Manouki, Sofia
(2023)
Anders Breivik’s War.
Master thesis, Master Religion Conflict and Globalisation.
Abstract
Breivik’s terrorism is not religious, but decidedly secular, because it concerns a war fought against a secular enemy, for a secular cause and by a secular in-group whose “Christianity” is, at best, the explicitly non-religious, yet “cultural” half-hearted, rationalized second best to the secretly preferable Odinism—and a coded reference to race anyway. As such, Breivik’s War is atypical of the capitalization of religious narratives that a cosmic war necessitates: his mix and match reconfigurations and re-imaginings of religious references is particularly problematic, because the relevance/usefulness of (the supposedly prone to violence) religion, as far as cosmic war theory is concerned, is precisely that established metaphysical (religious) imagery can be weaponized in order to legitimize violent conflicts.
────────────
Finally, Breivik’s ideas may indeed inspire acts of truly religious terrorism in extremist individuals, regardless of how he is represented; However, it is vital that scholars and the media do not encourage the misrepresentation of secular violence, by inaccurately portraying him— and other similar cases—as a religious terrorist, because that secondary instrumentalization of religion on the part of the analyst rather than the terrorist-subject, makes unclear what the true targets are (e.g. government officials, antagonistic political parties etc.) and draws (negative) attention to religious groups while letting future non-religious, radicalized lone wolves fly under the radar, thereby unnecessarily pouring taxpayer money into questionable security policies .
Introducing “religion” in the discursive representations of terrorist acts, should therefore include discussing the perpetrator’s specific conceptualization of religion, particularly with regard to whether it is a coded reference to another issue altogether. In this context, deceptively allencompassing theoretical tools, such as Juergensmeyer’s “cosmic war” concept, need to be refined by specifically including parameters concerning secular violence, that narrow down the cases of sociopolitical conflicts that can be described as religiously framed terrorism/cosmic wars, even when the terrorist brings up “religion”.
| Type: |
Thesis
(Master)
|
| Supervisors (RUG): |
|
| Degree programme: |
Master Religion Conflict and Globalisation |
| Academic year: |
2022-2023 |
| Date of delivery: |
30 Nov 2023 13:25 |
| Last modified: |
30 Nov 2023 13:25 |
| URI: |
https://rcs.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/751 |
Actions (requires login)
 |
View Item |
