RADICAL RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

Radical Religious Movements

Radical Religious Movements

Introduction

A religious movement is an organized effort that intends to bring about religious reforms. Many religious movements also have political goals because the kinds of reforms they want appear possible only by altering, sometimes fundamentally, political and/or social contexts and arrangements in which they operate. This entry discusses some weighty manifestations of such movements in contemporary politics.

In recent years, social scientists have consistently noted that religion can influence politics. Three decades ago, the Iranian revolution showed that an Islamic religious movement could overthrow a regime once seen as a key example of the modernizing effects of secularization in the Middle East. More recently, the rise of the Christian Right (CR) in the United States demonstrated how religious movements can evolve as a result of changing political circumstances. Further, the emergence and consolidation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India was made possible because of the party's foundations in Hindu religious movements. Similarly, Jewish fundamentalist movements have emerged in Israel with plenty to say about the Israel-Palestinian issue.

All these examples point to the inadequacies of modernization and secularization theories, which predicted that the importance of religion in politics would decline. Although secularization has clearly occurred in many countries, especially in Western Europe, this has taken place at the same time that religion has exhibited sustained presence some would call it resurgence in many parts of the world. Overall, impact of religion on politics has not declined but instead changed in complex ways, including the political involvement of some religious movements.

Discussion

Religious extremism is one of the primary concerns faced by citizens in the modern world. Furthermore, political and academic experts claim that Religious extremism through religious movements is the greatest threat to global security in the 21st century, and it has increasingly become a major factor in all international relations. The apprehension of Religious extremist suspects still at large has become a major preoccupation of law enforcement at all levels. Despite its importance in world affairs, there is little consensus on the many definitions of terrorism, which overlaps conceptually with a related term, extremism. Extremists seek a radical restructuring of the society in which they live although their methods may or may not involve terrorism (Whittaker, 2007, Pp 73).

Islam and the West

The middle Ages, there was a more or less constant struggle between Christian Europe and Muslim states, which controlled large areas of what became Spain, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece and Romania. Most of the lands conquered by Muslims were claimed by Europeans, and many of its possessions in North Africa were in fact, settled when Western power grew in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These setbacks were catastrophic for the Muslim religion and civilization Islamic believers considered the most advanced high and few were possible. In the late nineteenth century, the Muslim world's inability to resist Western expansion led to reform movements that sought to return Islam to its original strength and purity, asserting the identity of their own beliefs and practices (Burgat, 2008, ...