Unforced Errors: ISIS, The Baath Party, And The Reconciliation Of The Religious and The Secular

摘要

The need to bridge the perceived gap between religious and secular allies-individuals or movements incorrectly understood to be in tension with one another-presents a serious challenge for those attempting to understand such collaborations. Dominant efforts to reconcile the two have, moreover, been problematically inadequate. This article-taking religious ISIS and the secular Baath Party as its example-begins by identifying and critiquing the dominant strategies that analysts have employed to explain such collaborations: secularization (of ISIS), conversion (of the Baath Party), and minimization (of religion and ideology altogether). It argues that each of these approaches relies on distorting and misrepresenting the very movements under analysis and thus precludes an accurate understanding of what is happening. It then charts a constructive path forward by adapting political theorist William Connolly's work on resonance machines. An approach informed by Connolly makes it possible to retain ISIS's religiosity and the Baath Party's secularism; highlights the reality that putatively incompatible movements may be united by a shared ethos that amplifies their respective ideologies; and sheds new light on the implicit messaging that may tempt recruits to join such movements.