Why Secularism Fails? Secular Nationalism and Religious Revivalism in Israel

Abstract

This paper discusses the relations between secularism, religion and nationalism in Israel and offers a thesis about the failure of secularism there. The papers adopts Michael Mann's view of "religion" as a private case of ideological network of power and suggests a typology of four possible heuristic modules of political legitimacy, which are composed of different blends of nationalism and religionism (the suffix "ism" is added to underline Mann's view of religion as an ideology). These modules are constructed by the crosscutting of two axes: the axis of nationalism, which taps "weak" to "strong" nationalism, and the axis of religionism, which taps "weak" to "strong" religion (wherein the ultimate case of "weak religion" means secularism). The four modules are the following: strong nationalism/weak religionism: this is the case of a dominant and energetic secular nationalism. Strong nationalism/strong religionism: this is the case of a fusion between strong nationalism and strong religionism, which creates a kind of indissoluble mesh of "religious nationalism". Weak nationalism/weak religionism: this module represents a polity which is not founded upon strong pre-political "primordial" or ascriptive, national or religious, communal identity, but is rather constitutionally or "contractually" oriented. Weak nationalism/strong religionism: historically, this combination represents pre-modern and thus pre-national cultures, in which religion was pervasive as a communal identity. Presently, this combination can represent a type of communal "post-nationalism" or a transnational fundamentalism. The paper explains how Israeli political culture had moved from the type of strong nationalism/weak religionism to the type of strong nationalism/ strong religionism, which is inimical to secularism.Keywords Israel . Nationalism . Religion . Secularism This paper discusses the relations between secularism, religion, and nationalism in Israel and offers a thesis about the failure of secularism there; a failure "in the last instance," so to speak, because in the "first instance," say 60 years ago, observers tended to assess that Int J Polit Cult Soc (2008) 21:57-73

Religion and Politics’ in Israel: the Mythology of Jewish Nationalism (until 1993)

“…At first, the Palestinian colonization has become legitimate which means they have the right to own the land and it is not through trouble. Secondly, an exclusion instrument or local Arabs must help form the national boundaries to support national exclusiveness (Ram, 2008).…”

“…There were two major pillars for the Israeli-Jewish civil religion from the 1970s. The first pillar shows the nation downfall known as the Holocaust and the second pillar shows the revival of the nation through the Israeli Arab wars (Ram, 2008). Judaism does not consider these pillars as their traditional stock, but it allowed for Israeli's to attain a stronger identity of Jewishness after the 1970s.…”

“…The bottom line remains the same for all aspects. The Israeli Jewishness is transformed from the religion of a nation to a national religion keeping an exception of some small ultraOrthodox enclaves who would not accept the Zionism traditions (Ram, 2008).…”

Serbian Orthodoxy between traditional and universal values: Discourse analysis of the Journal Orthodoxy

“…Uri Ram (Ram, 2008) compared the religionism (religion composed with 'ism', a word that refers to religion as ideological doctrine) to nationalism and secularism in order to understand the relation between secular and national in Israel society and the way they immerse into collective identities. Ram distinguishes four models where nationalism and religionism meet in different degree of interaction:…”

“…The land and the nation have turned into the primary principles of the new Jewish religionism, delegating God and religious faith as such to a third priority." (Ram, 2008: 69) The cult of the land/ territory or the sacralisation of the land is equally a common principle in the case of Serbia -Kosovo is seen as Serbian Jerusalem (that is detected in Orthodoxy discourse as well) -a direct correlation between those two religious nationalism (Abrazović, 2010), or as Ram concludes the process is rather seen as a nationalization of religion than religious nationalism with the same result -creation of national religion (Ram, 2008: 69).…”