The Religious Right and US Middle East Policy

The Religious Right and US Middle East Policy PDF Author: Josef Braml
Publisher: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research
ISBN: 9948007328
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 13

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Book Description
The Christian Right in the USA has developed considerable financial and organizational clout over the years. With George W. Bush's victory in 2000, for the first time, a Republican presidential victory rested on a religious, conservative, southern-centered coalition led by a bloc of white Protestant fundamentalists and Evangelical Christians. The election results in November 2004 confirmed this trend. In the U.S. system of checks and balances, networks have a central role in the legislative process. About one-third of the circles on both sides of the Capitol consist of Congressional staffers and about two-thirds of external, grassroots organizations, interest groups and think tanks. Thus, the Christian Right is an "issue network" or "advocacy coalition," comprising different individuals and organizations with common worldviews and interests. National security issues provide a sustainable platform for different conservative elites and voters, as well as a glue to strengthen the cohesion of a broader Republican majority. Karl Rove, Republican strategist and confidant of the President, is trying hard to establish a permanent Republican majority. Assuming that the fight against terror will continue for a long time, it is probable that Republican campaign strategists and above all the Christian Right will continue their efforts to keep "existential" issues of national security, as well as moral and religious concerns, high on the political agenda. The issue network of the Christian Right is increasingly concerned with security and foreign policy issues, especially when Israel's security is at stake. Both the Christian Right and neo-conservatives want to strengthen U.S. military ability and use this unrivaled power to create a world in which both the U.S. and Israel can feel secure against forces portrayed as "evil." They can also count on support from pro-Israeli PACs, especially the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This situation has markedly reduced the American President's room for maneuver on Middle East policy.

The Religious Right and US Middle East Policy

The Religious Right and US Middle East Policy PDF Author: Josef Braml
Publisher: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research
ISBN: 9948007328
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 13

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Christian Right in the USA has developed considerable financial and organizational clout over the years. With George W. Bush's victory in 2000, for the first time, a Republican presidential victory rested on a religious, conservative, southern-centered coalition led by a bloc of white Protestant fundamentalists and Evangelical Christians. The election results in November 2004 confirmed this trend. In the U.S. system of checks and balances, networks have a central role in the legislative process. About one-third of the circles on both sides of the Capitol consist of Congressional staffers and about two-thirds of external, grassroots organizations, interest groups and think tanks. Thus, the Christian Right is an "issue network" or "advocacy coalition," comprising different individuals and organizations with common worldviews and interests. National security issues provide a sustainable platform for different conservative elites and voters, as well as a glue to strengthen the cohesion of a broader Republican majority. Karl Rove, Republican strategist and confidant of the President, is trying hard to establish a permanent Republican majority. Assuming that the fight against terror will continue for a long time, it is probable that Republican campaign strategists and above all the Christian Right will continue their efforts to keep "existential" issues of national security, as well as moral and religious concerns, high on the political agenda. The issue network of the Christian Right is increasingly concerned with security and foreign policy issues, especially when Israel's security is at stake. Both the Christian Right and neo-conservatives want to strengthen U.S. military ability and use this unrivaled power to create a world in which both the U.S. and Israel can feel secure against forces portrayed as "evil." They can also count on support from pro-Israeli PACs, especially the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This situation has markedly reduced the American President's room for maneuver on Middle East policy.

Rulers, Religion, and Riches

Rulers, Religion, and Riches PDF Author: Jared Rubin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110703681X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.

Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right

Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right PDF Author: J. Brooks Flippen
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820337706
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
As Jimmy Carter ascended to the presidency the heir apparent to Democratic liberalism, he touted his background as a born-again evangelical. Once in office, his faith indeed helped form policy on a number of controversial moral issues. By acknowledging certain behaviors as sinful while insisting that they were private matters beyond government interference, J. Brooks Flippen argues, Carter unintentionally alienated both social liberals and conservative Christians, thus ensuring that the debate over these moral “family issues” acquired a new prominence in public and political life. The Carter era, according to Flippen, stood at a fault line in American culture, religion, and politics. In the wake of the 1960s, some Americans worried that the traditional family faced a grave crisis. This newly politicized constituency viewed secular humanism in education, the recognition of reproductive rights established by Roe v. Wade, feminism, and the struggle for homosexual rights as evidence of cultural decay and as a challenge to religious orthodoxy. Social liberals viewed Carter's faith with skepticism and took issue with his seeming unwillingness to build on recent progressive victories. Ultimately, Flippen argues, conservative Christians emerged as the Religious Right and were adopted into the Republican fold. Examining Carter's struggle to placate competing interests against the backdrop of difficult foreign and domestic issues—a struggling economy, the stalled Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, disputes in the Middle East, handover of the Panama Canal, and the Iranian hostage crisis—Flippen shows how a political dynamic was formed that continues to this day.

To Bring the Good News to All Nations

To Bring the Good News to All Nations PDF Author: Lauren Frances Turek
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501748939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
When American evangelicals flocked to Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe in the late twentieth century to fulfill their Biblical mandate for global evangelism, their experiences abroad led them to engage more deeply in foreign policy activism at home. Lauren Frances Turek tracks these trends and illuminates the complex and significant ways in which religion shaped America's role in the late–Cold War world. In To Bring the Good News to All Nations, she examines the growth and influence of Christian foreign policy lobbying groups in the United States beginning in the 1970s, assesses the effectiveness of Christian efforts to attain foreign aid for favored regimes, and considers how those same groups promoted the imposition of economic and diplomatic sanctions on those nations that stifled evangelism. Using archival materials from both religious and government sources, To Bring the Good News to All Nations links the development of evangelical foreign policy lobbying to the overseas missionary agenda. Turek's case studies—Guatemala, South Africa, and the Soviet Union—reveal the extent of Christian influence on American foreign policy from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Evangelical policy work also reshaped the lives of Christians overseas and contributed to a reorientation of U.S. human rights policy. Efforts to promote global evangelism and support foreign brethren led activists to push Congress to grant aid to favored, yet repressive, regimes in countries such as Guatemala while imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions on nations that persecuted Christians, such as the Soviet Union. This advocacy shifted the definitions and priorities of U.S. human rights policies with lasting repercussions that can be traced into the twenty-first century.

Religious Minorities in the Middle East

Religious Minorities in the Middle East PDF Author: Anh Nga Longva
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004207422
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Focusing on the situation of both Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities in the Middle East, this volume offers an analysis of various strategies of resilience and accommodation from a historical as well a contemporary perspective.

Religious Freedom in Islam

Religious Freedom in Islam PDF Author: Daniel Philpott
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190908203
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Since at least the attacks of September 11, 2001, one of the most pressing political questions of the age has been whether Islam is hostile to religious freedom. Daniel Philpott examines conditions on the ground in forty-seven Muslim-majority countries today and offers an honest, clear-eyed answer to this urgent question. It is not, however, a simple answer. From a satellite view, the Muslim world looks unfree. But, Philpott shows, the truth is much more complex. Some one-fourth of Muslim-majority countries are in fact religiously free. Of the other countries, about forty percent are governed not by Islamists but by a hostile secularism imported from the West, while the other sixty percent are Islamist. The picture that emerges is both honest and hopeful. Yes, most Muslim-majority countries are lacking in religious freedom. But, Philpott argues, the Islamic tradition carries within it "seeds of freedom," and he offers guidance for how to cultivate those seeds in order to expand religious freedom in the Muslim world and the world at large. It is an urgent project. Religious freedom promotes goods like democracy and the advancement of women that are lacking in the Muslim-majority world and reduces ills like civil war, terrorism, and violence. Further, religious freedom is simply a matter of justice--not an exclusively Western value, but rather a universal right rooted in human nature. Its realization is critical to the aspirations of religious minorities and dissenters in Muslim countries, to Muslims living in non-Muslim countries or under secular dictatorships, and to relations between the West and the Muslim world. In this thoughtful book, Philpott seeks to establish a constructive middle ground in a fiery and long-lasting debate over Islam.

Perceptions of Palestine

Perceptions of Palestine PDF Author: Kathleen Christison
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520922360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
For most of the twentieth century, considered opinion in the United States regarding Palestine has favored the inherent right of Jews to exist in the Holy Land. That Palestinians, as a native population, could claim the same right has been largely ignored. Kathleen Christison's controversial new book shows how the endurance of such assumptions, along with America's singular focus on Israel and general ignorance of the Palestinian point of view, has impeded a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Christison begins with the derogatory images of Arabs purveyed by Western travelers to the Middle East in the nineteenth century, including Mark Twain, who wrote that Palestine's inhabitants were "abject beggars by nature, instinct, and education." She demonstrates other elements that have influenced U.S. policymakers: American religious attitudes toward the Holy Land that legitimize the Jewish presence; sympathy for Jews derived from the Holocaust; a sense of cultural identity wherein Israelis are "like us" and Arabs distant aliens. She makes a forceful case that decades of negative portrayals of Palestinians have distorted U.S. policy, making it virtually impossible to promote resolutions based on equality and reciprocity between Palestinians and Israelis. Christison also challenges prevalent media images and emphasizes the importance of terminology: Two examples are the designation of who is a "terrorist" and the imposition of place names (which can pass judgment on ownership). Christison's thoughtful book raises a final disturbing question: If a broader frame of reference on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had been employed, allowing a less warped public discourse, might not years of warfare have been avoided and steps toward peace achieved much earlier?

Religious Resurgence and Politics in the Contemporary World

Religious Resurgence and Politics in the Contemporary World PDF Author: Emile Sahliyeh
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438418477
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This book examines the highly politicized religious groups and movements that have surfaced since the late 1970s in the United States, Central America, South Africa, the Philippines, India, and the Middle East. Sahliyeh and others analyze this trend toward the politicization of religious conservatism and question a number of assumptions central to concepts of modernization. For example, it has been assumed by development theorists that the interrelated components of modernization would enhance the trend toward secularization of societies. This book shows that in many societies today religious revivalism and fundamentalism seem to be direct products of modernization. A global, comparative approach is utilized to formulate general explanations for religious revivalism and its implications for modernization, development, and politics.

With God on Our Side

With God on Our Side PDF Author: William Curtis Martin
Publisher: Broadway
ISBN: 0767922573
Category : Christianity and politics
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The rise of the Religious Right is one of the most important political and cultural stories of our time. To many, this controversial movement threatens to upset the nation's delicate balance of religious and secular interests. To others, the Religious Right is valiantly struggling to preserve religious liberty and to prove itself as the last, best hope to save America's soul. In With God on Our Side --the first balanced account of conservative Christians' impact on post-war politics--William Martin paints a vivid and authoritative portrait of America's most powerful political interest group. Although its members now number between forty and sixty million people, the Religious Right has not always carried the tremendous--and growing--political clout it enjoys today. A hundred years ago, scattered groups of conservative Christians worked fervently to spread the Gospel, but their involvement in politics was marginal. Early in this century, however, a series of charismatic and ambitious leaders began transforming the movement; by the election of John F. Kennedy as our first Catholic president, the Religious Right had found its voice. Politics and religion began mixing as never before. From Richard Nixon's strategic manipulation of Graham's religious influence in the 1970s, to Ronald Reagan's association with Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980s, to the Christian Coalition's emergence as a slick, sophisticated political machine, the line separating the pulpit from the presidency became increasingly blurred. Now, preachers such as Graham, Falwell, and Pat Robertson preside over ministries so vast and well organized that most politicians can ill afford to ignore their views--or lose their votes. In recent years, the Religious Right's political influence has propelled it into spheres beyond pure politics. Race relations, abortion and reproductive rights, school curricula, the nature and role of the family--conservative Christians have embraced all of these socially charged issues, and their activism has irrevocably altered the way America confronts its thorniest problems. How does a free society draw the line between Church and State without removing religious conviction from public life? What motivates individual Americans to do battle in the culture wars? Most importantly, when politicians and religiously motivated activists join forces, who holds the reins? Drawing on over 100 new interviews with key figures in the movement, William Martin brilliantly captures the spirit of the age as he explores both sides of this dramatic debate. Written in conjunction with the producers of the public television series of the same name, this landmark book is essential reading for all Americans--conservative and liberal, fundamentalist and atheist--who care about the spiritual health and political future of our country. From the Hardcover edition.

Making the New Middle East

Making the New Middle East PDF Author: Valerie J. Hoffman
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 081565457X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
Demands for freedom, justice, and dignity have animated protests and revolutions across the Middle East in recent years, from the Iranian Green Movement and the Arab Spring uprisings to Turkey’s March for Justice and the ongoing struggle in Palestine. Although expectations raised by the Arab Spring were largely disappointed and protests that toppled entrenched rulers unleashed vicious counterrevolutionary forces, there is no doubt that the landscape of the Middle East has changed. Drawing from diverse disciplines, this volume offers critical perspectives on these changes, covering politics, religion, gender dynamics, human rights, media, literature, and music. What ultimately has changed in "the new Middle East"? Who are the actors pushing the direction of change? How are aspirations for change being expressed through media and the arts? With extensive analysis and thoughtful reflection, this book gives readers an in-depth portrayal of a modernizing Middle East.