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What accounts for the nation's persistence as a central object of identification in anticolonial movements during the 1960s? How can we understand the appeal of nationalism when it simultaneously could signify one path to and a pitfall of decolonisation, as Frantz Fanon warned? This article addresses some of these questions concerning anticolonialism, its political possibilities, decolonial fantasies and desires in Iran. I discuss how Jalal Al-e Ahmad articulated a diagnosis of cultural imperialism, gharbzadegi, that expressed tensions between the translocality to which his framework aspired and the rigid confines of the nation-state model. This imbroglio, I claim, reverberated through the pathologisation of the national group, with the wounds of colonial violence unsettling and reforming different national attachments in Iran. To support this argument, I read the specific conditions, dynamics and sociohistorical processes in which Al-e Ahmad was immersed alongside the transnational structures to which they were related. Juxtaposing this pathological discourse with his travelogues, we can grasp a specific articulation of the translocal-national dyad that informed Al-e Ahmad's life and found expression in his limited theorisation of gharbzadegi. Analysing this particular context, I argue that this entanglement exposes the limits and pitfalls of anticolonialism in Iran. Souffrir pour/contre la nation : gharbzadegi et les tensions de l'anticolonialisme en Iran [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the structure, content, and function of widely circulating prophetic narratives in contemporary Greece and Cyprus. Prophetologists play a key role in recycling and disseminating prophecies through traditional and modern means of communication in an attempt to explain conditions of crisis and to promote conservative moral values and nationalistic aspirations as salvific remedies in the public sphere. Their highly politicized prophetic discourse blurs the differentiation between religion and politics that characterizes secular modernity. But at the same time, the use of modern media and secular strategies for sacred purposes have unintended secularizing effects on the religious field. Finally, the article explores the reasons why prophecy belief finds fertile soil for proliferation in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poland's public sphere, in the three decades following the fall of communism, has been shaped by tensions between secular and religious visions of the polity. This article analyzes significant trends in the politico-religious landscape of contemporary Poland and discusses the growing polarization of Polish society around religion and politics. While the Catholic Church openly supports the country's populist and right-wing government and remains strong from the loyalty of a significant portion on the Polish population, resistance to that political alliance and to the traditional association between Polishness and Catholicism is observable in various corners of Polish society. These include factions within the Catholic Church arguing for the depoliticization of Polish Catholicism; apostate and secularist movements; and the support for, and participation in, a notable Jewish revival. The article shows that while very different in both content and form, these movements converge in their effort to secularize Polish national identity and build a public sphere where various religious and non-religious value systems co-exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catalonia is simultaneously the most secular region in Spain and the region that places the greatest priority on actively managing religious affairs. Moreover, parties comprising the Catalan Left have been particularly assertive in pushing for legislative proposals to reduce the privileges of the Catholic Church and the general presence of religion in the public sphere. This article examines the sources of Catalonia's exceptionality in religious matters, with a focus on the entanglements between religion and nationalism in the region. Drawing on survey data, legal documents, transcripts of parliamentary debates, media reports, and historical studies, the author argues that counter-state understandings of nationhood have figured centrally in the rapid secularization of Catalonia's populace, the Catalan government's proactive approach to religious governance, and the Catalan Left's insistence on church–state reform at both the regional and national levels. This analysis speaks to broader questions regarding religion, secularism, and nationalism in stateless nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Most of the Spanish media have portrayed Catalan independentism as nationalism and populism. This article argues that this political and social mobilization does not fit into the usual definitions of populism as anti-elitist, anti-liberal and anti-pluralistic movement. Catalan independentism is here interpreted by stressing its democratic features, namely as a form of democratic populism: horizontally organized, and critical of procedural safeguards and counter-majoritarian powers. The popular organization of the referendum on 1 October 2017 and the vigorous democratic experience by almost half of the population of Catalonia allow for a characterization of this populism as a hybrid phenomenon that includes bottom-up and top-down dynamics, thereby contrasting with the usual leader-centred understanding of populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nationalisation of religion is introduced in this article as the condition in which the secular interests and values of the state are articulated and enacted by religious organisations or individuals participating in public life. It has two attributes: (1) performances are shrouded in a nationalistic character that renders the religious significantly invisible and as a result; (2) the prevailing political order proceeds unquestioned. To make its case, the article draws from the experiences of the youth of Soka who perform in public events such as the National Day Parade and Chingay in Singapore. These performances are some of the ways in which Soka presents itself as a cultural organisation working for peace and progress in Singapore. For them, it is about sending a message that individual and collective struggles can be overcome and that in spite of their differences, people can come together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the notion of ‘cultural defense’ to examine how nationalism shapes contemporary contestations around religion and secularity in Armenia. While clearly relevant, this framework has rarely been used for the analysis of religious change in the Caucasus region as part of the broader post-Soviet space. This article fills this lacuna. Simultaneously, it moves beyond the relatively narrow interest in the degree of secularization or reinforced religious nationalism as social outcomes of cultural defense situations. Instead, we are interested in how boundaries between religion and secular spheres in society are drawn in particular ways, how the resulting religious – secular configurations have evolved since the end of the Soviet Union – of which Armenia was a part – and how concepts of nationhood and nationalist mobilizations have shaped this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to conventional readings of secularization and its usual analytical point of references – American and French civil religions, American religious vitalism and French laïcité – this article seeks to better understand an intermediary religio-political configuration, named ‘cultural religion’, as widespread as neglected. Independently from the question of faith, the full respect of religious practices or knowledge of dogma, Western populations maintain a cultural attachment towards Christianity, which may characterize one of the important contemporary social functions conferred to Christian churches, and help understand their deep cultural and historical impregnation. This article will address the conventional account of religious indicators, more precisely the religious type of ‘seasonal conformists’, the process of secularization as culturalization, and will distinguish between cultural religion, civil religion and political religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In standard Albanian studies and Western scholarship, including both the work of religious and political activists and that of less ‘interested’ lay people, historical and textual fact-finding efforts have only confirmed and indeed perpetuated the myth that the thinking of Naim Frashëri was formed and dominated by Bektashism and that his ‘Albanianism’ had a Bektashi foundation. The author intends to scrutinize and disprove this analysis, arguing that while Frashëri’s thinking did indeed have a religious cast, it went far beyond Bektashism in its heterodoxy, being a kind of liberation theology and pantheism, which generated an all-inclusive attitude to Albanian identity, not one limited in any particular way to Bektashism. Methodologically, such a picture must arise if we submit the available empirical evidence to critical analysis from the perspective of social theoretical approaches to religion developed in sociology and anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sufi shrines in Pakistan are the communal loci of popular piety. Through their symbolic meaning and capacity for mobilization, they have become pivotal power stakes in Pakistani politics. Since the late 1950s, the State has attempted to nationalize them and make them tools for the construction of its identity and authority, in a modernist perspective embodied in the Ministry of Religious Endowments (awqaf ministry). In Pakistan, the veneration of saints takes a spectacularly festive turn during the ‘urs (meaning ‘marriage’ in Arabic, symbolizing the union of the saint with God). As the anniversaries of the death of saints, the ‘urs have become the focus of yearly pilgrimages. In nationalized shrines, these popular festivals are managed by the awqaf ministry. Among the most notable is the ‘urs of the patron saint of Lahore, Hadhrat Syed Ali Bin Uthman al-Hujweri (1010–1072). His shrine is one of the biggest in Pakistan and his ‘urs constitutes one of the largest religious gatherings in the Pakistani calendar. Massively loaded with nationalist and political symbols, the religious ritual is legitimized as a key element of national identity and, conversely, serves to legitimize the government and its administrative machinery. Hence, the State exploits the pilgrimage as a political platform in order to communicate with the population, through emotional and symbolic means. Thus, the celebration of the union of the saint with God somehow becomes the yearly opportunity for the sacred union between the Pakistani State and society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author aims to analyse the relationships between secularisation and nationalism. In the course of the debate regarding the origin of nationalism, some scholars have argued that nationalism has filled the void left by historical religions. Nationalism could therefore be considered a religion of modernity, or a functional equivalent of historical religions. The author aims to reconsider this issue. First, he explores the sociological origins of the theory of nationalism as a religion of modernity deriving from Durkheim’s Sociology of Religion. Second, he provides an overview of the different versions of this theory. Finally, he assesses the weaknesses of these approaches and proposes an alternative theoretical framework in which to reconsider the relationships between secularisation and nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]