Introduction

If a seer is to be judged by the accuracy of his or her prophesy, it may be time to blot Marx, Freud and Weber from the pages of the social scientists’ prophetic honor roll. At the turn of the twentieth century, these men, among others, heralded the imminence of secularism and, by extension, the demise of religion. Yet the turn of the twenty-first century has seen not the decline of religion, but rather its promotion to world-news center stage. While in the 1980s few, if any, international-terrorist organizations alluded to religion when explaining their political motivations, the 1990s saw the emergence of religiously motivated political violence all over the globe. One-third of the international terrorists groups listed in the St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism were religious in 1994; in 1995 in was 46 percent, and by 1998 more than half were religious.1 And this only alludes to the religious organizations promoting violent action; peaceful religion has flourished as well. In the United States, the 1980s and 1990s gave birth to the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition and the “megachurch.” The religious-settlers movement in Israel has demonstrated remarkable staying power, and one need only to walk down the streets of Cairo to observe the re-emergence of religious fervor evidenced by men in long white galabeyyas and women in brightly colored headscarves. Why, if secularization is as pervasive as sociologists predicted it would be, are we seeing a rise in religious movements at the end of the twentieth century? Further, how can we explain the wholly different methods of opposition adopted by different sectors of the same movement? Were the giants of the twentieth century wrong? Has secularization been halted in its steps? This book argues that secularization has unfolded in much the way that Marx, Freud and Weber predicted it would – but that the advance of secularization has not entailed the waning of religion. In fact, it is the advance of secularization that has led to the rise of religiously motivated violence. More specifically, as religious organizations perceive their access to the political process to become

increasingly limited, they either temper their rhetoric to increase their access, or become more shrill in their condemnation of the process that excludes them. As these organizations become more shrill, they are further excluded from the process, which reinforces the urgency of their cause. As their rhetoric intensifies, they are identified as radicals by the political center, and are limited in the types of organizational structure they can develop. They compensate by developing cell structures that are linked not by the traditional bonds of member ties, but by a frame that ties individuals to God, and emphasizes their moral and religious duty to physically fight secularization. This book explores three religious opposition movements: the Christian fight against abortion in the United States, the Muslim pursuit of Sharia law in Egypt and the religious-settlers movement in Israel. In each of the three movements, time has produced a fissure between organizations and individuals willing to use violence and organizations and individuals committed to non-violent protest. In each case, the variables of rhetoric, structure and ideology interact to produce unique methods of protest. A better understanding of the reasons behind the recent rise in religious movements, and a subsequent understanding of their choice of methods, is valuable for a number of reasons. The ebb and flow of opportunities for political access ensures that secularization and religion, although polar opposites, depend on each other to define themselves. As a result, while their respective degrees of influence will inevitably undulate over time, both will be a part of the political process for the indefinite future. Thus, a full understanding of both is critical to a meaningful understanding of the political process. Much work has been done in past decades to understand secular social movements as part of the political process, and con sequentially researchers now know a great deal about the motivations, resources and timing of secular social movements.2 Considerably less has been done in the field of religious social movements. This book aims to address this dearth. Second, if religion is likely to be a force within politics for some time to come, it behooves researchers to better understand the methods religious organizations use to achieve their goals. Despite the high level of visibility afforded to violent groups justifying their acts in the name of religion, there is a surprisingly low level of understanding about the conditions enabling this trend to spread. At present, a chasm exists between the work of those scholars who study violence in religious movements and those who study secular social movements. Scholars of religion often look to religion as a source of violence. In doing so, they fail to consider the importance of the environment in which religious organizations operate as a predictor for their behavior. In contrast, scholars trying to understand contentious protest from a social movements’ perspective have traditionally focused entirely on the grievances and motivations of the participants,3 while often ignoring the underlying belief systems that may have influenced the existence of the grievances or motivations.4