Search Results

‘Multicultural nationalism’ comes very close to being an oxymoron: devolution increased national self-consciousness and 9/11 added to the problems of multiculturalism everywhere, including Scotland. But in practice, potential problems proved to be solutions. Since England has a key role in defining Scottish identity, Scottish nationalism stimulates Anglophobia but not Islamophobia, and Muslims can use Scottish nationalism as a tool of integration. 9/11 made life worse for Muslims in Scotland, but not as much as elsewhere. Thus, 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ bound Muslims more closely to Scotland. Although both minorities criticized the governing performance of the new Scottish Parliament, both felt that its street-level impact has been more positive than negative. English immigrants feel that devolution has defused tensions, and Muslims self-consciously distinguish between the positive impact of devolution and the concurrent, negative impact of 9/11. Against the odds, multiculturalism and sub-state nationalism have not merely coexisted, but actually interacted positively within post-devolution Scotland.

This chapter discusses the fourth phase of UN involvement in Iraq, in which it was largely sidelined. Negotiations within the Security Council in late 2002 and early 2003 resulted in deadlock, and the decision of a US and UK-led Coalition to overthrow Saddam Hussein forcibly without a Council mandate. The chapter also addresses the early Coalition occupation of Iraq; subsequent decisions by the Security Council to lend this international action a semblance of legal cover (without providing post facto authorization of the use of force against Saddam Hussein); the nascent Sunni-dominated insurgency against Coalition forces and their local allies; and the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003 that was to traumatize UN staff and inhibit significant UN post-conflict roles on the ground.

Many of the key actors in the 9/11 drama articulated their grievances using archaic religious language. But the very fact that the code involved is ancient while the behaviour that needs to be explained is recent suggests the inadequacy of causal theories that overemphasize the religious element. This chapter examines whether non-religious motives may well have been predominant in the 9/11 mission. To pursue this suggestion, the inquiry is divided into two parts, discussing first the perpetrators and then the instigators and supervisors of the plot.

This chapter discusses how fresh reactions to 9/11 were dealt with in the classroom. In a class on religion and ecology, a variety of contemplative practices and social fieldwork projects were used, but unexpected rituals were born when the class was taken into the woods. There the natural world created a liminal space in which the students were able to stop, sense, feel, speak, and reflect in healing forms of shared communication. The chapter describes the experience of taking risks with a religion class, those that are planned and also the challenge of those that are unplanned.

This chapter provides a concise overview of the Church of Scientology's participation in the post-9/11 response at Ground Zero in New York City. Scientology was the only nontraditional religion to provide pastoral care at Ground Zero. This unique status could be explained by the extensive network of powerful members the Church of Scientology possesses. It could also be explained by the fact that the Church of Scientology, despite a controversial history, has become powerfully involved in corporate motivational and charitable activities in America, often providing these secularized services to government agencies.

The transfer of competence in areas considered emblematic of national sovereignty, like immigration and citizenship, should be a litmus test of the ‘polity’ ambitions of the EU. As of the early 1980s, national officials in charge of migration sought to avoid judicial constraints and conflicting bureaucratic views that that were experiencing at the national level. They consequently moved to relocate some of their decision-making to a secretive intergovernmental forum at the EU level. This chapter develops this analysis of motives for cooperation at the EU level in terms of political ‘venue shopping’.

This chapter offers an overview of the exceptional circumstances that Muslims face in the United States after September 11, 2001. The concept of pluralism, as fact and theory, is discussed in light of what the Muslim American experience has to tell us about the limits of tolerance. The situation of Muslims in the United States gives rise to both an internal struggle about what it means to be pluralistic and to an outward struggle to negotiate rights and liberties in a climate of fear that has intensified since 9/11. The chapter looks at the challenges facing Muslims in the United States, where they simultaneously seek to maintain ties with the worldwide Muslim community (ummah) and also pursue a uniquely “American” set of political and legal concerns. The chapter defines the exceptional circumstances under which the discursive construction of pluralism and Muslim American identity occur. These circumstances are characterized by the siege mentality that saturates much of the attention focused so intently on Muslims in the United States since the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. The agency found in the slippage in the fragmented and mobile subject of “Muslim” identity is illustrated when Muslims are narrated, and narrate themselves, into the multicultural nation and state. The implications of the post-9/11 backlash for the pursuit of justice and the vicissitudes of American pluralism are discussed.

This chapter assesses the claim that evangelical pressure forced Bush to recast his position on Israel’s incursion into the West Bank in the spring of 2002. People who know and admire Bush consider that ludicrous. David Frum says that Bush initially left Israel to the State Department. After 9/11, though, the Middle East was far more urgent to Bush. When he abruptly stopped demanding that Israel withdraw, says Frum, he was breaking away from traditional American policy. By the summer of 2002, Bush had charted an entirely new course. The chapter addresses various theories about why Bush allied with Israel so firmly. Some observers attribute it to his personal relationship with Sharon. Another perspective is that the Bush administration maintained a hands-off policy because of Bill Clinton’s failure to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough. Another issue was a debate in the administration about whether to act first on Iraq. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that Bush’s policy was influenced by a powerful but loosely defined Jewish Lobby. In the summer of 2007, the Bush administration sought to prop up the Fatah-led government in the West Bank and to sponsor Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Christian Zionists denounced the new peace initiative.

This chapter focuses on the threat of peril driven home to Americans by the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Moral responsibility in 2001 reflected how it had come to be understood during the preceding half century. Government officials, scientists and policy makers continued to be the professional experts who set the agenda for how the public would think about and respond to the attacks. People feared for their safety, thought it likely that terrorists would strike again, and registered doubt that they could do much to protect themselves. The initial sense of loss led quickly to calls for retaliation, as if a stricken nation needed to demonstrate its strength. Within days, public officials turned the response from questions about why the attacks had occurred to plans for retaliation. The Cold War was thus replaced by a new war, a controversial war that dominated public debate and again divided the world into defenders of freedom and purveyors of evil.

This chapter focuses on how the 9/11 attacks merged with and animated the discussion of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). By the first anniversary of 9/11, public officials and commentators were focusing less attention on how or why the World Trade Center and Pentagon had been attacked than on the far more lethal and presumably prevalent danger posed by weapons of mass destruction. The truly terrifying danger that now faced the world, officials argued, was the likelihood that terrorists would use WMDs in order to inflict casualties on a larger scale than ever imagined. Over the next few years, concern about WMDs grew dramatically. WMDs acquired the same kind of cultural prominence as an abiding source of unease that nuclear weapons had gained during the Cold War.

The book begins with an apostasy trial in democratic Afghanistan. The episode reveals a serious deficit in U.S. foreign policy: in a world increasingly influenced by religion, American diplomacy lacks the policy mandate, habits of thought, training or bureaucratic structure to engage religious ideas and actors. Beset by confusion, and despite supposedly clarifying events such as the 9/11 attacks, the foreign affairs establishment routinely acts in a “secularistic” fashion, instinctively removing religion from the policy table. The disarray does not admit of easy solution; it is fed by attitudes from across the ideological spectrum of American society. There is, however, a potentially fruitful remedy at hand: the U.S. policy of promoting international religious freedom. Properly refurbished and energized, that policy could dramatically increase the capacity of American diplomacy to advance vital U.S. interests abroad and at home. A key to success will be promoting religious freedom properly understood.