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Gandhi considered the cultural gap between the modern and the non-modern cultures deeper than that between the West and the East. It is the modern culture he rejected, not only as a social ideal, but also as a framework within which one could struggle for an equitable distribution of the products of modernity. Thus, to him, the demonic aspects of the modern Western culture did not centre around only the political economy of modernity, but also around modern West's scientific secularism, technologism, overorganization, ideologies of adulthood and masculinity, giganticism, stress on normality and oversocialization, and cultural evolutionism. Such a critique allowed Gandhi to see the West as a differentiated structure and the Western man as a co-victim of the oppression of the modern nation-state system, centralized economy, mass media and technocracy, and an ethic which was openly ethnocidal. Traditional cultures also were not undifferentiated to him. He was a critical traditionalist, not an uncritical defender of faiths, and he believed in 'negative' relativism, not in the anthropologist's version of cultural relativism. No culture could be perfect in his model, not even a traditional one; it could only be useful as a shifting baseline for cultural criticism.

This article analyzes and compares French and U.S. domestic responses to Jihadi radicalization, placing particular attention on the similarities between the two. In view of the political and cultural differences between the United States and France, the parallels between U.S. and French approaches to homegrown Jihadi radicalization are remarkable. Both countries got off to a late start when formulating counterradicalization strategies. While the underlying reasons (related to, inter alia, the notion of American exceptionalism and the French version of secularism) for this differ, the U.S. introduced its first counterradicalization strategy in 2011, followed by France in 2014. More important, so-called "soft" measures (including phone hotlines, dialogues and workshops, vocational training, targeted interventions, or counseling and exit programs), adopted by most Western democracies in an effort to prevent vulnerable individuals from radicalizing and reintegrate foreign fighters and others who have become infected with the Jihadi virus, have taken a back seat to "hard" security measures (including surveillance, arrests, and prosecutions) in the two countries. These findings have important implications for policymakers. Understanding what responses have been formulated, and also why, can facilitate international cooperation and provide useful insights on the characteristics, strengths, as well as limits of U.S. and French approaches to Jihadi radicals and foreign fighters.

Religion, conflict and post-secular politics : an introduction -- Section 1: Religious actors and democracy -- Religion and democratisation : what do we now know? -- Democratisation in the Middle East and North Africa : what is the effect of globalisation? -- Islam and democracy in East Africa -- The Arab Uprising, Islamists and democratisation -- Religion, democratization and secularization -- Section 2: Religion, human rights and civilisational interactions : postsecular politics and conflict -- Religion, democracy and civil liberties : theoretical perspectives and empirical ramifications -- Donald Trump, Judeo-Christian values, and the clash of civilisations -- The United Nations alliance of civilisations and global justice -- The United Nations alliance of civilizations and interfaith dialogue : what is it good for? -- From Huntington to Trump : twenty-five years of the clash of civilisations -- Concluding reflections on religion, conflict and post-secular politics.

This book is among the most thorough and comprehensive analysis of the causes of religious discrimination to date, complete with detailed illustrations and anecdotes. Jonathan Fox examines the causes of government-based religious discrimination (GRD) against 771 minorities in 183 countries over the course of twenty-five years, while offering possible reasons for why some minorities are discriminated against more than others. Fox illustrates the complexities inherent in the causes of GRD, which can emerge from secular ideologies, religious monopolies, anti-cult policies, security concerns and more. Western democracies tend to discriminate more than Christian-majority countries in the developing world, whether they are democratic or not. While the causes of GRD are ubiquitous, they play out in vastly different ways across world regions and religious traditions. This book serves as a method for better understanding this particular form of discrimiation, so that we may have the tools to better combat it and foster compassion across people of different religions and cultures.

Post-war British culture was initially dominated by religious-led sexual austerity and, from the sixties, by secular liberalism. Using five case studies of local licensing and a sixth on the BBC, conservative Christians are exposed here as the nation's censors, fighting effectively for purity on stage, screen and in public places. The Anglican-led Public Morality Council was astonishingly successful in restraining sex in London's media in the fifties, but a brazen sexualised culture thrived amongst the millions of tourists to Blackpool, whilst Glasgow and the Isle of Lewis were gripped by conservatism. But come the late 1960s, tourists took Blackpool's sexual liberalism home, whilst progressive Humanism burrowed into Parliament and the BBC to secularise moral reform and the national narrative. Using extensive archival research, Callum G. Brown adopts a secular gaze to show how conservative Christians lost the battle for the nation's moral culture.

"considers the similarities and differences in the relationship between Church and State, on a range of contemporary matters, in six countries. These - the Part II jurisdictions - are chosen on the basis of the contrasts they offer: the US and Canada, built on the contribution of immigrants but with sizeable indigenous populations, have distinctively different constitutional interpretations of that relationship; England and Wales and its five centuries of an 'established Church'; France where laïcité resolutely dictates the place of religion; Germany which struggles to overcome its Nazi past and re-integrate its eastern Communist citizens; and the outlier, Israel "a Jewish State for a Jewish people", established and maintained to provide a distinctly non-neutral protection to a specific religion and one where Judaism and the State are, seemingly, moving ever closer to a theocratic relationship. All six jurisdictions are modern democracies and all are signatory nations to international treaties that require States to adopt a neutral approach to religion"--

During Israel's military operation in Gaza in the summer of 2014 the commanding officer of the Givati infantry brigade, Colonel Ofer Vinter, called upon his troops to fight "the terrorists who defame the God of Israel." This unprecedented call for religious war by a senior IDF commander caused an uproar, but it was just one symptom of a profound process of religionization, or de-secularization, that Israeli society has been going through since the turn of the twenty-first century.This book analyzes and explains, for the first time, the reasons for the religionization of Israeli society, a process known in Hebrew as hadata. Jewish religion, inseparable from Jewish nationality, was embedded in Zionism from its inception in the nineteenth century, but was subdued to a certain extent in favor of the national aspect in the interest of building a modern nation-state. Hadata has its origins in the 1967 war, has been accelerating since 2000, and is manifested in a number of key social fields: the military, the educational system, the media of mass communications, the teshuvah movement, the movement for Jewish renewal, and religious feminism. A major chapter of the book is devoted to the religionization of the visual fine arts field, a topic that has been largely neglected by previous researchers.Through careful examination of religionization, this book sheds light on a major development in Israeli society, which will additionally inform our understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As such, it is a key resource for students and scholars of Israel Studies, and those interested in the relations between religion, culture, politics and nationalism, secularization and new social movements.

Denkanstöße zur Debatte, wie sich Europa gegenüber der Türkei verhalten könnte bzw. sollte, möchten die Autor/-innen (Journalisten, Historiker, Verleger) dieses Sammelbandes geben, der in Folge einer 2005 in Berlin veranstalteten Konferenz ("Modell Türkei") zusammengestellt wurde. Er versammelt versierte Stimmen aus der Türkei (u.a. Orhan Pamuk) und aus Deutschland (u.a. Cem Özdemir) zur Frage, wie sich die Türkei in eine pluralistische, demokratische Gesellschaft wandeln kann, ohne ihre religiöse Grundhaltung zu verlieren. Gut lesbare, die aktuelle Debatte zum Verhältnis Europa-Türkei bereichernde Texte für politisch interessierte Menschen.