The Clash of Civil Religions in Post-Revolutionary Egypt

The 2013 counter-revolution that led to the removal of President Mohammad Morsi and the election of former military chief, ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, as president indicate that Egypt has chosen the unifying framework of Egyptian nationalism and rejected the Islamic one proposed by the Muslim Brothers. These dichotomous categories obscure more than they reveal, because Egyptian politics after the 2011 revolution is also polarized between different visions of the 'civil state'. The civil religion paradigm and the conception of the clash of civil religions as analytical models will be used to enhance our understanding of the relationships between the religious and the civil models and to identify certain characteristics of one of the most striking outcomes of this revolution: the clash between civil models and, more precisely, the clash of civil religions.

How Civic is Russia's New Civil Religion and How Religious is the Church?

This chapter demonstrates how and why a shift in the balance between civic and religious elements of a civil religion can take place, using Russia as an illuminating case study. Post-Soviet Russia is used to demonstrate how religion can be utilized to reinforce national identity and the legitimacy of the political system in the face of their civic weaknesses. The chapter demonstrates how, eventually, the civic-democratic political model officially designated during Yeltsin's presidency gradually changed to a more religiously grounded one, albeit a model that is not fully recognized, during Putin's rule. Moreover, the Russian case allows us to differentiate between two possible levels of civil religion: an official and openly communicated secularism, and an established church religion, promoted by the establishment in more subtle but not necessarily less aggressive ways. It further shows that just as the state has to adopt religious features in order to be deified, religious institutions have themselves to become more secular to be suitable for adoption as the state's civil religion.

Avoiding Conscription in Israel

This chapter tackles Zionism as a modern manifestation of nationalism that included religion as an essential component of national identity. Positing from a feminist perspective that national identity is synonymous with masculinity, the author searches for the women's place in the Zionist movement, particularly through the prism of military service. The Israeli army had a major role in the creation of a Zionist national ethos, and the concept of a people's army, where women should be equal participants shaped the country as the only western democracy that conscripted women. With the establishment of the state, conscription to the IDF was made mandatory for both men and women. However, women's conscription met bitter opposition from religious Orthodox circles. This chapter analyzes how orthodox women were political pawns in the hands of religious leaders. The author claims that they were robbed of their right to choose military service and as such to be an equal part of Israel's diverse society.

The Haredi Scholar-Society and the Military Draft in Israel

This chapter examines the phenomenon of deferments of army enlistment in Israel of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men studying in yeshivas. The author claims that counter-nationalist argument enables us to understand the progress that the haredi scholar-society has made from a sectorial entity that kept itself removed from the nation-state, and viewed the state as an undesired political fact, to an entity that maintains its own counter-nationalism. This social cultural religious entity regards itself as a symbiotic or active partner in the national endeavor, specifically through the insular haredi ethos. The author employs the term counter-nationalism to describe an approach that takes a critical view of nationalism, but has in effect adapted it to the structure of the discourse, organization, and aims of the hegemonic national ideology. This perspective raises the possibility that the ultra-Orthodox are beginning to view themselves as maintaining a complementary partnership with the Israeli culture, and to a considerable extent have even constructed a similar cultural structure, a sort of mirror-image of the militaristic one. Moreover, this study even suggests that the haredi mainstream seeks recognition for itself as the spiritual elite troops of the State of Israel.

Religion and Politics

This chapter pertains to exploring the political resurgence of religion, seeking to answer the pressing question of first, what accounts for religious revival in the age of globalization and second, what accounts for the political success or failure of religious movements, mostly in terms of exerting political influence on their domestic spheres and arenas. In order to answer these questions, this chapter delineates the conditions under which the needs and imperatives of both religious movements and the political establishment of the state are conflictual or reconcilable. To this end, the intriguing case of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood will be analyzed, illustrating the shifting boundaries of Islam from its traditional civil realm to the political order of the state and distilling movement's trajectories in its quest for political prominence in the age of globalization. The theoretical and empirical sections of this chapter, then, proffer an interesting prism to the study of the broader linkage between religion and politics in the developing world, especially among non-democratic, or quasi-democracies countries, as found in the Arab Middle East, where religion has experienced recurrent revivals in presence and significance in states' social and political domains

Values, Constraints, and Maneuvers

For about a decade, ultra-Orthodox and Bedouin women have been applying to higher education academic institutions in Israel in order to study despite bans from their conservative communities. Academic studies instill learning and culture, create an encounter with knowledge for the individual and thus carry a high degree of threat to the rigid conservative enclave. This article examines how conservative societies cope with the wheels of change as the process of higher education for women expands. The case studies in this article are 60 educated women from Jewish ultra-Orthodox society and from Negev Bedouin groups in Israel. As shown by the findings, a theoretical flow model based on three parameters emerges: value-constraint-maneuver. In summary, it appears that this model reflects the development of a new conservative female model that combines traditional values with contemporary indicators.

National-Liberty Reflections of the Exodus Myth in Palestine-Israel Print Media Advertisements, 1923-1958

Focusing on the exodus from Egypt myth, an integral component of the Jewish people's religious and cultural consciousness, the current research highlights the advertising role in utilizing myth as both reinforcement, and as an agent of change in building the collective memory of the Jewish population in Palestine-Israel. The research claims that the local advertisers present their products and services to the local consumers in accordance with the ideology, interests and needs of Zionism. It points to various means for expressing the Zionism “national liberty” meaning of The Exodus myth. These means include the freedom to earn a living in the Land of Israel, the struggle for national liberty, and the “holiday of liberty” as the Israeli Independence Day.

Anti-Semitism as a Civil Religion

This chapter portrays the 19th century political ideology of anti-Semitism as a form of civil religion that promoted the ideation of a German national society. In contrast to its interpretation as a right-wing reactionary protest against modernity, antisemitism, it will be argued, adapted the conceptualization of collective identity to the premises of a progressive worldview, defining German society in terms of the modern paradigms of nationalism, scientism and anti-transcendentalism. Evidence for this assertion will be elicited from texts by German anti-Semitic writers and analyzed with the aid of contemporary theories and thinkers.

The Theocratic Deception Trap

This chapter studies theocratic ideology on the ground of political psychology. The mission is shedding the light on the patterns of communication and techniques of persuasion which the Iranian supreme leader, Khomeini, applied in his books to Iranian people in order to establish and preserve a theocratic state. Texts are chosen from the periods before 1979 revolution and the time of his demise in 1989. Research approach is qualitative and content analysis as the main methodology to study his texts. There are three important concepts which shape the core of text analysis: legislation and freedom, social interaction and self conception. The findings show, the same recognizable communication pattern in Khomeini's texts: psychological preparation, macro divination, micro salvation, theo-value credential. Persuasion technique in Khomeini's texts is rooted in defining a religious duty.