A scorpion and a frog meet on the river bank and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him on his back over to the other side. The frog asks, ‘How do I know you won't sting me?’ The scorpion replies, ‘Because if I do, I will die too.’ The frog is satisfied and they set out across the river. In midstream the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they will both drown; he just has enough time to gasp ‘Why?’

The scorpion replies ‘Because it's in my nature.’ In the pages that follow we analyse the complex relationship between religion and security and in doing so consider the multifaceted nature of religion as a source of violence, conflict and insecurity on the one hand and a channel of peace, goodwill and security on the other. What is in religion's nature? Like the scorpion in Aesop's fable who just can't help but inflict suffering because it's in its nature? Or like the frog willing and trusting, more sinned against than sinning?

In the scorpion/frog dichotomy lies much contemporary debate around religion and international security. Such a narrative portrays a Manichean worldview in which religion is either good or bad and needs to be understood by policy makers and wider society in order to enhance social cohesion and reduce tensions leading to violence. This approach appeals to a problem-solving narrative in which religion can be defined, analysed, engaged, co-opted or resisted by political elites and populations as part of a political agenda couched in terms of security, social cohesion, faith-based initiatives and religious freedom. Religion and what counts as religious in terms of security are highly contestable and require far greater nuance than religion good/bad or violent/pacific binaries.

In seeking to go beyond this dichotomy Religion and International Security makes five main claims. Firstly, that religion, conceptions of religion and the utility of religion as a category in international security are social constructs and as such ‘religion’ is what we make of it. Whether religion is portrayed as violent or peaceful is a social construction, dependent upon what counts as religion, which acts are considered religious and whether religion can be essentialized in given situations, with ‘religious’ motivations trumping competing interpretations. Secondly, that religion ‘good or bad’ presents a false dichotomy that enables states to control and use religion by co-opting or excluding certain religious actors. Thirdly, that politics shapes religion as much as, if not more than, religion shapes politics. Religion changes according to context, time and place and constantly evolves through political change and necessity. Fourthly, that what is described as ‘religious’ is often political, or involves a complex range of issues, where the term ‘religion’ is used as a signifier to mask political intentions and objectives. The fifth claim is that religion is inherently political and its sacred texts, traditions, rituals and pastimes emerged to order society and legitimate authority.

Over the course of Religion and International Security we consider in theoretical, historical and contemporary perspective what Robert Seiple and Dennis Hoover described as the ‘new nexus in international relations’ (Seiple and Hoover 2004). The newness of the nexus in the aftermath of 9/11 was a reflection of the neglect of religion in the international relations and security studies disciplines. In 1966 the front cover of the April edition of Time magazine asked ‘Is God Dead?’ while just over forty years later John Micklethwait and the editor and Washington Bureau chief for The Economist, Adrian Wooldridge, declared ‘God is Back’ (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2009). Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel meanwhile declared the twenty-first century to be ‘God's Century’ (Toft et al. 2011). The reality is that God, or rather religion, has never gone away, it is simply that most Western scholars have turned a blind eye to the lived experience of large sections of humanity, for whom belief in God and religious practice is a reality.

Today, there is an increased recognition and acknowledgement, for good or ill, of the role that religion plays in international affairs, as not only scholars and commentators but also governments turn their attention to encouraging religious literacy, diplomacy, faith-based diplomacy, humanitarian assistance, peacemaking and conflict resolution. The public square, once denied religious actors, has become more inclusive as a post-secular space (Mavelli and Petito 2012). Religion is not going away and, although atheism is increasing in the West, religious belief in ostensibly or formerly atheistic countries, including the former Soviet Union, Vietnam and Cuba is growing exponentially. China has an estimated Christian population of 67 million, approximately five per cent of the population (Pew Research Center 2011c). Fenggang Yang describes a spiritual revival taking place in China and estimates that by 2030 China will have the world's largest Christian population (Yang 2012). Europe's Muslim population is expected to rise from 4.9 per cent of the population in 2016 to between 7.4 and 14 per cent in 2050 (Pew Research Center 2017d). Religion is here to stay.

At the time of writing, civil war is raging in Syria between government forces and those of the opposition; based as much, if not more, on religious fault lines than on attitudes towards democracy. Shia and Alawites, backed by the Shia forces of Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, are pitted against Sunni Muslims, divided along factional lines between pro-democracy activists, secular Kurds and a plethora of Islamist groups with Christians and Palestinian refugees caught in the middle. Sunni and Shia refugees have fled to neighbouring countries and into Europe presenting significant economic, demographic and logistical challenges for host countries. The short-lived Islamic State caliphate in Syria and Iraq has been destroyed, with Daesh fighters dispersing across the region and returning to their home countries with exhortations to use whatever weapons are available to attack Western and Jewish targets and those Muslims they consider apostate or takfir. Shia and Sufi mosques continue to be bombed and Coptic Christian churches and congregations targeted in Egypt.

Genocide has been committed by the Myanmar military and their Buddhist supporters against the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine province and by Daesh fighters on the Plains of Nineveh against Yazidis and Christians. Violence has erupted in the Palestinian territories following the decision of Donald Trump to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, which in turn was inspired by pressure from conservative evangelicals and opposed by Pope Francis, other Christian leaders, moderate Jews and Muslims across the world. At the same time, and away from the glare of publicity, faith-based organizations are distributing foreign assistance, setting up hospitals, clinics, schools and clean water programmes, engaging in interfaith dialogue, brokering peace in communities and practically demonstrating compassion for humanity. Whether religion is better represented by the scorpion or the frog is a matter for conjecture or, as we shall discover, construction. What is clear is the need to study, understand, analyse and critique religion and international security today.

Any study of religion requires clarity about what exactly is being discussed. Sociologists of religion have produced thousands of volumes debating the definition of religion. We do not have the time or space to do so here but we utilize Scott Thomas’ helpful formulation that divides approaches to religion between a cognitive-propositional and rationalist position, where religion is defined as a ‘set of ideas, doctrines, or belief systems’ against a narrative/linguistic approach. The latter approach is communitarian and historicist, insisting on the importance of ‘cultural and religious traditions and historic faith communities’ (Thomas 2005: 89) see also (MacIntyre 2005, 2008). The narrative/linguistic approach contends that religious traditions help to mould individual and communal identity and to shape lived experience and worldview. In Religion and International Security religion and faith are used interchangeably and are defined by both approaches in different contexts. The narrative/linguistic approach is adopted when contemplating the lived experience of religious belief and practice as part of a community where tradition is an important identifier. The cognitive-propositional approach is used, where religion is ascribing to a set of beliefs and doctrines, rather than a way of life, where religion is co-opted for the furtherance of a political cause.

Security is also highly contested and requires defining in order to explain how the term is to be understood throughout the book. Security at its most basic level is about threats, not necessarily or exclusively about war, but threats at many levels and how to counter those. International Relations (IR) and security studies have expanded as a sub-discipline in recent decades beyond relations between states and ensuring the integrity of the state to consider other referent objects including the international system and the human. Security now concerns issues as diverse as regime security, gender, terrorism, environment, economic, energy and cyber security. Speech acts can be used to securitize anything that can be portrayed as an existential threat to our way of life. Religion and International Security adopts Peter Hough's broad definition of security: ‘If people, be they government ministers or private individuals, perceive an issue to threaten their lives in some way and respond politically to this, then that issue should be deemed to be a security issue’ (Hough 2008: 10).

Security is not limited to being safeguarded against threats but ultimately goes beyond that to create an environment free from threat. Ken Booth describes such freedom as emancipation, the ability to do what we would freely choose to do without human constraints. For Booth: ‘Security and emancipation are two sides of the same coin. Emancipation, not power or order, produces true security. Emancipation, theoretically, is security’ (Booth 1991: 319). It is argued in this book that religion has emancipatory potential, which is realized in the willingness to reach out to and embrace the ‘other’. This emancipatory potential competes with the stultifying and threatening bellicosity and intolerance of some religious actors for whom the ‘other’ represents an existential threat. It also competes with governments seeking to co-opt religious actors to help bring about political objectives, using religion as another weapon in a domestic or foreign-policy armoury.

In order better to understand changing approaches to incorporating religion into international relations and international security we focus in the first chapter on how religion came to be marginalized in IR theory since the Treaty of Westphalia until comparatively recently. We explore the dominant paradigm of a secular world order, secularism and the secularization thesis that came to dominate the discipline. We then consider and contest the contribution of the guardian of the public square, Jürgen Habermas, to an emerging post-secular discourse in which religion is readmitted under certain preconditions. This discussion sets up an examination of the main theoretical schools in IR and their potential to incorporate religion, including Realism, the English School, Liberalism, Constructivism, Copenhagen School and Critical Security Studies. The chapter argues that there is no need for a separate international relations of religion but rather that existing IR theory needs to move beyond a secular paradigm in order to understand more fully and theorize about the role of religion in a global context on a case-study basis.

Chapter 2 moves beyond traditional IR theory to introduce and analyse René Girard's proposition on the role of religion in violence and conflict, where he posits that rather than being the cause of violence in the world as so many claim, religion came about as an antidote to constrain violence. The concepts of mimetic rivalry, sacrifice and scapegoating are introduced before turning to inter- and intrafaith conflict, exploring conflict leading to violence between people using Huntington's clash of civilizations thesis as a starting point. The chapter explores interfaith conflict between Christians and Muslims, Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Muslims, through this Girardian paradigm, before considering the origins and outworking of the intrafaith divide between Sunni and Shia in Islam.

The third chapter, on just war and jihad, examines how Christianity transformed from a pacifist religion to the religion of the greatest war machine of its age, the Roman Empire, and how this co-option by the state introduces the concept of just-war theory. The chapter goes on to discuss jihad, exploring the emergence of the lesser jihad, or jihad of the sword into prominence within Islamist streams of Islam. Finally, the chapter examines the efficacy of the term ‘religious terrorism’ to describe terrorist acts within a religious paradigm, whether or not these acts are religiously motivated. Critical terrorism studies have challenged the certainties around ‘religious terrorism’ advanced by Terrorism Studies and this debate is revisited here.

Chapter 4 focuses on peacemaking and fundamentalist and mainstream contributions to religious cooperation and conflict resolution. We begin with an exploration of peace within the sacred texts in Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism before examining the practice of religious peacemakers, highlighting Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha campaign and Clonard–Fitzroy Fellowship's contribution to peace and reconciliation within Northern Ireland. The chapter proceeds with critical analysis of secular governments’ use of religious actors to advise on, and even lead, aspects of conflict resolution, diplomacy and humanitarian assistance. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the capacity for religious actors to make a significant contribution to societal wellbeing through religious cooperation.

The fifth chapter considers how the United States has responded to a post-secular international environment and developed faith-based initiatives in US foreign policy in the twenty-first century, arguing that such attempts seek to co-opt religious actors to achieve US political objectives. Faith-based diplomacy and an increasing emphasis on religious literacy are examined critically, before considering the enhanced role of military chaplains within the US armed forces. The chapter then analyses the role of faith-based humanitarian assistance in the context of international security. In Chapter 6 we move on to discuss human security before exploring the state of government harassment and social hostility towards religious groups today. The countries and regions where religious persecution is most prevalent are analysed and we consider the potential for human security to be strengthened through the intervention of religious and political actors in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, the Marrakesh Declaration and Charter for Compassion. The conclusion draws together the aspects of religion and international security covered in the book and concluding that whether religious practice is good or bad it is what we make it. Religion is inherently political and is often used as a signifier to mask political objectives and intentions. Governmental attempts to co-opt religious actors can be counter-productive but at its best, religiously motivated action has emancipatory potential to build bridges rather than walls, and to heal rather than to harm, and in doing so, enhance international security.