The New Cold War Jiergensmeyer Summary

Mark Juergensmeyer's “The New Cold War”:

Smith mentioned Juergensmeyer, who in “The New Cold War: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State” (Juergensmeyer 1993) attempted to deal with the question of religious nationalism and the expected conflict between it and the secular society. While Juergensmeyer does deal with a nationalism that is religious, his definition seems to be influenced by secularization theory, presenting religion opposed to the secular society with no chance for the two to coexist. He explains that his approach in his book is to attempt to see the contrasting roles of religion and secular society through the eyes of “religious activists”:

“From their perspectives it is secular nationalism, and not religion, that
has gone wrong. They see the Western models of nationhood-both democratic and socialist-as having failed, and they view religion as a hopeful alternative, a base for criticism and change. Why has secular nationalism failed to inspire them? Why has religion been raised as an alternative? Why has the religious rejection of secular nationalism been so violent? And what ideology and political organization will come in its place?” (ibid, locations 92-95)

The problem with Juergensmeyer's approach is that while he perceives “religious nationalism” as being opposed to “secular nationalism”, religious-Zionism can relate positively to secular Zionism, even support its goals, accepting a secondary role for religion while preventing that role to be lessen.
It is true that there are anti-modern or anti-secular elements within the religious-Zionist movement, and that these elements live up to Juergensmeyer's perception of religious nationalism, but the movement as a whole does not conform to that perception. Rather, I would argue that Juergensmeyer's idea of national religion should be seen as 'fundamentalism'. He does acknowledge that it would be easy to characterize it as such, but rejects this on three
objections;

The term is pejorative, referring to “those who hold "an intolerant, self-righteous, and narrowly dogmatic religious literalism”” (ibid, locations 118-119), being less descriptive than accusatory. The fundamentalists “should not be taken seriously as thoughtful political actors, and that characterization does not fit most of the people whom I encountered in this study, either directly or through their writings” (ibid, locations 119-121).
It is an imprecise category for making comparisons across cultures, referring historically to a group of American Protestants to define the “fundamentals of Christianity”. Juergensmeyer insists that the distinction here is important “because in most cases religious activists, while opposing the values of modernism, are themselves very modern persons” (ibid, locations 127-128).
It carries no political meaning.
By calling someone a fundamentalist, one would suggest that that person only is motivated by religious beliefs rather than the society and the world in general. This seems like an odd statement, considering that he just two paragraphs later quote Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as stating that there is no clear distinction between religion and politics, the distinction being a Western way of thinking (ibid, locations 138-139). When he recognizes that that is the case, why does he insist that calling a person fundamentalist is denying his ability to think both religiously and politically? A non-Western fundamentalist would necessarily insist on religion and politics being the same or so closely connected that there are no crucial distinction. That is at least the case for both traditional Judaism and
Islam.

I am not sure that I would accept Juergensmeyer's understanding of fundamentalism and fundamentalists. Sure, the term is definitely used in a pejorative way in normal day-to-day use. Merriam-Webster defines the term as “a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching” and “a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles .” The Urban Dictionary has more colorful descriptions of fundamentalist, covering the same definitions given by Merriam-Webster, as well as describing fundamentalists as people being “jerks”, people insisting on being right and refusing to relate to other opinions, or even facts, etc. Of course, Urban Dictionary is user-created, but it still gives an idea of how the term normally is used. One example even mentions Meir Kahane as an example of a fundamentalist, a person who Juergensmeyer uses as an illustration of a religious-nationalist activist in order to show what a fundamentalist is not.

Unfortunately Juergensmeyer's book was published in 1993, a decade before the publication of “Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World” by Gabriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan. This book presents the results of The Fundamentalism Project, a research project focusing on religious fundamentalism beginning in 1987, ending in 1995, with studies published in 1991, 1993, 1994, and 1995. According to this fundamentalism is defined as referring to a “discernible pattern of religious militancy by which self-styled "true believers" attempt to arrest the erosion of religious identity, fortify the borders of the religious community, and create viable alternatives to secular institutions and behaviors” (Almond, Appleby & Sivan 2003, locations 236-238). Fundamentalist movements are furthermore characterized by nine features, five ideological and four structural (ibid, locations 1308-1376) the ideological being: a) reactivity to secularization, b) selectivity, c) dualism or moral manichaeanism, d) inerrancy of religious sources, e) millennialism and messianism, and the structural being: f) elect, chosen membership, g) sharp boundaries, h) authoritarian organization, and i) behavioral requirements.
Not all the characteristics need to be present at all times, and movements can change form depending on the reality they find themselves in, but all are anti-secularist while still taking advantage of modern inventions. They are often also defined by comprehensive theological speculations and political theorizing. Violence does not need to be a part of the strategy used by fundamentalists according to the authors, though it can be when they feel that the situation demands it.

Reading Juergensmeyer's The New Cold War, I am of the opinion that what he describes fits the understanding of fundamentalism presented in Strong Religion, more that it fits religious nationalism. Also, considering what we know about religious-Zionism during the first generation, as well as how a number of later religious-Zionist thinkers have related to the Jewish state, I find it hard to fit Juergensmeyer's definition here.

I would rather refer to Atalia Omer's and Jason A. Spring's “Religious Nationalism”, when they ask “[w]hat is religious about religious nationalism?” (Omer & Spring 2013, pp. 18-19), where they give the example of Hamas:

“The Palestinian Hamas movement emerged from the Egyptian group the Muslim Brotherhood at the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising (the first intifada, 1987-1993) against the Israeli occupation. Hamas's primary objective is nationalist in that the movement aspires for political self-determination on the entirety of the land of Palestine. But intertwined with this objective has also been a strong program for the Islamicization of Palestinian society (guiding the society by the teachings of the religious tradition) and the reclaiming of broader trans-national Islamic unity and territorial integrity. In other words, Hamas interprets the liberation of Palestine as a religious duty. Hamas activists understand this to require jihad (meaning literally “to struggle” and denoting primarily a spiritual struggle) against Israel (or as Hamas calls it, “the Zionist entity”), the West more broadly, and the evils and decadence of secularism.”

In other words, Hamas struggle on the one hand for self-determination for the Palestinian people on their homeland, as well as for 'religionizing' of the society. The liberation is also seen as a religious duty, and not just as a matter of national rights. The struggle itself is defined via religious terms, jihad. If we were to “translate” this to religious-Zionist terms, then the movement is struggling for the self-determination for the Jewish people on their homeland. We also see the movement being intend to education of the Jewish public. The main struggle is the settling of the whole of the Biblical Israel, which is seen as a religious duty.

This would mean that, just as secular nationalism, religious nationalism is, with Anderson's terms, “an imagined political community – imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson 2006, p. 6). But where Anderson define the community as political, we also need to add “religious”. The foundation for the national expectations is based on an already existing religious expectation, defining the religious group in national terms. The struggle for self-determination is not secular, but religious. It is the religion which redefine political symbols, rather than the political redefining religious symbols. We will see later that this is indeed the case with religious Zionism, when we are dealing with the religious-Zionist attitudes to the Jewish state and how the movement attempts to religionize the Independence Day.