God's Warriors Religious Violence and the Global Crisis of Secularism

Religious violence remains an urgent problem for countries around the world. Despite this, scholars and analysts continue to struggle to understand the intersection of religion and violence and devise effective counterextremism policies. God's Warriors offers a novel explanation for religious violence in the modern world, challenging a common assumption that such violence stems primarily from embattled, oppressed, and marginalized religious minority groups who seek to assert their rights vis-à-vis majorities. Instead, argues Nilay Saiya, religious violence most commonly arises from dominant and privileged religious majorities. When historically and culturally dominant faith traditions receive special treatment from the state in the form of social and legal privileges and rhetorical support from politicians, extremists from these majoritarian communities are emboldened to target minorities. The more states favor dominant religious communities and discriminate against minority ones, the more majoritarian violence they produce. This "paradox of privilege" results from a global crisis of political secularism afflicting much of the world today. Drawing on examples from the world's major religious traditions--Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism--Saiya's theory reshapes our understanding of the sources of religious violence in our era and carries important policy implications for decisionmakers.

Nilay Saiya is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He holds research interests in religion and global politics. He is author of two books: Weapon of Peace: How Religious Liberty Combats Terrorism (2018) and The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation (Oxford University Press 2022). His peer-reviewed studies have appeared in journals such as Conflict Management and Peace Science, European Journal of Public Policy, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Democracy, Political Research Quarterly, and Terrorism and Political Violence, among many others. His public affairs commentary has appeared in Christianity Today, EU Observer, Liberty Magazine, National Interest, USA Today, The Diplomat, Slate, and others.