I will argue that secular and religious political violence are intertwined in modernity. In other words, so-called religious violence is in fact the product of secular politics. Consequently, religious modes of governance and political violence cannot serve as the analytic opposition to secular ones. The alternative to secular politics is not religious politics but the post-secular that in turn requires the post-religious.
In reaction to the demise of the so-called Westfalian narrative (WN) a new scholarly standard model seems to appear (NSM): The modern territorial and centralized nation state usurped the ritual power of religious effervescence through civil religion (e.g., Cavanaugh, 2009). In opposition to this deification of the secular state various political actors mobilize pre-modern “religious” resources of meaning making and practice to undermine the totalizing claims of state sovereignty. Like eminent political theorists (from Schmittian political theologians to Charles Turner), sociologists of political violence (Juergensmeyer; Abeysekara) use NSM.
NSM shares however with WN the idea that the religious and the secular are opposing and exclusive concepts. Yet, decades of scholarship in religious theory have shown that the oppositional framing of the religious and the secular is historically misleading. The claim that there is an essential, universal phenomenon called “the religious” is in fact the product of western colonialism and secular governance (Mazusawa; Fitzgerald; Asad; McCutcheon; Chiddester).
This discourse of modern religion (MR) is embedded in the legitimization of state power in post-colonial states (Chatterjee; Sharff), as well in those of the West (Asad). MR participates therefore in the political violence institutionalized in the secular state. Thus, it is to be expected that violent political conflicts involving secular regimes will mobilize religion.
To move beyond the intertwining of religious and secular political violence would require therefore the construction of post-secular and post-religious politics.
