Of religion in conflict

The Ambivalence of the Sacred
, Appleby (2000) 
goes beyond arguing the obvious, i.e. that religious texts can provide 
justifications for either promoting peace or war, pointing out that both 
violent extremism and non-violent movements can be religious. Instead, 
his interest is in the factors that cause religion to be used to legitimise 
violence. For him, it is ‘religious illiteracy’, a lack of understanding of 
religious writings and their interpretations by the common people, 
which makes it possible for reckless political and religious leaders to 
manipulate populations to achieve their violent objectives. At the same 
time, Appleby sees the inherent ambivalence of religion as fundamen-
tally positive because it provides opportunities for peace promotion. 

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British Academy // 
The Role of Religion in Conflict and Peacebuilding
25
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