. Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle (note 12). 35. C.Mudde, The Ideology of the Extreme Right (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). 36. B.Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 37. B.Beit-Hallahmi, ‘Fundamentalism’, in J.Krieger (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 38. T.W.Adorno, E.Frenkel-Brunswik, D.J.Levinson and R.N.Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1950). 39. Ibid. 40. Mudde (note 35). 41. R.D.Pharr, R.D.Putnam and R.J.Dalton, ‘A Quarter Century of Declining Confidence’ Journal of Democracy 11/2 (2000), pp.5–25. 42. A.Inkeles, ‘Transitions to Democracy’, Society 28/4 (1991), pp.67–72. 43. R.D.Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), p.358. 44. D.Canetti-Nisim, ‘Democracy and Religious and Parareligious Beliefs in Israel: Theoretical and Empirical Perspective’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Haifa, 2002 (Hebrew). 45. Altemeyer (note 36).

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46. R.Stark and W.S.Bainbridge, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 47. S.H.Schwartz and S.Huismans, ‘Value Priorities and Religiosity in Four Western Religions’, Social Psychology Quarterly 58 (1995), pp.88–107. 48. B.Duriez, P.Luyten, B.Snauwaert and D.Hutsebaut, ‘The Importance of Religiosity and Values in Predicting Political Attitudes: Evidence for the Continuing Importance of Religiosity in Flanders (Belgium)’, Mental Health, Religion and Culture 5/1 (2002), pp.35–54. 49. Adorno et al (note 38). 50. W.F.Stone and L.D.Smith, ‘Authoritarianism: Left and Right’, in W.F.Stone, G.Lederer and R.Christie (eds.), Strength and Weakness: The Authoritarian Personality Today (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993). 51. Adorno et al. (note 38). 52. Ibid. 53. Altemeyer (note 36). 54. Mudde (note 35). 55. G.Rubinstein, ‘Two People in One Land: A Validation Study of Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale in the Palestinian and Jewish Societies in Israel’, Journal of Cross- Cultural Psychology 27/2 (1996), pp.216–30. 56. Canetti-Nisim (note 44). 57. T.Hermann and E.Yuchtman-Yaar, ‘Divided Yet United: Israeli-Jewish Attitudes towards the Oslo Process’, Journal of Peace Research 39/5 (2002), pp.597–613. 58. S.Stouffer, Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955). 59. Y.Yishai, ‘“Old” versus “New” Politics in the 1996 Elections’, in A.Arian and M.Shamir (eds.), The Elections in Israel 1996 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), pp.137–59. 60. M.A.Greeley, ‘Religion and Attitudes toward the Environment’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 32 (1993), pp.19–28; Canetti-Nisim (note 44). 61. Stouffer (note 58). 62. C.W.Roof and W.McKinney, American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987). 63. Greeley (note 60), pp. 19–28. 64. Duriez et al (note 48), pp.35–54. 65. V.Karpov, ‘Tolerance in the United States and Poland’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41/2 (2002), pp.267–88. 66. Y.Peres, ‘Religious Adherence and Political Attitudes’, in S.Deshen, C.S.Liebman and M.Shokeid (eds.), Israeli Judaism: The Sociology of Religion in Israel (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995), pp.87–106; Canetti-Nisim (note 44).

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67. Y.Peres and E.Yuchtman-Yaar, Trends in Israeli Democracy: The Public View (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992). 68. G.E.Lenski, The Religious Factor (New York: Doubleday, 1963). 69. Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi (note 3). 70. E.A.Tiryakian, ‘American Religious Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 527 (1993), pp.40–54. 71. K.J.Christiano, ‘Religion and Radical Labor Unionism: American States in the 1920s’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 27 (1988), pp. 378–88. 72. Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle (note 12). 73. Wald et al. (note 23), pp.479–88. 74. Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle (note 12); Adorno et al. (note 38); D.CanettiNisim and A. Pedahzur, ‘The Effects of Contextual and Psychological Variables on Extreme Right-Wing Sentiments’, Social Behavior and Personality 30/4 (2002), pp.317–34. 75. This is more true for Israel or the US than it is for Europe. 76. R.J.Bord and J.E.Faulkner, Catholic Charismatics: The Anatomy of a Modern Religious Movement (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1983). 77. J.D.Frank and J.B.Frank, Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 78. C.Glock and E.Siegelman, Prejudice USA (New York: Praeger, 1969); W.Eckhardt, ‘Religious Beliefs and Practices in Relation to Peace and Justice’, Social Compass 21 (1974), pp.463–72. 79. D.Granberg and K.E.Campbell, ‘Certain Aspects of Religiosity and Orientations Toward the Vietnam War among Missouri Undergrounds’, Sociological Analysis 34 (1973), pp.40–9; C.E.Tygart, ‘Religiosity and University Student Anti-Vietnam War Attitudes: A Negative or Curvilinear Relationship?’, Sociological Analysis 32 (1971), pp. 120–9. 80. D.C.McClelland, Power: The Inner Experience (New York: Irvington, 1975). 81. Durkheim (note 9); Marx (note 6). 82. B.R.Wilson, Religion in Sociological Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). 83. Hollinger and Smith (note 24), pp.229–49. 84. G.D.Wilson, ‘The Factor Structure of the C-Scale’, in G.D.Wilson (ed.), The Psychology of Conservatism (London: Academic Press, 1973), pp. 71–92; Adorno et al. (note 38). 85. S.A.Vyse, ‘Superstition in the Age of Science’, World Review 2/4 (1997), pp.13–15. 86. Inkeles (note 42), pp.67–72. 87. Adorno et al (note 38); Wilson (note 84), pp.71–92.

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88. Adorno et al. (note 38). 89. Ibid. 90. H.K.Nixon, ‘Popular Answers to Some Psychological Questions’, American Journal of Psychology 36 (1925), pp.418–23. 91. Adorno et al. (note 38). 92. T.M.Randall and M.Desrosiers, ‘Measurement of Supernatural Belief: Sex Differences and Locus of Control’, Journal of Personality Assessment 44/5 (1980), pp.493–8. 93. Altemeyer (note 36). 94. Ibid. 95. Randall and Desrosiers (note 92), pp.493–8; Altemeyer (note 36). 96. T.M.Randall, ‘Supernatural Belief and Political Alienation’, Perceptual and Motor Skills 84 (1997), p.1394. 97. K.V.Heard and S.A.Vyse, ‘Authoritarianism and Paranormal Beliefs’, Imagination, Cognition, and Personality 18/2 (1998), pp.121–6. 98. Adorno et al (note 38). 99. Canetti-Nisim (note 44). 100. S.M.Lipset, Political Man: The Social Basis of Politics (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). 101. Ibid. 102. Hollinger and Smith (note 24), pp.229–49; A. El, Heimliches Wissen, Unheimliche Macht: Sekten, Kulte, Esoterik und der Rechte (Rand: WienBozen, 1997). 103. Adorno (note 4), pp.7–12, 13–90. 104. T.W.Adorno, ‘On Popular Music’, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9 (1941), P.22. 105. G.Weimann, ‘The Prophecy that Never Fails: On the Uses and Gratifications of Horoscope Reading’, Sociological Inquiry 52/4 (1982), pp.274–90. 106. Adorno et al. (note 38); Altemeyer (note 36).

4 Religious Violence and the Myth of Fundamentalism MICHAEL BARKUN

In the last quarter of a century, religion has emerged as something of a ‘dark force’ in human affairs. Its negative associations have come from two main sources. One is the prevalent stereotype about New Religious Movements, under the rubric of ‘cults’, and the other is the perceived threat posed by ‘fundamentalism’. Literatures about the threat of religious violence have thus focused on two types of groups that appear radically dissimilar: new groups that operate outside conventional religious communities, and fundamentalists, who claim to represent historic religious traditions. The cult stereotype asserts that a combination of malevolent leaders, brainwashed followers and poisonous belief systems lead such groups to engage in violence against both their own members and outsiders. In fact, in the overwhelming majority of cases, there is no evidence to support this assertion.1 Nonetheless, such beliefs have been sufficiently widespread to stigmatise many new and unconventional religious groups. By an unstated convention, a small number of what might be termed the ‘canonical cases’ occupy much of both the popular and academic literature on new religions. These cases include Jonestown, the Solar Temple, Heaven’s Gate, Aum Shinrikyo and the Branch Davidians.2 In only one of them—Aum Shinrikyo—were religionists the indisputable first users of violence against outsiders. In the others, violence was either directed inwards (for example, Jonestown) or against armed outsiders (for example, the Branch Davidians). This conventional grouping also omits certain cases that might equally well be considered, such as the confrontations that involved MOVE in Philadelphia and the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord in the Ozarks in 1985, but their inclusion would not alter the truth of the proposition that these groups rarely initiate violence.

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A second, and more powerful, stigmatising factor has been the identification of fundamentalist religion with terrorism. This connection was made well before the attacks of 11 September 2001. In an influential 1996 article, Walter Laqueur predicted that terrorism would increasingly grow out of ‘sectarian fanaticism’.3 While Laqueur, too, spoke of ‘cults’, he also pointed to the violence potential of ‘religious fundamentalism’ and ‘apocalyptic millenarianism’, both lodged within historic religious traditions. References to ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ have become so commonplace in discussions of violence that they scarcely occasion any notice. However, as with New Religious Movements, the prevailing association between fundamentalism and violence, particularly terrorism, should not be regarded as self-evidently true. It is, instead, often an act of labelling for the purpose of condemnation, with little regard for the beliefs to which the label is attached.4 ‘Fundamentalism’ itself is a construct whose relationship to violence is extremely problematic. For purposes of understanding the relationship between religion and violence, it turns out to matter relatively little whether a group is a New Religious Movement or has emerged out of an existing religious tradition. The two seem more separate than they are. Their distinctness is less a consequence of intrinsically different natures than of accidents in the division of academic labour. New Religious Movements and historic religious traditions tend to be studied by different people, participating in different networks, with the result that the end-products of scholarship underestimate convergences and overestimate differences. The fear of ‘dangerous religions’ has given rise to a literature that seeks to identify their characteristics, in the hope that intrinsic factors might allow one to distinguish the sinister from the benign. This essentialist argument asserts that it is possible to find markers of proneness to violence. These indicators allegedly centre around such features as styles of leadership (for example, charismatic), mode of organisation (for instance, isolated), and beliefs (for example, apocalyptic expectations).5 Unfortunately, the essentialist approach has little predictive value. Although inductively generated from past violent cases, it founders on the presence of numerous contrary cases. It is always possible to find non-violent groups that are, for example, led by charismatic leaders, physically isolated and doctrinally rigid. The search for a test based on the nature of the group is a blind alley, confirmed by the history of fundamentalism itself.

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A Short History of ‘Fundamentalism’ ‘Fundamentalism’ is a term that is now so widely used in so many different contexts that its origins have been obscured. As with other scholarly terms that have entered general usage (‘charisma’, for example), popularity has resulted in a degradation of meaning, as well as questionable applications. This is a particular difficulty where ‘fundamentalism’ is concerned, since its origins lie firmly in American Protestantism. The original context is of more than merely etymological significance, since it led directly to the political orientation of those who came to be called fundamentalists. Fundamentalism arose out of an internal conflict in American Protestantism often referred to as the Modernist Controversy, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It concerned the orientation of Christians towards such intellectual developments as evolutionary biology and biblical ‘higher criticism’. The former challenged the biblical account of creation, while the latter challenged the divine status of the Bible. Protestant denominations gradually separated into two tendencies: ‘modernists’ or ‘liberals’, who argued that believers needed to adapt to the findings of science and scholarship; and ‘traditionalists’ or ‘conservatives’, who insisted upon maintaining older views of revelation and biblical inerrancy. This process of polarisation led to a series of intra-denominational power struggles. As they progressed, the views of the anti-modernists were articulated in a set of pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915 under the title of The Fundamentals. Those who supported the booklets’ positions began to use ‘the Fundamentals’ as a catch-phrase for antimodernism, and by 1920 termed themselves ‘fundamentalists’.6 By the mid-1920s, however, it became clear that fundamentalists were losing the battles. In one denomination after another, modernists assumed control. The 1925 Scopes Trial was merely a national symbol of declining fundamentalist influence, as well as of fundamentalism’s isolation from mainstream American culture. As it became clear that fundamentalists were losing ecclesiastical power struggles, they responded by creating their own parallel institutions. These included publishing houses, religious conferences, denominational structures and educational institutions. This was in part a function of their rejection by other Protestants, but it also symbolised the fundamentalists’ own conviction that the larger society was pervaded by sinfulness.

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This withdrawal would be of merely historical interest were it not for its political implications. For fundamentalist withdrawal meant not only separation from other Protestants, but also self-imposed isolation from the political process—an isolation that encompassed not only fundamentalists but many of their related evangelical brethren.7 As the majority of Protestants opted for a politics dominated by secular issues and social reform, religious conservatives became ever more marginalised. By the late 1920s, as George Marsden notes, ‘most evangelicals remained on the fringes of American politics’.8 Fundamentalists did not rejoin the political system in large numbers until the growth of the New Religious Right in the late 1970s, through such organisations as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition.9 The purpose of this excursion into religious history is not only to point out the cultural roots of fundamentalism in its original form, but also—more importantly—to demonstrate that fundamentalists never had a single political orientation. They supported one of their own—William Jennings Bryan—in his three presidential bids in 1896, 1900 and 1908. Two decades later, they began to leave active politics, and did not return —until the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979. Fundamentalists’ oscillating political orientation, however, was almost always with reference to legitimate, legal political activity. American fundamentalists almost never considered violence as an appropriate option. The issue was always one of withdrawal versus engagement, not violence versus non-violence. During active periods, they worked within the system. During the long passive stretch, they withdrew in a manner that did not challenge the legitimacy of the political order. Indeed, the identification of fundamentalists as leaders in an American ‘culture war’ did not achieve currency until the most recent period of political mobilisation.10 The ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Debate The confusion surrounding fundamentalism has increased because of the fashionable tendency to regard religion as a surrogate for more encompassing conflicts between entire civilisational regions. While this position has been most closely associated with Samuel Huntington, it has not been lost on Osama bin Laden. In an interview held with bin Laden on 21 October 2001, an al- Jazeera interviewer asked, ‘What is your opinion about what is being said concerning your examples and “the clash of civilisations”? Your constant use and repetition of the word “Crusade” and “Crusader”

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shows that you…uphold that saying, the “clash of civilisations”…’. The questioner did not mention Huntington’s name, nor did bin Laden in his reply. Bin Laden also did not appear to be taken aback by the question. He merely responded that ‘the Jews and America have come up with a fairy-tale that they count to the Muslims, and they’ve been unfortunately followed by the local rulers [of the Muslims] and a lot of people who are close to them, by using “world peace” as an excuse. That is a fairy-tale which has no basis whatsoever!’11 The fact that Huntington’s phrase went unattributed was testimony to the breadth of its spread. The al-Jazeera reporter was not alone in assuming a relationship between it and ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. Huntington himself refers repeatedly to Muslim fundamentalism, as well as fundamentalism in other religious traditions. To the extent that he defines the concept, he understands it to involve ‘new surges in commitment, relevance and practice by erstwhile casual believers… fundamentalist movements arose committed to the militant purification of religious doctrines and institutions and the reshaping of personal, social, and public behaviour in accordance with religious tenets’.12 While Huntington attempts to distinguish ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ from ‘Islamic civilisation’, the distinction is made difficult by his tendency to employ religion as the ‘central defining characteristic’ of civilisations.13 Amartya Sen, one of Huntington’s most astute critics, has pointed out that linking civilisation and religion yields a ‘crude’ category. It fails to account for the many non-religious roles individuals occupy, as well as the variety of religious ideas that can be found even in societies that appear religiously homogeneous. The consequence is to ‘lend… authority to religious leaders seen as spokesmen for their “worlds”. In the process other voices are muffled and other concerns silenced’.14 The common association of fundamentalism with a clash of civilisations is made all the more confusing by the fact that those labelled fundamentalists are frequently in conflict with internal as well as external enemies. While they may confront ‘civilisational’ adversaries, their primary enemies are often those within their own tradition, including its nominal religious authorities. The latter are said to be corrupters of the tradition or the pawns of unbelievers, just as the original Christian fundamentalists castigated fellow Protestants as sellouts to modernity. However, those commonly called ‘fundamentalists’ may well be hostile to religious authorities who are in no sense ‘liberals’ or ‘modernisers’. This certainly appears to be the case in Saudi Arabia, for example, where mainstream Muslim clerics

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espouse a Wahhabist Islam that might well be considered fundamentalist to all but such adversaries as bin Laden and his sympathisers. Where, then, do these considerations leave the concept? Clearly, the more ‘fundamentalism’ is stretched beyond its original meaning, the more attenuated it becomes. Even in its original manifestation, it claimed no single, invariant orientation toward politics, and certainly no mandate for violence. Yet violence motivated and justified by religious beliefs is a sufficiently important concept in America, South Asia and the Middle East that it can hardly be ignored.15 What is usually referred to as ‘fundamentalism’ is in effect any claim to exclusive authenticity within a religious tradition. ‘Fundamentalism’ has been converted into a synonym for ‘religious revivalism’, even though the doctrines espoused by those campaigning, for example, on behalf of more intense religious devotions might have little in common with the fundamentalism of American Protestants. Indeed, religious revivals in the sense of campaigns to intensify religious commitment and observance were features of the American social landscape long before the appearance of fundamentalism.16 The question is, therefore, not one of distinguishing fundamentalists from non-fundamentalists.17 That being the case, the supposed problem of ‘fundamentalist violence’ disappears as such. It is subsumed, along with the violent potential of New Religious Movements, in the larger quest to identify the conditions under which any religious beliefs might become catalysts for violence. There is little reason to suppose that the religion-violence nexus differs greatly between situations arising out of traditional religions and those that arise from New Religious Movements. The main difference is likely to lie in their identification of adversaries, since members of historic religious traditions have traditional leaderships against which to fight, while newly established groups have a broader range of potential enemies. Both, however, can make claims to exclusive religious authenticity, and both may feel compelled to employ violence under certain circumstances. The forms of religious violence are clearly changing. Historically rooted inter-communal violence continues, whether between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in Bosnia, Muslims and Hindus in India, or Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. However, in the developed world, it has been superseded as a matter of public concern by religiously driven acts of terror. Their shock value arises from both the nature of the targets (such as the World Trade Center) and the dramatically public character of the violence.

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Violence as Sacred Drama The character of the 11 September attacks requires an approach that goes beyond the analysis of beliefs to include the analysis of intentionally dramatic social acts. Analysing social behaviour through the conventions of dramaturgy is neither recent nor novel. Pioneered by Erving Goffman in the late 1950s, dramaturgical analysis applied the concept of ‘performance’ to the task individuals face in presenting themselves to others (their ‘audiences’) in everyday interactions.18 Increasingly, this metaphor is finding its way into examinations of religiously driven terrorism. It appears apt, both because of the public character of terrorist acts with its presumption of a witnessing audience, and because of the centrality of ritual in religious activity. While some religious rituals are performed by the solitary individual, many—the Catholic mass and the Jewish seder, for example—are enacted in collectivities. An additional reason for extending the dramaturgical metaphor is the increasing awareness that many acts of religious terrorism are not obviously instrumental. That is, unlike the hostagetaker who may release captives on the fulfilment of specific demands, the religious terrorist may not demand any specific performance or abstention from potential victims or audience. Indeed, those responsible for acts of religious terrorism often do not claim responsibility for their acts or otherwise identify themselves. This has led Mark Juergensmeyer to speak of religious terrorism as ‘performance violence’. Juergensmeyer construes acts of terror as played out before audiences and therefore meant to be witnessed. He also suggests that they are ‘performative’, in the sense that in addition to their symbolic meaning, they possess ‘a certain power of their own’.19 Thus they possess both theatrical and numinous qualities. Their theatricality is inherent in their dramatic, public character, while the numinous quality comes from the quasi-magical power they are believed to manifest, channel or liberate. The element of performance is easier to see, for it is most often conveyed in vivid images, none more so than those of 11 September. Terrorism-as-spectacle, and therefore as performance, may explain the seemingly grotesque characterisations of 11 September offered to the press by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and the British artist Damien Hirst. At a press conference in Hamburg on 16 September 2001, Stockhausen reportedly called the World Trade Center attack ‘the biggest work of art’. The phrase, however, was used in the context of statements attributing the attacks to Lucifer, an attribution generally

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omitted in press coverage. By the time Stockhausen pointed out the omission, however, he had been pilloried in the world press.20 At about the same time, in an interview with BBC Online, Hirst called the attack ‘Visually stunning… I think the idea of looking at the 11 September attacks as an artwork is a very difficult thing to do. But I don’t think artists look at it in a different way’. He quickly apologised, saying that ‘As a human being and artist living in the civilised world I value human life above all else and abhor all acts of terrorism and murder’.21 However insensitive and ill-advised Stockhausen’s and Hirst’s comments may have been, they drew attention to the apocalyptic imagery from New York, differentiating the 11 September attacks from prior terrorist incidents. Stockhausen and Hirst were not alone in groping for an understanding of 11 September imagery. Lee Harris saw the targets in dramaturgical terms as ‘gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life’. They functioned as elements in the theatre of performance violence. Harris also recognised that al-Qaeda ‘is not engaged in Clausewitzian warfare’, in which military assets are deployed for calculated strategic advantage. Instead, ‘we are fighting an enemy… whose actions have significance only in terms of his own fantasy ideology’.22 Harris, however, has moved from the performed to the performative—to acts potent in themselves irrespective of their visible consequences. The power lies in the doing rather than in the observable effects. Yet the centrality of the performative is obscured by tying it to a ‘fantasy ideology’. No matter how bizarre a belief system appears to onlookers, it is regarded as real by those who hold and act upon it. Describing it as ‘fantasy’ relegates its holders to the realm of illusion and, ultimately, pathology. Doing so carries serious risks. First, it implies that the beliefs hold no attraction for rational individuals, only for some morbid minority. Hence we are unprepared when such beliefs attract large and functional constituencies. Second, virtually all religious belief systems can seem fantastic to non-believers, whether or not they lead to violence. Third, dismissing beliefs as fantasies destroys the possibility of explaining the link between those beliefs and the violence which follows, since the one is normally a logical product of the other. The Apocalypse as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy The volatility of exclusive claims has often resulted from believers’ conviction that they themselves could produce the millennial end of

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time. The obvious implications this held for peace and order led most traditional religious authorities to oppose it. For example, throughout much of Jewish history, there was an aversion to those termed ‘Forcers of the End’, persons who believed their own actions could bring the Messiah. Instead, rabbinic authorities ‘remov[ed] Messianism into the realm of pure faith and inaction, leaving the redemption to God alone and not requiring the activity of men’.23 In similar fashion, official Church doctrine since the time of Augustine emphasised the symbolic rather than the literal meaning of millenarian prophecies and insisted that ‘no man knows the day or the hour’. Despite such opposition, there has been no shortage of ‘Forcers of the End’, both in historic religious traditions and New Religious Movements. Robert Jay Lifton places Aum Shinrikyo, the perpetrators of the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack, in precisely this category. However, unlike Judaism and Christianity, whose authorities were usually hostile to activist millennialism, Aum’s action orientation emanated from the prophet himself. As a close disciple of Shoko Asahara remarked: ‘It was our practice to fulfil his prophecy, and under his direction Aum Shinrikyo was militarised as a means of accomplishing his prophecy’.24 Few religious leaders have been as direct as Shoko Asahara in demanding that followers bring prophecies to fulfilment. However, the temptation of self-fulfilment is always latent in millenarian thinking. It exists in tension with that quietism to which Gershom Scholem referred. The oscillation of American Protestant fundamentalism between quietism and activism, described earlier, reflects this tension. Fundamentalists have always been believers in the end of time, although they did not all subscribe to the same millenarian ideas. Fundamentalists differed too on the behaviour these beliefs entailed. For some, no special action was required, and the end of history remained in God’s hands. In its early days, fundamentalism eschewed violence, but by the 1980s, small coteries, for whom the final days were a time to take up arms, had broken away. Among the latter were Christian Identity believers, who saw themselves approaching a racial Armageddon against non-whites and Jews;25 and among the ‘absolute rescue’ wing of the anti-abortion movement, for whom the legalisation of abortion was a sign of the coming end.26 The reason for this inconsistency is that the potentially violent believer is engaged in two processes. First, there is the interaction with those who can confer or withhold religious legitimation of behaviour. Second, there is the interaction with those forces deemed to be hostile or evil. Issues of violence turn in part on understandings of doctrines

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and texts. Even those who consider themselves literalists where sacred texts are concerned, engage in interpretation, albeit in unacknowledged ways. In religious traditions with decentralised and potentially competing authorities, it is often possible to locate someone willing to provide the necessary religious warrant for violence. In some cases, the believer first desires to commit the act and then searches for a legitimater. In other cases, an individual first comes in contact with a religious justification for violence and then decides to act upon it. The relationship between the legitimating authority and the violent actor makes conventional conceptions of fundamentalism far less meaningful. For such conceptions usually rest on the assumption that a coherent group of fundamentalists claiming a religious vision of superior authenticity confronts traditional custodians of the tradition, viewed as lax and compromised. However, at least where attributions of fundamentalist violence are concerned, the reality is often far different. For the anti-traditionalists may themselves be splintered into a pluralistic array of doctrinal positions, among which some may justify violence and others may not. The second type of interaction is with those ‘others’ from whom the believer distinguishes him/herself—non-believers, governmental authorities, backsliders and heretics. In the context of those interactions, beliefs that have received an authority’s seal can have catalytic importance. Indeed, the result may be the kind of interaction David Bromley calls ‘dramatic denouements’.27 These occur ‘when a movement and some segment of the social order reach a juncture at which one or both conclude that the requisite conditions for maintaining their core identity and collective existence are being subverted and that such circumstances are intolerable’.28 Although Bromley’s concern is with crises that involve New Religious Movements, the concept of the dramatic denouement seems just as applicable to putatively fundamentalist groups. These conclusions rest upon perceptions of threat rather than objective dangers. In the eyes of outside observers, either a religious group or its adversaries may incorrectly estimate the danger the other poses or the intractability of its position. What matters, however, is not some presumed ‘real’ danger, but rather the way a particular actor evaluates danger, since for that actor, the perception is the reality. Bromley proposes that dramatic denouements can end in one of three ways: through capitulation, in which one party yields to the other; through exodus, where one party withdraws from the other’s domain; or through battle, resulting in one party’s domination or destruction.29 The

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first is not relevant to our purposes, since it implies a non-violent resolution. The second represents the quietism that characterised American fundamentalists prior to the late 1970s. It is the third, consequently, that demands attention, since it is the contingency associated with religiously based violence. As Eugene Gallagher has pointed out, neither beliefs nor interactions by themselves are sufficient to produce violence, although cases may be found in which one or the other appears primary.30 More commonly, a combination appears more likely to generate violent outcomes. Playing Out Apocalyptic Scripts Such clashes are often facilitated by a group’s millenarian beliefs. In the broadest sense, these constitute a set of expectations about imminent, this-worldly transformation.31 Such beliefs can become more volatile when they are expressed as an anticipated sequence of events that includes one or more violent struggles. Millenarian beliefs can therefore take the form of elaborate ‘scripts’ or ‘scenarios’ that describe a multistage sequence of events. It is not always clear whether believers regard such conditions as merely necessary or as both necessary and sufficient for the final consummation. The sensitivity of the issue arises because of its implications for God’s omnipotence, for if human events can be manipulated in a way that ‘forces the end’, human actors may be seen as having usurped the deity’s role. The more firmly a group comes to believe that it controls the dynamics of prophetic fulfilment, the more likely that its actions will include or precipitate violence. This conviction of control appears to contradict the stereotypical conception of fundamentalism as doctrinally rigid and textually literalist. These characteristics are in part reflections of claims to exclusive religious authenticity. However, they mask significant elements of uncertainty. While those commonly deemed fundamentalists claim ultimate fidelity to sacred texts, the meaning they extract from the texts can change over time. It does so because for believers in ultimate religious authenticity, the final meaning is often encoded in the text. That is, in addition to the plain meaning, there may be a concealed, esoteric meaning accessible only to the spiritually advanced. Some individuals are deemed to possess a greater ability than others to uncover this hidden meaning. This meaning is deemed to be singular. Once found, it supersedes all others. However, the believer may run through a large number of proposed meanings which are serially rejected as mere approximations of the ultimate, encoded meaning. Like manifestations

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of platonic archetypes, religious meanings can be sequentially discarded in favour of new ones that more fully unveil hidden truths. At the same time, the search for meaning does not take place in a vacuum. Rather, it occurs in the context of external events. These may include a variety of events regarded as salient by believers, including political developments, the actions of law enforcement, natural calamities and trends in popular morals and culture. Hence the meaning distilled by religious authorities is always read against these external events, in order to interpret the significance of what has occurred. At the same time, complex, ambiguous or dramatic events place pressures on believers to draw appropriate lessons from them. In short, judgements about the apocalypse are the result of a complex reciprocal process, which involves both the search for the authoritative meaning of texts and the need to assess events in religious terms. The process is reinforced by the fact that many of those who gravitate to such groups are ‘seekers’, individuals with life histories characterised by migration from one affiliation to another in search of absolute truth and meaning. A key element in this reciprocal process is the presence of an apocalyptic scenario. The scenario performs two functions: first, as noted earlier, it establishes the necessary and/or sufficient conditions for world-transformation; and second, it assigns roles to various actors. Critical roles may be identified not only for the deity and the forces of evil, but for believers themselves. To the extent that believers are given tasks in this cosmic division of labour, they cease to be onlookers and become potential combatants. Indeed, the multiplicity of available meanings, already discussed, may become biased in favour of those that most convincingly provide believers with an active role. The bias in favour of activism is particularly likely to emerge in situations where the flow of events appears to confirm apocalyptic imminence. In other words, the ‘signs and portents’ by which believers chart eschatological events can be read in ways that suggest an imminent breakthrough.32 This may take the form of events in the natural world (earthquakes, for example), but signs that other actors are playing the roles assigned to them in the apocalyptic scenario can be even more powerful. The Branch Davidians clearly believed that the actions of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal Bureau of Investigation demonstrated that they were playing out pre-ordained endtime roles. The sense of imminence heralds a brief period of intense movement activity, centred not only on the meaning of the signs but on the

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behaviour deemed necessary. As David Bromley observes, divergent interpretations are likely to result in a power struggle in which those deemed to be deviants are destroyed or expelled. Once doctrinal homogeneity has been achieved, a point comes where a final determination is made about the actions believers need to take, the stage of closure that Bromley calls ‘sealing’.33 Such crisis situations necessarily put doctrine into flux, for its meaning is shaped not only by the usual institutional factors but by dramatic changes in the group’s situation vis-à-vis its adversaries. Whether the outcome will be retreat or confrontation cannot be readily predicted. Although sealing implies an eventual commitment to some irrevocable position, until, that point is reached, there is likely to be a brief but hectic period of fluidity as beliefs are tested against circumstances. Once the sealing has occurred and an authoritative orientation has been adopted, the movement looks much as the stereotype of fundamentalism would suggest: intolerant of change, unquestioningly loyal, faithful to a single set of textual interpretations, with a consistent attitude toward the outside world, whether of separation or conflict. This occurs, however, as a stage in a process, not because a movement possesses certain innate characteristics. The process therefore includes periods of both plasticity and solidification. The same process may be found in both New Religious Movements (with which Bromley was principally concerned) and putatively fundamentalist movements within historic religious communities. Neither is unchanging; both respond to perceived eschatological cues in their environment. If fundamentalists appear different, it is only because they define themselves against opponents within their own religious communities, as well as against those outside it. However, the alternating periods of doctrinal modification and consolidation occur in both cases. Conclusion In the nineteenth century it was widely believed that ‘excessive’ religious devotion (or ‘enthusiasm’ as it was then called) might lead to insanity. This was held to be the case not only by psychiatrists, but also by conventional believers. From it sprang the legend, for example, that the millennialists who accepted William Miller’s predictions of the Second Coming in the early 1840s ended up in asylums.34 While we tend to smile patronisingly at such ideas today, imputations of fundamentalist violence are often scarcely more sophisticated.

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In the interest of clarity, it might be better to retire ‘fundamentalist’ to the lexicon of abandoned terms, in the same manner as the equally dubious ‘cult’. However, the former is doubtless too entrenched in both common and academic usage to permit such a simple solution. At the least, statements about the political behaviour of religious believers need to be handled with great care. There is no simple, unilinear relationship between violence on the one hand, and religious variables on the other; whether the religious characteristics involve charismatic leadership, textual literalism, charges of official laxity or resistance to compromise. Analytical problems have been exacerbated by the compartmentalisation of research. As a result, ‘fundamentalisms’ emerging out of historic religious traditions and ‘cults’/New Religious Movements, of a more innovative character, have stimulated separate literatures. Without ignoring the differences, it seems clear that the same level of individual commitment and conflictual relationships with the environment can occur in both. Both, too, have engendered sharp polemics from opponents, whether in the form of the anti-cult movement or opposition to fundamentalist political aims. These polemics have often become entwined with the work of analysis, to the detriment of both. NOTES 1. J.Gordon Melton and David G.Bromley, ‘Challenging Misconceptions About the New Religions-Violence Connection’, in David G.Bromley and J.Gordon Melton (eds.), Cults, Religion, and Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.42. 2. John R.Hall, with Philip D.Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh, Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan (London: Routledge, 2000); Catherine Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate (New York: Seven Bridges, 2000). 3. Walter Laqueur, ‘Postmodern Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs 75 (SeptemberOctober 1996), pp.24–36; Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 4. ‘Religion and Terrorism’, interview with Bruce Hoffman, 22 February 2002, Religioscope,http://www.religioscope.com/info/articles/ 003_Hoffman_terrorism.htm, accessed 26 September 2002. 5. James R.Lewis, ‘Safe Sects? Early Warning Signs of “Bad Religions”’, http://www.religioustolerance.org/safe_sec.htm, accessed 1 November 2002; Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the World to Save It: Aum

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6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism (New York: Henry Holt, 1999); Adam Szubin, Carl J.Jensen III and Rod Gregg, ‘Interacting with “Cults”: A Policing Model’, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 69 (September 2000), pp. 16–24. George M.Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), pp.41, 67. An understanding of Protestant fundamentalism is complicated by imprecise and often overlapping terminology. Fundamentalists may best be understood as the separatist wing of evangelicalism. Nonfundamentalist evangelicals, such as Billy Graham, are distinguished from fundamentalists less by theological differences than by a willingness to engage with the larger society. Overlapping on both are Pentecostals, set apart by their emphasis on experiential religion and such ‘gifts of the spirit’ as faith-healing and speaking in tongues. Marsden (note 6), p.94. Susan Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991). ‘The Unreleased Interview with Osama bin Laden, 21 February 2001’, Religioscope,http://www.religioscope.com/info/doc/jihad/ubl_int_l.htm, accessed 25 July 2002. Samuel P.Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p.96. Ibid., pp.47, 217. Amartya Sen, ‘A World Not Neatly Divided’, New York Times, 23 November 2001; Amartya Sen, ‘Civilisational Imprisonments’, New Republic, 10 June 2002, pp.28–33. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, rev. edn. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001). On the separate origins of revivalism, see William G.McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). The trans-cultural conception of fundamentalism advanced by the Fundamentalism Project turns fundamentalism into a procrustean bed in the attempt to do so, seemingly based on the view that the spread of the term to ever more contexts is unstoppable. Martin E.Marty and R.Scott Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p.viii. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor, 1959). Juergensmeyer (note 15), p.124.

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20. ‘Report from Suzanne Stephens to Jim Stonebraker for the Stockhausen Home Page, September 29, 2001’, http://www.stockhausen.org/ eyewitness.html, accessed 27 October 2002. 21. ‘Hirst apologises for 11 Sept. comments’, http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/ entertainment/arts/2268307.stm, accessed 27 October 2002. 22. Lee Harris, ‘Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology’, Policy Review 114 http:// www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris_print.html, accessed 2 September 2002. 23. Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971), pp.56–7. 24. Lifton (note 5), p.65. 25. Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, rev. edn. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 26. Jeffrey Kaplan, ‘Absolute Rescue: Absolutism, Defensive Action and the Resort to Force’, in Michael Barkun (ed.), Millennialism and Violence (London: Frank Cass, 1996), pp.128–63. 27. David G.Bromley, ‘Dramatic Denouements’, in Bromley and Melton (note 1), pp.11–41. 28. Ibid., p.11. 29. Ibid., p.28. 30. Eugene Gallagher, ‘Questioning the Frame: The Canadian, Israeli and US Reports’, in Jeffrey Kaplan (ed.), Millennial Violence: Past, Present and Future (London: Frank Cass, 2002), pp. 109–22. 31. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. edn. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p.15. 32. David Rapoport, ‘Messianic Sanctions for Terror’, Comparative Politics 20 (1988), pp.195–211. 33. Bromley (note 27), p.29. 34. Michael Barkun, Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-Over District of New York in the 1840s (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), p. 41.

5 The Uniqueness of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Fourth Wave of International Terrorism GABRIEL BEN-DOR and AMI PEDAHZUR

Islamic fundamentalist terrorism has become the single most influential phenomenon of the first years of the new millennium. This essay examines the phenomena of Islamic fundamentalism and its translation into terrorism in two contexts. First, we look into the theological roots of Islamic fundamentalism assuming a social sciences perspective. We posit that, within the paradigms of rationalism defined by social science as a modern academic discipline, the phenomenon can be examined both in the light of the basic characteristics it shares with all fundamentalist movements, and in the ways Islamic fundamentalism differs from other movements. These differences are substantial. They include the activist makeup and totalistic character of Islam, its ability to penetrate interstate boundaries, and the total adherence of believers to specific behavioural tenets leading both to and from a strong orientation to things collective. The immediacy of faith in the lives of believers makes it difficult for them to separate religion from politics. The Islamic commandment of jihad emphasises the need to fight for one’s faith, and the immediacy of that need. Thus, while affected by concrete economic, social and political conditions which prevail at a given time in each Islamic country, they tend to be vulnerable to waves of fundamentalism. The difference seems to be in degree rather than in kind. In the second part of this essay we present the development of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism over the last decades, and to examine its manifestations and consequences. By linking the historical development of Islamic terrorism to the basic nature of fundamentalist Islam, we hope to provide evidence that these events are indeed rooted in the basic nature of Islamic fundamentalism.

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Introduction The events of 11 September 2001, as well as recent terrorist attacks in different parts of the world such as India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Kenya, Israel, Egypt and elsewhere, share a basic common element. All of them were perpetrated by extreme Islamic movements. Several studies of the recent terrorist wave, which was labelled by Rapoport as the fourth wave,1 indicate that the vast majority of new terrorist organisations which were established in the last decade of the twentieth century are religiously motivated organisations, most prominently Islamic ones.2 The purpose of this essay is first to describe the notion of fundamentalism with special reference to Islamic fundamentalism. Unlike most studies in the field of comparative politics, we will focus on the uniqueness of Islamic fundamentalism compared to other fundamentalist movements rather than its similarities to them. In addition, we will evaluate the effects of Islamic fundamentalism as well as its future prospects. Following that, we will explore the expansion of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism over the last decades, its characteristics and outcomes. The Challenges of Studying Fundamentalism from a Social Sciences Perspective The study of complex social and political phenomena always raises a dilemma of duality. On the one hand, we would like our research to be as universal as possible. In terms of the ability to generalise, the more universal the approach, the higher the value of the work in purely scientific terms. Our instincts and training tell us that the more cases our explanation includes, the more satisfactory the explanation.3 In other words, the fewer the exceptions, the greater the sense of having done an adequate job of explanation. The more numerous the exceptions, the greater the concern that our explanation is not complete, and perhaps even unsatisfactory. As a result, we search for holistic models that will explain everything that is included in a given system. The ideal model is a deductive one; however, upon examination, we realise that the variables involved are too numerous and the variance too great for this to be a realistic approach. As a rule, such attempts have not been successful in contemporary social and political analysis.4 As early as the 1950s, Robert Merton advocated middle-range theories as an approach. Joseph La Palombara used the term ‘partial

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systemic explanations’ to express a similar idea during the late 1960s and early 1970s.5 The development of our tools in social science research has not been so rapid as to remove those limitations that made it almost impossible to use holistic models two or three decades ago.6 Of course, it would be most desirable and satisfactory to explain all cases of fundamentalism in a single theoretical framework. The necessity of comparing different types of fundamentalism could then be bypassed. Unfortunately, the huge literature on fundamentalism that has appeared recently has illuminated the topicality of this phenomenon, but, by and large, has failed to deliver.7 It has not even been able to come up with good, universally acceptable definitions of what the whole thing is about in the first place, and all attempts to define it in a way that would allow a single theory to cut across regional and cultural differences have been unsuccessful.8 Generally, the difficulty has been the lack of a real theoretical orientation on the part of authors who are more interested in arguing a point, studying a case or analysing a theological dispute than in creating or uncovering general theory. Conversely, in other cases, the material was just too big and diverse to fit a single theory. Neither a deficiency in scholarship, nor the faults of the analysis are what prevented the accomplishment of universality. It makes more sense to accept fundamentalism as a phenomenon that, while to some extent universal, should be understood in terms of the concrete society, theology and culture in which it was born and in which it plays an active role.9 Our desire for a universal perspective is defeated by the structure, or rather the lack of structure, of the phenomenon. Fundamentalism may thus be defined as a movement that is radical in terms of its goals, extremist in terms of its methods and literalist in terms of its adherence to scripture. Beyond that, we must acknowledge that there are many different forms of fundamentalism and that their comparison may yield important insights into such questions as why a particular form appears in one place and not another, why the intensity of one is that much greater than another, and why one dissipates at the same time as the other first makes its appearance on the scene.10 Such questions can be formulated, and perhaps eventually answered, more easily when we keep in mind the importance of a comparative perspective and do not yield to the temptation to generalise prematurely, before the insights of the comparative effort have been articulated and integrated into our theoretical frameworks. Hence, we need to reduce the level of analysis.11 It does not make sense to study fundamentalism as a single entity. Indeed, even Islamic

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fundamentalism is too big a unit of analysis. This is illustrated by the huge differences between, say, Morocco and Indonesia, in society, history, culture and geography. It makes more sense to speak of fundamentalism in Middle Eastern Islam, a unit that has far more cultural and political coherence.12 The present essay takes this perspective as its point of departure.13 The Jihad The first, and perhaps the most general point we need to consider is that of jihad, holy war in popular parlance.14 Jihadis one of the most visible elements of Islamic fundamentalism, and therefore perhaps the element requiring the closest examination. The willingness to sacrifice for one’s faith may be a requirement in most religions but it is only in Islam that there is such an explicit doctrine of fighting for the faith and a doctrine too that is so deeply ingrained in the popular mind The fact is that the doctrine of jihad is an extremely complicated one. Jihad is declared only by competent religious authorities and only after taking into account not only the chances of victory, but also the risks to the integrity and the well-being of the Islamic community in general. It follows that jihad is declared formally and legally only in few cases, and that it ought not to be considered as an automatic option in every case in which Muslims confront an enemy or an outside force that is able to threaten Islamic lands or resources. On the other hand, this set of qualifications and reservations is not always known and realised on the popular level. While these are intellectually important reservations, they are basically the property of the more educated élites.15 On the popular level, jihad and its implications are invoked much more easily, and jihad is in fact one of the most popular concepts among Muslims. We would not go so far as to argue that Islam has a jihad mentality16 or culture, but jihad occupies in the mind of most Muslims a much more important and prominent place than in the case of other religions. This, of course has implications for the theology and politics of fundamentalism.17 The Ishtishad An important and related point that must be made is that Islamic commandments and beliefs have a greater sense of immediacy than in other religions. The most extreme case is the concept of afterlife and martyrdom. In all religions, afterlife is important, and no religious

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person can be indifferent to the distinctions between heaven and hell. What religion can accept the view that the course of the human being comes to termination with the end of the physical existence of the body? For example, in the most important Jewish prayer, the 18 benedictions, the second of the 18 ends with blessing the Almighty as the one who raises the dead. In the 13 principles of the Jewish faith as articulated by the Rambam, the great medieval philosopher-theologian Maimonides, the final principle is again that the Almighty will raise the dead. In practice, however, this is not a major concern. Few Jews give this point a really important place in their thinking about life and death, and few would be willing to sacrifice their lives deliberately in order to enjoy a good or better life thereafter. If it is necessary, Jews are willing to die for the sanctification of the Divine Name, but they do so as a necessary evil, when continuing to live in sin or blasphemy would be intolerable. However, many Muslims indeed believe that the reward for dying as a martyr for the faith is so immediate and direct that such death is not something to be avoided, but rather something to be embraced. In some sects of Islam, notably Shiites, this is a greater element than among others, but of course the very existence of this phenomenon is almost unique. This is why Israel at times has found it very difficult to deter Shiite extremists in Lebanon. By definition, deterrence is ultimately making the adversary pay a higher price than justified by any possible gain. The ultimate penalty or price is considered, within the framework of deterrence, to make the adversary lose his very life. But when such a cost is not considered intolerable, and when some are willing to pay it joyfully, the entire calculus of deterrence is undermined to the point of collapse. This is not to say that all or most Muslims even remotely resemble this particular model of thinking, but the phenomenon does exist in the Islamic community as an important fact of life,18 and this is not the case in other religions today.19 The ‘Activist’ Attribute of Islam The existence of political space is not, in and of itself, decisively important, if the orientation of the movement in question is not activist and vigorous enough to use the space and fill it. In the case of Islam it is indeed activist and vigorous enough.20 This has to do with the fact that Islam is the youngest of the three major monotheistic religions, and the one that is still growing fastest in terms of numbers of believers. Clearly, this is not the case with Jews or the various Christian churches. A Muslim friend argued a while ago that Judaism is the religion of the

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old, Christianity the religion of the middle-aged and Islam the religion of the young. This view has enabled its adherents to accept as inevitable the eventual supremacy of Islam as the natural heir of the two older monotheistic religions. It also enables and even encourages them to proselytise openly, something that Jews have never done, and most Christians today find unfashionable and unpalatable. The ‘Protest’ Attribute of Islam As the developing world participates in a protest movement against Western democracy with its imperialist and colonial heritage and Judaeo-Christian traditions, Islam contributes its strength, its numbers and its activist, protest ideology. This interesting political-psychological phenomenon is a fact of life in a world growing smaller and more crowded, and a fact that can have far-reaching consequences. A developing world continent such as Africa does contain important Christian populations; however, mass conversion only exists in Islam, which continues to grow quickly while Christianity basically stagnates. Even within Western democracies, there are citizens who identify with the developing world, while they enjoy the benefits of the societies in which they live. In the United States, some African-American athletes are willing to play in leagues dominated by white men, but they register their protest against the identity of the society those leagues represent by converting to Islam and using Islamic names that differentiate them from white players and from those black players who lack this kind of consciousness and activism. The historical accuracy or inaccuracy of the sources of their anger and protest do not seem to be involved in their decision to follow this course. The vigour of youth and the vigour of protest complement each other potently. The ‘Totalistic’ Attribute of Islam Islam demands total adherence from its believers. More accurately, Islam is not merely a religion in the usual limited sense of the term. It is a total civilisation, encompassing every aspect of the life of the individual as well as the community.21 One might argue that this is the case with all religions, that this is what religion is all about, but that is not good enough. Other religions may say ‘give Caesar that which is his due’ and similar formulations, indicating that they accept some separation of church from state. But that is not the case with Islam and never has been.22

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Islam is a religion of commandments, most of them quite practical. These commandments refer to every aspect of life and not only those that are considered religious in the technical sense. Islam deals both with relations between man and God, and with ethical relations among human beings and groups. This includes everything that the individual believer or groups of believers may encounter in their lifetimes, from commercial relations23 to marital affairs. In other words, the call of God applies to everything that the believer does, and this call does not recognise any boundaries between different spheres. Hence, separation of religion from state is indeed not a viable option and it does not exist, constitutionally, in any of the Arab countries, though a major experiment has been tried in Turkey with mixed results. The ascendance of the Islamic party in the recent elections there points up the fragility of a secular movement in an Islamic state. One can argue that much of what we have just said also applies to Judaism, which is also a behavioural religion. It, too, is based on commandments and its commandments apply to all walks of life. Just as in Islamic jurisprudence we find numerous references to commerce, society and even outright politics, these very elements are present in the Talmud and Halacha. Much of this argument is valid on purely theoretical-theological grounds. But in practice, the co-existence of the Jewish religion with strong, alien, political and military domination led the Jews early in their development to accept the idea of ‘ diva demalchut dina ’, which is to say, that the law of the Kingdom is the Law, simply because the state has its own domain. This is the key to understanding the difference. Because Judaism was the religion of the few and the weak, it could come to terms with this kind of challenge, accepting and even welcoming the virtual separation of religion from state, since the latter was alien anyway. But in Islam, the idea of alien domination has never really been accepted, and the basic reference is to the domain of the Muslims themselves.24 In contrast, even when Jews had their own state, the older traditions enabled them to accept the existence of the more-or-less secular state, even when it is Jewish. For Muslims this has not been the case. They have enjoyed successes in maintaining their own, more-or-less independent political entities. Jews have not been able to do so during most of their long and troubled history. The success of Islamic fundamentalism is rooted in its political implications and flavour, which in turn are rooted in the fact that any separation of religion and state is tenuous, if present at all. In contrast, the value of that separation, which is embedded in Christian and Jewish

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societies, reduces greatly the political dimension of those societies, however fundamentalist. The Political ‘Revolutionary’ Attribute of Islam In few other cases is there such profound belief in the creative potential of the political system. Adherents to other religions, notably Christians and Jews may go about the business of being good in religious terms, even while living in what is accepted as a ‘bad’ state. For Jews this has been the practical result of the divorce between them and their state throughout most of their history. But for Muslims the existence of the state is acceptable only if it serves the purposes of the Islamic community. Leaders are considered legitimate only as long as they uphold the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, in which case they are indeed forgiven for other errors and omissions. In other words, the Islamic state has a more moral, ethical and theological character than its Jewish or Christian counterparts, and this creates a different, much higher set of expectations from it.25 Leaders are expected to represent perfection in order to merit positions of leadership, they must model themselves on the perfection attained by the ideal leader, the Prophet Muhammad. Outsiders sometimes find this puzzling; they perceive Muslims as naïve and cannot understand how Muslims can take seriously the idea that presentday leaders might be able to reach the state of perfection achieved by the founder of the religion. This, however, is something that is truly Islamic and, arguably, the most praiseworthy in terms of making the state accountable to the popular will, or in this case the divine will as revealed to the people through the religion. In practical terms, such high expectations can cause disappointment and frustration when they are not fulfilled, leading to frequent violence in overthrowing unsatisfactory regimes. In no other major religion is there such an intimate interrelationship between religion and state. Thus, religious extremism in Islam has more and greater political implications and ramifications than in other cases.26 Everything that is Islamic would tend to be more political than in other religions, but certainly in the case of Islamic fundamentalism where it obviously is impossible to keep the phenomena far from the political arena. The lack of separation between religion and state, the strong collectivist orientation and the close connection to political life in general all make the state machinery an often realistic target for Islamic fundamentalist subversion.

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The Unique Political Expansion of Islam The activist, protest, totalistic and collectivist nature of the Islamic religion explain why Islam alone, among the three major monotheistic religions, is in a unique position to expand across national boundaries. Islamic fundamentalists are able to penetrate the political systems of other countries in the name of Islam. While the weakness or strength of various Islamic countries varies appreciably, many of them have to contend with strong outside influences, and they find this challenge very troublesome to meet. It is conceivable for Iran to dominate politics in Sudan, at least temporarily, or to have a major impact in Lebanon, for example, at a time when such ideological-religious penetration is very rare in other parts of the world.27 Jewish fundamentalism exists, to be sure, but it rarely expands outside Israel.28 Christian fundamentalism is present around the world. In particular, there is a strong and powerful Protestant fundamentalist presence in the southern and western parts of the United States, and, of course, millions of Protestants, embracing widely disparate expressions of fundamentalism, live in all parts of the globe. The evangelical activities of people like Billy Graham testify that Protestant fundamentalists indeed have ambitions to work outside their own countries.29 Yet their ability, indeed their ambition, to penetrate the social or political fabric of other countries has been extremely limited in practice. Their theology and political doctrines have not given outside activities a very high priority, so that this is not something that has been carefully thought out, analysed in theory or acted out in practice. Roman Catholicism, a religion that is organised in a formal global hierarchy, seems to have a more universal orientation. Indeed, the word, Catholic, in the context of the Catholic church, means universal, and the trans-national, worldwide nature of the church has been a tenet since the very beginning. The centrality of the Papacy, and its infallibility in matters of faith, illustrate this tenet in the most basic way. Yet the universalism of the church is in fact the characteristic mode of operation of the established order. When fundamentalists rebel they often do so in the name of some local particularism, which represents an interesting phenomenon.30 In fact, this presents a contrast to Islam, which tends to get along well with the existence of individual states. These states generally have been able to harness Islam and its establishment to their own purposes.31 But when Islam becomes really radical, it tends to challenge the individual state, and when it becomes very active, either by capturing the machinery of the state, or in opposition to it, it is able

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to find the support, resources and legitimacy that enable it to do so. On the other hand, Catholic practice is one of a universal hierarchy, which has been immune to the phenomenon of fundamentalism, so that if there is a strong fundamentalist movement, it can act only by opposing the universal hierarchy and within specific states. In other words, Islamic fundamentalism has a regional and international space enjoyed by no other religion, and by very few ideologies at the present time.32 The Uniqueness of Islamic Fundamentalism and its Consequences Social phenomena differ greatly from one another, and just as we do not like it when people refuse to make comparisons, we also do not like it when they refuse to look at differences. There is a danger that people will say that Islamic fundamentalism is just like any other. In other words, that once one confronts a certain degree of extremism, one can no longer learn anything from other forms of extremism. This seems to us somewhat dangerous. According to Raymond Aron, the great FrenchJewish political sociologist, the essence of social science is to look for similarities in that which appears different, but also to look for differences in that which appears similar—excellent advice indeed.33 In the past, observers have been known, when encountering a new radical phenomenon, to say, ‘Oh well, we all have our radicals; why should this case be different?’ This type of thinking can blind us to the great fluctuations of degree and quality in phenomena that may resemble each other on the surface. Extremism and radicalism normally refer to degrees of intensity in commitment to ideologies and the willingness to make sacrifices and remain faithful to that which appears to be worthy of belief. Some have even argued that, as Barry Goldwater put it in 1964, extremism in the service of liberty is no vice, while moderation in the defence of liberty is no virtue. More to the point, there is merit in the argument that one must look critically and profoundly at what is being fought for, so extremely or radically. One must examine the type of cause that is the objective of extremism and determine whether it is, indeed, different from other causes. Failure to do so leads to a superficial and perhaps misleading assessment of the case in question. As we know, Muslims themselves dislike terms such as extremism, radicalism and fundamentalism.34 They refer to the people in question as Islamists, or Islamiytln, namely those who are committed to the Islamisation of the social and political system of their countries, and of

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other countries as well, because Islamic radicalism, in the final analysis, does not recognise the boundaries of the secular national states, and certainly not those between the various Islamic countries. They do recognise the need to accept these borders temporarily, for reasons of pragmatism. We feel that terms and definitions are important.35 Marx defined radicalism as the achievement of the goals and objectives in question, at the expense of other values. Hence, commitment and the willingness to use a calculus that gives tremendous value to this is a rational movement,36 but one that works with values that are entirely different in scale from those of others. Fundamentalism refers to scripturalism, and strict adherence to written commandments and interpretations, as well as a return to the fundamentals of religion. In this sense, the point must be made that from the theological point of view, there is no value judgement here when one uses the term ‘fundamentalism’.37 On the other hand, there are political problems associated with fundamentalism by the very definition of the term. There probably are many different attitudes with respect to the existence of extreme and fundamentalist ideologies in democratic, indeed in all regimes, but obviously a strong fundamentalist component must be a problem for any kind of regime.38 It is clear that the main problem is that fundamentalists reject any legitimacy not anchored in scripture, and such legitimacy is at times all but impossible to achieve for any kind of regime which is not in itself a fundamentalist one.39 This is as true with the very existence of the regime as it is true with the specific decision or pieces of legislation it undertakes. In the case of Islam, we are speaking of a large number of political entities.40 About 40 countries in the world have an Islamic majority and are classified as Islamic states, at least in the sense that they are formally affiliated with some organisation of Islamic states, above all the bloc of Islamic states holding periodic meetings and summit sessions. Many leaders of these states find this a problem rather than an asset, but they have little choice other than to act as if they belong to Islam, or risk making things that much worse for themselves in the domestic political arena.41 The accumulation of all these points adds up to a fundamentalism that today is more immediate, more violent, more political and more popular than any kind of fundamentalism in any other religion. Islam is so different in so many relevant aspects that one must recognise that the practical implications of Islamic fundamentalist activities are also different, in fact more intense, in every way. The result is not a

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particularly pretty picture, but it cannot be ignored. Nor will beautifying the unattractive picture in the name of liberal ideals or cultural relativism do any good.42 In the following section we present a short overview of the phenomena of terrorism, and its developments, in the past two decades. New trends in regional and global terrorism, commonly referred to as the fourth wave of terrorism, often correspond with fundamentalism— primarily of an Islamic nature. Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism Terrorism has become part of human history since the late nineteenth century and most prominently since the second half of the twentieth century. The use of terrorism has never been restricted to a single country or ideological apparatus. It has become a tactic which manifests national, ideological and religious grievances all over the world. For many years scholars studying terrorism have agreed that despite the horrible outcome of their deeds, terrorists used to stick to some rules. For example, they mostly used the gun and the bomb and avoided adopting the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).43 Moreover, many of the terrorist acts were mainly oriented to the media for the purpose of attracting the attention of international public opinion to the grievances of the terrorists.44 Hence, it could be argued that despite its violent nature, terrorism was perceived by many as a tactical annoyance, rather then as a strategic threat.45 In the early 1980s, however, a shift in the nature of terrorism appeared. The Islamic revolution in Iran introduced a new type of terrorism which was inspired by religious causes and supported by revolutionary theocratic regimes.46 Although religion had played a dominant role in the eruption of Christian, Jewish and Hindu terrorism over the years, the expansion of terrorism inspired by Islam was dramatic.47 Figure 1, which is based on an analysis of the chronology of terrorist events all over the world since the late 1980s,48 indicates that from 1992 to 1994 the number of acts perpetrated by Islamic organisations was greater than that of all the other organisations combined. Despite the fact that from 1995 until 2000 there was a significant decrease in the number of attacks initiated by Islamic organisations, the first two years of the new millennium indicate a significant rise in the number of terrorist attacks perpetrated in the name of Islam. While in 2001 the number of attacks by Islamic organisations stood at 53 (compared to 67 attacks by non-Islamic organisations), in 2002 the number grew to 57

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FIGURE 1 DISTRIBUTION OF TERRORIST ATTACKS PERPETRATED BY ISLAMIC AND NON-ISLAMIC ORGANISATIONS, 1988–2002

while the number of attacks by non-Islamic organisations remained steady. What are the factors that induced this last wave of Islamic terrorism? The answer to this question should be given with respect to developments which occurred in at least two arenas. In the international arena, the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan was perceived by many Muslims as a holy war and thus attracted young men from many Arab and other Muslim countries to take part. Afterwards, these fighters went back to their countries and established new militant cells. In the Middle Eastern arena, the conflict in Lebanon has also changed its nature. The strong Iranian influence on the Shiite population in the country has led to the establishment of a radical Islamic force, Hizballah, at the expense of the less militant and more nationalistic Shiite movement, Amal. Meanwhile, the religious component in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has grown. The establishment of the Islamic organisations Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the 1980s changed the nature of the conflict. It is no longer a struggle between two peoples who are fighting over the same piece of land, but rather a conflict between religions. The militants of Hamas and the PIJ have always been clear about the fact that the establishment of an independent Palestinian-Islamic state will be only the first stage in promoting a pan-Islamic revolution.

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It should be mentioned that the religious nature of terrorism has not been manifested only in the rhetoric of the organisations. It has had a dramatic effect on their mode of operation as well. Unlike the aforementioned terrorists who believed that the gun and the bomb could serve their purposes, the new Islamic terrorists inflicted what was labelled by Sprinzak as ‘mass casualty terrorism’, that is, operations whose main goal was to cause as much damage and loss of life as possible, primarily by multiplying the damage effected by conventional weapons.49 Indeed, a comparison between the tactics adopted by Islamic and non-Islamic organisations reveals a significant difference. For example, while kidnapping constituted 17.6 per cent of the attacks perpetrated by non-Islamic organisations, it formed only 8.1 per cent of the attacks by Islamic organisations. The same is true for planting bombs: 18.9 per cent of the attacks were by non-Islamic organisations as against only 11.4 per cent of the ones perpetrated by Islamic ones. The main force multiplier of Islamic terrorism is the suicide bomber. Despite the fact that suicide terrorism is a tactic which was applied by other organisations such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in Turkey, the various Islamic terrorist organisations have developed it over the years and turned it into an effective strategic weapon. This was manifested in the suicide attacks in Israel, Lebanon, Tunisia, Indonesia, Egypt and Kenya. However, the clearest and most horrific effect of this tactic was demonstrated in the events of 11 September in Washington and New York. Indeed, the suicide technique has constituted only 7.2 per cent of the terrorist attacks perpetrated by non-Islamic organisations since the late 1980s, while in the case of Islamic organisations it has represented almost a quarter of all the attacks (23.9 per cent). The unique tactics of Islamic terrorists are closely related to their selection of targets. While non-Islamic organisations tend to act against non-random targets such as politicians and governmental bodies (12.5 per cent) and military and police officers (13.8 per cent), Islamic organisations focus on random targets. Most prominent among them are citizens who are simply passers-by (16.2 per cent), civilians who are gathered in places of entertainment (14.4 per cent) or those using public transportation (14 per cent). The most disturbing result of the unique selection of targets and tactics by Islamic organisations is manifested in the number of victims. Figure 2 demonstrates that, since 1992 (apart from 1995, 1996 and 1999), the number of victims (both dead and injured) of Islamic terrorism has been consistently higher than that of any other form of

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FIGURE 2 DISTRIBUTION OF VICTIMS IN TERRORIST ATTACKS PERPETRATED BY ISLAMIC AND NON-ISLAMIC ORGANISATIONS, 1988–2002

terrorism. Moreover, compared to the late 1980s, where the average number of Islamic terrorism victims did not exceed a few dozens, in 2000 the number of victims of Islamic terrorism stood at 437, while in 2001 and 2002, it was 5,178 and 2,332 respectively. After revealing the expansion of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism over the last few years and its consequences, we now turn to look into the roots of this phenomenon from a social sciences perspective. Conclusion Islamic fundamentalism is indeed closely associated with the new wave of terrorist events taking place globally. However, realising the magnitude of a threatening social or political phenomenon should not discourage us or make us too pessimistic or deterministic.50 While Islam is both more vulnerable to fundamentalism and more likely to end up with a more violent version of it, there is no need to assume that Muslims will always be fundamentalists or that the majority of them enjoy supporting the fundamentalists among them.51 Fundamentalism is the product of failure, humiliation and backwardness, and there are many important social and political forces in the Islamic world determined to make progress towards reducing or perhaps even eradicating fundamentalism.52 Fundamentalism has come and gone in waves, and while the present wave is serious and dangerous, it is likely

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that one day it, too, will go away, if not forever, then for a long time. The forces of moderation and progress in the Islamic countries have many important interests in common with the Western democracies and Israel,53 and the potential of that commonality can and should be explored in depth and with sophistication. NOTES 1. David Rapoport, ‘The Fourth Wave: September 11 and the History of Terrorism’, Current History 100/650 (2001), pp.419–24. 2. See, for example, Ami Pedahzur, William Eubank and Leonard Weinberg, ‘The War on Terrorism and the Decline of Terrorist Groups Formation: A Research Note’, Terrorism and Political Violence 14/3 (2002), pp.141–7; Bruce Hoffman, ‘Terrorism Trends and Prospects’, in Ian O.Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1999), pp.15–28. 3. See A.Lipjhart, ‘Comparative Politics and the Political Method’, American Political Science Review 65/3 (1971), pp.682–93; G.Sartori, ‘Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics’, American Political Science Review 64/4 (1970), pp.1033–53. 4. See J.LaPalombara, ‘Macrotheories and Microapplications in Comparative Politics: A Widening Chasm’, Comparative Politics 111 (1968), pp.52–77. 5. Ibid. 6. T.Skopcol and M.Somers, ‘The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Theory’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (1980), pp. 174–97. 7. There have been some notable attempts to develop studies of fundamentalism in a comparative perspective. See, for instance, H.Lazarus-Yafeh, ‘Contemporary Fundamentalism—Judaism, Christianity, Islam’, Jerusalem Quarterly 47 (1988), pp.27–39; Lawrence Kaplan, Fundamentalisms in Comparative Perspective (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992); Bruce M.Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989); and Martin E.Marty and R.Scott Appleby (eds.), Accounting for Fundamentalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). However, these studies tend to be historical discussions of given cases with an attempt to see what is common in them after the analysis, rather than bona fide comparative studies in the sense of starting with a common theoretical framework for the simultaneous study of comparable cases. See Lipjhart (note 3). 8. See the following articles in The Annals 524 (1992): M.J.Deeb, ‘Militant Islam and the Politics of Redemption’, pp.53–65; I.Karasvan, ‘Monarchs,

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9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

Mullahs and Marshals: Islamic Regimes?’, pp. 103–19; and I.W.Zartman, ‘Democracy and Islam: The Cultural Dialectic’, pp. 181– 91. See also J.Esposito and J.Piscatori, ‘Democratization and Islam’, Middle East Journal 45/3 (1991), pp.427–40; J.Esposito, Islam and Politics, 3rd edn. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984); William Montgomery Watt, Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity (London: Routledge, 1988); Nazih N.Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge 1993); James P. Piscatori (ed.), Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis (Chicago: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991); and Mohammad Mohadessin, Islamic Fundamentalism: The New Global Threat (Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press, 1993). This is just a sample of the vast literature of the last decade, but of course there are many other sources that could be included. For an earlier list, see the bibliography in ‘Stateness and the “Return”, of Islam’, chapter 2 in Gabriel Ben-Dor, State and Conflict in the Middle East (New York: Praeger, 1983). The large literature quoted previously is quite ambivalent on this point. Some of it treats fundamentalism as a universal phenomenon, but much of it is in reality, if not in theory, a study of concrete cases with which the author happens to be familiar. One of the best explorations of such questions in the context of Islam is Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); see also Emmanuel Sivan and Menahem Friedman (eds.), ReligiousRadicalism and Politics in the Middle East (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990). See Sartori (note 3). See G.Ben-Dor, ‘Political Culture Approach to Middle East Politics’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 8 (1977), pp.43–63. With all due respect to the large number of publications in the field, the theoretical poverty of what we know is such that the study of this area is still in its infancy. Hence, it may be necessary not only to conduct theoretical studies, but also to think about the conditions for successfully doing so. See Harry Eckstein, ‘On the Etiology of Internal Wars’, in Bruce Mazlish et al. (eds.), Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1971); and G. Ben-Dor, ‘The Politics of Threat: Military Intervention in the Middle East’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology 1 (1973). The subtitle of this useful work is ‘The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History’. See also Vlannah R.Rahman, ‘The Concept of Jihad in Egypt’, in Gabriel R.Warburg and Uri M. Kupferschmidt (eds.), Islam, Nationalism, and Radicalism in Egypt and the Sudan (New York: Praeger, 1983). It is indeed a great pity that there are so many misunderstandings of the complexities of jihad not only on the popular level but even among

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16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

educated non-Muslims and also Muslims. Perhaps more knowledge about this phenomenon should do away with some of the popular notions of ideological zeal that are currently so strongly associated with the term. Indeed, I do not acknowledge the existence of such a thing as ‘mentality’ which seems to be unscientific and dangerous. See Ben-Dor (note 12). See W.Montgomery Watt, What is Islam? (London: Longmans, 1968). Indeed, this has become one of the greatest problems facing Israel in the peace process. See, for instance, G.Usher, ‘The Islamist Movement and the Palestinian Authority’, Middle East Report July-August 1994). One can find comparable examples, as in the case of some Tamils in the Sri Lanka conflict. See the little-known, but extremely interesting, observations in A.Jeffery, ‘The Political Importance of Islam’, Journal of Near East Studies 1 (1942), pp.383–95. This piece, which is somewhat polemical due to its birth in the context of the political tensions in India (still including at that time what later became Pakistan and Bangladesh), deserves greater attention. This is true to the point with respect to Islamic fundamentalism. By definition, it seems to be so self-contained as to isolate Islam from the rest of the world. See Watt (note 17). See John J.Donohue and John L.Esposito (eds.), Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). Watt (note 17). See also the article by the Ayatollah Khomeini, ‘Islamic Government’, in Donohue and Esposito (note 22). Erwin I.J.Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958). Elie Kedourie, Islam in the Modern World (Washington, DC: New Republic, 1980). For the penetrability of Middle East political systems, see the numerous sources and examples in Ben-Dor (note 12). The earlier ‘Arab Cold War’, a phrase coined by Malcolm H. Kerr in his book of the same title (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), is increasingly substituted by some form of ‘Islamic Cold War’, or even hot war, as in the case of the war between Iraq and the Islamic regime in Iran in the 1980s. See Gabriel Ben-Dor and David B.Dewitt (eds.), Conflict Management in the Middle East (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1987). This is due to the fact that there is only one Jewish state and only one independent Jewish political community. See Sivan and Friedman (note 10) and Lazarus-Yafeh (note 7). See Gilles Keppel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).

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30. Indeed, the duality of frequent rebellion against local power structures on the one hand, and basic obedience to the formal central hierarchy on the other, is striking, especially in the case of Catholic activism in Latin America. 31. See Ben-Dor, ‘Stateness and Ideology in Contemporary Middle East Politics’, The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 9/3 (1987), pp.1–35. 32. J.P.Nettl, ‘The State as a Conceptual Variable’, World Politics 20/4 (1968), pp.559–92. 33. See Harry Eckstein, ‘Case Study and Theory in Political Science’, in Fred I.Greenstein and Nelson W Polsby (eds.), Handbook of Political Science, Strategies of Inquiry 7 (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), pp.80– 104. 34. Some of this dislike is part of the general revolt of the people of the Middle East against the domination of their cultural lives by Western perceptions and concepts. See Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Pantheon, 1981). This piece is not less contentious, controversial and even biased than those that it criticises, but that does not detract from its great value as documentation of frustration and cultural resistance. 35. ‘To speak of “the” fundamentals of fundamentalism would signal arrogance. Yet any effort to describe international fundamentalisms… demands at least some sort of hypothesis. We need heuristic devices to begin a search. “Fundamentals”, then, refers to some distinctive, not necessarily unique, features of movements called fundamentalist. They need not be present in some way or measure in all such movements, but they should be characteristic of most of them’. Martin E.Marty, ‘Fundamentals of Fundamentalism’, in Kaplan (note 7), p.l5. 36. Gabriel A.Almond, ‘Rational Choice Theory and the Social Sciences’, in Gabriel A. Almond (ed.), A Discipline Divided (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990); G. Ben-Dor, ‘Arab Rationality and Deterrence’, in Aharon Klieman and Ariel Levite (eds.), Deterrence in the Middle East: Where Theory and Practice Converge (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 1993), pp.87–97. 37. In other words, fundamentalism is not a derogatory or pejorative term as it is now often used in everyday political discourse. I feel that this is one of the reasons why the term has become so unpopular in the Middle East. Yet, for the lack of a better term, we may need to stick with it for a while longer. 38. In the Islamic context, as in others, the defining mode of fundamentalist legitimacy is the one anchored in the religious message, not in the procedural aspects of formal democracy. Hence, in the wake of the apparent victory of the fundamentalists in the elections in Algeria in

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1991, their ‘most outspoken leader affirmed that it is Islam which has been the victor, as always, not democracy. We did not go to the ballot boxes for democracy’. Quoted in M.Kramer, ‘Politics and the Prophet’, New Republic (March 1993), p.39. 39. It seems to me that this is one of the truly universal characterizations attributed to fundamentalism. Indeed, the point appears in the literature trying to compare Islamic and Jewish fundamentalisms most frequently. See Esposito and Piscatori (note 8); and Fatima Mernissi, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993). 40. The following generalisations about Islam are based, obviously, on my own understanding and interpretation of Islamic theory and practice. They can and will be challenged by others whose understanding and interpretation differ from mine, which is as it should be in legitimate scholarly interchange and controversy. Essentially, my views are based on the literature on Islamic fundamentalism that has been cited thus far. For additional early sources that had a great impact on my thinking see the pertinent bibliography in Ben-Dor (note 12). Some of the most important works on Islam which I have found particularly helpful in thinking about the way the practice of Islam reflects theological and ideological underpinnings include: A.J.Arberry (ed.), Religion in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); H.A.R.Gibb, Mohammedanism (London: Oxford University Press, 1949); P.M. Holt, Ann K.S.Lambton and Bernard Lewis (eds.), Cambridge History of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968); Rosenthal (note 25); Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957); Gustave Von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952); idem, Modern Islam (New York: Doubleday, 1964); H.A.R.Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946); W.C. Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957); Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964); E.I.J. Rosenthal, Islam in the Modern National State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); Kedourie (note 26); Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968); Leonard Binder, The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (New York: Wiley, 1964); Richard P.Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford University Press, 1969); Bernard Lewis, The Middle East and the West (New York: Harper, 1964); idem, The Arabs in History (New York: Harper, 1964). 41. By this, I mean that the political potential of Islam is so strong that it cannot be ignored even by the most secular states, like Turkey, for

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42.

43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

denying the Islamic element in the state would provoke extremely strong feelings of resentment and opposition to the regime. In light of this, some regimes compromise their convictions in order to keep the potential Islamic opposition reasonably content. In this day and age, none of us would like to become involved in a religious war or even accuse other religions and civilisations of extremism or aggression. In the ‘new world order’, ideology and extremism should decline, not intensify; see Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Gulf War and the New World Order’, Survival 33/3 (1991), pp.195–210. Yet, there is no way to escape the fact that precisely in this day and age, there is a rekindling of extremism and fanaticism which does threaten Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Belittling or underestimating the danger smacks of paternalism that is bitterly resented by leading Muslim intellectuals, for example, Fatima Mernissi, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1993). Brian Jenkins, International Terrorism, the other World War (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1985). Bernd H.Brosius and Gabriel Weimann, ‘The Contagiousness of MassMediated Terrorism’, European Journal of Communication 6/1 (1991), pp.63–75. Peter Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counter Terrorism: The Evolving Dynamic (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996). Martha Crenshaw, ‘How Terrorism Declines’, Terrorism and Political Violence 3/1 (1991), pp.69–87; Martha Crenshaw, ‘The Psychology of Terrorism: An Agenda for the 21st Century’, Political Psychology 21/2 (2000), pp.405–20. Bruce Hoffman, ‘Holy Terror: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 18 (1995), pp.271–84; Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Mark Juergensmeyer, ‘Terror in the Name of God’, Current History 100/649 (2001), pp.357–61. The analysis is based on the ICT database. The whole data can be obtained at www.ict.org.il. Ehud Sprinzak, ‘Rational Fanatics’, Foreign Policy 120 (2000), pp.66– 73. Nor should this make us unduly optimistic, as seems to be the case, for example, in ‘Islam and the West’, Economist, 6 August 1994. As Reinhard Bendix argues, we are genuinely uncertain about future trends in macro-social and political developments and we need, therefore, to be on guard against deterministic fallacies; Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York: Wiley, 1964).

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52. R.Wright, ‘The Islamic Resurgence: A New Phase?’, Current History (February 1988), pp.53–6, 85. 53. A.K.Aboulmagd, ‘Islam in the Post-Communist World’, Problems of Communism (January-April 1992), pp.38–43.

6 Jewish Self-Defence and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel: Roots and Traditions ARIE PERLIGER and LEONARD WEINBERG

Introduction So far as many people are concerned, the principal role played by Jews in modern terrorist activity in the Middle East and elsewhere is that of victim. Nothing is more emblematic of this role than the wave of suicide bombings carried out against targets in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa over the last several years. Largely because of Israel’s long-standing conflict with the Palestinians and Muslim groups sympathetic to their cause, Jews and Jewish institutions have been the targets of terrorist attacks not only in the Middle East but also in Europe and other parts of the world. The role of Jews as victims of terrorist attacks fits into a wider conception of Jewish identity over the centuries: Jews as quintessential victims. Because of this by now stereotypical view, readers may have some difficulty adjusting to this essay’s subject: Jews not as victims but as perpetrators of terrorism; that is, Jews as members of relatively small sub-national groups carrying out acts of politically motivated violence intended to influence the behaviour of some audiences. If terrorism is a weapon of the weak and those operating at society’s margins, on reflection it should not be all that astonishing that Jews have employed this particular tactic. For until recently Jews, in general, have been exceptionally weak and usually at the margins of society, both Christian and Muslim. We intend to focus most of our attention on the terrorist activities of Jewish organisations in the years before and during the decades of the British Mandate in Palestine, culminating in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. However, before investigating the terrorism perpetrated by Jewish organisations in this era, one spanning roughly

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the first half of the twentieth century, we need to point out that their violence was not unprecedented. In a widely discussed article, David Rapoport recalls the ancient Zealots, a millennial Jewish sect whose militants used daggers or sicarri to carry out murders in public.1 In the years leading up to the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule (66–73 CE), The Zealots waged a ruthless campaign of assassination… The Zealot would emerge from the anonymous obscurity of a crowded market-place, draw the sica concealed beneath his robes and, in plain view of those present, slit the throat of a Roman legionnaire or of a Jewish citizen who had been judged by the group guilty of betrayal, apostasy, or both.2 The Zealots hoped their actions would provoke Roman repression and Jewish rebellion. They believed themselves to be living in the ‘end times’ and that the righteous and godly would prevail despite Rome’s vastly superior military prowess. Their miscalculation brought on not only defeat but an enormous calamity for the Jewish people, the sacking of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Second Temple and the advent of the Exilic Age. The catastrophe was so great that a strong tradition developed in the Talmudic literature, known as the ‘Three Oaths’, which admonished Jews to avoid provoking government authorities at all costs. Terrorism of course is, if nothing else, provocative.3 It is therefore not all that surprising that the next significant participation of Jews in terrorist violence involved individuals who had largely abandoned their communities and its values on behalf of secular, revolutionary concerns. We refer to the substantial role played by Jewish students and intellectuals in Russia during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth centuries in various attempts to bring down the Tsarist autocracy by means of terrorist violence. Estimates vary, depending upon the particular revolutionary band, but scholars repeatedly call attention to the significant presence of Jews in such groups as the Combat Organisation of the Socialist Revolutionaries. For example, the historian Anna Geifman reports that approximately 30 per cent of the latter’s female terrorists were of Jewish origins. She goes on to write that, ‘By joining the movement, a Jewish girl was not only opposing her parents’ political beliefs, but was also flouting one of the very foundations of Jewish society—her role as a woman in the family’.4

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The career of Sofia Ginsburg appears emblematic. Completely indifferent to the situation of the Jewish community in the Pale and a convert to Russian Orthodoxy (for reasons of expediency) she became caught up in revolutionary agitation during the 1880s. Fearing arrest, Ginsburg fled to Switzerland where she joined other exiled Jewish student revolutionaries in planning terrorist attacks on the Tsarist regime. After some years she returned to Russia to pursue her revolutionary objectives. In 1891 Ginsburg was arrested for publicly advocating the Tsar’s assassination and sentenced to a life term. She committed suicide shortly after beginning her sentence.5 The participation of significant numbers of Jews, or people of Jewish background at least, in revolutionary terrorism was not confined to Russia during the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II. The United States during the Nixon Administration (1969–74) offers another instance. The context was the anti-Vietnam war movement and the role played in it by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Among other things, the university-centred SDS promoted large-scale protest marches and demonstrations aimed at getting the United States to withdraw from the Vietnam conflict. In 1969, SDS suffered a factional split. Those most committed to direct action and violence, and to making what they thought would be a genuine revolution, separated and formed the Weathermen. Over the next few years, the Weathermen precipitated a number of highly publicised confrontations with the police, the so-called ‘Days of Rage’ in Chicago for example. These public and violent protests gave way to clandestine terrorist operations involving bank robberies and the bombing of public buildings. In the course of these revolutionary adventures several members of the Weathermen managed to blow themselves up while attempting to manufacture bombs in their New York headquarters, the Greenwich Village town-house owned by one of the revolutionary’s wealthy parents. Many Weathermen were, like their pre-Russian Revolution counterparts almost a century earlier, young university students or exstudents who had seemingly detached themselves from their Jewish roots. In conversations with each other, Mark Rudd, Kathy Boudin, Susan Stern and other Weathermen often discussed how far they had come from their cloying, bourgeois Jewish backgrounds.6 But how far had this journey really taken them? As in the case of their substantially more serious Russian predecessors, these Jewish radicals had come to view the world in Messianic terms. They defined themselves as a vanguard of the

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enlightened whose task was to lead the ‘masses’ or the working class to victory over the forces of injustice and thereby redeem the world. We may be accused of reductionism, but the ‘non-Jewish’ Jews who embarked on this course were of course expressing a secular version of an important element in the Jewish religious experience. Jewish involvement in modern terrorism is certainly dominated by but not completely restricted to this pattern. An important exception is provided by the All-Jewish Workers Union or Bund active in Lithuania, Poland and Russia from 1897 on.7 The Bund’s founders were committed to bringing an end to the Russian autocracy and replacing it with a new socialist economic and political order. They were also secularised. However, by contrast to Sofia Ginsburg and the other Jewish advocates and practitioners of revolutionary agitation and violence, they confined themselves to organising Jewish workers within the Tsarist Empire. The Bund represented an effort to promote the Jewish workers’ often desperate cause by merging Russian socialist revolutionary ideas with Jewish nationalism. The Bund’s nationalism was defined in terms of the claim to Jewish rights within Russia at a time when Zionist ideas were also winning supporters among other east European Jews. The Bund’s initial revolutionary programme explicitly rejected individual assassinations and other forms of terrorism but less as a matter of principle than out of a sense that these extreme measures were counter-productive. Over time and in practice, the Bund leaders came to applaud various terrorist attacks, particularly when they were directed against business owners and other symbols of ‘capitalist exploitation’. By the early years of the twentieth century, Bundist functionaries at the local level participated in terrorist violence with considerable frequency. Revenge and self-defence were almost always employed to justify these attacks. Accordingly, after a Bund member shot and wounded the Russian governor of Vilna in 1902, after he had ordered the flogging of 20 young Jewish workers, the party’s central committee proclaimed, ‘Honour and Glory to the avenger, who sacrificed himself for his brothers!’8 The Bund’s practice of eventually endorsing and practising terrorist methods on the basis of self-defence and vengeance was taken up by Zionists in Palestine from the period of the second Aliya onwards. For many Zionist young people arriving in Palestine from eastern Europe in the first years of the twentieth century, defence of the new Jewish communities was an overriding consideration. Often trained in self-defence techniques in Europe, these socialist-Zionist youth formed

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two principal groups, the Shomer and the Hagana, to protect the Jewish presence in Ottoman-controlled pre-First World War Palestine. The Zionist-Socialist Self-Defence Groups The Zionist movement in the early twentieth century served as an impetus for the mass migration of Jewish youth from eastern Europe to Palestine—which began at the end of 1903. These young people, numbers of whom were trained by Jewish defence organisations in Europe, made it their goal to implement the lessons learned in the Diaspora by forming a defensive framework for the protection of the Jewish community. In this manner they served as the basis for the establishment of several Zionist-socialist groups that focused on the security aspects involved in creating a Jewish political presence in Palestine. The two main groups were the Shomer and the Hagana. The Shomer (Guard), established in 1909 and based on the Bar-Giora organisation,9 was a clandestine, élitist organisation that had among its goals, not only the protection of the Jewish settlers, but also broader nationalist goals, such as the further development of the Jewish settlements, as well as influencing the political and ideological development of Jewish society in Palestine.10 In addition to guarding the settlements, Shomer members also helped found new settlements and establish groups of Jewish agricultural labourers (known as the ‘Labourers’ Legion’).11 The organisation focused its efforts on activities that were intended to realise a broad-range of political goals. These goals stemmed from the members’ unique view of the Shomer as a political, security-based avant-garde that promoted the development of the Jewish community in Palestine.12 The decline of the Shomer began in 1914, due to factors both in and outside the organisation. Most notable among the internal factors was the development of oppositional factions within the organisation, which had a negative effect on group solidarity and undermined the authority of the founding leaders. One of the two influential external factors was the ongoing oppression of Palestine’s Ottoman rulers, who considered the Shomer to be an illegal militia and repeatedly expelled its leaders during the First World War. The second external factor was the decline in the organisation’s relationship with landowners in the south of Palestine. As a result, the Shomer lost ground, and eventually made way for what became the largest and most prominent Jewish military organisation after the First World War, the Hagana.

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The Hagana, which began its activities in 1919–21, was, not unlike its predecessor, an organisation with a nationalist and Leftist orientation. The organisation functioned as the military branch of the Jewish settlement and its institutions, first under the leadership of the Unified Labour Party (Ahdut Haavoda), then under the workers’ union and finally as the official military representative of the population’s elected establishment. However, it was not until 1929 that the organisation became firmly established, for reasons that relate to the relatively stable security conditions and the constant shortages of resources, namely arms and manpower. This paucity reflected, to a great extent, the indifference felt by leaders of the Jewish settlement to the importance of a Jewish defence force.13 However, this state of affairs changed dramatically in 1929, following a wave of Arab attacks on Jewish targets. In the wake of these events, which left 133 Jews dead and more than 300 wounded, the Hagana established a national headquarters whose goal was to provide a military response to the needs of the Jewish population living under the British Mandate. The headquarters, which answered to the National Committee (the official executive office elected by the organised Jewish population of Palestine), functioned as the operational centre situated between the Hagana and the Jewish political institutions. In effect, it strengthened the Hagana’s position as the major security organisation of the Jewish population in Palestine. Parallel to its civic activities, which were intended to serve as the basis for the Jewish state’s institutions, the Hagana established a military infrastructure, trained soldiers and manufactured arms.14 Additionally during this period, the organisation adopted technical and tactical changes in an attempt to raise the level of static defence of the settlements to proper military standards. From a tactical perspective, the Hagana managed not to get drawn into an active role against Arab terrorism. It focused instead on passive defence of the Jewish settlements and of the roads leading to them. But in later years the Hagana expanded the deployment of units with active combat orientation, such as the ‘field units’ and ‘Special Night Squads’.15 By the time the State of Israel was established, the Hagana had become an established military institution which then served as the basis for the establishment of Israel’s army in 1948.16 In sum, the left-wing Zionist organisations which were active prior to the founding of the State largely engaged in vigilante activities intended to provide basic defence to the Jewish settlements, particularly in light of the ineffectiveness of the foreign authorities (whether Turkish or

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British) in dealing with the continuing conflict between the Arab and Jewish populations. Over the years, these organisations expanded their goals regarding the development of the Jewish settlements to include activities such as helping Jewish immigration and establishing new settlements; however, their main activity remained preparing a defence for the Jewish settlements. The ideological character of these groups was unusual: on the one hand, they were influenced by the Russian revolutionary Left, while on the other they held strong nationalistic goals. Hence these organisations anticipated the dual character of Jewish terrorism in the years to come, that is, Jewish nationalism combined with other ideological and religious elements. Along with the activities of the groups with a Leftist-socialist orientation such as the Shomer and the Hagana, at the end of the 1920s several smaller, right-wing, nationalistic organisations began to emerge which stressed political violence as a legitimate path. These Rightist groups formed the operational and ideological basis for Jewish terrorism following the founding of the State of Israel. Brit Habirionim The Arabs’ harsh attacks on Jews in 1929, which led to agitation among the Jewish population and particularly among members of the Hagana (which at the time was the only defence force available to the Jewish population), represent the events that ended Leftist organisations’ monopoly on the Jewish population’s organised military activities. The first right-wing group to be formed was characterised by its complete disassociation from the Zionist establishment (in contrast to the Etzel and Lehi, established later from within the ranks of the establishment). This group, known as Brit Habirionim (the Ruffians’ Treaty, its name reminiscent of the fanatics who fought against the Romans in the period of the Second Temple), was composed, even at the height of its activity, of only a few dozen members. Active between 1930 and 1933, the organisation considered itself to be a national revolutionary movement intended to function as an ideological and military avant-garde. Members of the organisation refused to accept the existing consensus among the majority of the Jewish population, according to which the British were perceived as allies of the Jewish cause. Therefore, they considered the authorities of the British Mandate and the Zionist establishment to be bound together, inefficient and corrupt

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organisations incapable of leading the process of fulfilling the national Jewish destiny in the Land of Israel.17 The ideology of Brit Habirionim, which was greatly influenced by Italian Fascism, considered the British rulers of Palestine and the socialist-Zionist establishment the targets of its struggle, whereas the struggle against the Arab population was considered of secondary importance.18 This view was based on a broader concept, developed and expressed by the organisation’s leader, Abba Haheimeir, who regarded fascism as strong enough to oppose the spread of communism on the one hand and liberal democracy on the other. Haheimeir considered both of these ideologies as inherently incapable of formulating a national political entity that would survive. Rejecting ideas that stemmed from the Left, he led the organisation to act against the Zionist establishment and against the British.19 With some support from the Israeli Right led by Zeev Zabotinsky (ideological and political leader of the Jewish population’s civilian Right at that time), members of Brit Habirionim carried out several largely minor operations—some violent and most of them illegal—which included attempts to initiate demonstrations against both Zionist and British institutions; attempts to interrupt the census conducted by the British; and other illegal activities intended as public provocations such as blowing the Shofar at the Western Wall (forbidden to Jews at that time) and removing the flags of foreign consulates.20 Brit Habirionim came to an end in 1933, following punitive measures taken against its members by the British Mandatory Authority, including the arrest of Abba Haheimeir and other leaders. The organisation received its final blow when its leader was accused of acting as an accomplice to the murder of Haim Arlozorov, a leader of the socialist camp. Although a year later, in 1934, Haheimeir was acquitted of all involvement in the murder, his now tarnished reputation led to his isolation by former political supporters among the Jewish populace. The Etzel (National Military Organisation) The unrest caused by the events of 1929, which gave rise to the founding of Brit Habirionim, also affected certain groups from within the Jewish military establishment. One such group was the Jerusalem branch of the Hagana, led by Abraham Tehomi. Following the events of 1929, Tehomi warned against the use of the antiquated tactics of the Hagana and demanded an organisational change that would be more militaristic in character, in contrast to its current militia-like structure,

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which lacked discipline and military norms.21 Tehomi and his companions complained of the poor quality of arms and maintenance, the low level of training, and the lack of development of effective means of intelligence-gathering. At the same time they demanded that the Hagana be subordinate to a national-level leadership which would represent all the active political factions and not just the socialist Left (not a surprising demand, given the fact that the majority of the Jerusalem branch belonged to the revisionist Right and its youth movement, Beitar).22 It appears that this conflict might not have resulted in a split if Tehomi and his companions had not had the political support of the Zionist Revisionist Federation (which was, at the time, the representative body of the civic right-wing of the Jewish settlement) and its leader Zeev Zabotinsky, who allocated all of Beitar’s human resources to the newly formed organisation.23 Despite repeated efforts to find a compromise, the Jerusalem branch finally split off from the Hagana. The new organisation called itself Irgun Bet (alternative organisation) or the ‘National Defence’ until 1932 when it took on the official name of Etzel (acronym of National Military Organisation). Etzel devoted most of its early years to its development as a clandestine military organisation with a right-wing activist and nationalist ideology. Almost simultaneously it established a professional command centre and expanded its sphere of activity throughout Palestine. Politically the Etzel was clearly a right-wing organisation whose personnel came from the Beitar and other movements from the political Right as well as from Zionism’s religious wing.24 Over the early years, Zabotinsky became the head of the organisation and representatives from the revisionist sections of public institutions also functioned as representatives of the Etzel.25 In addition to its emphasis on the development of its military character, the Etzel’s activities focused on illegal operations aimed at smuggling Jewish immigrants into Palestine. Thus, in 1934, the Etzel initiated the immigration of 200 Jews from Egypt and Greece. In 1938 more than 2,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in eight separate operations; and in 1939, the organisation brought to Palestine’s shores a record of 15 ships carrying more than 10,000 Jewish immigrants.26 In the 1940s, as the British exerted greater pressure against the Etzel’s activities in particular, and against Jewish immigration in general, the Etzel decreased its activity in this area and turned its efforts to militia activities within the country. In fact, the organisation became renowned

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for its internal terrorist actions initiated in the 1930s at first against the Arab population and later against the British presence in Palestine.27 The events that took place between 1936 and 1939 known as the ‘Arab Uprising’, provided the Etzel with its first opportunity to distinguish itself from the Hagana, as it chose not to join the latter’s ‘restraint policy’ (a policy that opted not to respond with counterattacks against the Arab population). As the events began, the Etzel leadership decided to choose a middle path of ‘responding without engaging in a terrorist war with the Arabs’.28 In fact, the Etzel leaders did choose a terrorist approach, that is, conducting operations that had political goals, intended to establish a reign of terror by carrying out arbitrary attacks on the Arab population, such as the killing of two Palestinian workers in a banana plantation on 20 April 1936, followed two days later by shooting and the throwing of a grenade at Arab passers-by in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.29 Between 1936 and 1939, the Etzel continued to conduct terrorist activities while methodically attempting to provide a rational justification for the violence by calling it retaliation for Arab attacks; for example, the shooting at a passenger train in August 1936 was justified as a response to the shooting at civilian Jews in Tel Aviv a day earlier by Arabs. Soon, however, the Etzel abandoned this policy line and announced a terrorist campaign intended to provide a suitable response to the Arab Uprising’. This approach reflected the Etzel’s world view, which considered political violence and terrorism legitimate tools in the Jewish national struggle for the Land of Israel.30 The Etzel’s terrorist campaign against the Arab population lasted until the end of the ‘Arab Uprising’ in 1939 and included more than 60 attacks. An attempt to characterise the Etzel’s activities in this period leads us to note its four major tactics: assassination attempts, attacks on transportation routes, shootings, and the use of explosive devices. More specifically, its first course of action was random assassination of Arab labour workers or passers-by. These attacks occurred in various cities (such as the shooting at Arabs in the downtown area of Haifa in June 1938, and a month later at Arabs walking near the Sheari Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem) as well as at more isolated areas (such as the killing of two Arabs on the beach in Bat-Yam in March 1937, and the killing of two other Arabs in the fields near the Hefer valley that same month).31 Encouraged by its success and the experience accumulated by its members, the Etzel expanded its range of activities to include ambushes and systematic attacks on major transportation arteries (shooting at a

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bus with Arab passengers in July 1938, throwing explosives at another bus in September 1937, shooting at a truck with an Arab driver in November 1937), and shooting attacks on Arab population centres (using a semi-machine gun and throwing a grenade at an Arab coffee shop in Jerusalem in November 1937, throwing explosives at another coffee shop in Haifa in April 1937, and the use of a semi-automatic machine gun to shoot at an Arab group in Haifa in May of 1939). The organisation also expanded its tactics to include the detonation of explosives by remote control. The most dramatic act in this regard was the planting of a mine in the Arab market in Haifa in July 1938, an attack which resulted in the death of more than 70 Arabs. In 1939, the Etzel changed its goals and shifted its focus to actions aimed against the British forces in Palestine. The change was due both to the cessation of Arab violence on the one hand, and on the other, a list of restrictions imposed by the British on the Jewish settlements regarding various issues, including the number of Jews allowed to enter Palestine and the Jews’ ability to purchase land. These restrictions were part of a series of British reforms regarding their policy in Israel (known as the ‘White Book’). The Etzel’s anti-British activities included the use of explosives against British targets and assassination attempts on British soldiers. For example, the British government’s broadcast centre in Jerusalem was blown up in August 1939 by detonation envelopes that had been smuggled in. A few days later, the Etzel killed a highranking British official who was accused by the organisation of torturing Etzel prisoners. However, it was the outbreak of the Second World War that finally caused the Etzel to bring its activities in line with the general consensus of the entire Jewish settlement and to declare a cease-fire in its struggle against the British authorities.32 This cease-fire was not to the liking of a small radical group of members within the Etzel headed by Yair Stern, which then withdrew and founded an alternative organisation that was first called ‘the Etzel in Israel’ and later ‘Israel Liberation Fighters’ (also known by its acronym, Lehi),33which will be reviewed in detail below. However, in February 1944, the Etzel, at the initiative of its leader at the time, Menahem Begin, decided to end the cease-fire. There were several reasons for this decision, prominent among them being signs of the Allied Forces’ approaching victory.34 A second important factor in the decision to end the cease-fire was the Jewish settlement’s sense that its contribution to and support of the British in the Second World War was not sufficiently recognised by the British authorities; thus, the

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British failed to demonstrate the loyalty to the Jewish cause that was anticipated in return for Jewish participation in the war effort. For Etzel members, this lack of loyalty was expressed in the increased restrictions on immigration of Jews to Palestine and in the attempts to prevent Jews from purchasing land.35 Therefore, the organisation declared an uprising against the British. With this declaration, the organisation chose its future political path. The organisation called for the withdrawal of the British Mandate on the Land of Israel and the establishment of a temporary Jewish government. In addition, its declaration also included the organisation’s political platform for the period following the founding of a Jewish state. Among other things, the declaration mentioned establishing a Jewish military, inculcating nationalist precepts that stem from Jewish tradition, imparting full civil rights to the Arab population, and changing the status of holy sites to being extraterritorial.36 The Etzel considered itself a national liberation movement with clearly defined goals. The first was to liberate Palestine from British rule through an uncompromising battle using all possible means. The other goals related to the period after the founding of the state and focused on establishing sovereign Jewish rule over all of Palestine. This rule would be social-democratic in spirit, including upholding human and civil rights. The Etzel also emphasised the importance of Jewish tradition both in the struggle for sovereignty (in this sense, members of the Etzel considered themselves as continuing in the path set by Jewish leaders throughout the generations in their struggle for independence) as well as in its role in establishing ethical guidelines for the Jewish state to come.37 In the context of Jewish tradition, the Etzel considered the war against the British as a commandment; thus, it was part of a framework that regarded the Jewish principle of warding off the enemies of the people of Israel (such as the biblical Amaleks and the Medianites and the present-day British) as superior to the commandment ‘you shall not kill’ in its political manifestation. Members of the Etzel subordinated their personal morality to the national one. They found support for this in a quote from the Rambam, one of the greatest Jewish philosophers, who determined that the commandment ‘Honour thy parents’ and the concept of love of family should be rejected at times of war.38 Thus, Etzel members were able to provide an ethical rationale for the use of terrorist tactics. The Etzel used the cease-fire during the Second World War to fortify its organisational infrastructure.39 At the same time, the organisation’s

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headquarters was established, which oversaw the various branches such as the medical, financial, public relations, intelligence and maintenance divisions. The organisation expanded its deployment throughout Palestine and placed a regional commander in each area, someone who was directly subordinate to the organisation’s general headquarters and superior to the military units. Simultaneously, the Etzel developed a philosophy of warfare, which would be its path in the years to come and consisted mainly of terrorist acts, based on the element of surprise, carried out by small, military-trained, compartmentalised units.40 On 1 February 1944, the Etzel renewed its battle against the British authorities with a symbolic act that included setting-off explosives in the British immigration offices of the three largest cities (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa), which the Etzel associated with the severe restrictions imposed by British authorities on Jewish immigration.41 A great deal of property was destroyed, although there were no casualties, since the operation took place on a weekend. Throughout that year and the next, the organisation continued its activities against the British. At the end of February, the British income tax offices in the three major cities were blown up,42 and at the end of March, the Etzel carried out a more complex operation, which began with a combined attack on the offices of the British secret police in the three cities, followed by a raid on the British broadcast station in Ramallah in mid-May 1944. Responses to the Etzel’s terrorist network were harsh, both from the Jewish establishment that mostly co-operated with the British in an effort to stop the Etzel’s activities, as well as from the British, who responded with sweeping arrests that sent most of the Etzel activists to detention camps outside Palestine.43 Despite external and internal pressures that were brought to bear on the Etzel, it did not abandon its warfare policy until the end of 1945. Most of its activities were focused on attacking British police stations, including the central headquarters of the British secret police in December 1945. At the end of that year, mainly due to the pressures exerted on it, co-operation was established between the Etzel organisation, the Hagana and the Lehi, united under an umbrella organisation called the Hebrew Rebellion Movement. Within this framework, each organisation could maintain its independence but had to obtain approval of its operations from the headquarters of the new organisation. The co-operation between these organisations ended with the most famous of the Etzel’s terrorist acts, the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in July 1946. The Etzel’s intent was to provide a

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response to several British acts against the Jewish population by blowing up the southern wing of the hotel, which housed the central government offices of the British Mandate as well as its central military headquarters. However, more than 82 people were killed in the attack, including civilians, and dozens more were injured or registered as missing.44 The position of the Hagana and the Hebrew Rebellion Movement’s consent to the operation remains unclear to this very day; however, it is clear that this attack effectively ended all cooperation among the organisations. In 1946–47, the Etzel, released from the restrictions imposed by co-operation with the Hagana, renewed its terrorist activities with full vigour. These attacks were mainly on government offices and military bases, including the blowing up of the income tax offices in November 1946, systematic attacks on police targets throughout the same month, and raids on the military airport and on the Schneller base in Jerusalem in January and March 1947.45 An exceptional operation, particularly in terms of its location, was the concealment of explosives in a suitcase at the British embassy in Rome, which destroyed the entire embassy. It was the first time the Etzel had moved its operations to the international arena.46 Once the State of Israel was founded, the Etzel forces joined the Israeli army and the organisation as such ceased to exist. Yet many of its members found it difficult to accept this and the fact that they were part of a military framework that was governed by the establishment headed by the Labor Party. The most obvious expression of such sentiment came on 20 June 1948, when the ship Altalena reached the shores of Israel full of arms and munitions purchased by the Etzel. Former Etzel members demanded that the goods be handed to them and not distributed among the army’s units. Beyond this point the unfolding of events is unclear, but the results were critical. Following failed attempts to reach a compromise, a battle ensued on the Tel Aviv coastline, during which the ship was sunk along with the Etzel members that were on board. The Altalena affair gave the young State’s leadership sufficient reason to raid the remaining active Etzel bases and put a definite end to its activities. Despite the broad-based terrorist activities carried out by the Etzel against the British authorities in Palestine of the 1940s, the Etzel was neither the most violent nor the most extreme Jewish nationalist group struggling for sovereignty. Moreover, it was not this group that laid the foundations for Jewish terrorism following statehood. This role is reserved for the Lehi organisation.

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The Lehi As mentioned, the cease-fire declared by the Etzel in 1939 with the beginning of the Second World War led to the withdrawal of a group of members of the Etzel organisation under the leadership of Yair Stern. Stern established a new organisation, first called the ‘Etzel in Israel’ and then later referred to as Israel Liberation Fighters, or by its acronym, Lehi. More than any other Jewish group, the Lehi considered a violent struggle in general, and terrorism in specific, to be legitimate measures for realising the national Jewish vision of the Jewish people, and a necessary condition for achieving national liberation.47 Not unlike the groups mentioned previously, the Lehi’s ideology also reflected an inherent tension between its national goals and its comprehensive socio-political views that would serve to influence the future state’s political and social direction. The Lehi’s ideology combined national militant ideas linked to Jewish history, tradition and religion, with influences drawn from a broad range of political philosophies (mostly from the Bolshevist revolution and Italian Fascism).48 Nevertheless, the Lehi’s point of departure emphasised the superiority of national and religious values, including the concept of liberation by means of a violent struggle, over any alternative value system. War and the violent struggle were considered by Lehi members to be essential components in the development of the Jewish nation and for the removal of restrictions that bound them in their many years in the Diaspora.49 According to the Lehi’s leaders, the rationale for these priorities of Jewish and national values stemmed from the assumption that neither social reform nor personal redemption could be achieved without attaining the status of a sovereign people, and Israel’s experience in the Diaspora provided the undeniable proof to support this assumption.50 In sharp contrast to the other organisations active at that time, the Lehi adopted a series of religious symbols and complementary Messianic terminology that constituted a central component of its ideological framework. Stern considered his group a chosen sect of the ‘chosen people’. In his view, religion was the common denominator in the nation’s existence and it was only religious fanaticism that ‘kept the nation’s blood purely Jewish’.51 Therefore, according to the Lehi, a Jewish political framework had to be characterised by traditional Jewish elements. Stern and his colleagues repudiated the official Zionist leadership, which in their view had no operative plan for attaining Jewish

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sovereignty, and had demonstrated only compliance with and frailty before the British authorities and the Arab population.52 In contrast to the Leftist organisations, the Lehi considered itself part of an historical process, which began with the biblical conquest of Canaan by Joshua Ben-Noon and was continued in the Zealots’ and BarKochva wars against Rome. As part of his newly formulated historiography, Stern considered all of these historic events as struggles intended to lead ultimately to nothing less than the foundation of a Jewish state. According to Stern’s view, all other ideological struggles (such as the struggle for emancipation in the Diaspora, sacrifices made to the democratic cause and the struggle against the Nazis), were distractions and, worse yet, they used up valuable resources necessary for pursuing the national cause. Unlike the Leftist organisations and even the Etzel, the Lehi granted exclusive status to the national struggle, imbuing it with a religious purity, above and beyond that accorded to any other value. Once established, the Lehi identified its three main goals: 1) to bring together all those interested in liberation (that is, those willing to join in active fighting against the British); 2) to appear before the world as the only active Jewish military organisation; and 3) to take over the Land of Israel by armed force.53 To realise these goals, Stern and his companions concluded that they could not or should not function as a military organisation, but rather as a revolutionary underground movement with the main purpose of creating an independent and unique fighting entity within the international arena. Thus, according to Lehi members, the organisation should be perceived as active and ready to help any of the powerful nations that would recognise the Jews’ holy right over Palestine and provide tangible help in establishing a Jewish military and state.54 It should also be noted that given their negative attitude towards the British on one hand, and on the other the similarity between elements of the Lehi’s world view and those of the Italian Fascist movement (which was admired by most members of the Lehi), there was no doubt as to the identity of the side they supported.55 Thus, in the organisation’s early years, Lehi members believed that the most effective way to realise Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was to find an opportune moment to recruit a strong international ally who would, in return for help from the Jewish military force, expel the British from Palestine and help found a sovereign Jewish state. Therefore, to convince the potential ally that this was a worthy plan, Stern decided that the Lehi’s major activity would be to enlarge the Jewish military forces, by bringing together as broad and as organised a force

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as possible, and demonstrating its desire for freedom through military operations.56 However, according to the nationalist tradition that Stern represented, anyone who opposed or refused to contribute to the collective goal was considered an enemy and traitor. The main problem for Stern and his companions was how to recruit these forces, most of which already supported or belonged to the Zionist establishment or to Leftist political bodies. This is perhaps where the Lehi’s radical and subversive outlook is most concretely apparent. From Stern’s point of view, the goal of recruiting the masses and gaining control of the Jewish street was obtainable only by revolutionary methods. Stern ruled out any possibility of reaching an agreement with the Zionist institutions, whose acts he considered national treason. He believed he must fight by revolutionary means to eliminate the establishment completely, by exerting both physical and financial pressures.57 Operationally, the first goal of the revolution was to establish Jewish control in Palestine by violently expelling the foreign rule. This task required educating and training the people to fulfil this revolutionary function. The next step was to establish a strong, centralised national authority that would oversee the activities of national conquest, put an end to the knavery and intrigue exercised by the various political parties and, as stated in the Lehi’s platform, renew the reign of Israel, establishing a socio-economic rule according to the moral spirit of the Prophets. While the Lehi did not clarify the specifics of the socio-economic programme it planned to apply, it seems that the organisation considered the state an ethnic, religious and national body that would install a centralised economy similar to the Italian model of the late 1930s.58 The revolution, according to Stern, was needed not only to take control of the Jewish settlement, but also as a process. This approach was complemented by his complete denial of gradual, legal and democratic processes for controlling the governing establishment. Stern, who understood that he had the support of only a small group of revolutionaries, attributed a great deal of significance to the creation of a centralised and unified revolutionary organisation that would be able to recruit the masses at the appropriate hour and would create a revolutionary spirit. Not unlike the Russian revolutionaries in October 1917, Stern believed that the revolutionary warrior (that is, the Lehi fighter) must be free of all personal, social or familial sentiments. Nevertheless, he and his companions purposely ignored the social ideals

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of the Russian revolutionaries and drew only on their revolutionary tactics.59 Finally, the Lehi organisation’s ideology places its world view in the quasi-fascist radical Right, which is characterised by xenophobia, a national egotism that completely subordinates the individual to the needs of the nation, anti-liberalism, total denial of democracy and a highly centralised government.60 The first year of the Lehi’s activities was not particularly successful. The organisation focused most of its efforts on distributing propaganda materials and attempted to raise funds for its activities by criminal methods, such as a bank robbery in Tel Aviv in September 1940.61 However, most of these attempts failed and funds that were acquired through robbery were never used to create the necessary organisational infrastructure.62 To summarise briefly, in its first few years, the organisation consisted of a small group of revolutionary radicals who were isolated, and did not manage to explain clearly the ideological platform that motivated their withdrawal from the Etzel. A series of failures at the end of 1941 and in early 1942 (including a failed robbery attempt on 9 January 1942, which led to the death of Jewish passers-by) caused the organisation’s temporary collapse. The last straw was the attempt to assassinate the commander of the British secret police in the central region of Palestine (in Lod). Because of the poor planning and execution of this attack, three police personnel were killed, two of them Jewish and one British.63 The response of both the British and Jewish establishments was severe, namely, declaring a comprehensive battle against the Lehi and its supporters. The willingness of the Zionist establishment to cooperate, for the first time, with the forces of the British Mandate in an effort to eliminate a Jewish underground organisation, clearly demonstrates the Lehi’s isolation from both the centrist ideology and the operational centre of the Jewish settlement of that period. By the end of January 1942, most of the Lehi activists had been arrested. Stern himself was also captured and killed in February of that same year.64 Seemingly, that should have been the end of the organisation. The Lehi was a failing underground organisation with a prominent gap between its goals and its achievements. The lack of organisation, the poor resources, the failed financial management, the inability to maintain secrecy, and above all the widespread public hostility it attracted due to its fascist image, were the main contributors to the organisation’s failure.

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Despite the fact that the Lehi organisation was almost completely destroyed in the winter of 1942, its few remaining members tried to maintain its core. In September 1942, this attempt was reinforced following the escape from prison of two of the organisation’s leaders, Itzhak Shamir (future Prime Minister of Israel) and Eliyahu Giladi (who was later assassinated by Lehi members due to his desire to return to the Etzel), both of whom were aided by two other escapees, Israel Eldad (Scheib) and Natan Yalin (Mor). In November 1943, they began working to re-establish the organisation. While the others dealt with the operational aspects, Israel Eldad focused on the publication and distribution of a series of articles titled ‘Foundation Blocks’, that aimed to reformulate the organisation’s platform.65 The general purpose of the renewed Lehi was to emphasise its revolutionary credentials, by describing the gap between the Jewish people and the British (especially after Hitler’s acts against the Jews during the Second World War had become public knowledge), and pointing out the organisation’s uniqueness in this context, in contrast to other Jewish parties and activist groups. The Lehi’s leaders continued to oppose the pro-British attitude favoured by most of the Jewish establishment, and considered the socialist-Zionist movement a tool used by the British to ensure their continued rule in Palestine. According to the Lehi’s view, the Arab public, that had failed to maintain their civil rights and had no national identity, was fostered by the British because ‘Britain prefers to rule over the Arabs rather than over a highly populated and cultured Jewish public’.66 The solution offered by Lehi members regarding the Arab’s status was either physical annihilation or expulsion from Palestine.67 But the most prominent ideological components of the new Lehi referred to its justification for terrorism. More than ever, leaders of the Lehi understood that to enable their terrorist activities they had to provide the Jewish public with a rationale for such activity, since it was the Lehi’s constant reliance on terrorism that caused its isolation from the Zionist establishment. The justification the Lehi provided had two levels: the operational and the ideological. On the operational level, the renewed Lehi emphasised the advantage of terrorist tactics when dealing with an enemy that possessed much greater resources. Therefore, the terrorist method was the only tool that, given the organisation’s meagre resources, would enable the Lehi to inflict real harm on the British military forces in Palestine while simultaneously calling the world’s

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attention to the struggle of the Jewish people and the country’s attention to the Lehi’s ideology.68 Ideologically, the leaders of the renewed Lehi distanced themselves from the religious, Messianic view of violence that Stern had represented. The renewed organisation’s rationalisation for the use of terrorist tactics was a definition of terrorism as ‘any coercion enforced through sanctions’. Thus they affirmed that terrorism is essentially not illegal, since the regulations imposed by the British authorities are, according to this definition, practices that express a terrorist rule, that is, coercive. This logic enabled Lehi members to claim that there is a legitimate struggle against British terrorism and that terrorism in and of itself is not an illegitimate tactic. They also emphasised the fact that terrorism was not a new phenomenon in the tradition of Jewish struggle against a foreign conqueror.69 Thus, while self-sacrifice was no longer upheld as a central ideal in their struggle, members of the Lehi still considered themselves followers of zealot activists throughout the generations.70 After a two-year pause for reorganisation, in February 1944 the Lehi was prepared to become active again. Its first activities were repeated attempts to kill representatives of the British authority, as in their failed attempt on the Chief British Commissioner in early February 1944. Given the failure of these attempts, the Lehi initiated clashes with the British authority’s police force. Thus, they arranged altercations with forces whose attention they drew by sending squads to put up antiBritish propaganda. However, members of the organisation paid a heavy price for their multiple attempts to kill British police and officials. From 19 March and throughout April of that year, the organisation lost four of its members. And at the end of April that same year, six of its members were also captured, including Israel Eldad. Once again, the gap between the Lehi’s notable ability to create an ideological infrastructure complemented by widespread propaganda and their operational abilities became evident. The most obvious shortcomings were faulty organisation, careless planning and particularly the lack of a welltrained intelligence unit, which left substantial parts of the organisation vulnerable. However, it is important to note that at this period, and for the first time in the organisation’s history, the Lehi and its activities gained some public support. This was in November 1944 and was due to the assassination of Lord Moyne in Egypt. Lord Moyne was minister of the British colonies at the beginning of the Second World War and was appointed resident minister for the Middle East on 28 January 1944. In

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the Jewish settlement he was already known for his hostility, expressed both in his long-term support in favour of a Middle Eastern Arab Federation as well as in his anti-Semitic lectures (such as his call for Arab sovereignty in the Land of Israel based on the superior purity of the Arab race compared to the mixed Jewish race).71 On 6 November 1944, Lord Moyne was shot and killed in his Cairo residence by two Lehi members. He was an ideal target for the Lehi both because of the location, which proved that the Lehi could fight British imperialism beyond the borders of the Land of Israel, and because of his prominent position. The need for such a successful act arose due to the Etzel’s triumphs, which made it difficult for the Lehi to recruit members and supporters. The assassination of Lord Moyne fulfilled this role and created a broad wave of publicity in both the Jewish settlement and in world public opinion. An interesting aspect of this event was the fact that the attack was practically a suicide mission. In contrast to the organisation’s previous acts in Palestine, in this case the perpetrators had no means of escape and, in fact, both were caught and later executed.72 For the British, as well as for the Zionist establishment and the Jewish settlement, the assassination of Lord Moyne represented an escalation in the Lehi’s activities and a dramatic departure from the unwritten rules of the Zionist struggle. Therefore, the reaction against the organisation intensified. The Jewish leadership decided to cooperate with the British forces against the Etzel and the Lehi. Leaders of the Jewish settlement concluded that the terrorist activities carried out by the two organisations damaged the relationship between the Jewish settlement and the British rule in the short-term, and the chances of attaining political sovereignty in the long-term.73 The period of the Jewish establishment’s co-operation with the British (known also as the saison) increased to a new high level. The already existing estrangement between the Lehi and the Zionist establishment mounted as well. The willingness of the Zionist establishment and the Hagana to co-operate with the British in an attempt to dismantle the right-wing organisations proved to be a hard blow to the Lehi, which already found it difficult to arouse sufficient public support. This was also a difficult period operationally for the Lehi; despite the fact that most of the Hagana’s actions were aimed at the Etzel,74 the larger organisation, the Lehi had to leave the arena and wait for the ‘storm’ to pass. Towards the end of 1945, when the fate of European Jewry became known, and particularly following the new British Labour government’s announcement that it would continue enforcing its restrictions regarding

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both Jewish immigration to Palestine and land purchases (‘White Book’ policies), the Zionist establishment withdrew from the saison policy. In fact, it was towards the end of that year that the co-operation between the Hagana, the Etzel and the Lehi began within the framework of the Hebrew Rebellion Movement. The Lehi at that time could claim some success, seeing the escalation of animosity between the Zionist establishment and the British rule as living proof of the ideology it had been following since its founding.75 Within the Hebrew Rebellion Movement, Lehi members participated in several attacks on British military bases, the most famous being the sabotage on British aircrafts in three different airports, carried out in February 1946. The tension between the Lehi’s activism and desire to carry out indiscriminate assassinations and terrorist acts, and the Hagana’s restraint and moderation expressed in the tendency to carry out only acts that would not lead to uncontrolled bloodshed, made it clear to Lehi members that their presence in this co-operative framework could only be temporary. The Lehi’s attack in April 1946, in which British soldiers were killed in their sleep, and later the attack of the Etzel on the King David Hotel marked the end of the co-operation. Each organisation again pursued its own path. The Lehi continued its terrorist activities even after the United Nations’ declaration of the founding of Jewish and Arab states, living side by side, in November 1947. Throughout that year, the Lehi considered the British political attempts to hand the issue of Palestine over to the United Nations as manoeuvres intended to secure the British Empire’s rule in the Middle East.76 According to the Lehi, the arrival of British forces in the Middle East, and particularly the improved relations between the British and the Arabs, endangered the ability of the Jewish settlement to attain sovereignty in Israel. Therefore, the organisation increased its activities against the British and initiated a series of acts, among them the bombing of the British shipping company’s offices in Haifa and the sabotage of the British military offices in the same city in early March 1947. A week later, the Lehi attacked the Jerusalem offices of the British government; however, the peak of its activities was the attack on the office of colonies in London, followed shortly by an assault on a large military base near Pardes Hana.77 Following the United Nations’ declaration and the Israeli army’s preparations to battle the Arab armies, the gradual dismantling of the Lehi began. Most of its units (excluding the Jerusalem region) joined the Hagana and the Etzel as part of the Israeli military. The Israeli

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government officially declared the Lehi’s dissolution after recruiting its members to the Israel Defence Forces on 29 May 1948. However, before its final demise, the Lehi carried out one final terrorist act that brought on a wide-ranging operation by the Israeli security forces against it, including an Israeli government decision to declare it a terrorist organisation. On 16 September 1948, Lehi members assassinated the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, who came to Israel as a diplomat of the United Nations. Apparently the reasons for the assassination were grounded in the Lehi’s basic lack of trust in the temporary Israeli government. The Lehi members considered the attempts to negotiate and reach a cease-fire between Israel and the Arab states a step backwards, and the beginning of a dangerous process whereby the powers at large would again take control over the region and aim to maintain political stability by further reducing the size of the Jewish state.78 The Lehi tried to deny its responsibility for the assassination; nevertheless, the murder of Bernadotte highlighted the dual nature of the Lehi in the period of its decline. On the one hand, it wanted to preserve itself as a political, non-belligerent organisation, while on the other hand, it wanted to maintain a fighting underground organisation in areas that were not strictly under Jewish sovereignty.79 Following the assassination, the temporary Israeli government declared the Lehi a terrorist organisation and acted forcefully to arrest its members and confiscate its property. This was the organisation’s final act, and after a short imprisonment period, most of its members were released from prison. A substantial number of its former leaders (such as Shamir and Eldad) continued to play an active role in the Israeli political system. Discussion Any attempt to understand the source of Jewish terrorism before the establishment of the State of Israel demands an in-depth observation of its roots in both Jewish tradition and in the Zionist movement. Therefore, in this essay we have tried to present the major tendencies in the activities of the various Jewish groups and sects that strove to attain their political goals by violent methods, and to review the formation of the ideological and theological bases for Jewish terrorism following the founding of the State of Israel. In general, we note two major tendencies in the development of violent Jewish groups. The first involves vigilante groups, which were essentially devoid of revolutionary goals. Instead these groups focused

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on providing effective defence to the Jewish collective, wherever it might be. These groups performed a self-defence function when foreign rulers seemed incapable or unwilling to protect the Jewish community when it came under attack Thus, the Jewish defence organisations in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century aspired to ensure that the Jewish community members lived safely without pogroms, given the neglect of the ruling governments. The Shomer and Hagana organisations that came later were similar in that their activity focused on the security of the Jewish settlements, given the ineffective reaction of the Turks and the British to the emerging conflict between the Jewish and the Arab residents in Palestine. These Jewish defence groups wanted to co-operate with the government; but even when this was not possible and they were forced to act secretly, the groups were careful not to oppose the governments and to avoid revolutionary activity. It is important to note that although the Shomer and the Hagana incorporated nationalistic slogans and expressed their desire for a future Jewish sovereignty, their essential goal was to defend the Jewish collectivity. The second involves radical Jewish groups that emphasised the need for a security-based, combative Jewish vanguard that would realise, by means of political violence, the independence of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. These groups did not content themselves with acting as defence groups to Jews at large; rather, they considered themselves to be the core of a Jewish army that would liberate the Jewish people from its Diaspora and the ongoing dependence on foreign political elements. Thus, the Sicarii struggled against the Romans during the period of the Second Temple, and the Etzel and Lehi struggled to defeat the British; defending the Jewish populace from their Arab neighbours was not their top priority. The wide-ranging political goals of these groups created a serious gap between their operational abilities and their farreaching visions, which caused them to choose terrorist tactics, the only violent tool that allows the weak to contend with an adversary whose resources are significantly greater. However, it appears that it was precisely the use of terrorism that led to the isolation of these groups and paradoxically impaired their ability to raise funds from the Jewish public. Despite the differences between the two types of organisations, both of them tended to incorporate into their statements some universal ideas that became part of the ideological scheme of the group. Some of the groups incorporated the anti-colonial or fundamentalist-Messianic components on the one hand or socialist elements from the other. The

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important fact is that only the first combination (of anti-colonial and traditional-religious elements) created in the Jewish case a wellestablished platform that drove groups into terrorism. This link was not a coincidence. These groups justified their use of terrorist tactics on the basis of religious ideas. The question that should be asked is whether Jewish fundamentalism was adopted by those groups in order to rationalise terrorism or, if the opposite is true, whether the religious components in their ideology drove them to use terrorist tactics. From our analysis of those groups, it seems that in the case of the Sicarii and the Lehi, the Jewish tradition had a major role in their tendencies to use radical violence, in regard to the Etzel the situation is less clear. From the operational aspects (the targets and the weapons) that were chosen by the Jewish organisations, we should note that they did not differ much from anti-colonial terrorist organisations in other parts in the world (that is, by acting especially against military and government targets and by using the traditional gun and bombs). But an important matter we need to consider is whether or not these groups fit established definitions of religious fundamentalism. Is the fact they incorporated religious elements in their doctrine enough? The answer is largely positive. First, both the Etzel and the Lehi adapted traditional texts in perpetrating new strategies in fighting the British and the Arabs. Second, their ideology reflected the classical dichotomy between the forces of good and the forces of evil (that is, everyone opposed to the Messianic model they presented). Third, they saw themselves as the followers of historical, radical, religious groups. Finally they were strongly organised along authoritarian lines during their most active periods. So, we may conclude that the Lehi, and for most part the Etzel as well, should be considered as examples of Jewish fundamentalism. To conclude, the founding of the State of Israel led to the disappearance of these radical groups, since the goal of Jewish sovereignty was attained. However, a fascinating process ensued. While revolutionary Jewish violence disappeared, vigilante violence continued to exist even after the founding of the State of Israel. It appears that the tradition, formed in the late nineteenth century in Europe and expanded with the activity of the Leftist groups in early twentieth-century Palestine, which includes the development of social functions that complement the government and supplement it in an array of political and military roles, survived after the founding of the State of Israel and continues to accompany the political reality in Israel to this very day.

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However, while the socialist tendencies were prominent before the founding of the State, after this event it was the Israeli Right that adopted this tradition and mode of action. NOTES 1. David Rapoport, ‘Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions’, American Political Science Review 78/3 (1985), pp.660–72. 2. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (London: Victor Gollancz, 1998), p. 88. 3. Gabriel Almond, R.Scott Appleby and Emmanuel Sivan, Strong Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p.67. 4. Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p.12. 5. Norman Naimark, Terrorists and Social Democrats (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp.219–23. 6. See the autobiography of Susan Stern, With The Weathermen (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), passim. 7. Alexandr Lokshin, ‘The Bund in the Russian Jewish Historical Landscape’, in Anna Geifman (ed.), Russia Under the Last Tsar (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp.57–72. 8. Quoted in Geifman (note 4), p.103. 9. One of the first Jewish groups active in Palestine in the early twentieth century was the Bar-Giora group (1907–20). The Bar-Giora group promoted communal ideals among its members, with an emphasis on a new human image that hails in the budding socialism of the early twentieth century. Simultaneously, the group acted to establish Jewish settlements in the Galilee and to organise Jewish groups that would be responsible for securing the settlements and protecting them from the attacks of their Arab neighbours. See Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Political Assasinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp.85–7. 10. Aziel Lev, ‘From Bar-Giora to the Shomer’, Monthly Review-I.D.F Officers Journal (September 1985), p.12 (Hebrew). 11. Meir Pa’il, The Armed Struggle, 1945–1948 (Efal: Yad Tabenkin, 1985), p.12 (Hebrew). 12. Lev (note 10), pp.109–23. 13. Meir Pa’il, The Evolution of Hebrew Defense Force (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1987), pp.33–40. 14. Pa’il (note 11), pp.34–45. 15. Pa’il (note 11), p.51; Mordehai Naor, The Hagana (Tel Aviv: Education Department Officer, IDF, 1975), pp.77–85 (Hebrew). 16. Naor (note 15), pp. 107–40; Pa’il (note 11), pp.72–9.

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17. Joseph Nedava, Abba Haheimeir (Tel Aviv: Association for Strengthening the National Consciousness, 1987), pp.7–18 (Hebrew). 18. Haim Borochov and Joseph Paamoni (eds.), Brit Habirionim (Tel Aviv: Zabotinski Institute, 1953) (Hebrew). 19. Nedava (note 17), pp.7–18. 20. Borochov and Paamoni (note 18). 21. Pa’il (note 11), pp.42–3. 22. Joseph Kister, The National Military Organization, 1931–1948 (Tel Aviv: Ezel Museum, 1998), p.4 (Hebrew). 23. Jakob Shavit, ‘The Political and Public Organization of the Jewish Settlements’, in Joseph Ben-Porat and Jakob Shavit, The History of Erez Israel (9) (Jerusalem: Cetter, 1982) (Hebrew). 24. Moshe Marks, I.Z.L. and Lechi in Palestine: The Recruitment of Funds and Economic Means (1940–1948), Ph.D. dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, 1994 (Hebrew). 25. Kister (note 22), pp.4–5. 26. Ibid., pp.23–5; David Niv, Battle for Freedom: The Irgun Zvai Leumi— Part Two (Tel Aviv: Klausner Institute, 1966), pp.129–61 (Hebrew). 27. Kister (note 22), pp.23–5. 28. Ibid., p.5. 29. Ibid. 30. Yitzhak Alfasi, The National Military Organization Sources and Documents (Tel Aviv: Zabotinski Institute, 1992), pp. 142–5 (Hebrew). 31. Niv (note 26), pp.28–94. 32. Kister (note 22), p.5; David Niv, Battle for Freedom: The Irgun Zvai Leumi—Part Three (Tel Aviv: Klausner Institute, 1967), pp.18–19. 33. Niv (note 32), pp.45–7. 34. David Niv, Battle for Freedom: The Irgun Zvai Leumi—Part Four (Tel Aviv: Klausner Institute, 1973), pp.9–11 (Hebrew). 35. Davar daily newspaper, 27 January 1944. 36. Kister (note 22), p.6; Alfasi (note 30), pp.141–5. 37. Alfasi (note 30), pp.141–4. 38. Josef Heller, Lehi ’, Ideology and Politics: 1940–1949 (Jerusalem: Zalman-Shazar Center, 1989) (Hebrew). 39. Niv (note 32), pp.244–61. 40. Kister (note 22), pp.15. 41. Davar daily newspaper, 14 February 1944; Niv (note 34), pp.20–1. 42. Hamaskif newsapaper, 27 February 1944. 43. Kister (note 22), pp.45–64. 44. Niv (note 34), p.201. 45. Ibid., pp.266–9. 46. Kister (note 22), pp.80–93. 47. Niv (note 32), pp.161–2.

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48. ‘Ikaray Hathia—the first Lehi ideological manifest’, 1939, in Heller (note 38), appendix, pp.591–603. 49. Niv (note 32), pp.161–4. 50. Heller (note 38), pp.115. 51. Lehi’s political platform, 1948, in Heller (note 38), appendix, pp.591– 603. 52. Heller (note 38), pp.112; Y.Banai, Anonymous Soldiers (Tel Aviv: Hug Yedidim, 1978), pp.61–2 (Hebrew). 53. Heller (note 38), p.112. 54. Ibid.; Lehi’s political platform (note 51). 55. See also Niv (note 32), pp. 176–9. 56. Undated documents of the underground movement; Heller (note 38), pp. 114–20. 57. Marks (note 24), pp.24–8. 58. Lehi’s political platform (note 51). 59. Heller (note 38), p.117. 60. Ibid., pp.173–9. 61. Niv (note 32), p.168. 62. Ibid., pp.168–72. 63. Heller (note 38), pp.144–5; Niv (note 32), p.171. 64. Niv (note 32), pp. 182–4. 65. Heller (note 38), pp. 160–1; Niv (note 32), pp. 194–5. 66. Heller (note 38), p.172. 67. Ibid. pp.170–3; Lehi’s political platform (note 51). 68. Heller (note 38), p.173. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Yitzhak Shamir, ‘Why the Lechi Assassinate Lord Moyen’, Nation 32/ 119 (1995), pp.333–7 (Hebrew). 72. Heller (note 38), p.210. 73. Niv (note 34), pp.98–105. 74. Ibid., pp.98–9, 116–17. 75. Heller (note 38), p.301. 76. Hamaas bulletin, 1947. 77. Heller (note 38), pp.328–9. 78. Ibid., pp.446–7. 79. Ibid., p.459.

7 Counting the Causes and Dynamics of Ethnoreligious Violence JONATHAN FOX

In recent years, religious fundamentalism and extremism, in its many forms, has been gaining increasing attention as a political and social force and, especially, as a cause of violence. The goal of this study is to build a model for understanding a specific manifestation of religious violence—ethnoreligious violence. This is done mainly through an examination of the quantitative literature on the topic. But this study also makes reference to the non-quantitative literature on the topic when appropriate. That is, the primary focus of this exercise is to take the existing behaviouralist evidence on ethnoreligious conflict contained in cross-sectional studies and use it in order to develop a model of the dynamics of ethnoreligious conflict. It also compares these findings to the behaviouralist evidence on the influence of religion on other types of conflict. This study proceeds in several steps. First, it establishes the basic parameters of this study, as well as the definitions upon which it relies. Second, it develops a model for ethnoreligious conflict within the domestic arena. Third, it examines the international influences upon ethnoreligious conflict, primarily through an examination of international intervention. Fourth, it examines the ‘civilisations’ debate and any light this debate has to shed on the nature of ethnoreligious conflict. Finally, all of this is used to attempt a better understanding of the wider picture. Definitions and Parameters Before we proceed, it is important to establish several definitions and parameters. First, ethnoreligious conflict is only one of several forms of religious conflict. Appleby, for example, divides religious fundamentalist movements into two categories: traditional fundamentalist movements and national fundamentalist movements.1

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Traditional fundamentalist movements are those movements which seek to spread their particular view of their religious tradition, often through efforts to influence or control government apparatuses. National fundamentalists are where religion and national divides coincide resulting in a movement where the two forms of ideology are intermixed and often fuel each other. It is the latter category which is the focus of this essay. Especially in light of the events of 11 September 2001, perhaps a third category can be added to this list: international militant movements such as al-Qaeda. What may differentiate this type of movement from the other two categories is not the type of ideology involved, as such movements are generally ideologically similar to one or both of the other two categories. Rather they are differentiated by their orientation. The previous two categories tend to limit their aspirations to one state, while international militant fundamentalist movements have global ambitions. They actively attempt to spread their doctrine across borders, fight what they consider to be their global enemies and, perhaps most importantly, consist of citizens of multiple states who are likely to be active in an even greater number of states. However, this is not to deny the fact that local movements are often in communication with movements elsewhere, are often inspired by them, and often inspire other movements elsewhere. Second, the majority of the quantitative studies discussed here are based on the Minorities at Risk (MAR) database. This database contains information on 267 ethnic minorities worldwide with thousands of variables collected for each minority.2 While the database itself does not contain much information on religion, additional data was collected separately for use with the MAR data and has been the basis of several studies which are discussed below.3 It is important to emphasise that the unit of analysis for the MAR project is a minority within a state. Thus a single minority can be present in several states, as is the case with the Kurds, who are included in the dataset separately for Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Also, a single state may have several minorities which are coded separately, as is the case with many states such as India and Russia. Third, this essay relies on the definition of ethnicity provided by the MAR project. According to Gurr, in essence, communal [ethnic] groups are psychological communities: groups whose core members share a distinctive and

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FIGURE 1 BASIC MINORITIES AT RISK MODEL

enduring collective identity based on cultural traits and lifeways that matter to them and to others with whom they interact. People have many possible bases for communal identity: shared historical experiences or myths, religious beliefs, language, ethnicity, region of residence, and, in castelike systems, customary occupations. Communal groups—which are also referred to as ethnic groups, minorities and peoples—usually are distinguished by several reinforcing traits. The key to identifying communal groups is not the presence of a particular trait or combination of traits, but rather in the shared perception that the defining traits, whatever they are, set the group apart.4 Carment and James, Deutsch, Horowitz, and Romanucci-Ross and DeVos, among others, similarly argue that self-perception and identity are the most important components of ethnicity.5 Fourth, for our purposes an ethnoreligious conflict is a conflict that involves a state and an ethnoreligious minority. A minority is defined as ethnoreligious if the minority is both ethnically and religiously distinct from the rest of a state’s population. Finally, much of the discussion and cross-sectional study of religion has taken place within the context of the debate over Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ theory.6 This literature is examined separately. Building a More Accurate Model for Ethnoreligious Conflict Perhaps the one generalisation which can be made of the relationship between theories of ethnoreligious conflict and the results of the quantitative studies which test them is that the results of the quantitative studies are rarely as simple as the theories on the topic would suggest. The theories are quite simple. The MAR project’s basic model for

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ethnic conflict is as follows: discrimination against an ethnic minority causes that minority to form grievances over this discrimination; these grievances cause an ethnic group to mobilise;7 finally, mobilised ethnic groups are more likely to take part in ethnic conflict in the form of protest8 and rebellion.9 The specific types of discrimination examined are political,10 cultural11 and economic discrimination.12 The list of grievances contains these categories13 as well as grievances over the issue of autonomy,14 which are correlated with whether the minority had some form of autonomy in the past. This basic model is shown in Figure 1. Of course, the dynamics of this basic model are influenced by other factors, including repression, group cohesion, group size, international support for the minority group, economic development, state power, regime type (democratic versus autocratic), democratisation and the spread of conflict across borders, to name a few. Gurr tests this model and finds that the results mostly conform to it for ethnic conflict but does not address the issue of ethnoreligious conflict.15 Also, it is important to note that when Gurr tested his model, the direct relationship between grievances and political action, in the form of protest and rebellion, was stronger than the relationship grievances had with mobilisation.16 Are Ethnic Conflicts Religious? Before we can develop a model for ethnoreligious conflict, we must establish three things. First, do ethnoreligious conflicts, those conflicts where minorities are both ethnically and religiously distinct, often involve religious issues? Second, if so, are these conflicts different from other ethnic conflicts? Finally, irrespective of whether religious issues are involved, are ethnoreligious conflicts different from other ethnic conflicts? Of the 267 cases of ethnic conflict analysed, 105 are ethnoreligious cases, thus ethnoreligious cases constitute a minority of about 39 per cent of ethnic conflicts. Of these 105 ethnoreligious cases, only in 12 (11.4 per cent) is religion a primary issue, but in another 65 (61.9 per cent) it is a secondary issue. Thus, religion is not an issue at all in only 28 (26.7 per cent) of these cases. Yet, even in most of these 28 cases, other religious factors like religious legitimacy or religious institutions also play a role.17 Given this, it is fair to say that most ethnoreligious conflicts involve at least some religious issues and factors.

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There is also considerable evidence that when religious issues are important, they influence the dynamics of ethnic conflicts. The details of these findings are described below. Finally, the simple fact that a conflict involves an ethnoreligious religious minority can change the dynamics of an ethnic conflict. Such conflicts involve higher levels of political and cultural discrimination and grievances. They are also more likely to involve issues of self-determination.18 Also, while democracy influences the extent of discrimination against ethnoreligious minorities it does not seem to be a relevant factor for other ethnic minorities.19 Finally, in a study based on different data, Rummel found that the more religious minorities are present in a state, the greater the extent of ethnic violence.20 Religious Discrimination and Grievances The basic model developed by Gurr to describe the causes of ethnic conflict (see Figure 1), is also applicable to ethnoreligious conflict. That is, just as non-religious discrimination leads to grievances over these issues which, in turn leads to mobilisation followed by protest and rebellion, religious discrimination should also lead to grievances over these issues which, in turn, should set off the same conflict process. This argument is also consistent with the qualitative literature on the topic. There are many who argue that threats to one’s religion provoke a defensive response. Wentz, for example, argues that religion often defines our understanding of the ultimate order and gives meaning to our existence.21 Because of this, religion is something so important to us that we will defend our beliefs at any cost. Geertz similarly argues that a threat to a religious belief system will provoke a reaction from those who depend on it for their understanding of reality.22 In fact, this type of argument is very common among those who discuss the causes of religious violence.23 Given this, it is reasonable to argue that grievances are formed over religious discrimination and that these grievances can lead to action. The empirical studies on this topic support this argument in general, but differ from Gurr’s model in some important specifics. As expected, religious discrimination24 leads to religious grievances.25 In fact, the correlations between these variables are much stronger than the correlations found by Gurr between any other type of discrimination and grievances. However, the relationship between these grievances and political action is more complicated in several ways. First, the correlations between religious grievances and mobilisation were similar

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FIGURE 2 RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION, RELIGIOUS GRIEVANCES, PROTEST AND REBELLION

to the direct relationship this variable had with protest and rebellion except that, as Gurr found in his general study with regard to nonreligious grievances, the direct relationship between grievances and political action was stronger than the relationship between grievances and mobilisation. Accordingly, this discussion focuses on this direct relationship.26 Second, the relationship between religious grievances and protest is the opposite of what one would expect. That is, the more upset an ethnic minority gets over religious discrimination, the less it engages in protest. This holds true even when controlling for factors such as other types of grievances, religious legitimacy, democracy, repression and mobilisation! There is no explanation that can be tested by the available data which explains this result.27 One explanation which comes to mind is that, perhaps, religion is something so important that it is beyond protest and only violent responses are considered appropriate. However, as is discussed shortly, violence, in the form of rebellion, only occurs in certain circumstances, making this answer problematic. Another potential explanation is that any state which engages in the religious discrimination which caused the grievances is likely to be a place where protest is discouraged. This answer is also problematic because the study controls for factors like democracy and repression. Nevertheless, it is possible that there is some more subtle aspect of repression or discouragement of protest that these variables do not reflect. Interestingly, another form of religious grievance, active religious grievances,28 are positively correlated with protest. Unlike the previously discussed variable which measures complaints over religious discrimination, this variable measures active demands for more rights which are unconnected to discrimination.29 Thus, the expected

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relationship between religious grievances and protest holds in the case of these active demands for more rights, but complaints over religious discrimination are counter-intuitively linked to less protest. Third, the relationship between religious grievances and rebellion is also not simple. This is because ethnoreligious minorities do not engage in rebellion unless they also make demands for some form of selfdetermination.30 In fact there are no ethnoreligious minorities engaged in terrorism, guerrilla warfare or open rebellion between 1990 and 1998 (the time span for which the MAR dataset has yearly data on rebellion) who do not also desire self-determination. This finding alone is worthy of note because there are few instances in the study of politics where a trend, however strong, has no exceptions. Be that as it may, among those groups which do desire selfdetermination, the level of rebellion doubles if they also express religious grievances.31 Based on this, we can conclude that religious grievances are not a basic cause of rebellion. It is a desire for selfdetermination that causes rebellion. However, religious grievances do exacerbate the situation when self-determination issues make rebellion likely. All of this is modelled in Figure 2. The Importance of Religious Issues It is fair to argue that when religious issues are important they will change the dynamics of a conflict. This argument is inherent in any argument as to how religious influences conflict and, therefore, requires no further discussion. Before we proceed to describe what happens in ethnoreligious conflicts where religious issues are important, it is necessary to define what it means when religious issues are important. For the purposes of this study the importance of religious issues is measured by comparing the extent of religious discrimination and grievances to non-religious discrimination and grievances.32 The importance of religious issues influences ethnoreligious conflicts in several ways. First, non-religious discrimination increases. In fact, in multiple regressions controlling for 11 other factors, religious relevance to a conflict is one of the strongest predictors of non-religious discrimination.33 This implies that religion is a major motivation for discrimination against ethnic minorities. Second, rebellion is more likely when religious issues are important but, as noted above, only when self-determination is an issue in the conflict. Third, political grievances are higher when religion is relevant to a conflict.34

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FIGURE 3 THE INFLUENCES OF RELIGIOUS RELEVANCE AND THE INFLUENCES UPON IT

There are also some other factors associated with religion being relevant to a conflict. First, when Islamic groups are involved in a conflict, either as the minority or majority group, religion is generally more relevant. In fact when one group is Islamic, on average the relevance of religion nearly triples, and when both groups are Islamic the average relevance of religion quadruples.35 Second, the more Christian groups involved in a conflict, the less relevant is religion. In fact when one group is Christian, on average the relevance of religion is cut nearly in half and when both groups are Christian the average relevance of religion is about one-eighth of when no Christian groups are involved.36 All of these influences of religious relevance and the influences upon it are shown in Figure 3. Religious Institutions Religious legitimacy and religious institutions can influence a conflict even if the conflict itself is not a religious one. Classic mobilisation theory has it that any group already organised through some form of institution, including religious institutions, will engage in more political activity. This is because it is simply easier to organise people for political activity when they are already organised through another format.37 This is particularly true of religious institutions for several reasons. First, they often have a protected status not available to other organisations. Second, they often have access to the media and international networks of communication. Third, they give the cause

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FIGURE 4 RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS

legitimacy. Fourth, they are often the only common denominator in diverse populations.38 On the other hand, there is also a viable argument that religious institutions should inhibit political activity. This is because religious institutions often have a close and mutually beneficial relationship with the government. Hence, it is often in their interest to inhibit antigovernment political activity. Upon examination of the evidence, there is support for both of these trends: they both occur, but under different circumstances. First, we will examine the relationship between religious institutions39 and protest. When religious grievances are low and when religion is not an important element in a conflict, religious institutions inhibit protest. However, when religious grievances are high and religion is an important issue, religious institutions facilitate protest.40 This implies that when the religion itself is not at risk, as measured by religious importance and religious grievances, religious institutions tend to inhibit conflict, but that when the religion itself is at risk, they support ethnic mobilisation. The relationship between religious institutions and rebellion is similar to the relationship between religious grievances and rebellion. When there is no demand for self-determination there is little rebellion, but when such a demand exists, religious institutions tend to facilitate it.41 Thus, ethnic demands for self-determination seem to be more important than a religious institution’s desire to support a beneficial status quo. This relationship is shown in Figure 4.

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FIGURE 5 THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS LEGITIMACY ON ETHNIC GRIEVANCES

Religious Legitimacy One of the few truisms in politics that appears to have universal acceptance is that religion can lend legitimacy to a wide range of political activities. This truism can be found in textbooks and in the behaviour of politicians worldwide.42 A corollary of this truism, which is particularly relevant to our purposes, is that religion can be used to legitimate secular grievances. More specifically, when an ethnic minority suffers for economic, political and economic discrimination, religion can be used to legitimate the expression of grievances over these secular forms of discrimination. Thus, a conflict does not have to be religious in order for religious legitimacy to come into play. Many argue that this is precisely what is happening in the Third World. Secular ideologies such as liberalism, socialism, fascism and communism, which were the basis for many state governments, are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy primarily due to their failure to meet the political and economic expectations of their constituencies. As a result, religion is becoming an alternative basis of legitimacy which supports opposition movements that are popular not due to their religious leanings, but rather because the people are fed up with the economic and political failures of their governments.43 The evidence shows that this also occurs in ethnoreligious conflicts, but with a twist. When religious issues are not important, religious legitimacy44 facilitates the formation of grievances over non-religious issues. However, when religion is an important issue in a conflict, religious legitimacy inhibits the formation of non-religious grievances. Also, regardless of whether religion is an important issue in a conflict,

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FIGURE 6 RELIGION AND DISCRIMINATION

religious legitimacy facilitates the formation of religious grievances.45 Thus, religious legitimacy can and is used in order to facilitate secular grievances unless religious issues are at stake, in which case it causes an ethnoreligious minority to focus on the religious issues at the expense of the secular issues. This relationship is shown in Figure 5. Religion and Discrimination While this discussion has thus far focused on the behaviour of minority groups, there are two sides to most conflicts. In the case of ethnic conflicts the other side is generally a state controlled by a rival ethnic group. The main type of action taken by these majority groups is discrimination. While there are many non-religious factors that influence the level of discrimination, including international support for an ethnic minority, the spread of conflict across borders and democracy, this discussion focuses on the influence of religious factors on discrimination and those causes of discrimination which are unique to ethnoreligious minorities.46 Several religious factors are linked to discrimination. Religious legitimacy, whether religion is important to a conflict, and religious demands are all causes of non-religious discrimination. The first two factors are also correlated with religious discrimination but since the religious relevance variable is constructed, in part, based on the religious discrimination it is inappropriate to test any links between the two.47 An interesting dynamic that is unique to ethnoreligious minorities is the link between democracy48 and discrimination. As one would expect, democracies discriminate less than do autocracies. But surprisingly those countries which fall between democracies and

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FIGURE 7 RELIGION AND DISCRIMINATION

autocracies on the democracy-autocracy continuum discriminate even less.49 This relationship is shown in Figure 6. A Model of Ethnoreligious Conflict This relationship is also the final relationship in our model of the dynamics of ethnoreligious conflict. The entire model is shown in Figure 7. As can be seen from the figure, the influence of religion on ethnoreligious conflict is neither simple nor trivial. Various manifestations of religion influence the conflict process at each stage of the process described by Gurr’s model of ethnic conflict in multiple and often complex ways. Furthermore, it is important to reiterate that all of these relationships are based on quantitative studies of 105 cases of ethnoreligious conflict during the early 1990s and, as such, are based not upon theoretical speculation, but rather upon empirical evidence. Thus, this model is supported by facts as well as theory.

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It is also important to reiterate that this model focuses on the religious aspects of ethnoreligious conflict. Numerous additional non-religious factors also influence the dynamics of all ethnic conflicts, including religious ones. International Influences on Ethnoreligious Conflicts International intervention, including intervention in ethnic conflicts, is becoming more common in the post-Cold War era. During the Cold War, intervention by a country from one of the two major blocs would generally result in a counter-intervention by the other bloc. Since this had the potential of escalating into a superpower confrontation, such interventions were not taken lightly. However, with the end of superpower rivalry, interventions such as those in the Gulf War and on behalf of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, to name just two, have become possible. It is reasonable to argue that affinities between groups influence the extent of international intervention. That is, if the population of a state feels ethnic or religious affinities with a minority living elsewhere, that state is more likely to intervene on behalf of that minority. For example, Israel is well known for its championship of the rights of Jewish minorities living throughout the world. The empirical results on the topic contain several findings which show that religion influences international intervention in ethnic conflict. First, states which intervene in ethnic conflicts are most likely to intervene on behalf of minorities religiously similar to them. About 76 per cent of political interventions50 and 78 per cent of military interventions51 by foreign governments in ethnic conflicts between 1990 and 1995 were on behalf of minorities religiously similar to the intervening state.52 Second, while both Christian and Islamic states are more likely to intervene on behalf of minorities religiously similar to them, this is especially true of Islamic states. While about 30 per cent of political interventions and 22 per cent of military interventions by Christian states are on behalf of non-Christian minorities, these percentages are only 8 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, for Islamic states intervening on behalf of non-Muslim minorities.53 Third, intervention in ethnic conflicts is more likely when those conflicts are ethnoreligious. Political intervention by foreign

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governments is about twice as likely in an ethnoreligious conflict as it is in a non-religious ethnic conflict.54 Finally, Islamic minorities are more likely to benefit from intervention than are other minorities. Fifty-seven per cent of Islamic minorities benefit from political intervention and 34 per cent benefit from military intervention, as opposed to 43 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively, for non-Islamic minorities. This is not surprising given that Christian states are willing to intervene on behalf of Islamic minorities but Islamic states are less willing to intervene on behalf of Christian minorities.55 Religious affinities are not the only affinities which seem to influence state behaviour in the international arena. General ethnic affinities between a state and a minority in another state have been shown to influence the behaviour of that state toward the state in which that minority resides. International conflict is more likely between two such states, especially if the minority in question expresses high levels of grievances and has high levels of mobilisation.56 Also, states of different religions are more likely to go to war.57 Based on all of this, it is fair to conclude that in addition to influencing domestic conflict, religion also influences international political behaviour. The Civilisations Debate While, at least until the events of 11 September 2001, the discipline of international relations mostly ignored the topic of religion,58 a major section of the international literature does indirectly address the issue. This literature is the debate surrounding Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ theory.59 This theory posits that the end of the superpower rivalry which dominated international relations during the Cold War has been replaced by a rivalry between several world civilisations. It is important to note at this point that while this theory is very controversial, the purpose of this discussion is not to rehash the extensive debate over the theory’s validity, but rather to evaluate what, if anything, empirical studies of ethnoreligious conflict have to add to our knowledge of the topic. Accordingly, this discussion focuses on several aspects of Huntington’s theory and the results of the empirical studies which examine it. Huntington defines a civilisation as: the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of what distinguishes humans

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from other species. It is defined by both common language, history, religion, customs, institutions and by the subjective self identification of people.60 This definition is similar to the definition of ethnicity discussed earlier in this work in that it is based primarily on the concept of selfperception. The major difference is that Huntington expects the more narrow ethnic identities of the past to coalesce into more broadly defined civilisational identities. Thus, most civilisational conflicts will also be ethnic conflicts. Furthermore, most civilisational conflicts will also be religious conflicts because, in practice, religion seems to be a major defining factor in his list of civilisations. The Islamic and Hindu civilisations appear to be solely defined by religion. The Confucian/Sinic civilisation includes Confucianism, and by inference Buddhism,61 as a ‘major component’. The West is, in part, defined by its combined Protestant and Catholic cultures as well as the effects of the Reformation. The Slavic-Orthodox civilisation is based, in part, upon the Orthodox branch of Christianity. Latin American culture is distinguished from the West, in part, by the fact that it is primarily Catholic.62 The Japanese civilisation has a distinct religious tradition including Shintoism. Interestingly, Huntington is unsure whether the African civilisation, the only civilisation with no clearly religious element, should be considered a civilisation. In addition to Huntington’s contention that post-Cold War conflict will be more civilisational, he also makes two other predictions. First, he predicts that conflict in general will be more common in the postCold War era. Second, he predicts that the Islamic civilisation will be disproportionally involved in civilisational conflict, especially with the Western civilisation. Empirical studies based on the MAR dataset which have tested this theory with regard to ethnic conflict have nearly unanimously rejected it on all fronts. First, post-Cold War ethnic conflict is no more civilisational than it was during the Cold War. While the levels of ethnic conflict rose immediately after the end of the Cold War, by 1998 they had dropped to their previous levels. Furthermore, the proportion of civilisational versus non-civilisational conflict did not change with the end of the Cold War and nor did the relative levels of violence of the two types of conflict.63 In the Middle East, nationalist conflicts are more violent than civilisational ones.64 Gurr similarly found that major ethnic conflicts of the early 1990s were not civilisational.65 These results are

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confirmed by Ellingsen, who used different data and similarly found that the dynamics of ethnic conflict did not change with the end of the Cold War.66 Second, his predictions regarding Islam were not correct. The proportion of conflicts involving the Islamic civilisation barely changed with the end of the Cold War. While the majority of ethnic conflicts involving the Islamic civilisation are civilisational conflicts, this is not new to the post-Cold War era, and the West does not seem to be singled out as their opponent of choice.67 Also, Islamic ethnic minorities are no more violent than are other ethnic minorities.68 Finally, in a head-to-head comparison, while neither religion nor civilisations were found to be the primary explanation for ethnic conflict, of the two, religion proved to be a stronger influence.69 Studies of other types of conflict mostly confirm these results. These include studies of civil wars which found that political factors are more influential than cultural ones.70 This also includes a number of findings on international conflicts. These include: that civilisational and cultural factors have no unidirectional influence on international war;71 that intra-civilisational wars are more likely than civilisational ones;72 that, if anything, the international conflict has waned with the end of the Cold War;73 that voting behaviour in the UN General Assembly is not influenced by civilisational factors;74 and that Huntington’s fears of Islamic wars against the West were unfounded (though this finding was before the events of 11 September 2001).75 However, in a study of terrorism, Weinberg and Eubanks found that terrorist activities shifted to a more civilisational pattern during the early 1980s, primarily attacks by Islamic groups on Western targets.76 Weinberg and Eubanks point out this shift occurred during the Cold War, but argue that it nevertheless conforms to Huntington’s theory and that, perhaps, terrorism is a leading indicator for the trends that will occur in other types of conflict. While it is possible that this is the case, there are three reasons to believe that this increase in Islamic terrorism is not a harbinger of the fruition of Huntington’s predictions. First, this is the only study which finds that any form of conflict conforms to Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ theory. Thus, the overwhelming weight of empirical evidence still favours the conclusion that Huntington’s predictions have yet to occur. This indicates that, at the very least, this foreshadowed shift in world conflict patterns has yet to occur. Second, this study focused on measuring a single variable and did not control for other factors, as did many of the other studies. Third, this study focuses on one of many potential types of conflict. It is

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possible, and even likely in light of the other quantitative studies of the topic, that Islamic groups participate in about as much conflict as they have in the past and that their conflicts are no more violent, on average, than are other conflicts. This rise in terrorism can simply mean that this particular tactic, which is one among many potential tactics, is becoming popular among Islamic groups engaged in conflict. While all of this clearly shows that Huntington’s theory is probably not an accurate description of reality, how do we reconcile these findings with the ones described earlier which found that religion does influence ethnic conflict? The answer is twofold. The first answer is that while Huntington’s concept of civilisations and religion are clearly correlated, they are not the same thing. Not all civilisational conflicts are religious ones and not all religious conflicts are civilisational. However, this answer, by itself, is unsatisfying because, at least for ethnic conflict, the overlap between the two is about 83 per cent.77 The second explanation for this disparity between the results on religion and those on civilisations is that the findings on the influence of religion on ethnic conflict include the finding that while a majority of ethnic conflicts are not religious, religious variables influence the dynamics of ethnic conflict. The studies of civilisational conflict described above mostly ask whether the amount of conflicts between civilisations has changed with the end of the Cold War, or whether the fact that the groups involved in a conflict come from different civilisations increases the violence of the conflict. That this has not occurred in no way contradicts the fact that religious variables influence the dynamics of ethnic conflict. However, all of the studies which compare the impact of religion and civilisations or religion and culture find religion to be more important. This includes studies of ethnic conflict and of international conflict.78 Furthermore, many of the studies which focus on the impact of religion on ethnic conflict also examine the influence of culture and generally find the religious variables to be more influential. Religious legitimacy, in multiple regressions, has a consistently stronger influence on the extent of discrimination on ethnic minorities than do cultural differences between the majority and minority groups involved in a conflict.79 Religious differences are also more influential in predicting whether an ethnic minority will benefit from intervention than are cultural differences.80 Thus, the empirical literature on the civilisations debate has a few things to add to our knowledge of the influence of religion on conflict. First, the extent of religious conflict has not changed since the end of

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the Cold War. Second, religion is not the primary cause of conflict. Third, despite this, religion has a greater influence on conflict than do other cultural factors. Finally, none of this in any way detracts from the finding that specific religious factors significantly influence the dynamics of ethnic conflict. Conclusions The results of this analysis of the behaviouralist literature on religion and ethnoreligious conflict can be summed up as follows: while religion is not the primary cause of ethnic conflict, it has multiple and complex influences upon the dynamics of ethnic conflict. The 18 boxes and 25 arrows in Figure 7, which covers only the domestic aspects of ethnoreligious conflict, well attest to this. Despite this influence, the main cause of ethnic rebellion is not religion. Rather it is the desire for self-determination. Yet, when a group wants some form of self-determination, the presence of religious issues in a conflict can double the level of rebellion. Furthermore, regardless of whether the conflict involves issues of self-determination, other religious factors, including religious legitimacy, religious institutions, religious discrimination, religious grievances and the specific religion of the group, can all influence the dynamics of an ethnic conflict. Furthermore, religion is shown to have a stronger influence on conflict than other cultural factors. In addition, religion has been shown to influence international intervention and whether states go to war. In all, while it is not a direct cause of ethnic conflict, it is probably the strongest influence among the non-causal influences on ethnic conflict. This means that the dynamics of ethnic conflict can not be understood without taking religion into account. Thus, minorities like the Palestinians, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Southerners in Sudan and the Kashmiris in India may be seeking self-determination, religious issues clearly exacerbate the situation. Religion also plays a role in less violent conflicts involving minorities who do not seek selfdetermination. This includes minorities like Copts in Egypt, the Hindus in Pakistan and the Muslims in France. In the former two cases, religion clearly plays a role in motivating the discrimination against these minorities, and in the latter case, Muslims in France who seek to express their religion must deal with barriers put up against this by a secular state. Yet religion can not wholly be separated from nationalism and the desire for self-determination. While no empirical study has been done

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on the topic, comparative research has linked many individual nationalisms to religious origins.81 That is, religion is posited to be a source of nationalism. Thus, the desire for self-determination that is the primary cause of ethnic rebellion can, in some cases, be linked to religion. Be that as it may, this analysis also reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative research. The downside is that numbers cannot fully capture the richness and nuances of a topic like religion. Many of the measures used in the studies described here merely measure whether a conflict is between two groups of different religions or compare the behaviour of groups belonging to different religions (that is, whether Christian and Muslim groups behave differently). Others look at some way religion manifests itself in the political or social arena. Variables which measure religious discrimination, religious grievances, religious legitimacy, religious institutions and whether religion is an important issue, are all examples of this. Yet these variables, in all probability, only scratch the surface of the power of religion as a motivating force in human behaviour. Given this, it is reasonable to ask whether such studies are at all worthwhile. A reply to this oft-asked question is based on the strengths of quantitative analysis. Given that the variables used here are by no means all that we would like them to be, they still accurately reflect reality, even if this reflection is partial and imperfect. Despite this, these imperfect variables clearly produce results. The many studies described here show that these religious variables do have multiple influences on several types of conflict. It is arguable that the fact that these variables are less than perfect shows not that they are unimportant but, rather, shows that religion is a very strong influence on conflict, especially ethnic conflict. This is because if imperfect variables which measure only a part of religion’s influence on human behaviour reveal so many influences, imagine the influences which could be discovered if more perfect variables were available. Thus, the findings reviewed here are not the tainted results of a flawed system but, rather, the tip of an iceberg seen by an observer who does not have the ability to look underwater at the greater mass that the water’s surface hides. The empirical methodologies of the studies discussed here have two other advantages. First, they avoid the trap of many comparative studies, where each side of a debate can cite its own examples or its own interpretation of the same example. In cross-sectional empirical research all examples within a defined category are included, so there is no possibility of citing cases selectively. Furthermore, in order to code

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variables, a rigorous system must be developed which clearly defines in what instances a variable is coded in a certain way. This makes it difficult to change one’s interpretation of a particular case in order to fit an argument. Second, and more importantly, empirical studies often reveal findings that are so unexpected that it is unlikely that anyone would have looked for them. The best example of this is the finding that as ethnic minorities get more upset over religious issues, they protest less. In sum, there are relatively few empirical studies on religion and conflict but those that do exist are very illuminating. They confirm that religion influences the conflict process but also show that it is rarely a primary cause of conflict, at least in the case of ethnic conflict. The interesting, unexpected and often counter-intuitive results of these studies indicate that much work has yet to be done in the field of the empirical study of religion and conflict and such work is an important agenda for future research. Furthermore, even those studies that do not focus on religion should, at the very least, include variables to control for the complex influence of religion on human behaviour. NOTES 1. R.Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). 2. For more details on the MAR database, see Ted R.Gurr, Minorities At Risk (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace 1993); Ted R.Gurr, ‘Why Minorities Rebel’, International Political Science Review 14/2 (1993), pp.161–201; Ted R.Gurr, Peoples Versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000); Ted R.Gurr and Will H.Moore, ‘Ethnopolitical Rebellion: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the 1980s with Risk Assessments for the 1990s’, American Journal of Political Science 41/4 (1997), pp.1079–1103; and the project’s website at www.cidcm.umd.edu/ inscr/mar. The website also contains a copy of the MAR data. It is important to note that the MAR dataset added 18 new cases after the religion data was collected so, these cases are not included in most of the analyses discussed here. 3. This data is also available at the MAR website. 4. Gurr, Minorities At Risk (note 2), p.3. 5. David Carment and Patrick James (eds.), Wars in the Midst of Peace (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), p.2; Karl W.Deutsch, ‘On Nationalism, World Regions, and the Nature of the West’, in Per Torsvik (ed.), Mobilisation, Center-Periphery Structures, and Nation

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Building (Oslo: Universitesforlaget, 1981), pp.51–93; Donald L.Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), p.68; Lola Romanucci-Ross and George DeVos (eds.), Ethnic Identity: Creation, Conflict, and Accommodation, third edn. (London: Alta Mira, 1995). Samuel P.Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’, Foreign Affairs 72/3 (1993), pp.22–49; Samuel P.Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). Mobilisation is measured by multiplying two scales. The first measures the number of organisations a group supports on the following scale: 0— none reported; 1—one; 2—two; 3—three or more. The second measures the support for the largest organisation on the following scale: 0—no political movements recorded; 1—limited, no political movement is supported by more than a tenth of the minority; 2—medium, the largest political movement is supported by a quarter to half of the minority; 3— large, the largest political movement is supported by more than half of the minority. This variable is measured twice, once for open, legal and peaceful organisations and once for underground, illegal and violent organisations. Protest is measured on the following scale: 0—none reported; 1—verbal opposition; 2—scattered acts of symbolic resistance (e.g. sit-ins, blockage of traffic), sabotage or symbolic destruction of property; 3— political organising activity on a substantial scale; 4—a few demonstrations, rallies, strikes and/or riots, total participation less than 10,000; 5—demonstrations, rallies, strikes and/or riots, total participation estimated between 10,000 and 100,000; 6—demonstrations, rallies, strikes and/or riots, total participation over 100,000. Rebellion is coded on the following scale: 0—none; 1—political banditry, sporadic terrorism; 2—campaigns of terrorism; 3—local rebellions, armed attempts to seize power in a locale; 4—small-scale guerrilla activity; 5—medium-scale guerrilla activity; 6—large-scale guerrilla activity; 7—protracted civil war, fought by rebel military with base areas. Political discrimination includes discrimination over the following issues: freedom of expression, free movement, place of residence, rights in judicial proceedings, political organisation, voting, recruitment to police or military, access to civil service, and attainment of high office. Cultural discrimination includes discrimination over the following issues: speaking and publishing in the group’s language or dialect; instruction in the group’s language; celebration of group holidays, ceremonies or cultural events; restrictions on dress, appearance or behaviour; restrictions on marriage or family life; and restrictions on organisations that promote the group’s cultural interests.

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12. Economic discrimination measures whether the group is poorer than other groups in the state as well as whether this is a result of public policy. 13. Cultural grievances measure complaints over the types of discrimination measured in the cultural discrimination variable. Political grievances measures the following type of grievances: diffuse political grievances, explicit objectives not clear; greater political rights in own community or region; greater participation in politics and decision-making at the central state level; equal civil rights and status; change in unpopular local officials or policies. Economic grievances measures the following type of grievances: diffuse economic grievances, explicit objectives not clear; greater share of public funds and services; greater economic opportunities (better education, access to higher status occupations, resources); improved working conditions, better wages or protective regulations (if sought specifically for group members); protection of land, jobs, resources being used for the advantage of other groups. 14. Autonomy grievances involve a general desire for self-determination, union with kindred groups living elsewhere, exit from the state, or autonomy within the state. 15. Gurr, Minorities At Risk (note 2); Gurr, ‘Why Minorities Rebel’ (note 2); Gurr, Peoples Versus States (note 2). 16. Gurr, ‘Why Minorities Rebel’ (note 2); Gurr, Peoples Versus States (note 2). 17. Jonathan Fox, ‘The Salience of Religious Issues in Ethnic Conflicts: A Large-N Study’, Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 3/3 (1997), pp.1–19. 18. Ibid., pp.11–13. 19. Jonathan Fox, ‘Religious Causes of Ethnic Discrimination’, International StudiesQuarterly 44/3 (2000), pp.423–50. 20. Rudolph J.Rummel, ‘Is Collective Violence Correlated with Social Pluralism?’, Journal of Peace Research 34/2 (1997), pp. 163–75. 21. Richard Wentz, Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion (Macon, GA: Mercer, 1987). 22. Clifford Geertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in Michael Banton (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966), pp.1–46. 23. See, for example, Mark Juergensmeyer, ‘Terror Mandated by God’, Terrorism and Political Violence 9/2 (1997), pp. 16–23; Carsten B.Laustsen and Ole Waever, ‘In Defence of Religion: Sacred Referent Objects for Securitisation’, Millennium 29/3 (2000), pp.705–39; David Little, Ukraine: The Legacy of Intolerance (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991), p.xxi; Jefferey R.Seul, ‘“Ours is the Way of God”: Religion, Identity and Intergroup Conflict’, Journal of Peace Research 36/3 (1999), pp.553–69.

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24. Religious discrimination includes the following types of restrictions: public observance of religious services, festivals and/or holidays; restrictions on building, repairing and/or maintaining places of worship; forced observance of religious laws of other groups; restrictions on formal religious organisations; restrictions on the running of religious schools and/or religious education in general; restrictions on the observance of religious laws concerning personal status, including marriage and divorce; and restrictions on the ordination of and/or access to clergy. 25. Religious grievances are either diffuse unspecific complaints over religious issues or complaints over the types of restrictions included in the religious discrimination variable. 26. Jonathan Fox, ‘The Effects of Religious Discrimination on Ethnic Protest and Rebellion’, Journal of Conflict Studies 20/2 (2000), pp.16–43. 27. Ibid. 28. This variable is measured on the following scale: 0—none; 1—the group is demanding more religious rights; 2—the group is seeking a privileged status for their religion; 3—the group is seeking to impose some aspects of its religious ideology on the dominant group; 4—the group is seeking a form of ideological hegemony. 29. Fox (note 26). 30. Ibid.; Jonathan Fox and Josephine Squires, ‘Threats to Primal Identities: A Comparison of Nationalism and Religion as it Impacts on Protest and Rebellion’, Terrorism and Political Violence 13/1 (2001), pp.88–102. 31. Fox (note 26); Fox and Squires (note 30). 32. This is done on the following scale: 0—none; 1—marginal relevance, issues are basically of a non-religious nature, but religion is being used to legitimise those issues and/or mobilise the group; 2—religious issues are significant but are less important than other non-religious issues; 3— religion is one of several significant issues which are of roughly equal importance; 4—religion is the primary issue of the conflict but there are other significant issues involved; 5—religion is the only issue relevant to the conflict. 33. Fox (note 19), pp.433–4. 34. Fox (note 17). 35. Jonathan Fox, ‘Is Islam More Conflict Prone than Other Religions? A Cross-Sectional Study of Ethnoreligious Conflict’, Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 6/2 (2000), pp.1–23. 36. Ibid., p.14; see also Jonathan Fox, ‘Are Middle East Conflicts More Religious?’, Middle East Quarterly 8/4 (2001), pp.31–40. 37. See, for example, Sidney Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics inItaly 1965–1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p.7; Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp.43–7; John

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38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

51.

D.Mcarthy and Mayer N.Zald, ‘Resource Mobilisation and Social Movements: A Partial Theory’, American Journal of Sociology 82/6 (1976), pp.1212–41. Hank Johnston, and Jozef Figa, ‘The Church and Political Opposition: Comparative Perspectives on Mobilisation Against Authoritarian Regimes’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 27/1 (1988), pp.32– 47; Barry Rubin, Islamic Fundamentalism in Egyptian Politics (London: Macmillan, 1994). This variable is measured on the following scale: 0—no religious institutions exist; 1—informal institutions exist; 2—a formally ordained clergy exists but there are no established houses of worship; 3—formal houses of worship exist but they are not organised under a formal unified ecclesiastical structure; 4—formal houses of worship organised under a formal unified ecclesiastical structure. Jonathan Fox, ‘Do Religious Institutions Support Violence or the Status Quo?’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 22/2 (1999), pp. 119–39. Ibid., p.130. See, for example, Mehran Kamrava, Understanding Comparative Politics: A Framework For Analysis (London: Routledge 1996), pp. 163– 5; Yves Meny, Government and Politics in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993), pp.28–31. See, for example, Jeff Haynes, Religion in Third World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994); Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1993); Emile Sahliyeh (ed.), Religious Resurgence and Politics in the Contemporary World (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990); Anson Shupe, ‘The Stubborn Persistence of Religion in the Global Arena’, in ibid., pp.17–26. For the purposes of this study, religion is considered to be legitimate in a state if the state has an official religion or religions. Jonathan Fox, ‘The Influence of Religious Legitimacy on Grievance Formation by Ethnoreligious Minorities’, Journal of Peace Research 36/ 3 (1999), pp.289–307. Fox (note 19). Ibid. For a full discussion of the democracy variable, see Keith Jaggers and Ted R.Gurr, ‘Tracking Democracy’s Third Wave with the Polity III Data’, Journal of Peace Research 32/4 (1995), pp.469–82. Fox (note 19). Political intervention includes ideological encouragement, non-military financial support, access to external markets and communications, the use of peacekeeping units and instituting a blockade. Military intervention includes funds for military supplies, direct military equipment donations or sales, military training, the provision of military

146 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

advisors, rescue missions, cross-border raids, cross-border sanctuaries and in-country combat units. Jonathan Fox, ‘Religious Causes of International Intervention in Ethnic Conflicts’, International Politics 38/4 (2001), pp.515–31. Jonathan Fox, ‘International Intervention in Middle Eastern and Islamic Ethnic Conflicts from 1990 to 1995: A Large-N Study’, paper presented at the Israeli Association for International Studies Annual Conference, Tel-Aviv, February 2002. Fox (note 52). Fox (note 53). David R.Davis and Will H.Moore, ‘Ethnicity Matters: Transnational Ethnic Alliances and Foreign Policy Behaviour’, International Studies Quarterly 41/1 (1997), pp.171–84; David R.Davis, Keith Jaggers and Will H.Moore, ‘Ethnicity, Minorities, and International Conflict’, in Carment and James (note 5), pp.148–63. Errol A.Henderson, ‘Culture or Contiguity: Ethnic Conflict, the Similarity of States, and the Onset of War, 1820–1989’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41/5 (1997), pp.649–68. Jonathan Fox, ‘Religion: An Oft Overlooked Element of International Studies’, International Studies Review 3/3 (2001), pp.53–73. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’ (note 6); Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations (note 6). Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’ (note 6), p.24. It is unclear whether Buddhism is included in the Confucian/Sinic civilisation. While Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations (note 6), hints that Buddhism may constitute a separate civilisation, he appears to include it as part of the Confucian/Sinic civilisation. The Buddhist civilisation appears on his map of ‘The World of Civilisations: Post-1990’ (pp.26–7). He also infers that there is a Buddhist civilisation on p.257, table 10.1, where he argues that the Chinese-Tibetan conflict is intercivilisational, ‘since it is clearly a clash between Confucian Han Chinese and Lamaist Buddhist Tibetans’. Otherwise, one would assume, as did Ted R.Gurr, ‘Peoples Against the State: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System’, International Studies Quarterly 38/3 (1994), pp.347–77, that Buddhists were included in the Sinic/Confucian civilisation. This is mainly because Huntington does not include it in his listing of civilisations. Also, on p.45 Huntington includes ‘the related cultures of Vietnam and Korea’, which are countries with Buddhist majorities, in the Sinic/Confucian civilisation. Finally, Huntington on page 48, concludes that ‘Buddhism, although a major religion, has not been the basis of a major civilization’. This final statement combined with the fact Buddhism is not included in his listing of civilisations, either in his book or in Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’ (note 6),

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62. 63.

64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

72.

73. 74.

75. 76.

leads me to the conclusion that operationally, Buddhism should be considered part of the Sinic/Confucian civilisation. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations (note 6), pp.45–6. Jonathan Fox, ‘Ethnic Minorities and the Clash of Civilisations: A Quantitative Analysis of Huntington’s Thesis’, British Journal of Political Science 32/3 (2002). Jonathan Fox, ‘Civilisational, Religious, and National Explanations for Ethnic Rebellion in the Post-Cold War Middle East’, Jewish Political Studies Review 13/1–2 (2001), pp.177–204. Gurr (note 61), pp.347–77. Tanja Ellingsen, ‘Patterns of Conflict: Towards Civilisational Clashes? Civilisational Differences and Intrastate Conflicts 1979–1998’, paper presented at the International Studies Association 42nd Annual Conference, Chicago, February 2001. Ellingsen based her study on a combination of the Correlates of War dataset and the Wallensteen and Sollenberg data. Jonathan Fox, ‘Islam and the West: The Influence of Two Civilisations on Ethnic Conflict’, Journal of Peace Research 38/4 (2001), pp.459–72. Fox (note 35). Jonathan Fox, ‘Clash of Civilisations or Clash of Religions, Which is a More Important Determinant of Ethnic Conflict?’, Ethnicities 1/3 (2001), pp.295–320. Errol A.Henderson and J.David Singer, ‘Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946–92’, Journal of Peace Research 37/3 (2000), pp.275–99. Henderson (note 57); Errol A. Henderson, ‘The Democratic Peace Through the Lens of Culture, 1820–1989’, International Studies Quarterly 42/3 (1998), pp.461–84; Errol A.Henderson, ‘Testing the Clash of Civilisations Thesis in Light of Democratic Peace Claims’, paper presented at the International Studies Association 43rd Annual Conference, New Orleans, March 2002. Bruce Russett, John R.Oneal and Michalene Cox, ‘Clash of Civilisations, or Realism and Liberalism Deja Vu? Some Evidence’, Journal of Peace Research 37/5 (2000), pp.583–608; Errol A.Henderson and Richard Tucker, ‘Clear and Present Strangers: The Clash of Civilisations and International Conflict’, International Studies Quarterly 45/2 (2001), pp. 317–38. Russett, Oneal and Cox (note 72). Tanja Ellingsen, ‘The Relevance of Culture in UN Voting Behaviour’, paper presented at the International Studies Association 43rd Annual Conference, New Orleans, March 2002. Russett, Oneal and Cox (note 72). Leonard Weinberg and William Eubank, ‘Terrorism and the Shape of Things to Come’, Terrorism and Political Violence 11/4 (1999), pp.94– 105.

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77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

Fox (note 69). Ibid. Fox (note 19). Fox (note 52). Anthony D.Smith, ‘Ethnic Election and National Destiny: Some Religious Origins of Nationalist Ideals’, Nations and Nationalism 5/3 (1999), pp. 331–55; Anthony D. Smith, ‘The Sacred Dimension of Nationalism’, Millennium 29/3 (2000), pp.791–814.

8 Reflections on Fascism and Religion ROGER EATWELL

Introduction In recent years, the relationship between fascism and religion has attracted considerable attention. This has primarily focused on two, partly related, issues. The first has concerned ‘clerical fascism’—a debate which at times has assumed polemical form in attacks on Pius XII as ‘Hitler’s Pope’. Indeed, the debate has moved well beyond the confines of academia. For instance, at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival an award was given to Constantin Costa-Gavros’s film Amen (based on Rolf Hochhuth’s 1960s’ play, The Deputy), in which a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer tells a Catholic priest about the Nazi extermination programme. Although the Pope is informed, he does nothing. The second dimension concerns the growing academic tendency to interpret fascism—especially in its Italian and German variants—as a form of ‘political religion’. So far the battle lines on this issue have not been fully formed—though the issue raises major questions about the nature of, and support for, fascism.1 The term ‘clerical fascism’ was popularised in Italy during the 1920s, especially by opponents who sought to point to those within the Catholic Church who supported Fascism. Later, the term was broadened to encompass links between the churches and fascism elsewhere (in the case of the Nazis, the links were much stronger with Protestantism). The term ‘clerical fascism’ has also been applied to fascist movements which were overtly and sincerely religious—such as the Romanian Iron Guard, led by the devoutly Orthodox Corneliu Codreanu. Most historians who use the term, such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, are seeking to refine typologies of different forms of fascism—especially contrasting authoritarian-conservative ‘clerical fascism’ with more radical ‘dynamic’ variants.2 However, for a growing group of scholars recently,

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like Daniel Goldhagen, the purpose of stressing the links between the church and fascism has been more to damn the former (especially the Vatican) by association.3 The first part of this article seeks to probe the relationship between the churches and inter-war fascism—in particular, the question of to what extent is it legitimate to talk of ‘clerical fascism’? As early as the 1930s, several philosophers and social scientists, such as Eric Voegelin, claimed that fascism was following in the footsteps of the French Revolutionaries, and seeking to found a ‘civil’ or ‘political’ religion.4 They pointed especially to the rise of godlike rulers, characterised by an apocalyptic sense of mission and allegedly capable of inspiring mass affective emotion. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were typically seen as the archetypes of this form of leadership. Recently, the political religion interpretation has attracted renewed interest on the part of several major historians, including Michael Burleigh and Emilio Gentile.5 They argue that terms like ‘dictatorship’, even ‘totalitarianism’, do not sufficiently convey the nature and fanatical support of movements such as Nazism and Fascism. Burleigh, for example, argues that: ‘Among committed [Nazi] believers, a mythic world of eternal strong heroes, demons, fire and sword—in a word, the fantasy world of the nursery—displaced reality’.6 Another interesting convert to the cause has been Roger Griffin, who in his early magnum opus had been critical of the political religion approach, apparently in an attempt to add explanatory force to his definitional focus on fascist ideology as a form of nationalist ‘palingenesis’ (rebirth).7 In the second part of this article, I will look more closely at this aspect of the relationship between fascism and religion—including both the attitudes of leading fascists to religion and the nature of popular support for fascism. Overall, my main conclusions are: 1. There were important ‘clerical fellow-travellers’ and even more ‘clerical opportunists’. They undoubtedly helped give fascism legitimacy. But ‘clerical fascism’ is essentially a misleading concept outside groups such as the Iron Guard. Although notably different forms of syncretism were possible within the matrix of fascist ideology, few leading members of the church in Germany or Italy believed that a true symbiosis was possible with fascism. Paradoxically, many fascists were not the rabid anti-Christians of academic conventional wisdom.8

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2. And this constitutes the main part of my argument, I want to hold that the fascism-as-a-political-religion approach yields important insights. However, it tends to focus unduly on culture and form over belief and function. In particular, the approach overstates the affective side of fascist support compared to its more rational appeals. The latter were in part linked to serious fascist ideological views about creating a new Third Way (neither capitalist nor socialist) state. They were also linked to scientific views about geopolitics-politics and race, which played a more important role in fascist expansionism and in the Holocaust than affective pseudoreligious sentiments.9 Clerical Fascism The term ‘clerical fascism’ has been applied to factions, movements and regimes in a variety of countries. The main examples, which will be considered here relate to Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. Brief consideration will also be given to the Iron Guard, arguably the best example of an overtly Christian fascism. Benito Mussolini founded the first fascist movement at a meeting in Milan in March 1919—a gathering of an eclectic group of activists, whose apparent main link was their relative youth and passionate celebration of Italy’s participation in the First World War. Fascism took its name from the Italian word ‘ fascio ’, meaning in a political context a ‘union’ or ‘front’ (the ancient Roman symbol of authority, the fasces, was initially not part of the movement’s iconography).10 During 1919, the Fascist movement adopted a programme which included measures such as: the election of a new National Assembly to decide on the radical reform of the state; worker participation in industrial management; old age and sickness insurance; a capital levy; secular schooling; and the confiscation of the property of religious institutions. Filippo Marinetti, the leading Futurist artist and prominent early Fascist, even called for the expulsion of the Pope from Rome. Early fascism, therefore, sought no favours from the church—a provocative position in a highly Catholic country. However, by the time of the March on Rome in October 1922, which brought Mussolini to power, relations between the church and fascism had improved dramatically.11 Fascist anti-clericalism had been toned down in an effort to gain church support. There were several points of symbiosis between Catholicism and emerging fascist movements. One was doctrinal and stemmed from Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 Encyclical, Rerum Novarum. This

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sought to defuse the dual secular challenge of liberal individualism and socialist class-collectivism by promoting new cooperative social institutions, especially corporatism. Although the motives were very different, this provided a direct point of contact with the important group of early Italian Fascists who were converts from syndicalism (during the First World War, nationalism rather than the revolutionary general strike came to be seen as the great mobilising myth). Arguably more important points of contact between Catholicism and Fascism were shared enemies—in particular, the weak liberal state and the antinationalist Left, which in Italy had a violent tradition even before the Bolshevik Revolution. Many in the Catholic Church came to see Fascism as a way both of defeating the Left on the streets and of providing a more steely conservative government in Rome (thus perpetuating a tradition of trasformismo—namely, incorporating insurgent centre and rightwing parties into the governing coalition). Some leading Catholics argued that Fascism was based on a dangerous, radical ideology. The most prominent exponent of this line was Don Luigi Sturzo, the founder of the Christian Democrat Partito Popolare in 1919, and the man who coined the term clerico- fascismo/ clerico-fascisti (derived from the older clerico- moderatismo/clericomoderati). Sturzo contrasted Fascism’s street violence with what he saw as the conciliatory nature of core Christian values; he also feared that Fascism’s goal was the destruction of all opposition, not just the Left.12 However, eminent figures, such as the conservative Archbishop of Milan, Achille Ratti, openly succoured the infant Fascist movement. After he became Pope Pius XI in February 1922, he actively promoted a political united front against the Left, rebuking the Popolari who were willing to ally with socialists and others against the rapidly rising Fascist Party. A small number of leading Catholics—for instance, those around the Jesuit review La Civiltà Cattolica—even claimed that Fascism had effectively synthesised the values of the Popolari , making it redundant. By 1926, the Fascist Party (PNF) had established a dictatorship. The Catholic hierarchy in general concurred in this. After 1922, it was particularly grateful for concessions such as the introduction of religious services on state occasions and of the crucifix into the classroom. In 1929, the Church signed a longed-for Concordat and the Lateran Pacts, which formalised relations with the Italian state (a lacuna since unification). This conceded social powers to the Church in fields such as education. There was notable opposition to this rapprochement among the anti-clerical element in the Fascist Party, who correctly saw

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the Church as essentially a conservative force which militated against a more radical Fascist totalitarian state and the creation of a secular ‘new man’. At the local level, this wing of the PNF encouraged attacks on Azione Cattolica youth centres in 1931. However, Mussolini apologised profusely to the Vatican for these, smoothing the troubled waters. During both the Abyssinian War and the Spanish Civil War (which was marked by notable atrocities against Catholics, as well as against the Republicans), the Church continued to give the regime important support. Indeed, by the mid-1930s the regime enjoyed widespread support. However, historians debate the exact extent and nature of this ‘consensus’, which in general seems to have been based more on passive acceptance rather than fanatical and activist support for the Duce, let alone the increasingly corrupt PNF. After 1936, there were growing public doubts about rapprochement with Nazi Germany, but Mussolini’s promulgation of German-style anti-Semitic laws in 1938 did not provoke a split with the Church. Previously, anti-Semitism had been a minor strand in the party, which contained many Jews—the Duce even had a longstanding Jewish mistress. Some of the radicals in the PNF appear to have hoped that the new policy might provoke a clash with Catholicism, as it ran against its doctrine of universal redemption through baptism.13 If this was the case, the plan failed. In 1937, Pius XI issued an Encyclical—Mit brennender Sorge (With Profound Anxiety)—which specifically dealt with the Nazis’ celebration of race and state. However, the document gave no real guidelines as to how Catholics should act when faced with the reality of anti-Semitism (though in Italy, persecution was relatively benign until the Nazis took over control of the centre and north of the country after 1943). Subsequently, Pius XII (1939–58) failed to take a clear public line about anti-Semitism in Italy and especially on the issue of how to deal with growing evidence that the Nazis were committing genocide. The recent band of critics of the Pope are part of a wider tendency within the historiography of fascism since the 1960s to focus unduly on the Holocaust. A more balanced reading of the evidence indicates that whilst the Pope was highly anti-communist and felt at home in German culture, he was neither pro-Nazi nor did he ignore the plight of Jews.14 Recent evidence shows that Pius XII wrote two letters in late 1940 to Giuseppe Palatucci, Bishop of Campagna, sending money to help Jews who were ‘suffering for reasons of race’. It is worth noting that the Nazi government pointedly sent no delegation to Pius’s enthronement in 1939, probably reflecting the fact that he had helped draft Mit

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brennender Sorge. Moreover, after 1939 Jews were not the only victims of Nazism. Although the number of Jews who were killed is horrific, far more non-Jews died—including many Catholics who were persecuted in eastern Europe by the Nazis. The Vatican, which had only a small international staff, was bombarded with information about such crimes. Even if the Pope had spoken out forcefully against Nazi policies, it is highly unlikely that this would have halted the killings. In the circumstances, Pius’s policy of cautious opposition, while in private encouraging help for Jews, becomes more understandable. Where the recent critics are on stronger ground is concerning their criticism of the Catholic Church’s historic teachings on Jews.15 There was a deep-rooted antipathy to Jews within Catholicism—a hostility which can be traced back to the Gospel of Matthew, with its shifting of the blame for the crucifixion from the Romans to the evil Jews. Defenders of the Catholic Church claim that historically it had been anti-Judaic rather than anti-Semitic, hostile to the Jewish religion rather than hostile to Jews as a race. This is correct in the sense that Jews could be, and were, admitted into the Catholic faith. Nevertheless, it is hard not to believe that such demonisation of Judaism helped prepare the way for the Holocaust—in which a notable number of Catholics played a prominent part. However, the critics again overstate their case. Many Catholics in Italy helped Jews to survive—over 80 per cent escaped the Holocaust. Even in Germany, relations between Nazis and Catholics were complex. Unlike early Italian Fascism, Nazi Party (NSDAP) programmes defended the rights of the Christian Churches. Such assurances were repeated by Nazi leaders: for instance, Josef Goebbels (a lapsed Catholic) assured a crowd in 1926 that the Nazis would create a new Reich in which true Christianity would be at home. Like Italian Fascism, the Nazis were extremely hostile to atheistic Marxism— though they also had a strong anti-capitalist slant, which was partly linked to the identification of sectors of business and finance with Jews. However, initially the Nazis appealed to few Catholics. Before 1930, Nazism was a minor force in German politics: in the 1928 elections, almost ten years after the party’s foundation, it was supported by just over 2 per cent of voters. Moreover, it was highly nationalistic and racist, which alienated a Catholic Church that tended to associate nationalism with an expansionary Protestant Prussian state in the nineteenth century. As a result, the Catholic hierarchy openly preached against the Nazis.16

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After Hitler’s accession to power in January 1933, the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, negotiated a Concordat with the new regime. Pacelli was later to become Pius XII and critics have used this as part of their case that he was sympathetic to Nazism. However, it was normal practice for the Holy See to seek to establish clear guidelines for state-Catholic relations. Inter alia, Hitler agreed to grant Catholic pupils more schools and teachers. In return, Pacelli successfully encouraged the Christian Democrat Centre Party to disband and accept a Nazi dictatorship. Pacelli was hardly a liberal democrat, but it is highly unlikely that the Nazis would have tolerated the continued existence of the Centre Party in a Germany where all other parties had been banned by the summer of 1933. Subsequently, both Pacelli and local Catholic leaders protested against aspects of Nazism. The bestknown example of the latter form of opposition came when Count von Galen, the Bishop of Munster, spoke out against the ‘euthanasia’ programme in 1940.17 However, there were also important areas where Nazi and Church concerns coincided, especially anti-communism. It is interesting to note in this context that Galen fully endorsed the ‘crusade’ against Bolshevism launched in 1941. He also did not extend his protest against murder to treatment of the Jews. Pacelli in many ways represented the mainstream, middle line of German Catholicism. He did not support the small numbers who pursued persistent forms of opposition, which led to periodic harassment and arrests of priests and nuns. On the other hand, he certainly did not share the views of an even smaller number of Catholic prelates who believed that a synthesis was possible with Nazism. Although he feared communism more, Pacelli/Pius XII did see Nazism as a major shortterm threat to the Church. Arguably the best example of the symbiotic position was Bishop Aloys Hudal, who openly referred to himself as a ‘clerical fascist’. Hudal was the author of a book published in 1936, entitled Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus: eine Ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung (The Foundations of National Socialism). In this he argued that the most offensive doctrines of some Nazis, namely racism and totalitarianism, were French and Italian imports whose origins lay especially in the writings of Artur de Gobineau and Niccolò Machiavelli. He argued that most Nazis defended Christianity, and claimed that the duty of Catholics was to work with mainstream Nazis to check the radical anti-Christian Nazis, such as the pagan Arthur Rosenberg, whose book The Myth of the Twentieth Century was second

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only to Mein Kampf in the Nazi bestseller list, but whose influence within the higher echelons of the party was minimal.18 Catholicism at this time was Germany’s second religion and Protestantism was the religion of about two-thirds of the 90 per cent of Germans who claimed to be members of a church in the 1930s. Whereas Hitler saw the Catholic Church as essentially anti-national, he believed that the Protestant ones would stand up for the advancement of Germanism—though be believed that most Protestants had not seen the extent of the Jewish danger, in spite of the fact that anti-Jewish sentiment had been historically important within German Protestantism.19 He therefore believed in 1933 that Gleichschaltung (involving shared aims more than a takeover) with these churches was a real possibility. However, even within the Protestant churches there were relatively few who really believed that the world views of Christianity and Nazism could be synthesised. In terms of their views about the relationship of religion to political nationalism, there were three main groups within the Protestant church. By far the largest, the conservative mainstream within the Lutheran Church, defended the autonomy of the church and was largely apolitical. The Confessional groups were keener to demonstrate their ‘national’ sentiments politically, and pastors often lent a powerful voice to the rise of Nazism immediately prior to 1933 (often linking support to other issues, such as anti-Marxism and defence of the family, which appealed especially to women).20 Finally, there were various small radical groups which believed that the rebirth of both the church and Germany could come through the synthesis of religion with Nazi politics.21 One of these radical groups, the so-called German Christians, self-styled themselves ‘stormtroopers of Christ’. The reference here was not simply to Nazism. It was also to the Stormtroopers of the First World War, an élite group of shock troops from all classes who wore the silver Death’s Head emblem, which had previously been reserved for the aristocratic cavalry. The German Christians were not just attracted to the Nazis through nationalism. They also saw them as a party which had taken politics to the people, whereas the existing churches were too dominated by the aloof and cold language of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie who cluttered its higher echelons. The Nazis sought to weaken the more conservative groups by appointing as Reich Bishop in 1933 Ludwig Müller, who was well known for his anti-Semitic and blood and soil views. Moreover, the Evangelical German Christian Nazi front organisation won a two-thirds majority in the church elections of 1933. But then the radicals over-

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extended themselves, proposing to expunge the whole of the (Jewish) Old Testament from the Bible. Even before this, mainstream Protestants had argued that a politics of race and blood had nothing to do with Christianity and was a form of tribalism rather than religion. There were also rapidly growing fears after January 1933 that Nazism was interfering too much in the sphere of religion. Prominent critics who pushed such views too publicly, for instance Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, risked harassment, imprisonment and even death. But fears of more diffuse resistance meant that the Nazis made little serious attempt to achieve forced Gleichschaltung with Protestantism after the early months of 1933.22 Most Nazi leaders realised that headon confrontation with the churches risked alienating public opinion. As in Italy, the issue is subject to some controversy among historians, but in general Germans appear to have become largely compliant after 1933 (‘consensus’ was reinforced by a far more extensive state terror than in Italy). Discussion of the term ‘clerical fascism’ also needs to consider forms of fascism which sincerely and uniformly espoused religious views. These usually emerged in highly peasant-based societies, where outside the radical Left there was little scope for parties which were not overtly religious. Arguably the best example of this form of fascism was the Romanian Iron Guard, whose leader, Codreanu, spoke of creating ‘National-Christian Socialism’.23 One of the group’s leading intellectual supporters was Mircea Eliade, who was later to become an internationally renowned scholar of religion. In 1937 he wrote that: ‘the supreme target of the Legionary revolution, is, as the Captain has said, the salvation of the people, the reconciliation of the Romanian people with God’.24 Codreanu, who modestly termed himself ‘Captain’, would typically campaign by arriving in a village mounted on a white horse. He would kneel and pray, swearing before God that the struggle for the country’s welfare was sacred and that he was the reincarnation of Archangel Michael. Iron Guard members often wore a white cross on their green uniform; sometimes they also wore swastikas. Among activists, there was a strong cult of sacrifice, which included a willingness to die for the cause. Indeed, two of the Guard’s leaders were to die in the Spanish Civil War fighting ‘Bolshevism’. Many Orthodox clergy were attracted not just by the Guard’s religiosity, but also through shared enemies. These were not just to be found on the Left and in the external menace of the USSR. Romania had done well from the post-First World War peace settlements, and the country included extensive ethnic minorities, especially the widely

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disliked Jews and Catholic Hungarians. There was a shared desire to create a strong state, which could either eliminate such minorities, or force them to become part of a holistic nation. More positively, elements within the Orthodox Church were attracted to the reformist plans for the Guard, which included forging a form of local peasant democracy and national corporatism, seeing these as safeguards against the promises of the Left. However, increasingly during the 1930s Codreanu moved away from some of his early fascist radicalism towards an emphasis on the rebirth of a vaguely defined ‘new man’ and conservative mysticism. The last point highlights the fact that there are problems in unequivocally including the Iron Guard within a radical generic fascist pantheon. Nevertheless, on balance the use of the term ‘clerical fascism’ seems far more appropriate in this context than in Germany and Italy, where only a small number were true ‘clerical fascists’ rather than ‘clerical fellow-travellers’, or ‘clerical opportunists’. Fascism as a Political Religion In recent years several historians have reiterated the claim that fascism was a ‘political religion’, focusing especially on Germany and Italy rather than on countries like Britain where the religious side of fascism was less pronounced. The argument tends to involve three main claims: first, that fascism was characterised by a religious form, particularly in terms of language and ritual; second, that fascism was a sacralised form of totalitarianism, which legitimised violence in defence of the nation and regeneration of a fascist ‘new man’; and third, that fascism took on many of the functions of religion for a broad swathe of society.25 In the words of Emilio Gentile: ‘This religion sacralised the state and assigned it the primary educational task of transforming the mentality, the character and the customs of Italians. The aim was to create a “new man”, a believer in and an observing member of the cult of Fascism’.26 Even before the First World War, there were proto-fascist thinkers who were interested in the political uses of religion. Japan’s military defeat of Russia in 1904–05 strengthened the view that new, more martial cultures were emerging, which would defeat decadent ones (‘Born a man, died a grocer’, was Maurice Barrès’s famous epitaph for Western bourgeois society). Symptomatic of the more extreme reactions to Japan’s victory was the conclusion of Enrico Corradini, who sought to establish a religion of ‘nature and heroes’27 in which a Bushido-like ethic would be married to what Barrès termed ‘enracinement’. There

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was also some interest, especially among the German Right, in Hinduism. Here the attraction was not simply the élitist caste system or the more martial aspects of Hinduism. There were also affinities with fascist critiques of bourgeois materialism and its emphasis on the short run over long-term goals—traits that had helped lead Friedrich Nietzsche to seek a synthesis between Eastern and Western thought, which in turn influenced a coming generation of fascists.28 Fascists were especially interested in the role of quasi-religious ceremonies and symbols in tying the populace to the state. Indeed, the fascist style plays a key part in many definitions: the ubiquitous swastika (hakenkreuz, or hooked cross), the mass rallies and the charismatic leader.29 Other aspects included innovations such as new calendar festivities. Some were based on Christian festivals, but others included key dates in Nazi Party history, such as 9 November, which included a procession of old fighters carrying a bloodstained flag from the Bürgerbrau to the Feldherrnhalle in Munich. In Italy, the calendar was even revised to start from the March on Rome rather than from the birth of Christ. The language of fascism could also be highly religious in tone. Italian Fascism was replete with references to ‘faith’, ‘martyrdom’ and ‘sacrifice’. Hitler’s language included words like ‘mission’, ‘salvation’ and ‘redemption’. Leading Nazis specifically sought to fit Hitler into the Protestant tradition through the doctrine of Providence, which held that God directed the affairs of men in moments of great need. For instance, rapidly rising Nazi support after 1930 was sometimes portrayed as divine will. However, it is important to note that this religious style was not unique to fascism. Nor was it simply a result of the First World War, which helped spread the language and imagery of religion, especially in Germany where the concept of rebirth pervaded propaganda. When Hitler preached that he had been given a mission by God to save Germany, he was only picking up a common theme in Protestant German nationalism. Nor was religious legitimation and symbolism unique to the Right. Pictures of Ferdinand Lassalle, who had founded the German socialist movement in 1864, decorated workers’ homes—a cult which was criticised by fellow-socialist August Babel, whose picture in turn came to be carried regularly in processions by workers.30 Gentile has argued that Mussolini’s charismatic appeal was a new feature in Italian politics.31 However, Giuseppe Garibaldi long before had been elevated to the status of prophet and saviour. Moreover, the Duce came from the Emilia-Romagna, whose socialists mimicked many aspects of Catholicism, including processions and naming children after socialist

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‘saints’. Although Max Weber’s concept of charisma is often considered as prefiguring a new style of leaders of the Right after 1918, it was in fact partly the product of Robert Michels’s encounters with the German and especially the Italian Left before 1914. Indeed, proto-fascist theorists such as Enrico Corradini saw fascist mythology as necessary propaganda to free the working class of socialist myths, such as international brotherhood or the iniquities of private property. Hitler too was concerned by the affective appeals of the Left, though he was more directly influenced in his youth by the rise of Austrian politicians who sought to counter the rise of socialism with quasi-religious appeals. The first was Georg Schönerer, who had people pay tribute to him as ‘ Führer ’ and who abolished the Christian calendar for supporters. The second key influence was Karl Lueger, who—like Schönerer—addressed people in the low language of the tavern, rather than the high language of the salon (many socialists failed to learn this lesson, though theirs tended to be the high language of Marxist theory). But Lueger and his Christian Social Party also surrounded themselves with priests and the trappings of conservative Catholicism. The result was a more sustained electoral success than that achieved by Schönerer. Hitler, a lapsed Catholic who was bitterly hostile to Catholicism’s anti-Germanism, concluded that Schönerer’s break with Rome had been a major political error.32 There were undoubtedly some fascists who sought to replace Christianity with a new religion. Rosenberg was a pagan willing to attack both Christian doctrine, for example, over its universalist egalitarianism, and Church pronouncements on specific policies, like compulsory sterilisation. Heinrich Himmler was fascinated by the occult, and sought to turn the SS into the basis of an official state cult.33 In an attempt to eradicate Christian thinking, after 1939 even the word ‘Christmas’ was forbidden in any SS document. However, such cultism was not a major concern among the Nazi leadership. Within Italian Fascism it was largely absent. Although Julius Evola supported the cultivation of a warrior priesthood, which would manipulate the masses through myths, he was a fringe figure within Fascism before 1945 (though he later became a cult figure for some neo-fascists, who often married his views with those of Codreanu, seeing both as prophets of the need for an ascetic and violent band of ‘political soldiers’).34 Hitler sought to limit the influence of the Christian church more than to create a new religion. During his ‘table talk’ in November 1941, he commented that the ‘heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate

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child’.35 But he added that ‘we must not replace the Church by something equivalent. That would be terrifying’. Albert Speer has written that the Führer believed that in the short run the Church was indispensable and that any attempt to replace the Church by party ideologies would lead to a relapse into the mysticism of the Middle Ages.36 Léon Degrelle, the leader of the Belgian Rexists who became a wartime Waffen-SS officer, has claimed that Hitler believed that in the longer run the Church would gradually fade away under the dual impact of science undermining its mysticism and consumerism alleviating its appeal to the poor.37 A similar sentiment can be found in the Führer’s wartime table talk, when he commented: ‘The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science’.38 However, whilst Hitler saw his views (not least on race) as supported by science, he still believed in the existence of a higher Being, who directed him. This syncretic blend of rationality and revelation was typical of much fascist thinking.39 In Italy, the Duce appears to have held relatively similar views. Mussolini, like several leading Fascists, began as a rabid anti-clerical. However, in 1936 he suggested to Hans Frank, the Nazi Justice Minister, that relations with the Catholic Church in Germany should be improved and argued that a separation between church and state was crucial, as this provided the state with more freedom.40 The first comment was probably designed to help improve the image of the Nazis within Italy, in order to make the emerging Axis more acceptable to public opinion. But Mussolini and most Fascists viewed the Church as a form of occasional irritant rather than as an enemy which needed to be vanquished. There were occasional tensions with the Vatican, such as over Azione Cattolica and after Mit brennender Sorge. However, Pius XI did not subscribe to the view that Nazism and Fascism were essentially the same form of regime, and his criticism was directed against the former rather than the latter. Nor did Pius XII—a point held against him by his many critics, who argue that by summer 1940 he should have known better. What linked fascists was not so much the desire to forge a new religion, as the quest to forge a holistic nation, linked to a radical syncretic Third Way (neither capitalist nor socialist) state. As Manichaeism was central, especially to the Nazi mindset, enemies would need to be defeated along the way. But these were mainly the forces of the Left (Jews too were central to Nazi demonology, though before 1933 antiSemitism often did not figure prominently in local Nazi campaigning, in part a reflection of the fact that in many areas the Nazis sought to

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portray themselves as a respectable party, not of the wild fringes). The quest for a new élite was also central to fascism, which tended to encourage the celebration of the Party leader. By the 1930s, there was undoubtedly a godlike aspect to Hitler’s persona.41 But the style of fascist leaders was not necessarily religious. Mussolini, for example, was fond of machismo-like posturing while engaged in sporting activities. The leader of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley, sought more to convey the image of the commanding officerintellectual, defining fascism in the syncretic terms of ‘Science and Caesarism’.42 Nor did the ‘disciples’ necessarily see the leader as God. Moreover, whilst there is no doubt that Hitler especially inspired great loyalty among leading Nazis, this was perfectly consistent with his acolytes conceiving God and religion in a variety of different ways (including the occult, paganism and belief in a Christian god). Some idea of how fascist leaders saw mass ‘new man’ can be gauged from Mussolini, who wrote: ‘Man is integral, he is political, he is economic, he is religious, he is saint, he is warrior’.43 An important function of ‘new man’ was to overcome bourgeois decadence and to rediscover martial virtues. In some countries, leading fascists openly celebrated the redemptive qualities of violence. However, fascist violence was in part a response to paramilitary organisation on the Left. Moreover, not all fascists positively valued violence and/or war. Even some leading Nazis, for instance Ernst Roehm, who had been wounded three times during 1914–18, had no love of war itself. This was especially true in countries, such as Britain and France, which had no territorial aspirations after 1918—although in the French case there were strong fears about German revanchisme. The French literary fascist, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, argued that there was no romance in modern war, which was fought at a distance by high explosives and aircraft, rather than in chivalrous combat by knights of old. The leader of the French Faisceau, Georges Valois, who had fought in the First World War, did not so much celebrate war as derive lessons from it—such as the need for leadership and to create a new spirit of community to ensure the achievement of collective tasks. The First World War undoubtedly heightened interest in the power of propaganda, especially the ability of nationalist myths to mobilise the masses. However, Hitler did not see the German nation as a myth in the sense that modern theorists of nationalism talk about an ‘imagined community’ or the ‘invention of tradition’. Hitler saw the German race as a historical reality, whose existence and superiority was supported by a great body of modern science. There is no doubt that Mussolini was

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fascinated by the power of myth. But Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher who provided the most sophisticated defence of Fascism, did not see his task essentially in terms of myth-making. His concern was more to build a totalitarian ‘ethical state’, namely a state which rejected the minimalist and pluralist nightwatchman conception of liberalism and which sought to school its citizens in moral values. Similarly, most syndicalist theorists who turned to fascism were mainly concerned with creating a new state, though in their case the emphasis was more on economic development. It has become commonplace to argue that fascism lacked a clear economic vision. Yet the British Union of Fascists’ propaganda arguably focused mainly on economics. The Nazis after 1928 set out a notable panoply of economic programmes, and after 1933 they developed a relatively clear economic programme based on a stateprivate market symbiosis. The Italian corporate state may have failed to live up to the expectations of the syndicalists, but it was a serious attempt to achieve class harmony and increase production. So too were organisations like the Dopolavoro and the Nazi ‘Strength through Joy’ movement (KdF), which concerned themselves with workplace, safety, food, as well as holidays and the like. Fascists may have believed that man cannot live by bread alone, but they also thought that materialist rewards, like a week’s holiday on the isle of Rügen (where the KdF had built Europe’s largest hotel by 1939) and a Volkswagen outside the front door, could work wonders too when it came to consolidating fascist support among the masses. The fascism-as-a-political-religion thesis is not simply about issues such as ritual or creed. It is also raises the question of how people continued to view the churches. In Italy, church attendance seems to have remained widespread. In Germany, church membership declined only slightly after 1933, and actually rose during the Second World War (a trend in line with other countries). Although the evidence is not conclusive, it seems that varying forms of opposition to the regime made the local pastor and priest important interlocutors—sources of advice and solace for those troubled by aspects of fascism. The various festivities introduced to supplant Christian ones remained a peripheral phenomenon in Germany. Himmler and the SS’s attempts to forge a link with supposed Teutonic traditions were met with widespread indifference and, depending on people’s courage, mild-to-biting derision. The political religion thesis also raises the central issue of why people supported fascism. In the 1950s and 1960s, arguably the two most

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common theories on this saw fascism as a movement of the middle class in crisis, or as a movement which appealed to individuals suffering from anomie as a result of rapid change (mass society theory). More recently, William Brustein (using Nazi membership data) has constructed a rational choice model, which stresses economic interest in voting for the Nazis prior to 1933. At the other extreme, Roger Griffin has recently stressed the affective force of ‘palingenetic’ appeals (he follows a tendency common since the 1930s among German intellectuals, in seeing Nazism as a quest for authentic meaning).44 Clearly, these are very different interpretations. Although most recent work holds that the Nazis were a catch-all Volkspartei (with half the vote in 1932 coming from women),45 disagreements continue as to why people voted in this way. The fascism-as-a-political-religion thesis in this context seems largely a revival of mass society theory, which in its earlier form has been largely discredited in the German context (outside Germany, evidence about voting for fascist parties is often weak). In a famous phrase, Walter Benjamin has talked of fascism’s ‘aestheticisation of politics’. The phrase conjures up popular images such as the opening of Leni Riefenstahl’s film of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, Triumph of the Will, with a godlike Führer , descending from the clouds to be worshipped by the faithful in new open-air temples designed by Speer. There seems little doubt that Hitler did exert a godlike appeal over some, though whether he exerted true mass charisma rather than a limited ‘coterie’ charisma is more debatable.46 Less frequently noted are the images of motorways and their modernist bridges, new consumer goods such as the ubiquitous radio (sold cheaply to aid state propaganda), or of Alfa Romeo and Auto Union racing cars vying for individual—and national—glory. They point to support based on more materialist motives. Certainly reports from the Social Democratic underground indicate the importance of economic factors, such as full employment and new consumerist and leisure opportunities. Fascists correctly perceived that ‘man’ was not one-dimensional: s/he responded to a blend of different appeals. The best predictor of Nazi voting in 1932, the last year of the Weimar Republic, was the religious nature of the area. In general, the more Protestant an area, the greater the Nazi vote, whereas the converse was true in Catholic areas. In part this reflected the ability of the Nazis to adapt their rhetoric to fit Protestant styles of thought. But there were exceptions to these generalisations, which points to the need for a more general stress on local (meso) dimensions when understanding support for fascism—especially the role of conformity and networks.47 In Italy,

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Fascism was strongest where civil society was most dense—not the opposite, as mass society theory would predict (and much contemporary democratisation theory). Local studies in Germany, for instance in Marburg, show that the Nazis were more active in local social clubs and professional organisations than any other movement, often taking them over.48 Here, and perhaps even more so in some rural areas, Nazism offered opportunities for participation which were not possible in other nationalist parties. The appeal was thus, in a sense, democratic and politically directed rather than religious. At the same time, it could be élite-legitimated, for example the way in which local Protestant pastors blessed the Nazis as bastions against the ‘November Criminals’ (Marxists and Jews). The Christian tradition of demonising Jews, and the Manichaean nature of Nazi thinking, seem to point towards political religion as an important tool in analysing the Holocaust. Certainly propaganda, such as the widely shown film The Eternal Jew (1940), seemed to imply that the destruction of Jews was part of a just war, which had been launched by conspiring Jews. However, it is important not to overstate religious inspiration. The bureaucrats who planned the Holocaust and even the Einsatzgruppen soldiers who personally shot the eastern Jews were frequently not fanatics. They were often professionals, acting in the best interests of their career and/or in what they saw as the economic interests of the new Germany.49 In the words of Hannah Arendt, what was interesting about Adolf Eichmann, the archetypal bureaucrat of the Final Solution, was the ‘banality of evil’—not his quasi-religious fanaticism. In general, the ‘ordinary’ Germans who took part in the shootings of Jews after 1941 do not seem to have seen this as part of a millenarian quest to renew the nation: excessive drinking of alcohol helped them to perform their ‘duty’. Previously, extensive propaganda seems to have helped inure them to the fate of Jews.50 The prestige with which racial science was held in Germany even before the Nazis came to power was an important factor too.51 Indeed, the sacralisation of science rather than the politicisation of religion offers more clues to fascism’s most evil act. As argued above, so too does the deep-rooted hostility to Jews which existed within many branches of the Christian faith. Conclusion The main focus of this article has been the growing tendency to see fascism as a form of political religion. If the approach is seen as

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heuristic, then it is a useful addition to our methodological toolbox. For example, it points to many questions which are not yet fully resolved, including how the churches viewed fascism and vice versa, and about popular attitudes to both the churches and fascism. However, if the approach is understood in a more essentialist way, there are serious problems. To the extent that a linking essence can be identified, fascism was a political ideology rather than a political religion. The issue can simply be defined away by holding that ideologies are secular forms of thought about human nature, the process of history, and socio-economic and political arrangements.52 Religions, on the other hand, involve some form of belief in a supernatural being(s). However, this misses the point that all modern ideologies exhibit dimensions of religions. Even ‘rationalist’ ideologies like liberalism have an affective side to their appeal, especially if studied in concrete political situations rather than through the dry texts of their great thinkers. Compare the pomp and circumstance surrounding the contemporary US Presidency with the restrained rationalism of James Madison’s eighteenth-century writings on the emerging US Constitution. Or consider why many liberals seem to need to be at war, metaphorically at least, with those who do not share their views—a question which points to interesting conclusions about much of liberal historiography’s demonisation of fascism as an un-intellectual creed—or political religion! A more fruitful way of distinguishing between ideology and religion is to adapt Søren Kierkegaard’s view that the essence of a religion is not the persuasion of the truth of the doctrine, but a leap of faith to accept a view which is inherently absurd. What could be more absurd than to believe that God allowed his only son to be born of a virgin in a lowly stable in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago? Christianity is a religion because of this core absurdity—this need for a leap of faith. Fascism’s essential syncretism meant that it was possible to find forms which overtly married ideology and religion—for example, in the Iron Guard, or among a limited number of Italian and German clerics (though most failed to see the radicalism at the core of fascism). Moreover, there were aspects of fascism which were absurd—especially the belief of some Nazis that there was an international Jewish conspiracy against Germany, which encouraged a belief in apocalyptic holy war against the Jew. However, most fascists were not driven by such affective sentiments. Indeed, there is nothing absurd about the core ideology of generic fascism—namely the quest to forge a holistic nation and create a radical syncretic Third Way state.

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NOTES 1. A third issue concerns ‘Islamo-fascism’—the extent to which it is legitimate to make parallels between Islam and fascism. Some made this equation—though in the reverse direction—back in the 1930s. For instance, Carl Jung said of Adolf Hitler in 1939: ‘The is like Muhammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic, warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with a wild god’, C.Jung, The Collected Works of C.G.jung, Vol.10 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), p.281. With the growth of Islamic ‘fundamentalism’ after the 1970s, discussion of such linkages re-emerged. See for example, W.Laqueur, Fascism, Past, Present and Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), in which Laqueur portrays Islamic ‘fundamentalism’ as a new form of ‘clerical fascism’. After 11 September, the debate moved well beyond the confines of academia, with President George W Bush arguing that alQaeda and its supporters: ‘follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism’, Congressional Record (House), 20 September 2001. However, a systematic comparison of Islam and fascism raises vast issues beyond the scope of this article. 2. H.R.Trevor-Roper, ‘The Phenomenon of Fascism’, in S.Woolf (ed.), Fascism in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981), esp. p.26. 3. For recent critics of the Roman Catholic Church in the field of antiSemitism and the Holocaust, see J.Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (London: Viking, 1999); D.J.Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (Boston: Little Brown, 2002); D.I.Kertzer, The Unholy War: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern antiSemitism (London: Macmillan, 2001); and S.Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 4. See especially E.Voegelin, Political Religions (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1986; first German edn. 1938); see also P.F.Drucker, The End of Economic Man (London: William Heinemann, 1939). 5. For example, M.Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (London: Macmillan, 2000); and E.Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). For more analytical presentations, see M.Burleigh, ‘National Socialism as a Political Religion’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 1/2 (2000), pp.1–26; and E.Gentile, ‘The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretations and Reflections on the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 1/1 (2000), pp. 18–55. 6. Burleigh, The Third Reich (note 5), pp.8–9.

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7. Compare R.Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Pinter, 1991), esp. p.196, with R.Griffin, ‘The Palingenetic Political Community: Rethinking the Legitimation of Totalitarian Regimes in Inter-War Europe’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 2/2 (2002), pp. 24–43. 8. For example, Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (note 7), p.32. 9. Restrictions on space mean that I cannot fully develop my views on the nature of fascist ideology, especially the need to see it within a flexible ‘ matrix ’ rather than a more essentialist and static ‘minimum’. For my views on this, see R.Eatwell, ‘Towards a New Model of Generic Fascism’, Journal of Theoretical Politics 4/2 (1992), pp.161–94; idem, ‘On Defining the “Fascist Minimum”: The Centrality of Ideology’, Journal of Political Ideologies 1/3 (1996), pp.303–19; and idem, ‘On Defining Generic Fascism: The “Fascist Minimum” and the Fascist Matrix’ (in German), in U.Backes (ed.), Rechsextreme Ideologien im 20 und 21 Jahrhundert (Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 2003). 10. On early Fascism, see A.Lytteleton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919–1929 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987). 11. See especially D.A.Binchy, Church and State in Fascist Italy (London: Oxford University Press, 1970); J.F.Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1929–1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and R.A.Webster, The Cross and the Fasces (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960). 12. On the divergent opinions in the party, see J.N.Molony, The Emergence of Political Catholicism in Italy: ‘ Partito Popolare ’ 1919–1926 (London: Croom Helm, 1977). For a sympathetic work on the Popular Party, see G.De Rosa, Il partito popolare italiano (Bari: Laterza, 1966). 13. On Fascist-Jewish relations, see M.Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); A.Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Jewish Families under Fascism (London: Cape, 1992); and S.Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust (New York: Basic Books, 1987). 14. For the most balanced account of the issue, see R.Rychlak, Hitler, the War and the Pope (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Books, 2000). For the defence case relating to Pius XII, see P.Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican (New York: Paulist Press, 1999). 15. See especially Goldhagen (note 3) and Kertzer (note 3). 16. For a general work on the churches under Nazism, see K.Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, 2 vols. (London: SCM Press, 1987). 17. On the euthanasia programme, and Catholic opposition, see M.Burleigh and W. Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. p.152ff.

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18. A.Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Torrance, CA: Noontide Press, 1982; original German edn. 1930). 19. A.Hitler, Mein Kampf (London: Hutchinson, 1969; first German edn. 1925), esp. pp.100, 103. 20. See C.Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (London: Cape, 1987). 21. D.L.Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). See also K.Poewe, ‘The Spell of National Socialism: The Berlin Mission’s Opposition to, and Compromise with, the Völkisch Movement and National Socialism: Knak, Braun, Weichert’, in U. Van der Heyden and J.Becher (eds.), Mission und Gewalt (Stuttgart: Fran Steiner Verlag, 2000); and D.Sikkink and M.Regnerus, ‘For God and the Fatherland: Protestant Symbolic Worlds and the Rise of German National Socialism’, in C.Smith (ed.), Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movements (New York: Routledge, 1996). 22. On resistance to Nazis more generally, see P.Hoffman, German Resistance to Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); I.Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933–45 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); and D.Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity and Opposition in Daily Life (London: Batsford, 1987). 23. C.Codreanu, La Garde de Fer (Paris: Editions Prométhée, 1938), p.19. On the Iron Guard, see R.Ioanid, The Sword of Archangel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 24. Cited in L.Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and anti-Semitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s (Oxford: Pergamon, 1991), p.85 (italics in the original). 25. For a good, concise statement of the case, see Gentile, ‘The Sacralization of Politics’ (note 5); see also P.Burrin, ‘Political Religion: The Relevance of a Concept’, History and Memory 9 (1997), pp.321–49. 26. Gentile, ‘The Sacralization of Politics’ (note 5), p.ix. 27. E.Gentile, ‘Fascism as Political Religion’, Journal of Contemporary History 25/2–3 (1990), p.232. 28. On Nietzsche, see G.Parkes, Nietzsche and Asian Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 29. See especially S.Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980). Payne’s other two defining dimensions concern fascism’s ‘negations’ and its more positive programme. 30. W.Hardtwig, ‘Political Religion in Modern Germany: Reflections on Nationalism, Socialism and National Socialism’, GHI Bulletin 28 (Spring 2001), pp.3–27. 31. E.Gentile, ‘Mussolini’s Charisma’, Modern Italy 3/2 (1998), p.219.

170 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

32. B.Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p.236ff. 33. N.Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism (Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1985); and P.Levenda, Unholy Alliance (New York: Continuum, 2002). 34. See F.Ferraresi, ‘Julius Evola: Tradition, Reaction and the Radical Right’, European Journal of Sociology XXVIII (1987), pp. 107–51. 35. H.R.Trevor-Roper (ed.), Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953), pp.6–7. 36. A.Speer, Inside the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), esp. pp.148–9. 37. L.Degrelle, Hitler pour 1000 ans (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1969), esp. pp. 158–9. 38. Trevor-Roper (note 35), p.59. 39. M.Rissmann, Hitlers Gott (Zurich and Munich: Pendo, 2001), esp. p. 191ff. 40. R.Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933– 1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), pp.95–6. 41. I.Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris (London: Penguin Press, 1998), esp. the Preface; and I.Kershaw, The ‘ Hitler Myth ’ : Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 42. O.Mosley, ‘The Philosophy of Fascism’, Fascist Quarterly 1/1 (1935), esp. p.45. 43. B.Mussolini, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions (Rome: Ardita, 1935), pp.25–6, 59. 44. W.Brustein, The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925–1933 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). See also a similar argument applied to Italy in W. Brustein, ‘“Red Menace” and the Rise of Italian Fascism’, American Political Science Review 56/4 (1991). Compare Griffin, ‘The Palingenetic Political Community’ (note 7), for example, p.34, with its literary supporting evidence. 45. For examples of important works on Nazi voting, see C.Fischer, The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Class in Weimar Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 1996); and D. Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers (London: Routledge, 1991). 46. On the distinction between coterie and mass charisma, see R.Eatwell, ‘The Rebirth of Right-Wing Charisma: The Cases of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Vladimir Zhirinovsky’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3/3 (2002), pp.1–23. 47. For the argument that the local/group (meso) side of fascist support has often been neglected at the expense of sweeping socio-economic/ psychological (macro) or individual (micro) explanations, see R.Eatwell, ‘Towards a New Model of the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism’, German Politics 6/3 (1997), pp.166–84.

REFLECTIONS ON FASCISM AND RELIGION 171

48. R.Koshar, Social Life, Local Politics and Nazism: Marburg 1880–1935 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). 49. G.Ally and S.Heim, The Architects of Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction (London: Weidenfeld, 2003). 50. See for example, C.Browning, The Path to Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), esp. p.169ff. Compare this with D.J.Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Boston: Little Brown, 1996), which claims that the Germans were deep-rootedly anti-Semitic. 51. On the prestige of science, see P.Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 52. R.Eatwell and A.W.Wright, Contemporary Political Ideologies (London: Pinter, 1999), esp. ch.1.

Abstracts

The Return of Martyrdom: Honour, Death and Immortality BENJAMIN BEIT-HALLAHMI The return of martyrdom as an ideal calls for specifying the psychological mechanisms involved. Sacralised violence gives death a cosmic meaning, while death in the service of a secular ideology, national or supra-national, can have only a historical meaning. The idea and the ideal of martyrdom, central to all historical religions, have been marginalised in the modern world, as the creation of sacred space has been narrowed. Modernity means the marginalisation of honour, death and immortality, which were once so central to humans. The inspiration for martyrdom, both for individuals and for groups, must include not only honour and the belief in immortality, but real despair as well. Two Religious Meaning Systems, One Political Belief System: Religiosity, Alternative Religiosity and Political Extremism DAPHNA CANETTI-NISIM A question asked by some of the great scholars of religion, including Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss and Sigmund Freud, is ‘What is the nature of religion?’ This study presents two linked arguments; in fact, one is generated from the other. First, it is assumed that in addition to the institutionalised conventional type of religion, there exists another type of religiosity in contemporary Western democracies—alternative religiosity. The second argument concerns the question of relationships between religious meaning systems and political belief systems. One of the most longstanding findings in the study of politics is that the more religious people become, the stronger their objections to the democratic

ABSTRACTS 173

way of thinking. Religiosity in many societies (for example, Israel and the United States) delegates believers to the spheres of the political Right. Although we have had much research on conventional religions and political attitudes, this is not the case for alternative religions. It would be reasonable to assume that those belief systems that developed as alternatives to the formal religions would be characterised differently; however, their implications on political attitudes are similar. Religious Violence and the Myth of Fundamentalism MICHAEL BARKUN Although violence by religious believers is often explained by reference to ‘fundamentalism’, this is an unsatisfactory analytic category. The term derives from a specific episode in American Protestantism and is often misconstrued as synonymous with beliefs based on the literal reading of texts. Religiously driven violence is often less a matter of beliefs than of ritualistic activity, similar to Juergensmeyer’s ‘performance violence’. The potentially violent believer must situation him/herself with reference to religious authorities who can legitimate action and an ‘other’ against whom violence can be directed. The presence of both legitimaters and loci of evil allows the playing out of apocalyptic ‘scripts’, in the expectation that violent acts will precipitate millennial transformation. The Uniqueness of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Fourth Wave of International Terrorism GABRIEL BEN-DOR and AMI PEDAHZUR Islamic fundamentalist terrorism has become the single most influential phenomenon of the first years of the new millennium. The occurrences of this phenomenon over the last two decades are described, and its theological roots are examined. The uniqueness of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism derives from the activist makeup and totalistic character of Islam, its ability to penetrate inter-state boundaries, and the total adherence of believers to specific behavioural tenets leading both to and from a strong orientation to things collective. Yet Islamic fundamentalism is not detached from the general phenomenon of fundamentalism and differences seem to be in degree rather than in kind.

174 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

Jewish Self-Defence and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel: Roots and Traditions ARIE PERLIGER and LEONARD WEINBERG So far as many people are concerned, the principal role played by Jews in modern terrorist activity in the Middle East and elsewhere is that of victim. This role also fits into a wider conception of Jewish identity over the centuries: Jews as quintessential victims. Because of this by now stereotypical view, readers may have some difficulty adjusting to this essay’s subject: Jews not as victims but as perpetrators of terrorism; that is, Jews as members of relatively small sub-national groups carrying out acts of politically motivated violence intended to influence the behaviour of some audience. If terrorism is a weapon of the weak and those operating at society’s margins, on reflection it should not be all that astonishing that Jews have employed this particular tactic. This essay focuses on analysing and illuminating the terrorist activities of Jewish organisations in the years before and during the decades of the British Mandate in Palestine culminating in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Counting the Causes and Dynamics of Ethnoreligious Violence JONATHAN FOX This study examines the quantitative literature on religion and conflict in order to build a comprehensive model of religion and ethnic conflict. The results of this examination show that while religion is not the primary cause of ethnic conflict, it does influence ethnic conflict in multiple and complex ways. In fact, religious factors are involved in most ethnic conflicts where the groups involved belong to different religions. Also, the mere fact that the groups involved belong to different religions creates different conflict dynamics than in conflicts where the groups involved belong to the same religion. Religious factors that influence ethnic conflicts include religious discrimination, grievances over religious issues, whether religious issues are important in a conflict relative to other issues, religious institutions, religious legitimacy and demands for more religious rights and privileges. In addition religion is shown to influence the decision by governments to intervene in ethnic conflicts. Finally, while religion influences ethnic conflicts, it appears that Samuel Huntington’s concept of civilisations does not. As these findings are based on quantitative studies of ethnoreligious conflict

ABSTRACTS 175

during the early 1990s, they are based not upon theoretical speculation but, rather, upon empirical evidence. Reflections on Fascism and Religion ROGER EATWELL Recently, there has been a revival of interest in ‘clerical fascism’ and the belief that fascism, especially in its Nazi and Italian variants, were forms of ‘political religion’. Both approaches reveal insights into the dynamics and nature of fascism. However, relatively few leading members of the churches can be considered true fascists. Moreover, the political religion interpretation of generic fascism focuses unduly on culture and form over belief and function. It overstates the affective side of fascist support compared to its more rational appeals. The latter were in part linked to serious fascist ideological views about creating a new Third Way (neither capitalist nor socialist) state, and to scientific views about geopolitics and race.

About the Contributors

Michael Barkun is Professor of Political Science in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. His publications on religious violence include A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (2003), Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (1997), and Disaster and the Millennium (1974). He served as a consultant to the FBI in the Montana Freemen incident. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi is Professor of Psychology at the University of Haifa. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 17 books and monographs on the psychology of religion, social identity and personality development. Among his recent publications are The Psychology of Religious Behaviour, Belief and Experience and Psychoanalysis, Identity, and Ideology: Critical Essays on the Israel/Palestine Case. Gabriel Ben-Dor is Professor of Political Science and Director of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa. A past Rector of the University and former President of the Israel Political Science Association, his publications deal with Middle East politics, civil-military relations, conflict resolution, ethnic politics, national security and minorities in the Arab world. Daphna Canetti-Nisim is Lecturer at the Political Science Department, University of Haifa, where she specialises in political psychology. Roger Eatwell is Professor of Politics at the University of Bath. His publications include Fascism: A History (new edn. 2003), Fascismo: verso un modello generale (1999), and ‘The Fascist Matrix versus the Fascist Minimum’ and ‘A Three-Dimensional Approach to Fascism’ (2003, in German and Italian).

177

Jonathan Fox earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1997 and is currently a Lecturer at the Department of Political Studies, Bar Ilan University. He has published numerous articles on the influence of religion and culture on politics and conflict, including articles in Australian Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, International Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Journal of Peace Research, Political Studies and Terrorism and Political Violence. He is also the author of Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century (2002). Ami Pedahzur is Senior Lecturer of Political Science at the University of Haifa and Deputy Director of the National Security Studies Center. His recent publications deal with political extremism in Israel, political violence and political parties. Arie Perliger is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Haifa. His M.A.thesis deals with political socialisation and democratic education. His Ph.D. theses focus on counter-terrorism in democratic states and his current research interest focuses on terrorism, counter-terrorism and political violence. Leonard Weinberg is Foundation Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada. Over the course of his career he has been a Fulbright senior research fellow for Italy, a visiting fellow at the National Security Studies Center, University of Haifa, a visiting scholar at UCLA, a guest professor at the University of Florence, and the recipient of an H.F. Guggenheim Foundation grant for the study of political violence. He has also served as a consultant to the United Nations Office for the Prevention of Terrorism (Agency for Crime Control and Drug Prevention), and for his work in promoting Christian-Jewish reconciliation he was a recipient of the 1999 Thornton Peace Prize. His books include The Democratic Experience and Political Violence (2001, eds., with David Rapoport), The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right (1998, with Jeffrey Kaplan), The Revival of Right-Wing Extremism in the Nineties (1997, eds., with Peter Merkl) and The Transformation of Italian Communism (1995). His articles have appeared in such journals as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics and Party Politics.

Index

11 September attacks on the United States, 5, 11, 23, 56, 61, 85, 120 as spectacle, 62 abortion, 17, 64 absolutism, 5–6 Abyssinian War, 149 Adorno, Theodor, 36, 41, 43, 47–8 Afghanistan, 8 invasion of, 84 Africa, 4, 134 Albanians, 131 Allende, Salvador, 23 al-Qaeda, 7, 62, 120 Amal, 84 Arendt, Hannah, 162 Argentina, 17 Arlozorov, Haim, 98 Aron, Raymond, 81 Aryan Nations, 7 Asahara, Shoko, 63 Asia, 4 Australia, 42 Austria, 42 extreme-Right Austrian Party, 48 authoritarianism, 43 belief in by alternative religious groups, 47–8 study of, 26

Belgium, 44, 157 Ben-Dor, Gabriel, 9 Benjamin, Walter, 161 Bernadotte, Folke, 113–14 bin Laden, Osama, 5, 59–60 Bolshevism, 148, 154, 157 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 153 Bosnia, 61 Boudin, Kathy, 93 Branch Davidians, 55, 67 Bromley, David, 65, 67 Brusein, William, 160 Bryan, William Jennings, 58 Buddhism, 133 Burleigh, Michael, 146 Canetti-Nisim, Daphna, 8 capitalism, 20, 27 impact on religiosity, 20 Catholicism (Orthodox), 154 Catholicism (Roman), 30, 80, 133–4 anti-Semitism of, 150 as anti-Enlightenment movement, 28 as parts of civilisations, 133–4 compared to Islam, 80 declining power of, 17–18 relationship to fascism, 145, 148– 53, 157–8, 161, 163 Chile, 23–4 Christianity, 4–5, 7, 15–17

Barkun, Michael, 8–9 Barrès, Maurice, 155 Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin, 8 178

INDEX 179

see also Catholicism, Protestantism as anti-Enlightenment, 28 compared to Islam, 76, 78, 80, 83, 126–7, 132, 138 in the secular age, 24 nature of, 50 Christian-Muslim confrontation, 8, 61 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 16 Church of the New Israel, 7 civil society, 1, 19, 161 civil war, 134–5 civilisations, clash of, 10, 25–6, 58– 60, 119, 121, 133–6 see also Samuel Huntington as compared to other forms of conflict, 134 importance in terrorism, 135 relative importance pre/post Cold War, 133–6 religious characterisation of, 133, 135–6 studies establishing the importance of civilisational factors, 134–5 Codreanu, Corneliu, 146, 153–4, 157 Confucianism, 133 contraception, 30 Corradini, Enrico, 155–6 Correa de Oliveira, Plinio, 28 Czechoslovakia, 1 Dawkins, Richard, 11 Degrelle, Léon, 157 Diaspora, Jewish, 9, 106, 115, 131 divine intervention, 6 Durkheim, Emile, 36-7 East Asia support for fundamentalists within, 7 Eatwell, Roger, 2, 10 economics

connection to legitimacy, 128 impact on religiosity, 20, 27 the depression, 2 education historical role of religion within, 13 literacy, 17 of revolutionaries, 108 Egypt, 72, 85, 100, 111, 137 Eichmann, Adolf, 162 Eldad, Israel, 109, 114 Eliad, Mircea, 154 Enlightenment, the, 19, 27–8, 31–2 see also modernity anti-Enlightenment, 28, 71 future of, 32 environmentalism, 44 ethnoreligious violence, 10, 119–39 connection to self-determination demands, 125 different explanations for the prevalence of, 124 international influences on, 131–2 model for, 125, 127, 130–31 role of legitimacy, 127–8 role of religious institutions, 127 Etzel (National Military Organisation), 99–106, 112, 115 encouragement of immigration into Palestine, 100 incorporation into the Israeli Army, 104–5 terrorist activities of, 100–104, 113, 116 use of religious language within, 103, 116 Europe see also individual countries extremism within, 42 secularisation of, 18–9 support for fundamentalists within, 7 Evola, Julius, 157

180 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

fascism, 1–3, 10, 26, 145–63 as political religion, 145, 155–62 attachment to the honour culture, 26 clerical fascism, 145–8, 153–4 comparison to religious fundamentalism, 31 connection to religious fundamentalism, 145, 155 connection to the Occult, 36, 47, 146, 159 fascist tendencies of Brit Habirionim, 98 fascist tendencies of Lehi, 105, 107 in Germany, 1, 146–53 in Italy, 147–8, 151–2, 156, 158– 61 in the United Kingdom, 158–60 relation to Christianity, 147–8, 157–60, 163 use of religious imagery, 154–61 First World War, 96, 147–8, 154, 156, 159 Fourier, 3 Fox, Jonathan, 9 France, 42 Frank, Hans, 158 French Revolution, 3, 8, 28 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 19 fascism within, 146, 159 Muslims within, 137 Freud, Sigmund, 36, 38 fundamentalism, 1–9 see also individual religions ability to gain a democratic mandate, 7–8 apocalyptic beliefs of, 63 appeal to the downtrodden, 30 attitude towards sexuality, 30–31 connection to political extremism, 6–7, 9, 40, 42, 81 connection to terrorism, 56

definition of, 4–6, 57–8, 60 different forms of, 120 difficulties presented in the study of, 72–4 psychological analysis of, 30 self-description of, 29–30 status of women within, 30–31 Galen, Count von, 151 Gallagher, Eugene, 65 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 156 Geifman, Anna, 92 Gentile, Emilio, 146, 155 Gentile, Giovanni, 159 Germany, 18 Christian Democratic Party, 151 during the National Socialist (Nazi) Government, 1, 146–53 during the Weimar Republic, 161 relationship with the USSR, 2, 154 Schutzstaffel (SS), 35, 145, 157, 160 Giladi, Eliyahu, 109 Ginsburg, Sofia, 93–4 Gobineau, Artur de, 152 Goebbels, Josef, 150 Goffman, Erving, 61 Goldhagen, Daniel, 146 Goldwater, Barry, 81 Graham, Billy, 80 Great Britain see United Kingdom Greece, 100 Griffin, Roger, 146, 161 Gulf War, 131 Gurr, Ted, 9 Haheimeir, Abba, 98 Hamas, 84 Harris, Lee, 62–3 Himmler, Heinrich, 157 Hinduism, 15, 30, 155 as a civilisation, 133 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 27

INDEX 181

conflict with Islam, 8, 41, 61, 83, 137 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), 27 Hirst, Damien, 62 Hitler, Adolf, 35, 109, 146, 151, 156– 8, 159, 161 Hizballah, 84 Hochhuth, Rolf, 145 Holocaust, 149–50, 161–2 Hudal, Aloys, 152 humanism, 21 Hungary, 1, 154 Huntington, Samuel, 10, 25, 59, 121, 133–6 India, 61, 121, 137 Kashmiris within, 137 terrorism within, 72 Indonesia, 6, 74, 85 industrialisation, 19 Iran, 8, 79, 84, 121 fall of the Shah, 4–5, 83 Iraq, 121 Gulf War, 131 Ireland, 17 Islam, 5–6, 30, 59, 71–87 as a civilisation, 133 as an anti-modern movement, 27 central characteristics of, 71, 74–8 compared to Christianity, 76, 78, 80, 83, 126–7, 132, 138 compared to Judaism, 75–9, 83 conflict with Hinduism, 8, 41, 61, 83, 137 expansion of, 79 in France, 137 Islamic states, 82 jihad, 71, 74–5 jurisprudence within, 78 protest attribute, 77 relationship to rationalism, 71 revolutionary attribute, 78 shia, 5, 75–6, 84

totalistic attribute, 77–8 uniqueness of, 71–82 Israel, 72 establishment of, 92 incorporation of Etzel into the Israeli Army, 104–5 Israel Liberation Fighters, 102, 105–14 Labor Party, 104 pre-Israeli Jewish independence movement see Etzel, Zionism support for the Jewish Diaspora, 131 Israeli-Palestinian conflict between, 84, 85, 91, 95, 115 Peace Process, 43, 86–7 Italy, 17 anti-Semitism within, 149 Fascism within, 147–8, 151–2, 156, 158–61 Partito Popolare, 148 James, William, 14, 16 Japan, 134, 155 Jay, Robert, 63 Jefferson, Thomas, 24 Jewish, 5, 162 All-Jewish Workers Union (Bund), 94–5 anti-Semitism, 149, 153 Brit Habirionim, 97 Diaspora, 9, 106, 115, 131 Etzel (National Military Organisation) see Etzel genocide of, 150 Hebrew Rebellion Movement, 104, 112 immigration to Palestine, 100, 102 involvement in the anti-Vietnam war movement, 93–4 involvement in the Russian revolution, 92–4 left-wing terrorist activities of, 91– 117

182 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

Lehi see Lehi messianic world view, 94 rebellion against Roman rule, 92 right-wing terrorist activities, 97– 116 suicide bombing against, 91 Talmudic traditions, 92 terrorism prior to the creation of Israel, 91–117 jihad, 71, 74–5 Palestinian Islamic Jihad, 84 Judaism, 30, 41, 43 compared to Islam, 75–9, 83 ultra-Orthodox, 44, 50 violence towards Palestinians, 41 Juergensmeyer, Mark, 62 JUSTUS Township, 7 Kenya, 72, 85 Kierkegaard, Søren, 163 kinship, 20 Koestler, Arthur, 2 Kosovo, 131 Krushchev, 1 Kurds, 121 La Palombara, Joseph, 73 Laqueur, Walter, 56 La Rochelle, Pierre Drieu, 159 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 156 Latin America, 2 Lebanon, 75, 79, 85 legitimacy, 127–8 model of, 129 role of economic factors in undermining, 128 Lehi, 105–15 desire for religious purity, 107–8 education of revolutionaries, 108 ideology, 108–10 terrorist actions of, 108–14, 116 use of Messianic and biblical language, 106, 110, 116 Lenin, 5

liberal democracy, 3, 31, 36 attitude of religion towards, 43 attitude towards religion, 20–21, 29 conflict between religiosity and liberal democracy, 31–2, 42–8 conflict with Brit Habirionim, 98 link with discrimination, 130 Lithuania, 94–5 Lueger, Karl, 157 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 152 Madison, James, 163 Marinetti, Filippo, 147 marriage attitude towards, 20 attitude towards divorce, 17, 21 Marsden, George, 58 martyrdom, 12, 23–5, 32–3 as understood in Islam, 75 compared to secular sacrifice, 25– 6 Marx, Karl, 5, 19, 36, 38 Marxism, 1, 81, 151, 162 as God, 3 Marxism-Leninism, 2 Mauss, Marcel, 36 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 3 Merton, Robert, 73 messianic beliefs, 29, 63 nationalism, 3 nature of Jewish terrorism, 115 of Lehi, 106, 110, 116 Jewish, 94, 106, 110, 116 Methodist, 18 Michels, Robert, 156 Middle East, 2, 4 see also specific places and groups Middle Eastern Arab Federation, 111 Miller, William, 68 Minorities at Risk Database (MAR), 120–21, 134 basic minorities at risk model, 122 breakdown of, 122–3

INDEX 183

model taking account of religion, 125 modernisation, 5, 12, 17 modernity, 5, 12, 17, 19, 57 anti-enlightenment groups, 27–8, 32 attitude towards religious wars, 27 characteristics of, 19, 29 Enlightenment, 19, 28 in psychological terms, 25–6 relation to secularism, 17 self-characterisation of, 29 Moral Majority, 58 Morocco, 74 Mosley, Oswald, 158–9 Moyne, Lord, 111–12 Muhammad, Prophet, 79 Müller, Ludwig, 153 Mussolini, Benito, 8, 146–9, 156, 158 National Socialism (Nazism), 1, 146– 53 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, 2 policy of, 149–51 policy towards the Catholics, 150– 52 relationship to Christianity, 152, 154 Netherlands (the), 42 New Religious Movements, 55–6, 65, 68–9 problem of definition, 56, 60–61, 68–9 Niemöller, Martin, 153 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 38, 155 Nigeria, 8, 61 Nixon, Richard, 93 Occult, 37–8 connection to extremism, 40 connection to fascism, 36 contemporary interest in the supernatural, 20, 27

Pacelli, Eugenio see Pope Pius XII paganism, 35 Pakistan, 137 Palatucci, Giuseppe, 150 Palestinians, 43, 137 Palestinian-Israeli conflict between, 84, 85, 91, 95, 115 jihad, 84 Peace Process, 43, 86–7 Pedahzur, Ami, 9 Perliger, Arie, 9 Phillipines, 72 political extremism psychological analysis of, 43 relation to religiosity, 28–9, 43, 145–63 political messianism, 8 political religions, 2, 4, 28–9, 145–63 Pope Leo XIII, 148 Pope Pius XI, 148–50, 158 Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli), 145, 149–51 pre-modern culture, 11, 17–26 idealisation of, 32 role of honour within, 26 Protestantism, 18, 28, 30, 57, 133, 151 compared to Islam, 80 connection to fascism, 145, 152– 3, 156, 161–3 in the United States, 4–5, 28, 41–3, 45, 57–8, 64–5, 80 Reformation, 18 psychological approaches The Authoritarian Personality Theory , 49 to the study of political extremism, 43 to the study of religiosity, 15–16, 22–3, 30, 35, 37–40, 49, 62–3, 68 racism, 2, 41 anti-Semitism, 3

184 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

connection to religious extremism, 2, 10 Rapoport, David, 92 Ratti, Achille, 148 religion see also individual religions, ethnoreligious violence alternative religions, 36–41, 46–50 as an object of academic study, 12–13 as the basis of civilisations, 133, 135–6 association with left-wing views, 45–6 association with right-wing views, 44–9 central components of, 15, 36–7 decline of, 1, 4 deformalisation of, 36–40 dimensions for the measurement of religiosity, 23 discrimination based on, 122–4, 129–30 examination of religious behaviour, 14 influence on foreign policy, 132 market for, 37–8, 49 New Religious Movements, 55–6, 60–65, 68–9 pluralism, 20–21, 29, 38, 42 political religion, 2, 4, 28–9, 145– 63 psychological analysis of, 15–16, 22–3, 30, 35, 37–40, 49, 62–3, 68 role of in pre-modern societies, 17–19 source of the power of, 14–15 Reformation, 133 Republic of Ireland see Ireland Republican Party, 43 Riefenstahl, Leni, 161 Roehm, Ernst, 159 Romania, 154 Romanian Iron Guard, 145–7, 153

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 3 Rudd, Mark, 93 Russia, 92–3, 121 see also USSR Combat Organisation of the Socialist Revolutionaries, 92 revolution, 108 Tsarist, 9, 92–4 sacralisation of science, 162 of violence and death, 23–4 Saint-Simon, 3 Saudi Arabia, 60 Scholem, Gershom, 64 Schönerer, Georg, 156–7 Second World War, 2, 40, 102–3, 105, 111 secularisation, 11–33 and its effect on new religions, 39 as war between religion and science, 13 definition of, 11–12, 19–21 exaggerated claims about, 37–8 impact on Christianity, 24 of death and violence, 22–4 of the developed world, 4–22 secularism, 45 Sen, Amartya, 59–60 Shamir, Itzhak, 109, 114 Shinrikyo, Aum, 63–4 Shintoism, 15, 134 Sikhism, 5 Silone, Ignazio, 2 sindicalism, 160 social Darwinism, 3 socialism, 3, 147 messianic, 3 Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property, 28 South Asia, 3 Spain Spanish Civil War, 149, 154 Speer, Albert, 157

INDEX 185

Spender, Steven, 2 Sri Lanka, 85, 137 Stalin, Joseph, 2 Stern, Susan, 93 Stern, Yair, 101, 105–10 Stockhausen, Karl, 62 Stormtroopers of Christ, 153 Sturzo, Don Luigi, 148 Sudan, 79, 137 symbolism of blood sacrifice, 2 Taliban, 8 Talmon, J.L., 3 Tamil Tigers, 85, 137 Tehomi, Abraham, 99 terrorism, 56 attack on the United States of 11 September 2001, 5, 11, 23, 56, 61, 85, 120 casualty rates of, 85–6 Islamic fundamentalist, 71, 83–6 Jewish terrorist activities, 91–116 non-Islamic fundamentalist, 83–6 of Lehi, 108–14, 116 of the Zionists, 95–7 resulting from civilisational clashes, 135 selection of targets, 86 terrorist activities of Etzel, 100– 104, 113, 116 use of suicide attacks, 85, 111–12 within India, 72 Third Way, 147, 158 totalitarianism, 2–4, 8, 146, 159 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 146 Turkey, 85, 121 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), 85 re-Islamisation of, 77 Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR),

see also Russia Bolshevik revolution, 148 expansionism of, 1, 8 failure of, 2 invasion of Afghanistan, 84 invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1 invasion of Hungary, 1 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, 2 relationship to Nazi Germany, 2, 154 United Kingdom, 18 fascism within, 158–60 Mandatory Palestine, 92, 96, 98, 100 Minister for the Middle East, 111 policy in the Middle East, 111–17 terrorist activities against Britain in Palestine, 101–6, 109, 111–12, 115–16 United Nations, 32, 113 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 32–3 United States of America (US), 93 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 67 Central Intelligence Agency, 23 conflicts within, 55–8, 60 constitution of, 19 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 67 practice of Islam within, 76–7 Protestantism within, 4–5, 28, 41– 3, 45, 57–8, 64–5, 80 religiosity of US Presidency, 163 support for fundamentalists within, 7–9, 41–3, 45, 57–8, 64–5, 80 urbanisation, 20 Valois, Georges, 159 Vietnam War anti-war movement, 93

186 RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

Students for a Democratic Society, 93 Weathermen, 93 violence, 8, 11–35 association to fundamentalism, 55–69 different forms of religious conflict, 120 instances of, 55 of Islamic fundamentalism, 82 representation of, 61–8 secularisation of, 22–6 Voeglin, Eric, 146 weapons of mass destruction, 83 Weber, Max, 6, 156 Weinberg, Leonard, 9 Weltanschauung, 40 Westernisation, 4 women treatment of by fundamentalists, 30–31 World War I see First World War World War II see Second World War Wright, Richard, 2 Yalin, Natan, 109 Zabotinsky, Zeev, 98–9 Zionism, 94 Brit Habirionim, 97–8 co-operation with the British, 109– 10, 112–14 Hagana, 95–7, 99–100, 104, 112, 114–15 nationalist reactions to, 97–114 Shomer, 95–7, 114–15 terrorist activities of, 95–7 Unified Labour Party (Ahdut Haavoda) , 96 Zionist Revisionist Federation, 99 Zionist socialist groups, 95–7