Religion as belief community

Conceptualising religion in terms of belief community requires looking into the relevance of religion in the narrow sense, such as particular notions of the transcendent or of justice, of what constitutes pious ‘religious behaviour’ or the content of myths, ethics, and doctrines. Such conceptualisation is especially relevant in analyses interested in the question of what determines the behaviour of international actors. This analytical interest is often based on an initial expectation of a connection between the particular nature of religious identity, ethics or theology, on the one hand, and a specific behaviour on the other. Conceptualising religion as a community of believers takes seriously the fact that it matters substantially whether the analytical focus is on the Pope or on a national Catholic church, the Muslim Brotherhood, Mennonite farmers, or a Buddhist sangha in Sri Lanka. The specific belief components, the inside-outside axis and the organising narratives defining the identities of religious groups are particular and can explain certain action-patterns.

Scott Thomas has argued that religion is a sui generis marker of communities and social identity because it is often related by its adherents to the integrity of the community, and is thus harder to compromise than other types of identity markers.Footnote ⁴⁰ This means that religion as an individual and social identity is distinctive because religious differences and identifications are perceived as more fundamental and unchangeable than other forms of identity. This line of thinking accords with the suggestions made by Mark Juergensmeyer that religious identification brings something special to a conflict, such as images of cosmic war – a battle between good and evil – or of sacrifice, making it more die-hard than it otherwise would have been.Footnote ⁴¹ But ‘where’ can these substantial aspects of religion – as belief and identity marker – be approached, and how can they in turn be linked to practice?

Since 9/11, much research dealing with militant Islamism and terrorism has been particularly inclined to focus on the doctrinal aspects of religion, taking the content of religious belief to be the main driver of radical behaviour. Some scholars engaged in this discourse focusing on motivations believe that motives should be read independently of what the ‘terrorists’ say because they are not fully aware of their real motivations or they would have reasons to hide them.Footnote ⁴² Thus, these scholars make a ‘scientific’ distinction between the subjective world of the terrorist and the objective reading of the scientist, disqualifying the ‘terrorist’ from the ability to illuminate the ‘truth’ of the matter.Footnote ⁴³ Nevertheless, it is questionable how a scholar can have access to a hidden motive that can even be hidden from the activist himself. The lack of self-criticism in assuming that researchers have privileged access to the pure text or the true religion is highly problematic, and – dare I say – resembles the exclusivist claims often made by religious fundamentalist when they say that they represent authentic religion. Motives are often indeterminate, and to find channels to the motives of ‘terrorists’ different from the ‘terrorists’ themselves at least requires some measurable indicators.Footnote ⁴⁴ In any case regardless of whether it represents the true inner feelings and motivations of the actors, political speech can be illuminating in itself since it plays into conflict dynamics that are relevant for IR scholars to investigate. So dismissing rhetoric on the ground that it is purely instrumental overlooks the importance of religious speech acts (this is elaborated further in the ‘Religion as speech act’ section below).

Other problems are also evident in analyses operating on the basis of a static perception of religious beliefs and doctrines. Reading the impact of religion from texts only (for example, holy scriptures) is devoid of consideration, firstly, of the agents who represent the given religion.Footnote ⁴⁵ This can lead to challengeable conclusions making causality claims based on ‘non-lived’ doctrines or, for example, on the frequency of the word jihad (often interpreted in terms of ‘holy war’) in the Qur'an.Footnote ⁴⁶ A scholar can hardly have an unfiltered or objective reading of religious texts and doctrines, which might be used as a ‘neutral’ account of what Islam, Christianity, or Judaism is for its believers. Secondly, from a scientific point of view the scholar's interpretation or reading of what religion is about is hardly as interesting as what the believers or adherents of religion put into their religion. Thus a focus on jihad can be important in conflict analysis as long as it reflects the opinions, framings, and representations of those claiming religion, rather than taking a descriptive/positivist/outside approach to what jihad is. The danger in evaluating theological concepts through a priori analyses detached from their adherents is that they can end up being highly speculative about the link between religion and action. The structure of a text and the substance of doctrines can be important, but not without methodological considerations looking at how the doctrines are ‘played out’ and the performance of agency.

In his 2007 article, Daniel Philpott contributes to the literature on motivations by asking, ‘what explains the political pursuits of religious actors?’ Based on existing empirical research primarily from the fields of religious studies and anthropology, the two answers he provides are political theology defined as religious ideas about political authority and justice, and differentiation, understood as the relationship between religion and state.Footnote ⁴⁷ Though it makes sense to investigate the link between religious ideas and violence, there needs to be a conceptual and theoretical criterion for linking religious ideas or doctrines to both motivation and action. Unfortunately, the legacy of positivist research methods and descriptive styles of science tend to influence political scientists on this area and important methodological considerations to avoid the dangers of treating religion in static terms are thus neglected when dealing with religion as an influential motivation in IR.

To deal with substantial dimensions of religion, such as doctrines, ethics, and identity is only interesting for IR if they can be related to a social science context where the ‘inner’ side of the human mind is linked to social practice or social consequences. In a recent article Cecelia Lynch has made an important conceptual contribution in developing this interest in the social impact of religious doctrines by taking religious ethics seriously and arguing that in order to understand the (changing) role of religious doctrines we need to analyse how religious actors interpret them in a variety of contexts. Presenting this work as a neo-Weberian approach she advocates that rather than having an a priori understanding of religious dogma, scholars need to ask how and in what sociopolitical and economic contexts religious agents refer to ethical constructs, which are especially evident in jurisprudential reasoning, in order to determine how to act. This kind of approach can prevent the error of providing ‘simple, parsimonious explanations of behaviour derived from the religious beliefs of actors.’Footnote ⁴⁸ According to Lynch doctrines are thus in flux and are only partly determined by ‘formal’ religious doctrine.Footnote ⁴⁹ Partly are they shaped by interpretation that is influenced by the specific sociopolitical context of the religious actor and this ‘pushes the analysis towards a strongly hermeneutic, contextualized conception of religious rules and law.’Footnote ⁵⁰ This perspective on religious dogma arguably has three very important implications for analysis: first, that religion is conceptualised as ongoing practice, second, in practice religion is not conceived of as a clear-cut phenomenon but with abilities to both shape and become shaped by its context and third, the link between religion and action is conceptualised by assuming that religious individuals and groups act intentionally according to their interpretations of ethical conduct. This last point is important to note because it simultaneously offers a demarcation of who count as ‘religious actors’.

This perspective can further be helped by the ‘cultural-linguistic’ concept of religious doctrines developed by theologian George Lindbeck, who bridged anthropology and Wittgensteinian philosophy of language in probing the relationship between language and culture on one hand, and experience and belief on the other. Lindbeck has argued for developing a position different from both traditional ‘cognitive-propositionalism’, for which religious doctrines function as truth claims objectively pointing to realities, and modern ‘experiential-expressivism’, which holds doctrines to be expressions of inner feelings, motivations, and experiences of the divine, thereby approaching truths as something prelinguistic. Instead, he puts forward a ‘cultural-linguistic’ approach, arguing that language shapes experience more than the other way around.Footnote ⁵¹ Thus belief and doctrines do not reflect precognitive, prelinguistic experiences, but they produce and structure such experiences and can only be studied as second order concepts. A move towards an approach that is more dynamic in its view on the relationship between experience, identity and belief on one hand, and language and practice on the other, requires an understanding of how the structure of language simultaneously constructs certain ideas and action pattern. This can help IR-scholars move towards a position where substantial dimensions of belief can be studied on the level of language and social practice, rather than as a singular motivation and truth.Footnote ⁵²

To sum up, conceptualising religion in terms of belief community is relevant for scholars interested in how religious identity constructions and interpretations of religious ethics and doctrines play into action and influence the conditions of possibility for the choices that political actors make. In line with the argument provided by Lynch, looking for religious ethics, doctrines and identity in social practice can arguably dispose the researcher towards the possibility of change and thus provide IR scholars a better understanding of why adherents within the same belief community can advocate different course of action. For example, within the same faith community a situation of suffering and hardship, can be interpreted either as a ‘test’ and thus call for more patience and prayers or as a ‘punishment’ from above interpreted as a call for giving sacrifices (by for instance taking up the battle against evil in the world), and thus motivate extraordinary measures. Religious interpretations of social reality can thus be an important focus for scholars and students interested in the conditions of possibility for different courses of ‘religious action’. Investigating identity constructions that fits into the image of a cosmic war between good and evil or draw on strong mythological narratives (based in a faith tradition) is also part of this perspective. This can be relevant for scholars interested in understanding/explaining the support and mobilisation behind a cause. When, for example, understanding/explaining the increasing use of suicide bombing among fighters representing their actions as acts of worship, the discourses on the theological doctrines of martyrdom and self-sacrifice can be relevant to investigate as well as other types of religious imagery that is drawn upon in legitimising the violence.

Religion as power

In IR religion is frequently conceptualised as a soft power of persuasion and justification or as a strategic asset. For instance, faith-based NGOs can be seen as successful players in promoting respect for democracy and human rights in many countries, thus strategic assets. Religious authorities can, in particular cases, be helpfully involved in diplomatic efforts, thus instrumental. This way of including religion is based on a broad – that is, functionalist – concept of religion, since it is concerned with its legitimacy-bestowing potential.

However, analysing religion as a strategic power factor does not necessarily have to imply that religion is only a tool or instrument with no other real importance. This can be just one aspect of scholarly interest. For instance, in understanding the active role that the American intelligence service, CIA, played in supporting the religious education and training of the mujahidin in Pakistan during the war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, it makes sense to focus on the strategic use of religion. If the analysis was to focus on the religious reasons why individuals went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet army during the Cold War, approaching religion substantially would be more appropriate.

An example of a recent study based on one kind of power approach to religion is that of Monica Toft, who endeavours to understand why Islam is overrepresented in the statistics on civil wars between 1940 and 2000.Footnote ⁵³ Her main argument is that this is the result of the high utility of religious outbidding among political elites seeking the resources they need to stay in power, combined with certain historical, geographical, and structural factors in Islam. By using the theory of religious outbidding she argues that religion is a convenient instrument in the hands of political elites, who will tender religious bids when and where they calculate that increasing their religious legitimacy can help them survive or achieve an objective that would otherwise remain out of reach. Toft's way of trying to incorporate religion into rational analysis rather than shunting it aside ‘as a category of irrational action’ is interesting.Footnote ⁵⁴ However, taking religion seriously as a useful legitimising strategy is not necessarily the same thing as taking religion seriously as a real factor with the potential to convince political elites. Even though it can be useful to focus on the strategic value of religion in order to narrow down an analysis, the problem of such analysis is when it takes for granted that a given political elite is only calculative towards the use of religion. Again, one has to be careful that the analysis does not end up being too speculative about what actors invoking religion put into religion. There is a major difference between assuming (a priori) that political elites calculate their use of religion to achieve a given aim, and observing that invoking religion makes a given strategy or aim possible. The last mentioned approach keeps the analytical focus on the strategies or aims that bringing religion into the picture can facilitate and avoids deterministic judgements about motivations. This type of analysis, however, still treats religion as a dependent variable.

Another way of approaching religion as power is by linking it to the study of the behaviour of religious institutions, such as the Rome-based papacy, churches, or the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). There are already several examples of such studies based on a rational choice model, but most of them still hold that the behaviour of religious institutions can best be understood by looking at organisational dynamics such as interests, goals, and the role of choice and agency.Footnote ⁵⁵ In studying religious behaviour, this model can again only explain that part of behaviour that is goal oriented. More substantial aspects of religion are especially relevant in a legitimacy-oriented analysis due to the distinctiveness of the religious rationality behind it.

Religious rationality has a distinct quality since firstly, it can be guided by particular ethical considerations about the common good (as argued also by Cecelia Lynch). These considerations can be tied up with interpretations of pious religious behaviour or of the will of God. Religious rationality arguably draws on a worldview or a particular description of the origins and future of social and existential reality (ontology) and constitutes a pattern of thinking that outlines parameters of an authoritative logic that defines ethical and unethical behaviour. In line with the arguments presented by Cecelia Lynch, the study of religious rationality should always be conducted on a micro-level – that is, by analysing the discourses of ontology and authoritative praxeology in relation to individuals, different religious communities (also the transnational) or religiously defined states. Secondly, as argued by Vendulka Kubalkova, the central trait of rational choice rationality is that it balances costs against benefits, while religious rationality neither corresponds to inductive or deductive lines of reasoning that accompany a cost-benefit template. Rather, religious reasoning is described as abductive, which means it is influenced by an emotional affiliation to the faith community.Footnote ⁵⁶ Thirdly, it can be argued that religious rationality is different from the individual utility maximising rationality that conditions both realist and liberalist theory in IR by also being collective.Footnote ⁵⁷ The common good or the wellbeing of the community can be more important than the maximisation of individual utility. And fourthly, insofar as the rationality is individual and goal oriented, the goal of one's actions are not necessarily to be achieved in this life but the next, for example, in the form of salvation. Consequently, the willingness to provide sacrifice in this life is much higher than if death was seen as the ultimate end. Thus religion potentially brings in an expanded timeframe and particular religious aims such as salvation against which the utility ought to be measured. And finally, the authority claims can be particular in a religious rationality, because they are based on particular notions of what constitutes ‘evidence’ and thus the basis for making authoritative truth claims. For example, activists who invoke religion, references to religious myths or spiritual dreams, holy scriptures or exegesis, or jurisprudential literature based on the interpretations of revelations or the will of God(s) have the same status as empirical evidence would have in a scientific discourse.Footnote ⁵⁸ Overall this means that the rational utility calculation can be based on different premises than those set up by traditional IR notions of rationality.

Taking religion seriously as a power factor – a distinct source of rationality and authority – that can shape interests, political action and identities is yet to be seen in IR scholarship, even though recent work on international political theology is pointing in that direction by challenging the centrality of the state and arguing that religion, like any political organisation, provides an assertive system of rules.Footnote ⁵⁹ In his comparative analysis of religious rebellion against the secular state, Mark Juergensmeyer has noticed that religion inherently has the same ‘qualities’ as the secular state, since both can forcefully claim to be the providers of security, justice, and order and because both can mobilise popular legitimacy around actions in the name of these concerns.Footnote ⁶⁰ However, since they appear as competitive forces in these domains, religio-political activists and the state can easily adopt positions of hostility towards each other. Thus the implication of Juergensmeyer's argument is that religion is not only a forceful source of resistance, but a fundamental challenge to the justifications that can be made in the name of sovereign states and their monopoly on legitimate violence. Even though the foundation of IR is built upon the centrality and power of the state, there is a danger that IR scholars will miss the boat if they do not take seriously the power of religious authority vis-à-vis state authority especially in regard to claims involving the legitimate use of force.

Like the case when dealing with religious doctrines, an analysis of this sort can also draw on Lindbeck's cultural-linguistic approach and thus be helpful in conceptualising the connection between religious rationality and legitimate action. This means that religious rationality can best be ‘detected’ in terms of language/discourse and ongoing practice. At the same time when focusing on the religious relevance to questions of power and legitimacy, it must again be assumed that other forms of rationality than the individual and goal oriented also influence religious individuals and groups and that religiously sanctioned authority plays an important role vis-à-vis the secular state.

To sum up, conceptualising religion in terms of power is relevant for scholars interested in questions of rationality and legitimacy behind political action. In order to understand the rationality behind the actions of religious actors, it could for instance be relevant to incorporate an analysis of the authoritative religious sources of legitimacy that are drawn upon. Better understandings and explanations of conflict dynamics where religious activists are involved, could be provided by looking at, for example, religious jurisprudence, individuals with influence and authority to give religious verdicts on how to ‘act in an Islamic way’ as well as the authoritative religious interpretations regarding the justice of wars, legitimate means in war and the rules of war. This kind of analysis can also be helpful in suggesting better policies to deescalate conflict-patterns, since promoting a critique, for example, of suicide attacks based on standards and interpretations that can be derived from ‘their own’ sources of legitimacy can prove more effective than an outsider take on ‘appropriate’ behaviour. This sort of analysis is also relevant for scholars interested in state strategies and policies dealing with religious actors. The fact that religion can appear as a competitive provider of order, justice, security, and legitimate violence vis-à-vis the state poses a great challenge to conventional ways of dealing with issues of authority, rules, and legitimacy in wars. For peacemakers pursuing such lines of thinking are crucial to break security dilemmas where both sides insist – as was the case when George Bush initiated the War on Terrorism in 2001 – on defending order, justice and freedom, but draw from different sources of legitimacy and authority.Footnote ⁶¹

Religion as speech act

The third way of approaching religion is by conceptualising it as a speech act. The securitisation theory of the Copenhagen School (CS) represents this second order approach to religion, where the relationship between saying and doing (speech acts) stands at the centre.Footnote ⁶² Originally, securitisation theory developed in response to essentialist approaches to the concept of security, arguing that security is primarily about naming: ‘In its usage security is not of interest as a sign that refers to something more real; the utterance itself is the act. By saying it, something is done …’Footnote ⁶³

The concept of securitisation is defined as the intersubjective establishment of an existential threat with a saliency considerable enough to have significant political effects.Footnote ⁶⁴ To make securitising moves can for instance involve the claim that (some dimension of) religion is existentially threatened and that action according to normal procedures (in this case; religious orthodoxy) will not be able to address the threat in time or efficiently enough, and that therefore extraordinary measures are both needed and justified. The theory is thus interested in the processes by which a given referent object is said to be threatened and a security action becomes possible with support of the audience addressed.Footnote ⁶⁵ It is based on a constructivist understanding that is aware of the process by which threats are constructed as ‘social facts’ and how these constructions affect security political action. As such, it does not recognise the sharp division of labour between ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions or the gap between understanding and explaining that has been at the heart of the great ‘third debate’ among IR scholars of neo-realist and post-structuralist orientation.Footnote ⁶⁶

The theory offers a framework of analysis that divides issues of security into different sectors of security (such as the military, societal, and environmental sector), and different referent objects (that which is said to be threatened) within these sectors. The division reflects the argument that the character of the referent object within each sector is important, since it decides both its inclination towards securitisation and what it takes to make a successful securitisation move. By theorising the dynamics within each sector of security, the ambition of securitisation theory is to predict conflict patterns and suggest ways of desecuritising issues.

The speech act perspective can be applied as an alternative entry to the study of religio-political activism (against, through or beyond the state). From this perspective, if religio-political actors act on behalf of an utterance about a threat, it is not interesting whether they are right in their assertion, or whether it expresses their real intentions, but rather whether they succeed in making a securitisation move and how it was made. This is because the successful securitisation cements the ground for extraordinary action-directions through a convincing and legitimacy providing security narrative.Footnote ⁶⁷

However, avoiding essentialist accounts of reality does not mean that the theory can do without accounting for the defining characteristics of the religion sector or how/where to ‘look’ for religion in concrete analyses. In doing so, the original position of the CS with regard to the narrowing/broadening debates among theologians and sociologist of religion is interesting to establish. This is so, because the way the CS has defined religious discourse in the first contribution on the issue can be object of the same kind of critique that the narrow/substantialist approaches to religion often receive from their opponents, namely the charge of being too narrow and forwarding a concept coloured by a particular cultural context that do not apply equally to other faith traditions than (protestant) Christianity.

Before the appearance of the article in 2000 (revised edition published in 2003),Footnote ⁶⁸ securitisation theory dealt with religion as a part of the societal sector, as a source of communal identity. In that year, Laustsen and Wæver introduced religion as an independent sector making faith its ultimate referent object, by arguing that the treatment of religion within the societal sector was only able to cover the community-aspect of religion and not religion as religion. This led them to point out faith as the central element of religious discourse (drawing on Søren Kirkegaard) and faith as a distinctive quality of religion qua its distinction between transcendent and immanent or sacred and profane (drawing on Georges Bataille). Evaluating seven dimensions of religion pointed out by Ninian Smart they argued that characteristic of religious dogmatism and rituals is the effort to bridge the distance between the two realms.Footnote ⁶⁹ The main outcome of their defining exercise was the referent object of the religion sector: the distinct trait of the religion sector of security is, they argued, that it defends not identity or community, but rather the true faith.

A problem that appears from their definition of faith is, that it ended up with an overly ethnocentric notion of religion leaning too heavily on the writings of Kirkegaard and Bataille. The defining distinction drawn between the sacred and the profane goes smoothly with respect to the Protestant Christendom or ‘European religion’, but this is very much a product of the way European religious thought has developed rather than a more broadly applicable criterion. Emile Durkheim, who is among the main proponents of the centrality of this dichotomy, has been criticised exactly because of its global limitations by anthropologists pointing out that many societies and cultures do not even have words that translate as sacred and profane.

Illustrative of problems with the way Laustsen and Wæver demarcate religious discourse is the central role given to the concept of the sinful man.Footnote ⁷⁰ This concept upholds the distance between earth and heaven in Christian discourses, but in many other faith traditions there is no such notion of original sin and for other interpretive communities the dissolution of the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane is the religious norm. Some Eastern religions like Zen Buddhism disapprove of cultivating dualism and religiosity/piousness for monks is, for instance, ultimately measured by the ability to let go of all conceptualisations of good and bad, sacred and profane. For other religions like Confucianism the sacred/profane dichotomy is far from the defining principle of faith and Taoism, for instance, is all about the balance of opposites (yin/yang) without one having divine characteristics.

The idea of immanence – that the divine is incarnate in the world and not separate from it – appears in many traditions, often in competition with other theological/interpretational positions that make a sharp sacred/worldly distinction. In Christianity, for instance, one of the main debates in the early church was whether Christ was fully human and not divine, or whether he was fully divine and only appeared to be human. A church council decided in favour of both: ‘fully God and fully man’. But the different positions lived on. Thus, even within the same faith tradition different positions regarding the dichotomy exist – some arguing for upholding a radical difference to avoid human beings acting like God, some arguing for reducing the gap in order to improve the understanding/realisation of God and again some arguing for the total dissolution of the distinction so far it conceptually exists at all.

The more serious problem with the definition of religious discourse is the implication drawn by it (since many would still hold that the sacred/profane distinction is an important tenant of many traditions), which is important for how the securitsation of religion is understood. First, it leads Laustsen and Wæver to conclude that those who securitise religion deny the gap between the transcendental and the immanent, and at the same time they replace doubt – yet another tenant of faith, the authors argue – by the certainty of war.Footnote ⁷¹ While they provide convincing arguments for the last-mentioned by arguing that securitised religion links cosmic battles between good and evil to worldly/material struggles, it is challengeable – as it is also visible from the examples above – whether there is an unambiguous link between the (normative) dissolution of difference, which is often characteristic of puritan and spiritually oriented interpretations of religion also, and securitisation. For instance, some Sufi interpretations of Islamic rituals clearly challenge the desirability of upholding the transcendental/immanent gap through discourses of fear and reward (hell and heaven) and represent an alternative to the ‘artificial’ distance between sacred/profane since separation from the Divine is seen as the unnatural state of human soul.

This idea that the elimination of the gap conditions securitisation also leads Laustsen and Wæver to argue that the formula for desecuritisation of religion is ‘acceptance of the fact that being in religious discourse is essentially being before a transcendental realm’ since ‘politics does something to religion.’Footnote ⁷² This implies that it is the overlap of religious and political discourse that is problematic, and desecuritising religious conflicts would require the imperialist project of ‘secularising’ faith traditions that do not share the same non-political concept of the religious/non-religious concept of the political. For instance, dominant discourses on Islam do not only represent Islam in terms of faith, but also in terms of correct action and one must include that aspect when dealing with discourses on religion in this case. Further, orthodox religious discourse in relation to Islam concerns both deen (faith) and dawla (polity), and the separation of politics from religion is often perceived as an artificial boundary. Using a ‘secularised’ template to evaluate this case would lead to the useless conclusion that Islamism represents a politicalisation of religion, since this would not provide any criteria to distinguish the phenomenon from orthodox discourses on Islam. Analyses applying Protestant templates of religion will not surprisingly end up suggesting secularism or ‘Protestant Islam’ to be the solution to Islamist violence.Footnote ⁷³

Making faith the sole referent object also constitutes a problem for the applicability of the theory across different contexts. However, as argued by anthropologist Benson Saler, there is not necessarily an analytical problem in applying prototype definitions of religion that are informed by Western cultureFootnote ⁷⁴ and sometimes ‘theoretical parochialism’ can prove to be an advantage in illuminating isolated elements of larger phenomena. In this case, though, the narrowness constitutes an analytical limitation that could be overcome by relying on a less substantial definition of religion. It is a limitation since it does not enable the theory to capture the manifold dimensions of religion that are claimed by religio-political activists in different parts of the world when they securitise religion; religio-political actors in conflict do not only defend faith, but for instance also holy places (lands, temples, mosques etc.) or holy law. The referent objects can potentially be multiple and should not be a priori limited by the (abstract) theoretical demarcation of religious discourse with faith at its centre.

Since the performative perspective of the securitisation theory epistemologically seems to be more compatible with the tradition within Sociology of Religion that approaches religion as a multidimensional concept (the ‘family resemblance’ theories), for the CS this would be a more natural pathway to religion. A more comprehensive account of potential referent objects within the religion sector can draw on the work of Ninian Smart who discerns some general patterns and structures of the world's religions and subtraditions leading him to outline seven dimensions of religion (the ritual, narrative, doctrinal, experiential, legal, social, and material dimensions).Footnote ⁷⁵ As already mentioned, Laustsen and Wæver do refer to Smart in their discussion of faith (in order to argue for the reflection of the sacred/profane distinction in each dimension), however without translating the dimensions into referent objects that can be mounted to analysis in a nominalist way. This would be helpful in schematising and making explicit what securitising actors are defending when they claim to defend religion.Footnote ⁷⁶

In studying militant Islamism, it would be interesting, to trace what dimensions of religion are securitised and if any are especially disposed to triggering the process of securitisation; is it, for example, obedience to God/worship (the ritual dimension), the Qur'an or hadith (the narrative dimension), monotheism (the doctrinal dimension), spiritual values (the experiential dimension), sharia (the legal dimension), the ummah (the social dimension) or holy places (the material dimension), and how the dimensions are constituted (what content is put into them)? This sort of detailed knowledge about the religious referent object can be helpful especially when analysing the differences between/within militant religious movements and dealing with the question of desecuritisation. For example if militant Islamists are securitising monotheism against secularism, it seems contra productive to suggest policies and initiatives to promote secularism. The focus on different dimensions of religion in the securitisation analysis of militant Islamism can contribute to the development of a detailed understanding of ‘Islam’ in Islamism. This approach to religion goes beyond the treatment of Islam in singular terms and can point towards the manifold dimensions of religion as well as the manifold meanings ascribed to each dimension in the representational practices of Islamists.

Thus, even though there is arguably a need to engage with religion more broadly than just with its identity aspect, defining religion as religion through faith is not the same as accounting for the potential referent objects or the manifold dimensions of religion that are successfully securitised by religio-political activists around the world. It is however more an empirical than theoretical question to trace the distinct dynamics of securitising particular dimensions of religion, because the different dimensions can have different weight in different traditions due to doctrinal, historical, mythodological elements, and thus some can prove more ‘explosive’ than others.Footnote ⁷⁷ Part of the empirical task is also to understand the context in which the securitisation appears, because this too can explain why some dimensions of religion are more prone to securitisation than others.

Especially one type of referent object relating to religion seems to be of increasing importance in international security politics, namely that of doctrine. Many conflicts today are rooted in the representation of doctrinal differences, for example, between Islam and the West. In contemporary times, the War on Terrorism has been the most spectacular scene for this sort of securitisation. Historically, other obvious examples where the securitisation of doctrines have been central to the dynamics of conflicts are the American and French Revolutions with the tension between monarchy and republicanism and the Cold war ideological rivalry between Communism and Capitalism.Footnote ⁷⁸ Interestingly, in the mid-twentieth century, the English School scholar Martin Wight mentioned wars of doctrines together with wars of gain and wars of fear as three distinctive types of war evident in history. According to Wight, doctrinal war is a ‘missionary or crusading war, war to assert principles and advance a cause’.Footnote ⁷⁹ He argues that since the end of the eighteenth century doctrinal assertion has become one of the most popular motives for warfare, drawing on the French revolutionary wars as the prime example. A focus on securitised doctrines instead of faith (defined by the sacred/profane distinction) allows a focus on other doctrines than the normative doctrine of upholding a sacred/profane distinction. It also grants more equality to the similar function of securitising religious and non-religious doctrines and dissolves the distinction between securitising religion on one side and other forms of political ideology/‘quasi-religion’ on the other. The epistemology of the securitisation theory inherently corresponds with the functionalist interest in the effects of naming some issue (in this case religion) a security issue. This is also why Wæver and Laustsen, in their original ‘opening’ of the religion sector, added that religious discourse is not only confined to religion in the narrow sense and made a shift away from the narrow definition of faith and religion to embrace a broad and functionalist concept of religion. This was done by arguing that political ideologies (like the national socialist ideology in the Third Reich) have religious dimensions too, because they are based on what is called quasi-religious semantics. In terms of effects, ideologies can function the same way as securitised religion.

Doctrines are central to both religion (as faith) and ‘quasi religion’ and this dimension of religion and secular ideologies is arguably the most distinct one among contemporary security issues that is not easily covered by the already existing sectors of security. Discourses of defending absolute and un-negotiable principles, values or ideas do relate to identity because they are often about who we are, but they are also about more than that: they are about what we believe in (a broad sense of faith), our values, our way of life, our point of view. In a way, doctrinal conflicts are about the type of political power that E. H. Carr back in the 1930s described as the power over opinion. On par with military and economic power, the power over opinion, Carr argued, is essential for broadening the basis of religions and of politics.Footnote ⁸⁰ Just as the state's criterion for survival is the defence of its sovereignty, and the criteria for survival for the firm is avoiding bankruptcy, the existence of doctrines depends on believers. Without believers doctrines would not be invoked and alive. Thus religio-political actors in the religion sector is struggling to convince others about the truth of their doctrines and giving the doctrines a authoritative status (to define and to decide laws and rules).Footnote ⁸¹

The advantage of a sector focusing on doctrines is – besides the more vivid security political relevance – that in terms of effects it does not privilege religious doctrines over secular ones. In some sense Laustsen and Wæver do this by starting of with an abstract substantial definition of religion that is used as a prototype for secular phenomena that shares similar characteristics.Footnote ⁸² To expand the applicability of a new sector requires that the category faith is not merely swopped with doctrine but that the demarcation of its boundaries follows a more structural and less substantialist definition than the one initially provided by Laustsen and Wæver. Doctrines are thus defined as particular principles, values, or ideas about ways of life, which are accepted as authoritative by a group of people and upheld by particular legendary myths that easily make the doctrines ‘worth dying for’. These doctrines should analytically be approached as empty signifiers – a term which discourse analysts often apply to denote signifiers without fixed referents. This would enable the analyst to initially approach doctrines (religious and quasi-religious alike) in a nominalist way according to family resemblance criteria and subsequently investigate their content.

The equal treatment of religion and ‘quasi-religion’ is important, because just as religion can bring images of cosmic struggle, evoke something greater than life, provide vehicles of social mobilisation, give legitimacy to and moral justification for violence, demonise opponents and cast a conflict in transhistorical terms,Footnote ⁸³ evoking doctrines of, for instance, secularism and freedom can do exactly the same. Doctrines of secularism or freedom as they are often represented in a Western context in fact draw on very strong myths. In the stories about the birth of modernity and democracy, the French and American revolutions in the last half of the eighteenth century are often portrayed as decisive events in world history, driven by the victorious principle of liberty. In America the revolution created the new republican ideals of liberty, which by reference to the founding fathers of America have been widely perceived as the core of American political values and a fundamental defining trait of the nation. Both in Europe and in America, freedom has been represented as a core value of just governance. Still, the French Revolution was not simply an event introducing freedom to the modern world; as Talal Asad recalls in his analysis of the European narrative, ‘Revolutionary armies themselves sought to promote liberty, equality, and fraternity by conquest. The Revolution inaugurated the age of modern empires, unleashing modern warfare, nationalism, racism, and genocide around the world.’Footnote ⁸⁴ Thus, grand narratives upholding doctrines such as freedom can also have mythic power and be framed beyond contestation. In the US and Western Europe the doctrine of freedom is especially inclined to become securitised, since the narratives of the revolutions in America and Europe are stories of people dying and sacrificing for a higher cause and a way of life. What European or American opinion makers often advance as non-religious principles can function exactly in the same way as what, by contrast, are labelled religious doctrines, since they can be based on the same kinds of strong sentiments.

From a speech act perspective it is this ‘work’ performed by securitised doctrines that is of central interest. But even though religious doctrines do not have a sui generis function vis-à-vis secular doctrines, they can be more anchored through ancient tradition and strong mythological narratives, and thus in some instances be easier to securitise successfully, also transnationally. So even though it corresponds with the functionalist ways of seeing religion, the particular content of the different doctrines – the legendary myths they are founded upon and the potential action directions that can be derived from them – are substantially important to understand. This sort of knowledge can improve the ability of researchers to either predict mobilisation capabilities of militant religious movements or state actors or suggest better ways of desecuritising doctrinal conflicts.

In sum, it seems that religion can be integrated into the securitisation framework of analysis in two useful ways. One is by defining the religion sector narrowly in a nominalist way but expanding the range of possible referent objects within the sector to cover multiple dimensions of religion that can be securitised. This would make the analytical framework more applicable in various contexts, leave ‘the essence’ of religion to be defined by empirical investigation and enable important comparative studies on which dimensions of religion are especially disposed to securitisation. The other way entails broadening the religion sector, perhaps renaming it the doctrinal sector, to embrace equally the securitisation of ‘quasi-religion’, including those conventionally designated as secular. This would be especially helpful when dealing with conflicts where doctrinal tensions – between values represented as religious and secular – appear to stand at the centre. The securitisation approach to violent religio-political activism is especially useful for students interested in understanding or explaining wars or conflict-dynamics with religious dimensions and for students interested in issues of radicalisation and fundamentalism. An analysis based on this theory accesses the security political narratives of religious activists, which like ordinary security political declarations involve the defence of a referent object, the identification of a serious threat and a call to deviate from ‘normal’ behaviour. Understanding radicalisation as securitisation and giving attention to the defensive framings is important in understanding and explaining why and how certain violent measures are made possible and thus also what it will take to deescalate conflicts with religious dimensions.