Abstract
In many contexts today it is clear that religious minorities will face escalating discrimination and persecution. The reason is simple: threatened political elites often seek support or attempt to demobilize opposition by reframing secular conflicts as religious conflicts in a process of religious outbidding. Religious outbidding has led not only to intensified discrimination in employment, worship, and education, but to large-scale violence, including civil war. In Muslim-majority countries, elites are increasing relying on two options to bolster their credibility: 1) introducing and intensifying shari'a law; and then (2) scapegoating those they deemed as threats to their vision of the role of religion in public life.
Notes
1. Data are available online at: http://www.freedomhouse.org.
2. For a reconsideration, see Casanova (Citation1994), and for support that the process secularization is continuing, see Norris and Inglehart (Citation2004).
3. Turabi's efforts began in the 1960s when he became the Dean of the Law School at the University of Khartoum and the secretary general of Sudan's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turabi spent the 1960s and 1970s organizing his vision and putting into place proponents of that vision to help create an Islamic republic based in Shari'a law (Burr and Collins Citation2003).
4. Under the Shari'a law adopted in Sudan before 1989, apostasy has not been punished by death. It has been added to the old Shari'a provisions following the Bashir coup in 1989 (Williams Citation1988).
5. In fact one could trace the struggle back centuries since the Islamists were attempting bring back Islam to Sudan, which was first promulgated by Muhammed Ahmad, who declared himself the first Mahdi. Mahdism remained a strong political and religious force for much of Sudanese history (Burr and Collins Citation2003, xv).
6. A lengthy interview by this author of Turabi in December, 2009 in Khartoum, Sudan, revealed that he was firmly committed to this vision and that he believed it was entirely consistent with the entirety of Sudanese history.
7. Purity discourse in Arabic translations of the Quran in fact has an ancient history; as evidenced in this passage from the Quran: “Truly the idolaters are unclean; so let them not, after this year, approach the Sacred Mosque ….” (9: 28).
8. Kuran misses this domestic-level dimension as he focuses only on “western” scapegoats.
9. And in fact, some of these calls were made, but fellow Christians in the USA, for instance, resorted to little more than shaming and the provision of aid (Phares Citation1998).
10. In June 2005, the author conducted a series of interviews with former associates of Basayev in Moscow, who confirmed Basayev's motives when it came to religion: politics first, then religion.
11. The analysis confirmed that the use of repression by the government is associated with a significant increase in the probability of Islamist violence.
