Articles

Politicising Religion

“…there cannot be a universal definition of religion, not only because its constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes”.

Religion in itself is a form of power, as it originates from a tradition of belief that shapes the actions of its adherents, compelling them to act in accordance with prescribed obligations grounded in the fundamental principles established by its prophet and the teachings contained within sacred texts.

However, once religion is mobilised as a technology of power within the state apparatus – and interpreted by state authorities as a mechanism of governmentality – it may undergo a juridical transformation. In this process, religion becomes embedded in governmental authority, institutional practices and the production of state policy.

At this point, religion undergoes a discursive process in which its interpretations are constructed according to the interests and frameworks of the state, which may not be in line with its central tenets. It is thus converted into an institution whose administration is bureaucratised, enabling the state to control, manage, regulate and discipline society—much in line with Michel Foucault’s conception of the power/knowledge nexus.

We can see this in how states weave religion directly into the fabric of their national policies: China deploys Confucianism as a normative foundation for the development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); Iran applies the doctrine of wilāyat al-faqīh as the basis of its system of governance; Israel emphasises the Jewish narrative of the “Promised Land” to justify its occupation of the Palestinian territory and; the Vatican stands as a sacred city of Catholic doctrine and constitutes the core of its national identity.

A curious development indeed: in 2023, billboards in Lebanon started displaying President Vladimir Putin holding a copy of the Qur’an accompanied by the Arabic inscription حارس وحامي الأديان (Guardian and Protector of Religions). These were intended to construct Russia’s international image as a defender and custodian of traditional values, thereby separating itself from the (liberal) West, which is portrayed as a “godless consumerist civilisation”.

It would never have crossed one’s mind that Putin would be portrayed as a paladin of religion, a designation that, by analogy, would be akin to suggesting that President Donald Trump safeguards the rights and interests of Muslims.

However, when one adopts a realist posture – which sees the state as the central locus of power – and reads this phenomenon through the lens of the costs and benefits of national interests, this is precisely where the transformation mentioned above occurs; that once religion enters the domain of power, its “sacredness” shifts and could be recast in accordance with the political interests of authority, whereby religion is instrumentalised as a means of sacralising perceptions of state leadership.

This may result in the legitimisation of certain actions that are seen as the moral responsibility of the state, while in reality they are merely a “morality” of cost and benefit as it pertains to the logic of national interests.

(Politicised) Religion in Foreign Policy

This transformation persists in the realm of foreign policy as well. The role of religion in foreign policy does not emerge spontaneously—it arises not only from social constructs shaped by the history, culture, language and social norms of a particular state, but also from geopolitical interests that engage with the religious discourses present in the foreign policies of other states.

In other words, religion transforms into a discursive construct that shapes national identity when it is politicised and justified as a core element in state formation.

Once religion is politicised, it effectively becomes a form of commodity, as the state utilises it to generate outcomes that can secure economic benefits, social order, political stability and diplomatic interests.

This is evident in the foreign policies of countries such as Saudi Arabia (Sunni Islam), Iran (Shia Islam), India (Hinduism), the United States (Christian Evangelicalism), the Vatican (Catholicism), Thailand (Buddhism), Japan (Shintoism) and others. When we map the dominant religions across nations worldwide, it becomes possible to examine the extent of their influence on foreign policy formation. Regardless of whether a state is traditional or secular in constructing its national identity, religious traditions and identities can, under particular political and historical conditions, influence foreign-policy discourse and state behaviour.

For example, Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy emphasises Sunni Islam, which has contributed to decades of friction with Shia-majority Iran—although religious ideology is not the sole factor in this geopolitical contest. The same can be seen in Narendra Modi’s soft-power strategy, which involves drawing on Hindu traditions to project India as a vishwaguru (universal guru) and vishwamitra (friend to the world). This forms part of Modi’s project to promote India’s diplomatic values to the world – one of the successes of which was India’s lobbying at the United Nations, culminating in the declaration of 21 June as the International Day of Yoga – much as China promotes Confucianism through the BRI.

Religion and State Behaviour

In foreign policy, religion is a product of historical struggles and power relations that have constructed a nation’s identity. This can be observed, for example, in Judaism as the national identity of Israel through the establishment of the State of Israel as a Jewish nation-state in 1948 after the Holocaust.

To understand the construction of religious discourse in foreign policy that shapes state behaviour within the international system, two factors require particular emphasis: historical experience and colonialism.

Historical experience “has the utmost importance in realizing the horizons and Weltanschauung that have been shaped by religious-cultural elements”, while colonialism “may develop a sense of inferiority complex and weak self over time, [which] has become a defining psychological, but unacknowledged, element of the way these countries see the world”.

In brief, these two factors – especially when considering the dynamics between colonised and colonising states as subjects of discourse analysis – produce differing constructions of religious discourse as part of national identity, even when the religious affiliation is the same. This explains why the foreign policies of OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) member states vary considerably, despite each member’s national identity being rooted in Islam.

In fact, whether one agrees or disagrees with Samuel P Huntington’s arguments in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, there is a crucial argument worth discussing: “[I]n the modern world, religion is a central, perhaps the central, force that motivates and mobilizes people.”

Huntington’s thesis was published in 1996, the midway point between the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the beginning of the War on Terror in 2001. Huntington was responding not only to Francis Fukuyama’s utopian thesis in The End of History and the Last Man (1992), but, more importantly, to a series of conflicts in the Middle East and beyond, including the Gulf War (1990-1991), the Bosnian War (1992-1995), and the Algerian Civil War (1992-2002).

While Huntington’s framing of these conflicts as a clash between Islam and the West is indeed problematic, his central focus – that religion as an ideological force is embedded in these conflicts – provides evidence that state decisions and leadership behaviour are influenced by the ways in which leaders interpret religion as an idea that must be defended.

If we examine this more closely, when religion emerges as an interpreted idea, God is understood in forms and attributes that correspond to that interpretation. Khaled Abou El Fadl, in his series of sermons compiled in The Prophet’s Pulpit: Commentaries on the State of Islam, frequently emphasises this point, arguing that God should be understood as an active force motivating human action to uphold goodness and justice.

A passive understanding of God, by contrast, results in acquiescence to wrongdoing. The consequences are most severe when God is “embodied” in a manner that legitimises social corruption, ranging from racism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, and misogyny, to acts of violence and even genocide, as exemplified in the oppression faced by the Palestinian people.

This is evident in the actions of extremist religious movements such as al-Qaeda and Daesh, which have carried out bombings in public spaces across the world, exacerbating conflicts in the Middle East.

Extremist organisations such as Daesh have invoked particular interpretations of religious authority to legitimise violence.  Daesh claims to kill in the name of God because its imagination of God is one that is cruel, wrathful, punitive, inhumane and permissive of violence in His name.

In Myanmar, specific groups influenced by extreme Buddhist nationalism has propagated anti-Muslim actions, legitimising the mass killings of the Rohingya population. Meanwhile, in the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry, the justification of “defending Shia/Sunni Islam” is used to engage in proxy wars across the Middle East, particularly in Yemen and Syria.

In the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, Russia frames the conflict as a “Holy War” to legitimise its invasion of Ukraine. Similarly, Israel’s justification for the establishment and expansion of the state of Israel invokes the concept of the “Promised Land”, extending their territorial claims to Jerusalem/Baitul Maqdis, regarded as the site of Solomon’s Temple.

This is how actors within the international system construct “truth” according to the image of God as projected in their own minds. This “truth” is built upon the confines of their knowledge of God, which in turn generates the power to shape reality through the formulation and implementation of their policies.

This aligns with what Foucault refers to as “rituals of truth”, wherein something becomes accepted as truth when articulated by authority and reinforced through formal, repeated processes. At this point, truth is no longer questioned ontologically but rather in relation to the reality being confronted. This is observable in the actions of international political actors, whether state or non-state, when they deploy religious identity in their behaviour.

Therefore, at this juncture, it is appropriate that we begin to ask, “religion for whom, and who benefits from it?”

The Formation of “Normalisation” in International Politics

Farish A Noor and Paul Hedges – in their paper Discovering ‘Religion’: Nineteenth Century Colonial Attitudes Towards Religious Identity and Difference in Southeast Asia – observe that by the late 19th century, Western colonial writers had constructed, analysed, and discussed Southeast Asian societies discursively.

They rigidly categorised and separated religious beliefs, cosmologies, and vocabularies, aligning them with ethnic differences and racial hierarchies, thereby establishing a correspondence between race and religion as parallel and mutually reinforcing categories.

This point is crucial in our discussion. Aligning this with Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory, it results in the understanding that states dominating the international system extend their hegemony not only through economic and military power but also through hierarchical modes of “being religious”.

This is exemplified in post-9/11 international politics; some political and security discourses have constructed a binary whereby the Western perspective of Christianity has been associated with democracy, justice and egalitarianism, while the Islamic world has been linked with theocratic authoritarianism.

Such framing creates a moral hierarchy within the international system, in which moral paradigms are dominated by the West, while Eastern values – particularly those of formerly colonised nations – are viewed as inferior or undesired.

Mahmood Mamdani discusses this issue in greater depth in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, where Muslim identity is leveraged to establish a “religious hierarchy”. In this framework, the “good muslim” refers to those who are secular, liberal and pro-West, whereas the “bad muslim” denotes those associated with political Islam and opposition to Western hegemony.

This binary serves as a common tactic of hegemony, used to regulate the behaviour of states outside the Euro-Western alliance system, reinforcing feelings of inferiority among other nations and ensuring they are not categorised as “pariah states”.

This constitutes a form of “normalisation” (in the terminology of Michel Foucault), whereby “norms” are constructed as standards of truth and serve as a disciplinary mechanism to ensure compliance; those who fail to conform to these manufactured “norms” are thus deemed “abnormal”.

In the context of international politics, normalisation occurs when dominant states control the narratives disseminated through international media, thereby shaping the behaviour of subordinate states.

Referring to the earlier discussion and examples, this process manifests in the portrayal of Christian traditions practised by European states as inherently democratic and just – reinforced by historical narratives and figures of the Enlightenment – while Islamic traditions are depicted as authoritarian and disorderly, particularly in reference to the instability of Middle Eastern states.

Such binarism constitutes a knowledge system constructed by imperial power to establish a moral hierarchy: “good” actors (who can govern, intervene and police) versus “bad” actors (who are subjected to discipline, sanctions and coercion) within the international system.

This dynamic is observable in the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 to capture Saddam Hussein and, more recently, in its actions against Venezuela, including the forced removal of President Nicolás Maduro on allegations of his presiding over a “narco-terrorist” organisation and of his government being responsible for regional instability and the ensuing migration crisis in Latin America.

In those cases, the moral binary between “good” and “bad” is not only political; it is also shaped by state morality grounded in power and national interests, leading its actions to be seen as sanctioned by religion.

The ontology of “good” and “bad” is subjected to political subjectivation, and the authority to define it is exercised by major powers in the international system. Religious discourse, in this sense, functions as a legitimising tool that determines the moral status of peripheral states according to the geopolitical interests of core states.

Conclusion

Talal Asad – whose quote is presented in the beginning of this piece – asserts that the absence of a universal definition of religion stems from the fact that its definition itself is “the historical product of discursive processes”. Consequently, when this is extended to the context of international politics, his view implicitly suggests that the religious narratives advanced by states are shaped by the historical and discursive processes through which the state constructs its identity and understands its position within the modern state system.

These processes, in turn, inform the formulation of national interests and the ways in which religion is articulated within state policy. This is precisely why we can observe differences in the religiously informed foreign policies of one state and another (as discussed earlier), even when their religious foundations are rooted in the same religious tradition and draw upon the same sources of reference.

Hence, it is important to understand this essential point: when religion enters the domain of state power, it becomes open to interpretation through a lens centred on national interests. When this occurs, all state decisions are, in essence, shaped by considerations of gain and loss.

This is where the discourse of hegemony in international politics comes into play, as religion functions as a source of power for exerting influence over the ideas and norms of the international system in ways that serve economic and political interests.