Religion and nationalism: four approaches*

ABSTRACT. Building on recent literature, this article discusses four ways of studying the relationship between religion and nationalism. The first is to treat religion and nationalism, along with ethnicity and race, as analogous phenomena. The second is to specify ways in which religion helps explain things about nationalism – its origin, its power or its distinctive character in particular cases. The third is to treat religion as part of nationalism, and to specify modes of interpenetration and intertwining. The fourth is to posit a distinctively religious form of nationalism. The article concludes by reconsidering the much‐criticised understanding of nationalism as a distinctively secular phenomenon.     

Conflicting nationalist traditions and immigration: the Basque case from 1950 to 1980

Immigration from the different regions in Spain to the Basque Country has traditionally opposed Basque and Spanish nationalism. This article provides an overview of the discourse of both nationalist traditions with respect to the intra‐regional migration movement of the second half of the twentieth century as well as of the resulting controversy. Whereas the Basque nationalist movement claims to have defended the need to integrate immigrants since the middle of the twentieth century, particularly through politics, Spanish nationalism claims that Basque nationalism has helped marginalise these same immigrants. A qualitative analysis is used to contrast this controversy by consulting the opinion of the Spanish immigrants who settled in the Basque Country and did not avail of the political integration proposed by Basque nationalism. The main conclusion is that these immigrants tend to avoid the heart of the matter of discord between both nationalist traditions, granting little importance to political and cultural elements though stressing their social integration in the Basque Country.     

‘Faith in nation comes in different guises’1: modernist versions of religious nationalism2

ABSTRACT. Many scholars of nationalism seem to assume that religious nationalism is inherently and necessarily hostile to the secular nation‐state and to modern developments in general. The present paper challenges this conviction by drawing on recent debates among sociologists of religion, and it points to the existence of modernist versions of religious nationalism that acknowledge the legitimacy of the secular nation‐state and are generally sympathetic to modern developments. It examines one of the most prominent manifestations of this variety of nationalism, namely Protestant modernist nationalism. After a brief consideration of cases from nineteenth century Europe, the remainder of the paper focuses on the modernist religious nationalisms arising in post‐Cold War Eastern Europe, with a special focus on Slovenia.     

Religion and ethno‐nationalism: Turkey's Kurdish issue

One approach within the Islamic camp treats Islam, which emphasizes overarching notions such as the ‘Islamic brotherhood’ and ‘ummah’, as incompatible with ethno‐nationalist ideas and movements. It is, however, striking that in the last decades, several Islamic and conservative groups in Turkey have paid increasing attention to the Kurdish issue, supporting their ethnic demands and sentiments. Even more striking, the leftist, secular Kurdish ethno‐nationalists have adopted a more welcoming attitude toward Islam. How can we explain such intriguing developments and shifts? Using original data derived from several elite interviews and a public opinion survey, this study shows that the struggle for Kurdish popular support and legitimacy has encouraged political elites from both camps to enrich their ideological toolbox by borrowing ideas and discourses from each other. Further, Turkish and Kurdish nationalists alike utilize Islamic discourses and ideas to legitimize their competing nationalist claims. Exploring such issues, the study also provides theoretical and policy implications.     

Minority nationalism and immigrant integration in Canada

Immigrant integration is currently a prominent issue in virtually all contemporary democracies, but countries in which the historic population itself is deeply divided – particularly those with substate nations and multiple political identities – present some interesting questions where integration is concerned. The existence of multiple and potentially competing political identities may complicate the integration process, particularly if the central government and the substate nation promote different conceptions of citizenship and different nation‐building projects. What, then, are the implications of minority nationalism for immigrant integration? Are the added complexities a barrier to integration? Or do overlapping identities generate more points of contact between immigrants and their new home? This article addresses this question by probing immigrant and non‐immigrant ‘sense of belonging’ in Canada, both inside and outside Quebec. Data come from Statistics Canada's Ethnic Diversity Study. Our results suggest that competing nation‐building projects make the integration of newcomers more, rather than less, challenging.     

The historical dynamics of ethnic conflicts: confrontational nationalisms,democracy and the Basques in contemporary Spain*

ABSTRACT. All the historical moments in which the Basque debate reached political protagonism in contemporary Spain coincided with political contexts of institutional democratisation. The debate on patriotism in the Basque Country is connected with a uniform narrative regarding the Basques and their moral distance from the Spanish nation: the ‘Basque problem’. This narrative has fostered a confrontational discourse between Spanish and Basque nationalism. It has also promoted recourse to specific stereotypical images of the Basques, which bind ethnicity to collective identity. Such representations reveal that the invention of the Basque country as a uniform ethnic collective had much more to do with the internal contradictions of Spanish national identity – and later of Basque identity – than with the existence of a secular conflict between Basques and Spaniards. The Basque case shows that every ‘ethnic conflict’ requires adequate contextualisation in order to avoid simplifying its origins and past pathways to make it conform to present uses.     

Between religion and nationalism in the Palestinian diaspora

This article examines Palestinian refugee articulations of the Palestinian homeland and struggle in relation to religion and nationalism. My contention is that the impact of Hamas's electoral victory in Palestine is visible within the discourse of Palestinians in Jordan. This discourse suggests a transformation of the meaning of Palestinian nationalism in which religion is taking an important albeit complex role in nationalism. Using the concept of intertwining, this article considers how Islam has been intertwined with Palestinian nationalism in ways that have privileged particular ideas about the national homeland and fight for liberation. While many suggest that Islamist politics is incompatible with nationalism, this article takes the local discourse of refugees and argues that Hamas and its supporters have yet to abandon the framework of nationalism, although certain tensions exist.     

An interpretation of Finnish religious nationalism: the four topoi of theological depoliticisation

ABSTRACT. The topic of this article is the relation between ‘politicality’ and theology in the discourse of Finnish religious nationalism during the Winter War of 1939–40 and the Continuation War of 1941–44. I shall draw on the ideas of Kari Palonen and Anthony D. Smith in attempting to thematise theological depoliticisation as an intrinsic element of religious nationalism. Also, I will elaborate its political significance in the Finnish context, where the role of traditional religion in the general development of nationalist thought has been particularly important. The specific focus is on how prominent representatives of the Finnish clergy related to war and nationalist claims in general. My interpretation is that their arguments were drawn from what I call the topoi of theological depoliticisation, which, at the same time, rendered the discourse extremely political.     

宗教与美国革命

长期以来,国内史学界在研究和探讨美国革命时,大多从政治、宪法、经济、贸易、黑奴和民族等视角阐述美国革命的渊源和意义,鲜有宗教因素方面的考量。北美殖民地与英国宗主国在两大宗教问题上存在着冲突,宗教在推动殖民地走上美国革命之路方面发挥了重要作用。法印战争结束后,随着英国在宗教和政治上加大对北美殖民地的干预和控制,宗教自由和政治自由成为一枚硬币的两面,两者不可须臾缺一。正是在这个意义上,殖民地争取宗教自由的斗争促进和推动了美国革命的爆发和发展。     

Sri Lankan Muslims: between ethno‐nationalism and the global ummah

ABSTRACT. Sri Lanka's Sunni Muslims or “Moors”, who make up eight percent of the population, are the country's third largest ethnic group, after the Buddhist Sinhalese (seventy‐four per cent) and the Hindu Tamils (eighteen per cent). Although the armed LTTE (Tamil Tiger) rebel movement was defeated militarily by government forces in May 2009, the island's Muslims still face the long‐standing external threats of ethno‐linguistic Tamil nationalism and pro‐Sinhala Buddhist government land and resettlement policies. In addition, during the past decade a sharp internal conflict has arisen within the Sri Lankan Muslim community between locally popular Sufi sheiks and the followers of hostile Islamic reformist movements energised by ideas and resources from the global ummah, or world community of Muslims. This simultaneous combination of “external” ethno‐nationalist rivalries and “internal” Islamic doctrinal conflict has placed Sri Lanka's Muslims in a double bind: how to defend against Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic hegemonies while not appearing to embrace an Islamist or jihadist agenda. This article first traces the historical development of Sri Lankan Muslim identity in the context of twentieth‐century Sri Lankan nationalism and the south Indian Dravidian movement, then examines the recent anti‐Sufi violence that threatens to divide the Sri Lankan Muslim community today.     

Nationalism studies between methodological nationalism and orientalism: an alternative approach illustrated with the case of El Greco in Toledo,Spain

Methodological nationalism is still dominant in nationalism studies. When studying the construction of national identities, scholars generally limit their study to the borders of one nation‐state, while only paying attention to members of that particular nation. Implicitly, foreign actors and influences are left out of the picture. I will challenge this methodological nationalism with a case study, which demonstrates that the place of Toledo within the Spanish national imagination, and more particularly that of El Greco, the most important representative of the city's artistic heritage, was largely determined by foreigners. During the nineteenth century, El Greco was rediscovered primarily by foreign scholars and artists. Moreover, it would be the rise of international tourism in the early twentieth century that convinced Toledans to adopt El Greco as the city's main artistic icon. This case, thus, clearly shows that in nationalism studies methodological nationalism can be avoided by also including foreign actors.     

The Lilliputian dreams: preliminary observations of nationalism in Okinawa,Taiwan and Hong Kong

This paper is a preliminary comparative analysis of three polity‐seeking nationalisms that emerged in the contiguous peripheral areas – the overlapping ‘spheres of influence’ of three contending imperial centres: Taiwan, Okinawa and Hong Kong. Specifically, it examines and compares the pattern of nation‐formation and the form, ideology and politics of nationalism in each case, and in doing so it tries to suggest a possible explanatory framework for the rise of these nationalisms. Its tentative conclusion is that the rise of nationalism in Taiwan, Okinawa and Hong Kong should be understood as a macro‐historical sociological phenomenon caused by both the short‐term penetration from centralizing colonial and geopolitical centre(s) that triggered nationalist mobilization in the periphery and the long‐term process of peripheral nation‐formation that created the social basis for mobilization. The three cases also demonstrate some other traits of anti‐centre peripheral nationalism: they all adopted a similar ideological strategy of indigeneity, and all developed a differentiation between radical and pragmatic lines characteristic of minority or peripheral nationalisms. A final observation is that while the geopolitics of states in the region is powerfully shaping the development of the three nationalisms, interactions on the societal level may over time create a counterforce from below.     

The Hindu nationalist reinterpretation of pilgrimage in India: the limits of Yatra politics

ABSTRACT. Victor Turner's anthropological reading of pilgrimages in terms of communitas is of utmost relevance in the case of Hinduism: indeed, Hindu pilgrimages produce a relative and temporal obliteration of social cleavages – particularly caste divisions – allowing the emergence of a sense of group belonging. Moreover, the geography of pilgrimage sites maps out the sacred land, marking the area of extension of Hindu civilisation in space. Hindu nationalists have tried to exploit this particular alchemy to offer an ethnic definition of the nation (and its territory) and thereby gather a following by lending some of their demonstrations the appearance of a pilgrimage. This approach asserted itself in the early 1980s thanks to the Ekatmata Yatra (Unity March) in 1983, and was confirmed in 1990 during the Rath Yatra (Chariot festival). Nevertheless, the instrumentalist interpretation of such movements comes up against an issue that is already at the core of subaltern studies' historiography, i.e. that masses do not always mobilise for the reasons put forth by political leaders. More specifically, if women march massively in the streets during these Yatra pilgrimages, it is both because they feel concerned by the reason for demonstrations and because these demonstrations have legitimised their entry into the public space, which still remains relatively closed to them.     

Negotiating the nation: diaspora contestations in the USA about Hindu nationalism in India

ABSTRACT. Diaspora positions and identities are being continually constructed, negotiated and reframed. Nevertheless, many studies tend to focus on the ethno‐centric, exclusionary and/or nationalistic orientation of some groups. In this article, I will explore variations in the responses of the Indian American diaspora community to Hindu nationalism in India. The article will focus on the opposition of progressive groups to a particularly controversial Hindu nationalist leader, Narendra Modi. They stand in contrast to those US‐based organisations that support Modi and his political ideology. The debate between the two sides shows a high degree of political polarisation within the community. This study illustrates the variations in interpretations of nationalism and identity that exist among groups operating in the transnational political space. In particular, it shows us that the political process that articulates these differences can impact policy in the home or adopted country.     

Reconstructed nationalism in Taiwan: a politicised and economically driven identity

Since the late 1980s, Taiwan has been engulfed in waves of both democratisation and integration with mainland China. These two waves have pulled identity reconstruction in Taiwan in two different directions. In the process of democratisation, a shift to a majoritarian system encouraged a Taiwanese renaissance on the political platform and consequently led to the deconstruction of Chinese identity. On the other hand, in the 1990s, with the high mobility of capital and people across the Taiwan Strait, close economic ties could have put the brakes on Taiwan independence movements. Hence, this paper uses random coefficient models to explore how the democratic transition and increasing cross‐strait relations brought about psychological and structural mechanisms that motivated people to opt for identity change in Taiwan. It also attempts to investigate how people dealt with the dissonance between rising Taiwanese nationalism and the economic interests that deterred a radical Taiwanese identity.     

The civic zeitgeist: nationalism and liberal values in the European radical right

This article examines the relationship between nationalism and liberal values and, more specifically, the redefinition of boundaries between national communities and others in the rhetoric of radical right parties in Europe. The aim is to examine the tension between radical right party discourse and the increasing need to shape this discourse in liberal terms. We argue that the radical right parties that successfully operate within the democratic system tend to be those best able to tailor their discourse to the liberal and civic characteristics of national identity so as to present themselves and their ideologies as the true authentic defenders of the nation's unique reputation for democracy, diversity and tolerance. Comparing the success of a number of European radical right parties ranging from the most electorally successful Swiss People's Party, the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List and Party for Freedom to the more mixed French Front National, British National Party and National Democratic Party of Germany we show that the parties that effectively deploy the symbolic resources of national identity through a predominantly voluntaristic prism tend to be the ones that fare better within their respective political systems. In doing so, we challenge the conventional view in the study of nationalism that expects civic values to shield countries from radicalism and extremism.     

Historic preservation in Nazi Germany: place, memory, and nationalism

While numerous studies have examined the post-war contestation surrounding commemorative sites associated with the legacy of Nazi Germany, relatively little attention has been dedicated to the ways in which the Nazi regime itself sought to create places of memory congruent with the movement's political and cultural goals. Indeed, party leaders sponsored a variety of disparate, and at times contradictory, programs to re-orientate some of Germany's most prominent historic places to better serve the needs of the regime. To expand our understanding of this process, this article examines the practice and rhetoric of historic preservation in Bavaria during the Nazi period with a focus on the preservationist program sponsored by Bavarian President Ludwig Siebert. Nazi propaganda promised to rejuvenate and protect Germany's architectural heritage for the public good, but the regime's actual priorities and policies led to widespread confiscation, damage, and eventually destruction.     

Hot, banal and everyday nationalism: Bilingual road signs in Wales

The paper focuses on Billig's (Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage) notion of banal nationalism. While Billig's work is to be commended for demonstrating the way in which nationalism is an endemic political ideology in all states – and not merely an extreme or hot political ideology that is based upon “blood and belonging” (Ignatieff, M. (1993). Blood and belonging: Journeys into the new nationalism. London: BBC Books) – we suggest that his work tends, perhaps unwittingly, to reinforce an unwarranted separation of the banal and hot processes that reproduce nationalism. Some empirical work has implicitly and explicitly begun to question the distinction between banal and hotter forms of nationalism. We argue that one way in which such an agenda can be furthered is through a promotion of the idea of everyday nationalism, which combines banal and hot elements in more complex and contingent ways. We elaborate on the benefits of adopting such an approach through an empirical discussion of the campaign in favour of bilingual road signs in Wales between 1967 and 1975. We focus, first, on how monolingual English road signs were constructed by Welsh nationalists as part of an everyday landscape of oppression and, second, on the everyday politics of road signs within the spaces of government. We conclude the paper by reaffirming the need to move beyond notions of banal and hot nationalism and to focus on the everyday contexts within which nationalism is reproduced.     

Boosting nationalism with non‐nationalist ideology: A comparative biographical analysis of the Chinese communist revolutionaries

This article conducts a comparative biographical analysis to explain why the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) revolutionaries used non‐nationalist Marxism to boost a nationalist movement. It argues that these people, based on their own observations of the precommunist Chinese nationalism, thought that China lacked structural conditions for making a solid nationalist movement such as cultural homogeneity, mass literacy, and a shared pride in modern history. They thus turned to seek a non‐national ideology that could still fulfil the functions of integrating leading elites, mobilizing the masses, and motivating the patriots themselves. Then, to explain why the CCP leaders particularly adopted Marxism, this article draws comparison with the Kuomintang (non‐communist nationalists) elites who advocated for more patience and insistence to develop regular nationalism. The comparison shows that the CCP's impatient jump stemmed from their disadvantaged backgrounds that had limited their ideological horizon: lower‐class origins, narrow overseas experiences, poor education, and weak attachment to traditional culture. To pre‐existing literature, this article makes three contributions: (1) provides a more detailed interpretation of the CCP's diagnosis of Chinese nationalism; (2) explains why the same structural dilemmas produced nationalist and non‐nationalist responses alike; and (3) draws a biographical database of the CCP and the Kuomintang.     

Constitution‐writing,nationalism and the Turkish experience

Until recently there has been relatively little attention paid to the question of how the relationship between the state, its citizens and the nation is articulated in constitutional texts. This paper seeks to address this gap through an examination of how the rules of belonging to the nation are discussed by the political elite and how these discussions find their final formulation in the constitutional texts. The analysis focuses on the Turkish case at two constitution‐writing moments (1924 and 1961). While such moments have conventionally been assumed to be ‘revolutionary’, the data on Turkey highlights continuities rather than radical changes over time. More particularly, it underscores the resilience and salience of the principle of nationalism over time.