British Academy //
The Role of Religion in Conflict and Peacebuilding
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4.3. Religion and state failure/collapse
There appears to be a strong correlation
between the emergence of
religious conflict and situations of state failure or collapse. Fox (2007),
for instance, tracks state failures between 1960 and 2004, identifying
the shifts in the role of religion and state failure. Using data from the
State Failure dataset, he identifies an increase in state failure related
to religion as a proportion of all state
failures during this period, and
finds that it became the most common kind of state failure in 2002,
after which he identifies religion as an element in the majority of all
conflicts that relate directly to state failure.
Since 11 September 2001, state failure and state collapse have been
associated with terrorism and labelled as the ‘Orthodox Failed States
Narrative’, which developed based on the experience of the rise of the
Taliban in the collapsed state of Afghanistan (Verhoeven 2009). Several
studies argue that there was an increase
in Islamic extremism in the
state failures experienced in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia in the 2000s.
However, they also differ in how much the various authors emphasise
the role of religion as a cause of increased extremism and offer different
explanations for the phenomenon.
Mwangi (2012), for example, identifies the combination of state collapse
and Islamism in Somalia as accounting for
the legitimacy gained by
Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujaheddin
(Al-Shabaab), a non-state armed
extremist group that provided local governance in Somalia, confirming
the fears that arise from the Orthodox Failed State Narrative. He
portrays Islamism not as a theological construct but as a political
ideology that helps provide answers to
the contemporary social and
political challenges facing the Muslim world. Mwangi argues that radical
Islam is most powerful as a mobilising tool when Muslim populations
feel threatened by secular or Christian states. Following Hoehne (2009),
he links the rise and radicalisation of Al-Shabaab with the joint American-
Ethiopian anti-terror strategy, as well as the difficulties the Somali
people faced under
conditions of state collapse, which left the country
with no central authority. Devlin-Foltz and Ozkececi-Taner (2010, 89)
also consider the case of Somalia and while they too found a correlation
between ‘state collapse and an increase in Islamists’ appeal and
influence’, they go on to argue that, ‘state collapse does not necessarily
generate more violent ideologies … rather [it]
allows those committed
to violence under all circumstances to allay more moderate elements’.
They conclude that political opportunities make violence a ‘normal and
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The Role of Religion in Conflict and Peacebuilding
// British Academy
effective’ means of political competition (2010, 105), and when secular
groups employ violence, moderate Islamist groups may move to view
violence as necessary and align themselves
with a wider range of
Islamists, which can increase the influence of more extreme factions.
However, Islamist groups in both Somalia and Iraq had also to recognise
the non-ideological interests of the population to gain legitimacy in
those countries.
Other scholars are even more dismissive of the Islamist terrorism threat
in Somalia. For Bryden (2003, 25), an analyst with the International Crisis
Group, the
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