Put p my bad Good Morning good morning everyone and welcome to the last day of the diplomacy Festival this morning we have the honor o of having with us Michael dresser Associated professor of political science at the John kabot University he’s going to talk about the religious engagement and the foreign policy thank
You very much for being here I’ll let the floor to Michael [Applause] dresser me can hello everyone oh I I talk loud so I think we can uh welcome welcome welcome uh so I’m Professor Michael dreon uh very good to be here um I hear you from Tor verata
How many of you from Tor verata everybody all right very nice very nice well I’m um a professor of political science and international Affairs at John cabat University which is an American University uh just across the street so really close and we have a new um master’s program in international
Affairs La m in in international Affairs and I’m the director of that new program so if you’re interested uh come and see me come and see John cat we’re starting next year and it should be a very good program uh so I’m going to talk about
Half an hour and uh keep an eye uh on my time and then so we can have a discussion afterwards and I’m going to speak as fast as possible in English so you better catch up with me right this is the but no if I’m speaking too fast
Please let me know um so I’m a professor of international affairs I work on religious engagement uh and for the last uh 10 years I’ve been involved in a series of policy initiatives uh with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the US um State Department on what we
Call Global religious engagement um the rise of what I refer to in my research as a global religious engagement regime and This Global religious engagement regime is part of a broader uh turn to religion within International Rel relations how many of you are doing international relations kind of on some level
Hopefully everyone’s doing a little bit of international relations uh within the last 10 years since 911 in particular there has been a rise of interest in states to engage with religious actors and religious communities and also to create new Partnerships with them um we can see this concretely in the
Institutional development of a number of new um ambass Ambassador positions uh across the United States across the UN in the EU we have uh new uh special envoys for Religious Freedom uh we have new special envoys for interreligious dialogue we have diplomats who are tasked with um formally outreaching to
The Muslim majority world uh we have uh not just States doing this within their foreign ministries of Foreign Affairs but we also have international organizations like the United Nations the EU the occe but we also have NGO and Civil Society organizations who are also um creating programs for outreach and
Engagement to uh to religious community so this is new this is a a new phenomena that’s happened over the last 20 years and there’s a debate about that within uh international relations and political science what does that mean why are these states engaging with religious communities and what type of impact or
Consequences does that have so that’s a a sort of a broad basic question I’m going to um drawn some recent research so this is two books that I’ve just come out with one which looks at the form this has taken within the Middle East um uh over
The last 10 years particularly since 911 but also the rise of the Islamic State we’ve had a number of state sponsored interreligious uh initiatives together with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well um and my work looks at that what is the why are states investing millions of why
Is Saudi Arabia investing Millions millions of dollars through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on inter religious dialogue why is the UAE investing millions of dollars through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on interreligious dialogue um and I also have this other uh book this edited book um which uh
Looks at some of the ideas which are coming out of those uh engagements so this religious public engagement ideas like human fraternity and inclusive citizenship which I’ll come back to in a second but I just want to note that this is uh um and it edited volume that we
Did with is isy if you’re not familiar with is one of the uh the major think tanks on international relations here in uh Italy and what we see is uh within edited volumes like this a growing number of Scholars working together with practitioners and policy makers on this
Question so um something is something new is happening and the question is what does that mean within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs they have a working group uh on uh Rel religion and international relations as does isy and so there’s an evident interest uh within
It so what I’m going to do today is I’m going to start off by zooming out so to speak and thinking about why and how uh political science and international relations has started to think about religion today so where does that come from so broadly talk a little bit about
The rise or the return of religion to um political science and international repairs and the rise out of that of a religious engagement perspective and then I’m going to zoom in to take a look at some of these um some of these initiatives within the Middle East so
That’s what I’m going to do all right so um how many people know this guy anybody seen this map before who is this man Samuel Huntington that’s right Samuel Huntington there he is um Samuel Huntington has been vilified uh and loved uh and uh by political scientists over the last 20
Years and what I’m going to do is I want to begin with Huntington to talk a little bit about how international relations began to take seriously religion so Huntington came out I I haven’t had the name up there so there you go you had Huntington CL he came up
With this idea of the Clash of civilizations in 1993 so I’m going to start with the perspective within international relations and then take a look at the perspective within domestic Politics as well I’m going to do it through two major thinkers Huntington and then um a political philosopher by
The name of habos and look at habas and Huntington together you begin to get a sense of how the re taking of interest within religion and international relations is closely connected to crises of liberalism crisis of liberalism both at the international level of politics and at the domestic level of politics
And Huntington helps us uh to get at that at the um International uh level of politics so hunon wrote this famous um article in 19 1993 called The Clash of civilizations and then it came out a book in 1996 called The Clash of civilizations and the Remake in a world
Order his book Remains the most cited book in political science today that’s pretty impressive uh something like 50,000 citations um and he was writing in many ways in direct response to another political Scientist by the name is Frank uh Francis fukuyama how many you have read fukuyama’s the
End of history in the man everybody how many’s read it okay a couple um at the end of the Cold War in 1989 1990 the predominant Paradigm that was um governing international relations and political science was an idea of liberal Triumph and along with liberal Triumph came an idea of
Secularization that somehow uh the Triumph of liberalism over the communism and the Cold War the Triumph of modernization globalization all those things things went together with some sort of secular liberal perspective and if you look at political science in the 1990s but if you go back from 1960s all
The way through the 1990s basically no one wrote about religion most political scientists for 50 years thought religion was not important uh fukuyama famously uh in 1989 when he wrote The Last Man the end of history in the last man he said uh theology is not important it
Doesn’t matter anymore he famously said it’s not going to matter uh We’ve solved that problem it no longer uh holds as a paradigm or motivator of uh global politics so Huntington uh responded that by saying that’s wrong in fact religion matters and in fact religion might matter more than anything else so
Huntington in this book proposed uh two thesis uh one was that the world was moving away from Nation States from a world based based on nation state conflict and was moving to a world based on what he called civilizational conflict and these are the civilizations this is his map of civilizations he has
Five or six main ones sort of has a a western secular liberal civilization uh famously a Muslim Islamic civilization Eastern Orthodox civilization uh Hinduism kushism and he argued that these nation states were largely the these civilizations were largely incommensurable their religious uh cultures over time had built up very
Different ways for governing politics and democracy liberal democracy which fukayama argued was Universal and had triumphed uh hunted and argued was not Universal but specific to the West he thought that therefore there could not be International cooperation based on shared Democratic Values that’s the central message of huntingt we cannot have international cooperation
Based on shared democratic values because Democratic Values are not shared they’re particular to the West um they come out of a judeo Christian pass and he set a secular present now the second thesis of Huntington uh was largely that Islam in particular was anti-democratic U so famously he thought that um the Muslim
World rejected democracy and therefore any type of imposition of democracy on the Muslim world would be uh responded to with rage so Huntington calls into the question of the universality of democracy as a political project and he relinks major Global political Dynamics to religious civilizations um it was
Bold It Was Out Of Tune um but after 911 Scholars and policy makers began to take Huntington seriously okay so Huntington began to name a way in which the liberal World Order had limits it could only expand so far beyond that expansion it ran into limits and those limits were
Largely um the result of religious differing religious civilizations so he was noting that International cooperation was dependent somehow on religious ideas and religious cultur Huntington wasn’t the only one who was naming some sort of Crisis within the liberalism or crisis when the liberal uh National order this is um a
Philosopher political philosopher Jurgen hmas how many of you read h get a sense how many of you doing political philosophy no okay read habas habas is probably the most important uh political philosopher of the last 20 years he’s a German political philosopher and he’s thinking not about liberalism in crisis
At the level of international politics but he’s thinking about liberalism at crisis within domestic politics and hmas was uh working in the 2000s habas was what we could call a rationalist um for all of his career he built up a very important um body of theories that looked at uh the public sphere
Democratic deliberation in the public sphere and for most of his career habas thought that in order to have Democratic deliberation in the public sphere religion should be out he was uh very much um he bought into what we might call the secularization Paradigm he thought very much that religion should
Not intervene in the public Sphere for good uh for legitimate uh consensus that Democratic decision making but in the early 2000s he began to reformulate that position in a very dramatic way and he was thinking and worried about what he saw as a crisis of solidarity within
European Society in the early 2000s he was especially worried about young uh students and their attachments to the EU uh he he feared that youth within Europe were not did not have strong motivations to participate in European Union decision making um but also within their own National Democratic decision- making
He was worried about a decline in political Civic culture you could speak U this is a way which putam might put it but a decline in Social a motivation and attachment to democratic values and Democratic solidarity across Europe and the United States and he worried that
That had a lot to do with liberalism itself that liberalism over time uh favors a certain type of individualism in which young people over time opt out of communal Community political uh sort of attachments and liberalism requires both individual human rights but also Community political attachments it requires both individual protection on
Human and political rights but also requires solidarity for those rights to be um uh to be to work well and so he began to think that maybe religion religious forces transformed religious forces with God over time may be helpful within the public sphere as regenerating some of those sources of uh Social
Capital so rather than thinking that religion should go away he began to argue that maybe the secular State needed to make more room for religion within the public sphere now in doing so he did not give up on the universality of democracy or ideas of secularism or secular or sort
Of separation of religion and state instead he proposed a new idea for how religion and the public sphere might work together what he called post secularism and post secularism for hun for hmas was a way to think about an a new appropriate uh fashion for religious forces to interact with political forces
In the public sphere on certain terms he thought religion still posed risks to the Democratic public sphere but he thought that certain types of religious forces more democratized religious forces religious forces which were what he called non-dogmatic or post- dogmatic could enter into a more fruitful relationship with secular um uh secular
Uh political um uh parties and secular uh political individuals so he began to name new space for religion in the public sphere and he began to think about how new religious forces in the public sphere made themselves um helpfully regenerate uh the the solidarity which liberalism
In the early 2000 looked like it was losing um and a key up here this is a famous quote from from habas he had this um incredible public debate with uh with Joseph ratzinger who became then Pope Benedict the 16th uh in 2005 in which he named this new Theory this theory of
Postsecularism and postsecularism for him um is a new form of what he called Mutual learning between religious and secular forces in the public sphere but that Mutual learning was dependent on new forms of religious mentalities transformed democratized forms of religious mentalities so in many ways I read in my
Own work hmasa sort of giving us a key to thinking about um how transformed religious forces may be useful within or helpful within the Democratic political spheres for overcoming some of our crisis um but that that itself requires some sort of process of religious modernization and the development of
Religious Democratic politics um or what I in my work look at as the development of stronger forms of religious humanism um religious humanism uh you may be aware of is a political philosophy um which comes from a a French political philosopher by the name of jacqu maritain and was fundamental uh in uh
The 19 19 40s 50s and 60s for the formation of Christian Democratic parties um there is a new sort of uh revisiting of religious humanism today um not just within Christian Democratic politics but within Muslim and uh uh and Buddhist Democratic Politics as well okay so these concerns of Huntington and
These concerns of habos point to a period in the early 2000s of Scholars and practitioners worried about liberal political crisis and rethinking about the role of religion in the political Sphere for um for overcoming or responding to that political crisis and both from a geopolitical perspective so
The perspective of hunting but also from a domestic perspective from the perspective of habas both indicated the need for international States for International System for States and international organizations to engage religious communities abroad and at home now that was the title of a very important um policy uh document which
Came out in 2010 by the Chicago Council on global Affairs called engaging religious communities abroad a new imperative for US foreign policy um and this was a very influential policy document which came out in 2010 but also captured somehow this shift within International policy circles which were
Sort of responding to the concerns of Huntington and responding to the concerns of habas and looking for new institutional modes for doing so um so this is the um some quotes from that report it had a series of recommendations for how States and the International System might engage uh religious uh religious organizations
Better it said things like establish religious engagement within the government bureaucracy something that you know the United States did not do as a secular neutral state it purposely did not engage engage religious forces within its government bureaucracy provide mandatory training for government officials on the role of religion in world affairs this created
All sorts of new programs geared towards upping religious literacy within ministries of Foreign Affairs something that Italy does something that the EU does something that the United States does since 2010 engage on the societal level not just the government uh the governmental diplomatic level Embrace a comprehensive approach to democracy
Promotion uh in order to accomodate the legitimate aspirations of religious communities and work with multilateral organizations so this report sort of formalized the emergence of this new position within Foreign Affairs within um policymaking circles which looked at the necessity to engage with religious uh forces in order to prevent
Further security crisis like 9/11 or like the Islamic State but also which began to think about positive potential for engagement with religious forces on common shared humanitarian goals whether or not be uh democratization uh political development Economic Development sustainable development um coid conflict mediation um I have some pictures here which gives
A sense of this um up on the upper right you see who’s that guy we got Obama okay well up on the upper left we have Trump do youbody know this picture this is one of my favorite alltime pictures it’s Trump with anybody see this both Obama and
Trump’s first trip abroad was to the Muslim majority world so Obama famously in 2009 his first major foreign policy speech was in Cairo uh and there he is visiting Cairo with Hillary Clinton with a headress on so very interesting so he goes and he visits Cairo in 2009 he gives a major
Speech uh at Alazar which is the major uh seat of learning for the Muslim majority World in which he announces a number of these new diplomatic positions so he announces an ambassador Brad to the Muslim majority world he announces a new Ambassador for to the organization of Islamic cooperation which is this
Mega international organization of Islamic States um as well as a number of other uh new special Envoy positions Trump did the same thing but he tried to best Obama so as soon as Obama as soon as Trump became elected his first uh his first trip abroad was to Saudi Arabia
Where this is his famous orb he sort of puts his hands on the orb with uh King Abdullah who’s the uh king of Saudi Arabia and that’s um Ali who is the uh president of Egypt and then he visited Jerusalem and then he visited Rome so very interesting both Obama and Trump
Their first major foreign policy initiatives were religious in aspect um but it also saw the development of all sorts of new international uh system organization religious uh interaction so on the bottom left does anybody know we see Pope Francis we know him hopefully um anybody know who the other guy is in
That picture with Pope Francis anybody recognize him what’s that what’s that blink no no no this is Jeffrey Sachs jeffre Sachs is um a major player in the world Bank you’re familiar with the sustainable development goals St the state of the goals come after the Millennium development goals and the
Millennium both were the brainchild of Jeffree Sachs so Jeffree Sachs was a World Bank Economist who basically uh offered the architecture for that program in the early 2000s just like HTH and Huntington he began to realize that to obtain the Millennium development goals required major Outreach to religious communities and so that’s what
He began doing in the mid 2000s 2010 um he started working particularly with the Catholic church but also with the Muslim uh world league and other major religious organizations um to find ways to engage religious communities on human on on sustainable development goals on the ecology on the environment on
Political uh Economic Development as well on the bottom right we have a friend of mine this is Andrea benzo this is at the um Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Andrea benzo just last year was was created as the first Italian special Envoy for the promotion of religious
Freedom so this sort of gives you a sense of the thickness of that institutional infrastructure over time all right so that’s a little bit how much time do we have here we have a little bit more time I’m going to say just so that’s a little bit about how we
Got to this position within International Affairs where we have religious engagement as a foreign policy Principle as a foreign policy priority we see that you know uh State states which are worried about security concerns particularly with the Islamic world and worried and trying to rethink the way in which they can engage
Religions for a host of policy and humanitarian goals as well um also because of the failure of secular liberal um principles of the secular liberal organization to do so all right now this is not just happening in the west but it’s also happening in the Muslim majority world so as the West is
Rethinking its relationship with religion the Muslim majority world is also responding to those policy prompts and we see from the early 2000s on a host of major religious initiatives interreligious initiatives coming out of the Muslim majority world which are again responding and speaking to the West um and repositioning rethinking Islam within
Global politics so this is a a series of foreign policy initiatives see in Jordan and turkey and Saudi Arabia Morocco a whole host of Institutions and declarations which try to disassociate Islam from the violence which the West was worried about um after 911 so I want
To say about um a few things about these initiatives and maybe their meaning for global politics and I’ll do so um briefly H in my work in political science uh a lot of political science accounts of these um of these initiatives tend to think about these initiatives purely through the logic of
Geost strategic competition through the logic of power why is Saudi Arabia engaging in in religious dialogue not because it’s interested in in religious dialogue but because it needs to build a better Rel relationship with the West so that’s that’s the primary sort of perspective that political science tends
To think and that’s important that’s not wrong um but there’s other things going on here as well there’s new religious ideas which are happening and sort of being represented by these initiatives and they’re also reflecting sociological and religious changes within Middle East Society so I um I argue for a more
Complex comprehensive sort of look at uh these initiatives which which include three different layers of analysis power ideas and shift over time in religious practices um anybody recognize this photo This was um a major uh interreligious dialogue moment in 2019 uh 2019 uh Pope Francis who’s in
The middle signed this uh Abu Dhabi human fraternity document with on our right uh shik AB Al who is the head Imam Alazar Alazar is the sort of it’s not the Vatican of the Muslim World Muslim majority world but sometimes they present themselves as so now that document did not just include
Pope Francis and shik amanel T but it also included this other guy on the left anybody know who this guy is he is Muhammad bin Zed he was a Crown Prince at that time now he is the president of the UAE he is perhaps the most powerful person in the Middle East
Today um mbz mbz as we know him now in this document uh in the Muslim majority world uh many people focus not on the religious authority of the document but the fact that Muhammad bin Zed was hosting and promoting that document um so this gets us to just
Briefly say something about the politics of these types of interreligious uh initiatives um you may be familiar with let me just go forward you may be familiar with the Abraham Accords anybody familiar with Abraham Accords 20 20 Abraham Accords okay so the Abraham Accords was a major initiative 2020
Signed on the White House lawn between this cast of characters which is very you know startling to see that today given the context of of Israel and Palestine but we have um Trump nahu and uh the ambassadors of the UAE in bahin and it normalizes relationship between the The Diplomatic relationship between
The UAE and Israel major shift within the geopolitics of the middle e now the 2020 Abraham Accords were preceded by Massive diplomatic investment by the UA in the region including Outreach to Jewish communities so many political scientists so this is a um this is this uh house set of three
Religious uh institutes which was built on this island in the UAE in Abu Dhabi in um called the abrahamic family house it includes a mosque it includes a Jewish synagogue includes a CH a Catholic church and For the First Time 5 years ago the UAE hosted a group of
Rabbis us rabbis and then it started hosting rabbis from Israel this was a major soft powered diplomatic push on the part of the UAE to begin to soften up the relationship and and create cultural bonds and cultural acceptance for what would then become the Abraham uh Accords notice the name abrahamic
Family House somehow becomes the abrahamic uh Accord so this is very much there’s a connection many many political scientists see this connection between these two initiatives and we can see this you know as serving the interests of States including authoritarian States within the Middle East um it’s a great
Public relations strategy the United States loves this the United States has an ambassador abroad for Religious Freedom and he can’t speak highly enough about the UAE it also enables um the UAE to man manage religious markets within its own territory better it helps them to promote a more moderate form of Islam
This is the words that they use it’s a problematic term but the words that they use uh to promote a more moderate form of Islam which does not threaten the legitimacy of the state it’s a counter to the Muslim Brotherhood which they see as threatening uh and it’s also a result
Of geopolitical competition um they by doing this can claim the mantle as religious leader within the region okay so there’s definitely something about State interests going on within the um Within These uh initiatives this is another um picture this is um shik Abdullah Bin Bea shik Abdul maybe is the
Head of the F Council within the um the UAE every year it’s very interesting uh you familiar with the Fortune 500 which is the list of the most you know the the the most powerful and and wealthiest companies in the world uh about 10 years ago um Jordan started producing this
List of the Muslim 500 so they have the most uh powerful and sort of authoritative religious authorities in the Muslim majority world and binaya is like number eight so he’s one of the most uh he has some of the highest level of religious Authority within the Muslim
Majority world and he’s been Central in a lot of these interreligious dialogue initiatives and in these initiatives I argue you see not just political power but new religious ideas which are taking form um and in my work I look a lot at ideas about inclusive citizenship um
Which have emerged from them and I think in order to understand the development of this religious or interreligious perspective within the Middle East it’s important that not just take the geopolitics seriously but also these new ideas um these religious authorities have responded to violence which was associated with Islam by more coming out
More clearly in favor and developing more clearly a sub stantive idea of citizenship as a model for political development within the region so in response to 9911 in response to the Islamic State in response to violence against religious minorities within the region folks like bbea and other important religious authorities have
Been proposing citizenship as a key to constructing durable peace within the region so there’s geopolitics State interests but there’s also new religiously legitimized ideas which are also present Within These initiatives um I’ll just say one last thing and then open up the questions we have some time
To have a debate I can speak about all of these for much more at length um but there’s also not just religious ideas new religious ideas at work but those religious ideas are also reflecting changes within Society changes within uh the Muslim World um which have been
Happening for the last 20 years if we cannot understand I think it’s impossible to understand these initiatives without reference to 911 in the Islamic State it’s also true that we can’t understand these initiatives without reference to the Arab Spring how many of you are familiar with the Arab
Spring vaguely aware okay good all right so the Arab Spring was a massive many ways youth-led series of movements within the Middle East in 2010 which was largely a pro-democracy movement now it failed a multiple levels it created all sorts of uh it began a period of
Violence and conflict but it was was inherently a society which was standing up in favor of individual rights and freedoms so it was the Arab Street as we often times refer to it um mobilizing and challenging authoritarian states in the name of democracy not name of Western liberalism but the name of
Democracy and in some ways these interreligious initiatives are also recognizing that religious authorities are responding to a crisis of religion within their own society and the development of new forms of more democratic and individual interests within Society itself so inclusive citizenship which is an idea which percolates which is Central to these um
To these initiatives or things like human fraternity social solidarity are also somehow the result or responding to those new Social and religious aspirations particularly of Youth saying sort of no to religious authoritarian politics no to Islamic State but also say no to secular liberalism this is I think the development of an alternative
Religiously inscribed Democratic sort of platform so maybe I’ll just stop there um these initiatives I think um are interesting they’re risky they’re vulnerable they’re complex they have all sorts of a multiple layers of meaning um but I hope at least I’ve convinced you um that they’re worthy of our ention as
Scholars and policy makers so I’ll stop there and um hello okay um thank you for your speech um my name is Stanislas I’m a gd2 student from a global governance student from Switzerland and uh my question was do you think um China is taking over USA’s influence in the Middle East
Because we could see for example in the I think it was in August that Saudi Arabia and Iran started to reconciliate under China’s um influence uh so what do you think about that thank you sure yeah uh so question on the Middle East um I think
Taking over is too strong of a term uh but certainly we see a shift and that uh China broker deal was uh was a major milestone in that we definitely see the United States disengaging or had been disengaging for the last 5 years um that doesn’t mean the United States is out of
The Middle East we should also not make that mistake they’re very much within the Middle East they they keep huge Air Force and navy bases um but clearly the lack of us leadership or lack of us uh political ambition in the Middle East over the last five years has created uh
The possibility for the rise of China in the Middle East um Saudi Arabia in particular has been active in opening up to a relationship with China also as a counterweight or leverage for what it sees oftentimes as um politics of the United States which has not respected its National interest
So I think you see some hint of a more multilateral Middle East which is also perhaps a transition and could also have to do with some of the violence there today um but China’s not taking over but they’re certainly more active in the mil States hi I’m Emma from Italy uh I
Wanted to ask you since we’ve seen in the last years uh more religion in international Affairs wouldn’t this like anal the process of secular secularization and like the states that called themselves lay States wouldn’t like prefer and tend more to one religion rather than another therefore annulling their lay thank you no very
Good very good yes so great question is this a violation of secularism and sort of the uh like sort of uh nature of these states that fear was exactly what was driving states to not engage with religious communities for the last 50 years um but I think on a practical
Level States just realized that they couldn’t do that anymore that somehow you know um it’s it’s not an element of secularization as a process we still see in the United States for instance secularization has accelerated over the last 10 years so we see more less so declining religious Society within the
United States um in Liberal democracies like the United States they are very careful in their engage engagement with religious communities to do so in Interfaith or multi-religious fashion so to not privilege one uh one religious organization so this represents a new type of Engagement with religious actors
Which is not choosing to identify with one of those religious actors but trying to find ways to partner with them and I think that is as much a practical response to what was seen as a major failure in the part of states in the 19
Uh late 1990s or 2000s um that they just when you know when 9 9911 happened there was almost no one who spoke Arabic in the US state department there was almost no one who even understood or could decipher what the claims the religious claims were of al-Qaeda and the state
Department in the United States realized that it was a failure they had no way to respond to that in an adequate sense unless they found some new paradig for engaging with religion so I don’t think it’s uh you know it’s a major debate some people would argue that it has sort
Of overcome secularization I think it’s a new way of engaging religious communities which still has the possibility to retain neutrality uh Within These States hi I’m Gia thank you very much for joining us today um my question to you is though very much it is very much
Needed for us to be engaged with with religious communities especially in the context of international Affairs there should also be a recognition of the fact that many fascist countries do um kind of weaponize the notion of cultural relativism to excuse their um violations of international law very recently you
Know because of the Middle East I’m thinking of the notion of Israel kind of justifying its violation of international laws such as mass punishment and the use of white phosphorus by claiming anti-Semitism though of of course you know I can’t be biased just because I’m Arab and I come
From a Muslim country I have to recognize that also many Muslim countries have weaponized cultural relativism my question to you is when can we put this boundary in international relations of how do we engage with religion because at the end of the day religion is not very logical
It’s personal and can be manipulated so how do we guide through that thank you good thank you very much yeah uh I think both of these questions are recognized in what um uh what contemporary political science scholarship recognizes as the complexity of you know it may be
Pra it may be impractical not to engage with religion and doing so is a major problem if you have religious forces which are sort of uh mobilizing politically but once you begin to gauge with religion there’s also all sorts of complexities right there’s there’s a lot of room for instrumentalization there’s
A lot of room for um using religion as a cover up for all sorts of things and this is what you’re alluding to so what do we do about that what do we do about that um it’s a good question uh I think that um these types of interreligious
Engagement processes give some sort of a space to for policy makers and religious Scholars to think about where they can work together and where they can’t work together um and it also allows them to challenge each other right so you know these I see these Forum as
Much a space for policy makers in the EU to challenge religious forces on their own um as it is the other way around and the absence of that space I think is not necessarily better I think religion is going to be instrumentalized anyway so you might as well have a space where you
Can talk about it on some level right um so these you know so I’ve been involved in a number of these initiatives which have um tried to think about for instance what are the theological roots for inclusive citizenship within Islam and you get you know you get a whole
Wide range of views on that some which use that as a way to reject human rights discourse as a western discourse to reject democracy as a western discourse and retrench some sort of Muslim uh essentialism you know Saudi Arabia can sometimes use wahhabi sort of thinking
But it also if you take them seriously it’s also it enables this interesting space to open up where um you allow an original uh discourse to emerge original discourses to emerge in favor of uh human rights as and political uh as well and I think that’s better than often
Times you know the West has been so um it’s been accused justifiably so of colonialism when it comes to culture and when it comes to political values um and it comes to sort of promoting liberalism from solely from a western uh understanding so I think it’s only by
Engaging in real debate and conversation with religious authorities and religious forces who are influential within their own societies whether it be Islam you know Muslim major Societies or Israel or whever it is that you can begin to move towards um something else some sort of uh religiously organically religiously
Backed social roots for uh common human values if I could put it that way thanks very good question though sorry Hi um I’m Julia I wanted to ask you if um you could please dissect and after 911 we know that there was the whole War global war on terror thing in
Afghanistan and Iraq and I wanted to ask to ask you to please dissect the reasons that pushed the USA to adopt this kind of international uh politics was it um exclusively fear because I know that there was a big part of like the fear with the capital F uh kind of thing but
Was it also using islamophobia or the phobia of terrorism to justify other political um aspirations and uh in general yeah I would like to know this thank you sure yeah great question um so I see an evolution uh you know there’s been it’s been 20 years now since 911
And so we’ve seen different stages of it in the early days there was I think a lot of the religious engagement was and response you know religious engagement on the part of the the Western world and the response within the Muslim majority world was mostly seen through the security
Perspective in the west and defensive in the Muslim majority world so it was very much motivi by fear uh and that was problematic it it ended up creating all sorts of securitization uh problems it ended up boxing Islam Huntington is you know famous for this you know boxing
Islam into one big category but then over time um that also opened up space for alternative discourses and over time you see 10 years 15 years the development of a different more positive religious discourse where it’s not simply defensive or simply worried about security but is reimagining the way in
Which religious forces within Society contribute to development political development in a positive way and so there’s been this interesting shift that I think is uh worth taking care of worth worth watching already very much in the beginning um you know George Bush uh who did all sorts of horrendous things for
Geopolitics um he recognized you even within the early us discourse they recognized that that this was going to be a uh rightly or wrongly an ideological question as much as a security question we have to win the war on Diaz that was already there um and
That might have not have been M you know might have been motivated by all sorts of different things but that focus on real substantive engagement and ideas has also been sort of moving this forward throughout the last 20 years so there is a security perspective there is
A lot of fear that motivated there was this need to do something um but at the same time something else was happening uh and I think we should pay attention to both a first dissection hi I’m Samuel I’m a global governance students from Italy my question is in your opinion
Could the rise of far right parties in Europe and in the US which often use um religious symbols and religious Concepts as an AR as a political arms uh [ __ ] and uh secularism in Western societies what was the last part so the far rise of the far right and the last bit the
Last uh could it threaten the secularism in yeah absolutely I mean um so this phenomena so you know I was we’re looking at work within the Middle East um but one of the most interesting things in religion and politics in the last 10 years has been the rise of Christian nationalism or religious
Nationalism as well um and religious many of the things you know if we go back to what I was talking about with Huntington and habas they were naming a crisis of liberalism and you can respond to that crisis in different ways religious nationalism the rise of a Christian
Right is clearly responding to that crisis so a lot of the things that I said about habas have the worry about social solidarity the roots for um for Community you know a more communitarian uh aspect the religious right has taken that and run with it and they have
Claimed that the only way to regenerate National strength is by more clearly identifying with our religious past and our religious Traditions um so Orban for instance has famously reappropriated Christian democracy as a political discourse and in doing so he claims that that’s illiberal or within political philosophy today what we would call
Post- liberal and post liberalism uh that kind of post- liberalism which is associated with religious nationalism is also decidedly uh threatening secularism or or you know sees sec secularism as a failed experiment that’s the way I would put it um I think that there’s a different type of response that’s
Possible which also uh you know responds I think some of haas’s fears but doesn’t go the religious nationalism rout the this idea of religious humanism or multi-religious humanism um which opens up possibilities for Mutual learning and mutual cooperation between religious and secular forces uh I think is a very
Promising uh body of of thought and experience that we should take seriously to but good question yeah hi um my name is Joe I’m Italian and German and um I think this question is going to be a bit different than the others and perhaps it’s going to
Challenge some of the things that we’ve said so far um so I’m thinking in countries especially in the Far East like in China in Mongolia in Japan and even arguably in South Korea religion plays a much lesser important role in internal politics um but then when we
Look at abrahamic religions we see a much higher impact right this is obvious in the Middle East where we have a majority of Muslims in most countries but also in other places that should be secular like for example the United States and even Italy even though there’s been this rice of a religious
Individuals I would say that the impact of religion as a whole has actually increased in internal politics for example with r versus Wade and the justification behind uh higher um higher limitation on abortion and abortion bans throughout the country um and I think to me this is particularly Waring in places
Like the States where there’s a lot of diversity in terms of religion so I wonder um what do you think about this influence and is it really and especially the rise and influence not just the presence of it um in countries overall whether they are majority one religion or very um multiethnic and
Multi-religious what you think yeah no good questions um we kind of have a world tour so there’s you know it’s important um religion religious development looks very different in different parts of the world and I think that’s part of your question you know so religion is uh playing different roles in different
Places uh we should take uh you know we should take care to recognize those context so here I was focusing on sort of global Trends but the those National Trends are important religion in China looks very different from religion in Europe which is very different from
Religion in India um so let me let me say maybe two things uh one is it’s true that we see secularization continuing as a process across different parts of the world and some Scholars think more some Scholars think less going back to this practical we were talking about sort of practical
Politics and wi for policies engaging with religion one sort of data point that we often times focus on and and we need to break that data point down but eight and 10 people around the world still consider themselves religious or see religion as important in their life
So if 80% of the world still sees religion as important in your life and we don’t have the means to account for that within our political systems then we may have trouble managing uh you know governing uh and thinking so that’s one thing now in the United States uh let me
Just respond to to the bit about the United States in the United States you see both happening at the same time you’re absolutely right you see this and in fact many scholars think that that is a cause and effect so you see the rise of the religious right which is
Happening in the 1990s and 2000s a peak could be George Bush um and it in response to the rise of the religious right in politics so the politicization of the religious right in politics has also created the backlash um it’s very you know we can debate about what the
Numbers look like but most Scholars of Sociology religion within the United States think that the rise of what we call the nuns so within the um uh we have this rise of a religious or non institutionally religious people so not necessarily atheism but people who no longer identify institutionally with any
One religious tradition the nuns the people who respond to surveys by saying I’m none of the above that and that’s particularly within the United States among youth so we have almost 40% of um of Youth in the American Youth the university level youth in the United States who are
Identify as none and they’re entirely Democratic party uh vote uh bio so we see this reaction and to the rise of religious right in the Republican Party by the rise of a secular left within the Democratic Party party um and one lesson you can take away from that is if
Religion becomes politicized or in a partisanship way inevitably it gets tagged to that partisanship and the reaction is to reject that religious politicization so you’re right I mean that intuition is is correct nevertheless we still see um I I think often times uh you know because we live
In a place like Italy or because we come from a place like the United States where we’re familiar with secularization often times we forget just how religious the rest of the world is um if you go to Africa you go to Latin America many are argue even within China itself um as
Power shifts to the global South as we move into a G20 world that world is going to be more religious um and that means that our International politics will as well Sure sure sure absolutely Absolutely sure well I mean China the easy answer is that they have been aggressively secular and aggressively atheist for the last 60 years so it’s been very difficult to be be religious in fact China you know China’s policies against its Muslim minority China’s policy against its a Christian minority um it’s
Very difficult to be religious uh so I mean officially it’s because of Communism right um now there’s a very interesting debate about sociologist religion of how religious China remains uh but its official foreign policy remains uh mostly secular although it has adopted a more religious nationalism as it’s progressed over the last 10
Years um I would say in the west the the West it’s not true that the West tried to remove religion what it did is it tried to um adopt a secular form of democratic politics but that secular liberal secularism always left religious freedom right so religious freedom as is the Cornerstone
Is a Cornerstone of liberalism within the west and lious freedom means that you can be religious uh and so there are religious people still in the west um in China That’s not necessarily the case yeah I’m sorry but the next speaker arrived so thank you so much for your
Answer and for your time thank you thank you everyone thank you very [Applause] much Excuse me 5 minutes of relax and then we’ll have a special uh a special friend that comes to explain to you the r beid for 2030 in torvergata
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