ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how religious organizations pressure governments to support or not interfere with their anti-secular agendas. Through the politics of the street and social media, unelected religious leaders have forced elected political leaders to embrace authoritarian measures to counter their influence and safeguard secular democracy in ways that compromise it. Mobocracy thus contributes to an ongoing process of democratic deconsolidation. The author examines the Buddhist organizations Ma Ba Tha in Myanmar, Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) in Sri Lanka, the Islamic organizations Front Pembela Islam—FPI (Islamic Defenders Front) in Indonesia and Hefazat-e-Islam in Bangladesh. This comparative empirical assessment of these organizations’ influence on their polities and its consequences concludes that with their illiberal socio-political agendas, they represent uncivil society.
