Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This essay revisits Civil Religion as applied in the American context by sociologist Robert N. Bellah. While the idea has been both lauded and criticized, it has become the dominant theoretical conceptualization of religious rhetoric in political discourse. While the concept remains theoretically and methodologically valid, several case studies of historical and contemporary presidential rhetoric suggest that a new theoretical conceptualization—religious rhetorical form—may prove more fruitful, particularly in instances of contemporary presidential rhetoric.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: My attempt in this paper is to argue for the mainstreaming of gender in the discourse on security and militancy, by engaging with women’s material and ideological contribution to militant activities and political violence. Women who participate as perpetr

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Even though the majority of suicide bombers have been male, female suicide bombers have carried out a number of attacks since 1985. As a spate of suicide bombings around the world in recent years has shown, the face of terror is increasingly becoming female. Female suicide bombers have struck in India, Turkey, Pakistan, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Russia, Uzbekistan and Iraq. From women targeting Israeli troops during Lebanon’s Civil War to women waging the ongoing insurgency in Iraq and Palestine, Middle Eastern female suicide bombers have been employed in several conflicts, by a variety of groups and individuals, against both military and civilian targets.

Most of the research on female suicide bombers in the Middle East has concentrated mainly on the social, economic and political causes of suicide-bombing. Little attention has been devoted to the religio-cultural causes of the phenomenon. While the motivation of any suicide bomber, whether male or female, is often open to different interpretations, as the motives cannot be established with certainty, female suicide bombers in the Middle East do have certain things in common. In this paper, I discuss several religious and cultural factors that female suicide bombers in the Middle East share despite their age and nationality differences. My primary argument is that suicide bombing elevates women’s status in societies where women often do not undertake large roles outside the domestic sphere. While some women engage in suicide bombing out of shame or fear after breaking cultural and religious rules, their social status improves and a subculture of tolerance toward them develops within their communities after they carry out their acts.

This paper seeks to find answers to the following questions: How are social relations and religious and cultural norms and beliefs transformed in the context of female suicide bombing? How do female suicide bombers reconfigure society’s perceptions of suicide and the definition of social status in societies where female social mobility is almost impossible? It also makes recommendations on how to counter the threat of female suicide bombing, given the changing dynamics of terrorism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The post-Cold War liberal would-be new world order rests on a tripod: democracy, capitalism, and secularism. What ‘secularism’ means varies a great deal across time and space. As Talal Asad and others have pointed out, secularisms are as plural and contested as Islams; analyses and politics fail if they are constructed on the foundation of a monolithic conception of such large and multi-faceted systems of producing meaning and order. Post-Saddam Iraq is an experimental crucible for the new world order, in which competing theories of politics and society are being tested. This paper surveys the genealogy of the secular political order struggling to come into being there, challenged on many fronts. It analyzes briefly Iraq’s constitutional history alongside the outside influences helping to shape the religio-political order today. What can the trajectories of other post-colonial republics of the region, exposed to a similar mixture of influences, tell us about Iraqi secularism’s possible future course?