CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Mikhail, Madonna Magdy |
|---|---|
| Title | Merging Religious Ideologies in State-Building Projects in the Middle East: A Comparison between the Religious Zionist Movement and the Islamic State |
| Summary | A new, powerful organization, the Islamic State (ISIS), emerged in the Middle East claiming to reestablish a caliphate system. Both the nature and the scope of violence committed by ISIS are unmatched in recent human history. However, in a region where the practice of monotheism is held to be of great significance, this is not the first religious state-building project. The study investigates the employment of religious ideologies in state formation processes of the Religious Zionist movement (a faction of the Zionist movement) and the Islamic State (ISIS) in the stage preceding state formation; namely, before 1948 and 2014 respectively. The aim is to analyze the ideological concordance as well as identity construction of two state-building projects that operationalize religion for the restoration of historical states. Through an intraregional comparison along with a critical discourse analysis, I depict the similarities and differences between the usages of religion in these processes. I specifically analyze each movement’s own perception of the concepts of statehood, peoplehood, restoration, and legitimacy in order to draw comparative conclusions from the semantics. The research shows that despite significant differences between the two movements that include, ISIS’s extreme fundamentalism and exclusion of out-groups and the Religious Zionists’ willingness to cooperate with the secular, Zionist majority, the similarities prove to be higher specifically within the scope of the study: ideology and identity construction. Both cases aspire to (re)structure a state that applies a comprehensive, religious legal system as idealized by a nostalgic past. Religion is significantly instrumentalized – in several, similar manners – as a motive and basis for legitimate claims to implement an envisioned project with an imagined community. The analyses, further, reveal ISIS’s plans and aspirations as well as puts it in a comparative perspective in order to better understand its motives. |
| Supervisor | Enyedi, Zsolt |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/mikhail_madonna.pdf |
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