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Unforced Errors

Isis, The Baath Party, And The Reconciliation Of The Religious and The Secular

Bibliographic Data

ID13040377
AuthorsMegan K Mcbride (0000-0003-0289-723X, Naval War College, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume20
Issue2
Pages170-191
Publication date2019-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitics Religion & Ideology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2156-7697 • E-ISSN: 2156-7689
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/21567689.2019.1617136
OpenAlexW2947696806
LanguageEN
Citations received3

The need to bridge the perceived gap between religious and secular allies—individuals or movements incorrectly understood to be in tension with one another—presents a serious challenge for those attempting to understand such collaborations. Dominant efforts to reconcile the two have, moreover, been problematically inadequate. This article—taking religious ISIS and the secular Baath Party as its example—begins by identifying and critiquing the dominant strategies that analysts have employed to explain such collaborations: secularization (of ISIS), conversion (of the Baath Party), and minimization (of religion and ideology altogether). It argues that each of these approaches relies on distorting and misrepresenting the very movements under analysis and thus precludes an accurate understanding of what is happening. It then charts a constructive path forward by adapting political theorist William Connolly’s work on resonance machines. An approach informed by Connolly makes it possible to retain ISIS’s religiosity and the Baath Party’s secularism; highlights the reality that putatively incompatible movements may be united by a shared ethos that amplifies their respective ideologies; and sheds new light on the implicit messaging that may tempt recruits to join such movements

Constructive · Dissent · Epistemology · Ethos · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Religiosity · Secularism · Secularization · Sociology · Computer Science · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Philosophy · Political Conflict and Governance · Religion and Society Interactions

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Unique citing works3
Citations per year0.5
Citation span2020 - 2026 (7)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 3

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