Abstract
Reviewed by Ron E Hassner , University of California, Berkeley, US
Bosco’s Securing the Sacred is the most important book on the politics of secularism to appear since Elizabeth Shakman Hurd’s 2008 volume The Politics of Secularism in International Relations. The focus here is on state efforts to grapple with religion as a matter of national security. After 9/11, Bosco argues, secular states began to “securitize” religion, that is, adopt discourses and policies that transformed religion into a thing to be protected, a referent object in international security. This effort placed secular states in the difficult position of having to manage religion, drawing distinctions between what is and is not religion, what counts as good or bad religion, authentic and inauthentic religion, promoting the former in each case. Some of these efforts, particularly US policies to encourage moderate Islam internationally, succeeded but others, like the British and French efforts to foster a domestic moderate Islam, failed. Bosco seeks to explain why and, in so doing, explores secularism, securitization, and the role of religion in contemporary national security policies.
These topics are significant and the author deals with them exceptionally well. This undertaking is no small challenge: The securitization literature in particular, and constructivism in general, are prone to obfuscating verbiage. This volume, however, is crisply written and beautifully structured. Contrary to the author’s claim, the argument is neither dispassionate nor “nonnormative” (123). Bosco’s displeasure with the securitization of religion is evident on every page but his analysis is balanced and fair and the writing is careful and sensitive. At the same time, the evidence is persuasive and the claims are bold. This too is no small feat since discourse analysis often limits itself to dissecting language, piling words upon words. Bosco, however, delves into policy and its implications. The states he studies have done more than change how they think or speak about religion. They have acted on those ideas, with varying success, and he seeks to uncover why.
The author relates how, after 2001, Western states chose to adopt a narrative that highlighted the conflict within Islam, rather than the conflict with Islam. This clash was said to pit those who distort Islam’s “authentic” meaning against moderates who represented what the religion “really means.” Leaders in the US, Britain, and France emphasized that it was not religion or Islam that threatened security but rather distorted versions of religion. They then acted to distinguish what they perceived to be pseudo-religions from authentic faith. To do so, they established and funded new Islamic institutions and representative organizations, forged new partnerships with existing institutions, set up imam training programs, proposed sermon scripts, offered religious training for police forces, and more.
In Britain and France, where these programs focused on the domestic level, they failed to garner popular support, Bosco avers, and were scaled back due to resistance from civil society which felt that the state was trying to manipulate religion for cynical ends. Muslim communities felt alienated by this manipulation of their religion that seemed designed to test their social and political loyalties. Some felt singled out as a community under suspicion, and others felt that mainstream members had sold out to the establishment (61). The US, on the other hand, implemented securitization in its relations with other states, not at home. Any resistance to its efforts to reform Islam in Indonesia, the Philippines, Yemen, or Jordan did not deter the US since it did not feel accountable to the global Muslim population. The US was thus able to outsource the fostering of certain interpretations of Islam to reliable state allies.
Bosco concludes that religion is more easily securitized at the international rather than the domestic level. Secular states, in particular, will find it hard to secure the domestic support needed for influencing religion. Paradoxically, the suspension of secularism that this securitization requires can lead to a backlash as religious groups rise to defend secularism from state manipulation. This conclusion suggests that both religion and secularism are contested categories in international politics and that we should be wary of treating them as independent variables in our analyses.
The volume does not shy from controversy and thus raises important questions. Some of these are definitional. At times, the author seems to take the social construction of religion too far, claiming, for example, that religion can only be securitized because it “has no self-evident or sui generis meaning, and scholars should not approach the study of religion in global politics assuming that it does” (21, see also 81). Yet, the securitization of a concept does not require the concept to be meaningless; it merely requires disagreement about how much of a threat it poses. Global warming, nuclear weapons, and poverty have undergone securitization despite general agreement as to what these things are.
Indeed, Bosco himself seems to be writing with a clear notion of religion in mind and with the confidence that his readers share this notion. This assumption explains his decision never to clarify what he means when he writes “religion” (the word is often used but never defined) and his confident use of the term “sacred” (also never defined) as a reference to religion in the title of the book. He is equally comfortable referring to the US, the UK, and France simply as “secular states,” without defining that concept either. Bosco can do this not because religion has an essence but because he and his readers have overlapping understandings of religion that share what Wittgenstein would have called a “family resemblance.” Religion is indeed constructed but that construction rests—indeed, has to rest—on a prior shared social understanding of what is being constructed.
Bosco deserves praise for avoiding the usual hemming and hawing over the definition of religion, not because the concept is meaningless but because, as Ivan Strenski has pointed out, we already know what the word means (Strenski, 1998). Nor does this definitional issue undermine Bosco’s claims in any way. The securitization of religion is fascinating not because it invents the category of religion ex nihilo but because it reshapes it. Precisely because we already have a strong sense of what religion is, it is so compelling to read about the efforts of leaders to “socially engineer” religion, such as attempts by the French government to socialize imams into distinguishing religion from politics by teaching them Rousseau and Voltaire (81).
Other definitional questions arise around the limits of securitization and the definition of failure. The argument treats all policies aimed at reshaping religion as motivated by national security and thus as automatically suspect. But was the decision by the Higher Education Ministry in Britain to emphasize Islamic Studies and the contribution of Islam to the country’s political and cultural capital really an “expansions of the security sector” (52)? Were all state subsidies for mosques in France (73) motivated by national security concerns and thus tarnished?
Moreover, how decisive was the failure of secularization effort in these two countries? The author’s verdict of absolute failure is based on the short-term resistance to state policies by civil society and “the relevant audiences” (66). The evidence, however, is drawn almost exclusively from the reactions of Muslim audiences. It may not be surprising that Muslim communities recoiled at state intervention in their religious practices but it is less obvious that these communities were the primary targets of securitization efforts. The reader must also wonder: Were the Muslim communities in these countries really monolithic in their rejection of moderation efforts? Was there no internal dialogue within these communities about religious extremism after 9/11, no internal effort to distance oneself from Salafi Islam, for example? If this account is to be believed, calls for religious tolerance were only ever imposed on these communities from above, never initiated from within, and were always rejected out of hand. But it is not obvious that Muslim dissent was uniform or effective in the medium or long term. For example, the narrative covers the opposition to an April 2011 debate on laïcité in France (87) but fails to note that the debate took place nonetheless, despite these protests. What were its repercussions? Similarly, the book documents Muslim resistance to the creation of the CFCM, the French Council of the Muslim Faith. Yet, the CFCM prevails and continues to act as the primary body representing French Muslims before the government. What effect has this had not just on French Muslims but on French society as a whole?
Indeed, the large question left unanswered is: What effects has the securitization of religion had on the security of these states in the long term? Surely, from the state’s point of view, that is the important way of measuring success. The author’s critical stance precludes that question from being asked or answered. But it should not have precluded the exploration of viable alternatives to the secularization of religion. If these policies were deplorable, if they pushed states “beyond their widely accepted limits regarding religion” and into “treacherous terrain” (23), “at their peril” (2), what should Western states have done after 9/11? Certainly, the dominant alternatives available at the time—ignoring the religious dimension of world affairs, adopting a “clash of civilizations” worldview, or worse, vilifying Islam—are even less palatable. If states should not make an effort to encourage moderate religion, if leader should not emphasize, as French President Sarkozy did, that Islam was an asset and not a threat and that the clash of civilization should be resisted (72), then what should they do?
The author’s message seems to be that government should cease meddling in religion altogether. “The solution to Britain’s post–9/11 security crisis was not less religion, but more” (65) and “the United States’ success in promoting moderate Islam abroad is not to be celebrated” (124). What policies does that imply? How should Britain have gone about achieving “less religion”? What US policies would have been worthy of celebration? The volume excoriates Britain for encouraging a moderate Islam that embraces multiculturalism, secularism, tolerance and community cohesion (66). What should the government have done instead? It is similarly critical of the US military’s efforts to gather intelligence about religious leaders in the Middle East, the religious ideas that tend to encourage violence, the myths and narratives of local communities, their religious sites, etc. (108–109). Would a military ignorant of indigenous religion have been preferable? How can the reluctance of the US State Department to engage religious actors or to train its diplomats in religion be construed as a positive development (113)?
The challenge is not just that the volume offers criticism without offering a constructive alternative but that this criticism requires the adoption of an exceptionalist stance. It assumes that the securitization of religion is a radical anomaly for “secular” states, a dangerous new game started after 9/11. In actuality, states have always been in business of securitizing, controlling, and shaping religion. As Anthony Marx, William Cavanaugh, Daniel Philpott and others have persuasively argued, the creation of the modern states required state appropriation of religion, its partitioning off, and its monitoring by the state. Absent this consistent history of state meddling in religion, the so-called “secular” state would never have come about. Had this volume sought out alternatives to the securitization of religion, it would have found none. There are no alternatives, only better and worse ways to securitize religion.
None of the above should be read as criticisms but rather as challenges to be considered by readers and scholars who follow in Bosco’s footsteps and build on his important research project. It is a fascinating and compelling contribution to the burgeoning literature on religion and international relations and to work on secularism and on securitization more specifically. Invitingly and lucidly written, the text is accessibly to lay readers and academics alike and will provoke both audiences equally. Robert Bosco’s Securing the Sacred should appear on any syllabus covering religion and politics and is enthusiastically recommended for all scholars of religion and international affairs.