Religion in Development: Rewriting the Secular Script - Softcover

Deneulin, Séverine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848130015 ISBN 13: 9781848130012

Publisher: Zed Books, 2009

Synopsis

Development practice is full of examples of the importance of religion in the lives of people in developing countries. However, religion has largely remained unexplored in development studies. This timely new book aims to fill that gap. The authors expertly review how religion has been treated in the evolution of development thought, how it has been conceptualised in the social sciences, and highlights the major deficiencies of the assumption of secularism.

The book argues that development theory and practice needs to rewrite its dominant script regarding its treatment of religion, a script which has so far been heavily inscribed in the secular tradition. It puts forward an understanding of religions as traditions: that religions rest on central thesis and teachings which never cease to be re-interpreted in the light of the social, political and historical context. In addition to providing a conceptual framework for analysing the role of religion in development, the book provides numerous empirical examples drawn from the Christian and Islamic religious traditions. This comprehensive new guide to this key issue is essential for students, development thinkers and practitioners who wish to understand better the role that religion plays in development processes and outcomes.

About this title

About the Author

Séverine Deneulin is Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath, UK. She holds a DPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, and an MA in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She has published The Capability Approach and the Praxis of Development (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006) and co-edited Transforming Unjust Structures (Springer, 2006).

Masooda Bano holds an ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford and is a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. She was awarded MPhil in Development Studies at Cambridge and DPhil at Oxford and also is a Research Associate at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. She has acted as a consultant to many international development agencies including DFID, UNESCO and Save the Children (UK).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Religion in Development

Rewriting the Secular Script

By Séverine Deneulin, Masooda Bano

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2009 Séverine Deneulin and Masooda Bano
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84813-001-2

Contents

Acknowledgements, vii, 
Introduction, 1, 
1 Addressing the Taboos, 12, 
2 Religion in Development Thought, 28, 
3 Religion in Debate, 52, 
4 Religion in Development Practice, 73, 
5 Conflicts between Traditions, 105, 
6 Dialoguing Traditions, 135, 
References, 170, 
Index, 180, 

CHAPTER 1

Addressing the Taboos

In February 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, became immersed in an intense controversy. There were calls for his resignation, with some calling him a 'disaster for the Church of England'. The critics came not only from the ranks of the liberals but also from among the conservatives in the Anglican Communion, all three leading political parties, fellow Christians in other denominations, Jews, and even some Muslims. At the heart of the controversy was the Archbishop's speech to the legal community in the UK in which he had argued for adoption of parts of Sharia – Islamic law – in Britain. For a book which aims at proposing an analytical grid for studying and understanding the role of religion in development, an examination of the Archbishop's proposal and the ensuing critiques illuminates the challenges development theory and practice confront in accommodating religion within their ambit.

In his speech, the Archbishop tried to address what to him was an important modern-day challenge: how to accommodate the demands of minority religious communities who want to exercise the option to be ruled on certain issues by their religious legal systems? Drawing on the case of some members of the Muslim communities in the UK who argued for freedom to live under Sharia law, he addressed the generic question of what level of public and legal recognition, if any, might be allowed to the legal provisions of a religious group.

While acquiescent to the fact that there are no easy solutions, he proposed a 'transformative accommodation' between secular and religious legal systems enabling the two to coexist. This, in his view, did not imply setting up a parallel legal system to British law. Rather it entailed formulating a scheme in which individuals retained the opportunity to choose the jurisdiction under which they would seek to resolve certain carefully chosen matters. The Archbishop maintained that this would force the religious and secular leaders to compete for the loyalty of shared constituents. The proposal involved accommodating religious law on a case-by-case basis where the legally recognized religious precepts did not interfere with the liberties guaranteed by state law in the society in question.

The justification for such a proposal was the recognition that social identities are not constituted by one exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging; people have multiple identities and affiliations. The modern secular state, when assuming a monopoly in terms of defining public and political identity, creates as serious a problem as do religious communities in viewing religious identity as the only significant category. For the Archbishop, it is unrealistic to believe that to be a citizen is essentially and simply to be under the rule of the uniform law of a sovereign state. The secular position, which holds that any other relations, commitments or protocols of behaviour belong exclusively to the realm of the private and of individual choice, is untenable (see Chapter 3):

It would be a pity if immense advances in the recognition of human rights led, because of a misconception about legal universality, to a situation where a person was defined primarily as the possessor of a set of abstract liberties and the law's function was accordingly seen as nothing but the securing of those liberties irrespective of the custom and conscience of those groups which concretely compose a plural modern society. (Archbishop's lecture, February 2008)

The Archbishop, in simple words, was arguing for respecting people's religious commitments and carving out greater spaces to accommodate religious precepts within the secular system if the secular state was to win the full allegiance of religious communities.

For his critics, however, the proposal, or even the mere discussion of such demands, was outrageous. For them, the mention of Sharia raised instant references to repression of women, archaic and brutal physical punishments and a pre-modern system with no human rights. How could the Archbishop argue for tolerance of such values within a progressive Western society, inquired over 17,000 hostile viewers flooding the BBC's online message board?

Michael Nazir Ali, the Pakistan-born Bishop of Rochester, on the other hand, noted the practical challenge to such a proposal: 'Every school of Shariah law would be in conflict with British law on matters like monogamy, provisions for divorce, the rights of women, the custody of children, the laws of inheritance and of evidence so how would consensus be evolved?' The toughest challenge to the Archbishop's proposal came from a group of columnists in The Times online edition, who questioned whether Sharia was something that could be cherry-picked. Can we say that we will engage with certain aspects of Sharia, or any religious system, and not with others? And, if yes, which criteria should we use to distinguish the religious precepts that we see as 'good' to engage with from those that are 'bad'?

The issues raised by the debate between the Archbishop and his furious critics do not relate only to how Western societies are to accommodate the public presence of religion in their midst; they also arise in developing countries and especially in their relation to Western donors. As this book will illustrate, there are many parallels to be drawn between the above story and the reality of development practice in developing countries, such as the controversy surrounding secular and religious understandings of women's empowerment or the controversy surrounding religious education and its rejection of non-religious subjects.

In its essence, the Sharia law controversy in Britain captures the Gordian knot that needs to be untangled in order to find ways for development theory and practice to deal with the presence of religion in the public sphere. In the Introduction we identified five questions that the reality of development work in developing countries confronts (see p. 7). This chapter briefly examines each of these questions as they relate to development theory and practice. Our purpose here is not to put forward a set of satisfactory responses that can be accepted by all, for disagreement is a characteristic hallmark whenever the subject of the appropriate role of religion in the public sphere is concerned. Instead, our purpose is to demonstrate, through a variety of examples, that the reality of development work makes these questions unavoidable. They have to be addressed. The fact that they lack straightforward answers is not a sufficient warrant for not asking them. Some case studies help us illuminate the terms of debate. They also point out that, given the empirical reality, some answers to the above questions are more appropriate than others.

Is religion relevant?

Is religion still a powerful force in the public sphere, worthy of serious academic engagement, or is it bound to disappear as societies reach higher levels of economic and social development? If what the foundational texts of the social sciences said about religion were correct, religion would long have become an irrelevant phenomenon in our world of material affluence, an archaic need bound to disappear with the rise of modernity. The social sciences, born at the end of the nineteenth century as heirs of the Enlightenment, viewed religion as incompatible with the demands of rationality and human reason. The public domain was assumed to be guided by collective reasoning free of transcendental concerns. Religion was a force to be marginalized from the public sphere, and so its eventual disappearance was assumed. The fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, both established an inverse relationship between modernity and religion: as societies modernize, they may be expected to rely less on the sacred to interpret events around them or seek solutions. This is known as the secularization thesis. As a growing stream of literature within sociology now contends, the thesis has failed (see Chapter 3). Religion continues to be of significance in the lives of many people in both the so-called developed and developing worlds. Rather than being confined to the private sphere, religion continues to register its presence and is observed to have both positive and negative influences on development processes in developing countries, as the forthcoming chapters will document.

On the positive side, religion remains the source of inspiration for much welfare and humanitarian work (see Chapter 4). Religion-driven charitable contributions remain a critical source of welfare work in many countries, and faith-based organizations (FBOs), which exist in all religious traditions, remain the most significant non-state providers of basic social services to the poor in many developing countries. The notion of social justice has been critical to the work of Christian and Muslim missionary groups. Both have placed high emphasis on improving the living conditions of the communities within which they work as part of their concern with propagating the word of God. Beyond welfare activities and the provision of social services, many of these groups have also engaged in radical political activism. In terms of civil society engagement, a large number of churches and faith-based organizations have participated in advocacy campaigns on justice issues, and are contributing to changing economic, social and political structures.

Religion thus provides a unique opportunity to mobilize resources for promoting development outcomes, such as poverty reduction and improved health and education. Yet it presents at the same time some of the toughest challenges. Examples are not difficult to find. In many societies, women are prohibited by religious decrees from working outside the home; religion is often a cause of sectarian and communal violence; or religious beliefs are interpreted so that women whose partners are HIV-positive are denied the use of contraception on moral grounds. There are many cases where religion appears to be undermining basic human rights – such as the right to dignified work, freedom from discrimination and hatred, and the freedom to escape an easily preventable death. The rising tide of religion-based militancy witnessed internationally pushes the destructive potential of religion to the forefront.

Militancy based on religious precepts has become a serious international concern. The inability of the 'War on Terror' to curb it, despite major financial investment in counter-militancy strategies, highlights the need to understand better the religious phenomenon if effective strategies are to be devised to limit the negative consequences of this rising religion-based militancy for the social order. The War on Terror has led the United States to violate human rights principles in its dealings with prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, has led to civil liberties being curtailed within US borders and those of its allies, and has led to large parts of Afghanistan and Iraq being destroyed and many civilians being killed. Further, these measures have entailed high costs for American taxpayers. But, despite current strategies to control it, religion-based militancy still remains unchecked.

Being blamed for training and supporting the Taliban and for harbouring pro-Al-Qaida sentiments, the government of Pakistan has followed closely the strategies advised by the US to curtail alleged Taliban and Al-Qaida militants in its tribal areas in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). These have included, first, performing military operations in the tribal belt to cleanse the area of suspected foreign and local militants; and, second, handing over militant suspects to the US without trial. Dialogue with the militants in order to reach peace agreements, though attempted, was not seriously pursued. The military operations led to many undesirable consequences, including deaths of innocent civilians, major displacement of the local population, and destruction of infrastructure. In October 2006, a military strike on a madrasa in Bajaur killed 82 people, many of whom were students under 18, some reportedly as young as 6 years of age.

Reliance on force has proved of limited effectiveness in dealing with religion-based militancy. In the tribal areas repeated military operations have failed to displace militant groups. Rather, after four years of operations, the militant resistance has spilled out of the tribal belt right into the heart of Islamabad and other peaceful places such as the Swat Valley, formerly a popular tourist resort but now under siege by the militants. At the same time, suicide bombing has become an increasingly common phenomenon in Pakistan – it only started after the declaration of the War on Terror. The reactive nature of these attacks is clear. The first lethal suicide attack, which killed 40 soldiers at a military base in NWFP, was carried out just days after the missile attack in Bajaur.

Religion-based militancy remains strong despite attempts to contain it. One could even argue that the greater the number of strategies to curb public expressions of religion, the more strongly religious people react to maintain its public presence. As the forthcoming chapters will illustrate with examples from Islam and Christianity, religion remains an important force shaping the public sphere in developing countries. Rather than sweeping it under the carpet or explaining it as ideological indoctrination, it is important for development theory and practice to understand how religion works.

Can religion be controlled?

Can religion be confined to the private sphere and be prevented from overflowing into the public domain, or does it escape control? The strategy of confinement is proving to be of limited effect. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, one of the basic assumptions of the secularization thesis is that religion should not be in the public domain and influence political processes. But the reality of political life in developing countries does not match these aspirations. Instead, it bears testimony to the influence of religion on the political, social and economic spheres, and its resistance to confinement in the private sphere. The continued presence of religious political parties in many developing countries, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jama'at-i-Islami in Pakistan and Bangladesh, testifies to the inherent political nature of religion.

The Society of the Muslim Brothers, or the Muslim Brotherhood, originated in 1928 in Egypt and was founded by Islamic scholar Hasan al-Banna as a network of Islamic organizations engaged in charity work among the poor. Its aim was to build progressively an alternative Islamic society based on Islamic values which would stand in stark contrast with the values imposed by the colonial power, such as secularism, individualism and economic liberalism. In the 1950s, some members of the Brotherhood started to resort to violent means to achieve their aim of establishing an Islamic society. They attempted to assassinate President Nasser, who was perceived as an instrument of Western domination in the region. The Society was thereafter forbidden and its leader executed, but the popularity of the Society among the Egyptian population remained strong.

After the 1992 Cairo earthquake, the Brotherhood emerged as a credible institution that was much more effective in delivering aid and social services than the government was. The Society demanded its legalization as a political party but it was refused. In the September 2005 elections, some members of the Muslim Brotherhood stood as independents and won 20 per cent of seats to become the main opposition group. It seems only a matter of time before the Muslim Brotherhood becomes a political party in Egypt, given its widespread support among the population.

Jama'at-i-Islami, an Islamic political party established in 1941 by Mawlana Sayyid Abu'l-A'la Maududi (1903–79), one of most influential Muslim intellectuals of the twentieth century, continues to exert its influence in the political sphere in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The party propagates the philosophy that religion cannot be followed in parts but is a complete way of life, giving clear guidelines for individuals as well as collective behaviour. The party also advocates that Sharia should shape the entire working of Muslim societies. It argues that while the ultimate goal of every believer is indeed to find salvation in the other world, this objective cannot be achieved without attempting to establish the religion of God in this world first. Jama'at maintains that this requires the exercise of political power.

In the 1958 elections in Pakistan, Maududi summed up the Jama'at-i-Islami plan of action as follows: 'First of all it brings intellectual change in the people; secondly [it] organizes them in order to make them suitable for a movement. Thirdly, it reforms society through social and humanitarian work, and finally it endeavors to change the leadership.' The idea is that once the leadership has been won over to Islam, the society will be Islamized and cleansed of all socio-economic diseases. Jama'at-i-Islami remains actively engaged in electoral politics in Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as in social action. It was part of the four-party alliance that formed the government of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) after the 2001 elections. It had also been influential throughout the 1990s in the Awani League. In Pakistan, it was one of the two main leading parties which led the opposition in the National Assembly and formed the government in the NWFP.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Religion in Development by Séverine Deneulin, Masooda Bano. Copyright © 2009 Séverine Deneulin and Masooda Bano. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848130015
• ISBN 13: 9781848130012
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192