This book explains how religious politics, repressive institutions, and leaders' political strategies intersected in the US Global War on Terror.

"In 1947, Myron Taylor, the United States (US) envoy to the Vatican and an ally of President Truman, met with several European religious leaders. In that meeting, Taylor called on "people of all faiths" to "unite upon a universal two-point declaration embodying the spirit of belief in God and belief in human liberty" (Inboden 2008, 124). The political significance of this statement is clear from the context: Taylor held this meeting to gain European support for the emerging struggle between the US and the Soviet Union. While much of Truman's early Cold War policies involved military and economic might, he also hoped to build up the America's "soft power" by appealing to common religious values and identities among allies. The role of religion in Truman's diplomacy should not be a surprise to anyone who studies (or engages in) US politics. As observers since Alexis de Tocqueville have noted, religion is an essential element of America. It infuses debates, and influences political struggles, and therefore it ends up also becoming an important element of US foreign policy. The idea of Manifest Destiny, which guided the country's early expansion, included a belief in the providential backing of the new United States of America. Religious rhetoric and imagery popped up repeatedly throughout the Cold War while continuing to influence US priorities in the 21st century, from debt relief to religious freedom promotion. Few, then would take issue with the claim that religion influences American politics, both domestic and international. But can religion actually be a tool for policy-makers? That is, can US leaders draw on faith to advance US interests?"--

How did the Trump administration change the place of religion in U.S. foreign policy? How did the guardrails of America’s foreign policy bureaucracy respond to a populist president? Drawing on firsthand experience in the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs during the Obama-Trump transition, David T. Buckley traces how the Trump administration’s populism affected the foreign policy bureaucracy, with significant implications for U.S. domestic and international politics. Blessing America First argues that under Trump, religion in U.S. foreign policy shifted from an implement of statecraft to a tool of populist political strategy. Populism constructs ideological bounds between “the people” and threatening outsiders, and embraces personalist governance while rejecting bureaucratic constraint. This domestic political logic, Buckley demonstrates, influenced foreign policy decisions and reshaped bureaucratic offices in the State Department and USAID. Populism also promoted international religious ties in a surprising range of settings, from Poland to India, Brazil to Russia. Buckley shows that the possibility of curbing these changes was limited by conditions in American democracy that predated the 2016 election, including norms of nonpartisanship among career officials, malleable legal institutions, and polarization in public opinion. A groundbreaking examination of Trump’s State Department, blending insider experience with original quantitative and qualitative data analysis, Blessing America First draws broader lessons for understanding the relationship between religion and democracy under populist rule.

After two decades and trillions of dollars, the United States’ fight against terrorism has achieved mixed results. Despite the vast resources and attention expended since 9/11, terrorism has increased in many societies that have been caught up in the war on terror. Why have U.S. policies been unable to stem the tide of violence? Harrison Akins reveals how the war on terror has had the unintended consequence of increasing domestic terrorism in U.S. partner states. He examines the results of U.S.-backed counterterrorism operations that targeted al-Qaeda in peripheral regions of partner states, over which their central governments held little control. These operations often provoked a violent backlash from local terrorist groups, leading to a spike in retaliatory attacks against partner states. Senior U.S. officials frequently failed to grasp the implications of the historical conflict between central governments and the targeted peripheries. Instead, they exerted greater pressure on partner states to expand their counterterrorism efforts. This exacerbated the underlying conditions that drove the escalating attacks, trapping these governments in a deadly cycle of tit-for-tat violence with local terrorist groups. This process, Akins demonstrates, accounts for the lion’s share of the al Qaeda network’s global terrorist activity since 2001. Drawing on extensive primary sources—including newly declassified documents, dozens of in-depth interviews with leading government officials in the United States and abroad, and statistical analysis—The Terrorism Trap is a groundbreaking analysis of why counterterrorism has backfired.

Inaugural issue of the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION | ISSN: 2633-352X (Print) | ISSN: 2633-3538 (Online) | Volume 1 | Number 1 | November 2020 | Special Issue: Politics of Religious Dissent Edited by Jeffrey Haynes, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, and Eric M. Trinka | Editorial: Launching the International Journal of Religion - Jeffrey Haynes, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, and Eric M. Trinka| From the Editorial Desk - Eric M. Trinka | Dissent among Mormons in the 1980 Senatorial Election in Idaho - Ronald Hatzenbuehler | Creating the Internal Enemy: Opportunities and Threats in Pro and Anti-LGBT Activism within South Korean Protestantism - Hendrick Johannemann| Is Right-wing Populism a Phenomenon of Religious Dissent? The Cases of the Lega and the Rassemblement National - Luca Ozanno and Fabio Bolzonar| A Religious Movement on Trial: Transformative Years, Judicial Questions and the Nation of Islam - Sultan Tepe | Finding the Right Islam for the Maldives: Political Transformation and State-Responses to Growing Religious Dissent - La Toya Waha| Islam, Catholicism, and Religion-State Separation: An Essential or Historical Difference? - Ahmet T. Kuru| Secularism, Religion, and Identification beyond Binaries: The Transnational Alliances, Rapprochements, and Dissent of German Turks in Germany - Nil Mutluer| Dissenting Yogis: The Mīmāṁsaka-Buddhist Battle for Epistemological Authority - Jed Forman| Tar & Feathers: Agnotology, Dissent, and Queer Mormon History - Nerida Bullock| New Religious-Nationalist Trends among Jewish Settlers in the Halutza Sands - Hayim Katsman

Religious Appeals in Power Politics examines how states use, or attempt to use, confessional appeals to religious belief and conscience to advance political strategies and objectives. Through case studies of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, Peter S. Henne demonstrates that religion, although not as high profile or well-funded a tool as economic sanctions or threats of military force, remains a potent weapon in international relations. Public policy analysis often minimizes the role of religion, favoring military or economic matters as the "important" arenas of policy debate. As Henne shows, however, at transformative moments in political history, states turn to faith-based appeals to integrate or fragment international coalitions. Henne highlights Saudi Arabia's 1960s rivalry with Egypt, the United States's post-9/11 leadership in the global war on terrorism, and the Russian Federation's contemporary expansionism both to reveal the presence and power of calls for religious unity and to emphasize the uncertainty and anxiety such appeals can create. Religious Appeals in Power Politics offers a bold corrective to those who consider religion as tangential to military or economic might.

This comprehensive volume examines the nature, causes, and consequences of state religion policy in 183 countries between 1990 and 2014. Each contribution uses round 3 of the Religion and State dataset which includes information on 117 distinct state religion policies. Secular and religious forces in society and government compete in order to influence state religion policy in a vibrant religious economy. While governments are more involved in religion in 2014 than they were in 1990, most states both added and dropped religion policies during this period. This is important because these policies impact on a number of important political, social, and economic phenomena. In this collection the authors examine the impact of state religion policies on interstate militarized disputes, violent domestic conflict, terrorism, and voting for political parties. They also examine some of the factors that influence state religion policy, including the attitudes of citizens toward religion and religious minorities, free and open elections, and having an independent judiciary. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Religion, State & Society.

This unique two-volume book covers virtually the whole spectrum of international conflict and security law. It proceeds from values protected by international law (Part I), through substantive rules in which these values are embodied (Part II), to international and domestic institutions that enforce the law (Part III). It subsequently deals with current challenges in the application of rules of international conflict and security law (Part IV), and crimes as the most serious violations of those rules (Part V). Finally, in the section on case studies (Part VI), lessons learnt from a number of conflict situations are discussed. Written by an international team of experts representing all the major legal systems of the world, the book is intended as a reference work for students and researchers, domestic and international judges, as well as for legal advisers to governments and international and non-governmental organisations. Sergey Sayapin is Associate Professor and Associate Dean at KIMEP University, School of Law in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Rustam Atadjanov is Assistant Professor at KIMEP University, School of Law in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Umesh Kadam is formerly Additional Professor at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, India and Legal Adviser with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Gerhard Kemp is Professor of Law at the University of Derby in the United Kingdom. Nicolás Zambrana-Tévar is Associate Professor at KIMEP University, School of Law in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Noëlle Quénivet is Professor in International Law at the University of the West of England, Bristol Law School in the United Kingdom.

Looking closely at relations between Muslims and their host countries, Abdulkader H. Sinno and an international group of scholars examine questions of political representation, identity politics, civil liberties, immigration, and security issues. While many have problematized Muslims in the West, this volume takes a unique stance by viewing Muslims as a normative, and even positive, influence in Western politics. Squarely political and transatlantic in scope, the essays in this collected work focus on Islam and Muslim citizens in Europe and the Americas since 9/11, the European bombings, and the recent riots in France. Main topics include Muslim political participation and activism, perceptions about Islam and politics, Western attitudes about Muslim visibility in the political arena, radicalization of Muslims in an age of apparent shrinking of civil liberties, and personal security in politically uneasy times.