Understanding global security - Peter Hough

SOCIAL IDENTITY AS A THREAT TO SECURITY
Since some nationalities are defined in religious terms, the presence of
individuals of other religions is often portrayed as a threat to national cohesion and,
hence, they can become the victims of state or societal repression. This was starkly
illustrated by the phenomenon of so-called ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina
in the 1990s. Slavic Serbs, Slavic Croats and Slavic Moslems, speaking the same
language and having cohabited peacefully for decades, fought along religiously
determined battle lines in the middle of a secular state. The Bosnian Moslems, natives
of the region whose ancestors had converted to Islam in the fifteenth century and
who were no more religiously devout than the Catholic Croats or Orthodox Serbs,
suddenly came to be seen as outsiders in their own country because of a societal
security struggle between the other two nationalities. Serbian nationalism was
reawakened by the break up of the multi-national state they had dominated and rallied
to its traditional cause of Islamophobia, fuelled by historic memories of centuries of
domination by the Ottoman Turks.
Whereas the break-up of Yugoslavia and the lower-level dispute over the status
of Northern Ireland are really national conflicts with ancient religious roots rather
than genuine clashes of faiths, there are numerous contemporary instances of blood
being shed over insecurities rooted firmly in religion. Secular, Westphalian states
today are still wary of the alternative lure religious identity may hold for their citizens.
The radicalization (or politicization) of many religions in the last quarter century has
led to state and societal insecurity frequently being triggered by more ‘real’
challenges than the use of religion as a label of difference. Religious fundamentalism
first came to the attention of the international community in 1979 when the absolute
monarchy was transformed into Shi’ia Moslem semi-theocracy in Iran. For Iranians
Shi’ia Moslem clerics, who had always been their spiritual leaders, would now
be their political leaders also. Revolutions in other countries have always made
governments nervous of their own citizens following suit and, just like the French
and Russian Revolutions in earlier eras, the Iranian revolt prompted copy-cat
uprisings among other societies and pre-emptive strikes against this possibility by
other governments. In Sunni Moslem states, such as Egypt, Algeria and Uzbekistan,
the undisputed national religion, in fundamentalist form, has come to be seen as a
threat to the government, prompting civil war and societal fissures.
Where a radicalized religion is that of a minority group the insecurities of the
dominant culture often lead to heightened persecution of ‘the other’. Traditionally
poor relations between Hindus and Moslem minorities in India have worsened over
the last 20 years, with Islamic fundamentalism prompting the rise of more militant
strains of Hinduism. Western European societal anxieties over migration have, in
some cases, taken a more specific form than a generalized distinction between
self and other. The rise to prominence of the populist nationalist prime ministerial
candidate Pim Fortuyn, in the Netherlands in 2002, was based on a campaign which
called not for a general tightening of non-EU migration, as favoured by most
European far-right politicians, but specifically for curbs on the entry of Islamic people.
Fortuyn, openly homosexual and with some black members in his party, cut
an unusual figure for an ultra-nationalist. His campaign, which saw the ‘Pim Fortuyn
List’ finish second in the elections after his assassination, won support principally
by arguing that Islamic culture was specifically at odds with permissive, liberal Dutch
society. The September 11th 2001 al-Qa’ida attacks in the USA have increased the
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