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This article attempts to delineate the set of circumstances under which religion acts as a significant conducive factor in the development of Arab political communities, and those circumstances under which religion presents an important obstacle to the emergence of a political community. The focus is restricted to the Arab world so as to permit a more precise analysis than would be possible were one to attempt to generalize across more diverse cultures, but some of its main threads may apply equally well to other peoples and other religions. For the reasons discussed below, religion seems to be a particularly powerful source of individual political identities, and of feelings of membership in political communities.

The article explores the role of religion in general, and Islam in particular, in the formation of political identities, followed by an analysis of the effects of religion on the development of political communities, and an examination of the influence of geopolitical conditions on this relationship. The final section examines the way in which Islam and other religions help and hinder the formation of political communities which correspond to the boundaries of Arab states. (DÜI-Hns)

Extensive secularization is frequently held to be a necessary condition for political modernity. The author argues that the relationship between religion and the modern state is considerably more complex than this general proposition suggests. It is necessary to specify particular ideological models of the modern state, since these differ significantly from one another; and it is necessary to specify particular religions in their contemporary manifestations, since these also differ in important ways. A detailed analysis of this type suggests that there is no general incompatibility between the main religions of the third world and widely shared, nonideological features of political modernity. Specific religions are shown to be incompatible with some specific forms of the modern state, while presenting no significant obstacle to other models of political modernity.

This article addresses the need to relate theoretical statements on the causes of political violence to micro-level activity. Gurr's relative deprivation model is reviewed and some modifications are suggested. His theory, the modifications, and a number of possible alternatives or additions to the theory are then tested against data from a survey of Roman Catholic political activists in Northern Ireland. The analysis suggests that disobedient and violent forms of antiregime behavior have quite different causes; that the connection between RD and violence is less direct than Gurr suggests; and that dissidence plays a more important role than that accorded it in the relative deprivation model.