Over the years, there have been increasing intersections between religious claims and nationalism and their power to frame and govern world politics. When Politics Are Sacralized interdisciplinarily and comparatively examines the fusion between religious claims and nationalism and studies its political manifestations. State and world politics, when determined or framed by nationalism fused with religious claims, can provoke protracted conflict, infuse explicit religious beliefs into politics, and legitimize violence against racialized groups. This volume investigates how, through hegemonic nationalism, states invoke religious claims in domestic and international politics, sacralizing the political. Studying Israel, India, the Palestinian National Movement and Hamas, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iran, and Northern Ireland, the thirteen chapters engage with the visibility, performativity, role, and political legitimation of religion and nationalism. The authors analyze how and why sacralization affects political behaviors apparent in national and international politics, produces state-sponsored violence, and shapes conflict.
Author(s): Nadim N. Rouhana, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2021
Cover
Half-title page
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Preface and Acknowledgments
1 A Comparative Perspective on Religious Claims and Sacralized Politics: An Introduction
Part I Israel
2 Religion and Nationalism in the Jewish and Zionist Context
3 Religious Claims and Nationalism in Zionism: Obscuring Settler Colonialism
4 On the Uses and Abuses of Tradition: Zionist Theopolitics and Jewish Tradition
5 The Relations between the Nationalization of Israel’s Politics and the Religionization of Its Military, 1948–2016
6 Sacralized Politics: The Case of Occupied East Jerusalem
Part II India
7 Hindutva: The Dominant Face of Religious Nationalism in India
Part III Sri Lanka
8 The Genesis, Consolidation, and Consequences of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism
Part IV Serbia
9 Serbian Jerusalem: Inventing a Holy Land in Europe’s Periphery, 1982–2019
Part V Iran
10 The Crossing Paths of Religion and Nationalism in Contemporary Iran
Part VI Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism
11 Saudi Nationalism, Wahhabi Daʿwā, and Western Power
Part VII Northern Ireland
12 Protestantism and Settler Identity: The Ambiguous Case of Northern Ireland
13 Does Religion Still Matter?: Comparative Lessons from the Ethno-national Conflict in Northern Ireland
Part VIII Palestine
14 Palestinian Nationalism, Religious (Un)claims, and the Struggle against Zionism
Index
