Securing the Sacred

This volume, which employs both ideational and more traditional social-scientific approaches to the study of politics, makes a substantial contribution to the literature on the role of religion in international affairs. In it, Robert Bosco explores the “securitization” of religion—the construction of religion as a national and international security issue—in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001. The book has two broad aims. The first is to demonstrate that following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Britain, France, and the United States each promoted a discourse suggesting that “authentic” Islam was not a security threat; instead, Islam was a menace only when corrupted by ideology, mistaken interpretations, totalitarian values, and extremism. Rather than viewing the attacks of 9/11 as evidence of the “Clash of Civilizations” predicted by Samuel Huntington, British, French, and U.S. policymakers posited a war within Islam between moderate Muslims and radicals. According to Bosco, this was purposive: an attempt to shift the terms of discourse away from civilizational conflict, which suggested that Western states were engaged in a struggle against the Muslim World, toward a conflict of ideas in which the West might find allies among Muslims both domestically and internationally.

Ideology · International relations · Islam · Muslim world · National security · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Securitization · Sociology · State (computer science) · Terrorism · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

• Strict Piety, Gender, and the Nation-State

  Open Access•N Stadler•American Behavioral Scientist•2024

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