The unhappy marriage of religion and politics: Problems and pitfalls for gender equality

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 31, Issue 6, 2010, Pages 833-850

  Razavi, Shahra ^a   Jenichen, Anne ^b  

^a UNRISD   (Switzerland)

^b Heinrich Böll Stiftung ^*  (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNIC CONFLICT; FEMINISM; GENDER DISPARITY; GENDER ISSUE; GENDER RELATIONS; HUMAN RIGHTS; POLITICS; RELIGION; REPRODUCTION; SEXUALITY; STATE-LOCAL RELATIONS;

ARTICLE; CIVIL RIGHTS; CULTURAL FACTOR; DEVELOPING COUNTRY; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FAMILY HEALTH; FAMILY SIZE; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; POLITICAL SYSTEM; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RELIGION; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIAL STATUS;

CIVIL RIGHTS; CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS; DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS; FAMILY HEALTH; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; HUMANS; POLITICAL SYSTEMS; RELIGION; SOCIAL CHANGE; SOCIAL CONDITIONS; SOCIAL JUSTICE;

EID: 77956758729     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2010.502700     Document Type: Article

References (39)

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6. The role of both the US (under the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush) and Saudi Arabia in funding faith-based organisations (evangelical and Wahabi respectively) in different parts of the world should not be underestimated. The proliferation of diaspora communities in Western Europe and North America has been another source of support and funding for faith-based groups, including Hindu fundamentalist groups in India. For useful references see,MTadros, Gender Conundrums of Faith-Based Organisations Delivering Welfare Services, Programme Paper GD No11, UNRISD, Geneva, 2010.
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18. On the relationship between religion and nationalism, see C Jaffrelot, 'Religion and nationalism', in PB Clarke (ed), The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 406-417.
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25. The influence of religious nationalist groups on violent conflicts, as compared to the influence of nonreligious nationalist groups, has increased since the 1980s.
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31. The contrast between 'prophetic' (moral critique of the state) and 'priestly' (anti-democratic, reinforcing inequalities) roles of religion is taken from TG Jelen & C Wilcox, 'Religion: the one, the few and the many', in Jelen & Wilcox (eds), Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective: The One, the Few and the Many, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp 1-24.
32. A Najmabadi, '(Un)veiling feminism', in Jakobsen & Pellegrini, Secularisms, p 52.
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35. M Blofield, The Politics of 'Moral Sin': A Study of Abortion and Divorce in Catholic Chile since 1990, Santiago: FLASCO, 2001.
36. Kuru, 'Passive and assertive secularism'.
37. T Parla & A. Davison, 'Secularism and laicism in Turkey', in Jakobsen & Pellegrini, Secularisms, pp 58-75. Parla and Davison, however, argue that Kemalism was committed not to secularism, but rather to a partial and limited form of laicism insofar as it supported the official establishment and interpretation of the religious tradition of the majority of the population.
38. Kandiyoti, however, argues that the military coup of 1980 marks a watershed in the further dilution of state secularism. In January 1980 a major stabilisation and structural adjustment package was put in place under the auspices of the World Bank and IMF, while the military regime abolished trade unions and established tight state control over other institutions. The restructuring of the state by a praetorian elite safeguarding its interests needed a corresponding state ideology. The military leaders who were in alliance with the right-of-centre political spectrum, most particularly with the proponents of Turkish-Islam Synthesis promoted by the Intellectuals' Hearth (founded in 1970), sought to manufacture public consent for the consolidation of military power using Islam. This prompted an official transition from secularism to religion-based nationalism.
39. D Kandiyoti, 'Secularism contested: debate and dissent in Turkey', Lecture delivered at the London School of Economics (LSE), 15 February 2010.