‘God is on our side’: The anatomy of an ideology

The article discusses the twin and, to a certain extent, reciprocal ideas of ‘Manifest Success’ and ‘Manifest Destiny.’ It argues that, as developed respectively by certain streams of thought within Islamic communities and religiously motivated political movements within the USA, they both display strong ideological characteristics in the negative sense. Apart from the historical evidence that contradicts their utopian aspirations, the sense of identity and destiny which they wish to inspire is politically dangerous for being illusory. Muslims and Christians need to be aware of the ideological instrumentalising of their faith traditions, in order to be able to repudiate the undesirable appropriation of their core beliefs.