The New Cold War?: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State(5 Comparative Studies in Religion and Society)

Will the religious confrontations with secular authorities around the world lead to a new Cold War? Mark Juergensmeyer paints a provocative picture of the new religious revolutionaries altering the political landscape in the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. Impassioned Muslim leaders in Egypt, Palestine, and Algeria, political rabbis in Israel, militant Sikhs in India, and triumphant Catholic clergy in Eastern Europe are all players in Juergensmeyer's study of the explosive growth of religious movements that decisively reject Western ideas of secular nationalism.

Juergensmeyer revises our notions of religious revolutions. Instead of viewing religious nationalists as wild-eyed, anti-American fanatics, he reveals them as modern activists pursuing a legitimate form of politics. He explores the positive role religion can play in the political life of modern nations, even while acknowledging some religious nationalists' proclivity to violence and disregard of Western notions of human rights. Finally, he situates the growth of religious nationalism in the context of the political malaise of the modern West. Noting that the synthesis of traditional religion and secular nationalism yields a religious version of the modern nation-state, Juergensmeyer claims that such a political entity could conceivably embrace democratic values and human rights.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Introduction: The Rise of Religious Nationalism

Part One: Religion vs. Secular Nationalism
1. The Loss of Faith in Secular Nationalism
Faith in Secular Nationalism
The Religious Rejection of Secular Nationalism
2. Competing Ideologies of Order
Secular Nationalism in the West
The Competition between Two Ideologies
How Secular Nationalism Failed to Accommodate Religion
Can Religion Accommodate the Nation-State?

Part Two: The Global Confrontations
3· Models of Religious Revolution: The Middle East 45
The Ingredients of a Religious Revolt 45
Iran: The Paradigmatic Religious Revolution 50
Egypt's Incipient Religious Revolt 57
Religious Revolt in a Jewish State 62
The Islamic Intifada: A Revolt within the Palestinian Revolution 6g
4· Political Targets of Religion: South Asia 78
Militant Hindu Nationalism
The Sikh War against Both Secular and Hindu Nationalism
Sri Lanka's Unfinished Religious Revolt
5· Religious Ambivalence toward Socialist Nationalism:
Formerly Marxist States
Religious Revival in Mongolia
Islamic Nationalism in Central Asia
The Religious Rejection of Socialism in Eastern Europe
The Ambivalent Relationship of Religion and Socialism
Patterns of Religious Revolt

Part Three: The Problems Ahead
6. Why Religious Confrontations Are Violent
The Rhetoric of Cosmic War
When Cosmic War Becomes Real
Religious Sanction for the Use of Violence
Empowering Marginal Peoples
7· Democracy, Human Rights, and the Modern
Religious State
Theocracy or Democracy?
The Protection of Minority Rights
The Protection of Individual Rights
Modernity and the Religious State

Conclusion: Can We Live with Religious Nationalism?

Notes
Bibliography
List of Interviews
Index

About the Author :
Mark Juergensmeyer is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the editor of Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World (1992) and the author of Radhasoami Reality: The Logic of a Modern Faith (1991) among other books.

Review :
"Mark Juergensmeyer's "The New Cold War? makes the history and issues surrounding world-wide fundamentalism accessible to a general audience." --Mary Warner Marien, "Christian Science Monitor