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261. Roots of Radical Islam in Central Asia

Author:
Martha Brill Olcott
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The history of the development of Islamic radicalism in Uzbekistan, and in Central Asia more generally, is a potentially contentious one. There is very little agreement either within the policy community in the United States or in Central Asia itself as to what Islamic radicalism is and who among devout Muslims should be considered as posing a threat to the secular regimes.
Topic:
Development, Government, and Religion
Political Geography:
United States, Central Asia, and Uzbekistan

262. PolicyWatch #1305: The PKK Redux: Implications of a Growing Threat

Author:
Soner Cagaptay
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
On November 5, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and deputy chief of military staff Gen. Ergin Saygun visited President Bush in Washington to discuss the growing threat posed by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The composition of the Turkish delegation was symbolically important and demonstrates a new political stability based on the working relationship between the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Turkish military. Yet the newfound weight of the PKK issue may prove problematic for the United States -- and, in the long term, for Turkey as well.
Topic:
Government, Islam, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

263. Confronting Colonialism: Maryknoll Catholic Missionaries in Peru and Guatemala, 1943–968

Author:
Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
My goal in writing this paper was to try to explain how Catholicism became embedded in the social and political structures of Peru and Guatemala and how this affected Maryknoll proselytization in Puno and Huehuetenango in the twentieth century. I argue that during the colonial period Catholic clergy served as intermediaries between indigenous communities and Spanish officials. The character of their relationship depended on local demands for labor and was, as a result, distinct in Peru and Guatemala. Demand for labor was consistently high in Puno because it was near the site of the Potosí mines, recognized as the most important source of income for the Spanish crown during the colonial period. This relationship ensured that Catholic clergy acted as enforcers of Spanish efforts to dominate indigenous communities. For their part, Andean caciques charged with protecting community interests and mediating with Spanish officials sought to limit incursions by Spanish clergy, economic elites, and governing officials. By contrast, Guatemala was an economic backwater during the colonial period. Spanish clergy came to act as “defenders of the Indians” in opposition to the interests of Spanish economic elites and governing officials. Mayan people engaged with Catholicism to restructure their communities and to establish barriers to incursions by outsiders.
Topic:
Civil Society and Religion
Political Geography:
South America, Yugoslavia, Peru, and Guatemala

264. The Future of Christianity in Latin America

Author:
Daniel H. Levine
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The public face of religion in Latin America has been transformed in the last half century, with important implications for the future. The Christianity of the future will be marked by vigorous competition and growing pluralism in an increasingly open and competitive civil society and political order. The origins of this diversity are located in changes within the region's long dominant Catholicism, combined with the surge of new Protestant and in particular Pentecostal churches. Both of these trends make sense in the context of social and political transformations that have moved major countries of the region out of civil war and authoritarianism into civil and competitive politics which draw the churches into public space in new ways. The impact of violence on the churches is visible in their new openness to issues of rights and freedom of organization, but also in a withdrawal from direct political engagement and a diversification of political positions in all the churches.
Topic:
Civil Society and Religion
Political Geography:
Latin America

265. Bernard Schwartz Fellow Sadanand Dhume on Political Islam and Indonesia

Author:
Nermeen Shaikh
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Asia Society
Abstract:
Sadanand Dhume, a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at Asia Society, is a journalist and writer with a long-standing interest in Asia. He has recently completed a book on the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia. As a former Indonesia correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Asian Wall Street Journal in Jakarta, Sadanand covered Indonesia's economic, political, security and social scene. Before that he was the New Delhi bureau chief of FEER.
Topic:
Economics, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Indonesia, Asia, New Delhi, and Southeast Asia

266. Political Islam and Europe – Views from the Arab Mediterranean states and Turkey

Author:
Robert Springborg
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
The social, political and economic power of moderate Middle East and North African Islamist movements has been growing for a generation or so. The question of how to deal with Islamists who reject violence, embrace democracy and outperform their competitors at the polls has therefore become a central concern not only of incumbent Middle East elites, but also of interested foreign actors such as the EU and US. Robert Springborg sees the need for the EU to clarify its policies towards the MENA region and Muslim democrats within it. The present lack of EU policies on engaging with moderate Islamists leads them to be at best curious about the EU and at worse to be suspicious of it. Engagement might itself help to contribute to policy formation in this important area, and serve as a vehicle to disseminate information about relevant EU policies.
Topic:
Politics and Religion
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Arabia, Arab Countries, and North Africa

267. Political Islam in Turkey

Author:
Senem Aydin and Rusen Çakir
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Turkey differs from the Arab states studied in the CEPS–FRIDE Political Islam project in not only in having a European Union membership prospect, but also in the fact that a broadly Islamist-oriented party has been in office since 2002. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) still enjoys the primary support of pro-Islamic constituencies in Turkish society and its orientation towards the EU has not changed since its assumption of power. An overwhelming majority in the party still sees the EU as the primary anchor of Turkish democracy and modernisation despite the inferred limitations of cooperation on issues relating to the reform of Turkish secularism. Yet the growing mistrust towards the EU as a result of perceived discrimination and EU double standards is beginning to cloud positive views within the party. Decreasing levels of support for EU membership in Turkish society and the fact that explicitly Euro-sceptic positions are now coming from both the left and the right of the political spectrum suggest that the sustainability of the pro-European discourse within the party could be difficult to maintain in the longer run.
Topic:
Development, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, and Arabia

268. Freeing All God's Children

Author:
Clifford Bob
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Human Rights and Human Welfare - Review Essays
Institution:
Josef Korbel Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver
Abstract:
Each year since 1999 the U.S. State Department has issued a lengthy report on violations of religious freedoms around the world. In recent years, Human Rights Watch and other major rights organizations have made religious persecution one of their major foci. And the world media now pays significant attention to violations of worship rights. As a result, countries such as Sudan, China, North Korea, Uzbekistan, and others have faced international pressure for their repression of various faiths, especially Christianity.
Topic:
Non-Governmental Organization and Religion
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, China, Sudan, North Korea, and Uzbekistan

269. The 1998 and 2007 Referenda on Abortion in Portugal: Roman Catholicism, Secularization and the Recovery of Traditional Communal Values

Author:
Paul Christopher Manuel and Maurya N. Tollefsen
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
In the thirty-three years since the April 25, 1974, Carnation Revolution, there have been sporadic efforts by progressive forces to legalize abortion in Portugal. This activity has intensified over the past nine years, culminating with two national referenda on the subject, one in 1998 which narrowly affirmed the ban on abortion, and the second in 2007 which allowed for the procedure during the first ten weeks of pregnancy. One reason that the abortion debate in Portugal attracted much interest in the world press was what it would potentially teach about the Roman Catholic Church's contemporary role in Portuguese society. That is, would the Church maintain its traditional influential role over public policy formation in a secularizing Portugal, especially related to its moral teaching? There is some controversy about the type of secularization which is taking place (i.e., Portuguese-style secularization may be of a different sort than that of Northern European countries), but there is little doubt that the Church's ability to define morality for its members has been reduced in recent years. The Church now competes with many secular voices to frame issues such as sexuality, marriage, divorce and abortion. The recent vote to legalize abortion—a move bitterly opposed by the Church—is but one of many examples symbolizing a drift in Portuguese society toward secularization. There was another dimension to the national debate over abortion as well: the pro-choice side successfully harmonized its rhetoric to certain traditional communal values found in Portuguese society—namely compassion, solidarity and support—and, in so doing, forged a recovery of those values.
Topic:
Civil Society and Religion
Political Geography:
Europe and Portugal

270. Faces of Islam in Southern Thailand

Author:
Imtiyaz Yusuf
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Several commentators and analyst have talked about the on ongoing unrest in southern Thailand from the perspective of the engagement of international terrorism, security issues, center ‐ periphery relations, organized crime and the drug industry. But none of them have written about the role of religion and ethnicity in the crisis. This monograph argues that the roots of the crisis in southern Thailand lie in the role of religion viewed from the point of ethnic identity. The phenomena of ethnification of religion is very much evident in Southeast Asia where religions function along ethnic lines; here a Malay is a Muslim, a Siamese/Thai a Buddhist and a Chinese either a Christian or Taoist/Buddhist syncretic. Thus ethnoreligious constructs shape identities. Hence, it is important to look into the blending of ethnicity and religion and how the constant transformation of these two factors alter the shape of the ongoing crisis in southern Thailand.
Topic:
Political Violence, Ethnic Conflict, Islam, Religion, and Armed Struggle
Political Geography:
China, Thailand, and Southeast Asia