History tells us that religion has often been at the heart of protracted and bloody conflicts. In the last 10 years, in the form of terrorist attacks on New York, London, Mumbai, Istanbul, Madrid and more, religion – and particularly Islam - has been associated with violence and insecurity more than ever. This has coincided with – or perhaps precipitated – a new interest in religion in sectors that have traditionally marginalized it. While it is far from the only theme of this new wave of ‘talk about religion’, the connection of religion to violence, insecurity and conflict is commonly accepted and has become a preoccupation for politicians, the media and the academy. However, analysts of this relationship have tended to focus on ‘religion’ and its ‘strangeness’, ‘irrationality’ or ability to cause and legitimate violence. Relatively little attention has been paid to the category ‘security’ which is simply accepted as a neutral and objective policy goal. The result of this imbalance is the perpetuation of a polarity between religion and public life that has been a feature of Western thought since 1648 and the conclusion that religion and security are conceptually incompatible. Inspired and informed by experience of UK security policy, founded in a new application of Durkheimian sociology, and influenced by the well developed discourses of civil religion, secularisation and constructivism, ‘Between Religion and Security’ takes a different approach. By interrogating the category of security and the discourses of international relations theory and political science from which it has emerged, and by exposing ‘security’ to sociological analysis, I suggest that its ideational character is revealed, challenging the rational-utilitarian interpretations which typify dominant security models. Security becomes a prism which refines our understanding of religion, demanding that we take a reflexive approach to our own self-understanding and orientation to the world. Religion is revealed as a system of social differentiation and agency which is not outside public life but is, in fact, very much present in our own ‘secular’ discourse and security can be considered a sacred Western value and an expression of religion itself.
