Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization: Issues and Challenges of the 21st Century 1536163236, 9781536163230

Citation preview

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HISTORY

MODERNITY, MODERNIZATION, AND GLOBALIZATION ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services.

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HISTORY Additional books and e-books in this series can be found on Nova’s website under the Series tab.

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HISTORY

MODERNITY, MODERNIZATION, AND GLOBALIZATION ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

SHAHID M. SHAHIDULLAH EDITOR

Copyright © 2019 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. We have partnered with Copyright Clearance Center to make it easy for you to obtain permissions to reuse content from this publication. Simply navigate to this publication’s page on Nova’s website and locate the “Get Permission” button below the title description. This button is linked directly to the title’s permission page on copyright.com. Alternatively, you can visit copyright.com and search by title, ISBN, or ISSN. For further questions about using the service on copyright.com, please contact: Copyright Clearance Center Phone: +1-(978) 750-8400 Fax: +1-(978) 750-4470 E-mail: [email protected].

NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shahidullah, Shahid M., 1950- editor. Title: Modernity, modernization, and globalization : issues and challenges of the 21st century / Shahid M. Shahidullah, editor. Description: Hauppauge, New York : Nova Science Publishers, 2019. | Series: Political science and history | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019041594 (print) | LCCN 2019041595 (ebook) | ISBN 9781536163230 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781536163247 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Civilization, Modern--21st century. | Culture and globalization. | Globalization--Social aspects. Classification: LCC CB428 .M634 2019 (print) | LCC CB428 (ebook) | DDC 909.83--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041594 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041595

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

This book is dedicated to the memory of the lives lost in the Christchurch Mosque massacre in New Zealand; the Easter Sunday Church execution in Sri Lanka; the Synagogue killings in Pittsburgh; and the Holey Artisan Bakery slaying in Dhaka—incidents that summoned the world for understanding the conviction of humanism which is the essence of modernity

CONTENTS List of Tables

ix

Foreword

xi Habib H. Khondker

Preface

xiii

Acknowledgments

xvii

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization: Towards a Conceptual Framework: Editor’s Introduction Shahid M. Shahidullah Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine: Issues and Challenges of Modernization and the Culture War in America Shahid M. Shahidullah America’s Global Project on Modernity: Continuity, Change, and Challenges in the 21st Century Shahid M. Shahidullah Modernity, Power, and Politics: The Issues and Challenges of Democracy in the 21st Century (The Rise of Ultra-Rights in Global Politics) Shahid M. Shahidullah Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values: Nonlinear Development of Central and East European Post-Socialist Countries Yuriy Savelyev Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality: Laws, Social Change, and Women’s Rights in India Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

1

21

45

81

111

127

viii Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Contents Women’s Modernity in Nigeria: Change and Transformations in Law, Politics, and Culture Dorothy Kersha-Aerga Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa: Colonial and Post-Colonial Modernization in the West African State of Sierra Leone Mohammed B. Sillah Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges of Religious Liberty and Tolerance: The Case of South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das The Modernity of the Oppressed: Chained Repression among Minority Females in America’s Criminal Justice System Zina T. McGee Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights: The Evolution of Legal Status and Cultural Attitudes towards Disability in America Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

151

175

207

239

253

About the Editor

275

About the Contributors

277

Index

281

Related Nova Publications

291

LIST OF TABLES Table 5.1

Materialists and Post-Materialists Compared, 1995-1997-2008

120

Contextual Change and Cohort Replacement: Post-Materialist Group, 1995-2008

120

Contextual Change and Cohort Replacement: Materialist Group, 1995-2008

121

Table 7.1

Nigeria: Women Elected to Public Office, 1999-2015

158

Table 7.2

Nigeria: National Gender Policy: Key Guidelines

161

Table 7.3

Nigeria: Violence against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015

162

Nigeria National Plan: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325

164

Table 7.5

Nigeria’s Global Gender Gap Report, 2006-2018

165

Table 9.1

India’s Performance on Items Related to Religious Hostilities

221

India’s Performance on Various Indicators of Religious Freedom, 2008-2016

221

Incidence of Religious Harassment Against Christians in India, 2012-2018

223

Types of Harassment and Violence Against Christians in India, 2018

223

Pakistan’s Performance on Various Indicators of Religious Freedom 2008-2016

226

Major Domestic and International Islamic Extremist Groups in Pakistan

226

Major Domestic Islamic Extremist Groups in Bangladesh

227

Table 5.2 Table 5.3

Table 7.4

Table 9.2 Table 9.3 Table 9.4 Table 9.5 Table 9.6 Table 9.7

x

List of Tables Bangladesh’s Performance on Various Indicators of Religious Freedom 2008-2015

228

Major Disability Legislations Enacted in the 1960s and 1970s

263

Table 11.2

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990

265

Table 11.3

Major Disability Advocacy Organizations in America

266

Table 9.8 Table 11.1

FOREWORD Modernity has clearly a historiographical dimension. Modernity is preferred to whatever existed before it. In the academic discussion of modernity, it has been questioned and subjected to critical scrutiny. The very fact that a whole host of intellectuals labor endlessly to critique various aspects of this concept is a testimony to the importance of the idea of modernity. The critical reflection of modernity in itself is a reflection of modernity. It is highly unlikely that people in the distant past sat around a bonfire to critically discuss their existence. Our hunter-gatherer forbearers must have had discussions of how to hunt better or whether to explore a new section of the forest to go to in search of subsistence, but it is unlikely them saying: let’s move out of this chancy existence to create a new kind of society based on “universal human rights” or “Church and State Separation.” Consciousness, especially, critical and self-reflective consciousness is a product of modernity. This is what connects modernity to the ideas of enlightenment that emerged in Europe as a culmination of ideas drawn from various civilizations, including the Islamic civilization. In that sense, modernity from its birth had global roots. Many proponents, as well as critics of enlightenment and modernity, seem to overlook the global roots of enlightenment. I am fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most distinguished authorities on modernity and globalization such as Ronald Robertson, Goran Therborn, Bryan Turner, and Frank Lechner. I am fortunate to have worked at Immanuel Wallerstein’s Braudel Center at Binghampton, New York. During my graduate studies at Carlton University in Canada, and the University of Pittsburgh in the USA, I spent most my time reading Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Nicos Poulantzas, Talcott Parson, Barrington Moore, and Theda Skocpol. I taught as a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, National University of Singapore, and Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. I am fortunate to have traveled in several countries of all of the five continents of the world. All around the world I traveled, people are dreaming of modernity. When I talk to an ordinary man or woman in Abu Dhabi, where over eighty percent of the population is from somewhere else, I do not sense any revulsion to modernity. When I ask them why they are here - the answer is the same, they like to earn more and send money home not just for the survival of their family members but also for the improvement of their social and economic conditions. They want to live in a better house made of bricks and concrete and not their old, thatched houses. A Bangladeshi woman, a free-lance, domestic worker in Abu Dhabi, told me that the freedom she enjoys here was not available in her village. She can go out to the shopping mall or take a bus without anyone telling her how a woman should behave

xii

Habib H. Khondker

properly. In a limited sense, she is liberated from the supervising eyes of the elders in her village who were judging all aspects of her public life. Even her private life was under surveillance of her in-laws. Both male and female migrant workers want to send their children – boys and girls – to schools so that they can find a better life. For them modernity is a better life, modernity is freedom, modernity is dignity. In fact, they have voted for modernity with their feet. They do not find the modern condition to be alienating, anomic, disenchanting, Eurocentric, de-centered, colonial, subjugated, ironical, or paradoxical. We can, then, talk about two ways of understanding modern life, modern condition, modernity, and globalization. One: how sociologists, philosophers, historians, writers, or intellectuals talk about modernity, and two: how ordinary folks in Abu Dhabi or Bangladesh or Manila talk about modernity. Understanding the processes of modernity and globalization involves a deeper understanding of historical forces and a broader appreciation of modernity of the common folks. In this book Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization: Issues and Challenges of the st 21 Century, Shahid Shahidullah has made a superb comprehensive attempt to combine these two strands—academic and folk perspectives—for making sense of modernity in the 21st century. His notion that modernity is foremost a universal cultural model for a good and better balanced society, and that it is not an extension of westernization, Europeanization, or Americanization, with undertones to undermine or dictate, but rather embraces all human rights and freedoms, political or spiritual, is one of the core themes in contemporary literature on modernity and globalization. This book, I believe, will be immensely valuable reading, particularly for students of sociology, political science, development studies, international relations, and global studies, as well as professionals in international development agencies, global think tanks and development research organizations.

Habib H. Khondker, PhD Professor, Department of Social Sciences College of Humanities and Social Sciences Zayed University, Abu Dhabi

PREFACE This book has examined some of the pressing issues and challenges of modernity, modernization, and globalization in the present world. Modernity is one of social science’s core discoveries that is probably comparable to that of the “Copernicus Revolution” of the sixteenth century. Copernicus discovered that the geocentric model of the universe was misleading. The social science of the nineteenth century discovered that medievalism as a model of a good society was misleading. In the nineteenth century, medievalism disintegrated, and a new society was born out of about four hundred years of new ideas, knowledge, and philosophy that began to grow since the Renaissance in the sixteenth century or even the birth of the classical philosophy of ancient times. The social science of the nineteenth century termed the emerging forces of the new society as “modernity.” One of the core missions of social science in the nineteenth century was to understand and theorize the nature and the structure of modernity. Many new concepts and ideas were discovered. Modernity was defined as industrialization and urbanization. Modernity was seen as the rise of new cities and a new middle class. Modernity was understood as humanism, individualism, democracy, and human equality. In political terms, it was defined as the birth of a new liberal social order. More importantly, modernity was thematized as a universal cultural model for a new culture and a new civilization. The modernity experiment began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mainly with the birth of modern states in England, America, and France. The whole of the twentieth century, indeed, was a time for the global expansion of modernity. Social science in the twentieth century was primarily engaged in discovering “how modernity is possible” in all distinct and disparate cultures and civilizations of the world. Social scientists in the twentieth century discovered that the culture of modernity is uniquely attractive to the whole of humanity; its progress is irreversible. People all over the world in the twentieth century was slowly rising from the darkness of medievalism and began to dream of a new world of democracy, equality, the rule of law, equal justice, and the recognition of human rights and dignity. However, it was also discovered by social science that the progress of modernity was not going to be easy. The clash between medievalism—the ideology of theocracy, localism, racism, sexism, hierarchy, and divisiveness—and the culture of modernity that builds on the notion of humanism, globalism, inclusivity, and universal human rights, are inevitable. Social change and transformations towards modernity will always involve conflicts and convergence and discord and consensus. World War I, World War II, and the Cold War of the twentieth century were waged primarily to defend the global progress of modernity—the

xiv

Shahid M. Shahidullah

universalization of the liberal social order. The twenty-first century, however, began with a great sense of global confusions and skepticism about the future of global modernity. The world of the twenty-first century is broadly seeing the emergence of two groups: one group— the anti-modernists—becoming hypnotically excited about the coming back of the ideologies of nativism, localism, racism, nationalism, and bigotry, and many emerging right-wing political parties are reinforcing them through the capturing of political power. The other group—the modernists and the liberals—are confused and contemplating the demise of the liberal social order and the “death of democracy.” These new scenario about the progress of global modernity in the twenty-first century set the context of writing and organizing this volume. This book aims to remind one of the core discoveries of the last two hundred years of advancement in social science that the cultural model of modernity is universal and irreversible. The global modernity is destined to expand its boundary, even in the face of advancing ideologies of nativism and localism, and nationalism and divisiveness. The present rise of the right-wing political power, this book argues, is a transitory phase in the progress of global modernity. The recent globalization of the world capitalist economy and strengthening of the Human Development Index, remarkable expansions of democracy in more countries of the world, the rise of a global middle class of about 3.5 billion people, the global expansion of economic and political empowerment of women, and the advent of new global connectivity of about 4.5 billion people through the Internet, this book suggests, are more important fundamental forces to be reckoned for the global progress of modernity than the rise of right-wing political parties in power in Italy, Denmark, and Hungary. The new rise of the anti-modernists in the global political landscape is associated with the rise of a new global underclass as a result of the impacts of economic globalization and technological advancement. The rise of the anti-modernist is also related to global terror and the global war on terror that created a huge mass of displaced population, particularly among Muslims, in recent years, many whom in desperation sought refuge to the west. The real threats to the future of democracy and the global liberal social order are not the present transitory phase of the rise of right-wing political parties in few countries. The real threats are the countries of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. These civilizational states did not even start an experiment of democracy and liberal social order during the twentieth century—the age of the unbounded global experiment for modernity. If America’s present right-wing political regime, however, further expands and stabilizes, the future expansion of global modernity, this book claims, could be severely restricted. For the last two hundred years, every American President from George Washington to Barack Obama, even though they belonged to many different political views and ideologies, has unceasingly pursued the mission for spreading global modernity—a mission what Thomas Jefferson described as spreading the “Empire of Liberty,” and Ronald Reagan termed as reaching to the “Shinning City.” With the rise of a new ideology of nativism, localism, nationalism, and hate and bigotry, America, has come to a cross-road of a time of great concern for the future of global modernity. The authors of this book, however, believe in what President Abraham Lincoln reminded the nation in a much darker days of the civil war, that America will again be touched “by the better angels of out nature.” In closing, I would like to remind the readers about what Steven Pinker, one of America’s great contemporary thinkers and a Professor of Psychology at Harvard, said in his book Enlightenment Now: “The Enlightenment has worked (his emphasis)—perhaps the greatest story seldom told. And

Preface

xv

because this triumph is so unsung, the underlying ideals of reason, science, and humanism are unappreciated as well. When properly appreciated, I will suggest, the ideals of Enlightenment are in fact stirring, inspiring, noble— a reason to live.”

Shahid M. Shahidullah, PhD Department of Sociology Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia, US

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS On December 13, 2017, I received an email from President of NOVA Science Publishers, Nadya S. Columbus, inviting me to produce a volume on the issues and challenges of modernization and globalization in the 21st Century. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, modernization, in the context of the rise of more than a hundred new nations in what is defined as the “developing world,” was the dominant paradigm of understanding social change and transformations. Around the mid-1960s, parallel to the rise of the Cold War, the modernization theory came under severe theoretical attacks. Social science in the 1970s saw the emergence of many Marxian and neo-Marxian approaches to development, such as the dependency theory, development of underdevelopment, self-reliance, post-colonial paradigm, and Structural Marxism. One of the central tenets of these various neo-Marxist theories was that capitalism is the evil of everything and modernization is an expansion of western imperialism. Modernization is Europeanization and Americanization of the world. Immanuel Wallerstein put forward the theory of the world system to create a bridge between modernization and the dependency theory. Following the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, and the collapse of the Soviet and Chinese models of socialism and communism, most of the neo-Marxist theories lost their radical audience, and they are presently in the periphery of theoretical interests in social science. From the 1990s, social science again began to reexamine the theories of modernity and modernization in the backdrop of the rise of globalization. I spent several years studying Sociology in North America during the heyday of the Cold War. In the late 1970s, I spent time at McMaster University in Canada where the department was housed with many Marxist and mainstream modernization theorists. In the early 1980s, I was at Rutgers University in New Jersey where the modernization theorists and the neoMarxists were in open conflicts. The Department of Sociology at Rutgers University’s Livingstone College in the early 1980s was almost taken over by the dependency theorists of the neo-Marxist school of thought. In the late 1980s in Pittsburgh, I was trained in modernization theory and globalization theory. In the 1980s, Ronald Robertson at the University of Pittsburgh created a new colloquium with students interested in studying globalization from the cultural perspective, primarily as a critique of Wallerstein’s world system theory. In the American academia of the 1970s and 1980s, I was, indeed, socialized to see the theoretical underpinning of both sides of the Cold War—liberal and Marxist worldviews. I was, therefore, very much intrigued by the invitation from NOVA Scientific

xviii

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Publications to do a volume on modernization and globalization. I was genuinely chuffed for the invitation, and that became the basis of this project. In planning this project, one of my perspectives was to tell the readers, in a very prudent manner, the meaning of modernity, and about the idea of modernization and globalization. I have a profound belief that the notion of modernity can be used as an overarching paradigm for explaining almost all global socio-historical facts and events of the last three hundred years—the rise of colonialism, decolonization, the rise of the new nations in developing countries, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, America’s cultural war, the rise of global terror, the War on Terror, the rise in global religious hostilities, and the present rise of right-wing politics in the global political landscape. I also firmly believe that modernity is universal and irreversible. A society that started a process of modernity—meaning that a society that started the construction of a new culture of democracy, equality, the rule of law, religious freedom, globalism, and inclusivity—is bound to advance and cannot go back to nativism, racism, fundamentalism, and divisiveness. It can temporarily, for some historical plights and predicaments, make a retreat and face many challenges. The contemporary rise of a global middle class, growth in women’s empowerment, and an evolving culture of global digital connectivity, however, suggest that global modernity is destined to go forward, The authors of this book have been carefully curated chosen to reflect on the above themes of modernization. Most of the authors of this volume are bi-cultural or bycivilizational—they are professionally trained and culturally educated both in the East and the West. I thought that these bi-cultural social scientists would be able to see and annotate the forces of modernity from the points of view of both locality and globality. I am truly grateful for their contributions in this volume and highly respect their respective opinions. Dr. C. Nana Derby of Virginia State University, Professor Robert Watson of Hampton University, Dr. Sheetal Ranjan of the William Peterson University of New Jersey, and Dr. James F. Hodgson of Everett University were gracious enough to read and review the manuscript. I genuinely appreciate their endorsements. Dr. Habib H. Khondker of Zayed University in Abu Dhabi read the manuscript and wrote a “Foreword.” His perspective on how ordinary people perceive modernity added a new dimension to this book and I am very much humbled by his endorsement. Mrs. Charlene Cutting has done a remarkable job in editing the manuscript. She did it with the utmost interest and sincerity. Her editing from the perspective of a native English speaker has enormously transformed the quality of the book and I am thankful to Mrs. Charlene Cutting. Mrs. Carra Feagaiga of the Department of Acquisitions has supervised this project from its very inception. Her care and advice led to the timely completion of this project. Last, but not the least, is my utmost gratitude to my family. My wife Sufia Shahid and my daughter Ashley endured many hours of isolation throughout the writing of this book (even when I was in the same house and eating in the same kitchen). My complete dedication to, and immersion in this project for almost two years brought many days of solitude to the family, but I was never deprived of support, help, and excitement. I am surely grateful to my wife and daughter Ashley. Now, a few words not about what I achieved and completed, but about the “incompleteness” in this endeavor. One of modernity’s or modern’s science’s core beliefs is that chaos, uncertainty, and skepticism are inevitable in the world of nature and the world of human facts and events. This is what quantum physics teaches us. What this means is that all

Acknowledgments

xix

data and arguments in science, particularly in social science, have to be taken with a sense of doubt and humility. To my reader, I hope this book finds you well. Thank you.

Shahid M. Shahidullah, PhD Department of Sociology Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

MODERNITY, MODERNIZATION, AND GLOBALIZATION: TOWARDS A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Shahid M. Shahidullah, PhD Department of Sociology, Hampton University, Hampton, VA, US

ABSTRACT This chapter examines the meaning of the concepts of modernity, modernization, and globalization. The chapter begins with the assumption that modernity is a broad conceptual framework that can be used to explain the world’s many social, economic, and political transformations that began to evolve from the days of the Renaissance in the 16th century. Modernity is a global cultural process of transformation of a unique kind. As a unique historical process of cultural transformation, modernity has been progressing since the beginning of the Renaissance. As a cultural process, modernity is a unique model of civilization. It is a unique set of universalistic cultural codes and scripts and an exclusive set of cultural logics and rationalities. Some of these cultural codes and scripts that are commonly defined as the meaning of modernity include; the notion of humanism, the idea of universal human rights, the concept of natural rights, the idea of naturalistic knowledge, the expansion of political democracy, the notion of the rule of law, the idea of separation between politics and religion, and the values of equality, individualism, and privacy. The cultural model of modernity was born in Europe, but it is not a European model or even a western model. Modernity does not mean Europeanization, or Americanization, or westernization of the world. Modernity is primarily a new civilizational concept. The notion of modernization, on the other hand, is more empirical in nature. It means the social and cultural transformation of a society from tradition to modernity—a process of social change and evolution. The notion of globalization implies the progress of modernization at a global scale—the evolution of modernity across the 

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

2

Shahid M. Shahidullah world societies. Modernity, modernization, and globalization are deeply interconnected. Modernity is a global and universalized process of social and cultural transformations. Almost all world societies are undergoing a process of modernization, particularly since the 19th century. The progress of modernization and globalization became intensified, particularly from the middle of the 1950s. Modernization, however, is not a linear but a dialectical process. It goes through a process of conflict and convergence, homogeneities and heterogeneities. In every society, there are two major groups concerning the issues of modernity—the modernists and anti-modernists. These groups are primarily two competing belief communities or paradigmatic communities. When modernization advances and modern values are codified through legal interventions, culture war and conflicts are inevitable. The war between the modernist and the anti-modernist groups are not just local. They are also global and historical. Understanding the dialects of modernity and modernization is crucial in understanding many of the larger social and political change, transformations, and turmoil in the modern world of the 21st century.

Keywords: modernity, modernization, globalization, cultural code and scripts, culture war, cultural homogeneity, cultural heterogeneity

INTRODUCTION One of the core missions of social science born in the middle of the nineteenth century, was to explain the nature and the directionality of modern society. Social science emerged in the nineteenth century to examine the novelty of modern cultures, the peculiarity of modern institutions, the profile of modern personality, and the future of modernity in the postmedieval civilizations of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the whole of the 20th century, social science was engaged with issues and challenges of modernity and modernization. Almost all social science theories and paradigms of the 20th century sought to explain the issues and challenges of transformations from medievalism to modernity. This book begins with the assumption that the notion of modernity and modernization can be used as a unified theory— as a broader conceptual framework—to explaining the whole spectrum of historical, political, economic, and cultural facts and events of the last four hundred years. Modernity was the central notion behind the historical movements of the Renaissance in the 16th century, the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, the Reformation in the 18th century, and the Age of Enlightenment in the 19th century. The advent of industrialization and urbanization in the 19th century came in the backdrop of modernity. Modernity is the broader historical context for understanding the outburst of the First World War, the coming of the Russian Revolution, and the horror of the Second World War. The beginning of decolonization and the rise of the developing world from the middle of the 20th century was in response to the progress of modernity. The Cold War erupted in the 1950s and 1960s because of the challenge of communism to the globalization of modernity and the liberal social order. The end of the Cold War, the emergence of a new phase of globalization of the market economy and democracy in the 1980s, and the rise of the Internet revolution and the beginning of a new age of digitalization at the end of the 20th century came as result of the rapid spread of the values and institutions of modernity. The birth of global terrorism and the rise of the ultra-rights in global politics in the first decade of the 21st century can also be examined as challenges to modernity. Social science in the 20th century, therefore, used modernity as a lager conceptual

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

3

framework for explaining the whole range of social, economic, and political transformations in all civilizations that began to evolve from the days of the Renaissance in the 16th century.

THE CONCEPT OF MODERNITY: MODERNITY AS A UNIVERSAL CULTURAL PROCESS The idea of modernity is, in fact, one of the core theoretical discoveries in the social science of the 19th century. Social science discovered that medievalism as a model for a good society was misleading. The medieval model that existed in all world civilizations in the form of monarchies, dynasties, theocracies, and aristocracies for more than one thousand years was humanly deficient and exploitative, socially divisive and oppressive and culturally demeaning and dehumanizing. Modernity was discovered by social science as a universal model for a good society. Modernity is necessarily understood as a global cultural process of transformation of a unique kind. Modernity is rather a unique model of a civilization. It is a unique set of universalistic cultural codes and scripts about a good society. As a historically unique cultural consciousness, modernity is an exclusive set of cultural logics and rationalities (Nelson, 1981). As Eisenstadt claims: “Modernity has indeed expanded to most of the world and given rise to civilizational patterns which share some central core characteristics” (2010, p.3). Modernity is what Martin Luther King Jr. has described as a “promised land”—a land of freedom and equality. Modernity is what is transpired by Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Modernity is a unique philosophy, and its scripts and logics are about transformations in relations between the ruler and the ruled, church and the state, elites and the masses, groups and individuals, men and women, races and races, and nations and nations. It is some of these cultural and philosophical scripts that are commonly defined as the meaning of modernity such as humanism, the idea of universal human rights, the concept of natural rights, the idea of naturalistic knowledge, the expansion of political democracy, the notion of the rule of law, and the values of equality, individualism, and privacy. The cultural notion of modernity was born out of about four hundred years of change and transformation in ideas that came in the historical contexts of the Renaissance of the 16th century, the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, and the industrial revolution of the 19th century. The cultural consciousness of modernity precedes the expansion of modern polity and modern capitalist economy. The relations among these three core sectors of modern society— culture, polity, and economy—are complex and multifaceted. A modern polity, is particularly intimately connected to the advance of the culture of modernity. A capitalist industrial economy in a country can advance without political and cultural modernity, and China is a case in point. The Chinese notion of socialist modernization is a notion of advancing free market economy within the framework of a communist authoritarian political system. The idea of modernity, however, is based on the presumption that it is an irreversible cultural process. The recognition of the principle of universal human rights, the search for a democratic political order based on the rule of law, the upholding of the principle of separation between politics and religion, the demand for a pluralist and inclusive political

4

Shahid M. Shahidullah

system, and the quest for a system of justice based on the due process of law are universal and irreversible cultural processes. The demand for the criminalization of violence against women, children, and minorities; the movement for the criminalization of hate, racism, and bigotry; the struggle to advance equality and equal opportunities irrespective of the privilege of birth, race, religion; and respect for individualism, privacy, and the human body, are some of the irreversible issues of modernity that are spreading today in all countries, regions, and civilizations. Social scientists have long been arguing that the progress of the culture of modernity will lead to a global process of homogenization in the articulation of the core values and institutions of a modern country (Inkles, 1983; Parsons, 1966). As sociologist Etzioni claimed: “Modernization is a recent example of the concept of social process as ongoing: something that happens; it cannot be halted” (1968, p. 4). The cultural model of modernity was born in Europe, but it is not a European model or even a western model. Modernity does not mean Europeanization, Americanization, or westernization of the world. Modernity is a new civilizational model. The notion of modernity in fact, goes back to all ancient civilizations (Hall and Gieben, 1992; Eisenstadt, 1986). The Renaissance in the 16th century created a great philosophical and intellectual bridge between the knowledge and learning of all classical ancient civilizations including the Egyptians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Chinese, and Greeks. The ideas of humanism, morality, justice, and a good polity were core concerns in Greek knowledge and philosophy. The great discoveries made by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton during the era of scientific revolution in the seventeenth century are not the intellectual properties of Europe alone. They became the universal intellectual properties of the whole of mankind. Descartes and Bacon's discovery of empirical methodology in science is the discovery applied to the whole of humanity. The social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau did not explain the evolution of the state in England and France alone. They theorized the evolving nature of the state in the post-medieval world in general. In defending the birth of sociology as a science, French philosopher Auguste Comte, theorized about the evolution of human societies from militarism to industrialism; not just in Europe, but in the whole world in general. German sociologist, Max Weber predicted the growth of scientific rationality with the birth of modernity not just in Europe, but across the world societies undergoing modernization. Weber undertook a vast global project of examining the major world religions and their role in modernization. Equally, German philosopher Karl Marx, theorized about the global expansion of modern capitalism, and he was excited about the expansion of British colonialism in India. British philosopher, Adam Smith’s famous discovery about the selfseeking nature of humans and the “invisible hand” inside their mind and morality for advancing the common good, is not for Britons alone. This discovery remained at the core of the universal science of modern economics. It is with this universal concept or the universal model of modernity that different countries, cultures, and civilizations of the world; including the western civilization, have been debating for the last two hundred years. Even in the twenty-first century that has seen the birth of a new digital civilization, some of the core notions of modernity are being challenged in the very heartland of western civilization.

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

5

POST-MEDIEVAL COMPLEXITIES OF TRANSFORMATION FROM TRADITION TO MODERNITY Different world societies and civilizations for the last two hundred years have been struggling for change and transformations; from the dark ages of medievalism to the modern world of enlightenment (Pinker, 2018). In almost all societies, regions, and civilizations, the old structures of the aristocracy, monarchy, patriarchy, racism, fundamentalism, locality, ethnicity, and bigotry are being destroyed, debased, changed, and challenged. There is no civilized society on the planet today where the monarchy is eulogized, aristocracy is defied, racism is embraced, bigotry is not hated, patriarchy is not challenged, and theocracy is not vigorously opposed. The process of transformation to modernity, however, is exceedingly complex. The rise of the ultra-rights in politics in the west, and the growth of ethnicity, religious fundamentalism, and localism in different regions of the developing world from the beginning of the 21st century suggest that the path to modernity is hugely chaotic and uncertain. One of the crucial questions in the literature on modernity therefore is: “How is modernity possible?” The cultural codes and scripts of modernity are not very much in question. The key question is: “How can modernity advance in different countries, regions, and civilizations?” Social science from its classical beginning in the 19th century advanced several hypotheses to examine and predict the transformation from tradition to modernity; and they described it as a process of modernization. One of the hypotheses in classical social science is that modernity must be theologically justified. It must be theologically accepted, preserved, and practiced. This hypothesis goes into the notion that adherence to modern values should be theologically seen as a sign of salvation (Weber, 1996; Bellah, 1998). This hypothesis argues that belief in humanism, individualism, equality, and justice for all must be observed as a religious duty. Another hypothesis, is about the rise of a liberal state and its role in the codification of the cultural scripts of modernity. This hypothesis argues that modernity is predicated on the birth of a modern liberal state as happened in England after the Glorious Revolution in 1688, in the United States after the American Revolution in 1776, and in France after the French Revolution of 1789. The evolution of liberal state in the developing world of Asia and Africa began after the beginning of decolonization in the 1960s and 1970s. Modern liberal states in Latin America were born after the end of Spanish colonization in 1800. Modernization of society, from this point of view, is intimately connected to the rise of liberal democracy (Apter, 1967, 1987; Lipset, 1979; Skocpol, 2015). Another related hypothesis is that modernization is intimately connected to the role of the strategic elites in society. The institutionalization and the governing of a liberal state depend on the dominance of a group of liberal strategic elites (Eisenstadt, 1964, 1966). This hypothesis can explain what happens to the progress of modernity in a country when the strategic political elites come to power from ultra-conservative political parties. Two of the recent examples are the dominance of a theocratic political elite in power in Iran, and the expansion of the Hindu nationalist, and the ultra-orthodox Bhartiya Janata Party in India. Closely connected to the elite hypothesis is the notion that for modernization, advancement in scientific and liberal education is critical. A society that fails to invest in science and liberal education will limit its progress towards modernity. The birth of the whole of modern social science was predicated on the notion that science of understanding human society and human

6

Shahid M. Shahidullah

behavior is possible. One can, so, explain why anti-intellectualism is one of the critical trends in the recent rise of the ultra-rights in politics in the west (Hofstadter, 1996; Jacoby, 2009; Niose, 2014), and why Mao-se-Tung, through his Cultural Revolution in 1966, sought to destroy China’s liberal intellectual foundations for bringing communism in China. Central to these and other hypotheses is the notion that cultural transformation is crucial for modernization. A country may have an expansive system of capitalism and a significant amount of modern technology, as in China, India, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, but they may still be far behind concerning the core values of modernity. On the other hand, a country may have a long period of expansion of modern values and institutions, but it may suddenly plunge to a retreat to ultra-conservatism. This is partially happening in many major countries of the west from the beginning of the 21st century including Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the United States. The evolution of global politics and diplomacy from the beginning of the 21st century shows that liberalism in the west and the world, in general, is in retreat (Luce, 2017), and the culture of modernization is under attack. America fought three great wars—the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War; all in the in the 20th century—to defend the globalization of liberal social order. Today, America itself is struggling against its soul—the civilization of modernity (Albright, 2018; Farrow, 2018; Meacham, 2018). The social, political, and cultural developments of more than one hundred years from the beginning of the 20th century have taught us a great lesson; which is that modernity is not a linear but a dialectical process. It goes through a process of conflict and convergence, and homogeneities and heterogeneities. One sociologist, so, theorized that the idea of modernity "contains a paradox. At the very moment when ‘the modern’ comes into its own, its ambiguities also become evident. Modernity becomes more troubled the more heroic, unstoppable and promethean it seems. The more it assumes itself to be the summit of human achievement, the more its dark side appears” (Hall, 1992, p. 16). In every society, we can observe the existence of two major groups concerning the issues of modernity—the modernists and anti-modernists. These groups are primarily two competing belief communities or paradigmatic communities. Within each belief community, there are, of course, many smaller groups with different agendas and different degrees of intensity of belief about tradition and modernity. Within the American modernist group (commonly described as Democrats or Liberals), for example, many are opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage. Similarly, within the American anti-modernist group (commonly described as ultra-conservatives), there are those who firmly believe in the First Amendment principle of the freedom of religion. There are also others among the anti-modernists who do not put much premium on racial equality, gender equality, diversity, and globalization. When modernization advances, and modern values are codified through legal interventions, they are bound to create cultural war and conflicts (Berger, 1974, 1999; Hunter, 1992). In the U.S, for example, the legalization of abortion through the U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Roe v. Wade in 1972, and the legalization of same-sex marriage by the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 created considerable tensions in the minds of millions of Americans who are pro-lifers and who believe in the biblical definition of marriage. The global expansion of the market economy that began to intensify in the wake of the end of the Cold War and the new opening of the market economy in China, Russia, and Eastern Europe in the late 1990s led to a massive shift of America's manufacturing industries abroad. Working class Americans who lost their manufacturing jobs because of the global expansion of the market economy could not fathom the inner logic and dynamics of the

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

7

global capitalist system, and, so, many of them turned to be supporters of anti-modernist (i.e., ultra-conservative) political agendas for nativism, economic nationalism, racism, and localism. As a dialectical process, the progress of modernity in a country is bound to create new conflicts of values between tradition and modernity, between different groups and individuals, and even between and among different cultures, religions, and civilizations. The war between the modernist and the anti-modernist groups are not just local. They are global and historical. The Glorious Revolution of England in 1688, the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, the American Civil War of 1865 and the end of slavery were born out of conflicts between tradition and modernity. Similarly, the First World War of 1917, the Second World War of 1945, the Cold War of the 1950s and 1960s, and the global war on terror that started in the beginning of the 21st century can also be broadly described as results of conflicts between the forces of modernization and anti-modernization.

MODERNITY AND THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK OF CIVILIZATION Since modernity itself is the model of a unique civilization, the perspective of using civilization as an analytical framework for understanding the progress of global modernity is highly relevant (Eisenstadt, 1986; Nelson, 1981). Currently, there are about 195 countries in the world who are members of the United Nations. Before they emerged as sovereign states and started their journey towards development and modernity, these countries belonged to different empires, cultures, and civilizations. Some of the world states belong to more than one civilization such as Malaysia, which is an extension of Islamic, Chinese, and Malay civilizations. Pakistan and Bangladesh are extensions of Islamic and Indian civilizations. Some of the modern states themselves, on the other hand, are the lands of great civilizations such as China, Japan, India, Greece, and Italy. The significance of the analytical framework of civilization has been forcefully argued in recent years by Harvard political scientist Huntington (2011) in his thesis of “civilizational clash.” Huntington claims that the civilization of the West is culturally very different from those of other world civilizations including Latin American, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Islamic, and Slavic-Orthodox civilizations. What Huntington suggests is that modernity is unique only to the west, and no other civilizations will be able to adapt to the core values of modernity. Huntington’s approach to understanding modernity in the context of the framework of civilization is relevant, but his analysis that modernity is peculiar only to the west is utterly misleading. Huntington predicted civilizational clash concerning modernity between the West and other civilizations, particularly between the West and Islam. At the beginning of the 21st century, the world is seeing the rise of a civilization clash not particularly between the West and Islam, but between the West and the universal civilization of modernity, and the rise of the ultrarights in recent western politics is a case in point. The ultra-rights are challenging, in some cases destroying, many of the core values and institutions that the West so painstakingly developed during its last two hundred years of change and transformations. In different civilizations, modernity is likely to progress through a dialectical process of conflicts and convergence. In different civilizations, this process will unfold in different ways depending on their social and political dynamics, starting from the days of colonialism in the seventeenth century. The countries and the civilizations that were not colonized by western

8

Shahid M. Shahidullah

powers began their journey towards modernity from the middle and the late 19th century. Prominent examples are the modernization of the Mejia era in Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the creation of a modern state in China by Sun Yat-sen, after the fall of the medieval Chinese kingdom of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Countries and civilizations that were under western colonialism, particularly in Asia and Africa, started their progress towards modernity from the middle of 20th century. The progress of modernization, in a society or a civilization, however, does not mean its total transformation from tradition to modernity, particularly in the domain of culture. The cultural boundary of different civilizations has grown for centuries. Each civilization has its own social and cultural codes that were born, grown, and crystallized by its ancient social and political dynamics and the nature of its medievalism. Each civilization has its unique codes and scripts about power, work, class, status, respect, faith, family, marriage, love, sex, and intimacy. Modernity does not define and demand changes in all facets of the culture of a civilization. Modernity does not, for example, have prescriptions of how to marry and when to marry. Modernity, however, demands the decriminalization of inter-racial or inter-religious marriage. Modernity does not prescribe a particular way of expressing love and emotion. Modernity, however, believes that one group does not have the right to hate another group. Modernity will not tell how many children one should have, but modernity demands the criminalization of child abuse. Modernity will not dictate the intensity of love between genders, but it will undoubtedly prescribe for the criminalization of spousal violence, and the decriminalization of same-sex love and intimacy. Modernity does not dictate how to pray and when to pray, but it indeed demands the freedom of prayer for all religions. Modernity does not suggest any specific form of punishment for a crime, but it indeed suggests that a trial must be based on a due process of law, and punishment must not be cruel and unusual. Modernity deeply legitimizes unequal allocations of power, wealth, status, and honor regarding the achieved qualities of life, but inequalities regarding the ascribed qualities of race, birth, gender, religion, nationality, ethnicities, and disabilities are seen as archaic and pre-modern. Modernity does not mean transformations of all cultural codes and scripts of an earlier or an existing civilization. There is, for example, no modern way of greeting people. Different cultures and civilizations have evolved different ways and norms of greeting. There is no modern language. Different cultures and civilizations have different languages that are basic to the evolution of their humanity—their intellectual, social, moral, and emotional growth. Modernity can never totally transform the language and the literature of a country. A modern country can at best be bilingual or multi-lingual. The project of modernity does not prescribe a particular religion. None of the great world religions will die because of modernity. Different cultures and civilizations also have different traditions of art, music, dance, dress, and fashions. They have different ways of expressing love, sorrows, and sadness. They have different styles of expressing emotions, attitudes, and perceptions. Many of these cultural and civilizational symbolisms can co-exist with modernity. Many of them can also emerge with new forms as a result of a synthesis between tradition and modernity. Many of them, however, will probably be changed and transformed in the context of modernity. If the Muslims want to pray five times a day, that has no conflict with modernity. Modernity preserves and sanctifies religious freedom. However, if some Muslims in a crowded city want to observe their prayer in open streets by stopping the traffic, that will be a conflict with

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

9

modernity. Modernity believes in the separation between public and private spheres of actions. The concept of the need for a total or structural transformation for modernity is probably more pertinent to political and economic modernization. There cannot be, for example, any synthesis between tribalism and democracy or monarchy and democracy (i.e., Saudi Arabia), theocracy and democracy (i.e., Iran), or communism and democracy (i.e., China). For a democratic political system, there cannot be any synthesis between modern and divine laws (i.e., the existence of the Common Law and Sharia Law in Pakistan and Nigeria). Similarly, a modern economic system demands a market economy based on private ownership of property, open market systems, and free labor. An economy based on slavery or bonded labor or public ownership of the strategic means of production of a country (i.e., socialism under USSR) is far from a modern economic system. Modernization is thus destined to advance in different social and cultural domains of different civilizations by creating conflicts and convergence, synthesis and synergies. The notion of conflict is mainly crucial for understanding the progress of modernity. Eisenstadt (2010) rightly claimed that the “continual expansion of modernity throughout the world was not necessarily benign or peaceful; that it did not assure the continual progress of reason” (p. 2). Eisenstadt (2010) further added that “The fact that these processes were continuously interwoven with wars, with imperialistic political constitutional and economic expansion, with violence, genocides, repression and the dislocation of large populations – indeed sometimes of entire societies – was recognized” (p, 2). Conflicts are also more likely to remain prominent in moral and ethical spheres. Eisenstadt further claimed that “The first major tension that developed within the cultural program of modernity was that concerning the primacy of different dimensions of human existence, especially the tension between the predominance of reason as against the emotional and aesthetic dimensions. Closely related were tensions between different conceptions of the bases of human morality” (2010, p. 5). Modernity raised great concerns whether morality "could be based on or grounded in universal principles of reason, in instrumental rationality or multiple rationalities; and in multiple concrete experiences and traditions of different human communities” (Eisenstadt, 2010, p. 5). Two of the prominent examples of conflicting moral issues in America are the issues of same-sex marriage and abortion. A survey of 2,504 individuals from all 50 states in 2017 by the Pew Research Center (2017a) observed: “striking increases in support for same-sex marriage among some demographic and partisan groups that, until recently, had broadly opposed it” (p. 1). These new groups include the baby boomers, African-Americans, young evangelicals, and liberal Republicans. However, there are many tensions concerning same-sex marriage on religious grounds. Another survey conducted by the Pew Research Center (2017b) found that “U.S. adults were evenly divided, with roughly half (49%) saying businesses should be required to provide wedding services to same-sex couples, and a nearly identical share (48%) saying that they should be able to refuse to provide services due to religious objections” (p. 1). The same survey noted that “A large majority of white evangelical Protestants (77%) said businesses should be allowed to refuse service to same-sex couples" (p. 2). Another moral issue tied to religious beliefs in America is abortion. Even though abortion is legal in America after Roe v. Wade in 1972, about 76 percent of white evangelical Protestants, 51 percent of Catholics, and 46 percent of Black Protestants believe that abortion is morally wrong (The Pew Research Center, 2017c, p. 2). On the other hand,

10

Shahid M. Shahidullah

“Nearly nine-in-ten liberal Democrats (88%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases” (The Pew Research Center, 2017c, p. 1). The modernists and the anti-modernists in America, another survey shows, are much more polarized today than they were 25 years ago, and they are mostly organized into competing political parties. The survey found that in America today “values and fundamental beliefs are more polarized along partisan lines than at any point in the past 25 years. Party has now become the single most massive fissure in American society, with the values gap between Republicans and Democrats greater than gender, age, race or class divides" (Pew Research Center, 2018, p.1). Globally, 26 countries of the world legalized same-sex marriage, and 17 of those countries are in Western Europe. No countries in Eastern and Central Europe, Asia, and Africa (except South America) support the legalization of same-sex marriage. In North and South America, six countries (USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay) have legalized same-sex marriage (Pew Research Center, 2017d, p. 1-2). Modernization is also leading to the convergence of many ideas across the world’s societies and civilizations. Apart from the desire to be a part of the global capitalist system and global political democracy, most countries of the world cherish many modern social and political values such as individualism, right to privacy, due process of law, transparent governance, equal justice, and judicial accountability. Many social issues are in a rapid process of homogenization across world societies including the rights of women (i.e., UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women), and rights of the children (i.e., UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). Movements are growing all across the world’s societies for laws criminalizing sexual crime and violence (i.e., UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women), trafficking of women and children (i.e., United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children), physical and sexual violence against children (i.e., 2017 Report on Ending Legalized Violence Against Children by the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment for Children), cyber-bullying, and sexual harassment. One of the recent World Bank (2016) studies that surveyed the changing nature of legal status of women in 175 countries found that “127 have laws on domestic violence, of which 95 [countries] cover both physical and sexual violence, and 122 [countries] cover psychological violence” (p. 20). The study also observed that “Over the past 25 years, the number of economies introducing laws addressing domestic violence has risen precipitously from close to zero, to 118” (World Bank, 2016, p. 22). There is also presently growing convergence of ideas across the world’s societies for ending corporal punishment for children in all settings—homes, schools, alternative care, daycare, and penal institutions. Corporal punishment in schools is prohibited in 130 countries of the world. One study observed that the number of countries that prohibited corporal punishment for children from all settings “increased from 2 in 1984 to 53 in 2017” (The Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment for Children, 2017, p. 7). Similar trends of homogenization in the process of modernization exist related to many social and cultural issues across the world societies. The experience of political violence and upheavals in the last two hundred years, particularly in the 20th century, also suggests that disruptions, decline, and stagnation can characterize the progress of modernity. A society may advance towards modernity for a few decades and then plunge into decline and stagnation for a variety of historical reasons, mainly if the anti-modernists capture the political power of the state. The modernization theorists have described this process as “breakdowns of modernization” (Eisenstadt, 1966). In the

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

11

contemporary time, the rise of theocracy in Iran in 1979 is an excellent example of the breakdown of modernization. The rise of the modern state and the progress of modernization in Iran began with the development of a new parliamentary democracy in 1906 by Muzaffare-Din Shah—the last ruler of the Quasar Dynasty. The birth of parliamentary democracy and a new constitution in 1906 brought the end of the 400 years of medieval rule in Iran by different Islamic dynasties. Modernization in Iran began from that time, particularly under the regime of the Reza Shah Pahlavi, by secularizing the country’s legal system on the basis of the civil law tradition of continental Europe, developing professionalization in legal education, creating the infrastructures of modern scientific education, and reforming the status of women, (i.e., Family Protection Law of 1975, women’s right to vote, equal rights of men and women on divorce, the raising the legal age of marriage from 16 to 18, and the enactment of the provision of modern family court). These and other developments of the culture and the institutions of modernity in Iran came to a complete halt with the rise in power of an extremely conservative theocratic Shiite clergy in 1979 (Entessar, 1998; Naghibi, 2007; Sedghi, 2007). Another striking example of the breakdown of modernization is the state of Pakistan. Pakistan became an independent country when the British colonial government left India in 1947. In 1947, “Pakistan inherited a highly educated and secular group of political elites; an expanding group of industrial elites from India; a diverse culture of Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Jews; a strong tradition of liberal and Western education introduced by the British colonial state; a huge reservoir of talented groups of people; and a political landscape that was restless to establish a state compatible with the values of modernity” (Shahidullah, 2012, p. 489). Pakistan began as a parliamentary democracy, but this process came to a halt with the rise of the military in power in the late 1950s. After seventy years of its independence, many described Pakistan as a “failed state,” or even a “failed idea” (Arsala, 2014). The progress of the culture of modernity in Pakistan received a death blow, particularly with the reforming of its legal system in 1979 by a military general named Zia-ulHuq. The present legal system of Pakistan is a combination of both the Common Law and the Shariah Law of Islam. In 1979, President Zia-ul-Huq introduced five ordinances that are collectively known as the Hudood Ordinances, and these Islamic laws are presently the integral parts of Pakistan’s legal system and the civil and the criminal judiciary. They amended Pakistan's Modern Penal Code of 1862 and Pakistan’s modern Code of Criminal Procedure of 1898. Pakistan is one of the major Muslim countries of the World that has a Blasphemy Law, and it was enacted in 1990. In the contexts of decades of entrenchment of the military in political power, the growth of an Islamic militancy in the early part of the 21st century, the integration of the Shariah Law with the Common Law, the enactment of the Blasphemy Law, the continuous prosecution of the religious minorities, and an enduring tradition of patriarchy and honor-killing, the progress of the culture of modernity in the nuclear state Pakistan has remained limited. The scholars of modernization will probably debate whether the rise of the ultra-rights in politics and power in most of the western countries in the early 21st century can be described as a breakdown in modernization. Many scholars of modernization are describing that the further expansion of modernity and liberalism in the west is under serious attack. The antimodernists and ultra-right forces are gaining political strength in most of the countries of the west, but nowhere, except in the United States, have they been able to capture the political power of a major country. In the United States, the rise of the Trump regime in power in 2017

12

Shahid M. Shahidullah

is a turning point in America’s march towards modernity. America’s experiment for modernity began with the Declaration of Independence and the creation of the American Republic in 1776. America was born with the vision of creating a state from the core principles of the Age of Enlightenment, and those are enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the American constitution. During the last 240 years, America went through many wars and upheavals both at home and abroad; embraced millions of people of diverse races, faith, and nationalities from abroad; faced many internal social movements aiming to turning the tide away from modernization; and the anti-modernists assassinated some of the great protagonists of modernity (i.e., Lincoln, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.), but still America’s political power of the state was never taken away from the hands of the champions of modernity from both political camps (i.e., Democrats and Republicans). In 2017, a new political regime came to power with the vision and mission to break away from modernity and to dismantle America's grand experiment of modernization. Many of the core principles of modernity that are codified in law, and that gave birth to many modern norms and institutions in America during the last 240 years are now in serious peril. Whether the rise of this new ultra-right political regime in power will eventually lead to severe disruptions and breakdowns in America’s progress towards modernity remains to be seen. Conflicts, convergence, and breakdowns characterize the march of modernity in a country or civilization. However, it could also be a process of synthesis and synergism. Modernity can advance by deliberately constructing norms and institutions through the borrowing and synthesis of values, ideas, knowledge, and experience from different nations, races, and civilizations. Modernity and globalization are intimately connected. Globalization is the global expansion of modernity, and, hence, globalization is also necessarily a cultural process (Robertson, 1992a, 1992b). Globalization is not merely a process of the worldwide expansion of modern technology, or modern market-economy. It is also the worldwide expansion of a culture of modern consciousness, reasons, logic, and rationalities. Globalization of modernity is bound to create tensions in different groups and civilizations because it challenges the traditional trajectories of relations between reason and emotions, individualism and collectivism, universalism and relativism, and localism and globalism (Eisenstadt, 2010). Changes in these spheres of the culture of modernity can proceed through the cross-fertilization of cultural norms and values and cultural synthesis and synergy. The notion of modernity, for example, is based on the idea of human autonomy commonly described as individualism. In many traditional civilizations of the East, the notion of human autonomy creates tensions in the minds of many collective groups. There is a sense that human autonomy is antithetical to universal order. The notion of individualism under modernity, however, does not mean the repudiation of all norms and demands of the collectivity. Modernity does not come with a definition of individualism. Radical individualism found in some of the western countries, particularly in America, is culturally and historically specific. Modernity defines individualism merely as a set of natural rights of a human being that all collectivities including family and the state must protect and preserve irrespective of gender, race, age, class, status, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and disabilities. Some of these are the right of an individual to be treated equal, the right of an individual to be protected against unusual search and seizure, and the right of protection against torture and cruel and unusual punishment. Under the impact of modernity and globalization, many countries and cultures today have discovered a new balance and a new synthesis between individualism and collectivism. A new synergy is also being observed to create a synthesis

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

13

between Eastern and modern philosophical ideas such as the globalization of the Confucian philosophy, the globalization of the Indian philosophy of devotion and meditation, the globalization of the Islamic philosophy of Sufism, the globalization of the Buddhist philosophy of Nirvana, and the globalization of the peace philosophy of Dalai Lama. Modernity is a model of new civilizational design, and it did not evolve out of the concrete realities of any country of the world including those of the West. Modernity, by design, has a cultural space within its boundary for absorbing and synthesizing different principles and philosophies of different civilizations. Regarding some of the themes and perspectives described above, the authors of this book have addressed three core questions; 1) What are the global social and cultural patterns emerging out of the conflicts and convergence between tradition and modernization? 2) How is the global process of modernization creating a global pattern of homogenization in politics, culture, and the economy, and how are those changes articulated in law and through many wider social and cultural movements? Moreover, 3) How is the global process of modernization creating many multiple foci of conflicts, violence, and upheavals in the world societies, and how those conflicts are articulated in cultural, political, and economic terms? Chapter 1 in this book contains the editor’s introduction. In this chapter, Shahid Shahidullah argues that modernity can be used as an overarching conceptual framework for understanding many of the world’s broad social and historical transformations of the last 400 years. Modernity is defined primarily as a cultural model. Modernization is a process of social change and transformation in a society with respect to modernity. Globalization is a process of an evolving global cultural consciousness about modernity. One of the core themes in this chapter is that modernization is not a linear process of social change. It is rather a process of conflicts and convergence and homogeneities and heterogeneities. Modernity does not mean the transformation of all cultural codes and scripts of an earlier or an existing civilization. Modernity, by design, has a cultural space within its boundary for absorbing and synthesizing the different principles and philosophies of different civilizations. In Chapter 2, “Modernity, Religion, and the Church and State Separation Doctrine: Issues and Challenges of Modernization and Culture War in America,” Shahid Shahidullah argues that in America, the modernity experiment with respect to the church and state separation progressed without much conflicts for almost one hundred and fifty years. Conflicts, confusions, and concerns began to grow from the 1960s, with the further expansion of the reproductive rights of women and the rights of the gay and lesbian community (i.e., Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965; Eisenstadt v. Baird, 1972; Roe v. Wade, 1973; Lawrence v. Texas in 2003). The culture war in America took a new turn, the author suggests, particularly after the Obergefell decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 that legalized same-sex marriage. The author, however, believes that it is in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision of the Supreme Court wherein probably lies the future of America's modernity experiment concerning the wall of separation between church and state. In Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2018, the court seemed to have come to a middle ground. The court did not overturn Obergefell but protected the religious belief —the free exercise right of the Cakeshop owner. In Chapter 3, “America’s Global Project on Modernity: Continuity, Change, and Challenges in the 21st Century,” Shahid Shahidullah has examined the issues of America’s engagement with the world for spreading the liberal social order—the “empire of liberty.” The key argument of this chapter is that for the last 240 years, all American presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama, in spite of many historical turns and turbulence, and in

14

Shahid M. Shahidullah

spite of their different political views and ideologies, kept alive the torch of liberty to reach to the “shining city.” The advancement of the modernity experiment for them was never without chaos, crisis, and confusions. The plight and the perils of the Civil War, and the dooms and destructions of the World War I, World War II, and the Cold War could not impede the progress of America’s “manifest destiny”—the globalization of modernity. But the Trump presidency in 2017 brought America to a new crossroad that is engulfed with confusions and convulsion about the destiny and the directionality of the America’s modernity experiment. The Trump regime is the first of its kind in America that came to power with a decisive vision to reverse the course of America’s modernity experiment. The author, however, believes that America will again be touched “by the better angels of our nature.” In Chapter 4, “Modernity, Power and Politics: The Issues and Challenges of Democracy in the 21st Century,” Shahid Shahidullah has examined the future of democracy and the global liberal social order in the context of the rise of ultra-rights in global politics from the beginning of the 21st century. He argues that the notion that the liberal social order is retreating and democracy is in crisis is overstated. The global empowerment of women, growth in gender parity and political inclusivity, the rapid rise of a global middle class, the rapid increase in global connectivity as result of global economic growth, the rise of the era of 5G digitalization, and the expansion of a global cultural consciousness about the values of modernity are some of the fundamental forces that cannot be reversed. They will inevitably contribute to the further expansion of democracy and liberal social order in the coming decades of the 21st century. Shahid Shahidullah has traced back the evolution of the ultrarights in recent politics in Europe and America to two sets of recent global events. The first is the rise of a disenchanted working class in Europe and America affected by the rise and the globalization of a knowledge-based digital economy. The second is international migration of displaced Muslim refugees in Europe and America from the Middle East and the countries affected by global terrorism and the global war on terror. Shahid Shahidullah claims that both these forces that currently provide the support base for the ultra-rights in politics in Europe and America will be significantly weakened in the coming decades because of the worlds’ fundamental transformations in demography, economy, science and culture. The crucial threats for the future of democracy and the liberal social order, according to Shahid Shahidullah, are not the today’s ultra-rights but the countries of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—the countries that travelled the whole of the 20th century without developing any democratic tradition. Ronald Inglehart, Christian Welzel, and several of their collaborators for quite some time have been studying the problematic nature of cultural change under modernization. One of their theories is that only when people’s basic economic and survival needs are satisfied, they develop the need for quality of life, self-expression, and subjective well-being. Inglehart and Welzel described these later needs as post-materialist or emancipative values. Yuriy Savelyev, in Chapter 5, “Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values: Nonlinear Development of Central and East European Post-Socialist Countries,” has examined this thesis of post-materialism in the context of the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Yuriy Savelyev argues that the post-socialist Central and East European countries that pursued economic development following the European model made a noticeable transition from a materialist to a post-materialist culture of emancipative values. The post-socialist countries that remained with the framework of Russia’s command economy and authoritarian political culture, however, still remained trapped to the phase of a survival

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

15

economy. The authors, so, contends that modernization is not a linear process of social and cultural change. In Chapter 6, “Modernization, Globalization, and Transformation in Gender Equality: Laws, Social Change and Women’s Rights in India,” Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting, and Collette Harris examined the issues of women’s modernity in India. Their research shows that women’s modernity in India began from the days of British colonialism in India in the nineteenth century through such enactments as The Bengal Sati Regulation of 1829, the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, and the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act of 1856. According to them, progress in women’s modernity in India intensified after India became independent in 1947, and started a more universal process of modernization. Some of the crucial enactments for women’s modernity made in India in recent years, they found, include the enactment of the National Commission for Women in 1990, The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971, The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act of 1986, The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act of 1987, The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDV) of 2005, Indian Women and Property Rights: The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act of 2005, The Personal Laws (Amendment) Act of 2010, The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 2013, and The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013. Thorugh these legislations, India has remarkably expanded legal opportunities for women’s equal access to work, education, health, and the practice of religion. There still remain, the authors believe, emormous challenges for women’s modernity in India. Some of these challenges are not just the culture of patriarchy, they are also demogrphic in nature. “Out of India’s 1.3 billion people, there are about 500 million women. There are about 382 million Indians who have less than high school education, and 165 million of those are women. About 200 million of Indians (2011 Census) belong to the lower caste described as ‘Shudras,’ or ‘Untouchables,’ or ‘Dalits.’ Out of 200 million Dalits people, about 100 million are women.” Because of this unique demographic realities and a unique system of social hierarchy embedded into Hinduism, India is still far from achieving the global gender parity. The march for progress in women modernity in India, however, the authors claimed, will continue to expand and is irreversable. In Chapter 7, “Women and Modernity in Nigeria: Change and Transformations in Law, Politics, and Culture,” Dorothy Kersha-Aerga, found that “during the last two decades, the federal and state governments of Nigeria enacted a number of legislation and created a series of governmental organizations and programs to advance women’s modernity.” Domestically, the government created a Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in 1995, formulated a National Gender Policy in 2006, and enacted the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015. Internationally, many Nigerian women development strategies are in conformity with the protocols of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children; United Nations Convention Against Torture, and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment of Punishment; and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. But the traditional cultural perspectives of patriarchy, polygamy, and child marriage, Kersha-Aerga observed, are still dominant in Nigerian culture, and they are inimical to further progress of women’s modernity in Nigeria. There is a general perception that Islam and modernity, and modernity and ethnicity are incompatible. In Chapter 8, “Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa: Colonial and Post-

16

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Colonial Modernization in the West African State of Sierra Leone,” Mohmmed B. Sillah has adressed this issue of Islam and modernity and modernity and ethnicity in the context of modernization in Sierra Leone. Out of Sierra Leone’s 6.3 million people (2018 estmate), about 79 percent are Muslims, 21 percent are Christians, and 10 perent belong to other religions. For about 160 years, Sierra Leone was formally a British colony. It became a Presidental Republic in 1961. After about three decades of political turmoils, a process for demcratization began in Sierra Leone in 1991 after the promulgation of a new constitution and a multi-party system. One of the core arguments of this chapter is that Sierra Leone is presently politcially stable, and rapidly growing as a modernized polity because its Muslim majority population are actively engaged in pursuing the paths to moderniy in terms of democratization, equality, rule of law, gender parity, science-based education, inter-faith harmony, religios tolernace, respect for ethcnic diversity, and openess to the West. The author claims that “The relationship between Muslims and Christians in post-colonial Sierra Leone has been a model of interfaith harmany in a continent where religious and ethnic conflicts abound.” He believes that the introduction of modern western education and its acceptance by the majority population of Muslims, and the integration of Islamic edcuation within the western educational institutions are the catalysts for advacing moderity in Sierra Leone. The global rise of the ultra-rights in the 21st century is closely linked to the global rise of religious hostilities around the world. In Chapter 9, “Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges of Religious Liberty and Tolerance: The Case of South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh),” Shahid Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das have examined this problem of the rise of global religious hostilities in South Asia with special reference to India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The chapter argues that increased religious violence and resentments that the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are experiencing from the second decade of the 21st century, are closely connected to the rise of global terror and the global war on terror. The contemporary global resurgence in religious violence and hostilities is essentially a political phenomenon. The growth of global terror has been responsible for the rise of the global war on terror. The global war on terror escalated the boundary of worldwide terror and displaced millions of Muslims and Christians from their homeland. The global war on terror created opportunities for the emergence of many ancient hostilities between and among the different great religions, particularly hostilities against the Muslims. The global terror and the war on terror created a particularly new generation of “nomadic” Muslims, many of whom sailed to the west to take refuge. This global scenario created a fertile ground for the regrouping and reemergence of the anti-modernists and the right-wing political parties in the global political landscape. Modernity’s philosophy of humanism extends to all categories of people—free and unfree, advantaged and disadvantaged, respected and disrespected, and liberated and confined. Modernization implies that the fundamental human rights of those who are confined and incarcerated should be respected. United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, “prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, without exception or derogation.” In Chapter 10, “Modernity and the Oppressed: Chained Repression among Minority Females in America’s Criminal Justice System,” Zina T. McGee, has examined the problem and the plights of incarcerated minority females within the America’s prison system. She argues that the incarcerated minority females are doubly oppressed. Many of them in the larger society are the victims of poverty,

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

17

spousal violence, drug addictions, and gang violence. These problems are mainly the reasons why minority female criminality is growing in America. Inside the prison, these victims of post-traumatic disorder syndrome, face the same world of hate and hostilities, and physical and psychological tortures. Their access to mental health is severely limited, and their training for reentry and reintegration to society is inadequate. Zina McGee claims that America’s prison system is still dominated by the perspective of punishment. America’s prison system, she contends, needs modernization not only in terms of the issues of human rights but also in terms of advances in the science of victimization, post-traumatic disorder syndrome, and the rehabilitative model of crime control. One of modernity’s core principles is the extension of universal human rights. A society undergoing modernization is bound by the principle that all humans should be treated equal irrespective of gender, race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientations, and disability. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted in 2006 and ratified by 177 ccountries of the world, states that “Countries are to recognize that all persons are equal before the law, to prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability and guarantee equal legal protection (Article 5). The Convention also states that “As a change of perceptions is essential to improve the situation of persons with disabilities, ratifying countries are to combat stereotypes and prejudices and promote awareness of the capabilities of persons with disabilities (Article 8). Chapter 11 of this book “Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights: Evolution of Legal Status and Cultural Attitudes towards Disability in America,” is concerned with this problem of modernization and disability in America. Melody Brackett, Kim Downing, and Deborah Riddick, who are trained in professional social work, have taken in this chapter a long historical view of development of rights of the disabled and the changing cultural attitudes towards disability in America. They made an argument that America has come a long way from the medieval perspective of demonology and disability. This perspective began to change from the beginning of the 20th century with the rise of the medicalization of disability. The medicalization perspective began to change the cultural attitudes towards disability from demonic to naturalistic understanding. From the middle of the 20th century, a human rights approach to disability began to be dominant. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, The Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, Medicare and Medicaid Laws of 1965, The Fair Housing Act of 1968, The Rehabilitation of Act of 1975, and The Education for all Handicapped Children Act of 1975 significantly extended the rights of the disabled. The catalyst for the extension of universal human rights to the disabled in America, however, was the enactment of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) of 1990. The authors also examined how science and digital technology are contributing to bringing disability in America in a new era of physical, mental, and cultural healing.

REFERENCES Albright, M. (2018). Fascism: A Warning. New York, NY: Harper Publishing Company. Apter, D. (1967). The Politics of Modernization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Apter, D. (1987). Rethinking Development: Modernization, Dependency and Post-Modern Politics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

18

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Arsala, A. (2014). Pakistan is not a Failed State; It is a Failed Idea. London, UK: Lambert Academic Publishing. Bellah, R.N. (1981). Religion and Progress in Modern Asia. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company. Berger, P. (ed.). (1999). The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company. Berger, P. (1974). The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness. New York, NY: Vintage. Eisenstadt, S. N. (2010). Modernity and Modernization. Retrieved from www.sagepub.net/ isa/resources/pdf/Modernity.pdf on January 20, 2019. Eisenstadt, S. N. (1986). The Origins of Diversity: Axial Age Civilizations. Albany, NY: The University of New York at Albany Press. Eisenstadt, S. N. (1966). Modernization: Protest and Change. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Eisenstadt, S. N. (1964). Breakdowns of Modernization. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 12 (4), pp. 345-367. Entessar, N. (1998). Criminal Law and the Legal System in Revolutionary Iran. Boston College Third World Law Journal. Vol, 8 (8), pp. 91-102. Etzioni, A. (1968). The Active Society. New York, NY: The Free Press. Farrow, R. (2018). War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Fukuyama, F. (2004). State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fukuyama, F. (2006). The End of History and the Last Man. New York. NY: The Free Press. Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment for Children. (2017). Ending Legalized Violence Against Children. London, UK: Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment for Children. Hall, S. (1992). Introduction. In S. Hall and Gieben, B. (eds.). (1992). Formations of Modernity (pp. 1-16). Cambridge, UK: The Polity Press. Hall S., and Gieben, B. (eds.). (1992). Formations of Modernity. Cambridge, UK: The Polity Press. Hofstadter, R. (1966). Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York, NY: Vintage Publishing Company. Hunter, J. D. (1992). Culture Wars: The Struggle to Control the Family, Art, Education, Law, and Politics in America. New York, NY: Basic Books. Huntington, S. P. (2011). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Inkles, A. (1983). Exploring Individual Modernity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Jacoby, S. (2009). The Age of American Unreason. New York, NY: Vintage Publishing Company. Lipset, S. M. (1979). The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspectives. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Luce, E. (2017). The Retreat of Western Liberalism. New York, NY: Grove Atlantic. Meacham, J. (2018). The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. New York, NY: Random House.

Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization

19

Naghibi, N. (2007). Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Nelson, B. (1981). On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science, and Civilizations. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Niose, D. (2014). Fighting Back the Right: Reclaiming America from Attack on Reason. New York, NY: St. Martin Press. Parsons, T. (1966). The System of Modern Societies. Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Pew Research Center. (2018). American Values Survey. Washington DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (2017a). Support for same-Sex Marriage Grows, Even Among Groups that Had been Skeptical. Washington DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (2017b). Supreme Court Same-Sex Wedding Cake Case Reflects Split among American Public (by M. Lipka). Washington DC: The Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (2017c). Five Facts About Abortion (by M Lipka and J. Gramlich). Washington DC: The Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (2017d). Global Snapshot of Same-Sex Marriage (by D. Masci and D. Desilver). Washington DC: Pew Research Center. Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Robertson, R. (1992a). Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Robertson, R., and White. K. (eds.). (1992b). Globalization: Analytical Perspectives. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Sedghi, H, (2007). Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Revealing. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Shahidullah, S. M. (2012). Comparative Criminal Justice Systems: Global and Local Perspectives. Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning. Skocpol, T; (2015). States and Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Weber, M. (2010). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: NY: Oxford University Press. World Bank. (2016). Women, Business, and Law 2016: Getting to Equal (by Iqbal Sarah). Washington DC: World Bank.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 2

MODERNITY, RELIGION AND THE CHURCH AND STATE SEPARATION DOCTRINE: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF MODERNIZATION AND THE CULTURE WAR IN AMERICA Shahid M. Shahidullah*, PhD Department of Sociology, Hampton University, Hampton, VA, US

ABSTRACT This chapter has examined the issue of Church and state separation in the context of conflicts and convergence of modernity in America. The central argument of this chapter is that the notion of modernity does not abandon the realm of religion, spirituality, and divinity. Modernity implies that a government will not encroach into the realm of religion. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the American constitution imply this fundamental principle of church and state separation under modernity, and this is what Thomas Jefferson described as the “wall of separation.” The wall of separation, however, is not built once and for all. In any society undergoing an experiment of modernity, it is an evolving cultural process. In America, the modernity experiment with respect to the church and state separation progressed without many conflicts for almost one hundred and fifty years. Conflicts, confusions, and concerns, began to grow from the 1960s with the further expansion of the reproductive rights of women and the rights of the LGBTQ community. The culture war in America took a new turn particularly after the Obergefell decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 that legalized same-sex marriage. After the legalization of same-sex marriage, millions of conservative Americans became concerned about the future of modernity with respect to the wall of separation. The culture war, however, is not the end of the experiment of modernity in America. It is a manifestation of the dialectical progress of modernity. The defense of modernity must be based on the presumption that there is nothing called unbounded liberty. There is no freedom which is absolute and unconditional. Those who wage the culture war in America at the same time must also recognize that modernity is a dynamic and universal process. The progress of modernity *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

22

Shahid M. Shahidullah will always create new social norms, rituals, attitudes, values, and institutions, and those need to be absorbed and integrated into the existing social and cultural order. In Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court has probably gone too far into the infringement of the right of many Americans who believe in the biblical meaning of sex, marriage, and family. But in doing so, the court upheld one of the core principles of modernity—the constitutional doctrine of privacy and equality under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the American constitution. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case in 2018, the court seemed to have come to a middle ground. The court did not overturn Obergefell but protected the religious belief —the free exercise right of the Cakeshop owner. It is in Masterpiece Cakeshop decision of the Supreme Court wherein probably lies the future of America’s modernity experiment concerning the wall of separation between Church and state.

Keywords: modernity, church and state separation, constitutional doctrine of privacy, due process clause, first amendment, establishment clause, free exercise clause, culture war

INTRODUCTION Throughout the whole of the medieval ages, particularly in Europe, the dominant epistemology—the source and the justification of knowledge—was based on religion. By the time of the beginning of medievalism after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, ancient science and philosophy were about 1000 years old. India had enormous contributions in science from the beginning of the development of the ancient civilizations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro around 2000 BC. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle discovered the notion of modern secular philosophy around 400 B.C. by exploring questions about justice, ethics, morality, human nature, and good polity. However, in the dark ages of medieval time, religion was still the dominant source and justification of knowledge. In the medieval world, religion sanctified the monarchy, and the monarchy and the Pope were inseparable. Medieval values, beliefs, and morality were based on how they were defined and codified by religion. Medieval canon law defined and described the nature of family, marriage, sex, body, beauty, and intimacy. Medieval humanity was under the absolute control of the monarchy and religion. The birth of modernity was the beginning of a project to search for an alternative epistemology and a separation between monarchy and the Pope on the one hand, and God and the understanding of human nature on the other. The culture of modernity proposed three alternative projects to deal with the problem of the divine. The first is philosophical, and it was about the nature and source of human knowledge based on natural philosophy. This led to the birth of modern science. The second was about the relations between church and individual. And it came through the rise of the Reformation. The third was about relations between church and the state, and it came with the rise of modern states. This chapter will examine these three issues, particularly the issue of church and state separation in the context of conflicts and convergence of modernity in America. The analysis will proceed in four directions. First, the chapter will examine the religion and modernity divide by describing the notion and the evolution of naturalistic explanation. Second, the chapter will describe the rise of the modern notion of individualism in the context of the rise of Reformation and the philosophy of natural rights. Third, the chapter will explore the principle of the Church and state separation in the context of the American constitution and some of the related landmark

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

23

decisions of the US Supreme Court. Finally, the chapter will examine America’s emerging religious landscape, and the role of religion in shaping debates on abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and reproductive rights.

MODERNITY AND THE RISE OF MODERN SCIENCE: THE DIVINE AND THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY The notion of naturalistic explanation, which is the core philosophy behind the birth of modern science, is predicated on the assumption of separation between God and the universe, and God and human nature. In fact, before the nineteenth century when the term ‘scientists” was coined, the founding fathers of modern science were described as “natural philosophers.” “During the seventeenth century, and well into the eighteenth (at least until 1750, if not later), figures like Newton worked within the century’s-old tradition of natural philosophy” (Janiak, 2014, p. 2). The natural philosophy or naturalistic explanation assumes that the natural, biological, psychological, and social worlds are governed by certain laws, rules, facts, and patterns. These laws, rules, facts, and patterns must be understood and examined through observation, theorizing, mathematization, logic, axioms, and experiments, and not in terms of divine scriptures. The birth of modern science is associated with the publication of the book On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543. Copernicus’s heliocentric theory brought not just the birth of modern science, it also brought the birth of a new form of human knowledge based on natural philosophy, not divine providence. This was nicely expressed in a letter written by Copernicus to Pope Paul III in 1543, where he defended his discovery and said that, “There will be those fools…who will venture a refutation based on some passage of scripture…I shall not waste my time on them” (King, 2014, p. 247). The heliocentric theory was later mathematically proven and validated by Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1642). Galileo in his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican published in 1632, more forcefully defended the Copernican discovery and confirmed the validity of naturalistic explanation. In a letter written to Grand Duchess Christina in 1615, Galileo said that, “in disputes about natural phenomena, one must not turn immediately to Scripture, but rather utilize the evidence of sense experience and demonstration based on them” (King, 2014, p. 253). Galileo further argued that “it would be wise to bar any engagement with scriptural passages, forcing them somehow to confirm the truth of this or that scientific conclusion” (King, 2014, p. 254). Rene Descartes, one of the founding fathers of modern science and the architects of the philosophy of naturalistic explanation, wrote in his Principles of Philosophy in 1640, that philosophy “signifies the study of wisdom… perfect knowledge of all that man can know….God is in truth the only being who is wise…but we may say that men are more or less as wise as their knowledge of the most important truths, is greater or less” (Descartes, 2005, p. 3). Descartes completely “reshapes the relations between metaphysics and natural philosophy, and develops the first mechanistic physical cosmology, the first nonmythological theory of the formation of the earth, the first mechanistic physiology and embryology” (Gaukroger, 2002, p. 4). As one author remarked about Descartes views of natural philosophy, “God remains present in Descartes’s lonely universe, but the more potent presence is the human mind, which has the power to know and dominate nature” (King, 2014,

24

Shahid M. Shahidullah

p. 257). In his Principia, published in 1684, Isaac Newton developed a more refined and advanced analysis of the methodology of natural philosophy (Janiak, 2914). Newton discovered the laws of gravitation, and did much theorizing about light and optics, but, more importantly, he was deeply engaged in debates about the construction of naturalistic knowledge based on experiments, and mathematization. The concept of natural philosophy received a new turn in the hands of Einstein in 1905. Einstein questioned the Newtonian notion of natural philosophy, that nature is the mathematical manifestation of the human mind. For Einstein, the core of natural philosophy is speculation or theorizing. Einstein argued that the natural world is external to the human mind and human perception can result in only some indirect experience. We can grasp nature only by speculations (Cespedes-Cure, 2002). For Einstein, “speculation does not only mean to guess. The speculation process… is a synthesis of all ontological, logical, and mathematical principles plus intuitive and imaginative abilities of the mind” (Cespedes-Cure, 2002, p. 17). From the Copernican discovery of the heliocentric theory in 1543 to Einstein’s theorizing of special relativity (1905) and general relativity (1916) about space and time, there were about four hundred years of the growth of modern science that was based on the notion of natural philosophy. The birth of natural philosophy did not deny the divine but created an alternative mode of analysis of nature and human bodies, minds, and societies. The notion of natural philosophy did not reject the scriptures and the relevance of the divine providence for the human mind. The idea still dominant in the mind of many anti-modernists that science leads to the rejection of the divine in the realm of humanity is utterly misleading. In the preface of his Revolutions of Celestial Spheres written to Pope Paul III, Copernicus wrote that “Perhaps your holiness will not be surprised so much that I have dared to publish these theories of mine…not hesitating even to commit in print my thoughts on the motion of the earth….I have chosen to dedicate these theories of mine to your Holiness, rather than to any other person” (King, 2014, pp. 245-247). Galileo did not “deny the truth of Holy Scripture, written at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. However, in the domain of nature,” Galileo argued, “truth derives from sense experience and demonstrations based on them” (King 2014, p. 250). Galileo said that “Both Holy Scripture and nature, equally proceed from the Word of God: The Holy Spirit dictates the first, the later as scrupulous executrix of God’s laws” (as quoted in King, 2014, p. 250). Einstein similarly was curious about the divine and the rules of the providence. However, he denied the existence of a personal God, modeled after the idea of a superman. Following Jewish thought, Einstein conceived of God as an abstract entity in accordance with the Biblical ‘Thou shall not make unto thee a graven image, or any likeness of anything’ (Exodus 20:4 (as quoted in Jammer, 1999, p. 47). When he was once asked to define his notion of God, Einstein said that, “We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force [through the natural philosophy] that moves the constellations” (Jammer. 1999, p. 48). Similarly, in response to another interview on his concept of God, Einstein once said that, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in God who concerned himself with facts and actions of human beings” (Jammer, 1999, p. 49). The naturalistic philosophy brought freedom of inquiry and created a space for the pursuit of human knowledge and learning apart from the Scripture. It is this newly created intellectual space that for the last four hundred years contributed to the development of a new body of knowledge described as modern science. The discoveries of the Copernicus’s theory of heliocentrism, Newton’s theory of gravity, Harvey’s theory of the circulation of bloods,

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

25

Pasteur’s theory of pasteurization, Rontgen’s theory of X-Ray, Rabi’s theory of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, theory of electricity by Faraday, Einstein’s theory of relativity, Darwin’s theory of evolutionism, theory of the DNA by Watson and Crick and numerous other scientific discoveries were possible because of the birth of the idea of natural philosophy and the methodology of naturalistic explanation. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a whole body of social science emerged based on the methodology of modern science—the naturalistic explanation. Comte’s theory of positivism, Adam Smith’s discovery of free market forces and the “invisible hand”, theories of social contract and the evolution of state by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, Marx’s theory of capitalism and class struggle, Freud’s theory of the structure of the mind and psychoanalysis, Weber’s theory of modernity and rationalization, Durkheim’s theory of religion and collective consciousness, Montesquieu’s theory of the social foundation of law, Bentham’s theory of utilitarianism and numerous other theoretical discoveries in social science in the nineteenth century built the intellectual foundations of modern social and behavioral sciences.

MODERNITY AND THE BIRTH OF INDIVIDUALISM: FROM REFORMATION TO THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT The rise of modern science came in the wake of rearticulating the relations between the divine and natural philosophy. Modern science, in other words, came in the wake of the demand for autonomy of natural philosophy from the control of the divine. Copernicus and Galileo begged for this autonomy from the religious authority of their times. The rise of individualism came in the wake of the rearticulating of relations between authority (including the divine authority) and the individual. In his Old Regime and the French Revolution in 1856, Tocqueville rightly observed that, “The word ‘individualism’ was unknown to our ancestors” (as quoted in Smith and Moore, 2015, p. 3). Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt in his epoch-making work on The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy published in 1860, similarly observed that, “In the middle ages man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, or corporation—only through some general category” (as quoted in Martin, 2004, p. 4). During the days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in ancient Greek civilization, and in the early days of the Roman Empire, there were many philosophical discourses on the notion individualism. During the age of the growth of classical learning, Greek philosopher Protagoras, before Socrates, around 500 B.C said that, “Man is the measure of all things” and this Stoic philosophical dictum is still the core of modernity (Tanner, 2017). However, the age of classical learning declined with the decline of the Greek civilization and the Roman Empire, and the advent of the medieval civilization brought a radical break in the continuity of the philosophical discourses on individualism. A new philosophical discourse on individualism began with the revival of classical learning and the beginning of modernity. The birth of individualism is one of the hallmarks of modernity. The notion of individualism is intimately connected to all of the cultural and philosophical movements of the last four hundred years—the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, Reformation, Age of Reason, Age of Enlightenment, and urban industrial capitalism (Meer, 2011; Nichols, 2016)).

26

Shahid M. Shahidullah

The medieval civilization survived and was sustained for almost one thousand years by developing a philosophy and creating a social-political system of absolute control of the individual by the collective institutions of the church and monarchy. The power of the divine and the divine power of the monarchy were the two central modes of organizing the medieval civilization. In the medieval world, the dominance of the church and aristocracy was defined and deified at the cost of the fate and the destiny of common individuals. Through the whole medieval time, individuals were degraded, dehumanized, abused, tortured, and killed by the whims of the church and monarchy. In a medieval home, patriarchy had absolute control over the body and mind of women and children. Under medieval feudalism, serfs and peasants were bound to work on lands owned by the monarchy and not by them. In medieval courts, the monarchs and their laws were divine, absolute, and unchallengeable. In the medieval court of the church, the canon law, inquisition, and exorcism were the dominant institutions. In the realm of medieval knowledge; philosophy, law and Scriptures were the dominant sources of knowing. In that medieval world system, the notions of individual rights, individual freedom, equality, and democracy were politically unknown and unrecognized. The principles of the rule of law and a due process of law for the protection of the rights of the individuals were unexplored and unfathomable. The medieval civilization made a complete break from the age of classical learning that bloomed in Greek and early Roman civilizations some one thousand years before the birth of medievalism. In the age of classical learning, many great discourses began on the notions of individualism, democracy, equality, justice, fairness, and human rights (Machan, 1998). The notion of individualism, for example, was at the core of Aristotle’s concept of moral philosophy. “The self-actualization of the individual,” Aristotle said, “must take place within the polis” (Machan, 1998, p. 5). Aristotle further claimed that “The polis…will exhibit justice only if it is a suitable setting for…self-directed agents, who need to have a room for development” (Machan, 1998, p. 5).

Renaissance and the Birth of Modern Individualism The birth of modernity and the rise of the modern notion of individualism began with the revival of classical learning—a movement described by many historians as the revival of classical humanism—from the days of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Reason, the Age of Enlightenment, the invention of the printing press, and the rise of urban capitalist industrial civilization (King, 2014). By the seventeenth century, “humanism was virtually universal, in that it was shared to some extent by the whole of the intellectual elite” in Europe (King, 2014, p. xiii; Johnson, 2000). From that time, new discourses on the nature of individualism began to be expressed in arts, painting (i.e., Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci), politics (i.e., Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau), science (i.e., Galileo and Descartes), and religion (Luther and Calvin). Historian Burckhardt observed that, “it was in [renaissance] Italy, above all, because of changing political structures, that ‘man became a spiritual individual’…and recognized himself as such” (as quoted in Martin, 2004, p. 5). The Renaissance scholars “placed new value on the will and the agency, on expressions, prudence, and creativity” (Martin, 2004, p 5; Nichols, 2016).

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

27

Reformation and the Birth of Modern Individualism The renaissance’s humanists rediscovered the notion of individualism discussed and debated in the classical age of Greek philosophy, but they did not provide for it any theological justification. Until a theological justification for individualism became politically and culturally legitimate, the dominance of the divine role of the church and the divine power of the King on the lives of medieval individuals remained mostly unchanged and unchallenged. This transformation came with the onset of a great historical moment in the history of Christianity, described as the rise of the Reformation. The Reformation was born in response to the divine rule of the church, particularly the papal theology, that had absolute dominance in governing the lives of medieval individuals through the instrumentalities of the canon law, Inquisition (Deane, 2011, Homza, 2006), and indulgences (Swanson, 2011)— instrumentalities that were justified on the basis of the Scriptures and in the name of the divine. The Reformation led by German theologians Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564) brought inner doctrinal transformations to rearticulating the relations between God and individuals. Luther said that, “others…have attacked the life. I attack the doctrine” (as quoted in Bainton, 1977, p. 24). Luther attacked “not the abuses of medieval Catholicism, but Catholicism itself as an abuse of Gospel was the object of his onslaught” (Bainton, 1977, p. 24). There were five doctrinal transformations brought by Luther in his ninety-five theological sermons and they markedly defined the sixteenth century movement of Reformation: grace alone (sola gratia), Scripture alone (sola Scriptura), faith alone (sola fide), Christ alone (sola Christus), and glory to God alone (soli Deo gloria). At the core of these doctrinal transformations was the new theology of Luther, that religious perfection “had to be intrinsic to the moral perfection of a rational creature [a rational individual]” (Levi, 2002, p. 280). The salvation of an individual “must depend on an interior moral attitude” (Levi, 2002, p. 280). The salvation can come through the grace of God and by faith in God and Christ alone. Salvation can come by reading the Scriptures alone (Trueman, 2017). The forgiveness of human sin, Luther said, “did not require sacramental absolution” (Levi, 2002, p. 280). The spread and the legitimacy of these new theological doctrines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to a series of religious conflicts, wars, and violence, and eventually, they gave rise to what is described as Protestantism (Wilson, 2011). Luther’s doctrine of salvation by faith alone received a new theological justification by the doctrine of predestination reincarnated from the New Testament by John Calvin (Wallace, 2004). The doctrine of predestination is the notion that the fate of an individual with respect to his or her salvation is predestined by God—a fate that cannot be changed and challenged. As Calvin said, “God has predestined [elected] some to Salvation, and others to destruction” (as quoted in Collinson, 2004, p. 97). Many social scientists theorize that Calvinism provided the core theological justification for modern individualism by making a modern individual theologically compelled to search for eternal salvation not through the Church, but through his or her own rational engagement with the goodness and materiality in this world. German sociologist Max Weber (2002) theorized that the theology of Calvinism was the driver for the development of rational capitalism and a culture of science, rationality, pragmatism, and materiality in the West. The Renaissance contributed to the rise of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and the rise of the Reformation contributed to the rise of what the historians described as the Age

28

Shahid M. Shahidullah

of Reason or the Age of Enlightenment (Johnson, 2000). The philosophers of the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment such as Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remained predominantly concerned about the rights of the individuals within the structure of power and the state. The modern notion of individualism became further concretized by the Lockean idea of natural rights. The notion of natural rights is at the center of the culture of modernity. John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government expanded his philosophy of natural rights and his thesis about the birth of the modern state. Locke argued that all individuals were created free and equal, and they had natural rights to life, liberty, and property in pre-political society—the “state of nature.” Life in the state of nature “was a state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation” (as quoted in Macpherson, 1980, p. xiv). But at the same time, life in the state of nature, Locke claimed, was “very unsafe, very insecure, full of fears and continual dangers” (as quoted in Macpherson, 2980, p. xiv). The instrumentally of the state evolved through “social contract.” The state was created with the supreme task of protecting the natural rights that individuals had in the state of nature. The philosophy of Locke is enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence and the American constitution and the Bill of Rights (Campbell, 2017; Kirk, 2014). Following the philosophy of John Locke in particular, and the spirit of the Age of the Enlightenment in general, the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 contained that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.” The Reformation recast the relations between the God and the individual. The Age of Enlightenment recast the relations between the state and the individual. The history of the culture of modernity, in fact, is a history of the continuing debate with the ghost of John Locke and his philosophy of natural rights (Dupre, 2004).

MODERNITY AND CHURCH AND STATE SEPARATION: THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION Historical and Philosophical Context One of the central projects of modernity since the days of the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment, as the above historical narratives suggest, was the creation of a new universalistic model of a social and political system; that is why many scholars define modernity as the design of a new civilization (Eisenstadt, 2010; Nelson, 1981). This new model or the new culture of modernity emerged with an intense philosophical debate with religion but it never examined the demise of religion and the dethroning of God from human life and morality. The notion of modernity is for the construction of a new civilization on the basis of human reason, science, and rationality. Philosophically, the culture of modernity set in motion a series of social experiments based on the notions of humanism, secularism, individualism, equality, and democracy. The Calvinist notion of “this-worldliness” is the decisive factor in the experiment of modernity, and this is what is described as the process of secularization. The notion of secularization does not mean the negation of religion. One of the

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

29

core meanings of secularization is the principal of the Church and state separation. How this principle of Church and state separation is working with the experiments of modernity in different cultures and civilizations is an empirical question. The principle of the Church and state separation was first enshrined in the constitution of the United States of America—the first state in the world to begin the experiment of modernity in the late eighteenth century. There are four major historical facts and forces in colonial America that set the political and philosophical contexts for the Church and state separation principle in the American constitution; the widespread religious conflict and violence in the colonies that continued for almost two hundred years before the birth of the Republic, inseparability of Church and state and state endorsement of religion in most of the thirteen colonies, an alternative trend of seeking religious freedom in colonial America, and the impact of Locke’s philosophy of religious tolerance on the founding fathers of the new Republic. The birth of the Reformation in the sixteenth century led to the permanent separation of Christianity into two major sects: Catholics and Protestants. In the seventeenth century, Europe witnessed the decline of Catholic societies and the rise of Protestant societies. Historians observed that in the seventeenth century, Europe’s “dynamic center has moved from Catholic Spain, Italy, Flanders, and South Germany to Protestant England, Holland, Switzerland and the cities of the Baltic’ (Trevor-Roper, 2001, p. 45). The emergence of the new Protestant civilization, however, did not come without conflicts, violence, and war. The Reformation created for almost one hundred years a Tsunami of religious war and violence in Europe (Trevor-Roper, 2001; Wallace, 2004). In the period, described by historians as the Thirty Year War in Europe, (1618-1648) “a large percentage of the populations of the European countries were killed…thousands of villages and towns were destroyed, [many] nations were bankrupted, and profound ecological damage [occurred] across the landscape” (Corrigan and Neal, 2010, p. 4). The religious conflict and violence in the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were an extension of those of Europe (Mass and Osborne, 2008). One historian observed that “European Christians brought with them America’s interpretations of the Bible that supported not only intolerance of non-Christian religions…but supplied guidance about how to deal with those who are different” (Corrigan and Neal, 2010, p. 18). Religious conflicts, violence, and discriminations were widespread in all the thirteen colonies before the birth of the American Republic. In New England, the Catholics were prosecuted by the Protestants. The New England Puritans “regarded Indians suspiciously, and at times that suspicion was distilled into fear and hatred of Indians as demonic, warlike, and meant by God for extermination” (Corrigan and Neal, 2010, p. 20). In Virginia the “Dissenting Protestant… suffered at the hands of the Anglican ecclesiastical establishment (Corrigan and Neal, 2010, p. 22). Also, in Virginia, “Heresy, the public pronouncement of religious ideas contrary to Anglican theology was punishable by death” (Corrigan and Neal, 2010, p. 22). Different states in colonial America also remained deeply involved with the issues of governing religion, albeit with different arrangements of Church and state relations (Miller, 2012). The Anglican Church was the official religion in the colonies of Maryland, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Congressional Church was the official religion of the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Many of the constitutions of the colonies, however, included provisions for religious freedom and tolerance within the Protestant Christian community. In 1683, the New York Charter of Liberties and Privileges wrote: “That no person or persons which profess faith in God by

30

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Jesus Christ Shall at any time be any ways molested, punished, disquieted, or called in Question for any difference in opinion or Matter of religious concernment.” Article III of the Massachusetts constitution wrote that “Every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law; and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.” Article XXXIII of the Charter of Maryland stated that, “it is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to him; all persons professing the Christian religion, are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty… [and] “Legislature may, in their discretion, lay a general and equal tax for the support of the Christian religion.” In the New England Colony, “before 1697, only church members in good standing could practice in politics. After 1697, voting was opened to nonmembers, but official holding, as a practical matter continued to be limited to Congregationalists” (Miller, 2012, p. xiv). There was also an alternative trend for seeking religious freedom and the Church and state separation in some of the colonies (Beneke, 2014, 2008; Miller, 2012). Almost half of the colonies in the seventeenth centuries did not have any state-mandated official religion (Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island). In 1776, the New Jersey constitution included a provision, “That no person shall ever, with this colony, be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God…be compelled to attend any place of worship, contrary to his own faith.” The constitution further stated ‘That there shall be no establishment of any religious sect in the Province, in preference to another.” The Rhode Island Charter of 1663 wrote that “our royal will and pleasure is, that no person within the…colony…shall be…molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion.” The Pennsylvania constitution (Section II) in 1776 wrote that “All men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God.” One historian observed that, “one of the most prominent themes in the intellectual life in colonial Pennsylvania was the right of private judgment in matters of biblical interpretation and religious choice” (Miller, 2012, p. xviii). The theological doctrines of the Reformation and its forceful adoption to the new religious landscape of the colonies, particularly by many dissenter Protestants (i.e., Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, and Quakers), in fact, largely contributed to the germination of the principle of church and state separation in the New Republic in the late eighteenth century. Historian Miller further confirmed that, “The theological construct of private judgment…had enough in common with the varieties of Protestant thought found throughout the colonies to allow religious disestablishment to become the persuasive paradigm in late colonial and early republican America” (2012, p. xviii). The Founding Fathers of the new American Republic were genuinely knowledgeable about the problem of religious conflict and violence and the same time for movements for religious freedom in the colonies. But they were also genuinely knowledgeable about the Age of Enlightenment’s vision for a modern state. The integration of the Church and state separation principle into the American constitution through the enactment of the Establishment Clause (i.e., First Amendment) was greatly impacted by the spirit of the Protestant reformation expressed through a theological justification for religious freedom by the dissenting Protestants of the colonies (Beneke, 2008; Miller, 2012). The Church and state separation principle remained also philosophically grounded in Locke’s theory of the tolerance of religious pluralism within the framework of the modern state. Locke’s theory of

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

31

religious tolerance appeared in his A Letter Concerning Toleration, published in 1689. Locke developed his ideas of religious tolerance by defining the meaning of religion (Lamprechat, 1928). He theorized that tolerance of religious pluralism is theologically essential and justified by Scriptures. In the Letter, he said that religion was not “instituted in order to the erecting of external pomp, nor the obtaining of ecclesiastical domination, nor to the exercising of compulsive force; but to the regulating of men’s lives according to the rules of virtue and piety” (as quoted in Horton and Mendus, 1991, p. 14). Locke further said that “It is in vain for any man to usurp the name of Christian, without holiness of life, purity of manners, and benignity and meekness of spirit” (as quoted in Horton and Mendus, 1991, p. 14). Religious torture and cruelties, forceful imposition of one’s religious faith on others, and to deny the freedom of faith and worship, Locke wrote in his Letter, “are contrary to the glory of God, to the purity of the Church, and the salvation of souls.”

Church and State Separation in the American Constitution: Jefferson and Madison The U.S constitution does not contain the provision for Church and state separation. It contains in the First Amendment of the constitution, adopted in 1791, which reads that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This provision of the First Amendment makes the practice of the freedom of religion as a constitutional right of an individual and the protection of religious freedom as a constitutional obligation of the government (Huston, 2007). Among the Founding Fathers, the key architects of the First Amendment were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (Brenner, 2004; Dreisbach, 2002). Their vision for a government in the Commonwealth of Virginia from the principle of Church and state separation was first codified in the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786 (the Bill was originally drafted by Jefferson in 1779). The Virginia Act established freedom of religion not only for Christians but for groups and individuals of all faiths and denominations (Juster, 2016). At the time of the adoption of the Virginia Act in 1786, Jefferson said that religious freedom involved “Jews and Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.” From the Virginia Act of 1786, the principle of Church and state separation became an inviolable and integral part of the First Amendment in the American constitution in 1791. The philosophy of Jefferson was to build the New Republic with a “wall of separation” between Church and state, and it was eloquently expressed in his address as President to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut in 1802 (Dreisbach, 2002). Clay Jenkins, one of America’s foremost humanist scholars and an expert on life and philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, claimed that Jefferson not only meant a “wall of separation”, but a “wall of eternal separation between Church and state.” James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, was also a grand champion of the principle of Church and state separation (Gutzman, 2014). In his letter to Edward Livingston in 1822, Madison wrote that, “We are teaching the world the great truth that Govts. do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Govt.” Madison’s views on religious freedom were brilliantly contained in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments written in 1784-1785 (Church, 2004). Many

32

Shahid M. Shahidullah

historians suggest that some of the writings contained in this document were reflections of Locke’s writings on Tolerance of Religion. In Memorial and Remonstrance, Madison “laid out the whole American Enlightenment case for religious freedom” (Gutzman, 2013, p. 46). Madison wrote that religion “can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence” (as Quoted in Church, 2004, p. 61). Madison further expanded that, “Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right” (as Quoted in Church, 2004, p. 61). One of the principal duties of a civil government, he claimed, is the protection of religious freedom. Madison affirmed that the best government is one that protects its every citizen for the “enjoyment of his religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another” (as Quoted in Church, 2004, pp. 66-67). Madison was purposefully blunt in saying that if freedom of religion is abused “it is an offense against God” (as Quoted in Church, 2004, p. 64).

CHURCH AND STATE SEPARATION IN THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION: LANDMARK SUPREME COURT DECISIONS The protection of religious freedom enshrined in the First Amendment of the American constitution is broadly the responsibility of all branches, agencies, and departments of the government of the United States. But the U.S. Constitution made the U.S. Supreme Court solely responsible to ensure that in the United States no laws, rules, and institutions are created and pursued, and there is no transgression of the separation of a wall between church and state. The U.S. Supreme Court, in other words, is the key arbiter of the crucial aspect of church and state separation and the experiment of modernity in the United States. During the last two hundred years, the U.S. Supreme Court made numerous rulings on cases related to Church and state separation, and most of these rulings were made in the second half of the twentieth century (Munoz, 2013). The Supreme Court made only three major rulings in the nineteenth century on Church and state separation issues (Reynolds v. the United States, 1879, Church of the Holy Trinity v. the United States, 1892; and Bradfield v. Roberts, 1899). In Reynolds v. The United States, one of the landmark rulings of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court decided that the faith in polygamy is not protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Through this ruling, the Supreme Court affirmed the sanctity and the sacredness of the traditional institution of monogamous marriage and family. Throughout the most part of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court made numerous rulings that firmly concretized the wall of separation, and this was an era of great expansion of modernity with respect to church and state separation in America. In 1947, the Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education argued that governmental support with the money of taxpayers for transporting children to Catholic schools is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In delivering the majority opinion, Justice Black said that, “no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities…to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government, can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa (as quoted in Munoz, 2013, p. 3). In McCollum v. Board of Education in 1948, the Supreme Court made a

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

33

similar ruling that teaching of religion in public school grounds, even though it is voluntary and outside main school hours, is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruled that religious prayer in schools is a violation of the Establishment Clause. In writing the majority opinion, Justice Black argued that, “state officials may not compose an official state prayer and require that it be recited in the public schools of the State at the beginning of each school day -- even if the prayer is denominationally neutral and pupils who wish to do so may remain silent or be excused from the room while the prayer is being recited” (Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 1962). Justice Black further expands that, “Under that Amendment’s prohibition against governmental establishment of religion, as reinforced by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, government in this country, be it state or federal, is without power to prescribe by law any particular form of prayer which is to be used as an official prayer in carrying on any program of governmentally sponsored religious activity” (Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 1962). The Supreme Court made another landmark decision on the Establishment Clause in Lemon v. Kurtzman in 1971. The court argued that state funding for non-public and non-secular schools, and “excessive entanglement between government and religion” is a violation of the Establishment Clause. In delivering the majority opinion, Chief Justice Burger clarified, “that the authors of the Establishment Clause “did not simply prohibit the establishment of a state church or a state religion, an area history shows they regarded as very important and fraught with great dangers. Instead, they commanded that there should be ‘no law respecting an establishment of religion’” (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 US 602, 1971). The Lemon gave birth to the doctrine of the Lemon Test, and since then it remained as a basis for examining cases related to the Establishment Clause. The Lemon Test is a three-prong strategy: a statute must have a secular legislative purpose; it must not support or inhibit any religion; and it must not create excessive governmental entanglement with religion (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 US 602, 1971). Similar rulings on the Establishment Clause were made by the Supreme Court during the last four decades of the twentieth century. Some of the landmark cases include the Torcaso v. Watkins in 1961; School District of Abington, Pennsylvania v. Schempp in 1963; Murray v. Curlett in 1963; Epperson v. Arkansas in 1968; Stone v. Graham in 1980l; Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987; Lee v. Weiseman in 1992; and Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe in 2000. During the same time, the Supreme Court also made a number of rulings defining the nature of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the principle of the wall of separation between Church and state. The Free Exercise Clause during the last two hundred years, however, remained more debatable than the Establishment Clause within the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia once defined the Free Exercise Clause in the following way: It “means, first and foremost, the right to believe and profess whatever religious doctrine one desires…. [It] often involves not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts: assembling with others for a worship service, participating in sacramental use of bread and wine, proselytizing, abstaining from certain foods or certain modes of transportation” (Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494- US 872, 1992). The Free Exercise Clause suggests that the government must not prohibit the free exercise and free expression of religious faiths, beliefs, opinions, ideas, and symbolism. The Free Exercise Clause implies that one should not be coerced in public places to follow and oblige to the rites, rituals, and symbolism of another religion. It conveys, as Justice Scalia wrote, the political exclusion of endorsing, affirming, regulating, and punishing

34

Shahid M. Shahidullah

religious beliefs, and doctrines (Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494- US 872, 1992). The Free Exercise Clause at the same time empowers the government to make laws to ensure that people, particularly the religious minorities, are not discriminated against for the free exercise of their religious beliefs, rites, and symbolisms. The Free Exercise Clause is the crux of modernity, and this also has remained as one of the most problematic issues concerning the experiment of modernity in the United States for the last two hundred years. Some of the landmark cases decided by the Supreme Court with respect to the Free Exercise Clause in the last half of the twentieth century include Cantwell v. Connecticut, 1940; Braunfeld v. Brown, 1961; Sherbert v. Verner, 1963; Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972; McDaniel v. Paty, 1978; Marsh and Chambers, 1983; Employment Division of the Department of Human Resources, Oregon v. Smith, 1990; and Church of the Lukumi Babalu v. City of Hialeah, 1993. Most of the Supreme Court rulings on Church and state separation until the 1980s were based on the doctrine of strict separation or the “separationist doctrine.” It was an era of more expansive growth of religious freedom in America. But from the 1980s, a more restricted interpretation of religious freedom began to be dominant with the Supreme Court, particularly from the ascendency of the Rehnquist Court in 1986 (Hudson, 2006; Rehnquist, 2002). The turning point came through the ruling in Mitchell v. Helms in 2000. In Mitchell, the majority opinion decided that governmental support for religious and parochial schools is not a violation of the Establishment Clause. In delivering the majority opinion in Mitchell, Justice Thomas discovered a new “equality doctrine.” He said that the Establishment Clause is not violated if government support is given equally to all religious and parochial schools. He also contended that the denial of governmental funding for religious schools is an expression of “undue hostility to religion”. He further added that, “the religious nature of a recipient should not matter to the constitutional analysis, so long as the recipient adequately furthers the government’s secular purpose…. the inquiry into the recipient’s religious views required by a focus on whether a school is pervasively sectarian is not only unnecessary but also offensive… hostility to aid to pervasively sectarian schools has a shameful pedigree that we do not hesitate to disavow (Mitchell v. Helms, 530 US 793, 2000). “In short,” Justice Thomas claimed, “nothing in the Establishment Clause requires the exclusion of pervasively sectarian schools from otherwise permissible aid programs, and other doctrines of this Court bar it. This doctrine, born of bigotry, should be buried now” (Mitchell v. Helms, 530 US 793, 2000). In recent years, the Robert Court also made a series of rulings based on a narrow and restricted interpretation of Church and state separation (DeGirolani, 2017). Some of the significant cases include Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, 2007; Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, 2011; Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School. v. EEOC, 2012; Town of Greece v. Galloway, 2014; Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 2014; Wheaton College v. Burwell, 2014; Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 2018; and Trump v. Hawaii, 2018. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the court ruled that state intervention in selecting a minister for a church is a violation of the Free Exercise Clause. The majority opinion of the court explained that, “By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the Free Exercise Clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments. According to the state, power to determine which individuals will minister to the faithful also violates the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government involvement in such ecclesiastical decisions” (Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School. v. EEOC,

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

35

565, US 171, 2012). In Hobby Lobby, the issue was whether the contraceptive coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in 2010, violates the religious right of a corporation, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (FRRA) of 1993. The court decided that ACT’s contraceptive mandate is in violation of the Free Exercise Clause. In writing the majority opinion, Justice Alito affirmed the decision in the following way: “We hold that the regulations that impose this obligation violate RFRA, which prohibits the Federal Government from taking any action that substantially burdens the exercise of religion” (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby 573 US 2014). In a concurring opinion, Justice Kennedy further expanded the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause. He said that “In our constitutional tradition, freedom means that all persons have the right to believe or strive to believe in a divine creator and a divine law…. It means, too, the right to express those beliefs and to establish one’s religious (or nonreligious) self-definition in the political, civic, and economic life of our larger community” (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 573 US, 2014). The court gave a much narrower interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in 2018. The issue in Masterpiece broadly was whether someone is protected by the Free Exercise Clause to deny any services to the wedding of same-sex couples. In writing the majority opinion in Masterpiece, Justice Kennedy asserted that “Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth…. At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and, in some instances, protected forms of expression.” He further added that, “When it comes to weddings, it can be assumed that a member of the clergy who objects to gay marriage on moral and religious grounds could not be compelled to perform the ceremony without denial of his or her right to the free exercise of religion” (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 US, 2018).

MODERNITY EXPERIMENT IN AMERICA: CHURCH AND STATE SEPARATION AND THE RISE OF CULTURE WAR The last six decades of social change and transformations have greatly widened the scope and the boundaries of the experiment of modernity in America. During the last five decades, a series of legal transformations made by both the Supreme Court and Congress expanded the scope of human rights, and widened the boundaries of democracy. Several Supreme Court rulings expanded privacy and individualism; decriminalized discriminations based on race, gender, religion, age, disability, and sexual orientations; and strongly guarded the wall of separation between Church and state. In the 1950s and 1960s, America emerged as a model for modernization, and many social scientists such as Apter (1967), Eisenstadt (2010, 1986, and 1966), Inkles (2000), Lipset (1977), and Parsons (1971) at that time theorized about the progress and success of the American experiment of modernity. As a modern nation, America was also engaged politically to spread the mission of modernity across the world societies. It was in defense of modernity and the global liberal social order that America remained engaged in the Cold War for almost two decades in the 1960s and 1970s. From the 1970s, however, a new “culture war” began to spread in American homeland raising many concerns about the American model of experiment in modernity (Hartman, 2015; Meacham, 2015;

36

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Hunter and Wolfe, 2006; Hunter, 1992). America’s culture war that began in the 1970s came to a new turning point with the ascendency of the ultra-rights and a new political regime in power in 2017. A detailed examination of the nature of this culture war is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it can certainly be argued that American’s culture war centers primarily around religious issues and principles of Church and state separation. Patrick Buchanan, one of America’s most passionate soldiers of the culture war once defined that culture war in America is “a war for the soul of America… and it is critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself” (as quoted in Hartman, 2015, p. 1). Buchanan surmised that the culture war is about “whether the ‘Judeo-Christian values and beliefs upon which this nation was built’ would survive” (as quoted in Hartman, 2015, p. 1). Although each and every generation in America since the beginning of the Republic was curious about it, the real “struggle to define America” began from the 1960s and 1970s. The America of the 1960s and 1970s saw the crumbling of many traditional beliefs and values based on Judeo-Christian ethics and ethos, and the rise of a new “rights revolution”—a revolution in defense of individual freedom. A series of cases decided by the Supreme Court and a number of statutes enacted by Congress spread and widened the rights revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. One author estimated that, “By the late sixties, almost seventy percent of its [Supreme Court] decisions involved individual rights, and the court had, essentially, proclaimed itself the guardian of the individual rights of the ordinary citizen” (Epp, 1998, p. 2). The culture war began from that era, not however, because of the general expansion of individual rights (e.g., racial equality, gender equality, and equality in terms of age and disability), but primarily because of many significant legal transformations related to the reproductive rights of women and the rights of LGBTQ people—rights that are seen by many as sharply conflicting with the biblical beliefs in sex, reproduction, marriage, and family. The legal expansion of women’s reproductive rights began with the Supreme Court decision on Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965. The Griswold decision legalized the use of contraceptive devices by married women from the constitutional right of marital privacy. In delivering the court’s opinion, Justice Douglas remarked that, “We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights—older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.” He further confirmed that marriage is “an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects” (Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, 389 US 479, 1965). In a concurring opinion, Justice Goldberg further confided that, “the concept of liberty protects those personal rights that are fundamental and is not confined to the specific terms of the Bill of Rights…the concept of liberty…embraces the right of marital privacy” (Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, 389 US 479, 1965). Seven years after Griswold, the court in Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972, further decided that the denial of contraceptive devices for unmarried women is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Brenan, in delivering the majority decision explained that the morality of denying contraceptive devices to unmarried women on the assumption that they may lead to unwanted pregnancy “conflicts with fundamental rights…. whatever the rights of individual access to contraceptives may be, the right must be the same for the unmarried and married alike” (Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 US 432, 1972). A year after Eisenstadt, the Supreme court through a landmark decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973 declared that the Texas statute that criminalized abortion was unconstitutional. In delivering the majority opinion, Justice

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

37

Blackmun asserted that, “The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, the court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution” (Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113, 1973). On the basis of the principle of personal privacy and also on the basis of the legitimacy of state interest to regulate abortion decisions, the court concluded that “the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified, and must be considered against important state interests in regulation” (Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113, 1973). These three landmark decisions concerning the reproductive rights of women—Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972, and Roe v. Wade in 1973 came in the backdrop of the discovery of birth control pills in the 1950s (Eigg, 2015; Watkins, 1998). Margaret Sanger, one of the pioneers of the birth control movement in the 1950s, had a mission to have a technology that would allow having “Sex without marriage. Sex without children. Sex redesigned, sex re-engineered, made safe, made limitless for the pleasure of women” (Eig, 2015, p. 6). The scientific breakthrough came by a team of scientists led by Harvard biologists Gregory Pincus through a successful clinical trial of the pill on fifty women in Massachusetts in 1954 and 100 women in Puerto Rico in 1956 (Watkins, 1998). In 1957, the FDA approved the pill for contraceptive use, and by 1965 about 6.5 million women were on the pill. A study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute (2018) found that in America “More than 99% of women aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method” (p. 1), and about 26 percent of them use the pill (Guttmacher Institute, 2018). The study also observed that “The pill is the method most widely used by white women, women in their teens and 20s, never- married and cohabiting women, childless women and college graduates” (Guttmacher Institute, 2018, p. 3). Since the days of the enlightenment and rise of modernity in the eighteenth century, there has been growing a movement for sexual liberation (Dabhoiwala, 2012; Godbeer, 2004; Garton, 2004; Giddens, 1992). Sexual revolution “was a central part of the European and North American Enlightenment” (Dabhoiwala, 2012, p. 2). It is the birth of the pill and the declaration of the constitutional right to privacy in sexuality by the court that brought the enlightenment of sexual revolution in a new turning point in America in the 1970s. The sexual revolution brought a new meaning and a new culture of sexuality and sexual liberty—a meaning that human romanticism was searching from the days of the enlightenment. British sociologist Anthony Giddens (1992) defined this new meaning of sexuality as plastic sexuality. Plastic sexuality “is crucial,” he says, “to the emancipation implicit in the pure relationship. [It] is decentered sexuality, freedom from the needs of reproduction…it frees sexuality from the rule of the phallus, from the overweening importance of male sexual experience” (p. 2). Harvard historian David Allyn (2001) described more vividly the nature of the emerging culture sexual liberty in his Make Love, Not War. In the late 1960s, the sexual revolution brought in American culture “the sudden acceptance of nudity in film and on the stage” (p. 5). In the 1970s, the culture of sexual liberty brought “hard-core sex films in first-run theaters [and] private clubs for group sex. For those in the counterculture, the “sexual revolution” meant the freedom to have sex where and when one wished” (p. 5). For some radical students, the sexual revolution brought an end “to the tyranny of the genital” (p. 5). The sexual revolution and the new culture of sexual liberty in the 1970s gave birth to a new movement in America’s cultural landscape in the 1980s and 1990s—the gay revolution

38

Shahid M. Shahidullah

(Faderman 2016; White, 1992). The seeds of the gay revolution were sown by the Stonewall generation who were dedicated to launching a crusade against the historical abuse, torture, and dehumanization of Gays and Lesbians (Allyn, 2001). In the 1960s, homosexuality was considered as a crime in America, the church described it as a sin, and the psychiatrists defined it as a personality disorder. In Bowers v. Hardwick (478, US 186, 1986) the Supreme Court narrowly ruled (5-4) that the act of homosexuality, because it is not related to the traditional definitions of family, marriage, and procreation, is not protected by the constitutional doctrine of privacy. However, from the late 1990s, the court made some landmark rulings that legally and culturally legitimated the gay liberation movement. Some of the most important of these rulings came through the cases of Romer v. Evans in 1996; Lawrence v. Texas in 2003; United States v. Windsor in 2013; and Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. In Lawrence, the court held that two consenting adults have the right to engage in private conduct under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution. In delivering the court opinion, Justice Kennedy described that, “Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private place. In our tradition, the State is not omnipresent in the home. Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct” (Lawrence v. Texas, 539 US 558, 2003). In 1996, Congress enacted The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (Public Law 104-199) that defined that marriage is heterosexual in nature and it can happen only between a male and a female. The Act denied same-sex couples from receiving federal benefits. In United States v. Windsor in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional. The court said that “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment” (United States v. Windsor, 570 US, 2013). The court further held that the act of defining marriage is a state responsibility and not the responsibility of the federal government. The Windsor decision recognized the right of a state to legalize same-sex marriage. In 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court further opened the way to legalize same-sex marriage all across the United States. The court held that, “The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State” (Obergefell v. Hodges 576 U.S. 2015). It is these legal, social, and cultural changes and transformations concerning sexual liberty, equal rights of women, and the LGBTQ community that further widened the culture war that began in the 1960s and 1970s. The culture war is primarily a moral war—a war for returning to the biblical values and beliefs about sex, marriage, and family. On the one side of the culture war, are the modernists who want to further enlarge the boundaries of rights, privacy, and inclusion. On the other side, are the anti-modernists who are concerned and skeptical about the experiment of modernity and the ‘wall of separation’ between Church and state. These anti-modernists, broadly described as the “religious right,” are comprised of various discretely connected religious groups including the Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, Southern Baptists, Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Concerned Women for America. From the 1970s, these and other evangelical fundamentalist groups began to be politically mobilized to wage a culture war on modernity (Fitzgerald, 2017; Dionne, 2008; Brown, 2002). The religious- right groups believe that “Christians should reconstruct the society based on biblical law, a theonomy that would lead directly to the coming of Christ” (Fitzgerald, 2017, p. 8). From empirical research on the religious right, one

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

39

sociologist observed that, “The most persistent complaint of Christian conservatives was that the separation of Church and state threatened to remove religion from public and even private life (Brown, 2002, p. 23). They are opposed to unfettered sexual liberty, radical feminism, homosexuality, and abortion (Brown, 2002). They believe that America’s unfettered sexual liberty is responsible for many of its serious social problems such as the rising rate of divorce, single parenting, teen pregnancy, growth in out-of-wedlock children, fatherless homes, premarital sex, drug addictions, and teen suicide. Sexual liberty, they claim, is leading the country “against God’s plan.” The religious right is “against the social revolution of the 1960s” (Fitzgerald, 2017, p. 626). The Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 that legalized same-sex marriage brought the culture war—a culture of homophobia— into a new turning point for the religious right. From the second decade of the 21st century, the culture war on modernity on the issue of Church and state separation in America, therefore, became much more intense and widened.

CONCLUSION: MODERNITY AND RELIGION Modernity’s principles of science based on naturalistic explanation, individualism based on the philosophy of natural rights, and secularism based on the doctrine of the Church and state separation, are bound to collide with fundamentalist explanations of the scriptures; not just of Christianity but also of all other great religions. It is because of this predicament that modernity in a society advances by creating a distinctive cultural space of its own. However, modernity does not abandon the realm of religion, spirituality, and divinity. Modernity implies that a government will not encroach into the realm of religion. A government under modernity, however, is the protector of religion. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the American constitution imply this fundamental principle of Church and state separation under modernity, and this is what Thomas Jefferson described as the “wall of separation.” The wall of separation, however, is not built once and for all. In any society undergoing an experiment of modernity, it is an evolving cultural phenomenon. Forces of social change and transformations are bound to create stress and tensions about the wall of separation, particularly concerning issues that are based on scriptural knowledge such as the sanctity of sex, marriage, procreation, and family. In Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, the Supreme Court, so, explained that, “The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change… Changed understandings of marriage are characteristic of a Nation where new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations. This dynamic can be seen in the Nation’s experience with gay and lesbian rights” (Obergefell v. Hodges 576 U.S. 2015). The expanding culture war in today’s America clearly demonstrates that the modernity experiment in society is essentially a dialectical process. Modernity in society is bound to go through a process from convergence to conflicts and conflicts to convergence. A process of discontinuities, as Giddens (1990) described, is endemic to the progress of modernity. In America, the modernity experiment with respect to the Church and state separation progressed without many conflicts for almost one hundred and fifty years. Discontinuities, confusions, concerns, and conflicts began to grow from the 1960s with the further expansion of the reproductive rights of women and the rights of Gay and Lesbian men and women. The

40

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Supreme Court’s core argument on these issues is based on the constitutional doctrines of privacy and equal protection under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the American constitution. After Obergefell in 2015 that legalized same-sex marriage, the cultural war took a new turn. After the legalization of same-sex marriage, millions of conservative Americans and not just the advocates of the religious right became concerned about the future of modernity with respect to the wall of separation. The culture war is not the end of the experiment of modernity in America. It is a manifestation of the dialectical progress of modernity. The defense of modernity, however, must be based on the presumption that there is nothing called unbounded liberty. There is no freedom which is absolute and unconditional. In his Second Treatise of the Government, Locke surmised that “the state of liberty…is not a state of license. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it…which is that…no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” (2017, p. 7). The reason that the focus of America’s culture war by the anti-modernists is mainly on the court is because of its many expansive interpretations of the notion of religious freedom during the last six decades of the progress of modernity, particularly in spheres of the rights of women and Gays and Lesbians. Those who wage the culture war in America at the same time must also recognize that modernity is a dynamic and universal process. The progress of modernity across time and space is irreversible (Giddens, 1990). In 1948, about 91 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christians. In 2014, the number fell to about 70.6 percent (Blumberg, April 2016). In the 1950s, about 70 percent of Americans said that religion is an important point of reference in their daily lives. In 2007, the number dropped to 56 percent. During the last seventy years, the number of church members has also significantly dropped. “In a 1937 Gallup Poll, 73 percent of Americans said they were church members. That percentage fell to around 70 percent in the ‘60s and ‘70s. By the 2000s, that number hovered around 60 percent” (Blumberg, April 2016, p. 5). More and more Americans are becoming unaffiliated with organized religions. The religiously unaffiliated is “a rapidly growing ”faith” group in the United States. They make up roughly 23 percent of the U.S. adult population and 35 percent of millennials, and can be seen cropping up across demographic categories” (Blumberg, July 2015. P. 1). The changing landscape of religion is developing new meanings and perceptions about sex, love, intimacy, reproduction, marriage, and family. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center (June 2017), 57 percent of Americans were in favor of same-sex marriage in 2001. In 2017, the number increased to 62 percent. The survey found that, “Among people who are religiously unaffiliated, a solid majority have supported same-sex marriage since 2001. Today, 85% of religious “nones” say same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Two-thirds of Catholics now support same-sex marriage, as do a similar share of white mainline Protestants (68%) (Pew Research Center, June 2017, p. 2). A major study conducted by the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey (GSS) on changing attitudes towards same-sex marriage and gay rights similarly found that “Americans’ attitudes toward gay people have become increasingly favorable since the early 1990s, and these changes have accelerated in recent years. In 2010, for the first time, more people supported same-sex marriage than opposed it. Support has continued to grow, and in 2014, more people than ever agree that same-sex couples should have the right to get married” (The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, June 2018, p. 1). This survey also noted that, “Fifty-six percent of Americans agree or strongly agree that gay couples should have the right to get married, while just 32 percent disagree or strongly disagree. Support is up eight

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

41

percentage points since 2012 and 45 percentage points since the question was first asked in 1988” (Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, June 2018, p. 1). The progress of modernity will always create new social norms, rituals, attitudes, values, and institutions, but they need to be absorbed and integrated into the emerging social and cultural order. In this process of integration, conflicts between the ethos of tradition and modernity are inevitable. In Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges, the court has probably gone too far into the infringement of the right of many Americans who believe in the biblical meaning of sex, marriage, and family. But in so doing, the court upheld and kept integrated some of the core principles of modernity—the constitutional doctrines of privacy and equality under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the American constitution. In Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2018, the court seemed to have come to a middle ground. The court did not overturn Obergefell but protected the religious belief —the free exercise right of the Cakeshop owner. It is in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision of the Supreme Court wherein probably lies the future of America’s modernity experiment concerning the wall of separation between Church and state.

REFERENCES Allyn, D. (2001). Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. New York, NY: Routledge. Apter, D. (1967). The Politics of Modernization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (June 2018). Same-Sex Marriage and Gay Rights: A shift in American’s Attitude. Chicago: Associated Press-NORC. Bainton, R. (1977). Here I stand: A Life of Martin Luther. New York, NY: Mentor Publishing Company. Beneke, C. (2014). The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Beneke, C. (2008). Beyond Toleration: Religious Origins of American Pluralism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Blumberg, A. (April 2016). American Religion Has Never Looked Quite Like It Does Today. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com on May 28, 2018. Blumberg, A. (July 2015). How the “Nones” Can Find A Sense of Community Outside of Religion. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com on June 30, 2018. Brenner, L. (2004). Jefferson and Madison on the Separation of Church and State: Writings on Religion and Secularism. Fort Lee, NJ: Baricade Books, Inc. Brown, R. M. (2002). For a Christian America: A History of the Religious Right. New York, NY: Prometheus Books. Campbell, J. (2017). Natural Rights and the First Amendment. Yale Law Journal., Vol. 127, pp. 246-321. Cespedes-Cure, J. (2002). Einstein on Trial or Metaphysical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Ramsey Lab Incorporated. Retrieved from www.ramseylab.org on May 3, 2019. Church, F. (ed.). (2004). The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America’s Founders. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

42

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Collinson, P. (2004). The Reformation: A History. New York, NY: The Random House Publishing Group. Corrigan, J. & Neal, L. S. (eds.). (2010). Religious Tolerance in America: A Documentary History. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Dabhoiwala, F. Z. (2012). The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Deane, J. K. (2011). A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little Field. DeGirolani, M. O. (2017). Constructional Contraction: Religion and the Robert Court. Stanford Law and Policy Review., Vol. 28, pp. 385-410. Descartes, R. (2005). The Principles of Philosophy (trans by John Veitch). Indy Publishing.com Dionne, E. J. (2008). Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dreisbach, D. L. (2002). Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State. New York: New York University Press. Dupre, L. (2004). The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundation of Modern Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Eig, J. (2015). The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution. New York, NY: W.W. Norton Company. Epp, C. R. (1998). The Rights Revolution: The Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Court in Comparative Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eisenstadt, S. N. (2010). Modernity and Modernization. Retrieved on January 2, 2019, from www.sagepub.net/isa/resources/pdf/Modernity.pdf Eisenstadt, S. N. (1986). The Origins of Diversity: Axial Age Civilizations. Albany, NY: The University of New York at Albany Press. Eisenstadt, S. N. (1966). Modernization: Protest and Change. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Faderman, L. (2016). The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Fitzgerald, F. (2017). The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Garton, S. (2004). Histories of Sexuality: Antiquity to Sexual Revolution. New York, NY: Routledge. Gaukroger, S. (2005). Descartes System of Natural Philosophy. London, UK: Cambridge University Press. Giddens, A. (1992). The transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in modern societies. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Goodbeer, R. (2004). Sexual Revolution in Early America. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. Gutzman, K. R. C. (2013). James Madison and the Making of America. New York, NY: St. Martin Press. Guttmacher Institute. (2018). Fact Sheet: Contraceptive Use in the United States. Retrieved from www.guttmacher.org on April 20, 2019.

Modernity, Religion and the Church and State Separation Doctrine

43

Hartman, A. (2015). A History of the Culture Wars: A War for the Soul of America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Homza, A. L. (2006). Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Horton, J. & Mendus, S. (1991). John Locke’s Letter on Tolerance in Focus. London, UK: Routledge. Hudson, D. L. (2006). Rehnquist Court: Understanding its Impact and Legacy: New York, NY: Praeger. Hunter, J. D. & Wolfe, A. (2006). Is There a Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution and PEW Research Center. Hunter, J. D. (1992). Cultural Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York, NY: Basic Books Publishing Company. Hutson, J. H. (2007). Church and State in America: The First Two Centuries. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Inkles, A. (2000). Becoming Modern: Individual in Six Developing Countries. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse. Janiak, A. (2014). Newton’s Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Jammer, M. (1999). Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Johnson, P. (2000). The Renaissance: A Short History. New York, NY: The Random House, Inc. University of Pennsylvania Press. King, M. L. (eds. and trans.). (2014). Renaissance Humanism: An Anthology of Sources. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Kirk, R. (2014). Natural Law and the Constitution of the United States. Notre Dame Law Review., Vol. 69 (5), pp. 1034-1048. Lamprecht, S. P. (ed.). (1928). Locke Selections. New York, NY: Charles Scribner Sons. Levi, A. (2002). Renaissance and Reformation: The Intellectual Genesis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lipset, S. M. (1977). American Essentialism: A Double-Edged Sword. New York, NY: W. W. Norton Company. Locke, J. (2017). The Second Treatise of the Government. Retrieved from www.digireads.com on June 2, 2019. Macpherson, C. B. (ed.). (1980). John Locke: Second Treatise of Government. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Machan, T. R. (1998). Classical Individualism: The Supreme Importance of Each Being. New York: Routledge. Martin, J. J. (2004). Myths of Renaissance Individualism. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave and Macmillan. Mass, M. & Osborne, C. (eds.). (2008). American Catholic History: A Documentary Reader. New York, NY: New York University Press. Meacham, J. (2015). The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. New York, NY: Random House. Meer, Z. (ed.). (2011). Individualism: The Cultural Logic of Modernity. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

44

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Miller, N. P. (2012). Religious Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Munos, V. P. (ed.) (2013). Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Nelson, B. (1981). On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science, and Civilization. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Nichols, T. (2016). Renaissance Art in Venice: From Tradition to Individualism. London, United Kingdom: Laurence King Publishing. Parsons, T. (1971). System of Modern Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Publishing Company. Pew Research Center. (June 2017). Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage. Retrieved on June 2018 from www.pewforum. Rehnquist, W. H. (2002). The Supreme Court. New York, NY: Vintage Publishing Company. Smith, G. H. & Moore, M. (eds.). (2015). Individualism: A Reader. Washington DC: The Cato Institute. Swanson, R. N. (2011). Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passport to Paradise? London: United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Tanner, G. (2017). Stoicism: A Detailed Breakdown of Stoicism Philosophy and Wisdom from the Greats: A Complete Guide to Stoicism. Amazon Digital Services. Trevor-Roper, H. (2001). The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (Religion, the Reformation and Social Change). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Inc. Trueman, C. R. (2017). Grace Alone- Salvation as a Gift of God: What the Reformers, Taught and Why it Still Matters. Grand Rapid, MI: Zondervan. Wallace, P. (2004). Long European Reformation: Religion, Political Conflict, and the Search for Conformity, 1350-1750. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave and Macmillan. Watkins, E. S. (1998). On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. Weber, M. (2002). Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and other Writings. (trans. and edited by Peter Baehr). New York, NY: Penguin Books Ltd. White, K. F. (1992). The First Sexual Revolution. The Emergence of Male Sexuality in Modern America. New York, NY: New York University Press. Wilson, P. H. (2011). The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press (Harvard University Press).

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 3

AMERICA’S GLOBAL PROJECT ON MODERNITY: CONTINUITY, CHANGE, AND CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY Shahid M. Shahidullah, PhD Department of Sociology, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia, US

ABSTRACT This chapter is based on the argument that America is not just the name of a country, or a nation, or a physical space. It is also the name of an experiment of modernity—an experiment to build a modern nation based on the values and beliefs evolved from the philosophical ideas of the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment. The Founding Fathers of this nation defined America’s responsibility to advance the modernity experiment as “American Exceptionalism,” and it was with this notion that they began to build “an empire of liberty” both at home and abroad. This chapter has examined that for the last 240 years, all American presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama, in spite of many historical turns and turbulence, and in spite of their different political views and ideologies, kept alive the torch of liberty to reach to the “shining city.” The advancement of the modernity experiment for them was never without chaos, crisis, and confusions. The plight and the perils of the Civil War, and the dooms and destructions of World War I, World War II, and the Cold War could not impede the progress of America’s “manifest destiny”—the globalization of modernity. The Trump presidency in 2017, however, brought America to a new crossroad that is shrouded with confusions and convulsion about the destiny and the directionality of America’s modernity experiment. The Trump regime is the first of its kind in America that came to power with a decisive vision to reverse the course of America’s modernity experiment. From the beginning days of the American modernity experiment, there was the anti-modernist group that never accepted and adored the ideology of modernity. The forces of globalization that began to be strengthened after the end of the Cold War and the events of September 11th that brought a new sense of skepticism about the future of inclusivity in America created a new moment of contemplation for the anti-modernist in the first two decades of the 21st century. This further widened and galvanized the culture 

Corresponding Author Email: [email protected].

46

Shahid M. Shahidullah war by bringing the issues of religious divide, racial divide, gender divide, and civilizational clash into the core of American politics. Different hitherto existing groups who always cherished the ideologies of nationalism, nativism, isolationism, racism, and sexism created a new “imagined community,” and it was this community that brought the Trump presidency in power in 2017. How and to what extent this “imagined community” of believers in anti-modernism and the Trump presidency will deter the further progress of the empire of liberty both at home and abroad remains to be seen. Those who believe in America’s “exceptionalism” and the “manifest destiny” must also believe, however, as President Abraham Lincoln once reminded the nation in a much darker days of the civil war, that America will again be touched “by the better angels of our nature.”

Keywords: modernity, American experiment, American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, shining city, global modernity, culture war

INTRODUCTION The notions of modernity, modernization, and globalization are conceptually different, but they are thoroughly connected social and cultural processes of change and transformations. Modernity is the philosophical model of a unique culture and a distinctive civilization, commonly described as a liberal social order or a liberal civilization. Since the disintegration of the medieval world from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, different world civilizations, including the west, are in the process of integrating the core cultural values and institutions of liberal civilization. The values and institutions of modernity were born out of the philosophical themes of the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, Reformation in the sixteenth century, Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century, and the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Even though it was born in Europe, modernity is not a process of westernization. It is what German sociologist Max Weber defined, an “ideal type” or an ideal model of organizing a liberal social order. The model of modernity demands the deliberate construction of a social order based on notions such as; universal human rights, democracy, equality, individualism, secularism, and capitalism. The mission and the struggle for all countries and world civilizations today is transformation towards modernity—towards the vision of a liberal civilization. The concept of modernization is that it is an empirical process of translating the visions of modernity into new laws, ethos, values, and institutions. Modernization is a process of social change and transformation to advance the culture of modernity. Modernization is like social engineering—a deliberately planned and consciously designed set of legal and political efforts for change and transformation towards a more open, inclusive, and liberal society. The process of modernization started in Europe with the birth of modern states, and then it began to expand at a global scale with the onset of colonialism. The countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America embarked on a deliberate planning for nationbuilding through modernization after the process of decolonization began in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The idea of globalization, on the other hand, is primarily a concept of time and space connectivity. It is an expansion of modernity at a global scale. It is the growing connectivity and homogeneity among different countries with respect to the pursuit of modern culture and institutions. Globalization is sometimes defined as an expansion of capitalism. The system of capitalism, however, is just one of the institutions of modernity— an institution that commands the organization of an economy, not on the basis of slavery and

America’s Global Project on Modernity

47

serfdom, but free labor, global market, and the sanctity of private property. Globalization is primarily a world-wide process of the expansion of modern values such as human rights, democracy, the rule of law, religious freedom, women’s rights, the rights of children, and the rights of all socially disenfranchised groups of people (Robertson and Buhari-Gulmez, 2017; Robertson, 1992; Robertson and White, 1992; Tomilson, 1999). Capitalism and modern technology sometimes can advance in a country without much advancement in modern values; Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are cases in point. The globalization of modernity is an irreversible and universalizing process of transformation. The progress of modernity, modernization, and globalization is bound to bring change and transformations in different world cultures and civilizations, even though that process could be hugely chaotic and tumultuous. There are 195 countries in the world today that belong to many great cultures and civilizations of the past. Modernity has been in a process of diffusion in those countries as a part of the process of globalization since the disintegration of medieval monarchies, expansion of colonialism, and the birth of modern states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. America is the first nation in the world that created a modern state based on the ideals of modernity. From the late eighteenth century, one of America’s great missions, when America itself was in its infancy, was to spread the ideals of modernity across the world societies—the globalization of the liberal vision of civilization. America remained unceasingly engaged with this mission for the globalism of liberal civilization for the last 240 years from the presidency of George Washington in 1796 to the presidency of Barack Obama in 2016. Even though different successive political regimes from that time defined it in different ways and with different degrees of intensity, there were no disconcertments or discontinuities until recent years about America’s mission of engaging with the world for spreading the “empire of liberty.” A new political regime that came to the ascendency of power in America in the second decade of the 21st century, for the first time in American history, however, has taken an entirely new turn to disengage America from defending and spreading the vision of liberal civilization across the world societies; and it is with this problem that this chapter is concerned. What is the nature of continuity and cohesion of America’s engagement with the world for the spread of the vision of liberal civilization since the birth of the New Republic in 1776? What were the America’s missions, strategies, and challenges during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for the spread of modernity in the rest of the world? What social, political, and cultural issues and challenges contributed to the rise of America’s new strategy of global disengagement and isolationism from the second decade of the 21st century? And how will America’s strategy of disengagement impede the global progress of modernity in the coming decades of the 21st century? This chapter will explore and examine these and other issues related to America’s role for the globalization of modernity. The core argument of this chapter is that the experiment of modernity that began with the birth of the New Nation of America in the late eighteenth century was a “beacon of hope” for freedom and liberty for all around the world. The world is still far from a global liberal civilization; but the 21st century was born with a great hope for the expansion of modernity. Active engagement of the west under American leadership, rapid expansion of the market economy, and an unprecedented growth in modern science and technology, brought a new world of cultural connectivity between and among the different nations and civilizations. The 21st century, however, was also born at a time when many forces of anti-modernism— medievalism, totalitarianism, fundamentalism, theocracy, racism, terrorism, and bigotry—are

48

Shahid M. Shahidullah

bringing enormous challenges to the liberal vision of civilization across the world in all societies (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018; Luce, 2017; McFaul, 2018; Myers, 2016; Snyder, 2016). America’s strategy of disengagement from the liberal vision of civilization both at home and abroad at this critical moment of history may be highly cataclysmic for further progress of modernity in the coming decades of the 21st century.

AMERICA’S GLOBAL VISION FOR MODERNITY: THE IDEAS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS When America was born in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the world was vastly different from what it is today. The medieval civilization of the Popes, Kings, and Queens took almost three hundred years from the time of the Renaissance to disintegrate, and to give birth to modern states in Europe. The process of the birth of modern states began when the major European monarchies signed the Treat of Westphalia in 1648 by ending the Thirty Year’s War between the Catholics and Protestants in the whole Roman Empire. The first modern state of England was born after the Glorious Revolution in 1688. The American nation was born after the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The Treaty of Westphalia paved the way for the birth of modern states in Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and the whole of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Except Europe and America, most of the world was under medievalism, colonialism, and monarchies during the nineteenth century. In Latin America, modern states emerged after decolonization by the Spaniards and the Portuguese in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In Asia and Africa, modern states were born after the decolonization by the British, French, Belgians, Portuguese, and the Dutch at different times in the twentieth century. In the Middle East, the decolonization by the British and the French, and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the twentieth century paved the way for the birth of modern states. Japan established a modern state after the Meiji Restoration in the middle of the nineteenth century, and China became a modern state by overthrowing the Quin imperial power in 1912. When George Washington became America’s first President (1789-1797), there were only two modern states in the world—the United Kingdom and France. Today, there are 195 states in the modern world recognized by the United Nations. The scope and challenges of modernization today are vastly different from those of the time of America’s Founding Fathers. But Washington, Jefferson, and Adams, even from that time made the spread of the liberal model of society across the world a core vision of the new nation of America. The America’s founding fathers deeply realized that the nation that was born in front of their eyes and through their philosophy, knowledge, and leadership was the beginning of a new civilization of modernity, and it is the America’s “manifest destiny” to spread this to the rest of the world (McGovern, 2009; Mead and Leone, 2002; Wood, 2011). America’s Declaration of Independence surmised a universal principal of the right of a nation to wage a war to create and defend a modern government based on the notions of natural rights, constitutionalism, and democracy. The Declaration of Independence stated that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” George

America’s Global Project on Modernity

49

Washington’s vision of spreading modernity abroad came through his vision of building a modern nation at home in America. He forcefully conveyed the notion that before America became engaged with the world for modernity, it must first build at home a nation based on the principles of the Enlightenment. He believed that America was created and dictated by the “Providence” to begin the experiment of modernity. In his inaugural speech in 1789, Washington directed that this “experiment is entrusted to the hands of the American people” for the “preservation of the sacred fire of liberty” and a “Republican model of Government.” In his farewell address in 1796, Washington reminded the nation that “Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.” John Adams, America’s second president (1797-1801) had a similar global vision about America’s experiment with modernity. In a letter to Henry Channing (November 3, 1820), Adams wrote: “I have a great reason to rejoice in the happiness of my country…. God prosper long our glorious country and make it a pattern to the world.” In response to an invitation from the Committee of arrangements of the city of New York to participate in the 4th of July celebration in 1826, Adams, a month before his death, expressed a great aspiration for the universality of the American experiment. “The anniversary you propose to celebrate,” he replied, “will become memorable by its increasing age…. Not these Unites States alone, but a mighty continent, the last discovered, but the largest quarter of the globe is destined to date the period of its birth and emancipation from the 4th of July, 1776” (June 10, 1826). Adams, however, contemplated that the spread of the enlightenment model of civilization and the disintegration of the old regimes will not be without conflicts and violence. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson on September 17, 1823, he sadly noted that “It is melancholy to contemplate the cruel wars, dissolution of countries, and oceans of blood, which must occur before rational principles and rational systems of government can prevail and be established.” The architecture of a modern government, he believed, “is a complicated piece of machinery, the nice and exact adjustment of whose springs, wheels, and weights, is not yet well comprehended by the artists of the age, and still less by the people” (Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821). Like George Washington who advocated for moderation in America’s engagement with the world to spread the vision of modernity, Adams espoused a philosophy of non-violence. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1823, Adams wrote “I am no king killer, merely because they are kings… I would not … behead them… but I would shut them up… until they could be converted to right reason and common sense” (August 15, 1823). Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and America’s third President (1801-1809), was more forceful about the essentiality of globalizing the culture of modernity and the Enlightenment vision of a civilization which he often described as the “empire of liberty” (Cogliano, 2014; Tucker and Hendrickson, 1992; Wood, 2011). In his inaugural address in 1801, Jefferson boasted that the American experiment of modernity was “advancing to destinies beyond the reach of moral eye.” Jefferson claimed that “May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains…to assume the blessings & security of selfgovernment… [and] unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion” (Letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826). Jefferson’s vision of America’s role for spreading the empire of liberty was to enlarge not just the physical boundary of the American experiment here at home (e.g., Louisiana Purchase from the French in 1803), but also the philosophical and cultural boundaries of the America’s experiment abroad in all distant and different

50

Shahid M. Shahidullah

civilizations. In a letter to Joseph Priestly in 1802, Jefferson stated that “we feel that we are acting under obligations not confined to the limits of our own society. It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind” (June 19, 1802). Jefferson believed that as one of the first countries to begin the experiment of modernity and the enlightenment model of a civilization, America has a moral obligation to spread the message of modernity to the whole world. In the same letter to Joseph Priestly, he explained that the “circumstances denied to others, but indulged to us, have imposed on us the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave it’s individual members” (Letter to Joseph Priestly, June 19, 1802).

AMERICA’S GLOBAL VISION FOR MODERNITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: MANIFEST DESTINY AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE In the new nation of America in the late eighteenth century, the task for the globalization of liberal civilization and the spreading of the empire of liberty was a noble vision for the Founding Fathers. Europe at that time was under a wide engulfing process of social and political turbulence. In the whole of Europe, wars, conflicts, and violence spread in the eighteenth century in the wake of the rise of modernity. The rest of the world in Asia, Africa, and Latin America was still largely under feudalism, monarchy, and colonialism. America’s Founding Fathers in the late eighteenth century dreamed to spread the sprit of the Enlightenment but as a pragmatic foreign policy of the new nation, they maintained a strategy of neutrality. America’s policy of engagement with the world for spreading the empire of liberty slowly began in the nineteenth century, particularly with the development of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and the Polk Doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” in 1845. At home, the whole of the nineteenth century in America was a time for creating the legal and institutional structures of a modern nation. The process of political modernization that began with the birth of the republic through the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the promulgation of the constitution in 1787, and the introduction of Bill of Rights in 1791 became further widened in the nineteenth century. Some of the landmark developments were the abolition of slavery and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, and the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment directed that “Neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The Thirteenth Amendment came in the context of the Civil War (1861-65) that claimed the life about 620,000 Americans. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 laid the foundation of the American experiment for modernity. The Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment signaled that America was ready to swim even, through the oceans of blood to reach to the shores of a new civilization of modernity based on natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the America land, there are still enormous racial issues and challenges, but it is this American land that has proven through the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment that the spirit of modernity is irreversible and universal. The Fourteenth Amendment proclaimed that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States… are citizens of the United States and of the state where they reside.” The Fourteenth Amendment further added that “No state shall make or enforce any

America’s Global Project on Modernity

51

law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Fourteenth Amendment reversed Dred Scott v. Sanford where the Supreme Court in 1857 made a ruling that the constitution did not protect the slaves and they were also not the citizens of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment extended and legalized the empire of liberty within the whole people and jurisdiction of the United States. The Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 extended the voting rights to all male citizens of the United States irrespective of race and previous conditions of servitude. Along with political modernization, nineteenth century America also witnessed rapid economic and cultural modernization. In the eighteenth century, America was a small island of about five million people. By 1900, the American population reached to about 77 million. After the Mexican-American war in 1846, New Mexico and California became a part of mainland United States, and in 1867, America purchased Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. The very nature of America as a unique civilization of diversity began to take shape from the nineteenth century. Throughout the nineteenth century, people from all corners of Europe—the British, Dutch, Irish, Germans, Italians, French, Polish, Russians, and Swedish—came and settled in the United States. The nineteenth century was also a time in America for rapid growth in industrialization, urbanization, and science and technology. Culturally, many modern ideas, values, and institutions also began to grow and bring new issues and challenges. The nineteenth century saw the birth of America’s scientific and technological revolution (Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Thomas E. Edison); equality revolution (i.e., Sarah Grimke and Frederick Douglass); and the women’s revolution (i.e., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott). Many of America’s great philosophical traditions such as transcendentalism (i.e., Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau), evolutionism (i.e., John Fiske and Chauncey Wright), Social Darwinism (i.e., Andrew Carnegie), and pragmatism (i.e., Charles Pierce, William James, and John Dewey) were born in nineteenth century. Politically, economically, and culturally, America greatly advanced on to the road to modernity in the nineteenth century, and this vastly increased the confidence of the political leaders of that era to carry the torch of the empire of liberty to many furthest corners of the globe. After Thomas Jefferson, there were twenty-two presidents who ruled in the nineteenth century. They did not have the same visions and passions for America’s engagement with the world, but they never abandoned the idea of spreading the empire of liberty. The Monroe Doctrine conceived by President James Monroe in 1823, and the notion of manifest destiny coined by President James Polk in 1845 were the two enduring themes for America’s global role in the nineteenth century. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, a series of events led to America’s strategies to remain engaged in the process of decolonization of Latin America. Most of the regions of Latin America at that time, after almost three hundred years of cross-fertilization of ideas and institutions between Europe and its indigenous cultures and civilizations, were in wars and revolts for liberation from European colonialism. The Monroe Doctrine was proposed by President Monroe to control the further expansion of European colonial power in the western hemisphere in general and fostering the process of liberation by the Latin American regions in particular. On March 8, 1823, President Monroe informed the members of the House of Representatives that “The revolutionary movement in the Spanish provinces in this hemisphere attracted the attention and excited the sympathy of fellow

52

Shahid M. Shahidullah

citizens from its commitments. This feeling is natural and honorable to them.” In his seventh address to Congress in 1823, President Monroe declared that America will not intervene into the internal affairs of Europe, but it can not remain “indifferent” with respect to further expansion of European power in Latin America, and the region’s search for freedom and selfgovernment. “It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent… nor can anyone believe that our Southern Brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition, in any form, with indifference.” In the same address, President Monroe added the core mission of the Monroe Doctrine. “The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments that are most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness of their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic” (Address to Congress, December 2, 1823). For about one hundred and ninety years, particularly during the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, the Monroe Doctrine remained as the core strategy for America’s engagement for modernization in Latin America. Like James Monroe, his Vice-President, John Quincy Adams, who later became America’s sixth President (1825-1829), also firmly believed in America’s role for global expansion of the empire of liberty (Edel, 2014). In connection with Latin America’s revolution, he lamented that the colonial masters were “not able to make a constitution which will work to secure the enjoyment of liberty, property, and peace. Their constitutions result in nothing but civil war” (Letter to Charles Jared Ingersoll, June 19, 1923). He claimed that America’s “great superiority is in political science, government, and political morality.” The American Revolution he believed is irreversible. “The influence of our example has unsettled all ancient governments of Europe. It will overthrow them all without a single exception…. I hold this revolution to be as infallible as that the earth will perform a revolution around the sun in a year” (Letter to Charles Jared Ingersoll, June 19, 1923). Since the Mayflower Compact of creating a self-government in the colonies of the New World in the early seventeenth century, and particularly from the days of the Declaration of Independence and the creation of the New Republic in 1776, America is guided by a belief that there is something unique about this new nation; that the people who created this nation are blessed and chosen by the Providence; and it is the destiny of this exceptional nation to spread the empire of liberty both at home and abroad. This vision was first articulated in a dream speech by a Puritan leader named John Winthrop aboard the ship Arbela sailing from England to the New World in 1630. He expressed almost a godly belief that the New England in the Massachusetts Colony will be a “city upon a hill.” This metaphor became a worldly vision expressed by Thomas Jefferson as the empire of liberty. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the same vision was emboldened and began to be described as America’s “Manifest Destiny,” and it became a core political ideology when James K. Polk took over the presidency in 1845. The notion of manifest destiny is the same metaphor that America is ordained by the Providence to spread the empire of liberty across the world societies, seas, and oceans. The manifest destiny was a not a notion for America to colonize the rest of the world. It was rather a political vision to lead and justify its engagement with the world for global modernity. The term was coined by a New York Morning News journalist John L. O’Sullivan in the context of the annexation of Texas (declared independence from Mexico in 1836) in 1845 and Oregon (formerly a British colony) in 1846. O’ Sullivan coined the term to put forward the claim that America “has the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty” (as quoted in Mountjoy, 2009, p. 10). Echoing the vision of

America’s Global Project on Modernity

53

manifest destiny, President James Polk said, in his inaugural address on March 1845, that in America the “most admirable and wisest system of well-regulated self- government among men ever devised by human minds has been tested by its successful operation for more than half a century… I fervently hope and believe, [it will] endure for ages to come and dispense the blessings of civil and religious liberty to distant generations.” Guided by the vision of manifest destiny, James Polk declared a war against Mexico in 1847 that lasted less than a year. In 1848, after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico, the American territorial boundary was expanded to California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. America’s vision for global engagement continued to grow in the second half of the nineteenth century. Some of the significant events of that time included America’s role in the birth of a modern state in Japan in 1865, the extension of the empire of liberty in the Pacific region through the annexation of Hawaii in 1898, and the birth of a modern republic in China before the communist takeover in 1949. Japan established a modern democratic state by overthrowing the feudal power of the Tokugawa elite (1603-1867) through the Meiji Restoration in 1867. This historical transition was remarkably aided by America’s establishment of trade and diplomatic relations with Japan in the late 1850s. After the demise of the Tokugawa elites who were deliberately closed to the west, the elites of the Meiji Restoration embarked on a plan for modernization following the American model of democracy and the vision for an enlightened liberal social order within the framework of Japanese civilization. The conflict between the indigenous monarchy of Hawaii and the British and French colonial powers in the region remained as a matter for great economic concern for America from the early nineteenth century. In 1849, President James Polk signed a treaty of friendship for trade and commerce with the kingdom of Hawaii; the kingdom became an American territory under a joint resolution signed by President William McKinley in 1898; and in 1959, President Eisenhower signed the Hawaii statehood bill. With the political integration of Hawaii within the American mainland, America’s march for spreading modernity in the nations of the pacific region reached to a new turning point. In the late nineteenth century, Hawaii became a pivotal center for organizing a political movement by Sun-Yet-Sen that led to the demise of China’s medieval Qing dynasty and the birth of the modern republic of China in 1912. Sun-Yet-Sen did his schooling under the American missionaries in Hawaii, was educated in western medicine, and created his enlightened political ideology of modernization and democracy based on Abraham Lincoln’s famous dictum “government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people." Many Chinese scholars and intellectuals, after a brutal communist regime that existed in China for thirty years (1949-1979), are currently debating the relevance of many of those of enlightened political ideas in the context of the Chinese civilization. The existence of a liberal intellectual tradition in contemporary China, in fact, was an American contribution, and its origin goes back to China’s first modern republic (1912-1949) fathered by Sun-Yet-Sen. America’s global engagement for modernity in the nineteenth century ended with the demise of Spanish colonialism after the Spanish-American war in 1898 that lasted for less than a year. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Spain lost its control over the major territories of Latin America (i.e., Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Cost Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela). After the end of the Spanish-American war and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, America

54

Shahid M. Shahidullah

took control of Spain’s remaining territories in Latin America and the Pacific region—Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines (American occupation in Cuba ended after four years in 1902 and the Philippines after forty-eight years in 1946). At the end of the nineteenth century, America’s vision for spreading liberty abroad remained remarkably robust. President McKinley in his second inaugural address (March 4, 1901) expressed his trust by saying that “The American people, entrenched in freedom at home, take their love for it with them wherever they go, and they reject as mistaken and unworthy the doctrine that we lose our own liberties by securing the enduring foundations of liberty to others.” He further advised that “Our institutions will not deteriorate by extension, and our sense of justice will not abate under tropical suns in distant seas.”

AMERICA’S GLOBAL VISION FOR MODERNITY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: FROM WORLD WAR I TO THE COLD WAR The world of the twentieth century was vastly different from that of the nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century, Spanish, British, and Portuguese colonialism in Latin America and the Pacific region came to an end. This process of decolonization saw the birth of a huge number of independent states in Latin America that embarked on to the path of modernity. But in the beginning of the twentieth century, a vast number of nations in Asia and Africa were still under the control of British, German, French, Dutch, and Belgium colonialism. A considerable number of states that now constitute the Middle East region at that time were under the control of the Ottoman Empire. In Europe, imperial power and aristocracies still controlled a significant number of nations including the Russians, Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Romanians, and Italians. By the 1960s and 1970s, a global process of decolonization started and this gave birth to more than one hundred independent states. America’s global vision for modernity in the nineteenth century was thematized by the Monroe Doctrine that envisioned the end of colonialism as a precondition for spreading the Jeffersonian notion of liberty and self-government across the world societies. America’s history of expanding the empire of liberty in the twentieth century is more complex, diverse, and painful. In his second inaugural address, President McKinley rightly reminded the Americans that “The path of progress is seldom smooth. New things are often found hard to do. Our Fathers found them so. We find them so. They are inconvenient. They cost us something.” The twentieth century was America’s ‘best of time’ to spread the empire of liberty to hundreds of new states who were restless to be part of the liberal social order—the global system of modernity and Enlightenment. The twentieth century was also America’s ‘worst of time’ to keep alive the torch of liberty and the dream of a liberal civilization abroad in the face of the advancing antimodernists ideologies of Fascism, Nazism, and communism. The history of the progress of America’s experiment of modernity abroad in the twentieth century can be rightly described as the history of the control and containment of Fascism, Nazism, and communism in defense of the liberal social order. It is to defend the spread of the liberal civilization in Europe and abroad that America in most part of the twentieth century was involved in the Frist World War, the Second World War, Vietnam War, and the Korean War. There were seventeen successive presidencies in the twentieth century, and they came from different political views and they pursued different foreign

America’s Global Project on Modernity

55

policy strategies. But all from Theodore Roosevelt Jr. to William J. Clinton were dedicated to defend the vales and institutions of the empire of liberty both at home and abroad (Smith, 2012).

Woodrow Wilson: The Doctrine of Internationalism America’s twentieth century role in the global stage began with the rise of the doctrine of internationalism advanced by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Wilson believed in the Jeffersonian notion of a republic of self-government as a model for the whole world (O’Toole, 2018; Smith, 2017). In his first inaugural speech on March 4, 1913, he boasted that in America “We have built up… a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty.” But from the beginning days of his presidency, Wilson was deeply skeptical about the future of democracy in the world, particularly in Europe, because of autocracy and organized militarism of the Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire of Turkey, Prussian Empire of Germany, and the other Austro-Hungarian nations. In his war speech to Congress on April 17, 1917, Wilson declared that he wanted America to join with the allied forces in the World War I not because of the submarine war declared by Germany and the sinking of the British cruise ship, Lusitania, but because of the greater mission of defending democracy and liberty for all people of the world. In his famous speech on Fourteen Points, Wilson told Congress that “We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secure once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves” (War Speech to Congress, April 17, 1817). The American participation in the war, he claimed, was to make the world “safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression” (War Speech to Congress, April 17, 1917). He advised Congress that “Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples…. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty…. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind” (Wilson’s War Message to Congress, April 2, 1917). One of the enduring ideas of Wilson’s doctrine of internationalism was his belief that the prevention of future war and the need for spreading democracy demand multilateralism. On the basis of this vision, and the themes and strategies of his Fourteen Points, Wilson fathered the organization of the League of Nations in 1920 which is the precursor of the United Nations created in 1945. World War I ended with the triumph of the forces of modernity under the leadership of the United States. About one hundred and seventeen thousand Americans lost their lives in the War, and those lives were lost not to gain any European territory but to spread the American experiment of modernity in Europe. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Europe, tragically, plunged into another war within a short period of two decades. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after the end of the World War I was a great gain for the modernist forces in Europe, America, and the Middle East. A number of states that are now experimenting with modernity in the Middle East such as Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and

56

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Jordon became independent after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Europe after World War I, however, made a major retreat from modernity. In Germany, the first democratic government— the Weimer Republic—was formed and existed for about 10 years. But it was overthrown when Nazism came to power in the 1930s under the leadership of Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. In Italy, Fascism became a dominant political and state ideology in the 1920’s and 1930s under the dominance of Benito Mussolini. In Russia, the old aristocratic regime of the Czars was overthrown by the Bolshevik revolution led by Vladimir Lenin in 1917. These political developments made the world more unsafe for democracy and far apart from modernity and the age of enlightenment. Many historians misleadingly believe that the contraction of the world capitalist system, and America’s Great Depression of the 1930s that impacted on Europe were the reasons for the rise of Fascist and autocratic regimes in Europe after World War I. The main reason rather, was the failure of the political leadership of a part of Europe; particularly of Germany and Italy, and even Russia, to begin to fathom the meaning of the age of enlightenment—a movement that was more than two hundred years old by that time in America. The misleading ideologies of Fascism and Nazism created new beliefs about racism, militarism, authoritarianism, Xenophobia, and bigotry—the ideas against which Europe fought for almost four hundred years since the birth the Renaissance. Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s Fascism in 1939 took Europe to World War II.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: America in the World War II in Defense of Liberal Civilization America again faced a challenge for its mission to make the world “safe for democracy.” Two successive American Presidents—Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman—made a choice again to go to the world stage to join World War II, siding with the Allied Powers of Great Britain, France, and the USSR (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic). The decisive moment for Roosevelt to take America to the war came after the Pearl Harbor bombing and the declaration of war against America by Japan in 1941. In his State of the Union Address on January 6 in 1942, Roosevelt explained to Congress that in World War II, the whole project of world modernity was under attack by the forces of Fascism and Nazism. Germany, Italy, Japan and their allies, Roosevelt believed, had a dream to build a world empire based on the ideologies of Fascism and Nazism. He reminded Congress that “Japan's scheme of conquest goes back half a century. It was not merely a policy of seeking living room: it was a plan which included the subjugation of all the peoples in the Far East and in the islands of the Pacific.” The Fascist Italy, he said, had the same dream. “The Fascists first revealed their imperial designs in Libya and Tripoli. In 1935 they seized Abyssinia. Their goal was the domination of all North Africa, Egypt, parts of France, and the entire Mediterranean world.” But the dream of building a new empire in Europe and the world at large by destroying the global experiment of modernity was more vivid, Roosevelt believed, in the Nazism of Hitler in Germany. Roosevelt alerted Congress that “the dreams of empire of the Japanese and Fascist leaders were modest in comparison with the aspirations of Hitler and his Nazis. Even before they came to power in 1933, their plans for that conquest had been drawn. Those plans provided for ultimate domination, not of any one section of the world, but of the whole earth and all the oceans on it.” Roosevelt further expressed his great concern to Congress about the

America’s Global Project on Modernity

57

future of America’s empire of liberty. “Destruction of the material and spiritual centers of civilization-this has been and still is the purpose of Hitler and his Italian and Japanese chessmen. They would wreck the power of the British Commonwealth and Russia and China and the Netherlands—and then combine all their forces to achieve their ultimate goal, the conquest of the United States” In his State of the Union Address On January 6, 1942, Roosevelt concluded by saying that “We are fighting today for security, for progress, and for peace, not only for ourselves but for all men, not only for one generation but for all generations. We are fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils, ancient ills. No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been—there never can be—successful compromise between good and evil.” Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address in January 7, 1943 described the same understanding of the war as a global struggle between the proponents and the enemies of liberal civilization. “The issue of this war is the basic issue between those who believe in mankind and those who do not—the ancient issue between those who put their faith in the people and those who put their faith in dictators and tyrants.” He understood that the war was deeply a philosophical divide between those who have chosen the path of enlightened civilization and those who want to destroy the path of enlightened civilization. Roosevelt advised the nation “The very philosophy of the Axis powers is based on a profound contempt for the human race. If, in the formation of our future policy, we were guided by the same cynical contempt, then we should be surrendering to the philosophy of our enemies, and our victory would turn to defeat.” (State of the Union Address, January 7, 1943). Roosevelt did not live to see the end of the World War II and the realization of his dream for the triumph of the Allied forces. He died on April 12, 1945.

Harry S. Truman: The Truman Doctrine Harry S. Truman took over America’s presidency in the middle of the war in 1945. From the beginning of his presidency, Truman vowed to continue the path taken by Roosevelt in the war to destroy the enemies of liberty. In his first inaugural speech on April 16, 1945, Truman stated that “Today, the entire world is looking to America for enlightened leadership to peace and progress. With great humility, I call upon all Americans to help me keep our nation united in defense of those ideals which have been so eloquently proclaimed by Franklin Roosevelt.” Truman made a call not just to the Americans but to all countries and to all peoples of the world in favor of liberty and democracy. “I want in turn to assure my fellow Americans and all of those who love peace and liberty throughout the world that I will support and defend those ideals with all my strength and all my heart. That is my duty and I shall not shirk it… I want the entire world to know that this direction must and will remain-unchanged and unhampered” (First Inaugural Speech, April 16, 1945). Truman’s decisive war decisions and America’s superior military engagement, along with that of the Allied powers, brought an end to the war in 1945. Germany surrendered in May of 1945. Japan surrendered after the dropping of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in August, 1945. About fifty nations were involved and 50 million people were killed in the Second World War. Out of those 50 million, 7.5 million were killed in the USSR, 3.5 million were killed in Germany, 2 million were killed in China, and 1.2 million were killed in Japan. About 405,000 thousand American men and women lost their lives in the war, and this great sacrifice was to eradicate the

58

Shahid M. Shahidullah

ideologies of Fascism and Nazism that embarked on a grand plan to destroy the philosophy of modernity and enlightened civilization. To remain engaged with America’s mission to spread the empire of liberty and to make the world safe for democracy, Truman, after the end of the World War II, proposed a new global strategy, described as the “Truman Doctrine.” The core ideas of the Truman Doctrine were to rebuild some of the countries in Europe devasted by the war, the containment of soviet communism, and the expansion of multilateralism for global peace and security. In a speech to the Joint Session of Congress, Truman appealed to Americans that “The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world -- and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation. Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events” (April 12, 1947). About the United Nations, established in 1945, Truman informed Congress that the “United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations….We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes” (Speech to Joint Session of Congress, March 12, 1947). In his 1950 Address to Joint Session of Congress, Truman expressed his pride about the United Nations. He said that “We believe that this organization can ultimately provide the framework of international law and morality without which mankind cannot survive” (Speech to Joint Session of Congress, January 4, 1950). Four years after the United Nations, Truman led the creation of a common defense structure not just for Europe but also for the whole of the free world—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO came with the immediate mission of containing Soviet expansionism in Europe, but it was also broadly aimed to provide a common defense for the expansion of freedom and democracy all over the world. In NATO’s signing ceremony in the White House on April 1, 1949, Truman reminded the world about the broader mission of the NATO. He said that the “Nations represented here [NATO] are bound together by ties of longstanding. We are joined by common heritage of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. These are the ties of a peaceful way of life. In this pact we merely give them formal recognition.” Truman further reiterated his utmost belief in the need for multilateralism to broaden the empire of liberty across the world societies. He contended that “We believe that our method of achieving international unity through voluntary association of different countries dedicated to a common cause is the only way to bring order in our troubled world” (Truman Speech at the NATO Signing Ceremony, April 1, 1949). America thought that its struggle to make the world safe for democracy by expanding the empire of liberty would end with the end of the World War II. But America’s predicaments around the globe after World War II were entirely different. A new era of ideological war between socialism and liberalism, described as the Cold War, began immediately after the end of the World War II. The Cold War formally ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1990, the official disintegration of the USSR into nineteen independent states after the signing of the Bolshevik accords in 1991. But America was engaged with the Cold War for forty years, and this was a turning point in its mission for the globalization of modernity. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Soviet Union began to spread the ideology of a socialist social order in almost all countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The ideology of Marxism and communism also began to spread to the intellectual horizons of Europe and North America. The movement of the global spread of the

America’s Global Project on Modernity

59

socialist social order began to intensify after the end of the World War II and the birth of a bipolarized world order between America and the Soviet Union. This bipolarization was not merely a political divide; it was a great philosophical and civilizational divide between the liberal and socialist world orders. The First and Second World Wars were mostly political in nature. They were to destroy the old orders of colonialism, imperialism, militarism, racism, and totalitarianism. The socialism of the Soviet regime, on the other hand, was a global ideological design for a social order fundamentally different from that of a liberal civilization. Since the birth of the Cold War, the world remained philosophically divided, and this division was created not by America but the Soviet regime and its socialist ideology. Truman, in his address to the Joint Session of Congress, made a fundamental realization that “The world is divided, not through our fault or failure, but by Soviet design. They, not we, began the cold war” (January 7, 1953). The American perception about the Cold War was that it was a significant threat to the survival and the continuity of liberal civilization not just at home but also abroad in the nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Those nations were born in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the dream of building a liberal civilization after remaining centuries under colonialism and imperial rules. Truman, so, cautioned the Americans that they must see the Cold War from a global perspective. The Cold War challenge he said is “partly military and partly economic, partly moral and partly intellectual, confronting us at every level of human endeavor and all around the world” (Address to Joint Session of Congress, January 7, 1953). He further reckoned that “The threat of world conquest by Soviet Russia endangers our liberty and endangers the kind of world in which the free spirit of man can survive. This threat is aimed at all peoples who strive to win or defend their own freedom and national independence” (Address to Joint Session of Congress, January 7, 1953). After it entered into an atomic age with the development of nuclear weapons in 1949, Soviet threat, Truman informed the nation, became much more real and invincible. “Historically, it was the Soviet atomic explosion in the fall of 1949, nine months before the aggression in Korea, which stimulated the planning for our program of defense mobilization” (Address to Joint Session of Congress, January 7, 1953). From the beginning of the Cold War, Truman advised that America must remain engaged with the world militarily, economically, politically, and culturally until the ideology of the Soviet socialist regime is defeated. In his speech on the Cold War, he urged Congress that “It has been and must be the free world's purpose not only to organize defenses against aggression and subversion, not only to build a structure of resistance and salvation for the community of nations outside the iron curtain, but in addition to give expression and opportunity to the forces of growth and progress in the free world” (Address to Joint Session of Congress, January 7, 1953). Military security and human progress, Truman was convinced, must go hand in hand to win the Cold War. “These two requirements--military security and human progress--are more closely related in action than we sometimes recognize. Military security depends upon a strong economic underpinning and a stable and hopeful political order; conversely, the confidence that makes for economic and political progress does not thrive in areas that are vulnerable to military conquest” (Address to Joint Session of Congress, January 7, 1953). In the context of the Cold War, Truman set the justifications for America’s economic and cultural engagement with the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa. He told Congress that in Asia and Africa “hundreds of millions of people are in ferment, exploding into the twentieth century, thrusting toward equality and independence

60

Shahid M. Shahidullah

and improvement…Politically, economically, socially, things cannot and will not stay in their pre-war mold in Africa and Asia. Change must come--is coming—fast” (Address to Joint Session of Congress, January 7, 1953). Truman appealed to Congress in his last speech to the nation that “There will be no quick solution for any of the difficulties of the new nations of Asia and Africa--but there may be no solution at all if we do not press forward with full energy to help these countries grow and flourish in freedom and in cooperation with the rest of the free world” (Address to Joint Session of Congress, January 7, 1953). During his presidency, Truman witnessed the Soviet occupation of East Germany in 1946; ascendency of the Maoist communist regime in power in China and the fall of China’s first republic in 1949; and the expansion of socialism in North Korea and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. At the end of his presidency, the Cold War, however, was still in its infancy. Truman left the presidency with enduring four-point global policy strategies to contain the spread of Soviet socialism. These policy strategies were for America’s deliberate engagement with multilateralism, America’s deeper involvement in the expansion of the global market economy, America’s strong leadership in strengthening military security within the structure of the NATO, and America’s liberal foreign aid for technical assistance to developing countries.

Dwight Eisenhower: The Eisenhower Doctrine After Truman, there were eight successive presidencies in the twentieth century—from Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) to George Bush (1989-1993)—who witnessed massive military, territorial, and cultural expansions of the Cold War in all regions of the world. These successive presidencies had different worldviews, different political ideologies, and different challenges both at home and abroad. But all of them were in accord with the broader policy strategies devised by Truman for the containment of the Cold War (Galambos, 2017). In the context of the Cold War, Eisenhower in his inaugural address echoed the same vision of Truman. The American faith in spreading the empire of liberty, he believed, belongs not to America alone “but to all the free world. This common bond binds the grower of rice in Burma and the planter of wheat in Iowa… It confers a common dignity upon the French soldier who dies in Indo-China, the British soldier killed in Malaya, the American life given in Korea.” (Eisenhower’s First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953). Eisenhower, like Truman, believed that an effective response to the challenges of the Cold War for America is global interdependence based on respect and equality for all races and nations. “This basic law of interdependence, so manifest in the commerce of peace,” he said, “applies with thousand-fold intensity in the event of war… strength of all free peoples lies in unity; their danger, in discord…. To produce this unity, to meet the challenge of our time, destiny has laid upon our country the responsibility of the free world's leadership” (Eisenhower’s First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953). When in the late 1950s, Soviet expansionism began to grow in the countries of the Middle East, particularly in Egypt, and Indo-China (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), Eisenhower put forward a global policy strategy, described as the Eisenhower Doctrine, for military and economic aid to any countries of the world seeking to combat what Eisenhower termed as “international communism.” Eisenhower greatly expanded America’s military and nuclear strength which, he thought, was vital for winning the Cold War. But at the same time,

America’s Global Project on Modernity

61

he deeply cherished America’s leadership in the creation of an interdependent world of the countries aspiring for freedom and democracy (Hitchcock, 2018). During his presidency, Eisenhower sought to achieve this goal by widening and strengthening America’s role in a number of multilateral organizations including the Organization of the American States, South East Asia Treaty Organization, United Nations Organizations, the World Bank, InterAmerican Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the International Development Association. In his last address to the nation, Eisenhower reminded Americans that “Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals” (Radio and Television Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961).

John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon: Continuity of the Truman and Eisenhower Doctrines Soviet expansionism and the Cold War became much more global and intensive during the three successive presidencies of John F. Kennedy (1961-1963), Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969), and Richard Nixon (1969-1974). Within two decades after Kennedy came to power, Soviet expansionism reached to all most all countries of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. In the decade of the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet communist regimes were established in North Korea, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, China, and North Vietnam. In the decade of the 1960s and 1970s, communist regimes came to power in Cuba, in the continent of Latin America; South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and Afghanistan in the continent of Asia; and Yemen, Kenya, Somalia, Congo, Angola, Benin, and Mozambique in the continent of Africa. The cultural and ideological influence of communism and political conflicts for the expansion of communist hegemony in these continents also became rapidly widespread. The Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s became a global culture war between the ideology of communism, based on the philosophy of Karl Marx and the ideology of liberal civilization based on the philosophy of the Enlightenment. With increasing military, economic, political and cultural expansions of the Soviet regime in the 1960s and 1970s, America faced undaunted challenges for spreading the empire of liberty in almost all regions of the world. The global challenges of the Cold War, however, brought America much closer not just to the political regimes of the developing world but also broadly to the core of their different cultures and civilizations. In the 1960s and 1970s, America engaged both its hard power and soft power for the containment of communism, and this began with the presidency of John F. Kennedy. From the beginning of his presidency, Kennedy made a commitment to defend the global spread of the empire of liberty. In his inaugural speech, he addressed the new nations and said “we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny” (Inaugural Speech, January 20, 1962). He advised the new nations that America’s engagement with them to combat communism was morally right and justified. “To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery,” Kennedy declared, “we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves…not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right” (Inaugural Speech,

62

Shahid M. Shahidullah

January 20, 1962). Kennedy described the Cold War as a “global civil war,” and as a “basic clash of ideas” (Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 11, 1962). The Eisenhower doctrine proposed for military and economic aid to the countries fighting to combat communism. Kennedy went further and made a firm commitment to engage America’s military to participate in the global war against communism. Kennedy began his inaugural address in January 20, 1962 with the American resolve to fight communism all over the world at any cost. “Let every nation know,” he revealed, “whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Kennedy’s renewed commitment to further expand and bolster America’s conventional and nuclear military strength, and his new strategies for the exploration of space were primarily aimed to containing the military expansions of the Soviet communist regime. “So long as fanaticism and fear brood over the affairs of men,” Kennedy advocated, “we must arm to deter others from aggression” (Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 11, 1962). During his presidency, Kennedy’s firm resolve to militarily combat the Cold War was expressed by his decision for a naval blockade of Cuba in 1962 in response to the construction of forty nuclear ballistic missile sites in Cuba by the Soviet communist regime. Kennedy’s legacy for combating the Cold War and advancing the missions of liberty around the world, however, was not about expanding America’s hard power abroad. He firmly believed that wining in the global civil war against communism needed more expansion of America’s soft power in the new nations. Kennedy’s policy innovations in founding the Peace Corps, establishing the Alliance for Progress for development in Latin America, expanding technical assistance for the new nations of Africa and Asia, creating the United States Agency for International Development, and strengthening the United Nations were vital for creating the social and cultural foundations of modernity in hundreds of new nations in the 1960’s (Sargent, 2017). During the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, America became militarily involved with a war against the communist regimes in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The war continued for almost a decade and there were about 58,000 American casualties in these three countries. But still America did not abandon the idea of spreading freedom and democracy in the world and renouncing its leadership for the new nations. Johnson was proud to continue Kennedy’s legacy of advancing civil rights at home through his “Great Society Program” because he believed that in America we must “prove the success of our system” (Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 8, 1964). He was equally proud to continue Kennedy’s legacy of strengthening the transatlantic alliance and expanding America’s commitment for international development. In his farewell address to the nation, Johnson reminded the new nations that America “cares about their freedom” (Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 14, 1969). President Nixon echoed the same vision even though he and his foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger developed the notion of co-existence and detente with the Soviet Communist regime. Nixon was the first American President to try to bring the communist regime of China into the realm of American influence through a diplomatic innovation described as “Ping Pong Diplomacy.” Nixon also formally ended the Vietnam War in 1973. After Nixon assumed his presidency, he set up a Task Force to recommend new foreign policy strategies to combat the Cold War. The Task Force recommended that "The United States has a profound national interest in cooperating with developing countries in their efforts to improve conditions of life in their

America’s Global Project on Modernity

63

societies." Nixon replied, “I agree” (Nixon’s Statement on Receiving a Report by the Presidential Task Force on International Development, March 8, 1970).

Ronald Reagan: The Vision of “The Shining City” The Cold War and America’s relations with the nations of Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa came to a new turning point from the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). Two years after Reagan came to power, the Soviet socialist system began to collapse from within under a new philosophy of openness to the west (glasnost) espoused by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev convinced the Soviet nation to start a new age of restructuring (perestroika) in cooperation with the west. Under the new ideology of perestroika by Gorbachev, the socialist regimes all over the world, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region began to witness a series of social, political, and economic transformations. In 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev signed an accord to remove all intermediate nuclear weapons from Europe. In 1987, all medium and short-range nuclear weapons were also removed from Europe. In 1989, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan, Poland and Hungary became independent, the Berlin Wall was removed, and the communist governments of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania were overthrown (Adelman, 2014). With these political developments, the Soviet regime, created after the Marxist revolution in 1917, collapsed. With the collapse of the Soviet regime and the end of the Cold War, a new world order began to unfold from the time of the Reagan presidency. In the emerging world order of the 1980s, the new nations began to dream for a new century of growth and democracy under America’s triumphant leadership. In his last address to the nation, Reagan proudly described the forces of change and transformations that were hovering along the horizons of the world nations after the end of the Cold War. He told Americans that “We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world. Countries across the globe are turning to free markets and free speech and turning away from the ideologies of the past. For them, the great rediscovery of the 1980s has been that…. Democracy, the profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive” (Farewell Address to the Nation, January 11, 1989). In the same address, Reagan reminded the Americans about the vision of the empire of liberty with his new dream of a shining city. The shining city, Reagan said “was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity” (Farewell Address to the Nation, January 11, 1989). Reagan’s shining city is a new world of globalization where different nations can cherish within their own bounds of economic growth and prosperity, peace and tranquility, and, above all, respect for diversity. “And if there had to be city walls,” Reagan dreamed, “the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still” (Farewell Address to the Nation, January 11, 1989). Reagan had a vision that America is still “a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home” (Farewell Address to the Nation, January 11, 1989).

64

Shahid M. Shahidullah

George H. W. Bush: The New World Order At the end of the twentieth century, the two successive presidents, George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) and William J. Clinton (1993-2000), boldly pledged to continue to work for the realization of Reagan’s vision for a shining city for all of mankind (Brands, 2016). The last twelve years of the twentieth century were probably the best time for America’s engagement for the globalization of modernity. The end of the Cold War signified what many historians called the “end of history”—end of the old world of communism and the beginning of a new world of global modernity (Fukuyama, 1991). A new hope for democracy and freedom began to grow in hearts and minds, not only of the Russians and the ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe but also of the billions of people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The expansion of the Internet in the 1990s created a new world of virtual connectivity. Hundreds of world nations in the 1990s began to open doors for the market economy and embarked on the experiment of democracy. Millions of people in the 1990s set out to roam around the world with a dream and curiosity of a new world culture of modernity characterized by deepest respect for freedom, democracy, and diversity. Many of them crossed many lands and oceans to see the American experiment of a shining city through their own eyes. Both Bush and Clinton vowed to strengthen that process of globalization of modernity that was unfolding in an unprecedented speed in the 1990s. Both of them believed that the birth of globalization was a moment that America was searching for since the American experiment had begun to spread the empire of liberty—a moment that remained tormented during the Cold War. In his inaugural speech, Bush painted the picture of a new world order and America’s emerging role in leading the future of liberty. “Great nations of the world,” he claimed, “are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom. Men and women of the world move toward free markets through the door to prosperity. The people of the world agitate for free expression and free thought through the door to the moral and intellectual satisfactions that only liberty allows” (Inaugural Address, January 20, 1989). He advised that “For the first time in this century, for the first time in perhaps all history, man does not have to invent a system by which to live. We don't have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better. We don't have to wrest justice from the Kings. We only have to summon it from within ourselves” (Inaugural Address, January 20, 1989). Bush, however, was not naive to know that the task of building a global liberal world order was not done after the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War “does not mean,” he claimed, “there is no specter of war… we see disturbing signs of what this new world could become if we are passive and aloof. We would risk the emergence of a world characterized by violence, characterized by chaos, one in which dictators and tyrants threaten their neighbors, build arsenals brimming with weapons of mass destruction” (Farewell Address, Remarks at the United States Military Academy, West Point, January 5, 1993). The end of the Cold War must not mean, Bush advised, the end of America’s engagement and leadership for the construction of a new world order. He believed that what was "entangling" in Washington's day is now essential” ((Farewell Address, Remarks at the United States Military Academy, West Point, January 5, 1993). Isolationism for America, he said, would be misleading and misguided. America must “morally, economically, and strategically” remain “involved in world affairs. We must engage ourselves if a new world order, one more compatible with our values and congenial to our interest, is to emerge” (Farewell Address, Remarks at the United States Military Academy, West Point, January 5, 1993). It is with this vison for America’s

America’s Global Project on Modernity

65

engagement for a new world order that Bush revitalized America’s relations with post-Cold War Russia and China; brokered a deal for the unification of Germany; militarily forced the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hossain to leave the occupation of Kuwait (Operation Desert Storm); initiated new plans to advance the Middle East peace process (Madrid Conference); and took an active agenda to advance multilateralism as one of the core strategies for the construction of a new world order (Bush and Scowcroft, 1999).

William J. Clinton: Doctrine of Enlargement William J. Clinton came to America’s presidency at a time of intense change and transformations in the world after the end of the Cold War. It was a time for the reconstruction of the world order for freedom and democracy. It was a time for creating opportunities for the Russian republic and the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe to build the institutions of market economy. The world after the Cold War brought unprecedented opportunities for bringing billions of people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America into the broader framework of liberal social order and modernity. The World after the Cold War also saw the rise of enormous violence centering on tribalism, ethnicity, racism, hate, and bigotry. The need for America’s engagement and leadership was never as compelling and crucial as it was when Clinton took over the American presidency. In his inaugural address, Clinton made a vow to continue to engage America for enlargement of the boundary of liberal social order and modernity. Clinton reminded the nation that at the end of the twentieth century, “There is no longer a clear division between what is foreign and what is domestic. Today, as an older order passes, the new world is freer but less stable. Communism's collapse has called forth old animosities and new dangers. Clearly, America must continue to lead the world we did so much to make” (Inaugural Address, January 20, 1993). He further advised that “in the wake of the cold war, in a world where we are the only remaining superpower, it is the role of the United States to marshal its moral and material resources to promote a democratic peace. It is our responsibility; it is our opportunity to lead. There is no one else” (Inaugural Address, January 20, 1993). He justified to the world nations that “America’s strength is the power of ideas which are still new in many lands. Across the world we see them embraced, and we rejoice. Our hopes, our hearts, our hands are with those on every continent who are building democracy and freedom. Their cause is America's cause” (Inaugural Address, January 20, 1993). After eight years of his presidency, Clinton echoed the same vision of the compelling need for America’s engagement with the world to spread its ‘power of ideas.’ “At this remarkable moment of history,” he claimed in his farewell address to the nation in 2001 that “People all around the world look to America to be a force for peace and prosperity, freedom and security… in our times, America cannot and must not disentangle itself from the world. If we want the world to embody our shared values, then we must assume a shared responsibility” (January 18, 2001). During his presidency, Clinton translated his vision for America in the age of globalization by formulating a new foreign policy strategy termed as the ‘Doctrine of Enlargement.’ The core mission of the doctrine of enlargement was to economically, morally, politically, and, if needed, militarily engage America for the globalization of democracy, market economy, and the culture of modernity. It was from this perspective of the doctrine of enlargement that Clinton negotiated with Russia for the

66

Shahid M. Shahidullah

withdrawal of its troops from the Baltic republics of Estonia and Latvia; militarily intervened to stop the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in collaboration with the NATO; enlarged the boundary of the NATO by including Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic; brokered a peace deal in the Republic of Ireland; took initiatives for progress in the Middle East peace process; negotiated with the IMF for a new “Marshall Plan” to enhance the security of Russia’s nuclear weapons and enlarge its boundary of market economy; and made a deal with Canada and Mexico for the creation of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association). Clinton believed that in the age of globalization, America must evolve as a government of a new type that is open and inclusive, that is “kinder and gentler” and that “not only tolerates but also celebrates diversity.” In his farewell address, Clinton advised the nation that “In our hearts and in our laws, we must treat all our people with fairness and dignity, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation and regardless of when they arrived in our country, always moving toward the more perfect union of our founders' dreams” (January 18, 2001).

AMERICA’S GLOBAL VISION FOR MODERNITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY: CHALLENGES TO THE EXPERIMENT OF MODERNITY America’s modernity experiment entered into the 21st century with unbounded optimism. The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the USSR brought a new era of America’s leadership for global modernity in the last two decades of the 20th century. America’s unprecedented scientific and technological advances and the birth of the Internet and Social Media began to reach to the furthest corners of the world from the end of the 20th century, and billions of people of the world were dreaming for a new civilization of globalization and modernity. America began its journey in the 21st century with the same vision of Thomas Jefferson; that the American experiment of modernity was “advancing to destinies beyond the reach of moral eye.”

George W. Bush: The Birth of the Global War on Terror On January 20, 2001, President George W. Bush in his inaugural address surmised that “We have a place, all of us, in a long story—a story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer.” Bush brought the ideals of the American experiment of modernity to a new reach of historical destiny. He reminded the nation, as did his predecessors, that “America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.” He further advanced his vision of America’s engagement for global leadership, and warned that the “The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will

America’s Global Project on Modernity

67

show purpose without arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth” (Inaugural Address, January 20, 2001). In his first address to the Joint Session of Congress, Bush echoed the same optimism for America’s role for global modernity. “America has a window of opportunity to extend and secure our present peace by promoting a distinctly American internationalism. We will work with our allies and friends to be a force for good and a champion of freedom. We will work for free markets, free trade and freedom from oppression. Nations making progress toward freedom will find America is their friend” (February 27, 2001). At the beginning of his presidency, Bush, however, alarmed the nation that the world of the post-Cold War that was becoming restless to enter into the age of modernity was also a world of unprecedented violence, confusions, and convulsions for change and transformations. “Our nation,” he envisioned, “needs a clear strategy to confront the threats of the 21st century, threats that are more widespread and less certain. They range from terrorists who threaten with bombs to tyrants and rogue nations intent on developing weapons of mass destruction (Address to Joint Session of Congress, February 27, 2001). The events of September 11th 2001 came just six months after President Bush alarmed the nation about the predicament of global terror in the 21st century. One of America’s great sociologists, Benjamin Nelson (1981), once theorized that the directions of the progress of a society or a civilization cannot always be planned and predicted. Every civilization is dramatically shaped by its historical predicaments—the turns and twists of its history that are unknown and unfathomable. During the last two hundred years, America faced a series of historical predicaments and all of them, in different ways and degrees, shaped its progress in the experiment of modernity. Some of the most crucial of those historical predicaments, as mentioned before, were the Civil War, the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War. The history of the American experiment of modernity, in fact, is a history of response to those challenges of historical predicaments. America was engaged with those historical wars primarily for the defense of modernity—a liberal world civilization composed by diverse nations, races, religions, and cultures. The events of September 11th brought the American experiment of modernity to a new turning point—a new historical moment of national contemplation and pensiveness. The eight years of the presidency of George W. Bush were primarily a time to reflect on the American Experiment and the mission of global modernity in the context of the rise of global terror and the global war on terror. Understanding the history of the rise of global terror is beyond the scope of this chapter. Some observations about its colossal impact on America’s soul, sanity, and sanctity, however, are worth exploring. The global war on terror brought remarkable change and transformations in America’s domestic and global engagement and leadership for further advancement of the liberal civilizational order. After September 11th, national security became America’s central organizing theme for domestic and global engagements. A day after the terror attack, Bush declared that "The attack took place on American soil, but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world. And the world has come together to fight a new and different war, the first, and we hope the only one, of the 21st century. A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them” (United States Department of State, 2009, p. 1). Throughout his eight years of presidency, Bush created and expanded a series of laws and national security strategies on the basis of the theme for the containment of global terror. The enactment of the PATRIOT ACT of 2001, beginning of the Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001, the declaration of war

68

Shahid M. Shahidullah

against Iraq in 2003; the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002; the setting up of The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) in 2002; and the enactment of the 9/11 Commission Recommendation Implementation Act of 2004 were some of the key national laws and national security policy strategies that engulfed the whole of Bush presidency from 2001 to 2009. In the context of these laws and strategies, a series of institutional transformations began from that time in U.S. domestic intelligence gathering and surveillance, foreign policy strategies, international diplomacy, goals of foreign aid and technical assistance, and the extent of multilateral engagements for advancing the campaign of war against global terror. Bush’s agenda for advancing America’s leadership for global modernity—an agenda which appeared prominent in his inaugural address on January 20, 2001—was not abandoned but recast in the context of the new predicament of global terror with a new theme of America’s unilateralism. Bush did not come to power with the ideology of unilateralism; even though, there was a small group of his neo-conservative and anti-modernist advisors cherished for a new era of America’s nationalism and anti-globalism after the end of the Clinton presidency. The events of September 11th brought new opportunities for Bush’s neo-conservative group to recast America’s foreign policy in terms of the new ideology of unilateralism. The neo-conservative architects of the ideology of unilateralism, sometimes called as the Bush Doctrine, proposed a new foreign policy agenda based on the principles of isolationism, unipolarity, militarization, nuclearization, hegemony, preemption, and deglobalization. Bush’s neo-conservative and antimodernist “power elites,” for the first time in American history, rose extremely close to political power to redefine America’s foreign policy focusing on the themes long cherished by the advocates of the culture war, the proponents of religious and political rights, the defenders of militarism, the champions of nationalism, and the promoters of deglobalization. The event of September 11th was not a victory for the perpetrators of this vicious crime. It brought rather a grand victory for America’s ultra-conservative and antimodernist elites to exert a new argument in front of the nation that America must disengage itself from the rest of the world regions of conflicts; that America is fully militarily capable to defend itself; that America would no longer depend on global collective security; and that America would not “wait on events while dangers gather.” The war must be taken to the enemies. The new argument of the antimodernist elites was to disengage America’s leadership from the vision of the globalization of modernity. During his send term (2005-2009), Bush himself, however, got considerably disengaged from the ideas of isolationism and deglobalization. While taking America for military engagement to fight the global war on terror, Bush was also advancing America’s mission for spreading democracy all over the world. His strategy to fight the war on terror in Iraq was primarily a strategy for spreading democracy in the Middle East including Iraq. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Bush contemplated a global philosophy which is that the absence of political democracy and a democratic political culture is the sole reason for the spread of violence in the Middle East. In 2003, Bush claimed that “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo.” (as quoted in Daalder, 2003, p.1). He, therefore, “adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before, and it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region

America’s Global Project on Modernity

69

of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace” (as quoted in Daalder, 2003, p.1). In his last address to the Joint Session of Congress in 2008, Bush left the Presidency with the same hope for spreading the empire of liberty dreamed by Thomas Jefferson. Bush advised the nation that “Our foreign policy is based on a clear premise: We trust that people, when given the chance, will choose a future of freedom and peace. In the last seven years, we have witnessed stirring moments in the history of liberty” (January 28, 2008). He further added that, “We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century. The terrorists oppose every principle of humanity and decency that we hold dear. Yet in this war on terror, there is one thing we and our enemies agree on: In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny. And that is why, for the security of America and the peace of the world, we are spreading the hope of freedom” (January 28, 2008). In order to advance democracy in the Middle East and the rest of the world, Bush redesigned his foreign aid strategy by developing the notion of Millennium Challenge Grant that tied foreign aid with democracy, transparency, and the elimination of terror and violence. “I ask that you,” he called on to Congress, “fund the Millennium Challenge Account, so that American aid reaches the people who need it, in nations where democracy is on the rise and corruption is in retreat” (State of the Union Address to the 100th Congress, January 23, 2007). Bush’s foreign policy at the end of his regime remarkably shifted from the ideology of unilateralism to the ideology multilateralism. Addressing the United Nations, Bush boldly declared that the journey towards democracy that began in the Middle East and the rest of the world in the 21st century “demands courage, patience, and perseverance,” and “The United Nations was created to make that journey possible. Together we must support the dreams of good and decent people who are working to transform a troubled region — and by doing so, we will advance the high ideals on which this institution was founded” (Address to the United Nations General Assembly: A World beyond Terror, September 19, 2005). These visions which became more prominent during Bush’s second term of presidency were sharply in contrast with those cherished by his neo-conservative and antimodernist power elites. In the domestic sector, Bush was also advancing the ideology of an open and inclusive America by reforming immigration legislation. He told the Americans that “We’re a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We’re also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways. These are not contradictory goals. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time” (Address to the Nation on Immigration, Oval Office, May 15, 2006). Bush did not want to create a wall of separation in the Southern border. The United States, Bush claimed, “is not going to militarize the southern border. Mexico is our neighbor, and our friend. We will continue to work cooperatively to improve security on both sides of the border, to confront common problems like drug trafficking and crime, and to reduce illegal immigration” (Address to the Nation on Immigration, Oval Office, May 15, 2006). He dreamed, rather, for a bridge of cohesion and harmony among the future generation of Americans, and his key strategy was the creation of the diversity visa—a strategy to widen America’s diversity by bringing people from the world regions historically left behind to come to America and to be a part of the American experiment. He believed that “we must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one nation out of many peoples. The success of our country depends upon helping newcomers assimilate into our society, and embrace our common identity as Americans” (Address to the Nation on Immigration, Oval Office, May

70

Shahid M. Shahidullah

15, 2006). Bush firmly upheld the American experiment of modernity, even in the midst of the escalating global war on terror by stating that “Our new immigrants are just what they’ve always been — people willing to risk everything for the dream of freedom. And America remains what she has always been: the great hope on the horizon, an open door to the future, a blessed and promised land” (Address to the Nation on Immigration, Oval Office, May 15, 2006). The global war on terror, for Bush, brought a new storm of global chaos and confusions, but he deeply believed that it must not extinguish the torch of liberty that America has been carrying to all farthest corners of the world since the birth of its modernity experiment 240 years ago. For him, the events of September 11th, more than any other time in American history, created a new urgency for America’s global engagement for modernity. “Without American involvement in the world,” he contemplated, “the ambitious tyrants would go unopposed, and millions would live at the mercy of terrorists. With America’s active involvement in the world, tyrants learn to fear, and terrorists are on the run” (as quoted in Daalder and Lindsay, 2003, p, 199).

Barack Obama: The Doctrine of Strategic Engagement There is no denying, however, that the events of September 11th created a huge rupture in trust of relations, alliance, and affinity, however so temporary it may be, between America and the rest of the developing world. This was particularly visible in the relationship with America and the Islamic World. During the four decades of the Cold War, thousands of Americans gave their lives and trillions of dollars were spent in wars, foreign aid, and technical assistance to protect the new nations of the developing world from falling into the expanding empires of tyranny. The whole of the Islamic World was a close ally of America during the Cold War. America during the Cold War befriended a whole host of Muslim countries ruled by monarchies and theocracies, and opened up many new horizons of opportunities for change and transformations to liberal democracy and modernity in the Islamic World (Abrams, 2017; Lynch 2017). This faith was almost completely shattered after the events of September 11th. The events of September 11th brought back to many common Americans the memories of the old civilizational boundaries of race, religion, culture, and nationality. It created colossal confusion about the destiny of the modernity experiment both at home and abroad. From the moment of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, America began to search for the meaning and the sanctity of its own soul. It began to question the justification for its engagement in spreading the empire of liberty across the world societies. It was justifiably a moment for exceptional concern and confusion in the minds of mainstream Americans about the whole of non-western civilizations, particularly the Islamic civilization. The rapid spread of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan and the expanding reach of the global jihad and the ideology of the Islamic State in Asia, Africa, and Europe in the first decade of the 21st century, created a huge sense of skepticism in the minds many Americans about the future and the destiny of inclusive civilization here at home in America. For the rest of the world, in the wake of the war on terror, the expansion of the Arab Spring, and the enlargement of the boundaries of global jihad, also remained engulfed with chaos and confusions about the destiny of the globalization of modernity. In the midst of this chaos and confusion, both at home and abroad, Barack Obama came to the power of American presidency in 2009.

America’s Global Project on Modernity

71

One of Obama’s predominant visions from the beginning of his presidency was America’s re-engagement with the rest of the developing world, particularly the Islamic world (Chollet, 2016; Indyk, Liberthal, and O’Hanlon, 2012). In his first inaugural address, Obama began by recalling the greatness of America’s inclusive civilization. He boldly claimed that America is a “nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus—and nonbelievers’ (President Obama’s Inaugural Address, January 21, 2009). The events of September 11th, he deeply believed, must not be allowed to change the course of journey of the American experiment of modernity. He demanded that “Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations” (President Obama’s Inaugural Address, January 21, 2009). Obama’s resolve to re-engage America with the march for global modernity was more forcefully expressed in his second inaugural address to the nation. “America,” he proclaimed, “will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe. We will support democracy from Asia to Africa, from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom” (Inaugural Address by President Barack Obama, January 21, 2013). In his Cairo speech, (The White House, June 4, 2009) Obama made a valiant declaration that “I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition” (p. 2). Obama told the young Egyptians that democracy, the rule of law, transparent governance, equality, and religious tolerance “are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere” (p. 3). The Obama era was a time of winning the war on terror, and he accomplished it by removing and destroying the whole of the upper hierarchy of Al-Qaida, including Bin-Laden. The Obama era, however, was not a time for creating more threats and confusions abroad by extending America’s military power. It was rather a time for bridging the gap that the war on terror created between America and the Islamic World. It was time for reiterating to the world that America is an indispensable nation and that it is destined to lead the world towards freedom and democracy not with coercion but with consensus in culture and values (Chollet, 2016). Obamas’ Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates in 2009 became the key architect of the paradigm of “soft power” for America’s military and diplomatic engagement to winning the war on terror. Obama’s soft power foreign policy strategies forcefully advocated for strong and sustained American involvements in market-based economic development, extension of democracy and equality, creation of good governance, and the growth of modern education, science, and technology in developing countries; particularly in the regions that were the hotbeds of Islamic radicalism (Chollet, 2016). In the Department of Defense, the soft power strategies were expanded and adopted through a new policy model of “stability operations doctrine.” The new model prescribed America’s military engagement in “conflict transformations,” “capacity-building,” “reconstruction,” “stabilization,” and the strengthening of fragile and vulnerable states. After more than a decade of expansion of the global war on terror, the Obama era was also a time to dispel American skepticism about the rest of the world—about the future of America’s inclusive civilization here at home. And Obama boldly defended that all Americans have a great stake in preserving the soul and the sanctity of American democracy

72

Shahid M. Shahidullah

that contains the institutions and the ethos of our inclusive civilization. In his farewell address, Obama asked all Americans to revisit the true meaning of America’s exceptionalism—the true meaning of America’s modernity experiment for democracy. “The progress of American democracy,” he said, “has never been without chaos, confusions, and contentions. The work of democracy has always been hard. It’s always been contentious. Sometimes it's been bloody. For every two steps forward, it often feels we take one step back. But the long sweep of America has been defined by forward motion, a constant widening of our founding creed to embrace all, and not just some” (The White House, President Obama’s Farewell Address, January 10, 2017). American democracy, he reasoned, is now on test and trial in the wake of globalization, growing inequality, demographic changes, and the expanding threats of terror. The future of American democracy will vastly depend, Obama argued, how we respond to these challenges. “A shrinking world, growing inequality; demographic change and the specter of terrorism – these forces haven’t just tested our security and prosperity, but our democracy as well. And how we meet these challenges…will determine our future” (The White House, President Obama’s Farewell Address, January 10, 2017).

Donald J. Trump: Breakdown of the Continuity in the American Experiment of Global Modernity Two competing and contrasting trends were growing in response to the events of September 11th from the beginning decades of the 21st century. One was a modernist trend for the continuity of the American experiment of modernity even in the turbulent time of escalating global jihad and the war on terror. This was the vision of the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barrack Obama (Siracusa and Warren, 2016). The second was an antimodernist trend, and it espoused the vision of global cultural divide and civilizational clash. The groups that were expanding and mobilizing the culture war in politics in America since the 1970s began to capitalize the events of September 11th to further widen the anti-modernist ideas of cultural divide and civilizational clash. From the beginning days following events of September 11th, America began to see the escalation of a new anti-modernist interpretation of the culture war expressed more sharply in terms of America’s nationalism, isolationism, antiglobalism, fundamentalism, racism, and nativism (Boot, 2018; Goldberg, 2018; Hawley, 2017; Hawley, 2016). Donald J. Trump came to the American presidency in 2017 with the promise and pride to uphold these new ideologies of the anti-modernist groups sometimes described as ultra-rights (FitzGerald, 2017; Maclean, 2017; Sykes, 2017; Zito and Todd, 2018) or “alt-rights” (Hawley, 2017). In his inaugural address to the nation, President Trump (The White House, January 20, 2017) claimed that “January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.” These “forgotten men and women” were the men and women of the Trump coalition born in the wake of the culture war in the 1970s, but remained politically largely invisible until a more fertile ground was created for their blossom by the events of September 11th (Zito and Todd, 2018). President Trump loudly declared from the beginning days of his presidency that he would bring a new shift in America’s engagement with rest of the world (Kauffman and Vidal, 2016). “We assembled here today are issuing a new decree,” he said in

America’s Global Project on Modernity

73

his inaugural address, “to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First” (The White House, January 20, 2017). This new decree is what was being cherished by the ultra-rights since the birth of the culture war in the 1970s, but it could not be politically loudly spoken even during the Republican presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2016; Farmer, 2005). The events of September 11th helped enlarge and revitalize the ultra-rights coalition, but with the coming to power of Barack Obama in 2009—a man who has a Muslim and African-American heritage—it reached a culminating point. The ultra-right coalition since the 1970s was looking for an advocate to galvanize the nation for a new ideology of nativism, not modernism. With the emergence of Donald J. Trump in the political landscape of America in 2016, the ultra-rights coalition discovered a “new prophet of nativism” at home. And it was this anti-modernist, ultra-rights coalition that brought Donald J. Trump in power in 2017 (Abramson, 2018; Isikoff and Corn, 2018; Green, 2017; Nance and Reiner, 2018; Zito and Todd, 2018). During the last two years, President Trump has taken a series of unilateral and isolationist foreign policy postures aiming to disengage America from the rest of the world including Europe (Farrow, 2018; Frum, 2018; Maclean, 2017). He deliberately devalued the role of the NATO; withdrew America from the Paris Agreement; started a trade war with China, Canada, and Mexico; pulled America out of the Iran Nuclear Deal; moved the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; and undermined the United Nations (Albright, 2018; Farrow, 2018; Woodward, 2018). At the same time, he began to create an alliance with the some of the most authoritarian leaders of the world—a foreign policy posture that remained utterly enigmatic and unexplainable. How and to what extent the unilateral and isolationist foreign policy strategies of the Trump regime will harm America’s future leadership in the free world remains to be seen (Wolf, 2018). One of the recent surveys of 25 countries found that “America’s global image plummeted following the election of President Donald Trump, amid widespread opposition to his administration’s policies and a widely shared lack of confidence in his leadership” (Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes & Trends, October 1, 2018, p.1). The survey found that “Of the 25 countries surveyed, a median of 70% lack confidence in Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs” (Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes & Trends, October 9, 2018, p. 1). “The international publics,” the same survey observed, “express significant concerns about America’s role in world affairs. And there are signs that American soft power is waning as well, including the fact that, while the U.S. maintains its reputation for respecting individual liberty, fewer believe this than a decade ago” (Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes & Trends, October 1, 2018, p.1). Another Pew Research Center’s survey conducted with data from 40,448 people of 37 countries in 2017 showed that since the ascendency of the Trump regime in power, global confidence in the American presidency is in sharp decline, and it “is especially pronounced among some of America’s closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada.” The same survey observed that “Trump received higher marks…only in two countries: Russia and Israel. The increase was particularly pronounced in Russia, where 53 percent of those surveyed said they had confidence in Trump” (Pew Research Center Spring 2017 Global Attitudes Survey as quoted in Kiely, September, 2017, pp.1-2). Domestically, President Trump has also taken a series of policy strategies to roll back many of the gains of America’s modernity experiment of the last 240 years. President Trump

74

Shahid M. Shahidullah

is not only adamant to build a concrete wall in the Southern border; his policy visions are also creating many cultural walls of separation internally between whites and blacks, men and women, Christians and non-Christians, Muslims and non-Muslims, Jews and non-Jews, parents and children, citizens and non-citizens, and the straight and the LGBTQ communities (Johnston, 2018). Whether his domestic policy agenda, including his strong passion to reshape the highest court of the land, will further widen the culture war remains to be seen. It is very likely that the last seven decades of legal and cultural gains in many areas such as civil rights, racial equality, gender equality, diversity and inclusiveness, reproductive rights of women, universal health care, and religious freedom will be severely curtailed or even halted. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2018 found that, “Just after Trump’s election in 2016, nearly half of Republican voters (48%) said they expected his election to lead to improved race relations.” Roughly a year later, just 17% of Republicans say it has. Meanwhile, about eight-in-ten Democratic voters (83%) say Trump’s election has made race relations worse (Pew Research Center, January 29, 2018, p. 2). Another survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019 found that, “A majority of Americans (58%) said they were not too or not at all confident in Trump’s ability to make wise decisions about immigration policy” (Pew Research Center, February 4, 2019, p. 2). What is particularly alarming about America’s new isolationist and “America First” strategy, is its multifaceted impacts on the future of freedom, democracy, and the march of modernity in the world. Is it going to contribute to the further rise of ultra-right regimes in the landscape of global politics (i.e., Western and Eastern Europe)? Is it going to constrain the further expansion of the global market economy? Is it going to contribute to the further escalation of global terrorism for rage and revenge of one religion by another religion, or one race by another race, or one civilization by another civilization? Is it going to take the West closer to “civilizational clash” with the Islamic World? How will it affect the future of global multilateral institutions that greatly contributed to progress and stability of the world during the last 70 years after the end of the Second World War? The future of these global events and transformations are uncertain, but some likely scenarios can be drawn. It is very likely that America’s isolationist foreign policy strategy will strengthen the global regimes that espouse authoritarianism, theocracy, racism, and ultra-nationalism. With the absence of a strong American leadership in the global political stage, the authoritarian control of the Russian regime is more likely to further expand in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region, Middle East (particularly Iran and Syria), China, and North Korea. This political expansion could certainly contribute to the further militarization and nuclearization of these regions. It is likely that America’s populist and ultra-right political ideology will be a source of great strength and inspiration for the rise of similar political regimes in Asia and Europe. It is likely that America’s ultra-right political rhetoric could be a source of legitimation for the spread of hate, racism, and bigotry by different groups around the world, and the recent events of Florida, Pittsburgh, and New Zealand are cases in point. Without a strong America in the global economic stage, it is likely that Chinese economic expansion in the Asian and African region will be further widened, and the future of democracy transition in those regions will remain stunted. Without America’s deep commitment and leadership, the future growth of the world’s multilateral institutions is also more likely to be halted. America’s march towards global modernity that began with the birth of the new nation of America, and America’s notion of a global liberal civilization envisioned by Thomas Jefferson’s dream of an “empire of liberty” continued to expand for 240 years unabatingly from presidencies of George

America’s Global Project on Modernity

75

Washington to Barack Obama. With the ascendancy in power of the Trump regime in 2017, America, however, came to a new turning point in its mission for global modernity. The impacts and the challenges of this new historical turn in American history will probably be strongly felt both at home and abroad throughout most of the 21st century.

CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA’S GLOBAL PROJECT ON MODERNITY The central argument of this chapter is concerned with change and continuity in America’s engagement with the experiment of modernity. The core of this argument is the notion that America is not just the name of a country, or a nation, or a physical space. It is the name of an experiment of modernity—an experiment to build a modern nation based on the values evolved from the philosophical ideas of the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment. The American Declaration of Independence codified the core of these philosophical ideas by stating that “We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that which among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The American experiment to build a modern nation at home and a global modern world abroad began with the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence. The legal and institutional expression of this modernity experiment came through the creation of the American constitution and the birth of the Bill of Rights. Since the events of September 11th, America has been debating about its soul and sanctity, raising the question of who is an American? In the greater context of America’s modernity experiment, an American is he or she who deeply cherishes the values of universal human rights, democracy, the rule of law, equality, individualism, and the freedom of religion. The American experiment does not define an American as someone who is and is not born in America; citizenship is a legal construction. In other words, to not believe in the core values of the American experiment is utterly unamerican, and to deliberately suppress and destroy them is crudely anti-modernist. The founding fathers of this nation defined America’s responsibility to advance the modernity experiment as “American Exceptionalism,” and it was with this notion that they began to build “an empire of liberty” both at home and abroad. This chapter has examined that for the last 240 years, all American presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama, in spite of many historical turns and turbulence, and in spite of their different political views and ideologies, kept alive the torch of liberty to reach to the “shining city.” The advancement of the modernity experiment for them was never without chaos, crisis, and confusion. The plight and the perils of the Civil War, and the dooms and destructions of the World War I, World War II, and the Cold War could not impede the progress of America’s “manifest destiny”— the globalization of modernity. The Trump presidency in 2017 brought America to a new crossroad that is shrouded with confusion and convulsion about the destiny and the directionality of America’s modernity experiment. The Trump presidency is the first of its kind in America that came to power with a decisive vision to reverse the course of America’s modernity experiment. From the beginning days of the American modernity experiment, there was an anti-modernist group that never accepted the ideology of modernity. The last two hundred years of gains in the

76

Shahid M. Shahidullah

social, political, and cultural realm of modernity in America, particularly those that were achieved since the 1970s in the areas of racial equality, gender equality, reproductive rights, inclusive politics, and religious freedom, widened the gap between the modernist and antimodernists—a phenomenon described as “culture war” in America. The forces of globalization that began to be strengthened after the end of the Cold War and the events of September 11th that brought a new sense of skepticism about the future of inclusivity in America, created a new moment of contemplation for the anti-modernist in the first two decades of the 21st century. This further widened and galvanized the culture war by bringing the issues of religious divide, racial divide, gender divide, and civilizational clash into the core of American politics. Different hitherto existing groups who always cherished the ideologies of nationalism, nativism, isolationism, racism, and sexism created a new “imagined community,” and it was this community that brought the Trump presidency in power in 2017. How and to what extent this “imagined community” of believers in antimodernism and the Trump presidency will deter the further progress of the empire of liberty both at home and abroad remains to be seen (Meacham, 2018). Those who believe in America’s “exceptionalism” and the “manifest destiny” must also believe, however, as President Abraham Lincoln once reminded the nation in much darker days of the civil war, that America will again be touched “by the better angels of our nature.”

REFERENCES Abrams, E. (2017). Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy after the Arab Spring. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Abramson, S. (2018). Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Adelman, K. (2014). Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours that Ended the Cold War. New York, NY: Broadside Books. Albright. M. (2018). Fascism: A Warning. New York, NY: Harper Books (Harper Collins Publishing Corporation. Boot, M. (2018). The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right. New York, NY: Liverigh Publishers. Brands, H. (2016). Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order. New York, NY: Cornell University Press. Brooks, S. G., and Wohlforth, W. C. (2016). America Abroad: Why the Sole Super Power Should Not Pull Back from the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Bush, G. H. W., Scowcroft, B. (1999). A World Transformed. New York, NY: Vintage Books (Penguin Random House). Chollet, D. (2016). The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America. New York, NY: Perseus Books Group: Public Affairs. Cogliano, F. D. (2014). Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson’s Foreign Policy. New Heaven, CT: Yale University Press. Daalder, I. H. (November 10, 2003). On the Record: President Bush’s Speech on Global Democracy and Freedom. Washington DC: Brookings.

America’s Global Project on Modernity

77

Daalder, I. H., Lindsay, J. M. (2003). America: Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. Washington DC: Brookings Institution. Edel, C, N. (2014). Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Farmer, B. (2005). American Conservatism: History, Theory, and Practice. New Castle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Farrow, R. (2018). War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company. FitzGerald, F. (2017). The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Frum, D. (2018). Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. New York, NY: Harper-Collins Publishers. Fukuyama, F. (1991). The End of History and the Last Man. New York, NY: Macmillan. Galambos, L. (2017). Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Goldberg, J. (2018). Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politic is destroying American Democracy. New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group. Green, J. (2017). Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Nationalist Uprising. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Hawley, G. (2016). Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Hawley, G. (2017). Making Sense of the Alt-Right. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Hitchcock, W. I. (2018). The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Indyk, M., Liberthal, K. G., and O’Hanlon, M. E. (2012). Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy. Washington DC: The Bookings Institution Press. Isikoff, M., and Corn, D. (2018). Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. New York, NY: Twelve-Hachette Book Group. Johnston, D. C. (2018). It’s Even Worse than you Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Kauffman, B., and Vidal, G. (2016). America First: Its History, Culture, and Politics. Westminster, MD: Prometheus Books. Kiely, E., (September 2017). World Opinion of Trump and U.S. Retrieved from factcheck.com om April 20, 2019. Levitsky, S., and Ziblatt, D. (2018). How Democracies Die: New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group. Luce, E. (2017). The Retreat of Western Liberalism. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly PressGrove Atlantic. Lynch, M. (2017). The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East. New York, NY: Perseus Book Groups: Public Affairs. MacLean, N. (2017). Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

78

Shahid M. Shahidullah

McFaul, M. (2018). From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. McGovern, G. (2009). The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Meacham, J. (2018). The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels. New York, NY: Random House. Mead, W. R., and Leone, R. C. (2002). Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World. London, UK: Routledge. Mountjoy. S. (2009). Manifest Destiny: Westward Expansion. New York, NY: Infor Base Publishing. Myers, S. L. (2016). The New Tsar: The Rise of the Reign of Vladimir Putin. New York: Vintage. Nance, M., Reiner, R. (2018). The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and his Spies are Undermining America and Dismantling the West. New York, NY: Hachette Book Groups. Nelson, B. (1981). On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science, and Civilizations. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. O’Toole, P. (2018). The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Pew Research Center. (February, 4, 2019), State of the Union: How Americans see Major National Issues (by K. Bialik). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes & Trends. (October 9, 2018). How the World Views the U.S. and its Presidents (by K. Bialik). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (January 29, 2018). State of the Union 2018: American Views on Key Issues Facing the Nation (by K. Bialik). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes & Trends. (October 1, 2018). Trump’s International Rating Remains Low, Especially among Key Allies (R. Wike et.al). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Robertson, R., and Buhari-Gulmez, D. (2017). Consciousness and Modernity. London: Routledge. Robertson, R., and White. K. (eds.). (1992). Globalization: Analytical Perspectives. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Sargent, D. J. (2017). A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Siracusa, J. M., and Warren, A. (2016). Presidential Doctrines: U.S. National Security from George Washington to Barack Obama. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Skyes, C. J. (2017). How the Right Lost its Mind. New York, NY: St. Martin Press- US Macmillan. Snyder, T. (2016). The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, and America. New York, NY: Tim Duggan Books. Snyder, T. (2012). Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York, NY: Basic Books. Smith, T. (2017). Why Wilson Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and its Crisis today. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

America’s Global Project on Modernity

79

Smith, T. (2012). America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. The White House. (January 10, 2017). President Obama’s Farewell Address. Washington DC: The White House. The White House. (June 4, 2009). Remarks President Obama at the Cairo University. Washington DC: The White House. Tomilson, J (1999), Globalization and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tucker, R. W., and Hendrickson, D. C. (1992). Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. United States Department of State. (2009). The Global War on Terrorism: First 100 Days. Washington DC: The Department of State. Wolf, M. (2018). Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. New York: Henry Holland Company. Wood, G. (2011). Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford History of the United States). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Woodward, B. (2018). Fear: Trump in the White House. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster Publishing Company. Zito, S., and Todd, B. (2018). The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. Crown Forum. New York, NY: Crown Forum.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 4

MODERNITY, POWER, AND POLITICS: THE ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF DEMOCRACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY (THE RISE OF ULTRA-RIGHTS IN GLOBAL POLITICS) Shahid M. Shahidullah*, PhD Department of Sociology, Hampton University, Hampton, VA, US

ABSTRACT One of the global trends evolving from the beginning of the 21st century is the rise of the ultra-rights or extreme right-wing populism in many countries, particularly in Europe and America. Many scholars have described this global trend as the “retreat of western liberalism” or the “Death of Democracy.” This chapter argues that the notion that the liberal social order is retreating and democracy is in crisis is overstated. The chapter expands the argument that the global liberal social order has been progressing for more than two hundred years since the birth of modernity in the eighteenth century. The notion of power is at the core of modernity—the liberal social order. The movement for democracy is fundamentally a process of redefining and reshaping the concepts of power and domination concerning the whole spectrum of human relations and connectivity. Any systematic analysis of the crisis of liberal democracy should be pursued in terms of this broader idea of the meaning of democracy. Such a study should also be pursued in terms of the idea that the progress of democracy is not and will never be without conflicts, crisis, and violence. In all societies, the growth of democracy is essentially an ideological war—a culture war—between the modernists and anti-modernists. From the beginning of the 21st century, the liberal social order and democracy have entered into a new phase of crisis because of the impacts of globalization and the rise of global terror. In America and many countries of Europe, globalization created a rural and marginalized working class unable to compete with its economic challenges and the impacts of the advent of the age of digitalization. The rise of global terror and the global war on terror at the same time displaced millions of people, and a part of that displaced, and war-ravaged people came to take refuge in the West. These two byproducts of globalization and the global war *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

82

Shahid M. Shahidullah terror—the rise of a mass economically displaced population and a new wave of international migration in the West, mainly Muslim migration—created a fertile ground for an ideology of populism, nativism, racism, bigotry, and xenophobia. It is this ideology that is being used by America and Europe’s right-wing political parties. But the world is currently also undergoing some fundamental transformations in terms of women empowerment, the rise and expansion of a global middle class, a new 5G generation of digital connectivity, and an evolving cultural consciousness for modernity and democracy. These social, economic, and cultural transformations that are spreading at a global scale will provide a solid base for the further advancement of democracy and modernity in the coming decades of the 21st century. The real threats to the future of global democracy are not the rise of a few populist regimes in Europe. The real risks are the countries of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—the countries that do not have any tradition of democracy and liberal social order. It is an irony to suggest that America’s present right-wing populist regime is also a significant threat to the future of democracy and global modernity.

Keywords: democracy, modernity, women empowerment, gender parity, middle class, global connectivity, global cultural consciousness, global terror, war on terror, ultra-right politics

INTRODUCTION It is now widely perceived and recognized that from the beginning of the 21st century, the globalization of modernity, particularly political democracy, has come to a crossroad of many new and uncertain challenges. After almost five decades of continuity in the spread of political democracy since the end of the World War II, more particularly since the end of the Cold War in the middle of the 1980s, the world has been suddenly observing a new trend of the rise of ultra-rights in many of the heartlands of democracy, both in the East and the West. In Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, and other European countries, the anti-modernist political parties recently made significant political advances (Applebaum, 2018). In America, a nationalist and an anti-modernist wing of the Republican Party has captured the power of the presidency in 2017. In Asia, democracy came to a new turning point with the rise of a fundamentalist regime in power in India in 2014. In China, the ideology of socialist democracy is a new name for a communist regime committed to promoting capitalism both at home and abroad. In Iran, there are no signs of transformation from within the theocracy that is going to be about forty years old by 2020. In Saudi Arabia, monarchy coexists with economic and technological growth, and it remained invincible. In the whole of the Middle East, the Arab Spring, after spreading in Libya, Egypt, and Morocco, came to a sudden halt in the face of advancing terrorism and authoritarianism. And it is very likely that the ideology of the Isis, Islamic fundamentalism and the Palestinian crisis will remain alive in the world stage as long as the dominance of the ultra-right regimes continues to expand. This trend of the spread and the continuity of authoritarianism and the rise of the ultra-rights in our contemporary time is described by many as the “retreat of western liberalism” (Luce, 2017), or the “Death of Democracy” (Applebaum, 2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). The World Economic Forum’s (2018a) report Global Risk 2018: Fractures, Fears, and Failures observed that the world’s geopolitical landscape is currently

Modernity, Power, and Politics

83

rapidly changing. The rise of nationalism and state-centered politics, growing tensions among the world’s major powers, and increasing vulnerability among small states are creating new “fractures” within the global international system and limiting the advance of global modernity. The report expressed huge concern that “The world has moved into a new and unsettling geopolitical phase. It is not just multipolar, but multi-conceptual. There is no longer any assumption—as there had been in the post–Cold War phase, framed by the socalled New World Order. This creates new risks and uncertainties and destabilizing feedback loops” (World Economic Forum, 2018a, p. 1). It is a great puzzle that just about three decades ago, a man named Francis Fukuyama (1991) made a global headline by writing a book titled The End of History: The Last Man. Fukuyama made an argument, and many were convinced at that time, that the end of the Cold War was not merely an end of a particular phase of human history, but the end of humanity’s global ideological struggle for modernity. Today, the World Economic Forum is predicting the rise of a new world of “fractures, fears, and failures” and many scholars are concerned that the ideology of liberal social order and modernity is in retreat and receding. How would one conceptualize this political shift in terms of discourses on modernity? What happened during the last three decades in the world arena that contributed to the rise of an alternative geopolitical landscape, and the resurgence of the ultra-right in the world arena? Are the values of liberal democracy that began to spread in world societies about two hundred years ago losing their underlying meaning and significance for modernity? Are people all over the world giving up their “war for modernity,” or is the recent resurgence of anti-modernism just a particular phase in the spread of global modernity? The progress of modernity is universal and inevitable, but does it presume that it is unilinear and one-dimensional, and its advances in the past were without confusions, crisis, and violence? This chapter aims to examine and explore some of these issues and challenges related to liberal democracy and global modernity.

THE NOTIONS OF POWER, DEMOCRACY, AND MODERNITY The notion of power is at the core of the birth of modernity. From the days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in ancient Greece, and from the days of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century to Bertrand Russel (2004) and Michael Foucault (2001) in our contemporary time, understanding the notion of power has been a central concern in philosophy and discourses on social change and transformations. Since the beginning of human civilizations, power has been the driving force for the rise and fall of empires and the growth and decline of dynasties and aristocracies. Power is the reason for all past wars, conquests, crisis, and genocides. Power is the reason for slavery, subjugation, domination, exploitation, racism, rape, poverty, abuse, and dehumanization. The control and the transformation of human power, therefore, has been a central concern for the philosophers of the Enlightenment and modernity. One of the core presumptions of modernity is transformation in the nature of power relations—relations between the ruler and the ruled, the elites and the masses, the owners and non-owners, the majority and minority, men and women, parents and children, husband and wife, teachers and students, and believers and non-believers. Modernity gives us a model of how power ought to be defined, allocated, and legitimated. The social contract theory of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau is mainly based on the idea that the state was born as

84

Shahid M. Shahidullah

an instrument of governance in modern societies to structure, allocate, and legitimize power relations in terms of the principles of democracy. Marx theorized that capitalism is a far more advanced system than feudalism in terms of relationships between the owners and the nonowners of the means of production. Darwin’s theory of evolution and his notion of survival of the fittest was centered on the idea of the instinct of human power—a thought that was further refined by the concept of the “selfish gene” discovered by Richard Dawkins (2010). Freud theorized that the human instinct of power is fundamentally destructive and disruptive. He, therefore, claimed that culture and civilization are essential for the taming and rechannelization of the instinct of human power (Freud, 2010). German sociologist Max Weber discovered that the instinct of human domination is universal and that it is an essential part of human nature. For Weber, the crucial question, therefore, is not how to eliminate power and domination but how to make it rational and legitimate (Weber, 2018). Michael Foucault (2001) has empirically examined how power drives our organizations of the state, bureaucracy, work, professions, sexuality, schools, and prisons; and how power is the source of domination, exploitation, and dehumanization. The quest for the rationalization, or commonly speaking, the democratization of power, has been the central concern of the philosophers of the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment. The crux of modernity is this problematic of rationalizing and democratizing power. Democracy and modernity are indivisible and inseparable. Modernity’s march for democracy and the rationalization of power historically began from the days of Magna Carta in 1215. More fundamental transformations, however, started from the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, the American Revolution in 1776, and the French Revolution in 1789 (Eisenstadt, 2006; Nelson, 1981). The Magna Carta led to the birth of modern democracy by discovering the notions of the “rule of law,” “limits of power of the Kings,” and “individual rights.” Chapter XL of the Charter of Magna Carter proclaimed that, “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.” Charters VII and VIII of Magna Carta were concerned with the rights of women. They proclaimed for “the protection of the widows of tenants-in-chief.” The Charter VII and VIII claimed that, “On the death of her husband a widow must receive her rightful inheritance, without delay or hindrance. Moreover, she must not be compelled to marry, a proceeding sometimes adopted to get her lands into the possession of a royal minion.” Modernity’s contemporary movement for equality between men and women can be traced back to these Charters of Magna Carta. In 1688, the Glorious Revolution of England made parliament for the first time as the source and the legitimacy of the political power of the King and the state. The Glorious Revolution in England paved the way for transformation from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy, but in essence, it gave birth to the tradition of parliamentary democracy and constitutionalism. About one hundred years after the Glorious Revolution in England, the quest for a modern democratic state emerged as a global movement in the wake of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Thomas Jefferson’s enlightenment philosophy that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” sent in motion a new global trend for democracy—the transformation of “power” in terms of the visions for human freedom, equality, and dignity. The birth of the American Republic, “a ball of liberty” as Jefferson described it, began to spread from the late eighteenth century a new “Copernican revolution”—a revolt against medievalism, monarchy, and colonialism—in all across the world societies for statehood on the basis of the ideals of the Enlightenment. After

Modernity, Power, and Politics

85

the American Revolution, the French Revolution of 1789 brought an end to the French monarchy and that further strengthened and enlarged the global movement for democracy. Borrowing ideas from the philosophy of enlightenment, the French “Declaration of the Rights and Man and Citizen” thematized the birth of a new notion of political power and democracy in terms of the visions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The last two hundred years, the whole of the nineteenth and twentieth century, was a time for unabated expansion of the global movement for liberal democracy. And this movement has not been merely a process of refining the electoral process. The movement for democracy broadly and fundamentally has been a process of redefining and reshaping the notions of power and domination concerning the whole spectrum of human relations and connectivity. The global movement for liberal democracy for the last two hundred years has been a movement primarily for the expansion of equality and freedom in all realms of human power connectivity. Any systematic analysis of the coming crisis or the “death” of liberal democracy should be pursued in terms of this broader notion of the meaning of democracy. The progress of democracy should also be examined in terms of the idea that its development is not and will never be without conflicts, crisis, and violence. Since democracy presumes new structures of power relations, its advancement in society is bound to create chaos, crisis, and confusions. In all nations, the progress of democracy is essentially an ideological war—a culture war—between the modernists and anti-modernists. The modernists historically had to always advance by defeating the anti-modernist ideology of totalitarianism, authoritarianism, fundamentalism, racism, sexism, nativism, and xenophobia. The culture war between the modernists and anti-modernists may evolve as a “cold war,” both within a country and between and among different countries. This cold war is universal and inevitable in all nations progressing towards modernity. It is universal and inevitable because the modernists and the anti-modernist believe in two competing and conflicting civilizational models based on two different sets of cultural logics and rationalities (Nelson, 1981). The nature and intensity of this cold war may vary from time to time and from one generation to another generation, but politics of all nations can always be defined broadly as an ideological war between those who seek for democracy, modernity, and enlightenment, and those who want to pursue the paths of authoritarianism, divisiveness, nativity, racism, sexism, and fundamentalism. Historians will define that the cold war began in the 1950s after the end of the World War II, and it ended after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the political disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic in the mid-1980s. The cold war related to modernity, in fact, began from the days of the birth of modernity in the 18th and 19th centuries. The culture war, at different periods of modern history, also evolved as real wars between and among different nations, and World War 1 and World War II are cases in point. How this ideological war—the cold war—between the modernists and anti-modernists in a country will evolve at a particular period of history depends on a variety of social and historical forces; some of which are known and deliberate and some which are unknown and unseen. The events of September 11th, 2001, that began to vastly impact the global politics of modernity from the first decade of the 21st century was mostly unknown. Since the progress of liberal democracy is an ideological clash and a culture war, in no society it is achieved once and for all. It may advance in society for some decades, and they can face new choices and challenges. After some decades of retreat and challenges, it may again evolve into a new phase of growth and expansion. The recent resurgence of the ultra-right and the antimodernists in global politics is not entirely new and unseen during the last two hundred years

86

Shahid M. Shahidullah

of the progress of global modernity. Global modernity has advanced despite challenges from Fascism, communism, and Nazism. The present rise of the ultra-rights in global politics is just another phase of a trial to modernity that began from the days of the birth of modernity. One of the core arguments of this paper is that several recent global trends suggest that the progress of democracy and modernity is unstoppable and inevitable. Some of these emerging trends include the rise of global inclusivity, the expansion of a global middle class, the growth of new global connectivity, and the development of universal cultural consciousness for modernity (Robertson and Buhari-Gulmez, 2016). These global trends have been bringing fundamental transformations in the way people around the world perceive the issues of human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and access to justice. They are giving birth to an entirely new breed of global actors—the new middle class, the latest women, the new knowledge executives, and the modern youth. The new global actors of the 21st century have been emerging, in fact, as a new global tribe that has a vision of a future world that will not be constrained by the boundaries of race, religion, nationality, and nativity. Authoritarianism, racism, sexism, and fundamentalism are certainly not the ideologies and the cultural visions that this new global tribe would like to defend and deify. There is indeed currently growing a global ideological cold war for democracy and modernity—a war that has been spreading in all capitals of the world from New York to London, Paris to Tripoli, Amsterdam to Amman, Dakar to Dacca, and Khartoum to Kampala. The present resurgence of the ultra-rights in global politics is a manifestation of this increasing globalization of the ideological war for democracy and modernity across the world societies.

THE GLOBAL PROFILE OF DEMOCRACY AND THE MARCH FOR MODERNITY There are 193 countries in the world today that are the members of the United Nations. There are currently about 7.7 billion people in the world. These countries and billions of people belong to different continents, cultures, and civilizations. They are vastly diverse and varied in terms of race, religion, and culture. Most of the countries, including the United States, were under European colonialism for more than three hundred years. Until the early nineteenth century, the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean was under the colonial rule of the Spaniards. Until the 1920s, most of the Middle East was under the control of the Ottoman Empire of the Turks. And, until the 1950s and 1960s, most of the countries of Asia and Africa were under the colonial rule of the British, Dutch, French, Germans, and the Belgians. The deliberate march for democracy and modernity in most of the countries around the world, except the United States, Great Britain, and France, did not systematically begin until the end of World War II in the middle of the 1950s. Historical research suggests that over the last two hundred years, democracy has been slowly advancing in all countries of the world. During the whole of the nineteenth century, a survey done by the University of Cambridge based think tank Our World in Data (Roger, 2019) described that, “more than a third of the population lived in the countries that were colonized by imperial powers and almost everyone else lived in autocratically ruled countries. The first expansion of political freedom from the late 19th century onward was crushed by the rise of authoritarian regimes that in many countries took their place in the time leading up to the Second World War”

Modernity, Power, and Politics

87

(p. 2). But from “the second half of the 20th century the world has changed significantly: Colonial empires ended; the share of the world population living in democracies increased continuously…. Now more than every second person in the world lives in democracy’ (Roger, 2019, p. 3). Research shows that in 1919, about 354.22 million people lived under democracies. In 2019, about 4.1 billion people are living under democracies (Roger, 2019, p. 3). Many scholars suggest that most of the democracies of the present world are flawed and faulty, and only a limited number of countries can be described as “full democracies.” The Economic Intelligence Unit’s 2018 Democracy Index, based on the survey of 167 countries in terms of five categories (electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture), described that there are four groups of countries: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. Out of 167 countries, only 19 countries are described as full democracies (top five full democracies are Norway, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, and Ireland); and 57 countries as flawed democracies. The United States of America is described as one of the flawed democracies characterized by an increasing erosion of people’s trust in government and elected officials (Economic Intelligence Unit, 2018). Similarly, the Freedom House, a Washington-based think tank, in its 2017 survey of the global profile of democracy found that only 45 percent of the world’s 195 countries are full democracies with freedom in terms of political rights and civil liberties. The people of about 30 percent of the countries have limited democracy, and 25 percent of the countries have no democracy at all. The report, however, shows that about 30 years ago, the share of democratic countries with freedom was 34.5 percent. In 2017, the percentage of democratic countries with freedom increased to 44.1 percent (The Freedom House, 2018). Modernity and a democratic form of society is a model or an experiment for social, political, and economic transformations. As a model and an experiment, democracy is never achieved once and for all, and no society is entirely democratic. All nations of the world are trying to approximate the model of modernity and democracy and make it adaptable to their own culture and civilization milieu. In assessing the global profile of democracy today, we, therefore, need not only a broader view of the varied historical contexts of different countries under colonial and imperial powers, but also a more general conceptualization of democracy in terms of the fundamental forces of social transformations. Many significant indicators are defined and described by the global surveys on democracy by the Economist Intelligence Unit, 2018) and the Freedom House (2018). But a more comprehensive definition of democracy seems to have been given by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)—a global think tank, based on Sweden, that is studying the progress of world democracy since the middle of the 1990s. The International IDEA defines democracy in terms of five core attributes: representative government, fundamental rights, checks on government, impartial administration, and participatory engagement. These five attributes include sixteen sub-attributes such as inclusive suffrage, elected government, social rights of equality, civil liberties, access to justice, effective parliament, electoral participation, and local democracy (International IDEA, 2018a). The IDEA, in its 2018 report on the Global State of Democracy: Exploring Democracy’s Resilience, examined the progress of democracy in 158 countries from 1975 until 2015. The report clearly recognizes that the concept of democracy “reflects a core value enshrined in article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that the ‘will of the people’ is the basis for the legitimacy and authority of

88

Shahid M. Shahidullah

sovereign states….Democracy reflects the fundamental ethical principles of human equality and the dignity of persons, and is thus inseparable from human rights” (2018a, p. xiv). The critical question that needs to be explored in analyzing the recent rise of the ultraright and the future of liberal democracy today, therefore, is about the global trends in the spread of the fundamental values and institutions of liberal democracy and modernity. Are demands for equality, democracy, and freedom becoming increasingly universal in world societies? Are women, minorities, and socially disenfranchised groups all over the world fighting for their rights and political inclusivity? Are the forces of globalization and technology increasing the global connectivity and giving birth to a new global middle class? Is there growing a new global culture of openness, optimism, and urbanity? Is the world becoming increasingly homogeneous in terms of the core values, mores, and institutions of modernity? Are people all over the world aspiring and struggling for civil liberties, religious freedom, electoral participation, equal access to justice, judicial accountability, effective governance, and freedom of the press? These are some of the more fundamental questions in exploring liberal democracy and modernity’s future in the 21st Century? The 2018 International IDEA report, similar to the report from the think-tank Our World in Data, observed that from 1975 until 2015, democracy has gradually advanced in most of the countries of the world. The “Democratization process during the last four decades,” the IDEA report found, “has created many opportunities for public participation in political life. More people today live in electoral democracies than ever before” (International IDEA, 2018a, p. xiii). Democracy’s third wave that began in the 1970s, the report observed, is still advancing in almost all the world societies. In the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, in the wake of the fall of communism in the 1980s, and the countries of North Africa and the Middle East, in the wake of the Arab Spring in the first decade of the 21st century, movements for democracy had greatly expanded (International IDEA, 2018a). Similar observations about the progress of world democracy were made by another Sweden-based think tank, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). Based on data on 450 indicators and indices on the progress of democracy in 201 countries during the last 228 years, from 1789 to 2017, the study defined that there are five models of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberate, and egalitarian. V-Dem’s 2018 report concluded that even though the world is observing some “disquieting trends in several key countries, such as Brazil, India, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and the United States,” the progress in global democracy and modernity “is still in good standing across the world. Global levels of democracy remain close to their alltime high” (Varieties of Democracy-V-Dem, 2018, p. 8). The study noted that, “For the first time since 1979, the number of countries backsliding (24) on democracy is again the same as the number of countries advancing” (p. 8). During the “third wave of democracy,” that started mainly after the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Arab Spring, according to the V-Dem report, the “Global South saw a gradual but steady increase in liberal democracy until around the year 2005. Since then, levels of democracy have been relatively stable across the world” (2018, p. 20). The V-Dem report further claimed that as of 2017, about 4.9 billion of the world’s 7.7 billion people lived under different models of democratization, and about 2.5 billion people lived under some forms of authoritarian regimes.

Modernity, Power, and Politics

89

Democracy and the Global Trend of Inclusivity: The Inclusivity of Women The growth of inclusivity in politics, society, and culture is one of the core values of democracy. International IDEA’s 2018 report on the Global State of Democracy in Focus found that the world societies are becoming increasingly homogeneous in terms of the values of inclusivity, even though some of them are traveling at a slower speed and some have remained stagnant. The study defines inclusivity in terms of gender equality and social group equality. The category of gender equality again is defined in terms of five indices: the proportion of women in the legislature, the proportion of women in cabinet-level positions, women’s participation in civil society organization, distribution of political power by gender, and female and male mean years of schooling. The category of social group equality is defined in terms of civil liberties and access to power of different marginalized racial, ethnic, and religious groups (International IDEA 2018b). The Global State of Democracy in Focus report found that gender equality “saw considerable improvement across the world between 1975 and 2017 with almost a doubling of its global score, from 0.37 in 1975 to 0.6 in 2017. Despite significant differences in starting points, similar increases were seen in all the regions of the world. In the past decade, Africa has again improved at a faster rate than any other region (p. 8). The report further found that “Of the 10 countries that had statistically significant improvements in Gender Equality…seven are in Africa (Algeria, Angola, Libya, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Tanzania), two are in Asia and the Pacific (Myanmar and Nepal) and one is in Latin America and the Caribbean (Ecuador) (International IDEA, 2018b, p. 8). At the country level, progress in gender equality is equally remarkable. “Countries across all regions (except for North America, consisting only of Canada and the United States, which have relatively high levels of gender equality) have seen improvement on the Gender Equality measurement—a total of 42 countries in the world from 1997 to 2017. Notably, not a single country saw a significant decline during these 20 years” (International IDEA, 2019, p. 4; International IDEA, 2018c). The progress of gender equality across the world, according to the International IDEA report of 2019, has been particularly remarkable in the area of political empowerment including the proportion of women in the legislature and cabinet-level position, and distribution of political power by gender. The report noted that “Since 1975, and especially since the mid-1990s, there has been an increase in the percentage of women in the lower legislative chamber and women in cabinets across all region (International IDEA, 2019, p. 5). According to the data from the International IDEA, all regions of the world in 2017, except the Middle East and Iran, had an average of over 20 percent representation of women in the lower chamber. “Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean had the highest proportion, both with a 27 percent average. This is followed by North America at 23 percent, Africa at 22 percent, and Asia and the Pacific at 20 percent (International IDEA, 2019, p. 6). Data from the United Nations show that “22.8% of all national parliamentarians were women in 2016-up from 11.3% in 1995” (George, February 2019, p. 1). In 2018, the world observed further enlargement in the political participation of women across the globe. In 2018, “113 women registered as parliamentary candidates in Lebanon, an eight-fold increase since 2009. Rwanda broke records, with the world’s largest number of women parliamentarians, its lower house featuring more women than men” (63.8%). A ‘pink wave’ of 100 women in the US set a record for female congressional representation” (George, February, 2019, p. 1). In 2007, only 3 percent of the countries of the world reached the 30 percent critical minority threshold of

90

Shahid M. Shahidullah

women in the legislatures—a mandate set by of the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action. In 2017, the 30 percent critical minority threshold was achieved by 28 percent of the countries of the world. In ten years from 2007 to 2017, the proportion of women in the lower chamber of legislatures increased in 114 countries (International IDEA, 2019). The data from the United Nations observed that “As of November 2018, 49 single or lower houses were composed of 30 percent or more women, including 21 countries in Europe, 13 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 11 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2 in the Pacific and 1 each in Asia and Arab States” (UN Women, January 2019, p. 2). For achieving the 30 percent threshold, many countries “have applied some form of quotas - either legislative candidate quotas or reserved seats - opening space for women’s political participation in national parliaments” (UN Women, January 2019, p. 2). Data from the Inter-parliamentary Union and Un-Women (2017, p. 1) show that as of 2017, the highest number of women in both chambers of parliament were in the Americas (28.1 1perent) followed by Europe (26.3 percent including the Nordic Countries); Sub-Saharan Africa (23.6 percent), Asia (19.3 percent), Arab states (18.0 percent) and the Pacific (17.4 percent). A similar trend is observed in the area of the proportion of women in executive and cabinet-level positions across the world. In ten years from 2007 to 2017, the percentage of women in cabinet-level positions increased in 75 countries of the world (International IDEA, 2019), even though women’s proportional representation in the executive is lower than that of the legislatures. “North America has the highest percentage of ministerial positions filled by women, at 32 per cent, followed by Latin America (24 per cent), Europe (23 per cent), Africa (16 per cent), Asia and the Pacific (12 percent) and the Middle East and Iran (7 percent)” (International IDEA, 2019, p. 7). Data from the Inter-parliamentary Union and the UNWomen (2017) observed that as of 2017 across the world, there was 7.2 percent of women heads of state, 5.7 percent women heads of government, 19.1 percent women speakers of parliament, and 26.6 percent women deputy speaker of parliament. As of 2017, 18.3 percent of government ministers across the world “were women; the most commonly held portfolio by women ministers is the environment, natural resources, and energy, followed by social sectors, such as social affairs, education and the family” (UN Women, January 2019, p. 2). With their increasing participation of in politics and growth in political empowerment, women are also rapidly becoming economically empowered and inclusive across the world as a result of increasing globalization, urbanization, digitalization of the global economy, and more importantly, the 2030 UN agenda for Sustainable Economic Goal. Data from the UNWomen (2019) show that “Many international commitments support women’s economic empowerment, including the Beijing Platform for Action, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and a series of International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions on gender equality” (p. 1). The World Bank’s (2019) study on Women, Business, and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform examined laws and legal reforms for economic empowerment of women in 187 countries. The study is based on eight indicators: going places, starting a job, getting paid, getting married, having children, running a business, managing Assets and getting a pension (The World Bank, 2019a). The study found that between 2008 and 2017, 131 countries have enacted 274 legal reforms for advancing the economic empowerment of women. The study noted that “These reforms led to a 4. 65-point increase in the average global score from 70.06 a decade ago to 74.71 in 2017. The greatest increase in an average regional score occurred in South Asia, which saw an

Modernity, Power, and Politics

91

increase of 8.36 points, followed by East Asia and the Pacific with an increase of 5.93 points and Sub-Saharan Africa with an increase of 5.59 points” (The World Bank, 2019a, p. 9). The increasing political and economic empowerment of women are yet to achieve a 100 percent gender parity across the world. No society in the world has 100 percent gender parity. But gender parity is increasingly advancing in all across the world societies, including the nations of the Middle East. The growing advancement of gender parity and the inclusion of women is a formidable global force for the promotion of democracy and global modernity. The World Economic Forum (2018b) has been measuring gender parity across the world since 2006. The Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2018 examined the gender gap in 149 countries in terms of five thematic dimensions: economic participation, political empowerment, educational attainment, health and survival, and artificial intelligence. The states were scored from 0 (no parity) to 1 (complete parity) across all five thematic dimensions and their sub-categories. The study finds that across the five thematic dimensions of gender parity, as of 2018, “Globally, the average (population-weighted) distance completed to parity is at 68.0%...In other words, to date, there is still a 32.0% average gender gap that remains to be closed (World Economic Forum, 2018b, p. vii). A comparison between the Global Gender Gap Reports of 2006 and 2018, however, shows that in 12 years, the gender gap across the world regions has significantly narrowed. The 2006 Global Gender Gap report (World Economic Forum, 2006) found (115 countries surveyed) that as of 2006, the countries of Oceania and the EU ranked at the top of closing the gender gap (70 percent) followed by the countries of North America, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. The 2018 Gender Gap Report shows that all eight regions studied by the report “have achieved at least 60% gender parity, and two have progressed above 70%. Western Europe is, on average, the region with the highest level of gender parity (75.8%). North America (72.5%) is second, and Latin America (70.8%) is third. They are followed by Eastern Europe and Central Asia (70.7%), East Asia and the Pacific (68.3%), Sub-Saharan Africa (66.3%), South Asia (65.8%) and the Middle East and North Africa (60.2%)” (World Economic Forum, 2018b). In 2006, all regions of the world showed an average of an 85 percent gap in women’s political empowerment. In 2018, the political empowerment gap decreased to 77.1 percent. In 2006, all regions of the world had a 50 percent gender gap in economic empowerment. In 2018, the economic empowerment gap decreased to 41.9 percent. In 2018, in all 149 countries surveyed, educational attainment and health and survival gaps were “significantly lower at 4.4% and 4.6%, respectively (World Economic Forum, 2018b, p. vii). In recent years, research has firmly established that there are positive correlations between gender inclusiveness and democracy (Piccone, 2017; Carothers, 2016; Beer, 2009; Moghadam, 2008; Inglehart, Norris, Welzel, 2002). “Studies focusing on gender equality as measured by women’s political and economic participation have found a robust positive correlation between democracy and gender equality” (Piccone, 2017, p. 1). Countries with a higher level of women’s political and economic empowerment are more likely to advance faster in the process of democratization. They are more likely to have faster economic growth, less corruption, and lower level of intra-state and inter-state conflicts. “Higher levels of gender equality are strongly correlated with a nation’s relative state of peace, a healthier domestic security environment, and lower levels of aggression toward other states “(Piccone, 2017, p. 1). A large body of empirical research documents “a positive relationship between gender equality and national security—more gender-equal societies are less likely to engage

92

Shahid M. Shahidullah

in internal and external violence” (Piccone, p. 3). Countries with a higher level of women empowerment are more likely to have a higher level of inclusivity of minorities and other socially disenfranchised groups in politics. Women empowerment is also positively connected to more laws criminalizing domestic violence against women, sexual violence, sexual harassment, cyberbullying, and child abuse. Studies from the UN-Women (2019) found that “Women demonstrate political leadership by working across party lines through parliamentary women’s caucuses - even in the most politically combative environments - and by championing issues of gender equality, such as the elimination of gender-based violence, parental leave and childcare, pensions, gender-equality laws and electoral reform” (UN Women, 2019, p, 2; Inter-parliamentary Union, 2008). Data from the Inter-parliamentary Union shows that women legislatures “pay more attention to ‘soft’ issues of security such as social welfare, legal protection, and transparency in government and business” (Piccone, 2017, p. 3).

Democracy, Modernity, and the Rise of the New Global Middle Class In his classical work on democracy in America, French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville claimed that modernity means the advance of democracy, and the rise of democracy means the advancement of equality. “The gradual development of the equality of conditions is, therefore, a providential fact” (Tocqueville, 2012, p. 5). Democracy, Tocqueville believed, is a set of beliefs, passions, mores, and institutions for transformations in the nature of power and domination. “Men do not become depraved through the exercise of a power or the habit of obedience, but rather by wielding a power that they consider to be illegitimate or by obeying the power that they regard as usurped and oppressive” (Tocqueville, 2012, p. 6). Democracy, Tocqueville asserted, is bound to advance where people learned to struggle for equality, when the middle class becomes a dominant force in shaping the political power, and when there are boundless curiosities of people for liberal education, open society, community empowerment, and self-government. Long after Tocqueville, Noble Laureate Amartya Sen similarly defined that transformation in power relations is the key to development. He defined development as freedom. “The expansion of freedom is the ‘primary end’ and ‘principal means’ of development. The removal of substantial un-freedoms…is constitutive of development” (Sen, 2000, p. xii). In addition to gender empowerment and inclusivity, another significant global trend of the present time is the rise and expansion of individual empowerment and the global middle class. Currently, the world’s population, as mentioned before, is 7.7 billion (2019-2020). It is estimated that out of 7.7 billion people, about 3.2 billion, as of 2017, belonged to the middle class. One of the notable researchers from the Brookings Institute, who is following the trend of the rise of the global class for more than a decade, claimed that, “There were about 3.2 billion people in the middle class at the end of 2016, 500 million more than…previously estimated. This implies that in two to three years there might be a tipping point where a majority of the world’s population, for the first time ever, will live in middle-class or rich households” (Kharas, 2017, p. 2). He further observed that, “The rate of increase of the middle class, in absolute numbers, is approaching its all-time peak. Already, about 140 million are joining the middle class annually, and this number could rise to 170 million in five years’ time” (Kharas, 2017, p. 2; Kharas, 2011). It is estimated that by 2030, the total number

Modernity, Power, and Politics

93

of global middle-class households will reach 5.4 billion. Among the six world regions, Asia Pacific will have the most significant growth (3.5 billion), followed by Europe (733 million), North America (354 million), Central and South America, (335 million), Middle East and North Africa (285 million, and Sub Saharan Africa (212 million) (Wang, August, 2017). In Asia, the growth of the middle class started, particularly from the middle of the1980s. The Asian Development Bank (2010a) noted that “Developing Asia’s middle class ($2–$20) has grown dramatically relative to other world regions in the last couple of decades. While it made up only 21% of the population of the developing Asian countries in 1990 (using survey data), it more than doubled to 56% by 2008; up more than three-fold from 565 million in 1990 to 1.9 billion in 2008 in absolute terms” (p. 6). By 2030, Asia’s middle-class population will reach 3.5 billion. In Latin America, according to data from the World Bank, the middle class in the past decade “grew 50%, and now represents 30% of the population (The World Bank, 2012, p. 1; Castellani and Zentero, 2014). A study conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank (2014), that surveyed Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay in 2011, similarly observed that about 40-55 percent of the people belong to the middle class in Latin America. “Colombia and Bolivia have the smallest middle class (45–47 percent of households) in the region, while Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay have middle classes that exceed 50 percent of households” (p. 6). Regarding the rising middle class in Africa, the African Development Bank (2011) similarly noted that, “By 2010, the middle class (included floating class) had risen to 34.3% of the population— or nearly 326 million people—up from about 115 million or 26.2% in 1980, 157 million or 27% in 1990 and 204 million or 27.2% in 2000 (p. 3). Goldman Sachs in its study of the global middle class underlined that even not counting China and India, “new [middle class] entrants would still be larger than the world has seen for many decades” (as quoted National Intelligence Council, 2012, p. 9). The World Bank and many other international organizations define global middle-class households as those who are earning between $11 to $110 per person, per day (PPPD). “This implies an annual income for a four-person middle-class household of $14,600 to $146,000” (Kharas, 2017, p. 3). The Asian Development Bank defines the middle class in terms of the per capita consumption of $2-$20 per day. The global trend of the growth of middle class is explained in terms of several indicators such as the middle-class consumption expenditures in absolute dollars, the global share of the middle-class consumption expenditures, size of the global middle-class market, and the profile of the global middle-class Human Development Index (HDI). It is estimated that by 2030, the total middle-class share of global consumptions will be highest in China ($14.3 trillion), followed by India ($10.7 trillion), United States ($4.7 trillion), Indonesia ($2.4 trillion), Japan ($2.1 trillion), Germany ($1.5 trillion), Mexico ($1.3 trillion), Brazil ($ 1.3 trillion), and United Kingdom ($1.2 trillion) (Wang, August 2017). The Asian Development Bank made a projection that if Asian middle-class consumption expenditures “continue to grow at roughly the same rate as in the past 20 years [$4.3 trillion annually] they are likely to reach $32 trillion and comprise about 43% of worldwide consumption by 2030, placing the region at the forefront of worldwide consumption” (The Asian Development Bank, 2010, p. 3). It is estimated that the global middle-class market is growing faster than the global GDP. Kharas (2017) observed that, “The absolute market size of middle-class spending is larger than previously estimated. In 2015, middle-class spending was about $35 trillion. It now accounts for one-third of the global economy. At the growth of

94

Shahid M. Shahidullah

about 4 percent in real terms, the middle-class market is growing faster than global GDP growth (p. 2). The concept of Human Development Index (HDI) is applied by most international development agencies to measure the progress of social and economic development across the world. HDI measures the rise of the middle class not by per capita income alone but also by health and education (United Nations Development Program, 2018). The unprecedented expansion of the global middle class, therefore, means not just an unparalleled development of its income and expenditures but also its remarkable progress in knowledge and education and a culture of openness, secularity, and globalism. The global middle class is a new global tribe empowered by money, education, knowledge, culture, and technology. The US National Intelligence Council’s (2012) report Alternative Worlds: Global Trends 2030, therefore, rightly asserted that the rise of the global middle class is one of the megatrends that will decisively define the nature of global prospects and politics in the coming decades of the 21st century. The report observed that, “The growth of the middle class constitutes a tectonic shift: for the first time, a majority of the world’s population will not be impoverished, and the middle classes will be the most important social and economic sector in the vast majority of countries around the world” (p. 8). A similar observation was made by a report Individual Empowerment: Global Societal Trends to 2030 that focused on challenges for the countries of the EU in the context of the rise of a global middle class (Rand Corporation Europe, 2015; Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, 2019). The size of the global middle class by 2030, as mentioned before, will be around 5.4 billion people. Out of 5.4 billion, there will probably be about 2.25 billion women. According to the general profile of the middle class, these 5.4 billion people will be urban, and college educated, empowered by decent income, good health, and technical literacy. Culturally, they will be more open, secular, and global. It is highly unlikely that in a world populated by 5.4 billion educated and urban middle class, the ideology of the ultra-rights—the doctrine of nationalism, nativism, racism, sexism, and Xenophobia—will find a fertile ground to grow and survive (the case of the middle class in China is an exception) (Chen, 2013). The middle class is always likely to remain the backbone and the vanguard of democracy. The middle class everywhere is expected to push for a government based on the rule of law, accountability, inclusion, equality, and equal justice. A report from the African Development Bank (2011) rightly claimed, “that the growth of the middle class is associated with better governance, economic growth and poverty reduction. It appears that as people gain middleclass status, they are likely to use their greater economic clout to demand more accountable governments. This includes pressing for the rule of law, property rights, and a higher quantity and quality of public services” (p. 1). Research from the Asian Development Bank (2010b) similarly recognized that “in terms of market competition, gender equality, trust, and perceptions of upward mobility, achieving middle-class status still appears to have highly beneficial effects correlated with values that contribute to economic growth and development” (p. 26). The Bank further noted that “South Asia’s middle class appears to have the highest participation in political activities. In general, the figure shows that East Asia generally has more progressive views, which may explain some of the higher rates of growth in the region compared to South and Central Asia (p. 27). A small and an insignificant part of the middle class everywhere can always espouse the ideology of anti-modernism, nativism, and violent extremism as cautioned by the National Intelligence Council’s (2012) report Alternative Worlds: Global Trends 2030. The report

Modernity, Power, and Politics

95

claimed that, “Managing the intensifying interaction of traditional political, religious, and cultural norms with the ideologies of the globalizing West will be a core challenge for many rapidly developing societies, affecting prospects for global and domestic governance and economic performance through 2030” (p. 13). But the overwhelming part of the middle class is likely to remain everywhere as the driver of democracy, open society, and modernity. Thomas Hartman (April 2016), an American scholar and a media specialist, put this nicely in the context of American middle class in the following words: “A true democracy both produces a middle class and requires a middle class for survival. Like the twin strands of DNA, democracy and the middle class are inextricably intertwined, and to break either is to destroy the viability of both” (p. 4).

Democracy and the Emergence of New Global Connectivity When the Canadian media specialist Marshall McLuhan coined the term “Global Village” in the early 1960s, when sociologist George Ritzer (2004) observed the “McDonaldization” of the world or even when Thomas Friedman (2006) found that “the world is becoming flat,” they did not have any clue as to what is happening in global connectivity today. But they all correctly imagined the emergence of a world of hyperconnectivity. As of January 2019, out of the world’s 7.7 billion people, unique mobile users are 5.11 billion (penetration rate 67 percent), Internet users are 4.39 billion (penetration rate 57 percent), active social media users are 3.48 billion (penetration rate 45 percent), and mobile social media users are 3.36 billion (penetration rate 42 percent). As of January 2019, 100 million people have been added annually in the group of unique mobile users, 367 million in Internet users, 288 million in active social media users, and 297 million in mobile social media users. Out of the world’s 4.39 billion active Internet users, 3.9 billion are mobile internet users (52 percent of the world’s population). The 20 countries that had the highest growth in the use of the Internet in 2018-2019, all but three (USA, Germany, and Spain) belonged to the developing world. Out of the 20 countries, the most substantial absolute growth in term of percentage was in Tanzania (173 percent) followed by Afghanistan (142 percent), Cote de Ivoire (69 percent), Ukraine (60 percent), and Cambodia (56 percent) (Kemp, 2019). As of January 2019, out of the world’s 4.9 billion Internet users, 3.48 billion are active social media users, and out of them, 3.2 billion are active mobile social media users. “Worldwide social media user numbers have grown to almost 3.5 billion at the start of 2019, with 288 million new users in the past 12 months pushing the global penetration figure to 45 percent. Countries in the Middle East top the social media penetration rankings again this year, with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar tied for the top spot (Kemp, 2019, p. 17). It is further observed that “The number of social media users around the world at the start of 2019 equates to roughly 58 percent of the total ‘eligible population’, but this figure rises to more than 70 percent in almost 100 countries around the world” (Kemp, 2019, p, 19). All across the globe, the “average social media user now spends 2 hours and 16 minutes each day on social platforms – up from 2 hours and 15 minutes last year. If we extend this average daily time across all 3.48 billion people using social media today, we get a combined total of almost 330 million years of human time spent on social platforms during 2019” (Kemp, 2019, p. 26). Among the most widely used social media platform as of January 2019, Facebook ranks at the

96

Shahid M. Shahidullah

top (with 2.2 billion users) followed by YouTube (1.9 billion users), WhatsApp (1.5 billion users), Messenger (1.3 billion), WeChat (1.08 billion), and Instagram (1.0 billion). This data clearly shows the rapid globalization of digital technology, digital behavior, and digital culture in all regions and all remotest corners of the world. The globalization of digital technology brought a qualitatively different world of connectivity between and among the different groups of people, countries, and cultures of the world in the 21st century. It gave birth to a new digital global tribe—a new digital generation of men and women. The impact of the latest knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, dreams, and aspirations of this new digital tribe on the future of the world democracy and modernity remains to be fathomed. But some general hypotheses can be examined. One of the hypotheses is that the globalization of digital technology will lead to further acceleration in the growth of the global middle class. The acceleration of the global middle class will lead to the acceleration of democracy. The contemporary evolution of digital technology, including the advent of the 5G connectivity and the emergence of the era of the Internet of Everything (IoE), the global economic productivity will be significantly increased. The 5G connectivity is taking the world not only in a new phase of connectivity between people-to-people but also in a new era of connectivity between people and everything. The 5G platform will be the future of innovations in industry, education, science, technology, energy, transportation, management of megacities, and health care. In one of the surveys commissioned in 2016 by Qualcomm that interviewed 3,588 industrial leaders, broad elites, and opinion leaders in 7 countries, 91 percent of the respondents said that 5G platform will lead to the creation of many products and services “that have not been invented yet” and that it will help create new industries, new jobs, and accelerate global economic growth. The respondents claimed that 5G connectivity will further advance global internet connectivity, global education, global health (virtual health care technologies), global energy, global security, and the management of safe and secured cities (Qualcomm Technologies, December 2016). The global internet connectivity is not just market driven, it is also being deliberately planned by the governments of different countries, the world’s leading high-tech companies, and many international development agencies. Google and Facebook have ambitious projects to connect the world’s remotest areas by beaming the Internet from drones and satellites. The World Bank has several projects to enhance economic growth in developing countries by combining many region’s physical infrastructures with digital connectivity (The World Bank, 2019b). The World Bank’s Global Infrastructure Connectivity Alliance is based on the recognition that connectivity is the driver of global economic growth in the 21st century (The World Bank, 2017). The strengthening of connectivity between people-to-people, people to things, and between and among different nations, is in fact, currently a primary global transformative strategy. This process of deliberate planning for global connectivity between and among different countries began from the 1970s initially through the formation of various supra-national organizations such as the European Union, North American Free Trade Agreement, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, African Union, Gulf Cooperation Council, Organization of American States, and the organization of Islamic Cooperation. The second generation of global connectivity began in the 1990s with the idea of forming transnational land-based and sea-based economic corridors. China, for example, has plans for building six commercial corridors “linking China-Mongolia-Russia, China-Central and Western Asia, China-Indo-China Peninsula, China-Pakistan and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar as well as the New Eurasian Land Bridge, which will be the focus of efforts related to Asia-Europe

Modernity, Power, and Politics

97

connectivity” (Ziman, May 2015, p. 1). The third generation of global connectivity began with the rise of the globalization of digital technology. The separation and isolation of a nation from the advancing era of global connectivity today, which is an integral part of the ultra-rights ideology, is destructive and a failed strategy. The new trend of global connectivity is positively connected to increased global economic productivity, and increased global economic productivity will lead to the further enlargement of the global middle class. The global middle class empowered by “digital dividends” (The World Bank, 2016), will be further strengthened as a significant global transformative megatrend predicted by the National Intelligence Council’s (2012) report Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds.

Democracy, Culture, and the Emerging Nature of Global Modernity The historical realities of the world societies are that they are profoundly diverse and heterogeneous in terms of race, culture, law, politics, and religion. They belonged to different world civilizations, and they traveled different routes of history because of various predicaments. However, there is a global culture growing from the days of the beginning of modernity, particularly from the beginning of the 20th Century that is widely shared, understood, adored, and legitimated, with few exceptions, by all peoples and different countries of the world. The contemporary process of globalization that started from the 1980s and 1990s, and that began to advance at an accelerated speed from the birth of the digital age in the first decade of the 21st Century, is often times described purely as an economic phenomenon—as a process of the globalization of market economy (Wallerstein, 2004). Globalization, however, is also a cultural phenomenon. As a cultural phenomenon, globalization is leading to the emergence of global cultural consciousness (Robertson and Buhari-Gumez, 2016). This consciousness is both about a feeling of sameness and a feeling of diversity. This consciousness is about the curiosity of knowing about different people, lands, countries, and cultures. It is a new mentality of learning and borrowing from different cultures. People from different countries are not only physically traveling from one region to another region and one continent to another continent. They are also becoming highly reflective of different peoples and cultures. Three distinctive trends can be discerned in the globalization of cultural consciousness. The first is the process of diffusion through which various cultures are learning from one another, or different cultural traits are traveling from one culture to another. The process of global cultural diffusion is not a new phenomenon. It is only progressing at an accelerated speed with the advent of globalization and digitalization. One author nicely described this process in the following way: “Imagine the vast spectrum of all the cultures in the world. Listen to the music—from the gentle drum beats of Africa to the melodic didgeridoo of Australia, to the scream of the electric guitar. Taste the curry from India, the coconut milk from Thailand, the cheeseburger from the United States. Now imagine that all these cultures are compressed into one super-culture” (Dixon, 2009, p. 1). The other distinctive trend is the revitalization in a society of its historical, cultural traditions and artifacts described sometimes as the localization of the globe (Robertson and Buhari-Gumez, 2016). Many advocates of the ideology of ultra-rights seek to mobilize this cultural trend to bolster their visions of nativism and nationalism. In India, for example, Prime Minister Modi, the leader of the ruling ultra-right Janata Party, is a strong advocate for bringing a health care revolution in India by revitalizing the traditional Ayurvedic medicine.

98

Shahid M. Shahidullah

There is nothing wrong today in reviving the traditional cultural traits, heritage, and artifacts in a country with the aid of digital technology, but conflicts evolve when such efforts are politicized as an anti-globalist ideology. The third and the most fundamental trend in the contemporary process of globalization is the rise of a global consciousness about the culture of modernity. The culture of modernity is the awareness of the values of modernity such as universal human rights, democracy, equality, the rule of law, transparent governance, and equal justice. The hypothesis that is crucial here is that the globalization of modernity is an unstoppable and irreversible process of change and transformations across the world societies. People of all countries and cultures today are profoundly conscious and aware of these values of modernity. There is hardly any country in the world today, including the world’s most authoritarian regimes, where people are not restless and struggling for the achievement of the values of modernity. Laws protecting the values of modernity, such as the economic and political rights of women, children, minorities, and other socially and racially disadvantaged group are growing in almost all countries of the world. Global discourses for the rule of law and democracy today are rapidly engulfing most of the capitals of the world. It is this universal force of the cultural consciousness about modernity that is the key to understanding the future of democracy in the 21st Century. The World Values Survey, that began in 1981, suggests that individual empowerment is positively connected to the advancement of democratic values. When people’s basic physical and survival needs are satisfied, and they are socially, economically, and politically empowered, there is the first preference for emancipative values (Inglehart, 2018). Emancipative values and democracy growth are positively connected. One of the core findings of this survey is that “If set in motion, human empowerment advances on three levels. On the socio-economic level, human empowerment advances …people’s capabilities to exercise freedoms. On the socio-cultural level, human empowerment advances … emancipative values …people’s aspirations to exercise freedoms. On the legal-institutional level, individual empowerment advances as widened democratic rights increase people’s entitlements to exercise freedoms” (World Values Survey, 2019, p. 6). The global growth in gender parity, rising of a global middle class, the emergence of a new global economic and digital connectivity, and the globalization of a culture of modernity are some of the formidable recent global transformative forces of empowerment. If the emerging global middle-class size is about 5.4 billion by 2030, the impact of their emancipative values on the future democracy and modernity will be impeccable.

THE RISE OF THE ULTRA-RIGHT IN GLOBAL POLITICS: THE CONTEXT, ISSUES, AND CHALLENGES The rise of the ultra-rights in global politics from the beginning of the 21st Century came in the context of two global forces. The first is the accelerating process of globalization that began after the end of the Cold war in the 1980s. The second is the rise and expansion of global terrorism that began with the events of September 11th, 2001. In each country, where the ultra-rights are gaining political momentum or have captured political power, there are some specific and internal political and cultural dynamics. However, as broad historical forces, the emergence of the ultra-rights in modern global politics are rooted primarily in the

Modernity, Power, and Politics

99

process of globalization and the rise of global terror. It is misleading to argue that the ultrarights are gaining political momentum in some regions because of the failure of modern liberal economy and current liberal social order or because of widening poverty, inequality, corruptions, and the lack of public trust in governance. These issues were there in global politics and the economy much before the recent rise of the ultra-right. The believer and the advocates of the ideology of ultra-rights—the anti-modernists—were there in all societies from the days of the beginning of modernity. The liberal international system and liberal democracy that has been rapidly expanding since the 1950s did not and will never be able to wipe out the forces of anti-modernism and anti-globalism completely. In all countries, until recently those forces remained politically weak and dormant in the face of advancing democracy and the globalization of modernity. Some of the unforeseen but inevitable impacts of globalization and global terror created new opportunities for them to reemerge in politics and mobilize people and power to wage a broader war on democracy and modernity. The forces of the ultra-rights recently gathered strength in Europe and the United States, and it is these regions that are deeply impacted by globalization and global terror (the rise of rightwing fundamental regimes in power in India, Turkey, and Brazil are mostly impacted by their internal economic and political dynamics). The advance of globalization that accelerated after the end of the Cold War created two interconnected scenarios. The first is the economic dislocations of millions of people both in developed and developing economies. As a result of rapid economic globalization accompanied by the recent rise of digitalization, the economic opportunities for the rural and non-college educated working class both in Europe and the United States became limited. The rapid advance of the knowledge-based digital economy is making a part of the working class in these countries obsolete and uncompetitive. It is a section of this rural, non-college educated, and economically dislocated working class that has become the support base for right-wing populist parties. The right-wing populist parties “deliberately stroke the anger of majority populations who somehow fell behind by a world of greater equality and diversity” (Feffer, 2018, p. 6). In the United States, within the Trump coalition, for example, the dominant group is formed by rural and non-college educated working class negatively impacted by economic globalization. “Trump beat Clinton among non-college whites [rural working class] by 18 percentage points in New Hampshire, 21 in Colorado, 22 in Arizona, 24 points in Wisconsin, 31 points in Michigan, and 35 points in Missouri. The margin swelled to huge margins in Southern states: 34 points in Florida, 40 points in North Carolina, fully 64 points in Georgia” (Brownstein, 2016, p. 2). The second scenario related to globalization is the growth in international migration. With the rapid expansion of economic globalization from the mid-1980s, a new wave of international migration began to expand to Europe, North America, Middle East, and the Gulf States. The working class of many countries who were economically dislocated, and also a part of the educated middle class that was looking for better economic opportunities began to take advantage of the open-door immigration policy adopted, particularly by Europe and North America, after the end of Cold War in the mid-1980s. “Net immigration in Europe in 2001 stood at 3.0 per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to 3.1 in the United States. The region now hosts a population of 56.1 million migrants, compared to 40.8 million in North America” (Global Commission on International Migration, 2005, p. 1). Both in Europe and America, international migration during the first decade after the end of the Cold War was favorably perceived as an expansion of the global liberal social order. It was primarily an issue of

100

Shahid M. Shahidullah

economics and cultural assimilation into the heartland of liberal social order. In 1996, President Clinton told the American nation that, “What we need to do is to have a sensible approach to immigration. It needs to be open. It needs to be non-dogmatic and nonbigoted….And we need to try to get as many of our immigrants who want to do so, to become citizens as quickly as possible so that the American people will all see that this is a part of the process of American history which, is a good one for our country.” President George W. Bush, in his first inaugural speech on January 20, 2001, expressed a similar vision that, “America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be citizens…. Every citizen must uphold them. Moreover, every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.” The perspective of looking at international migration as a strength and an extension of global liberal social order, both in America and Europe, however, became significantly blurred in the context of the rise and expansion of global terror from the beginning of the 21st Century. The destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and the attack on the Pentagon in Washington, DC on September 11th, 2001, brought and signified the birth of a new phase in the spread of global terror. Global terror was not born in 2001. Its lineage can be traced back to several terrorist attacks started in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the U.S. embassy attack and the killing of ambassadors in Sudan (1973), Cyprus (1974), and Afghanistan (1979); attack on PANAM 707 (1973), U.S. Embassy attack in Iran (1979), bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut (1983- two hundred and forty-two American died), and bombing of PANAM 103 in 1988 (all 259 passengers on board died). The events of September 11th, 2001, brought the world, particularly America and Europe, at a crossroads of new realities about the spread of violent Islamic extremism all across the world societies. Because of the 2002 bombing in Bali, 2004 train bombing in Madrid, 2005 train bombing in London, 2008 Marriot bombing in Pakistan, 2008 terrorist attack in the city Mumbai, 2008 attack on U.S. embassy in Yemen, 2013 car bombings in Damascus, 2014 Boko Haram attack in Nigeria and numerous other attacks in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the world in the first two decades of the 21st Century saw the collapse of the hopes and the dreams of the ‘New World Order” envisioned at the end of the Cold War. The Global Terrorist Database shows that in 2004, terrorism claimed the lives of 5,743 people in the world as a whole. In 2014, the total number of people killed as a result of terrorist attacks in the world increased to 44,490. The rise of the Islamic terror brought the world, for the first time after World War II, face-to-face with another global war—the war on terror (Roger, Nagdy, and Ritchie, 2018). It is to secure the safety and ensure the progress of the global liberal social order that the global war on terror started by the United States in collaboration with most of the world nations, particularly with support from the major countries in Europe, in 2001 (Operation Enduring Freedom). Between 2001 and 2014, about 6,900 American men and women in uniform lost their lives in executing the Operation Enduring Freedom. There were also hundreds of casualties from the nations of Europe who joined the coalition on the war on global terror including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and the Netherlands. A detailed analysis of the global Islamic terror and the global war on terror is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it is pertinent to examine how the rise of global terror for the last two decades impacted world politics, mainly how it created a fertile ground for the growth of the ideology of ultra-rights in the West.

Modernity, Power, and Politics

101

Between 2001 and 2018, the war on terror in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and many other parts of Asia and Africa displaced millions of people, and many of them became desperate to migrate to Europe and North America. According to Data from the Migration Policy Institute (2017) “Global mass displacement reached a record high of 65.3 million people by the end of 2015, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Approximately 21.3 million of these individuals were refugees, 40.8 million were internally displaced persons (IDPs), and 3.2 million were asylum seekers” (p. 1). A report from Europe’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (2018) observed that “Between 2014 and 2017, Europe saw its largest influx of migrants in decades, with 1.9 million arrivals to the continent (and thousands of lives lost at sea during the dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean Sea) and 3.6 million first-time asylum applicants across the 28 E.U. member states” (p. vi). More than 1.3 million refugees claimed asylum in the E.U. countries in 2015. The highest number of refugees came from Syria (about 360 thousand), followed by Afghanistan (about 175 thousand), and Iraq (about 120 thousand). “Germany received the highest number of new asylum applications in 2015 (476,000). Hungary moved into second place with one hundred seventy-seven thousand one hundred thirty applications by the end of December” (BBC News, March 2016, p. 3). Although Germany is receiving more asylum applications, Hungary in 2015 had the highest number of refugees (1,799) per 1,000 local people followed by Sweden (1,667), Austria (1,027), Norway (602), Finland (591), Germany (587), Italy (138), Greece (122), and France (114) (BBC News, March, 2016). In 2015, the E.U. granted 292,540 asylums, and Germany issued the highest number of applications (140,910) followed by Sweden (32,215), Italy (29,615), France (20,630), Netherlands (16, 450), and the U.K. (13, 905). In 2015, the highest number of asylum applications granted in the E.U. countries were from Syria, followed by Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran (BBC News, March 2016). The number of displaced migrants seeking asylum in America after the start of the global war on terror in 2001, and the Syrian crisis in 2011, also significantly increased. In 2004, America approved 49,638 refuge applications. The highest number of Muslims in 2004 came from Somalia (6,616) followed by Sudan (3,249), and Iran (1,561). In 2016, the total number of refugee applications approved increased to 84,989. Refuge admissions in America decreased “to a low point in 2002…after September 11th, 2001. Refugee arrivals subsequently increased and reached a post-2001 peak of 76,600 in 2009. After a brief decrease from 2009 to 2011, refugee admissions began to increase sharply again in 2012. The ceiling increased to 85,000 in 2016, including 10,000 refugees from Syria” (United States Department of Homeland Security, 2018, p. 3). The increased flow of Muslim migration after the global spread of the terror of Al-Qaida and the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) during the last one and a half decade contributed to the rise of a new political discourse and a new perspective in Europe and America about international migration in general, and Muslim immigration in particular. Before September 11th, 2001, the public political discourse on international migration centered on integration and cultural assimilation. After September 11th, the political discourse on immigration from the ultra-rights began to be centered on increased fear of terror and issues of differences in race, religion, culture, and ethnicity (Brookings Institute, July, 2016). A new perspective of “demonization” of the migrants, particularly of the Muslim migrants in Europe, and the migrants from Mexico and Central American countries in America began to be dominant in the political discourses of the ultra-rights in both sides of the Atlantic. Norway’s Progressive Party, for example, is one of the most rising ultra-right populist parties

102

Shahid M. Shahidullah

in Europe, and its primary agenda is the expansion of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim policies. As one observer reported: “It would be easy to look at Progress and arrive at a broad conclusion that, after a string of less-than-successful elections for similar parties across Europe, this anti-immigration, anti-Islam party is a bright spot for the movement heading into another round of key European elections this fall” (Schultheis, September 2017, p. 2). In Hungary, Victor Orban of the ultra-right party Fidesz, “who built a steel fence in 2015 sealing off Hungary’s southern borders to keep out migrants, has framed the election as a choice between forces backing and opposing mass immigration. He was re-elected for a third term in 2018 with a very strong mandate” (Than and Dunai, May 2019, p. 1). Orban assured his voters that his party “will protect Christian Culture in Europe” (Than and Dunai, May 2019, p. 1). These two issues—the crusade against migration and the demonization of Muslims— are in fact, at the core of the political philosophy and the support base of the ultra-rights both in Europe and America. Both these issues and strands of the political philosophy of the ultra-rights are fragile and temporary. They are also misguided and based on misleading information— “alternative facts.” The 2018 report on Europe’s Center for Strategic and International Studies on migration crisis in Europe noted that, “perhaps the most lasting and devastating impact of Europe’s migration crisis has been the unleashing of fear-based public sentiment that extreme political forces deftly exploited and amplified with xenophobic tones, eroding the credibility of and confidence in elected officials and institutions” (p. vii). The report also observed that, “The exploitation of these fears impacted and shaped the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union and has caused significant fissures between Central and Western E.U. members. These fears have also inflated the popularity of the far-right and, at times, farleft parties that have based their political agenda on immigration restriction and ethnonationalist ideas. The realities on the ground, however, suggest that the majority in Europe are still welcoming the migrants. The 2017 European Social Survey found that European voters “are generally inclined to continue to support an open Europe” (European Social Survey, 2017, p. 3). The survey noted that, “regardless of their country’s economic situation, Europeans (72%) of all ages, education levels and across the political spectrum support a fair allocation of refugees based on a country’s reception capacity” (p. 3). The European Commission’s (2018) Special Eurobarometer found that “Nearly seven in ten Europeans say that integrating immigrants is a necessary investment in the long-run for their country. A clear majority (69%) of respondents agree that fostering the integration of immigrants is a necessary investment for their country in the long run” (p. 7). The support for integration, however, is lower among the European voters who are economically displaced and vulnerable. In America, as of 2016, one of the surveys shows, that 62 percent of Americans said that they are in support of Muslim people in America. The support is highest among the Democratic voters (79 percent) followed by independent (60 percent), and Republicans (42 percent) (Brookings Institute, July 2016). Like in Europe, the support for open immigration policy is also lower among the economically displaced working-class population in America. As one survey observed: “White working-class voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their land and who believe the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump than those who did not share these concerns” (Cox, Lienesch, Jones, May 2017, p. 1).

Modernity, Power, and Politics

103

THE CHALLENGES TO THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY AND GLOBAL MODERNITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY The dangerous threat for further expansion of democracy and global modernity is not the recent popularity of the right-wing populist parties in Europe and America. The forces that are presently contributing to the popularity of right-wing populism—an economically displaced mass of rural, non-college educated working class, and a massive flow of international migration—will be significantly diminished by 2030. By 2030, the size of the middle class both in Europe and America, because of the rise of a new generation of 5G technology and expanding college education, will be significantly widened. The 2018 midterm-election in America that brought an unprecedented number of women House of Representatives into Congress is a significant indicator about the expanding middle-class electoral base of the Democrats in America. By 2030, because of the higher growth rate among the Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, and other minorities, the size of the sub-urban and college-educated middle class in America will be significantly widened. In Europe, the 28 countries of the E.U. are solidly behind democracy and modernity, and the Brexit has collapsed. The 2018 Eurobarometer survey “shows a continuous increase in citizens’ support for the European Union. Over two-thirds of respondents (67%) are convinced that their country benefits from being a member of the E.U. This is the highest score ever measured since 1983” (European Parliament, 2018, p, 1). The flow of international immigration from the Muslim majority countries in Europe and America will be stabilized in the next decade because of the collapse of the ISIS and the total disintegration of Al-Qaida in the Middle East. The progress of guided democratization in Iraq and Afghanistan will significantly reduce the extent of social and economic dislocations of people from those regions. The ideology of global Islamic terror probably cannot be destroyed, but its scope has been significantly reduced. Globally, the majority of the world’s population still believe in the values of democracy. Democracy is not achieved in a country once for all. It is a process that needs to be nurtured and constructed by every generation. A survey of 38 nations conducted by the Pew Research Center (October 30, 2017) found that 86 percent of the people support a democratic form of government. “About nine-in-ten Swedes (92%) say representative democracy is a good way of governing their country, the highest share of any country in the survey” (p. 1). In Germany “More than nine-in-ten are opposed to military rule (95%) or rule by a strong leader who can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts (93%)” (p. 1). In India, where currently a right-wing populist party is in power, “55 percent of people view rule by a strong leader as a good way to govern, [but] this form of governance remains less popular than direct democracy (viewed favorably by 76% of respondents), representative democracy (75%) and rule by experts (65%)” (p. 1). The progress of the Arab Spring in the Middle East is slow but not dead. Democracy returned to Nigeria in 2000, and now Sudan is on the way to democratization. In Bangladesh and Indonesia, two of the most populous countries of Asia (except China and India), democracy is also on the way to further stabilization. The real threats to global democracy and modernity in the next decades of the 21st Century will probably not come from the rise of populist right-wing parties in Europe and America. The real threats will likely come from four countries of the world—Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Except for Iran, all three countries are equipped with nuclear weapons

104

Shahid M. Shahidullah

(Russia alone has 7,000 nuclear warheads). However, cyberwar will probably become the future strategy to attack democracy, and Russia’s cyber espionage in America’s 2016 general election is a case in point. None of these countries that are rooted in four major world civilizations—the Chinese, Russian, Persian, and Korean—have seen the tradition of liberal democracy after the end of their medieval monarchies and aristocracies. China, in the whole of the 20th Century, except the first two decades under Sun-Yet-Sen, was ruled by communism. China has an expanding middle class, but the Chinese middle class is an exception to the rule. It may not work as the driver of democracy. As Chinese observer Chen (2013) claimed: “unlike the middle class in the West, the Chinese middle class has so far relied heavily on the state under CCP or the party state for survival and growth since its birth. Due to this difference, the new middle class in China now are not in favor of political changes for democracy” (p. xiv). Russia in the same way, after the Russian Revolution in 1917, was ruled by communism until the mid-1980s. During the last three decades, Russia, particularly under Putin, has been trying to revitalize the Cold War and expand the Russian hegemony in Europe. Russia is decisively broadening its influence on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea, military support for the authoritarian regimes of Bashar-al-Assad in Syria, the political realignment with Iran, and political support for the socialist government of Nicolas Maduro are some of the examples to suggest that the global Cold War is not over. Iran, with some experiments of liberal democracy in the 1950s and 1960s, turned into a theocracy in the late 1970s and is ruled by a fundamentalist Shiite religious elite, deeply proud of the spiritual heritage of medieval Persian civilization. North Korea, with political support from Russia and China, is likely to expand its nuclear strength further, stabilize its hereditary authoritarianism, and remain as an invincible island in the Korean Peninsula far away from the global system of democracy and modernity. It is a great irony, however, to suggest that America’s present right-wing populist regime is also a challenge to further expansion of global democracy and modernity. If this regime continues for some more decades, and its power is stabilized within Congress and the federal judiciary, it will render incalculable and do unimaginable harm to democracy and modernity both at home and abroad. However, hope lies in the rapid expansion of America’s gender parity; the future world of 5G connectivity; America’s growing middle class of different races, religion and ethnicities; and a galvanizing cultural mentality of “American Exceptionalism.” Every generation of Americans was told by their leaders to carry the torch of freedom in all farthest corners of the world. There is no reason to believe that the future generations of Americans in the 21st Century will be deprived of this great pride of American exceptionalism.

CONCLUSION One of the global trends evolving from the beginning of the 21st Century is the rise of the ultra-rights or extreme right-wing populism in many countries, particularly in Europe and America. In Europe, populism is gaining strength in England, Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Denmark, and many other countries. Many described this global trend as the “retreat of western liberalism” or the

Modernity, Power, and Politics

105

“Death of Democracy”. This chapter argues that the notion that the liberal social order is retreating and democracy is in crisis is overstated. The chapter expands the argument that the global liberal social order has been progressing for more than two hundred years since the birth of modernity in the 18th Century. The progress of democracy has never been without conflicts, crisis, and violence. Since democracy presumes new structures of power relations, its advancement in society is bound to create chaos, crisis, and confusions. In all nations, the progress of democracy is essentially an ideological war—a culture war—between the modernists and anti-modernists. The last two hundred years of the development of democracy and liberal social order was not without chaos and conflicts. The First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War are examples of those historical realities. From the beginning of the 21st Century, the liberal social order and democracy have entered into a new phase of crisis because of the impacts of globalization and the rise of global terror. In America and many countries of Europe, globalization contributed to the expansion of a mass of rural, noncollege educated, and marginalized working class. This new marginalized working class is unable to compete with the new economic and technological challenges of globalization. The rise of global terror and the global war on terror at the same time displaced millions of people, and a part of that displaced and war-ravaged people came to take refuge in the West. These two byproducts of globalization and the global war terror—the rise of a mass of economically displaced population and a new wave of international migration in the West, mainly Muslim immigration—created a fertile ground for an ideology of nativism, racism, bigotry, and xenophobia. It is this ideology that is being used by America and Europe’s right-wing political parties. This chapter has examined that the world is currently undergoing some fundamental transformations in terms of women empowerment, the rise and expansion of a global middle class, a new 5G digital connectivity, and an evolving cultural consciousness for modernity and democracy. These social, economic, and cultural transformations that are spreading at a global scale will provide a solid base for further advancement of democracy and modernity in the next decades of the 21st Century. The real dangers to the future of global democracy are not the rise of a few populist regimes in Europe. The real threat is the countries of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—the countries that could not develop any tradition of democracy and liberal social order during more than one hundred years of their political evolution after the demise of medievalism. It is an irony to suggest that America’s present right-wing populist regime is also a significant threat to the future of democracy and global modernity.

REFERENCES African Development Bank. (2011). The Middle of Pyramid: Dynamics of the Middle Class in Africa. Retrieved from www.afdb.org on May 2019. Applebaum, A. (2018). The Warning from Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come. The Atlantic (Special Edition on Is Democracy Dying?), 322 (3), pp. 53-63. Asian Development Bank. (2010). Key Indicators for the Asia and the Pacific 2010: Asia’s Emerging Middle Class-Past, Present, and Future. Manila, Philippines: ADB. Asian Development Bank. (2010). Key Indicators for the Asia and the Pacific 2010: The Middle Class and their Values: A Profile. Manila, Philippines: ADB.

106

Shahid M. Shahidullah

BBC News. (March 2016). Migration Crisis: Migration in Europe Explained in Seven Charts. Beer, C. (2009). Democracy and Gender Equality. Studies in Comparative International Development, 44 (3), pp. 212-227. Brookings Institute. (July 2016). Report: American Attitudes Towards Muslims and Islam (by S. Telhami). Washington DC: Brookings Institute. Brownstein, R. (2019). How Trump Won. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.theAtlantic.com on April 12, 2019. Carothers, T. (2016). Democracy Support Strategies: Leading with Women’s Political Empowerment. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Castellani, F., Parent, G. & Zentero, J. (2014). The Latin American Middle Class: Fragile After All. Washington DC: Inter-American Development Bank. Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2018). Crossing Borders: How the Migration Crisis Transforms Europe’s External Policy. New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield. Chen, J. (2013). A Middle Class without Democracy: Economic Growth and the Prospect for Democratization in China. U.K.: Oxford Scholarship Online. Cox, D., Lienesch, R. & Jones, R. P. (May 2017). Beyond Economics: Fear of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump. Retrieved from www. PRRI.com on May 20, 2019. Dawkins, R. (2010). The Selfish Gene (40th Anniversary Edition-Oxford Landmark Science. New York, NT: The Basic Books. Dixon, V. K. (2009). Understanding the Implications of a Global Village. Inquiries, 1 (11), pp. 1-7. Economic Intelligence Unit. (2018). Democracy Index 2018. London, UK: The Economist Group. Eisenstadt, S. N. (2006). The Great Revolutions and the Civilizations of Modernity. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers. European Commission. (2018). Integration of Immigrants in the European Union: Special Barometer 469. Brussels, Belgium: European Commission. European Parliament. (2018). Eurobarometer: Democracy on the Move: European ElectionsOne Year to go. Brussels, Belgium: European Parliament. European Social Survey. (2017). Attitudes towards immigration in Europe: Myths and Realities. Brussels, Belgium: European Parliament. Feffer, J. (October 2018). Why is the Radical Right Still Winning? Institute for Policy Studies. Retrieved from www.ips-dc.org on April 2, 2019. Foucault, M. (2001). Power (The Essential Work of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. 3). New York, NY: The New Press. Freud, S. (2010). Civilization and its Discontent (Reprint Edition). New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company. Friedman, T. L. (2006). The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Fukuyama, F. (1991). The End of History and the Last Man. New York, NY: The Free Press. George, R. (February 2019). Gender Norms and Women Political Participation. Global Trends and Findings on Norm Change. Retrieved from www.alognplatform on May 23, 2019.

Modernity, Power, and Politics

107

Global Commission on International Migration. (2005). Migration in Europe: A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis and Research Program of the Global Commission on International Migration (by C. Boswell). Hamburg, Germany: Hamburg Institute of International Economics. Hartman, T. (April 2016). When there is no middle class, there cannot be real democracy. Retrieved from wwwsalon.com on April 2, 2019. Inglehart, R. (2018). Cultural Evolution: Peoples Motivation and Changing and Reshaping the World. U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Inglehart, R., Norris, P. & Welzel, C. (2002). Gender Equality and Democracy. Comparative Sociology, 1 (3), pp. 321-345. Inter-American Development Bank. (2014). The Latin American Middle Class: Fragile After All (Working Paper by F. Castellani, G. Parent, and J. Zentero). Washington DC: IDB. International IDEA. (March 2019). Political Gender Equality and the Global State of Democracy Indices. Stockholm, Sweden: IDEA. International IDEA. (2018a). The Global State of Democracy: Exploring Democracies Resilience. Stockholm, Sweden: IDEA. International IDEA. (2018b). Inclusion and the Global State of Democracy Indices. Stockholm, Sweden: IDEA. International IDEA. (2018c). Global State of Democracy: Key Findings and New Data. Stockholm, Sweden: IDEA. Interparliamentary Union. (2008). Equality in Politics: A Survey of Men and Women in Parliament. Geneva, Switzerland: Interparliamentary Union. Interparliamentary Union and the UN-Women. (2017). Women in Politics 2017. New York, NY: United Nations. Kemp. S. (2019). Digital Trends 2019: Every Single Stat You Need to Know about the Internet. Retrieved from www.nextwed.com on May 2, 2019. Kharas, H. (2011). The Emerging Middle Class in Developing Countries. Washington DC: Brookings Institution. Kharas, H. (2017). The Unprecedented Expansion of the Global Middle Class: An Update. Washington DC: Brookings Institution. Levitsky, S. & D. Ziblatt (2018). How Democracies Die? New York, NY: Crown Publishing House. Luce, E. (2017). The Retreat of Western Liberalism. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press. Migration Policy Institute. (June 2017). Refugees and Asylees in the United States (by J. Zong and J. Batalova). Retrieved from www.migrationpolicy.org on May 1, 2019. Moghadam, V. M. (August 2008). The Gender of Democracy: The Link Between Women’s Rights and Democratization in the Middle East. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. National Intelligence Council. (2012). Global Trends: Alternative Worlds. Washington DC: ODNI. Nelson, B. N. (1981). On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science, and Civilization. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. (2019). Trends Shaping Education. Paris: OECD.

108

Shahid M. Shahidullah

Pew Research Center. (October 30, 2017). How Countries Around the World View Democracy, Military Rule, and Other Political Systems (by J. Gramlich). Washington DC: Pew Research Center. Piccone, T. (September 2017). Democracy, Gender Equality, and Security: Policy Brief. Washington DC: Brookings Institution. Qualcomm Incorporations. (December 2016). 5G Economy Global Public Survey Report Commissioned by Qualcomm. Retrieved from www.psbresearch.com on May 1, 2019. Rand Corporation. (2015). Individual Empowerment: Global Trends to 2030: Thematic Report 3 (by M. Graf, J. Ghez, D. Khodyakov, O. Yaqub). Brussels, Belgium: Rand Europe. Ritzer, G. (2004). The McDonaldization of the World Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Robertson, R. & Buhari-Gulmez, D. (2016). Global Culture: Consciousness and Connectivity. London: Taylor and Francis. Roser, M. (2019). Our World in Data: Democracy. U.K.: University of Oxford Global Change Data Laboratory. Roser, M., Nagdy, M. & Ritchie, H. (2018). Our World in Data: Terrorism. U.K.: University of Oxford Global Change Data Laboratory. Russell, B. (2004). Power: A New Social Analysis (Routledge Classics, Vol. 89). London, UK: Routledge. Schultheis, E. (September 12, 2017). What Right-Wing Populists Look Like in Norway: Can they Avoid the Nativism of the European Peers? Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com on May 1, 2019. Sen, A. (2000). Development as Freedom. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Than, K. & Dunai, M. (May 2019). Hungary’s Fidesz Wins 52% of Vote; Orban Vows to Halt Immigration. Retrieved from www.reuters.com on May 20, 2019. The Freedom House. (2017). Freedom in the World, 2017. Washington DC: The Freedom House. The World Bank. (2019a). Women, Business, and the Law: A Decade of Reform. Washington DC: The World Bank. The World Bank. (2019b). Chongging: A Regional Strategy to Increase Connectivity and Economic Integration. Washington DC: The World Bank. The World Bank. (2017). Global Infrastructure Connectivity Alliance. Washington DC: The World Bank. The World Bank. (2016). World Development Report, 2016: Digital Dividends. Washington DC: The World Bank. The World Bank, (2012). Latin America: Middle-Class Hits Historic High. Washington DC: The World Bank. Tocqueville, A. (2012). Democracy in America (A New Translation by A Goldhammer). New York, NY: Library of American Books. United Nations Development Program. (2018). Human Development Indices and Indicators. New York, NY: UNDP. United States Department of Homeland Security. (2005). Refugee Applications and Admissions to the United States: 2004 (by M. F. Rytina). Washington DC: DHS. UN-Women. (January 2019). Facts and Figures: Leadership and Political Participation. New York, NY: United Nations.

Modernity, Power, and Politics

109

UN-Women. (2019). In Brief: Economic Empowerment of Women. New York, NY: United Nations. Varieties of Democracy-V-Dem. (2018). Democracy for All: V-Dem Annual Democracy Report 2018. University of Gothenburg, Sweden: V-Dem Institute. Wallerstein, I. (2004). World-System Analysis: An Introduction. Chapel-Hill, NC: Duke University Press. Wang, B. (2017). Global Middle Class: Growth will be 88% in Asia for the Next Five Years. Retrieved from www.nextbigpicture.com on May 20, 2019. Weber, M. (2018). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (trans. edited, and introduction by H. H. Gerth, and C. Wright Mills). Kindle Edition. www.forgottenbooks.com. World Economic Forum. (2018a). Global Risk: Fractures, Fears, and Failures. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum. (2018b). The Global Gender Gap Report 2018. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum. (2006). Global Gender Gap 2006. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum. World Values Survey. (2019). WVS Online Analysis: Findings and Insights. Vienna, Austria: World Values Survey. Ziman, Y. (May 2015). Six Economic Corridors to Better Connect Asia and Europe. Retrieved from www.chinadaily.com on May 1. 2019.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 5

MODERNITY, ECONOMIC CHANGE, AND CULTURAL VALUES: NONLINEAR DEVELOPMENT OF CENTRAL AND EAST EUROPEAN POST-SOCIALIST COUNTRIES Yuriy Savelyev*, PhD Faculty of Sociology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine

ABSTRACT Modernization is a multi-dimensional and discrepant process. Central and East European countries are a particular case due to the communist project of modernization and its subsequent failure. Drastic post-socialist transformations of the 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as economic pitfalls of the 2000s, led to inefficient democratic institutions in some countries and authoritarian regimes and the rise of rightwing political forces in others. The observed variability in emancipative (post-materialist) value change in different Central and East European countries confronts the existing notion of the global scale the modernization process (Inglehart and Welzel, 2010). This chapter aims at revealing a nonlinear modernization trend in Central and Eastern Europe by partitioning socialization and historical period effects in the spread of emancipative values in post-socialist Central and East European countries. The results are identified through statistical estimation of orthogonal intracohort and intercohort changes in values over multiple measurements using a method of linear decomposition. The dataset for analysis consists of integrated World Values Survey data (waves 3, 4, 5: WVS1994-1999, WVS1999-2004, WVS2005-2007), European Values Survey data (waves 3, 4: EVS19992001, EVS2008-2010) and Human Development Index data (UNDP HDI) for 13 Central and East European countries. Although the research results sustain the modernization model (Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, 2003) concerning the dispersal of emancipative (post-materialist) values due to the growth of resources and economic security, the model needs to be amended to account for more complex patterns of social change. The differentiated effects indicate that distinctions in the modernization process are primarily caused by specific country-level contextual factors which were not favorable for the spread of emancipative values during the post-socialist transition. Thus,

*

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

112

Yuriy Savelyev a historical period effect can explain why “modernization does not follow a linear path” (Inglehart and Baker, 2000).

Keywords: modernization, modernity, development, globalization, post-materialism, emancipative values, post-socialist countries, Eastern Europe

INTRODUCTION Modernity is a set of unique cultural codes that put a high premium on such values as human rights, individualism, democracy, equality, religious freedom, inclusivity, and diversity. Modernity is not merely a materialistic and an economic phenomenon. It is primarily a set of cultural choices, perceptions, and preferences. Since the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century, this cultural model for organizing and governing human social orders became the core of liberal philosophy. The liberal philosophy was the driving force for England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688 for the birth of parliamentary democracy, the birth of the American republic in 1776, and the birth of the French Republic in 1789. It was through these revolutions that a global process of modernity and modernization began about two hundred years ago. One of the puzzles in the understanding of modernity is how transformation in cultural values of society towards modernity is possible. Since the birth of social science in the nineteenth century, which came in the wake of a debate with the ghost of Karl Marx, culture has always been theorized as the prime mover of economic and political value orientations. This was primarily under the impact of Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. From the 1970s, a group of American social scientists led by Ronald Inglehart has been pursuing a thesis, described as post-materialism, that economic development is a driver for modernity. This chapter is concerned with this problematic nature of the growth of post-materialist culture in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have a unique predicament in the history of their economic and political evolutions. For about four decades during the Cold War, these countries were under the control of the command economy and totalitarian political regime of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). After the end of the Cold War, these countries became independent, but they pursued different economic development routes. Some of the nations came to continue the European Project, and some remained entangled with the command economy of the Russian republic. This chapter argues that the postmaterialist thesis explains the value shift in the countries that opted for the European Project but not in the states that remained within the process of Russia’s command economy and totalitarian political culture. It is, therefore, hypothesized in this chapter that transformation from materialist to post-materialist culture is not always a linear process. Modernization, in a broader sense, is a multi-dimensional process. The present chapter aims at revealing a nonlinear modernization trend in Central and Eastern Europe by partitioning socialization and historical period effects (components of social change) in the spread of emancipative values in post-socialist countries of this region. The results are identified through statistical estimation of orthogonal intracohort and intercohort changes in values over multiple measurements using a method of linear decomposition (Firebaugh, 1989). Based on the mathematical modeling, the study allows differentiating components of social change and

Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values

113

demonstrates that distinctions in the modernization process are primarily caused by specific country-level contextual factors which predominantly were not favorable for the spread of emancipative values during the post-socialist transition. Hence, the chapter provides a substantiated explanation why “modernization does not follow a linear path” (Inglehart and Baker, 2000) and what are the empirical grounds for its antinomies (Berger, 1990; Bauman, 2000; Martinelli, 2005). Globalization has accelerated economic growth and competition between different countries, and currently, modernization is considered as a form of international competition in the global world (Zhang, 2015; Martinelly and He, 2015). National states and regions differ in their modernization paths as well as in the outcomes (Martinelli and He, 2015). In the continuing global competition, Central and East European post-socialist societies in transition constitute a particular case which lacks attention in the current scholarship (Minakov, 2018). Peculiarities of these countries derive from the communist modernization and its subsequent failure in the 1980s. The communist modernization was “a large-scale” attempt of “modernization from above” (Sztompka, 1993; Yakovlev, 2014). It was implemented with the purpose “to bridge the gap between the most developed [capitalist] and the backward, underdeveloped societies” by means of command (planned) economy, monopoly of the political power and ideological dominance (Sztompka, 1993, 88). Such a project of modernization had a fundamental contradiction between “the basic premises of modernity… the high level of social mobilization” and “far-reaching strong totalitarian orientations and policies… and the attempts to control totally all the mobilized groups” (Eisenstadt, 1992, 2829). Although the communist modernization resulted in individual essential gains (industrialization, technological development, an increase of the level of education, and social mobility) and overall improved life chances for more social actors (Tiryakian, 1995), it eventually failed to come out with stable, competitive and thriving societies. Since the Communist Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1990-91, an optimistic project of transformation of Central and East European societies into western, like the liberal capitalist model, was conceived (Blokker, 2005). However, the following drastic post-socialist changes of the 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as economic pitfalls of the 2000s, led to inefficient democratic institutions in some countries, authoritarian regimes and the rise of right-wing political forces in others (Minakov, 2018). Subsequently, many of East European post-socialist countries experienced underdevelopment which devalued “rationality in exchange for the dominance of neo-traditionalist beliefs” (Minakov, 2018, 94). Such an experience confronts the existing notion of the global scale invariant modernization process based on cultural and institutional premises (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005; Inglehart and Welzel, 2009; Inglehart and Welzel, 2010). Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann (2003) have argued that modernization proved to be universal: economic development led to a shift from materialist to post-materialist values, which in turn induced the rise of democratic institutions. Recent empirical studies demonstrate variability in emancipative (post-materialist) value change in most of the Central and East European countries (Savelyev, 2016). If a gradual growth of well-being and a sense of existential security contribute to the spread of emancipation values via socialization of younger generations, which is a prerequisite for the modernization of political institutions, acute socio-economic problems and a loss of confidence by social agents lead to peril of underdevelopment through the strengthening of materialist value orientations among the population (Savelyev, 2018).

114

Yuriy Savelyev

This chapter aims at explaining a nonlinear modernization trend in Central and Eastern Europe by partitioning socialization and historical period effects (components of social change) in the spread of emancipative values in post-socialist countries of this region. The results are identified through statistical estimation of orthogonal intracohort and intercohort changes in values over multiple measurements using a method of linear decomposition (Firebaugh, 1989). The dataset for analysis consists of integrated World Values Survey data (waves 3, 4, 5: WVS1994-1999, WVS1999-2004, WVS2005-2007) and European Values Survey data (waves 3, 4: EVS1999-2001, EVS2008-2010) and supplemented by Human Development Index data (UNDP HDI) for 13 Central and East European countries. First, the chapter provides a brief overview of specific problems of post-socialist transition and current issues of modernization of Central and East European countries. Countries of this region are compared in order to understand their differences in development tracks under the communist regime and after the Cold War. Second, theoretical framework employed in the research is presented which is a modernization model suggested by Welzel, Inglehart and Klingemann (2003) and a conception of post-materialist value shift (Inglehart, 1990). Such a shift is core of the modernization process and a prerequisite for enduring institutional changes. Thirdly, the chapter focuses on variables, data, research hypotheses, and method of analysis to estimate the statistical significance of value change in selected countries and decompose available trend data into orthogonal between-versus within-cohort effects. Finally, based on the mathematical modeling the proposed study allows differentiating components of social change in 13 Central and East European societies and demonstrates that distinctions in the modernization process are primarily caused by specific country-level contextual factors which predominantly were not favorable for the spread of emancipative values during the postsocialist transition. Hence, using a case of Central and East European post-socialist societies, the chapter provides a substantiated explanation why “modernization does not follow a linear path” (Inglehart, Baker, 2000) and what are the empirical grounds for modernization antinomies and tensions (Berger, 1990; Bauman, 2000; Martinelli, 2005).

THE POST-MATERIALIST THESIS According to the post-materialist thesis (Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, 2003), modernization is linked to emancipative values and comprises three elements, namely: a) individual resources (objective means of choice); b) emancipative cultural values (motives of choice); and c) institutional rules (sufficient rights to human choice). Emancipative values have to appear due to the growth of resources (economic prosperity). In general, such transformations turn out to be a human empowerment process that boosts people’s capabilities (Inglehart and Welzel, 2010). Socialization is supposed to explain this emancipative value shift as a core of the modernization process (Inglehart, 1990). It is assumed that observed values of adults reflect the social and material conditions of their socialization process, and their youth experience of economic and physical security shapes enduring value orientations (Inglehart, 1990). Consequently, a growing sense of existential security leads to ‘intergenerational value change’. Socialization reflects possible differences between the cohorts about the value orientations that have been shaped via personal experience under the condition of relative scarcity or security during one’s early life or

Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values

115

“formative years” (Inglehart, 1990). Although previous comparative cross-national research shows that “pervasive massive cultural change” associated with economic growth is path dependent, and “cultural zones with distinctive value systems” rooted in religious traditions persist despite “the effects of economic development” (Inglehart and Baker, 2000), modernization appears to be a linear process of the spread of emancipative values and human empowerment.

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: PROBLEMS OF POST-SOCIALIST TRANSITION After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union in 1989-1991 Central and Eastern Europe fell into two clusters with different development tracks. While three former Soviet Republics Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine were involved in the post-Soviet integration project (CIS) maintained by Russian Federation, the other three former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, with the rest of Central and Eastern European societies became determined by European integration. Based on the Human Development Index (HDI) as a comprehensive indicator for measuring the level of development of a society, it is possible to compare different Central and East European countries. Before the collapse of the communist modernization in 1980-91 Slovenia and the Czech Republic had a higher level of development among others (HDI is equal to 0,851 and 0,845 for the latter). Among Soviet republics, Lithuania demonstrated better performance with the value of 0,827. Estonia (0,813), Russian Federation (0,815), Ukraine (0,809) and Latvia (0,804) were approximately at the same level with Poland (0,806) and Hungary (0,813). Soviet Belarus (0,790) was close to Bulgaria (0,794) and Romania (0,777) (which are currently also the EU members) constituted a cluster of less developed societies. Moldova had the lowest HDI (0,740) and was considerably behind other countries in the region (Human Development Report, 2009). Due to post-socialist transformations and degradation of the economy during the first half of the 1990s HDI dropped dramatically for all countries by 1995 and then began to recover at a more rapid pace in those societies which were involved in the European integration project (Savelyev, 2014). Economic growth was associated with another attempt of modernization of Central and Eastern Europe which was “predominantly understood in terms of gradual incorporation of the post-communist societies into the European project…. as convergence in legal, institutional, and political terms” (Blokker, 2005, p. 515). Unlike the communist project of modernization which was modernization from above governed by the authoritarian state (Sztompka, 1993), the European project rested on market economy, a free political system and civic engagement of capable and responsible social actors. Meanwhile, modernization of the former Soviet Republics Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine as well as the Russian Federation was not so coherent and resulted in corrupt economic and political practices (Kapustin, 2003; Tikhonova, 2011). Human Development Index data shows that Poland and Hungary didn’t experience a steep fall in contrast to post-Soviet countries. Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia did have a drop as well as other former Soviet republics. However, they quickly recovered after 1995 (Human Development Report, 2009). Bulgaria and Romania had a moderate decrease from 1990 till 1995. Their HDI trends were very similar to the ones of Russian Federation

116

Yuriy Savelyev

and Belarus from 1995 till 2000, but from 2000 their HDI began growing much faster so that even Romania passed Belarus and the Russian Federation by 2005. Ukraine and Moldova had the most significant slump in development indicators and never fully recovered. In contrast to 1990, Ukraine’s HDI value in 2005 (0,788) was much lower of the median of the set of 13 countries (0,855) and even lesser of the 1st quartile (0,836). (In 1990 Ukraine’s HDI value of 0,809 was exactly the median in the selected set of 13 countries, and Ukraine’s HDI was even slightly above the mean of 0,806 in the region). Overall, by 2005 six former Soviet republics already had made two distinct clusters. Three post-Soviet Baltic States (along with Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic), which were involved in the European integration project, had considerably higher HDI then Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine and the Russian Federation (Savelyev, 2014). Since then, Ukraine was struggling for independence as well as tackling enormous corruption and poverty. Development of the Russian Federation and its satellite Belarus was based on rent extraction due to availability of abundant supplies of natural resources, primarily oil and gas. Authoritarian regimes in these countries turned out to be the most efficient way of securing natural resources extraction and transportation to foreign customers (Etkind, 2013).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: ROLE OF POST-MATERIALIST EMANCIPATIVE VALUES IN MODERNIZATION Either ways of modernization of post-socialist transition societies did not lead undoubtedly to the enduring changes that were initially expected by political agents (Minakov, 2018). On the other hand, on a global scale, modernization seems to be a universal process as economic growth triggers a shift in values which in turn determines the rise of democratic institutions (Inglehart and Welzel, 2009; Inglehart and Welzel, 2010). According to this leading theoretical framework (Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, 2003), modernization is linked to emancipation and comprises three elements, namely: a) individual resources (objective means of choice); b) emancipative cultural values (motives of choice); and c) institutional rules (sufficient rights to human choice). Emancipative values have to appear due to the growth of resources (economic prosperity). In general, such transformations turn out to be a human empowerment process that boosts people’s capabilities (Inglehart and Welzel, 2010). Such human empowerment is possible due to ‘weakening vertical authority’ and ‘fading constraints on human autonomy’ reshaping people’s orientations and priorities which have been labeled by different theorists as ‘civic culture’, ‘post-materialist values’, ‘liberal values’, ‘anthropocentric values’ or ‘self-expression values’ (Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, 2003, pp. 241-242). Regardless, the exact term used, the core of such value change implies that “traditional conformity values, which subordinate human autonomy to community discipline, tend to give way to more emancipative values that emphasize individual choice. Accordingly, we characterize this process as an emancipative value change” (Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, 2003, p. 242). As Inglehart (1990) asserts, socialization is supposed to explain this emancipative value shift as a premise of the modernization process. It is assumed that observed values of adults reflect the social and material conditions of their socialization process, and their youth experience of economic and physical security shapes

Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values

117

enduring value orientations (Inglehart, 1990). Consequently, a growing sense of existential security leads to ‘intergenerational value change’. Socialization reflects possible differences between the cohorts concerning the value orientations that have been shaped via personal experience under the condition of relative scarcity or security during one’s early life or “formative years” (Inglehart, 1990). Although previous comparative cross-national research shows that “pervasive massive cultural change” associated with economic growth is path dependent, and “cultural zones with distinctive value systems” rooted in religious traditions persist despite “the effects of economic development” (Inglehart, Baker, 2000), modernization appears to be a linear process of the spread of emancipative values and human empowerment. This theoretical framework is not directly applicable to the case of Central and Eastern Europe where modernization results turned out to be fragile (Minakov, 2018). In this research, the focus is on a particular part of the theoretical framework testing the direction of the components of value change in Central and East European societies, namely, population turnover and historical period effect. If these components of change have the opposite directions, then such a contradiction may explain nonlinearity of modernization in the region.

DATA, VARIABLES, HYPOTHESIS AND METHOD OF ANALYSIS The dataset for analysis consists of integrated World Values Survey data (waves 3, 5: WVS 1994-1999, WVS 2005-2007) and European Values Survey data (waves 3, 4: EVS 1999-2001, EVS 2008-2010) with matching questions covering the period from 1995 till 2008 in 13 post-socialist Central and East European countries: Bulgaria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine (seven of them are former Soviet republics, and four are still non-EU members). All countries were selected according to the formulated criteria and availability of the indicators. The response variable is the level of emancipative (post-materialist opposing materialist) values in a given society within a period of social change (middle of the 1990s – end of 2000s) computed as proportions of people who share either materialists or post-materialists value priorities. To partition and statistically estimate social change, it is necessary to have at least three-time points for all countries included in the analysis (Firebaugh, 1989). That is why a four-item post-materialist index (EVS/WVS integrated data) is used as a measure of the response variable (EVS, 2011; WVS, 2009). This index coincides with a more significant number of waves and countries than other available measures of emancipative values. It allows the opportunity to compare more societies and over a broader period. Recent studies have pointed to the lack of scalar invariance of the index, which implies the impossibility of meaningful comparisons of the country means (Ippel, Gelissen, and Moors, 2014). However, since metric invariance was found plausible, the rank ordering of countries by a four-item post-materialist index is possible “if one is willing to accept that the scale measures a single latent factor” (Ippel, Gelissen, and Moors, 2014). To avoid a potential problem of crosscountry comparability, instead of different means of the index, I suggest comparing proportions of groups of people who share either materialist (‘pure materialists’) or postmaterialist (‘pure post-materialists’) value priorities. Predictor variables in the model are related to the orthogonal components of social change: demographic replacement (intercohort

118

Yuriy Savelyev

element) and historical period effect (intracohort part). Demographic replacement (population turnover) is a proxy for the socialization process which may vary for different cohorts. Accordingly, cohort variable (year of birth of respondents) and time variable (year of the survey wave) are included as predictors in the statistical model. The hypothesis is that two components of value change in the selected Central and East European societies have opposite directions and, therefore, produce a nonlinear effect on modernization. If emancipative value change occurs through both cohort replacement (intercohort component), when younger cohorts differ from the older ones in terms of shared values (Inglehart, 1990; Inglehart, and Baker, 2000), and time effect (intracohort component), which implies the prevalence of within-cohort change over cohort differences due to socialization, the hypothesis is false and emancipative values are not the cause for modernization nonlinearity. Alternatively, the incongruence of the value change components may be associated with a nonlinear trend of modernization in societies in post-socialist transition. The design of the research is repeated cross-sectional with four-time points. The sample is representative of a population of over 18 (overall 78,501 respondents) (EVS, 2011; WVS, 2009). To achieve the research goals, statistical analysis is based on a method of linear decomposition (Firebaugh, 1989). This method allowed differentiating two otherwise concealed components of social change and was efficient in sociological research to detect variations in attitudes over time (Voicu and Tufis, 2012; Savelyev, 2015). Although it is not plausible to separate all three components of aging, cohorts, and time period as the linear additive effects (well-known APC identification problem), “one can decompose trend data reflecting social change into two orthogonal components: the betweencohort versus within-cohort part of the trend” (Alwin and McCammon, 2003). In contrast to other mathematical techniques, linear decomposition uses the most information to estimate cohort replacement effects (Firebaugh 1989, p. 256). The initial step in modeling for decomposing social change is to regress the response variable on the survey year (that represents the first component of change) and cohort (respondent’s birth year that represents the second component) for the pooled cross-sectional dataset with at least three-time points. Then the slopes of the model predictors can be used “to estimate the intracohort change and cohort replacement components” (Firebaugh, 1989, р. 253). To test the research hypotheses, regression models are estimated for each country separately. Since a four-item postmaterialist index is used as a measure of the response variable with categorical outcomes, binary logistic regression is employed for statistical modeling in this study. The statistical significance of the coefficients of the predictors (the slopes in the regression equation) that represent a component of intracohort change and a part of cohort replacement will indicate whether the change in emancipative (materialist vs. postmaterialist) values was due to any of these components. Interpretation of the decomposition model is limited by the statistical significance of the coefficients and direction of the relationships. If the regression coefficients are significant for the increase in probability of a binary outcome of belonging to a group of pure post-materialists in one decomposition model, and are significant for the decrease in probability of a binary outcome of belonging to a group of pure materialists in another decomposition model, then there is a coherent growth in emancipative values as a prerequisite for modernization in a given society.

Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values

119

THE DISCREPANCY OF EMANCIPATIVE VALUE CHANGE IN 13 CENTRAL AND EAST EUROPEAN COUNTRIES Descriptive statistics show that Slovenia and the Czech Republic have the most significant number (over 10%) of pure post-materialists (besides, Slovenia also has the lowest quantity of pure materialists) demonstrating a clear emancipative value trend. Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia have a group of materialists similar in size to the Czech Republic (about 30%) but have a smaller post-materialist group. Slovakia, Poland, and Romania are behind the Czech Republic by both indicators. The lowest number of pure post-materialists is in two post-Soviet non-EU countries: Ukraine and Russia, but also in Bulgaria. The other two postSoviet states, Belarus and Moldova, have a higher percentage of post-materialists comparable to most of the East European societies. However, all four non-EU countries have the most significant number of materialists, exceeding 40%, which is substantially higher than in the rest of the region of Central and Eastern Europe, except Bulgaria. Moldova and Russia have even more than 50% pure materialist populations. The relative change across the waves from the mid-1990s until 2008 is presented in Table 5.1. The substantial change in the number of post-materialists has not occurred over the decade in the vast majority of countries. On the other hand, the decrease in the number of materialists was significant in most cases, showing at least a partial emancipative value shift. The only exception was the Russian Federation, where a slight growth of materialists between the waves occurred. There was a stable situation also in the most prosperous Central European countries: Slovenia and the Czech Republic. The method of linear decomposition provides objective estimates of emancipative value change going beyond descriptive statistics that will allow testing the research hypothesis. Utilizing binary logistic regression, I contrasted cohort replacement and historical period components within the observed value change in each country (Table 5.2). The regression coefficients here are the log odds ratios of belonging to the ‘pure’ postmaterialist group. The response variable that was regressed on the predictors: year of birth (cohort) and year of survey (time variable for contextual effects). The sign of the coefficients indicates the ascending (if positive) or descending (if negative) emancipative values trend. The study of 13 Central and East European societies from 1995-2008 by linear decomposition method reveals a general hidden shift from materialist to post-materialist values via socialization of younger cohorts. Nonetheless, this trend is obscured by opposite directions of intracohort values changes in most of the post-socialist European societies. Despite a significant effect of cohort replacement with growing odds of belonging to a postmaterialist group for younger cohorts, due to the unfavorable historical period component, it did not result in the actual growth of the number of people who supported emancipative values. The only exception is Latvia, where cohort turnover is not significant, while the positive contextual change is. This is the exceptional case of the growing number of people with post-materialist priorities in Central and Eastern Europe, and it was found in a postSoviet country. Surprisingly, non-EU, post-Soviet countries including Russia and Ukraine also demonstrate a positive post-materialist trend via cohort replacement, although z statistics of the coefficients are less significant. Socialization mechanism was not again sufficient to secure a visible social change which might induce durable modernization. A similar pattern is also found for an opposite (materialist) group via the decomposition method, while the regression coefficients are the log odds ratios of belonging to a ‘pure’ materialist group

120

Yuriy Savelyev

(Table 5.3). For these models, the sign of the coefficients should be interpreted reversely: negative coefficients stand for an ascending emancipative trend because the log odds of belonging to a materialist group are lower for younger cohorts or later waves, and positive coefficients indicate an opposite materialist trend.

Table 5.1. Materialists and post-materialists compared, 1995-1997-2008 Country Belarus Bulgaria Czech Republic Estonia Latvia Lithuania Moldova Poland Romania Russian Federation Slovakia Slovenia Ukraine

Pure materialists change in % - 4.83 - 10.41 - 0.81 - 9.28 - 5.54 - 16.17 - 5.1 - 3.95 - 7.99 2.89 - 10.53 1.66 - 6.03

Pure post-materialists change in % 1.33 - 2.13 1.16 0.63 2.4 0.55 1.89 1.55 - 0.64 - 0.58 0.76 0.06 - 0.59

Significant change in bold (Source: EVS 2011; WVS 2009)

Table 5.2. Contextual change and cohort replacement: Post-materialist group, 1995-2008

Country Belarus Bulgaria Czech Republic Estonia Latvia Lithuania Moldova Poland Romania Russian Federation Slovakia Slovenia Ukraine

Binary logistic regression, unstandardized coefficients. Change in a group of postIntracohort change materialists (%) 1.33 - .014 - .076*** - 2.13 1.16 - .006 0.63 .015 .034* 2.4 0.55 - .029 1.89 .030 1.55 - .007 - 0.64 - .045** - 0.58 - .038 0.76 .033 0.06 - .014 - 0.59 - .025

Cohort replacement .029*** .021*** .015*** .023*** .007 .022*** .018*** .020*** .026*** .027*** .026*** .018*** .017**

*

p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 (Source: EVS 2011; WVS 2009).

In contrast to the previous post-materialist group, cohort replacement effect for materialist group is highly significant for all 13 selected countries. This implies the presence of socialization mechanism in the spread of emancipative values by reducing support for materialist priorities. This effect is also combined and boosted by historical period effect

121

Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values

(contextual factors) in Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia (p < 0.001) and Romania (p < 0.05). Vice versa, in advanced and the most prosperous Central European Czech Republic and Slovenia, as well as in post-Soviet Russia, contextual factors were negative for emancipative value change. Thus, for post-materialist as well as materialist group, the linear decomposition of a trend showed that socialization was a driver for the spread of emancipative values and, therefore, might be considered as a working mechanism for modernization in Central and Eastern Europe (although Latvia is a particular case). These findings confirm the current theoretical framework (Inglehart and Welzel, 2009; Inglehart and Welzel, 2010).

Table 5.3. Contextual change and cohort replacement: Materialist group, 1995-2008

Belarus Bulgaria Czech Republic Estonia Latvia Lithuania Moldova Poland Romania Russian Federation Slovakia Slovenia

Binary logistic regression, unstandardized coefficients. Change in the group of Intracohort change materialists (%) .010 - 4.83 - .006 - 10.41 - 0.81 .020*** - .032*** - 9.28 - .012 - 5.54 - .033*** - 16.17 - .013 - 5.1 .001 - 3.95 - .015* - 7.99 .033*** 2.89 - .048*** - 10.53 1.66 .024**

Ukraine

- 6.03

Country

*

- .007

Cohort replacement - .024*** - .014*** - .017*** - .014*** - .012*** - .012*** - .017*** - .017*** - .012*** - .020*** - .022*** - .017*** - .011***

p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 (Source: EVS 2011; WVS 2009).

However, there is also a discrepancy in the observed value change. A statistical estimation of the partitioned components provides evidence that such incongruence comes not from socialization but historical period effect. This effect differs across the region. For a group of pure post-materialists, it is only significantly positive for Latvia. Linear decomposition discloses the existence of eventually negative contextual impact on emancipative value trend in Bulgaria. Unfortunately, because of unobserved heterogeneity problem in regression modeling with categorical response variables (Mood 2010), we cannot compare the effect sizes in different logistic regression models for each country. Still, it is possible to make an inference that the socialization effect alone was not sufficient to increase the number of people who share post-materialist priorities despite its statistical significance. The contextual impact on a group of pure materialists is more diverse. It played against the emancipative trend in 3 countries while contributed to this trend in 4 others. One can assume that better than the expected improvement of the socio-economic situation in Estonia, Lithuania, and Slovakia had a positive influence on the spread of emancipative values in these countries. On the other hand, higher anticipations in more developed at the end of the communist era Czech Republic, Slovenia and the Russian Federation probably did not meet the reality of post-socialist transition. While cohort replacement is similar for both groups of materialists and post-materialists (although the effect size is not directly comparable), emancipative values change due to the

122

Yuriy Savelyev

historical period component is more likely to happen only in the former group. Among the selected 13 countries, the effect of the historical period varies. It is more often adverse rather than favorable for emancipative values. Although Bulgaria and Romania followed the European integration project after the Cold War, these countries remained the poorest in the EU and contextual effect induced lower probability of belonging to the pure post-materialist group at the end of the observed period (Table 2). For the rest of the countries (including EUmembers as well as non-EU) that component of value change was not significant for pure post-materialists. Vice versa, the materialist priorities changed regardless of the EU accession.

CONCLUSION This chapter is focused on a particular aspect of the modernization process, which is related to a fundamental emancipative shift in values as motives of individual choice. It attempts to answer the question of whether a nonlinearity of modernization in Central and Eastern Europe may be associated with discrepancy of such changes of values. Based on the statistical modeling by a method of linear decomposition, the study allows partitioning socialization and historical period components in the spread of emancipative values in 13 post-socialist countries and finds that these components may be incongruent. Hence, the research hypothesis is that two orthogonal effects of value change have opposite directions, which might induce a nonlinear impact on modernization in the post-socialist Central and East European societies, was confirmed for the majority of countries. The results support the current theoretical framework of modernization (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005; Inglehart and Welzel, 2009; Inglehart and Welzel, 2010) but only if one assumes that emancipative cultural values (motives of choice) are formed via the socialization process and remain relatively stable during the life course (Inglehart, 1990). There is a true, although not always apparent, generational replacement that brought emancipative orientations with younger cohorts in virtually all of the selected countries from the mid-1990s to the end of 2000s. If the value changes were entirely due to demographic turnover (i.e., differences in socialization between the cohorts) due to the growth of resources and economic security, then one would expect a more linear modernization path. However, the historical period component (contextual intracohort change) accounts for a discrepant emancipative trend and, therefore, for the nonlinearity of modernization in Central and Eastern Europe. In other words, in terms of demographic turnover, Inglehart’s socialization hypothesis appeared to be a valid assumption in most cases. However, its validity was constrained by the other component of value change. Even significant generational differences do not alone produce the expected general shift towards emancipative values. The study demonstrates that the observed variability in value change in different countries in Europe is due to intracohort transformations and not population turnover. This finding confronts the assumption of the exclusiveness of socialization against the period effect in forming value orientations (Inglehart, 1990). Thus, the dominant theoretical framework of modernization (Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann, 2003; Inglehart and Welzel 2010) has to be amended to account for more complex patterns of value change. Distinctions in the modernization process are primarily caused by specific country-level contextual factors which were not favorable for the

Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values

123

spread of emancipative values during the post-socialist transition. Not only path dependency, which is shaped by religious and historical heritage (Inglehart, Baker, 2000), but also a specific historical period is crucially significant and should be included into a theoretical model for a meaningful interpretation of the modernization route in Central and Eastern Europe as well as its outcomes. More questions arise for further research. Why in some countries was the significant period transformation of values (intracohort change) not detected while it did happen in others? Why in several societies was the trend positive in terms of emancipative values while in others it was negative? The studied period from the mid-1990s to the end of the 2000s was diverse by the impact for different societies in terms of economic and social development. Central and East European countries experienced deep transformations with various levels of success. Nevertheless, based on the case of societies in post-socialist transition, the chapter contributes into current understanding (Berger, 1990; Bauman, 2000; Martinelli, 2005; Martinelli and He, 2015; Minakov, 2018) of the ambiguity and antinomies of modernization in the globalized world.

REFERENCES Alwin, D. F. & McCammon, R. J. (2003). Generations, Cohorts, and Social Change. In Jeylan T. Mortimer, Michael J. Shanahan. (Eds.), Handbook of the life course. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 23-49. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Berger, P. (1990). Ponimanie sovremennosti. Sotsiologicheskie Issledovania, 7, 127-133. [Understanding modernity. Sociological Studies, 7, 127-133]. Blokker, P. (2005). Post-communist modernization, transition studies, and diversity in Europe. European journal of social theory, 8(4), 503-525. Eisenstadt, S. N. (1992). The breakdown of communist regimes and the vicissitudes of modernity. Daedalus, 121(2), 21-41. Etkind, A. (2013). Petromacho, ili Mekhanizmy demodernizatsii v resursnom gosudarstve [Petromacho, or Mechanisms of demodernization in resource state]. Neprikosnovennyi zapas, 2 (88), 154–165. EVS. (2011). European Values Study 1981-2008, Longitudinal Data File. GESIS Data Archive. Cologne, Germany, ZA4804 Data File Version 2.0.0 (2011-12-30) DOI:10.4232/1.11005. Firebaugh, G. (1989). Methods for Estimating Cohort Replacement. Sociological Methodology, 19, 243-262. Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. (2009). How Development Leads to Democracy: What We Know about Modernization Today. Foreign Affairs, 8 (2), 33-41. Inglehart, R. & Baker, W. (2000). Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence of traditional values, American Sociological Review, 65(1), 19-51.

124

Yuriy Savelyev

Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. (2010). Changing Mass Priorities. The Link between Modernization and Democracy. Perspectives on Politics, 8 (2), 551–567. Ippel, L., Gelissen, J. & Moors, G. (2014). Investigating Longitudinal and Cross-Cultural Measurement Invariance of Inglehart’s Short Post-materialism Scale. Social Indicators Research, 115 (3), 919-932. Kapustin, B. (2003). Modernity’s Failure/Postmodernity Predicament: The Case of Russia. Critical Horizons, 4, 99-145. Martinelli, A. (2005). Global Modernization: Rethinking the project of modernity. London: SAGE Publications. Martinelli, A. & He, C. (2015). Global Modernization Review: New Discoveries and Theories Revisited. A. Martinelli, & Chuanqi He (Eds.). Singapore: World Scientific. Minakov, M. (2018). Development and Dystopia. Studies in post-Soviet Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Stuttgart and Hannover: ibidem Press. Mood, C. (2010). Logistic regression: Why we cannot do what we think we can do, and what we can do about it. European sociological review, 26(1), 67-82. Savelyev, Y. (2014). Critical Assessment of Development of a Modernizing Society in Eastern Europe: Latent Risks for Social Inclusion. Journal of Siberian Federal University: Humanities & Social Sciences, 7 (10), 1775-1793 Savelyev, Y. (2015). Cohort Analysis and the Issue of Delimitating Components of Social Changes: Method of Linear Trend De-composition. Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya, 10, 130-135. Savelyev, Y. (2016). Decomposition of Value Change in European Societies in 1995–2008: Test of Modernization Model and Socialization Hypothesis. Sociológia, 48 (3), 267-289. Savelyev, Y. (2018). Antinomies of Late Modernity: Eastern Europe in Peril of Demodernization. The Ideology and Politics Journal: Post-Soviet Transit and Demodernization, 9 (1), 14-63. Sztompka, P. (1993). Civilizational incompetence: The trap of post-communist societies. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 22(2), 85-95. Tikhonova, N. E. (2011). Osobennosti normative-tsennostnoi sistemy rossiiskogo obshchestva cherez prizmu teorii modernizatsii [Peculiarities of Value-normative System of Russian Society via Perspective of Modernization Theory]. Terra Economicus, 9 (2), 60-85. Tiryakian, E. A. (1995). Modernization in a Millenarian Decade: Lessons for and from Eastern Europe. In B. Grancelli (Ed.), Social Change and Modernization: Lessons from Eastern Europe. Berlin, New York: 249-264. United Nations Development Program. (2009). Human Development Report, 2009. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Voicu, M. & Tufiş, P. A. (2012). Trends in gender beliefs in Romania: 1993–2008. Current Sociology, 60, 61-80. Welzel, С., Inglehart, R. & Klingemann, H. D. (2003). The theory of human development: A cross-cultural analysis. European Journal of Political Research, 42 (3), 341-379. World Values Survey (WVS). (2009). World Value Survey 1981-2008. Values Survey Association. Retrieved from www.worldvaluessurvey.org on April 2018.

Modernity, Economic Change, and Cultural Values

125

Yakovlev, A. (2014). Russian modernization: Between the need for new players and the fear of losing control of rent sources. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 5(1): 10-20. Zhang, F. & He, C. (2015). World Modernization Indexes 1950 to 2010. In A. Martinelli, & Chuanqi He (Eds.), Global Modernization Review: New Discoveries and Theories Revisited-Singapore: World Scientific, 131-136.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 6

MODERNIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN GENDER EQUALITY: LAWS, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN INDIA Sesha Kethineni, PhD, Serita Whiting, MA and Colette B. Harris, JD Department of Justice Studies, College of Juvenile Justice and Psychology Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX, US

ABSTRACT The modernization of women in India began in the nineteenth century under the rule of the British colonial government. Until the advent of the British colonial rule, Hinduism, which is the religion of about 80 percent of the people in India, has been the dominant worldview in shaping all facets of the lives of Indian women for more than 3,000 years. The birth of Buddhism in India about 2500 years ago and the rule of India by different foreign Muslim dynasties for more than 700 years did not weaken the control of the institution of patriarchy legitimated by Hinduism in any significant way. The challenge to the traditional Hindu worldview of women began in the context of colonial modernization. In the nineteenth century, the British colonial government made three significant enactments: The Bengal Sati Regulation of 1829, the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, and the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act of 1856. The women of India began to see the birth of a new era of women modernity after the end of colonialism and the birth of a modern state of India in the middle of the twentieth century. During the last 70 years, India has enacted several legislations to control and criminalize violence and cruelty against women. India has remarkably expanded legal opportunities for women’s equal access to work, education, health, and the practice of religion. In addition to the tradition of patriarchy shaped and legitimated by the religion of Hinduism, there are also enormous other challenges for the modernization of women in India. Out of India’s 1.3 billion people, there are about 500 million women. There are about 382 million Indians who have less than high school education, and 165 million of those are women. About 200 million Indians (Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, 

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

128

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris 2011).) belong to the lower caste described as “Shudras,” or “Untouchables,” or “Dalits.” Out of 200 million Dalits people, about 100 million are women. About 68.8 percent of the Indian population lives in rural areas (Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, 2011)). Because of these unique demographic realities, a vast number of women in India, who live in rural areas and the women who belong to the lower caste and other socially peripheralized groups (rural Muslim and Christian women), cannot much avail of the rights of equal access to social and political opportunities that are legally open to them. The dominance of the institution of patriarchy, family, and collective violence against women in India are, therefore, still widely prevalent. However, the movement for the modernization of women and the social and cultural struggle to change the institution of patriarchy that began in the nineteenth century is also becoming much broader and engulfing in today’s India in the twenty-first century.

Keywords: modernity in India, gender equality, women rights, Indian women, women empowerment, culture of patriarchy, SShani Shingapur temple

INTRODUCTION Since the birth of human civilizations about ten thousand years ago, patriarchy—-the dominance of men in all realms of social and political systems—was an inviolable institution and a legitimate cultural order. However, it is widely shared by the scientists that the institution of patriarchy is not rooted in biology. It is a social and historical construction. “Until the most recent past…historians have been men; what they have recorded is what men have done and experienced and found significant. What women have done and experienced has been left unrecorded, neglected, and ignored in interpretation. The existence of women history has been obfuscated and neglected by the patriarchy” (Lerner, 1987, pp.4-6). Many feminist historians, so, argued that if the institution of patriarchy is historical, and “it has a beginning in history…it can be ended by historical process” (Lerner, 1987, p. 6). The advent of modernity and the Age of Enlightenment seemed to have given birth to this historical process of ending the institution of patriarchy and creating a new civilization based on gender equality. From the middle of the nineteenth century, within the context of the birth of modern liberal state and democracy, a new history of gender equality began to be written in almost all societies of the world. The globalization of this movement for gender equality can be described to have organizationally began from Seneca Falls Convention in New York in 1848 when a group of women activists, under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, started to demand for the universalization of the philosophy of the American Declaration “that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” (Stanton, 1848, para 3). The organization of the International Women’s Day in 1911 and the International Congress of Women in 1915 led to the further globalization of this historical process of constructing a modern world based on gender equality. Within the global context, however, this process began more systematically after the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 that asserted “the dignity and worth of the human person and [the] equal rights of men and women.” The globalism of the women’s rights movement further widened after the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

129

Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1979 and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1975. As of 2018, nearly all 193 member states of the United Nations have ratified the CEDAW. The member states of the CEDAW are obligated according to this treaty to focus on three areas of gender equality: civil and political rights, reproductive rights, and changes in cultural attitudes towards women. The civil and political rights include women’s right to vote, right of political participation, and women’s equal access to educationand employment. The reproductive rights include the right of women's control on their reproductive decisions, right of access to reproductive and family planning services, right of maternity protection, and the right of access to publicly funded child-care services. The CEDAW also mandates that the member states adopt appropriate educational and cultural programs to change the traditional perspectives on gender inequality. In 1992, CEDAW, by making two General Recommendations (12 and 19), made it obligatory for the member states to work on violence against women. General Recommendation 19 asserts that the member states are obligated to criminalize all forms of gender violence as an essential component of gender equality. The CEDAW is rightly described as the International Bill of Rights for Women. During the last three decades, almost all countries of the world have seen remarkable progress in different areas of gender equality under the behest of the CEDAW and numerous bilateral and multilateral organizations. The purpose of this chapter, of course, is not to examine all that happened in the areas of gender equality across the world societies. This chapter will examine some of significant legal, social, and cultural transformations and trends concerning gender equality and modernity in India. In the study of the modernization of women in India, one, however, has to recognize its unique demographic, religious, and historical issues and challenges (Sharma, 2004). India currently has 1.2 billion people (2011 Census), which accounts for about 18 percent of the world’s population. Racially, about 72 percent of Indians are Indo-Aryan; 25 percent are Dravidians, and 3 percent are Mongoloid. About 80 percent of Indians are Hindus, 13 percent are Muslims, and 2.3 percent are Christians. According to 2011 Census of India, about 51.80 percent of the Indian population are males, and 48.20 percent are females. Currently, India has about 500 million women—more than the total population of the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, and Germany. India has a literacy rate of 74 percent. About 382 million people in India have less than high school education, and 162 million of those are women. About 57 percent of the Indians live in rural areas and work in agriculture and related activities. India is a civilization of about 3,500 hundred years old. It is a vastly Hindu civilization based on the religion of Hinduism rooted in the Aryan invasion in this region in 1500 B.C. About 2,500 years ago, Buddhism was born in India. Different Hindu and Buddhist dynasties ruled India for about 1,500 years. The religion of Islam began to spread in India from the eighth century, and different foreign Muslim dynasties successively ruled India for about 700 years. The British East India Company took over the political power of India in the middle of the eighteenth century, and India remained formally a British colony until 1947. Because of these different historical phases of political power in India, and because of the creation of a vast social and cultural complexity created by the traditions of three significant civilizations— Hinduism, Islam, and the West—the study of India, particularly the modernization of women in India is immensely challenging. The issues of women rights in India are highly intriguing because of their unique demography, and unique embeddedness in religion, culture, and modernity (Sarker & Sarkar, 2008).

130

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN ANCIENT INDIA: THE CULTURE OF PATRIARCHY IN HINDUISM Throughout history, Hinduism dictated the role of women. For example, according to the Vedas1 (1500–500 BCE), a woman must provide support to her husband in performing her essential duties, procreate, and take care of the children. Although the Hindu women deemed to have played a secondary role, it has not always been the case. They have gone through phases of subjugation to liberation. For example, during the Rig Veda period, women exercised freedom and worked outside the home as teachers and participated in public discourse. However, such privilege was limited to women from high social status. Despite these freedoms, women derived respect as daughters, mothers, or wives (Jayaram, n.d.). Women were also regarded as “the deity at home” (Mondal, n.d.a, para 4) and were respected for their intellect. Rig Veda allowed the remarriage of the widow with the brother of her deceased husband; however, the widow was allowed to remarry anyone that she desired (Devi & Subrahmanyam, 2014). During the Epic period2 (1000–600 BCE), women, especially of high social class, enjoyed many freedoms, including the freedom to choose their spouses during a contest among the suitors, known as Swyamvara. The winner of the contest became the husband of the woman. The practice of polygamy (where a husband was allowed to have more than one wife) and polyandry (where a wife had more than one husband) was recognized. The women also participated in philosophical discussions. Towards the end of the Epic period, early marriages, and the system of Sati3 were allowed. Also, the caste system was in practice, but it was not rigid (Shivani, n. d.). In the Smritis4 period (200 BCE–400 CE), the laws of Manu5 (Manu Samhita, Manu Smriti, or Manava Sharma) guided the social, moral, and legal life of Hindus. Of particular importance is the description of the role of women in society. Although Manu advocated for tender and loving treatment of daughters and honoring the mothers, he objected to the independence of women and “places them firmly in subjugation to their fathers, brothers, or husbands” (Cudrak, 2013, para 2). The laws of Manu dictated how a woman in different roles (i.e., daughter, sister, wife, or widow) should behave and how her name should be pleasing and not dreadful. Manu further stated the women were seductresses and should not be trusted. He advocated that a woman should “serve and worship her husband even if he is not a person of good virtue and character” (Mondal, n.d.a, para 19). The institution of patriarchy in Hinduism thus is rooted in a dualistic conception of the nature of women. Women, on the one hand, were depicted as the source of power (Sakti) for 1

Vedas are considered the oldest as well as the most sacred scripts of Hindu texts. There are four Vedas: Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharva Veda. In the Rig Veda period, women enjoyed freedom, were allowed to study the Veda and fine arts, helped their husbands in agricultural work, and were consulted by their husbands on financial matters (Mondal, n.d.a). The Rig Veda period also recognized the right of spinster to inherit her father’s property (Nitisha, n. d.). 2 , This period is considered as Epic age because the most significant epics for Hindus—Mahabharata, Ramayana, and Upanishads—came to be existence. 3 The word Sati (Suttee) in Sanskrit means virtuous women. The practice of Sati dates back to 3rd century BCE. It involves self-immolation by a Hindu woman after her husband’s death. The act is committed by jumping into the funeral pyre of her husband. 4 The Smritis or Sharmashastras contain laws that regulate obligations of Hindus in various aspects of life (i.e., daily conduct, customers, and manners). These rules and laws were developed by Sages in ancient times. 5 Manu Smriti or the laws of Manu are the most influential text of ancient India that addressed the social, moral, and legal aspects of Hindu life.

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

131

the love, creation, and the construction of proper social order—a woman, is a “Laksmi.” On the other hand, women are depicted as the source of power (Sakti) for crime, aggression, and destruction (Goddess Kali). “The concept of the female in Hindu ideology presents an essential duality: on the one hand, she is fertile, benevolent—the bestower; on the other, she is aggressive, malevolent—the destroyer” (Wadley, 1977, p. 113). The Hindu scriptures, so, present a dualist role for the patriarch—the man. Women, on the one hand, should be obeyed, respected, and deified as goddesses. Women, on the other, should also be controlled, dominated, and denied certain rights traditionally reserved for men. This dualistic conception of the nature of women in Hinduism became more complicated in the context of the Hindu caste system. The Hindu scriptures claimed that Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas must not marry a Shudra (lower caste), woman. The scripture Manu Smriti warned that “[A] Brahmin who marries a Shudra woman, degrades himself and his whole family, becomes morally degenerated, loses Brahmin status and his children too attain the status of shudra” (Salam, 2017, para 1). It is highly intriguing to see how and whether the traditional Hindu conceptions of the nature and rights of women today are in conflict or consensus with those of modernity.

THE NATURE AND CONCEPTION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN MUSLIM INDIA The Quran regulates every aspect of the Muslim, from daily life to the rights of community, individual, morality, crime, and related punishments. During pre-Islamic Arabia, women enjoyed many freedoms. They were considered “the embodiment of strength and action” (Sharma, 2016, p. 2) and anyone who insulted a woman faced severe consequences. Around 600 CE, Arab men believed that women were their property, and could be “married and divorced at will” (Women, 2004, n.d., para 3). These were primarily the Arabs who settled in villages and cities (Sharma, 2016). During this period, different marriage practices6—marriage by agreement, marriage by capture, marriage by purchase, beena marriage, baal marriage, and Muta marriage—were common. Also, infanticide (killing of girls at birth), polygamy, and giving dowry to the bride’s male relatives were common (Women, n. d.). Later, the social institutions went through significant changes, resulting in denouncing the practice of female infanticide, elevating the status of daughters and mothers, permitting mothers to have a share in the inheritance, prohibiting Muta marriages, and offering marh (money provided as part of the marriage settlement). Many of these changes came from the preaching of the Prophet Mohammad. However, the Qur’an allowed men to divorce their wives without any cause. The process of divorce was made simple by allowing a man to pronounce the word talaq (or divorce) three times; though there is a three-month waiting period known as iddat. Also, women enjoyed inheritance rights. For example, she was entitled to one-eighth of her husband’s property if she had children. Otherwise, she got one-

6

In marriage by agreement, the man's family agrees with the future wife's family. Marriage by capture is where women are captured during the war and marry them. In beena marriage, a woman would invite men into her tent to have sex. Once she conceived and had a child, she would then call the men and to claim the paternity of the child. In baal marriage, the women would go to the husband’s home, and the children take the name of the father’s clan; and the Muta marriage is a temporary marriage for a fixed term (Sharma, 2016).

132

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

fourth. (Sharma, 2016). With the Arab aristocracy, came the slave trade, polygamy, and the purdah (veil) system, all of which led to the decline of the status of Muslim women. The expansion of Islam in India was the results of Arabs, Turks, Afghans, the Mughals, and the Persians immigrating to India during the medieval times. These groups brought with them their own cultural and religious beliefs and practices. Also, some Hindus converted to Islam. All of these groups tried to assimilate the Hindu-Muslim cultures that existed at that time. With some exceptions (i.e., motherhood), “women, as a class, suffered discernable discrimination . . . from birth till death" (Sharma, 2016, p. 45). The caste system that played a significant role in the lives of Hindus also contributed to social relations among Indian Muslims. The major groups, especially in North India, were Ashraf and non-Ashraf. Within each of these groups, there are subgroups. The major groups were not allowed to eat together or intermarry (Bhatty, 2016). It took the activism of many Muslim women leaders to bring about social change.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY COLONIAL INDIA The dominance of the institution of patriarchy based on the scriptures of Hinduism can be said to have remained unchallenged and unchanged for almost 3,000 years until the advent of British colonialism in India in the eighteenth century. Indian historians share the view that the religion of Hinduism in general and the Hindu conception of nature and the role of women did not change in any significant way during the 700 years of Muslim rule in India. Various Muslim dynasties, since all of them, came from outside India, made politically expedient decisions not to intervene in the religious affairs of the Indian people. During the Muslim rule, the size of the Muslim population in India did significantly grow, and many injunctions of the Quran touched the lives of the converted Muslim women. However, the lives of Hindu women remained mostly unchanged. It is, of course, true that the institution of patriarchy remained largely unchallenged even in the west until the advent of modernity and the Age of Enlightenment in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. British colonialism was one of the great historical forces of globalizing the discourse of modernity. It was from the beginning of the British colonial rule in India that important legal discourses began for the modernization of women in India. Three modernizing worldviews impacted these discourses. The first modernizing worldview was represented by the “civilizing mission” of the British colonial rulers and missionaries in India, particularly after India formally became a part of the British Crown in the middle of the nineteenth century (i.e., William Jones, H.T. Colebrooke, William Carey, H. H. Wilson, and James Prinsep). “The British wanted to bring Western enlightenment to the native Indian family by abolishing child marriages, sati, the prohibition of the remarriage of widows, purdah, and similar patriarchal customs that oppressed women" (Chitnis & Wright, 2007, p. 1324). The other modernizing worldview was of the native modernizing elites of India, particularly Bengal, represented by such figures as Ram Camul Sen, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. Social reforms to change some of the traditional Hindu worldviews on women were one of the primary missions of these and other protagonists of modernity in Bengal in the late nineteenth century—an era described by historians as an era of Bengal Renaissance (Dasgupta, 2011; Hatcher, 2011; Kumar, 1993). The third trend was represented

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

133

by the British feminists of the nineteenth century “who claimed a moral imperative to reclaim for Indian women the dignity and rights of Western women. British feminists claimed that they, rather than English and Indian men, better understood the plight of Indian women” (Chitnis & Wright, 2007, p. 1319). With the colonial economy thriving in India in the late 19th century, Indians who were able to find their way into middle or upper classes also became a part of the colonial movement for the modernization of women in India (Sen, 2000). The modernization of women movement during the colonial time showed two major trajectories: social reform and educational advancement. In the area of social reform, there were three major enactments: The Bengal Sati Regulation of 1829, the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, and the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act of 1856. The enactment of the The Bengal Sati Regulation (XVII) of 1829 by Lord William Bentinck, then GovernorGeneral of India criminalized the sati pratha—an age-old Hindu custom that forced the burning of a widow in the funeral pyre of her husband to prove her virtuousness and purity (the word sati implies pure and virtuousness women) as a devoted wife. The Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 defined a child as “a person who, if a male, is under eighteen years of age, and if a female, is under sixteen years of age” (p. 1). The Act made a provision that “[W]hoever, being a male above eighteen years of age, contracts child marriage shall be punishable with simple imprisonment which may extend to one month, or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees or both” (p. 2). The Hindu Widow’s Re-Marriage Act of 1856 was the first piece of social reform legislation that sparked a vigorous movement in India for the establishment of the rights of women for divorce, remarriage, guardianship, and the succession of property (Majumdar, 2008; Kumar, 1993). These rights were legally refined and extended after almost hundred years after the enactment of the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, the Hindu Succession Act of 1956, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act of 1956, and the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act of 1956. Along with legal advancement in social reforms for different rights of women, there also began from the middle of the nineteenth century a vigorous movement for the spread of secular and modern scientific education for women in India. One of the historical sources shows that in the Bombay Presidency in 1891-1892, there were four professional colleges for women and eight women were enrolled in those colleges. In 1921-1922, there were seven women professional colleges with an enrollment of 79 women (as quoted in Srivasta, 2002, p. 3).

WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN INDIA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Between 1910 and 1970, the agenda for women’s movements focused on achieving equality through two distinctive ways: participating in politics and creating organizations. In 1910, the first women’s organization—Bharat Sri Mahamandal—was founded by Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, which centered on promoting education for women and girls. Sarala Devi was among the few educated women at that time who believed in bringing together women of all races and classes, and from different political parties (Shinwari, 2017). In 1917, the Women’s India Association (WIA) was formed by a group of women activists—Annie Besant, Margaret Cousins, Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy, Sister Subbalakshmi, and Sarojini Naidu—and

134

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

was a significant feminist organization in India with more than 40 branches and 9,000 members across the country. The organization’s success was due to it being inclusive of all women of all classes, castes, and sects, who joined forces for the betterment of females (Women’s Indian Association, 2017). During the freedom movement, women participated in civil disobedience protesting the salt tax levied by the colonial power (i.e., the British Raj). In 1921, a women’s political organization, Rashtriya Stree Sangha, was established by Sarojini Naidu, a feminist with excellent oratory skills. She became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress (Mondal, n.d.b). Gandhi (the leader of India's non-violent freedom struggle) challenged the forces of women’s movement into the nationalist movement (Patel, 1998); however, some feminists demanded parity when it comes to property rights, suffrage, and education, and were reluctant to accept Gandhi’s view of “the sexes as different and complementary” (Kumar, 1993, p. 2). India gained independence from the British in 1947, and the Indian Constitution was passed in 1950 that guaranteed equality for men and women and prohibited discrimination in employment. Article 14 of the Constitution included the provision of equality before the law. “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India, (The Constitution of India, 1949, p. 6). Article 39 of the Constitution guaranteed that “a) citizens, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means to livelihood; and d) there is equal pay for equal work for both men and women.” (The Constitution of India, 1949, p. 21). Immediate after passing the Constitution, several pieces of legislation—the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (1956), the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act (1956), the Hindu Succession Act (1956), and the Dowry Prohibition Act (1961)—were enacted, which allowed a woman to adopt children, to be the natural guardian of her minor child, and have equal rights to her family property. Also, they made accepting or demanding dowry a punishable offense.7 Many of these rights, however, are geared towards Hindu women because those laws are considered “personal laws” and varied among different religions. At the dawn of the 1970s, India witnessed a new wave of the women’s movement spearheaded by educated females united on issues such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and state-sponsored violence (Gnanadason, 2016; Sen, 2000). At that time, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), founded in 1972 by Ela Bhatt, was considered as one of the first women organizations that aimed to improve the working conditions of women, including such issues as low wages and harassment from police, employers, and family members. SEWA implemented training, legal aid, and a host of other initiatives aimed at transforming women into positive images within the Indian society. The early 1970s also saw women’s movement taking on social issues in the form of anti-alcoholism in some parts of western India and the anti-price rise agitation (i.e., consumer protection movement) in Bombay (Gull & Shafi, 2014). In 1973, the United Women’s Anti Price-Rise Front began a catalyst that fought against inflation. Furthermore, India, in recognition of the United Nation’s (UN) Declaration’s directive to assess the status of women, appointed a Committee on the Status of

7

Sathyanarayan and Sundaragiri (2017) examined the demographic factors of dowry deaths. Highlights from the study indicated that dowry deaths due to burns usually take place among women between the ages of 23 and 26 years of age, most incidents occurred at night, most women were in lower economic status, and usually, at least 80% of the body surface was burned. Their research also suggests that roughly 22 dowry deaths occur in India every day.

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

135

Women in India. The Committee Report (1974) set the motion for women’s movement that continues today (Ghadially, 2007). According to Goswami and Bandyopadhyay (2011, p. 4), one of the most significant reforms among the women’s movement after independence was “the Shahada agitation and the subsequent formation of the workforce union by the Bhil landless laborers.” The precursors for the movement was the rape of two Bhil8 women in the1970s. “The landlords were known to be extremely repressive and exploitative in nature” (p. 4). This incident led to massive protests and demonstrations to build solidarity between men and women in the fight for justice against the perpetrators. Following this effort, the Progressive Organization of Women (POW) was established in 1974 to support women’s economic independence and to challenge the sexual division of labor and unequal pay.

CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN INDIA The contemporary women’s movement in India fall into two phases—from 1975–1989 and from 1990 to the turn of the century (Ghadially, 2007). The activism of women in the late 1970s resulted in the establishment of women’s studies centers at universities. These educational efforts further lead to the creation of the Indian Association of Women Studies Centers and a journal—Indian Journal of Gender Studies—dedicated to gender issues. In addition, various autonomous women’s groups emerged to address violence against women [e.g., dowry deaths, custodial rape, female foeticide, eve teasing (i.e., sexual harassment in public places)]; the practice of devadasi;9 and other gender-related issues such as women’s reproductive health, high infant and maternal mortality rates, sterilization abuses, and an unbalanced sex ratio due to sex-selective abortions (Ghadially, 2007). During this period, there were also localized movements such as the Chipko movement (an ecological movement by rural women who fought for the conservation of forests, particularly in the Himalayan region) and the Bodhgaya movement that focused on land rights for women (Sen, 2000). In 1990, the National Commission for Women Act was passed with the primary goal of protecting the rights of women while providing a voice for women’s issues and concerns. The Act resulted in advancing the position of women through financial empowerment (Dubey, 2016). The 1990s also saw not only economic liberation but also a change in the way women saw themselves. It was suggested that the impact of Western film and cable television with sexually explicit images in Indian homes changed the meaning of sexuality and sexual desire for young women. This new form of Indian femininity made women comfortable with their “modernity and sexuality” (Kurian, 2018). However, many conservative Indians were “threatened by the changing lifestyle of the growing number of educated, professionally skilled and financially independent women questioning traditional gender roles and expectations” (Kurian, 2018, para 11).

8

Bhil people represent the most significant tribal population in India. They primarily hail from Central India, especially from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. 9 Devadasi (also known as temple servants) is a medieval practice in which young girls dedicate themselves to the temple. Before the 20th century, devadasis were known as entertainers for the king and his close circle. However, many of them were engaged in temple prostitution.

136

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

Women’s Rights: Legal Advances The women’s movement in the 1970s was the phase of “self-conscious commitment to feminist politics” (Sen, 2000, p. 26). The movement took on nationwide efforts to bring attention to custodial rapes by the agents of the state, dowry deaths, and other legal issues. A report—Towards Equality—prepared by the Ministry of Education & Social Welfare (1974) brought to light the inequalities faced by women, especially poor women, in the areas of health, education, and political participation (Sen, 2000; Patherya, 2017). Although a few pieces of legislation were passed in the 1970s, the 1980s saw a stream of legal reforms, from abortion rights to protection of women from indecent exposure, Sati, and domestic violence.

The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (1971) The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971 defines the circumstances under which a woman’s pregnancy can be terminated and specifies the persons permitted to perform abortions. The Act was amended in 1975 and 2002. Although some argue that the Act was “a population control measure rather than as a right . . .” (Asthana, 2017, para 2), others contend that the Act was an attempt to decrease the maternal morbidity and mortality rate because many women aborted their pregnancies illegally, using unsafe methods (Chatterjee, 2013).

The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act of 1986 Activists for women’s rights demanded legislative action about the way women were portrayed in mainstream media, particularly in advertisements. The Act was passed to address these concerns. The Act defines the indecent representation of women as “the depiction in any manner of the figure of a woman; her form or body or any part thereof in such a way as to have the effect of being indecent, or derogatory to, denigrating, women. . .” (para 3). With technological advancement, the government was concerned with the use of digital media in objectifying women. As a result, a new bill was proposed in 2012 to amend the 1986 law that includes new forms of communication.

The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act of 1987 The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act of 1987 was an attempt to prevent the dehumanization of women and glorification of Sati in Rajasthan villages (located in northern India) where ceremonies were performed honoring the women who committed Sati. The bill was the first law concerning Sati to be enacted since the Bengal Sati Regulation of 1829 and the Tamil Nadu Sati Regulation of 1830. The Act redefined Sati by including actions beyond burning widows alive with their dead husbands by stating that any burning or burial of living women, or widows with their husbands’ items or items associated with their husbands, or other relatives, even if voluntary. An individual who attempts to commit Sati will receive the same punishment as any individual who attempts to commit suicide. The glorification of Sati

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

137

includes active participation or observing ceremonies or processions linked to the commission of Sati or eulogizing a person who commits or attempt to commit Sati. Likewise, the building of a temple, performance, or worship of the Sati ceremony is considered the glorification of the act. The glorification of Sati is punishable with imprisonment from one to seven years as well as a fine of 5,000 to 30,000 rupees. The Act allows state governments or government agents to destroy temples and structures that glorify Sati, seize properties purchased for Sati glorification, and disqualify the property inheritances of any persons who commit Sati. The Act is a part of the 20th-century legal movement for more protection, freedom, and equality for women, wives, and widows in India.

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013 The Act attempts to guarantee the safety of women in their workplace. Sexual harassment in the workplace includes the invasion of private space by a male colleague hovering too close for comfort, the use of language with sexual overtones, innuendoes, and subtle touches (Dubey, 2016). According to the FICCI-EY, a non-governmental and not-for-profit business organization, report of November 2015, a quarter of multinational companies and more than a third of Indian companies are noncompliant (Pandey, 2015). The new law criminalized voyeurism, stalking, and sexual harassment, and imposed the death penalty for repeat offenders, especially when rape victims died as a result of rape attacks (Xu, 2013). The case of Vishaka & Ors. v. State of Rajasthan & Ors. (1997) provided Indian women with the right to freedom from sexual harassment and sexual violence in the workplace. The court found that sexual harassment in the workplace violated women’s human rights. Further, state law prohibits workplace discrimination. The case created the guidelines that employers have to adhere to, protecting women’s rights and freedoms in public and private places of employment.

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDV) of 2005 The PWDV Act defines domestic violence as a threat of abuse or any form of abuse, including physical, verbal, economic, emotional, or sexual. Attempts to collect unlawful dowries, via threats to the woman or her relatives, are also included. The Act aimed to prevent domestic violence and protect women from being victims of hidden human rights issues. The Act allows women the right to secure housing (or living in the marital home or joined living space) even if she does not have rights or title to a home; issues protection orders to prevent acts or threats of violence, harassing communication, or harm to individuals attempting to assist the victim; and provides women the right to have Protection Officers or service providers appointed to assist when seeking medical treatment, shelter, and legal aid.

138

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

Indian Women and Property Rights: The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 Like many personal laws,10 inheritance laws are not the same for all religious communities. In India, Hindus represent 79.8% of 1.4 billion population, followed by Muslims (14.2%), Christians (2.3%), Sikhs (1.7%), Buddhists (0.7%), Jains, (0.4%), and other religions (1.0%; Sawe 2018). The Hindu Succession Act was first enacted in 1956 and allowed daughters the right to their father’s property until married, whereas sons held rights to their father’s property, regardless of their marital status (Agarwal, 2018). The marriage of a Hindu daughter removed her from inheriting family property because she was expected to join her husband’s family. Sons, on the other hand, stay with their parents and become legal heirs to their parents’ property (Majumdar, 2010). In 2005, Hindu women were finally granted the right to inherit ancestral and jointly owned property through the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act of 2005. Until the 2018 Supreme Court ruling in Danamma @ Suman Surpur & Anr v. Amar & Ors, daughters could only take advantage of the 2005 Hindu Succession Act if her father died after September 9, 2005. The Court ruling allowed daughter equal claim to coparcenary—shared ownership with older members and varying generations in a family—property (Agarwal, 2018). Also, the property share of the pre-deceased daughter shall be allocated to her children. Though women have the right to inherit property under the existing law, women in northern India continue to be deprived of their inheritances because the law is not strongly enforced (Xu, 2013). The Act applies not only to Hindus, but also Buddhist, Jains, and Sikhs, who are members of “Hindu-like” religions (Roy, 2015, p. 234). In V. Tulasamma v. V. Sesha Reddi (1977), the Indian Supreme court emphasized the right of women to maintenance (i.e., spousal support) provided through the right to the property via marriage. The court held that the Hindu Succession Act of 1956, Section 14(1), must be applied to provide women with full ownership rights to the property of her husband (Mandhani, 2015). The courts have become secular when it comes to women’s rights. In Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum (1985), the Supreme Court awarded maintenance (spousal support) to the ex-wife, a Muslim woman, to be paid by her ex-husband under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Mandhani, 2015). In Mrs. Mary Roy Etc. v. State of Kerala & Ors (1986), the Supreme Court found that Christian women are entitled to an equal share of their father's property. Before this court ruling, the Travancore-Kochi Christian Succession Act of 1916 provided daughters a one-quarter share of their fathers’ property. Also, the ruling granted retrospective rights to grant equal share to women (Mandhani, 2015). In Daniel Latifi v. Union of India (2001), the first question before the Supreme Court was the interpretation of Section 127(3)(b) of the Criminal Procedure Code where a Muslim man who divorced his wife and paid mahr is liable for maintenance to his ex-wife beyond iddat. In this case, the couple was married for 43 years before the husband divorced his elderly wife. The Court considered several factors such as the age of the woman, the length of time she lived in the matrimonial home, the ability of the woman to independently support herself, and 10

In India, “personal laws” are based on different religions such as Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Parsi. Many of the personal laws are applicable in personal and family matters such as marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption, and the partitioning of joint property, inheritance, and succession. Some of these personal laws include the Hindu Marriage Act (1955), the Indian Succession Act (1925), the Indian Christian Marriage Act (1872), the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act (1936), and the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act (1939).

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

139

the possibility of remarriage. The Court ruled “that the divorced women were entitled to apply for maintenance orders against their former husbands under Section 125 CrPC and such applications were not barred under Section 127(3)(b) CrPC” (Babu, 2001, para 4). In addition to the inheritance laws, the Equal Remuneration Act of 1976 prevents discrimination of salary/wages. The Act requires equal pay for men and women workers (Dubey, 2016).

CHILD GUARDIANSHIP, ADOPTION, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE RIGHTS In 2010, the Indian Parliament passed the Personal Laws (Amendment) Bill, which led to the amendment of the Guardians and Wards Act of 1890 and the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act of 1956, which provided women with equal rights in the adoption and guardianship of children. The Guardians and Wards Act applies to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Parsis. Before the amendment, the husband of the couple adopting a child was considered the sole natural parent. The Amendment allows the mother of the adopted child to be added as a guardian. The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act applies to Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs, and allows married women to give a child up for adoption or adopt a child with fewer hurdles (Press Trust of India, 2010). The Personal Laws (Amendment) Act of 2010 allows the adoption of a child by single, divorced, or widowed women. Before the Amendment was passed, women separated from their husbands or involved in lengthy divorce cases could not adopt a child. The Amendment permits a married woman who is separated from her husband to adopt a child with the consent of her husband, even if the two are in the middle of divorce proceedings. Other reasons that would allow a married woman to adopt a child without the consent of her husbands include a change in the husband’s religion, or the husband being declared incompetent or of unsound mind (Press Trust of India, 2010; Rai, 2013). In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India struck down the adultery law [Indian Penal Code (IPC; §497] and ruled that women are not chattel. Under IPC §497, sexual intercourse by a man with a married woman without permission from her husband was punishable by up to five years imprisonment. Previous legislation provided all rights of prosecution of a woman’s affairs to the husband—because women were considered the property of their spouse—and criminalized an act that warranted a civil divorce (Frayer & Neuman, 2018; Sharma, 2018b). In 2017, the Indian Supreme Court found it unconstitutional for a Muslim man to divorce his wife without contest. The practice of instant divorce, known as triple talaq, in which the husband utters, writes, or posts “talaq” (divorce) three consecutive times to secure permanent separation from his wife without the need for legal proceedings. Although the Indian Constitution guarantees equality and freedom from discrimination irrespective of one’s gender or religion, a large of part of Muslim personal laws are based not on any codified laws but religious norms included in the Quran and the hadith11 (Yadav, 2015). Some consider the law highly controversial because they argue that Muslim personal laws have given Muslim women choice in marriage and the right to keep

11

The hadith is a collection of deeds and words of the prophet Mohammad and is considered the second major source of guidance for Muslims.

140

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

mahr property12 (Yadav, 2015). In Shamim Ara v. State of U.P. and Ors (2002), the question was raised as to whether the husband could claim that he had divorced his wife in a written statement without explicitly communicating with the wife? The judge ruled that a written statement that he has divorced his wife does not amount to divorce; it has to be spoken (Agarwal, 2012). Finally, in 2018 the Triple Talaq Bill was passed, amid opposition from some law lawmakers, which penalized Muslim men who proclaim the instant divorce. The banning of triple talaq in India was intended to promote continuous movement toward justice and equality for Muslim women in India (Press Trust of India, 2010). In Shamim Ara v. State of U.P. (2002), the Supreme Court of India provided the requirements that had to be met to make a talaq valid. The first measure, stating the cause for the talaq, must be reasonable. Before talaq, the husband must have attempted to reconcile with his wife with two mediators and arbiters present. The husband and his family must select one of the arbiters; the wife and her family must select the other arbiter. If the attempt to reconcile the marital relationship fails, the husband’s talaq can be considered valid (Mandhani, 2015). In Lata Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2006), the Supreme Court found inter-caste marriage under the Hindu Marriage Act could not be considered a crime. The ruling provided marital freedom for women who desire to enter an inter-religious or inter-caste marriage. The court awarded the police with the power to initiate criminal proceedings against any person that threatens, harasses, instigates, or commits violent acts against the persons in an intercaste or inter-religious marriage (Mandhani, 2015). In D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal (2010), the Supreme Court clarified the definition of domestic relationship by including married couples as well as live-in couples. However, not every relationship meets the standard, known as the ‘a relationship in the nature of marriage’ (or Common law marriage). The Common law marriage requires that the couple must be known to the society as spouses, must be of legal age to marry, must be qualified to enter into marriage and voluntarily cohabitating for a significant period to claim relief under the Domestic Violence Act. A woman kept by a man for a servant or sexual purposes while providing financial maintenance is not considered to be in a marriage relationship. The Courts for the first time recognized live-in relationships.

RELIGION AND WOMEN’S WORSHIP RIGHTS Women in India have long fought for the right to attend religious ceremonies and gatherings. In 2016, Muslims women were granted the right to attend mosques and dargahs in Mumbai. The Bombay (Mumbai) High Court found the entry ban on women into the inner sanctum of Haji Ali Dargah violated their constitutional right to practice religion and enter all places to worship (Bhalla, 2016). Before the High Court’s decision, only men of the Islamic faith were allowed entry into the inner sanctum of Haji Ali Dargah. The inner sanctum is a shrine to Sufi saint Haji Ali, built in the 1400s, on an island 500 meters from the coast of Mumbai, and it can only be accessed at low tide. The ban on women was established in 2012 when the shrine managers decided that women coming near the tomb of Ali was a severe sin, though thousands come there to worship each year (Bhalla, 2016; Sharma, 2018a). Intending 12

Mahr is a gift in the form of money, property, or things of value given by the husband to his wife at the time of the marriage to show his love for her. The mahr then becomes the absolute property of the women.

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

141

to preserve the purity of Hindu shrines, several temples in India also banned women from entering. The discriminatory practices of religions against specific genders have caused the courts to intervene. The High Court of Maharashtra ordered the trustee of the Shani Shingapur temple in Ahmednagar to allow women to enter the temple, breaking a gender barrier that had existed for several decades (Sharma, 2018a). In September 2018, the Indian Supreme Court lifted the Sabarimala temple entry ban on women of the menstruating age (i.e., 10–50 years of age). The temple is in the southern state of Kerala, and every year millions visit the temple. Menstruating women were considered unclean by some religious individuals (Sharma, 2018a). The court found that the exclusion of women from the historic Sabarimala temple did not represent an indispensable devout practice. This ruling furthered the recognition of women’s constitutional right while challenging India’s conservative beliefs (Sharma, 2018a).

CONCLUSION With the advent of modernity in the ninetieth century, there began to spread a global movement and a global culture for gender equality. Today, after more than two hundred years of the globalization of modernity, there is hardly any society in the world that has not been touched by this global movement for gender equality. The problem of gender equality is not just a problem of women’s equal rights to work, income, education, and health. More fundamentally, the movement for gender equality is a movement for the transformation of the faith and culture of the institution of patriarchy—an institution that is as old as human civilization. The institution of patriarchy is deeply ingrained in all cultures, religions, and civilizations. The globalization of modernity is not going to change the institution of patriarchy in a society once and for all. The movement for gender equality in a society is rather a process of gradual change and transformations in gendered law, politics, and culture. The present chapter has presented some developments in gendered law and politics in India that began to evolve from the days of the British colonial time in the middle of the nineteenth century. As this chapter shows, from the enactment of the Bengal Sati Regulation in 1829 to 2018 Indian Supreme Court decision in case of the Sabarimala temple entry ban on women of the menstruating age—within about 200 years—India has traveled a long way on the path for the modernization of women. India is a highly sophisticated civilization that about 3,500 years old. It is predominantly a Hindu civilization where the laws and culture of defining the nature and the role of women were based on the scriptures of Hinduism. The religiouslydriven gender laws are, of course, not something unique to India. In all civilization, gender laws and culture are predominantly based on religion. In all civilizations, patriarchy is the dominant model of defining gender relations. Different religions have defined patriarchy in different ways. The laws enacted in India have significantly advanced many women’s rights in India—the rights that are upheld by the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1975. A series of laws were enacted in modern India to criminalize violence and cruelty against women. These laws include the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act of 1986; the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act of 1987; the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and

142

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

Redressal) Act of 2013; and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDV) of 2005. Laws were also enacted to protect women’s equal rights of access to the property, work, education, health, and religion. The Indian Supreme Court in recent years has also vastly widened women’s rights through several landmark rulings (i.e., Danamma @ Suman Surpur & Anr v. Amar & Ors, (1918), V. Tulasamma v. V. Sesha Reddi (1977), and Lata Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2006). The progress of modernity in a society, however, is a gradual process of change and transformations. Cultural conflicts between the demands of tradition and modernity are probably endemic to the progress of modernity. Even though women in India legally enjoy almost all the substantive rights and freedom enshrined in the India Constitution and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the dominance of the patriarchy culture is still widely felt in all facets of gender relations, and discriminations against women are not few and far between. The challenge of the modernization of women in India is primarily cultural. For example, the perception of working women varies based on where they live (i.e., urban vs. rural), their socioeconomic class, generational status (young vs. old), and their educational level. The expectation of Indian women is first to take care of familial responsibilities and then the work obligations. The caste stratification and religious differences still limit the progress of the women’s movement. For example, Dalit groups claim that feminist groups are made up of educated, upper-class women “and the interests of the Dalit women have been marginalized within [the] Indian women’s movement” (Gull & Shafi, 2014, p. 53). In the last two decades, Muslim women’s groups have fought for changes in personal laws, such as the right of divorced women to maintenance and the criminalization of triple talaq. Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN) and the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) were created to address the rights of Muslim women. The MWRN focuses on the rights of all women. However, particular emphasis is placed on issues affecting Mulsim women. The BMMA efforts are primarily focused on matrimonial rights, social and political deprivation, and issues related to Mulsim Personal Laws (Kirmani, 2011a, 2011b). The recent Supreme Court judgment on the triple talaq law is a clear indication that the judiciary is concerned with the rights of women in general (Naqvi, 2017). In recent years, there has been a concerted effort to focus on issues that affect women in general, such as violence against women and children, especially rape and sexual abuse of children. In 2016 alone, there were over 50,000 rape cases reported. Of those cases, roughly 40% of the victims were girls under age 18. Also, between 2013 and 2016, India reported over 24,000 dowry deaths. Roughly 70% of married women between the ages of 15 and 49 years had been victims of beatings or rape (National Crime Records Bureau, 2016). `In 2012, a 23-year-old college student from Delhi was brutally gang-raped by six males (five adults and a juvenile) while waiting for a bus. The juvenile lured her and her male friend into a van. The male friend was assaulted and thrown out of the van, and the woman later died of injuries resulting from the rape and torture. The public demanded that legislators and law enforcement must take measures to protect women from sexual assaults. One of the six assailants died in prison. The four men were convicted and received a death sentence. The juvenile was given three years of the sentence to be served in reform school, the maximum allowed under the juvenile law (Jamil, 2017). The public anger towards the lenient sentence given to the juvenile led to the amendment of the Juvenile Justice Act, whereby juveniles who commit gruesome offenses may receive the death penalty. Despite a legal ban on oppressive

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

143

gender practices such as Sati, female infanticide, child marriage, and the giving and taking of dowries, certain communities in India continue these traditions. The caste system is still influential in the oppression of women in India. India currently ranks 127th out of 146 on the United Nations Gender Inequality Index. However, the continuing publicity of gang rapes, honor killings, social disregard, and disrespect of the women in India suggest that the country has not achieved complete gender equality (Xu, 2013; Kumar, 2014). To address these gender inequities, attitudes toward women must change. Recent events have led to the revival of the women’s movement. Unfortunately, it took the gruesome rape of a young woman to bring to light the rampant sexual violence against women in India (Shandilya, 2015). The movement was able to bring the entire country to “align with their demands and objectives” (Jamil, 2017, xiv). Modernization, however, is an irreversible process of social change and transformations for modernity. In terms of many international standards, India has made remarkable legal transformations to control gender violence and expand gender equality. What is needed is a far more fundamental transformation in the culture and the worldview of patriarchy.

REFERENCES Agarwal, A. (2018). Where’s my share: Understanding daughters’ right to property. makaaa, Retrieved May 11, 2018, from https://www.makaan.com/iq/legal-taxes-laws/what-areproperty-rights-of-daughters-in-hufs. Agarwal, D. (2012). Talaq: Shamim Ara v. State of U.P. & Ors. Femin Ijtihad. Retrieved February 14, 2019, from https://wrcaselaw.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/talaq-shamimara-v-state-of-u-p-ors.pdf. Asthana, K. (2017, May 26). Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act and the right of women over their own body. Ipleaders.in. Retrieved January 26, 2019, from https://blog. ipleaders.in/medical-termination-of-pregnancy/. Babu, R. (2001, September 28). Danial Latifi & Anr vs. Union of India. Indiankanoon. Retrieved January 26, 2018, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/410660/. Bhalla, N. (2016, August 26). Mumbai high court gives women entry to inner sanctum of famous Haji Ali Dargah. Reuters. Retrieved January 5, 2019, from https://in.reuters.com/ article/india-women-religion-haji-ali-dargah-mum-idINKCN11201O. Bhatty, Z. (2016). Purdah to Piccadilly: A Muslim woman’s struggle for identity. New Delhi: India, Sage. Chatterjee, P. (2013). Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act: A boon or a bane for a woman in India-A critical analysis. International Journal of Science & Research, 5(8), 236–240 Chitnis, V., & Wright, D. (2007). The Legacy of Colonialism: Law and Women Rights in India. Washington and Lee Law Review, 64, pp. 1315-1348. Cudrak, K. (2013, March). The laws of Manu. Mahavidya. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from http://www.mahavidya.ca/2014/12/09/the-laws-of-manu-cudrak-kaylyn/. D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal. (2010). Indiankanoon. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1521881/.

144

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

Danamma @ Suman Surpur & Anr v. Amar & Ors. Civil Appeal Nos. 188–189 of 2018 [@SLP(C) Nos. 10638-10639 of 2013]. Indiankanoon. Retrieved February 1, 2018, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/88759498/. Daniel Latifi v. Union of India. (2001). 7SCC 740:2001 CriLJ 4660. Academia.edu. Retrieved December 4, 2018, http://www.academia.edu/32830641/Danial_Latifi_v_ UOI_Case_Analysis. Dasgupta, S. (2011). Awakening: The Story of the Bengali Renaissance. India, Delhi: Random House. Devi, N. J., & Subrahmanyam, K. (2014). Women in the Rig Veda age. International Journal of Yoga, 2(1), 1–3. Dhawan, H. (2017, August 7). How female qazis took the law into their own hands. The Times of India Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/ sunday-times/ how-female-qazis-took-the-law-into-their-own-hands/ articleshow/ 60237820.cms. Dubey, T. (2016, June 24). Know your rights: 10 laws that protect women and their rights. Herstory. Retrieved December 4, 2018, from https://yourstory.com/2016/06/laws-thatprotect-women-rights/. Frayer, L., & Neuman, S. (2018, September 27). Women are not “chattel,” says India’s Supreme Court in striking down adultery law. NPR. Retrieved January 5, 2019, from https:// www.npr.org/ 2018/ 09/ 27/ 652075778/ women-are-not-chattel-says-india-ssupreme-court-in-striking-down-adultery-law. Ghadially, R. (2007). Urban women in contemporary India: A reader. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Gnanadason, A. (2016). Resisting injustice: Seeking new ways to speak! Cross Currents, 66 (2), 215–226. Goswami, D., & Bandyopadhyay, K. K. (2011). The anti-corruption movement in India. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://www.cetri.be/IMG/pdf/Anti-CorruptionMovement_India.pdf. Gull, R., & Shafi, A. (2014). Indian women’s movement after independence. International Research Journal of Social Sciences, 3(5), 46–54. Hatcher, B. A. (2011). Hindu Widow Marriage: Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar. New York: Columbia University Press. Hussain, S. (2007). Shariat Courts and the question of women’s rights in India Pakistani Journal of Women’s Studies, 14(2), 73–102. Jamil, G. (2017). Muslim women speak: Of dreams and shackles (Vol. 1). New Delhi, India: Sage. Jayaram, V. (n.d). Traditional status of women in Hinduism. Hinduwebsite.com. Retrieved February 22, 2019, from https://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/h_women.asp. Jha, P. (2016, July 24). Women are being empowered and rained to be qazis by Muslim Mahila Andolan. ED Times. Retrieved March 3, 2019, from https://edtimes.in/womenare-being-empowered-and-trained-to-be-qazis-by-bmma/. Kirmani, N. (2011a). Re-thinking the promotion of women’s rights through Islam in India.” IDS Bulletin-Institute of Development Studies, 43(1), 56–66. Kirmani, N. (2011b, January 14). Mobilizing for Muslim women’s rights in India. opendemocracy.net. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ 5050/mobilising-for-muslim-womens-rights-in-india/

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

145

Kumar, R. (1993). This history of doing: An illustrated account of movements for women’s rights and feminism in India, 1800–1990. New Delhi, India: Kali for Women. Kumar, S. (2014, June 6). India’s shame: Women's rights. The Diplomat. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from https://thediplomat.com/2014/06/indias-shame-womens-rights/. Kurian, A. (2018). #Me too is riding a new wave of feminist in India. The Conversation. Retrieved February 1, 2019, from https://theconversation.com/metoo-is-riding-a-newwave-of-feminism-in-india-89842. Lata Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2006). Indiankanoon. Retrieved March 5, 2019, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1364215/. Lerner, G. (1987). The Creation of Patriarchy. New York, NY: The Oxford University Press. Majumdar, R. (2008). Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal. North Carolina, Durham: Duke University Press. Majumdar, R. (2010). Marriage, family, and property in India: The Hindu Succession Act of 1956. South Asian History & Culture, 1(3), 397–415. Majumdar, S. (2018, June 29). 5 facts about religion in India. Pew Research. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/29/5-facts-about-religionin-india/. Mandhani, A. (2015, March 8). Women’s day special: 15 Supreme Court judgments that made India a better place for women. Live Law.in. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from https:// www.livelaw.in/ womens-day-special-15-judgments-that-made-india-a-better-place-forwomen/. Mann, I. S. (2018, January 11). A critical review on globalization: Its impact on women human rights in India. Krishaka Devo Bhava. Retrieved January 20, 2019, from https://rkmvukdb.blogspot.com/2018/01/a-critical-review-on-globalization-its.html. Ministry of Education & Social Welfare. (1974). Towards equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India. New Delhi: India, Government of India. Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum. (1985, April 23). AIR 945, 1985 SCR (3) 844. Indiankanoon.org. Retrieved February 3, 2019, from. https://indiankanoon.org/ doc/823221/. Mondal, P. (n.d.a). Status of women in Vedic and post-Vedic period. Yourarticlelibrary. Retrieved January 4, 2019, from http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/society/status-ofwomen-in-vedic-and-post-vedic-period/4397. Mondal, P. (n.d.b). The role of women in the Indian national movement. Yourarticlelibrary. Retrieved January 5, 2019, from http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/essay/the-role-ofwomen-in-indian-national-movement/32977. Mrs. Mary Roy Etc. v. State of Kerala & Ors. (1986, February 24). AIR 1011, 1986 SCR (1) 371. Indian Kanoon. Retrieved February 3, 2019, from https://indiankanoon. org/doc/1143189/. National Crime Records Bureau. (2016). Crime in India, 2016. Ministry of Home Affairs. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from ncrb.gov.in/StatPublications/CII/CII2016/pdfs/ NEWPDFs/Crime%20in%20India%20-%202016%20Complete%20PDF%20291117.pdf. Nitisha. (n.d.). Status of women during the Vedic period. Yourarticlelibrary. Retrieved January 6, 2019, from http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/women/status-of-womenduring-the-vedic-period/47391.

146

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

Naqvi, M. (2017, August 22). India’s top court holds instant divorce among Muslims unlawful. Courthouse News Service. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from https://www.court housenews.com/indias-top-court-holds-instant-divorce-among-muslims-unlawful/. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. (2011). 2011 Census data. Retrieved March 1, 2119, from http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/Census Data2011.html Pandey, P. (2015, November 27). Sexual harassment cases at the workplace more than double in 2014. The Hindu. Retrieved November 27, 2018, from https://www.thehindu.com/ business/ sexual- harassment- cases- at- workplace- more- than- double- in- 2014/ article 7924191.ece. Patel, I. (1998). The contemporary women’s movement and women’s education in India. International Review of Education, 44 (2–3), 155–179. Patherya, K. (2017). Domestic violence and the Indian women's movement” A short history. Inquiries, 9(11), 1. Retrieved Match 5, 2019, from http://www.inquiriesjournal. com/articles/1702/domestic-violence-and-the-indian-womens-movement-a-short-history Press Trust of India. (2010, September 1). Women get equal rights in guardianship, adoption of children. Times of India. Retrieved September 20, 2019, from https://timesofindia. indiatimes.com/ india/ Women-get-equal-rights-in-guardianship-adoption-of-children/ articleshow/6476814.cms. Rai, N. (2013). Married Hindu women’s right to adopt-a legal analysis in the light of Indian Constitution. Thesis submitted to the P.G. Department of Law, Law Section, Hooghly Mohsin College, Chinsurah. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from http://shodhganga. inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/57274/1/thesis%20of%20nisha%20rai.pdf. Roy, S. (2015, May). Empowering women? Inheritance rights, female education and dowry payments in India. Journal of Development Economics, 114, 233 – 251. Salam, Z. U. (2017, August 4). Manusmriti in Modi era. Frontline. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/manusmriti-in-modi-era/article9774617. ece Sarkar, S., and Sakar, T. (2008). Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader. Indiana, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sathyanarayana, P. K. K., & Sundaragiri, S. (2017). An epidemiological study of dowry deaths in special reference to burns in Indian scenario: A medicolegal study. MedicoLegal Update, 17(2), 50–55. Sawe, B. E. (2018, July 10). The major religions in India. Worldatlas. Retrieved January 15, 2019, from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/major-religions-in-modern-india.html. Sen, S. (2000). Toward a feminist politics? The Indian women’s movement in historical perspective. unpan1.un.org. Policy Research Report on Gender & Development, Working Paper Series, no. 9. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from http://unpan1.un.org/ intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan051009.pdf. Shamim Ara vs. State of U.P. and Anr. (2002). Court judgment. legalcrystal.com. Retrieved January 20, 2019, from https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/666431/shamim-ara-vs-stateu-p-anr. Shandilya, K. (2015). Nirbhaya’s body: The politics of protest in the aftermath of the 2012 Delhi gang rape. Gender & History¸ 27(2), 465–486.

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

147

Sharma, A. (2018a, September 28). India’s top court lifts temple’s ban on women who menstruate. AP News. Retrieved September 28, 2018, from https://www.apnews.com/ 481ce8ec4d084583bb40a9b1bc91a440. Sharma, A. (2018b, September 27). Adultery verdict is latest progressive ruling by India court. AP News. Retrieved September 30, 2018, from https://www.apnews.com/ 8c1a6b4099c24bc39ed5777a7167cf4f. Sharma, S. (2016). The status of women in medieval India. New Delhi, India: Sage. Sharma, A. (2004). Hinduism and human rights: A conceptual approach. London, UK: Oxford University Press. Shinwari, N. (2017. November 7). Founder of India’s first women’s organization-Sarala Devi Chaudhurani. Feminism in India. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from https://feminisminindia. com/2017/11/07/sarala-devi-chaudhurani/. Shivani, V. (n.d.) The epic age in India. History Discussion. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from http://www.historydiscussion.net/history-of-india/epic/the-epic-age-in-india/6248. Srivasta, G. (2002). Zanana System of Education- Its Impact on Women Education in Western India in the Nineteenth Century. Social Change, 32 (1), pp. 39-45. Stanton, E. C. (1848). Seneca Falls Declaration. Digital History.uh.edu. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1087. The Bengal Sati Regulation XVII, A.D. (1829). dart.columbia.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2019, from http://dart.columbia.edu/main/DART-0009.html. The Child Marriage Restraint Act. (1929). (19 of 1929). refworld.org. Retrieved July 5, 2019, from https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4c3f19a02.pdf The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act. (1987). Ministry of Women & Child Development. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from http://wcd.nic.in/act/commission-sati-prevention-act-andrules. The Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act. (1939). Indiankanoon. Retrieved December 4, 2018, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1458498/. The Dowry Prohibition Act. (1961). Ministry of Women & Child Development. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from http://wcd.nic.in/act/dowry-prohibition-act-1961. The Equal Remuneration Act. (1976). Ministry of Labour & Employment. Retrieved December 4, 2018, from https://labour.gov.in/womenlabour/equal-remuneration-actsand-rules-1976. The Guardians and Wards Act. (1890). India Code, Digital repository of all central and state acts. Indiacode.nic.in. Retrieved July 5, 2019, from https://indiacode.nic.in/handle/ 123456789/2318?view_type=browse&sam_handle=123456789/1362 The Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act. (1956). [78 of 1956, dt. 21-12-1956]. Legislative.gov. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from http://www.legislative.gov.in/ actsofparliamentfromtheyear/hindu-adoptions-and-maintenance-act-1956. The Hindu Marriage Act. (1955). Indiankanoon. Retrieved March 3, 2019, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/590166/. The Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act. (1956). Act No. 32 of 1956. Indiacode.nic. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/1649/ 3/A1956-32.pdf. The Hindu Widow Remarriage Act. (1856). lawcommissionofindia. Retrieved June 2, 2019, from http://lawcommissionofindia.nic.in/51-100/Report81.pdf.

148

Sesha Kethineni, Serita Whiting and Colette B. Harris

The Hindu Succession Act. (1956). [Act No. 30 of the Year 1956, dated 17th. June 1956]. Revenue.tripura.gov. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://revenue.tripura.gov.in/ sites/default/files/hindu-succession-act-1956.pdf. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act. (2005). Hrin.org. Retrieved December 4, 2018, from https://www.hrln.org/admin/issue/subpdf/HSA_Amendment_2005.pdf. The Indian Penal Code (IPC). (1860). WritingLaw.com. Retrieved December 2, 2018, from https://www.writinglaw.com/category/ipc/. The Indian Christian Marriage Act. (1872). Indiankanoon. Retrieved December 4, 2018, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1166543/. The Indian Succession Act. (1925). Indiankanoon. Retrieved December 4, 2018, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/169530510/ The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. (1986). (NO. 60 OF 1986). Ministry of Women & Child Development. Retrieved December 2, 2018, from http://www.wcd.nic.in/act/indecent-representation-women. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act. (1971). (Act No. 34 of 1971). twc.nic.in. Retrieved December 2, 2018, from http://tcw.nic.in/Acts/MTP-Act-1971.pdf. The National Commission for Women Act. (1990). NO 20 OF 1990. Ministry of Women & Child Development. Retrieved January 20, 2018, from http://www.wcd.nic.in/ sites/default/files/ncwact.pdf. The Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act. (1936). Indiankanoon. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/122564/. The Personal Laws (Amendment) Bill. (2010). prsindia.org. Retrieved January 10, 2018, from https://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/the-personal-laws-amendment-bill-2010-1124. The Personal Laws (Amendment) Act. (2010). (No.30 of 2010). prsindia.org. Retrieved January 10, 2018, from https://www.prsindia.org/uploads/media/Acts/The%20Personal %20Laws%20(Amendment)%20Act,%202010.pdf. The Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act. (2005). Writing Law. Retrieved December 2, 2018, from https://www.writinglaw.com/category/protection-of-womenfrom-domestic-violence-act/. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act. (2013). Ministry of Women & Child Development. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from. http:// www.wcd.nic.in/ act/ sexual-harassment-women-workplace-preventionprohibition-andredressal-act-2013. Tulasamma V. v. Sesha Reddi. V. (1977, March 7). Supreme Court of India. The-laws.com. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from. http://www.the-laws.com/Encyclopedia/Browse/Case? CaseId=007791241000. Vishaka & Ors. v. State of Rajasthan & Ors. (1997, August 13). 6 SCC 241. Indiankanoon. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1031794/. Wadley, S. S. (1977). Women and the Hindu Tradition. In Women and National Development: The Complexities of Change, (University of Chicago Press Journal), Autumn, pp. 113-125. Women. (n.d.). (2004). Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t243/e370. Women’s Indian Association to mark centenary. (2017, March 3). The Times of India. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/womensindian-association-to-mark-centenary/articleshow/57440594.cms.

Modernization, Globalization, and Transformations in Gender Equality

149

Xu, B. (2013, June 10). Governance in India: Women’s rights. Council on Foreign Relation. Retrieved March 1, 2019, from https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/governance-indiawomens-rights. Yadav, A. (2015). Rights of Muslim women: An analysis of Indian Muslim personal law. In C. P. Singh (Ed.), Affirmative action: Women & law (pp. 220–229). Lucknow, India: Faculty of Law, University of Lucknow.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 7

WOMEN’S MODERNITY IN NIGERIA: CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN LAW, POLITICS, AND CULTURE Dorothy Kersha-Aerga*, PhD Department of Social and Behvioral Sciences, Elizabeth City State UniversityUniversity of North Carolina, Elizabeth City, NC, US

ABSTRACT The modernizing elites of Nigeria firmly believe that women’s modernity is inextricably linked to Nigeria’s overall economic growth and modernity. Domestically, during the last two decades, the federal and state governments of Nigeria enacted several legislations and created a series of governmental organizations and programs to advance women’s modernity. The significant developments were the creation of the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in 1995, the National Gender Policy of 2006, and the Violence against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015. Internationally, Nigeria is the signatory to United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children; United Nations Convention Against Torture, and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment; and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. Nigeria is also a signatory to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, African Union Declaration for Gender Equality, and the African Protocol on People’s Rights and the Rights of Women. Section 18 (3) of the African Charter on Human and People Rights. For advancing women modernity, Nigeria has set up expanded governmental machinery and legal framework in compliance with international instruments and protocols for gender advancement. During the last two decades, a considerable number of Nigerian women entered politics, became political and governmental leaders, went to higher education, enlisted in foreign services and military, and became aggressive economic entrepreneurs. The problem of women’s modernity in Nigeria, however, has a series of challenges, and most of them are cultural. They are the institutions and practices of polygamy, child marriage, forced marriage, domestic *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

152

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga violence, sexual violence, genital mutilation, and sex trafficking. These issues, ingrained in the culture of tribal patriarchy, sanctified partly by the worldviews of traditional Islam and Christianity, severely limit the progress of women’s modernity in Nigeria. This conflict between tradition and modernity probably is inevitable in all cultures and civilizations destined to advance for women’s modernity.

Keywords: modernity, modernization, women development, women empowerment, sexual violence, genital mutilation, sex trafficking

INTRODUCTION A native African woman, Goddess Bvukutwa, recently made an interesting observation about the institution of patriarchy in Africa. “Patriarchy as a way of doing things,” she observed, “has been so deeply entrenched in most African settings – in our norms, values and customs – that trying to separate it from our humanness and culture is unfathomable for most…the systems and structures of patriarchy have worked for centuries for a particular group of society – men – which has benefitted immensely from having privileged positions since time immemorial” (2014, p. 2). She further noted that “apologists (including women) insist gender equality is a western notion that will never work in an African setup….Gender equality in Africa,” she claimed, “can work, it just needs to be given a chance, support, and commitment” (2014, p. 1-5). Since the beginning of modernity in the nineteenth century, a global movement for gender rights and gender equality has been spreading all over the world societies. The birth of modernity has brought a series of challenges to the continuity of the traditional institutions of politics, power, class, and the economy. However, modernity’s most transformative notions have been to achieve a decisive change in the institution of patriarchy—changes in gender relations and gender powers. One of the core ideas of modernity was that the domination and exploitation of women by men based on gender, is a gross violation of the philosophy of enlightenment predicated on the assumptions of universal human rights. A global movement for a new social order based on gender equality, therefore, began to spread more particularly in the context of the 1949 United Nations Declaration of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The purpose of this chapter is to examine some of the issues and challenges of gender equality in Nigeria. The chapter will mainly focus on some of the legal, political, economic, and cultural developments on gender equality. What are some of the significant laws and statutes enacted to address the issues of gender equality? How is the political participation of women in contemporary Nigeria growing? What reforms have been done to economically and socially empower women in Nigeria? What are some women’s rights groups and movements in civil society that are dedicated to advance the agenda for women modernization? Moreover, how issues of women’s modernity in Nigeria conflicts and converge with the traditional cultural paradigms of tribal patriarchy and polygamy. This chapter will examine and explore these and other issues and challenges to the modernization of women in Nigeria.

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

153

WOMEN, POWER, AND POLITICS IN NIGERIA: THE COMPETING CIVILIZATIONAL TRENDS Any systematic analysis of women’s modernity in Nigeria needs to have some historical and contextual understanding of the country’s dynamics in culture and power before it emerged as an independent nation and started a process of democratization and modernization in the 1960s. Nigeria is at the crossroads of four distinctive civilizational trends and heritage. First, Nigeria has a great tribal and monarchical legacy. The lands that now constitute the state of Nigeria were and still are occupied by about 300 ethnic tribal groups. Some of the dominant tribes, who are still dominant in Nigerian politics, include the Hausa and Fulani 29%, Yoruba 21%, Igbo 18%, Ijaw 10%, and Tiv 2.5%. These tribal groups were traditionally ruled by tribal chiefs who were mostly men and the guardians of the institution of power and patriarchy. The control of the tribal chiefs on the definition and the allocation of gender power and gender roles were absolute and unchallengeable. Historically, particularly in the middle ages, different tribes were organized and ruled by different monarchies such as the Hausa (500-1808), and Borno (900-1500) Kingdoms in the North, and the Benin Kingdom (1180-1897) in the South. Before the advent of colonial rule in 1900, Nigeria was ruled by different medieval monarchies. The phenomenon that is of great curiosity about Nigeria’s legacy of tribal civilization is not just the dominant tribal culture of patriarchy, but its dominant institution, polygamy. The institution of patriarchy has been universal in all civilizations, but the co-existence of patriarchy and polygamy is uniquely African and particularly Nigerian. The widely practiced institution of polygamy significantly impacts the progress of women’s modernity in Nigeria—an institution that legalizes and culturally legitimizes men to marry multiple wives at the same time. Another tribal cultural legacy in Nigeria is the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM)—a practice internationally recognized as a violation of human rights. Despite the age-old customs of patriarchy, polygamy, and the practice of FGM, historical research indicates that in the days of tribal monarchies in Nigeria, women played many significant roles in politics and tribal decisionmaking. Noteworthy is the traditional role of princess Inikpi of Igala and Moremi of Ife, Queen Amina of Zazzau in Zaria, Queen Kambass of Ijaw, Queen Qwari of Ilesa, Queen Idia of Benin, and Madam Tinubu of Lagos (Mbaebie, 2015). During Nigeria’s pre-modern era, there was a dual-sex political system in many tribal monarchies and “In a dual-sex political system, women’s organizations acted as a parallel authority structure to those of men. Political power was shared between men and women to promote harmony and the well-being of the society” (Chuku, 2009, p. 84). Within the context of the dual-sex tribal political system, women exercised political authority over matters that fall within the purview of women affairs in all female organization such as women’s courts, market authorities, secret societies, and age-old institutions (Chuku, 2009). Women in a dual-sex political system exerted their political power also “through their membership in all-female age-grade and title societies. The age-grade system was a mechanism for assigning special social duties and responsibilities to the different segments of the society’s population based on seniority” (Chuku, 2009, p. 86). The other civilizational trend that had historically impacted women in Nigeria is its conversion to Islam, particularly among the tribes and the Kingdoms of Northern Nigeria. Islam in Nigeria is more than 800 hundred years old. Currently, about 55 percent of Nigerians

154

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

are Muslim, and they are located mostly in the northern states of Sokoto, Katsina, Kano, Borno, Kaduna, Niger, Yobe, and Kebbi. Islamic Sharia Law strictly governs the issues of women, sex, marriage, and gender among the Muslim people of these northern states. Nigeria’s third civilizational trend was set by the arrival of Christianity in the eighteenth century. Currently, about 45 percent of Nigerians are Christians, and they are mostly in the southern states of Abuja, Lagos, Benue, Kogi, Ekiti, Oyo, Ogun, Delta, Bayelsa, Taraba, Ondo, and Edo. Among the Nigerian Christians, the Protestants comprise the majority (about 75 percent). The Protestant Christians of Nigeria, both elites and the masses, view women issues of modernity in a very different way compared to the North that is dominated by Sharia Law. The fourth civilizational trend is about Nigeria’s contemporary commitment to modernity. This process started from the beginning of colonialism and the birth of the modern state of Nigeria in 1900. However, more precisely, this process started after the end of colonialism and the beginning of democratization and modernization in Nigeria in the 1960s. The birth of the modern state of Nigeria and its commitment to the United Nation’s 1949 Declaration of Universal Human Rights and the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women set the stage for the beginning of a new era of Nigeria’s progress for women modernity. The cultures of tribalism, Islam, Christianity, and modernity have all shaped and formed in different ways today’s Nigeria and Nigerian women’s movement and the struggle for modernity. With about 200 million people, Nigeria is the 7th largest country in the world. Currently, there are about 100 million women in Nigeria, comprising about 50 percent of the Nigerian population. About 50 percent of the 100 million women live in urban areas. The average national literacy rate for young men and women (15-24) is 65.1 percent. The average national literacy rate for young women is 59.3 percent (Chuka, 2009).

MODERNIZATION OF WOMEN IN COLONIAL NIGERIA Nigeria formally became a British colony in 1900. From 1990 to 1960, Nigeria was ruled by the British Crown from England. By 1914, the Northern and Southern part of Nigeria came under the control of the British colonial state, and all Nigerian tribal Kingdoms were abolished. With the disintegration of the traditional Kingdoms and the emergence of an incipient structure of a modern state, the gender-based traditional political system legally and culturally collapsed. The new colonial state started gender-based discriminatory political and economic policy strategies. The new colonial state gave preferential treatment to men over women. Men were equipped with the skills to work with introduced technology and were employed to work with the Native courts, the transport industry, in the mines, Christian mission, and expatriate trading companies (Chuku, 2009). The colonial state introduced in Nigeria a modern educational system, but it was based on a dual-gender structure that subjected girls to domestic science training while emphasizing training boys for leadership and technical instructions. The colonial gendered employment policy that discriminated against women deprived women access to the newly introduced British money. Men, on the other hand, were favored by the new policy and had access to the new money through the male-dominated cash-crop economy (Chuku, 2009). The process of women’s modernity in Nigeria can be described to have started with the women’s resistance movement against the

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

155

gender-based discriminatory policies of the colonial government. From the second decade of the colonial rule, women began to politically organize to protest their increasing peripheralization within the colonial economic and political power structure. In response to the ostracization that women felt politically, socially, religiously, and economically during the colonial period, they protested utilizing political mechanisms such as boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, and sleep-ins (Chuku, 2009). The organization of the Nwaobiala Movement in 1925, the Water Rate Demonstrations in 1929, Women’s War and the Anti-Tax Demonstration in 1930 are some of the examples of the struggles for women’s rights and gender equality in colonial Nigeria. From the 1940s, the colonial government began to adopt some liberalization policies concerning gender equality. In the 1950s, three women were appointed as House of Chiefs: Mrs. Olufunmilayo Ransome Kuti appointed as a House of Chiefs for Western Nigeria and Mrs. Margaret Ekpo and Janet Mokelu appointed into the Eastern Nigeria House of Chiefs. In the context of the movement for decolonization, and to advance the agenda for women modernization, many urban and educated women in 1950s created many women’s organizations such as the National Council of Women’s Societies, (NCWS), Enugu Women’s Association (EWA), and the Aba Women’s Association (AWA) (Mbaebie, 2015). It is probably because of their traditional political role and legacy in tribal Nigeria that the Nigerian Women, during the decolonization movement in the 1950s, unlike in many other British colonies, played a significant modernizing role.

POST-COLONIAL MODERNIZATION OF WOMEN IN POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE IN NIGERIA: 1960-2000 Nigeria became an independent state in October 1960. For almost four decades, the country was ruled by different successive military governments. During the forty years of political turmoil, issues of women modernization were not prominent in the policy agenda of the successive military government, even though the military rulers in many areas of policymaking used the metaphor of “women development.” “Because the Nigerian civil society has been so reluctant to engage with gender, the military had been able to appropriate the terrain they referred to as ‘women development’ for their ends” (Mama, 1998, p. 2). One of the first women development programs launched during the military rule in Nigeria, in the context of the United Nations Decade for Women (1975-1985), was the “Better Life Program for the African Rural Women” organized in 1987 by Maryam Babangida, wife of President Ibrahim Babangida. One of the objectives of the program was “to raise the social consciousness of women about their rights and roles, as well as their social, political, and economic responsibilities.” The Better Life Program established cooperatives to make credit facilities accessible to rural women. It also created small scale industries like knitting, tailoring, weaving to generate job opportunities and enhance the empowerment of rural women. A significant achievement on women development during Ibrahim Babangida’s presidency, however, was the creation of the National Commission for Women. In 1995, the National Commission for Women was renamed as the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development. Two of the primary objectives of the Ministry were directly concerned with women’s modernization. One of the ministry’s mission was to promote the welfare of women, include women in the development of human resources, and eliminate social and

156

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

cultural practices that discriminate against and dehumanize human-hood. Second, the Ministry ensured the integration of Women in political processes and promoted the mainstreaming of gender on all issues of national importance (Muftau, 2016). With the creation of the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Nigeria complied with one of the 12 critical areas of actions set up by the Beijing Platform of Action during the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1999, that mandated that all member states of the United Nations to create “institutional mechanism for the advancement of women.” The participation of women in power and governance also began to slowly increase from the time of the military rule in Nigeria. During the era of the first republic (1960-1965), there were only four women legislators. Mrs. W. Esan was selected by the Western Region to serve as one of the 36 members of the Senate. In the 1961 general elections, two women won seats into the Eastern House of Assembly and the third won by a by-election. Issues of women’s modernization slowly began to emerge in policy-making from the time of the second and the third republic. During the third republic a woman, Mrs. Titilayo Ajanaku emerged as Local Government Council in Ogun State, with a few women elected as councilors. At the federal level, there were a few elected House of Representatives that were women and one elected as a senator (Oluremi, 2018). Mrs. Franca Afegbua emerged as the first female member of the Senate to be elected into office by an election in 1983. In the North, however, women were still deprived of the right to vote and to participate in politics until 1979. With the advent of the military regime, President Buhari introduced a formal quota system at the Federal Government level that required the appointment of women into governance. The directive was to have at least one woman serve as a member of the Executive Council, and most states implemented the quota system as directed by the Federal Government. By the 1990s two women were appointed as Deputy Governors for Lagos (Alhaja Sinatu Ojikutu) and River State (Mrs. Cecilia Ekpenyong). By the second republic (1979-1983) more women participated in the political process and won seats in the House of Representative at the national and seats at the state levels, some women were appointed Commissioners at the state level as well. Furthermore, two women were appointed to serve in ministerial positions (Mrs. Janet Akinrinade -Minister for Internal Affairs; and Mrs. Adenike Ebun Oyagbola as Minister for National Planning). At the local government level, a few women contested and won seats on the Local Government Councils. Only a few women won House of Representatives seats (Mrs. Florence Ita Giwa was one of the few), but a woman named Mrs. Oko Bucknor Akerele won a senatorial seat and was the only woman amidst men. President Buhari’s successor President Ibrahim Babangida appointed two women to serve on the Transitional Council in January 1983. The subsequent Interim National Government under Chief Ernest Shonekan appointed two women ministers. His successor General Sani Abacha also appointed a few women as ministers at various time in his cabinet. During the last regime of military rule, General Abdulsalami Abubakar appointed two women to serve on the Federal Executive Council.

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

157

POST-COLONIAL MODERNIZATION OF WOMEN IN POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE IN NIGERIA: 2000-2015 A new process of democratization and modernization began in Nigeria with the end of the military rule in 1999 and the emergence of Olusegun Obasanjo as a democratically elected president. With the emergence of a democratically elected president, the wife of the then vice president Mrs. Titi Abubakar under Obasanjo’s government established a non-governmental organization called “Women Trafficking and Child Labor Eradication Foundation” (WOTCLEF). The mission of the organization was to eradicate trafficking and child labor. It was also committed to offering support to women who had been victims of trafficking and child labor. The organization also focused on building an international coalition that restored human dignity by way of empowerment, education, and advocacy (Muftau, 2016). The awareness created by the efforts of Women Trafficking and Child Labor Eradication Foundation resulted in the establishment of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP) on August 26, 2003. The Agency was the creation of trafficking in persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act, 2003. It criminalized the trafficking of individuals and its attendant abuses. On December 12, 2000, Nigeria became a signatory to the Trafficking of Persons Protocol Supplementing the Transactional Organized crime Convention (TOC). The provisions of Article 5 required State Parties to penalize practices and conducts that dehumanized and exploited human beings. During President Goodluck Johnathan’s presidency, there was the creation of two microcredit schemes, established to facilitate credit to women at a 10% interest rate. The schemes were Women Fund for Economics Empowerment (WOFEE) and the Business Development for Women (BUDFOW). About the same period, nationwide was the establishment of Skills Acquisition Centers through the National Directorate for Employment (NDE). The program was meant to empower women economically, through training in poultry, aquaculture, poultry management, greenhouse irrigation, among others. The program, while meant for women benefitted both men and women who were graduates of tertiary institutions (Muftau, 2016). Participation of women in politics significantly increased after the Obasanjo regime came to power. Obasanjo’s regime brought a significant change in the participation of women in politics and governance. He appointed four senior ministers (out of 29) three junior ministers (out of 18); two women advisors, two seniors special assistants and six special assistants; one special assistant to the vice president and eight permanent secretaries (Luka, 2011; Muftau, 2016). Women were appointed as commissioners as well, which made them members of the executive council in all the states (Kolawale, Abubakar, Owonibi and Adebayo, 2012). The trend in women participation persisted from 1999 through the 2015 elections. The 2003 election year witnessed the emergence of the first female presidential flag bearer for one of the registered political parties. Also, for the first time in the history of the country, a woman was elected as the first female speaker of the House of Representatives in the 7th Assembly (Muftau, 2016).

Table 7.1. Nigeria: Women elected to public office, 1999-2015 Office President Vice President Senate House of Reps. Governor Deputy Governor State House of Assembly CSHA SHA Committees Chairpersons L.G.A. Chairpersons Councilors

1999 Available Seats P 1 109 360 36 36 990

0 0 3 (2.8) 7(1.9) 0 0 24(2.)

2003 Available Seats 1 1 109 360 36 36 990

829

18(2.2)

710 6368

13(1.8) 69(1.1)

Women

0 0 4(3.7) 21(5.8) 0 0 40(3.9)

2007 Available Seats 1 1 109 360 36 36 990

881

32(3.6)

774 6368

15(1.9) 267(42)

Women

0 0 9(8.3) 27(7.5) 0 0 57(5.8)

2011 Available Seats 1 1 109 360 36 36 990

887

52(5.9)

740 6368

27(3.6) 235(3.7)

Women

0 0 7(6.4) 25(6.9 0 0 68(6.9)

2015 Available Seats 1 1 109 360 36 36 990

887

-

-

-

740 6368

-

-

-

Women

Women 0 0 7(6.5) 20(5.6) 0 4 46(4.6)

Source: Men without women: An analysis of the 2015 General Election in Nigeria, Independent National Electoral Commission 2015 and European Union Election Observation Mission 2015.

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

159

It is essential to point out that women from 1999 began to enter into politics not only as political appointees but also as elected officials. Before 1999, the representation of women in parliament was usually at 3.1% and 5% for the Federal Executive Council (Luka, 2011). In the general election of 1999, there were 978 seats for grasp in the 36 House of Assembly, and twelve women were elected to fill the positions at the State level and three at the Federal level (Muftau, 2016). The 1999 elections witnessed an increase in women participation in the political process. Of the 118,81 positions available for grasp during the election cycle, women contested for 631 of the positions and won 181. At the local government level, women accounted for 9 out of 774 local government and 143 out of 8810 local government councilors nationwide. The 1999 election created political awareness that resulted in the formulation of 30 political parties for the 2003 election year, with three women emerging as members of the Senate and 21 House of Representatives (Mbaebie, 2015). During the general election of 1999, 15 women emerged as members of both the Senate and House of representative (3.19%). In the 2003 general election, the number increased to 25 (5.33%). Women’s participation in politics and governance further widened after the general election of 2007. The number of women members in the Senate and House of Representatives after the election of 2007 grew from 25 to 34, representing 7.24%. Between the 2003 and 2007 election cycle, 4-6 women won seats as deputy governors. In 2010, the Federal cabinet consisted of women serving in ministerial positions for Aviation, Education, Information and Communication, Petroleum Resources, and Women Affairs (Muftau, 2016). There was, however, a slight decline during the 2011 elections as the number of women in parliament droped by two, only 33 women were elected to parliament, dropping the percentage to 7.03%. Despite the slight decline of women representation, women still had a decent presence in the 2011 Federal Cabinet. The 2011 Federal Cabinet consisted of a female Minister for Niger Delta Affairs, and Finance, five female Special Advisers, 10 Ambassadors, 16 judges of Court of Appeal, 11 Permanent Secretaries, 16 Judges of the Federal High Court, 3 judges of the Supreme Court, 6 judges of the Industrial Court and Ag. President of the Court of Appeal (Muftau, 2016). President Goodluck Jonathan made a conscious effort to increase the number of women as political appointees. He appointed several women to serve on the Federal Executive Council (FEC). Before the September 13th, 2013 cabinet reshuffle, of the 42 serving ministers, 13 were women. There were also 11 women serving as permanent secretaries (out of 43), and five as advisers (out of 13). Most significant was the assignment of women to key ministerial positions usually held by men (the ministry of Petroleum and Aviation). This trend of increased participation of women in politics and governance in Nigeria in the first decade of the 21st century continued to remain strong at the state level too. At the state level, the number of seats occupied by women had increased by 11 seats during the 2011 election year. While the number of women in parliament from 1999-2003 increased at the state level, things were different at the federal level. There was a downward trend that started with the 2011 election and persisted through the 2015 election (Ogwezzy-Ndisika, and Faustino, 2016). The 2015 election recorded a decline at both levels of government (federal and state). Despite the negative trend, 30% of the Cabinet members at the federal level were women politicians and technocrats (see Table 7.1). The 2015 Federal Cabinet consisted of 6 women Ministers heading the following ministries: Education, Finance, Women Affairs, Environment, Budget, and National Planning, Trade Industry and Investment. The head of Services of the Federation was also a woman (Muftau, 2016). Since 1999, women have made

160

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

significant advances within the bureaucracy. Some of the key positions held by women since 1999 include the position of Managing Director of the Nigerian Stock Exchange held by Ndi Okere Onyiuke; Director General, National Agency for Food and Drugs Control (NAFDAC) Late Prof. Dora Akunyili; Senior Special Assistant to former President Obasanjo on Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit Dr. Obiageli Ezeweseli; Managing Director of Nigeria Bank of Industry Mrs. Evelyn Oputu; Minister for Education Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufai; Executive Chairman, Inland Federal Revenue Service Mrs. Ifueko Omogi-Okauru; and Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, Prof. Grace Alele William. The last but certainly not least was the Minister of Finance Dr. Okonjo-Iweala who served under President Obasanjo in 1999. Nigeria is yet to conform to the international standard of 35 percent of representation of women in government as recommended by the Fourth World Conference on women in Beijing in 1995. But the government of Nigeria seems to be making significant progress to reach the target of 35% within the next decade (Mbaebie, 2015; Oluremi, 2018).

THE EVOLVING GENDER LAWS AND REGULATIONS IN POST-COLONIAL NIGERIA, 1960-2015 During the last five decades, Nigeria’s federal and state government have enacted and adopted a number of laws and regulations related to gender issues. Some of them include the constitutional mandate for gender equality, the Child Rights’ Act of 2003, the National Gender Policy of 2006, National Gender Policy Framework of 2008, Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015, the Law on Abolition and Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Edo and Ondo states), the Law on Protection of Human Rights of Widow, and the Law on Prohibition of Early Marriage (Kebbi and Niger States), and the Law on Mandatory Primary School Enrollment for Girls (Edo, Kano, Borno, Gombe, and Bauchi states). Chapter 2 (Section 15) of the Nigerian constitution states that, “discrimination on the grounds of place of origin, sex, religion, status, ethnic or linguistic association or ties shall be prohibited.” Section 17 of Chapter 2 of the constitution mandated that, “The State social order is founded on ideals of Freedom, Equality, and Justice,” and “every citizen shall have equality of rights, obligations, and opportunities before the law” (Consitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1990). The Child Rights Act of 2003 was enacted for the domestication of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Children Rights Act of 2003 stated that, “No Nigerian child shall be subjected to physical, mental or emotional injury, abuse or neglect, maltreatment, torture, inhuman or degrading punishment, attacks on his/her honor or reputation.” The Act defined a child as a person who is below the age of 18, and the Act prohibited child marriage and female genital mutilation. The Children Rights Act of 2003 is ratified by 22 out of 36 states (Muftau, 2016). Many current legal and policy strategies for women development in Nigeria are based on the National Gender Policy adopted by the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in 2006. In 2007, for the implementation of the National Gender Policy, Nigeria adopted a National Gender Policy Strategic Framework funded by the Canadian International Development Agency. The strategic framework was approved by Federal Executive Council in 2008, and it was adopted by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, States’ Commissioners of Women Affairs, States’ Ministries of Women

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

161

Affairs, Office of the President, and many civil society organizations. The development of the National Gender Policy in 2006 and the adoption of a Gender Policy Strategic Framework in 2008 were described as the turning point where the Nigerian government recommitted to the enactment and enforcement of both national and international conventions and laws, that adovocated gender equality, women’s human rights and women empowerment (Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, 2008). The Gender Policy of 2006 and the 2008 Gender Policy Framework were created to focus on five critical themes related to gender modernity in Nigeria: 1) fostering cultural change and sensitivity about traditional gender roles and perceptions; 2) advancing women’s human rights; 3) promoting women empowerment; 4) increasing women participation in politics and governance; 5) and building partnership with civil society organizations, traditional institutions and faith-based groups for women advancement (Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, 2008). These five themes of the National Gender Policy and several guiding principles built the Gender Policy Strategic Framework approved by the Federal Executive Council (see Table 7.2).

Table 7.2. Nigeria: National gender policy: Key guidelines  All stakeholders, including government, the private sector, civil society organizations, and community-based organizations, development partners, and individual women and men have a role to play in the achievement of gender equity and equality.  Instituting a gendered culture that brings about cooperative interaction of women and men, recognizing human rights of all persons a culture which respects women’s and men’s capabilities and entails cooperation and interdependence A cultural re-orientation that will be supported by policies and programs of gender education, sensitization, dialogues, incentives, motivation and responsiveness, rather than only through legislation.  Transformation of the policy environment within which gender equity programs are to be implemented, supported by resources – financial and technical, demonstrating political will.  They are reforming of the existing structures of the national gender management system to strengthen their capacity for a more robust mandate.  Promoting the empowerment of women through the bridging of existing gender gaps will be considered integral to the achievement of gender equality, and using policies and legislation of affirmative action if necessary and would no way be deemed discriminatory. Source: Federal Ministry of Women and Social Development, 2008.

In 2015, Nigeria enacted relevant legislation criminalizing violence against women, signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan. This legislation described as the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition Act of 2015) (VAPP) reformed the Nigerian penal and criminal code. The Prohibition Act prohibited all forms of violence against persons in private and public life and provided maximum protection and effective remedies for victims and punishment of offenders. Under the VAPP Act, rape, incest, spousal violence, harmful widowhood practices, female genital mutilation, abandonment of children, harmful traditional practices, denial of liberty, indecent exposure, and political violence are described as punishable offenses. One of the significant developments in the Act is that it defined spousal violence broadly to include physical, sexual, emotional, and economic abuse of spouses. Some of the core provision of the Act directly addressed the issues of gender rights and gender equality (see Table 7.3). The enactment of the VAPP, was described by a Nigerian Women legal expert as “a pivotal event with the potential, arguably, to transform the landscape of violence against women in Nigeria…The Act is the latest, most wide-ranging legislation against persons, including women, in Nigeria (Onyemelukwe, 2015, p. 4).

162

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

Over the last two decades, more States’ enacted quite a few legislations addressing the many issues of women rights, violence against women, and gender equality. Some of the most notable of those state laws are Anambra State’s Gender and Equal Opportunities Law, Women Reproductive Rights Law, and Malpractices against Widows and Widowers Law; Cross River State’s Law to Prohibit Girl-Child Marriages and Female Genital Mutilation and the Law Against Domestic Violence Against Women; River State’s Abolition of Female Circumcision Law; Edo State’s Genital Mutilation Law; Lagos State Protection Against Domestic Violence Law; and Imo States’ Gender and Equal Opportunities Law; Ekiti State’s Gender-Based Violence (Prohibition) Law; and Bauchi State’s Withdrawal of Girls from School for Marriage.

Table 7.3. Nigeria: Violence against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015 Issues Criminalization of Rape

Key Provisions of the Act of 2015 A person commits the offense of rape if he or she intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person; other person does not consent to the penetration, or consent is obtained by force. A person convicted of the offense [of rape] is liable to imprisonment of life. Criminalization of A circumcision of genital mutilation of the girl child or woman is hereby prohibited. A person Genital Mutilation who performs female circumcision or genital mutilation is liable on conviction to a term not exceeding four years. Spousal Violence A person who batters his or her spouse is liable on conviction to a term not exceeding three years. Widowhood A person who subjects a widow to harmful traditional practices commits an offense and is liable Practices on conviction to a term not exceeding two years. Deprivation of A person who deprives another person of his or her liberty, except pursuant to a court order, Liberty commits an offense and is liable on conviction to a term not exceeding two years. Stalking A person who stalks another person commits an offense and is liable on conviction to a term not exceeding two years. Indecent Exposure A person who intentionally exposes his or her genital organs, or a substantial part thereof, with the intention of causing distress to another party, commits an offense termed as “Indecent Exposure” and is liable upon conviction to a term not exceeding 1 year. Source: Violence Against Person (Prohibition) Act of 2015 (prohibition) Law (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 2016).

In addition, Nigeria is a signatory to a number of international and regional treaties and conventions aiming to advance gender rights and gender equality such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), United Nations Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment of Punishment, African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, African Union Declaration for Gender Equality, and the African Protocol on People’s Rights and the Rights of Women. Section 18 (3) of the African Charter on Human and People Rights provides that “The states shall ensure the elimination of every discrimination against women and also to ensure the protection of the rights of women and the child as stipulated in international declarations and conventions” (Muftau, 2016, p. 76). The provision of the African Charter conformed with Article 1 of the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The CEDAW requires States to “Take all appropriate measures including legislation to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women…to eliminate discrimination against women by any person or institution and to enact appropriate legal protection of the rights of women.” The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action was another famous declaration with provisions that protected women. Article 18 of

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

163

the Declaration provides that, “The Human rights of women and girls are an inalienable integral and indivisible part of universal rights. The full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life, at the national, regional and international levels, and the eradication of all forms of discrimination on the grounds of sex are priority objectives of the international community….” Article 37 provides that, “The equal status of women and the human rights of women should be integrated into the mainstream of United Nations system-wide activity. These issues should be regularly and systematically addressed throughout relevant United Nations bodies and mechanisms.” Article 38 further provides that, “The World Conference on Human Rights stresses, the importance of working towards the elimination of violence against women in public and private life, the elimination of all forms of sexual harassment, exploitation and trafficking in women, the elimination of gender bias in the administration of justice and the eradication of any conflicts which may arise between the rights of women and the harmful effects of certain traditional or customary practices, cultural prejudices and religious extremist.” The last but not least of the International declaration was the 1945 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Universal Declaration Rights law guaranteed the rights of both men and women, it was still significant because it reiterated the fundamental rights of women and led to the International Decade for Women (Muftau, 2016 p. 77). In compliance with her commitment to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), and to a number of other related international treaties and protocols cited above, Nigeria embarked on a significant National Action Plan (NAP) in 2017 to address issues related to women, peace, violence, and security in Nigeria. The UNSCR 1325 was adopted in 2000 by “Reaffirming the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building, and stressing the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security, and the need to increase their role in decision-making with regard to conflict prevention and resolution” (United Nations Security Council, 2000, p. 1). The UNSCR 1325 urged all member states to ensure there is an increase in the number of women involved in decision making at all levels, national, regional at international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict (United Nations Security Council, 2000). Not cited in the reference, Nigeria’s 2017 National Action Plan (NAP) was an improvement of the first National Action Plan formulated in 2013. Many of Nigeria’s gender laws and policy strategies, related particularly to violence against women in conflict regions and the role of women in preventing violence, are contained in this National Policy Action Plan which is also aligned with National Gender Policy of 2006, National Gender Policy Strategic Framework of 2008, and the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015 (Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, 2017). The NAP is organized around five themes described as pillars: Prevention and Disaster preparedness, Participation and Representation, Protection and Prosecution, Crisis Management, and Partnership, Coordination, and Management (see Table 7.4). Some of the major objectives achieved by the NAP include the “Establishment of state action plans on UNSCR 1325 in five states: Delta, Rivers, Kano, Borno and Plateau states; enactment of the Violence Against persons (prohibition) Act; the acceptance of females in the Nigerian Defense Academy ensuring that they can attain the highest possible rank in the Military; and the initiation of the Program on Promoting women’s engagement in Peace and Security” (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 2017, p. 8).

164

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

Several landmark decisions were made by the Nigerian judiciary to protect women’s rights and advance gender equality in Nigeria. Some of the landmark decisions include Asika v. Atuanya (2008), Lois Chitura Ukeje vs. Mrs. Gladys (2014), Onyibor Anekwe and Anor vs. Mrs. Maria Nweke (2014), and Dr. P. I. Amadi vs. Director-General of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS). In Asika v. Atuanya (2008), the Court of Appeal held that discriminatory customs that are repugnant to natural justice and gender equality must be abolished. In Lois Chitura Ukeje vs. Mrs. Gladys (2014), the Nigerian Supreme Court held that, “a child is entitled to an inheritance from her late father’s estate.” In Onyibor Anekwe and Anor vs. Mrs. Maria Nweke (2014), the Nigerian Supreme Court argued that, “Nigerian customs which disinherit women are repugnant to natural justice, equity, and good conscience.” In Dr. P. I. Amadi vs. Director-General of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt decided that the “right of immigration to insist on a written consent of the husband before an international passport can be issues is a violation” of the constitution and the Article 18 (3) (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 2017 p. 15).

Table 7.4. Nigeria National Plan: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 Pillars Prevention and Preparedness

Strategic Objectives To ensure prevention of conflict and all forms of violence against women and girls; development of mechanism and systems for averting and mitigating disasters Participation and Representation To increase the participation of women at all levels of decision-making related to conflict prevention and peace-building Protection and Prosecution To ensure that women’s rights and security are protected and promoted in conflict and peace and that violators are prosecuted Crisis Management To ensure that women’s human security needs are protected through crisis management, recovery, and reconstruction efforts Partnership and Coordination To ensure coordination, implementation, monitoring, and reporting on women, peace, and security plans and programs Source: Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, 2017.

WOMEN MODERNITY AND GENDER PARITY IN NIGERIA: TWO DECADES OF CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATIONS The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in its various reports, clearly recognizes that Nigeria from the mid-1990s has taken a series of deliberate policy strategies and both the federal and state governments have enacted a number of legislations to enhance the process of democratization and women’s modernity. One of the CEDAW reports observed that, “The Beijing Platform of Action (BPFA) alongside the provisions of the CEDAW continues to inform policies, strategies actions of government and stakeholders in the promotion and protection of the rights of women and girls in the country. Many laws have been passed over the years that support different principles of the CEDAW” (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 2016, p. 22). The report further elaborates that, “The Nigerian Law Reform Commission has undertaken extensive reforms in Nigerian Law, Law related to rape and sexual offenses, as well as laws on marriage.” In the area of political empowerment, the government has created the Nigerian Women’s Trust

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

165

Fund, taken measures for the promotion of women leadership, and engaged women in peacebuilding. The government has expanded employment opportunities, and taken measures for enlisting women in the military, acceptance of women in the judiciary, generated opportunities for women to work in the private sector and become entrepreneurs. The government has further taken steps to change the traditional cultural attitude towards women, by initiating measures that involve faith-based and non-governmental organizations, and formed Girls Education Advocacy Groups known as EGBENN project (The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 2016). The CEDAW has recognized that women participation in politics and governance is also slowly growing in Nigeria. In 1999-2003, women, for example, held three seats in the National Assembly (2.75 percent). In 2011, the number increased to 8 (7.3 percent). In 19992002, there were 15 women in both houses (3.2 percent). In 2011, the number increased to 32 (6.8 percent) (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 2016). The CEDAW report observed that “The representation of women in appointive positions has witnessed a gradual but steady increase since Nigeria returned to democratic government in 1999. Available data for the period 1999-2010 shows that there were seven female cabinet ministers out of 42 available seats. This is a representation of 16.66 percent while from 2010 to 2016 there were 13 female cabinet ministers, a 13 percent representation” (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 2016, p. 38). The CEDAW report of 2016 also observed that, “Nigeria has put women in the forefront of its development agenda pillar which includes its foreign policy…There has been a gradual increase in the number of female ambassadors” (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 2016, p. 39). Despite these and other economic, political, and cultural advancements related to gender rights and gender equality during the last two decades, Nigeria still has a long way in closing or achieving a gender parity compatible with international standards (British Council Nigeria, 2012).

Table 7.5. Nigeria’s global gender gap report, 2006-2018 Rank, 2006 Score, 2006 Global Gender Gap Score 94 0.610 Economic Participation 59 0.612 Educational Attainment 104 0.816 Health and Survival 99 0.966 Political Participation 99 0.049 Source: World Economic Forum, Gender Gap Report 2018.

Rank, 2018 133 79 140 132 139

Score, 2018 0.621 0.661 0.806 0.964 0.052

The Global Gender Gap report produced by the World Economic Forum has been providing data and information on issues of gender inequality in world societies since 2005. The World Economic Forum in May of 2005 launched its study on the gender gap in 58 countries. The criteria for the study was based on economic, educational, health, and politics (World Economic Council, 2006). The 2018 Gender Gap report “benchmarks 149 countries on their progress towards gender parity on a scale from 0 (disparity) to 1 (parity) across four thematic dimensions—the sub-indexes Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment” (World Economic Forum, 2018, p. vii).

166

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

According to the 2018 Gender Gap Report, Nigeria, among 149 countries, ranks 79 in economic participation and opportunities for women, 140 in women’s educational attainment, 132 in women health and survival, and 139 in political participation. Nigeria’s Global Gender Gap score in 2006 was 0.610. In 2018 it increased to 0.621 (see Table 7.5). The Global Gender Gap report, with regards to political empowerment, ranks Nigeria at 144 in the subcategory of women in parliament, and 105 in ministerial positions in 2018. The report also noted that women in Nigeria do not have access to financial services, there are no inheritance rights for daughters, and women have only limited access to land use, control and ownership.

MODERNIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION OF WOMEN’S MODERNITY IN NIGERIA: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES Even though the Nigeria government has enacted many laws, international treaties have been signed, organizational structures have been formed, and many programs have been undertaken by the government during the last two decades, the age-old traditional cultural and religious worldview that is repugnant to many of the core ideas of women’s modernity is still pervasive. Nigeria seems to have an endemic culture of violence against women. The issues of women’s fundamental human rights are still largely ignored and misunderstood. The traditional culture of Nigeria still celebrates child marriage, despises women education, sanctifies polygamy, denies women’s right to inheritance and property, justifies genital mutilation, and exploit and dehumanize girls and women in deference to faith and religion. The traditional culture is skeptical about the empowerment of girls and women. The widespread practice of polygamy, for example, is one of the significant challenges hindering women modernity in Nigeria. Even though polygamy is prohibited by civil law, the practice is pervasive, particularly in northern Nigeria where it is sanctified in the pretext of the Islamic religion and the Sharia Law. In 2013 Demographic and Health Surveyed, “33% of women in Nigeria reported that their husbands have more than one wife” (Sahel and African Club, January 2019, p. 1). In Nigeria, “multiple marital regimes operate in parallel. While civil law formally prohibits polygamy, the 12 northern states that are governed under Islamic Sharia law recognize polygamous marriages” (Sahel and African Club, January 2019, p. 1). Polygamy enforces and expands the control of the institution of patriarchy and limits women’s access to rights and liberty. Usually, women’s legal marital status expands women’s equal access to rights and opportunities. Polygamy undermines a woman’s right to equality with men (Sahel and African Club, January 2019). Research has shown that the depression rate is higher among women in polygamous marriages, and children from polygamous families do not have equal access to education. According to a metanalysis of 22 major research studies on relations between polygamy and mental health of women published between 1967 and 2011, one study observed that mental health issues are very prevalent among women in polygamous marriages compared to monogamous women. Noteworthy, are the principally significant levels of somatization, depression, anxiety, hostility, paranoid ideation, psychoticism, psychiatric disorder, general symptom severity (GSI), decreased life and marital satisfaction, problematic family functioning, and low self-esteem (Shepard, 2012). Another major survey on the impact of polygamy (polygyny) conducted based on data collected from 179 countries found that polygyny “exerts an effect on child welfare. Girls are

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

167

less likely to receive an education in a primary or secondary school as polygyny becomes more frequent. The same holds true for boys as well…countries that have lower primary enrollments of girls, polygyny is more frequent” (McDermott and Cowden, 2015, p. 1790). The same study also found that, “secondary enrollment of girls in school, behaves in response to polygyny in the same way as that for primary enrollment… Increased polygyny also heightens the difference in the occurrence of HIV infection between women and men; women become more likely relative to men to suffer from HIV as polygyny becomes more common” (pp. 1790-1795). The study further observed that women in polygamous marriages are more likely to marry at a younger age, have more children, and low life expectancy. They are also more likely to be victimized by sex trafficking (McDermott and Cowden, 2015). Probably as an extension of the institution of polygamy, child marriage is also pervasive in Nigeria. The Global Gender Gap report of 2018 noted that about 18 percent of Nigerian girls are married before the age of 18, and 44 percent of Nigerian girls and women are married by the age 18 (World Economic Forum, 2018). The percentage of girls and women married in Nigeria before the age of 18 is higher than that of Sub-Saharan Africa (12 percent) and the whole of West and Central Africa (14). Data from the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development show that about 11.5 percent of Nigerian girls are married before they are 15 years of age, and 49.6 percent of women are married before they reach the age of 20 (as quoted in Japan International Cooperation Agency, 2011, p. 9). Forced marriage is another area where the abuse of girls and womens right are visible. Marriage is legally a contract of mutual consent between parties involved. In parts of Nigeria, culture and religion justify forcing young girls into marriage. There are many legal, social, and medical implications of early marriage. The legal implication is the denial of a woman’s right to marry whom she desires, even in cases where there is purported consent if the woman was a minor when she gave her consent, such consent is null and void in the eyes of the law. Socially, a woman who is coerced into a marriage is likely to be unhappy and less likely to want to make the marriage work. Forced marriage contributes to increasing the rate of divorce and family dissolution. The culture, however, is that a woman must endure and make her marriage work. A divorcee is less likely to remarry as she is presumed to bear the blame for the failure of her marriage. If a divorced woman has a female child, prospective suitors for her female children are discouraged by society, because the assumption is that a daughter of a divorce will not be able to sustain her marriage either, giving credence to the phrase that, “an apple does not fall far from the tree.” Medically, girls who are compelled to marry early are more likely to suffer from Vesico Vaginal Fistula Disease (VVF) because her womb is not fully developed to carry and deliver a baby (Muftau, 2016). The culture of polygamy, child marriage, and forced marriage in Nigeria severely limits women’s progress in education, particularly in elementary and secondary education. Data from Nigeria’s Digest Education Statistics show that about 40 percent of Nigeria’s adult females ages between 15 and 24 (about 40 million adult women) are not literate. “UNESCO defines a literate person as one who can with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on his/her everyday life and an illiterate person as one who cannot with understanding both read and write a short, simple statement in his/her daily life.” In 2017, the literacy rate among Nigeria’s adult females was 59.3 percent compared to 70.9 percent for adult males. In Nigeria, there are almost five and a half million children who are not in school (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 2013, p. 3). Data also shows that, “17 states, mainly in Northern Nigeria, have literacy rates below the national

168

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

literacy rate in either both genders or mainly with the female gender. It also indicates that the remaining 19 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have a literacy for both genders above the national literacy rate in Nigeria” (Amoo, July, 2018, p. 2). Research has shown that women’s modernity is positively connected to women’s education. “Girls with higher levels of education are less likely to have children at an early age. 10% fewer girls would become pregnant under 17 years in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia if they all had primary education. Almost 60% fewer girls would become pregnant under 17 years in subSaharan Africa and South and West Asia if they all had a secondary education” (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 2013, p. 2). It is globally observed that educated girls are less likely to marry at an early age, and have children at an early age. Research points to education as a critical component of reducing early child marriages and birth (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 2013). Studies have also shown that an educational background helps boost women’s confidence to overcome discrimination. Education also equips women to know their rights and grants them the freedom to be assertive with regards to decisions that affect their lives. Equipped with this knowledge, women are in a better position to make decisions that will not only enhance their lives but that of their children. (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 2013). One of the reasons for the lower rate of female enrollment in schools is that culturally, males receive preferential treatment from parents and society in terms of education. If parents had to make a choice which child to educate, they usually would choose the male child over the female. The rationale for the decision of parents to educate a male child over the female is that girls are considered best fitted for domesticated roles. Historically, Nigerian culture has always valued a male child over a female child. A male child is believed to be the one to carry the family name forward, while a female child is equated to property. Less value is attached to the female child because she does not carry the family name forward. The assumption is that it is only a question of time before she will marry and assume her husband’s last name and place of origin, and what she needs is not an education but to be taught how to do domestic chores and mothers spend time teaching girls how to do domestic chores in preparation for early marriage (Muftau, 2016). The cultural practices of polygamy, child marriage, and the lack of societal preference for girls and women education contribute to the creation and the legitimacy of a culture of violence against women. Domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, sex trafficking, and the practice of female genital mutilation are widespread in many parts of Nigeria. One of the recent surveys about domestic violence in Nigeria indicated a prevalence of domestic violence across Nigeria in recent times, as reported by about 78% of respondents. The South-West geopolitical zone was reported to have the highest number of domestic violence cases (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 2017). The UN Women 2016 Global Data on Violence against Women shows that 16 percent of Nigerian Women experience lifetime physical and sexual intimate partner violence; 11 percent had experienced physical and sexual intimate partner violence in the last 12 months; 18 percent had experienced genital mutilation. The 2008 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) found that among every-married woman, 18% had experienced physical violence from either current or former partner with 16% of them reporting being slapped as the standard type of physical violence ever experienced; 4% of the women had experienced sexual violence; and 24% had experienced emotional violence” (as quoted in Solanke, 2014, p. 934). Studies have shown that women

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

169

victims of intimate partner violence are less likely to utilize maternal health services. Reportedly, 24.2% of emotional violence victims were found to be less likely to utilize skilled antenatal care (Solanke, 2014). The World Health Organization (2013) observed that the victims of intimate partner violence “are 16% more likely to have a low-birth-weight baby. They are more than twice as likely to have an abortion, almost twice as likely to experience depression, and, in some regions, are 1.5 times more likely to acquire HIV, as compared to women who have not experienced partner violence” (p. 2). Section 31 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution prohibits any form of human degradation and molestation (Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1990). However, domestic violence is very prevalent in Nigerian society, because a woman is considered her husband’s property, as such any form of abuse by him is permissible in some cultures. The physical abuse of a woman by her husband is permissible as a corrective measure for wrongful behavior. The police are reluctant to intervene even when a woman reports her abuse because of physical violence against a woman by her husband is considered a family matter. The reason police are reluctant to intervene is because while the provisions of Section 31of the Nigerian Constitution prohibits violence; Section 55 of the Penal Code contradicts Section 31. Section 55 of the Penal Code provides that, “Nothing is an offense which does not amount to infliction of grievous hurt upon any person and which is done by a husband to correct his wife, such husband or wife be subject to native law or custom in which such is recognized as lawful” (as quoted in Muftau, 2016 p. 78). The World Health Organization (2013) has also conducted studies on the impact of female genital mutilation and found that this practice has many serious long-term consequences including painful urination, painful menstruation, sexual dysfunction, childbirth complications, newborn deaths, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and low self- esteem. The provision of Section 31 of the Nigerian Constitution prohibits the torture, inhuman, and degrading treatment of all persons (Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1990). Regardless of this provision, the cultural practice of female circumcision has persisted in many parts of the Nigerian society. Because of the impact of the problem of polygamy, child marriage, forced marriage, illiteracy, genital mutilation, and widespread sexual and intimate partner violence, millions of girls and women in Nigeria are trapped into poverty and extreme desperation. Poverty and extreme desperation create a breeding ground for sex trafficking. Nigeria is an oil-rich country, but it is estimated that about 70 percent of Nigerians live below the poverty line of less than one dollar per day. Traffickers capitalize on the poverty level and dangle false promises of employment and vocational training in front of girls to entice them into the world of sex slavery. Unfortunately, desperation does compel some parents to urge and encourage their children to be willing participants of the trade (World Policy Institute, May 2014). One study found that, “Per the latest Global Slavery Index (2018) Report, Nigeria ranks 32/167 of the countries with the highest number of slaves – 1,386,000. The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) reports that the average age of trafficked children in Nigeria ranked a Tier 2 Watchlist country on the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report (2018), is 15” (Pathfinder Justice Information, November 2018, p. 1). The same study further noted that, “75% of those who are trafficked within Nigeria are trafficked across states, while 23% are trafficked within states. Only 2% of those who are trafficked are trafficked outside of the country” (Pathfinder Justice Information, November 2018, p. 1). Outside Nigeria, Europe is a crucial point of attraction of Nigerian sex trafficking,

170

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

particularly Italy. Reportedly, a significant number of the Nigerian population legally residing in Itay are women. It is estimated that there may be as many as 10,000 Nigerian prostitutes in Italy. Other significant destinations for sex trafficking include the Netherlands and Spain, and, to a lesser degree, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the United Kingdom (Migration Policy Institute, 2005). According to data from the International Organization of Migration, sex trafficking from Nigeria to Italy is rapidly growing. In 2011, the total number of Nigerian women victims of sex trafficking in Europe was 1,317. In 2016, the number rose to 11,099 (Damon, Swails, and Laine, March 2018). Research indicates a high concentration of sex trafficking cases in the South-Central part of the country, particularly in Edo State. A survey by Women’s Health and Action Research Centre in Edo’s capital Benin City a few years ago indicated that one in three young women in Edo received proposals to go to Europe and serve as a sex slave (Migration Policy Institute, 2005). Another study made a similar observation and found that Edo State of Nigeria “is an internationally recognized sex trafficking hub, with built-in infrastructures and networks which support the sale of human bodies. According to IOM, an astounding 94% of all Nigerian women trafficked to Europe for prostitution hail from Edo State, with Italy being the number one destination country” (Pathfinder Justice Information, November 2018, p. 3). The problem of sex trafficking in Nigeria is further worsened by the growing terror of Boko Haram. “Abubakar Shekau of Boko Haram is right: There is a market for selling humans. This is perhaps the only truth the terrorist organization’s deranged ringleader spoke in a video released on May 9th, in which he stated he would sell 276 Nigerian girls into slavery” (World Policy Institute, May 2014, p. 1). Nigeria is the signatory to the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, sometimes described as the Palermo Protocol. Federal legislation related to human trafficking, however, remained inadequate and unenforceable.

CONCLUSION As one of the largest and evolving modernizing states in the African continent, Nigeria has made deep commitments for women’s modernity. Nigeria is an old civilization, but a new modern state. Nigeria became an independent state after the end of sixty-years of British colonial rule in 1960. Nigeria is a complex nation of three civilizational streams: ancient tribal civilization, Islamic civilization, and Christian civilization. About 50 percent of Nigerians are Muslim, 40 percent are Christians, and 10 percent believe in different forms of tribal religions. These three civilization streams have created many regional, demographic, and cultural complexities in Nigeria, and that is probably the reason why Nigeria was ruled for about forty years by different successive military regimes. Nigeria’s experiment for democracy and modernity, in a sense, is less than two decades old. It began in 1999 with the onset of a civilian rule and the promulgation of the constitution. Of the total Nigerian population of about 200 million people, about 100 million are women. The modernizing elites of Nigeria firmly believe that women’s modernity is inextricably linked to Nigeria’s overall economic growth and modernity. Domestically, during the last two decades, the federal and state governments of Nigeria enacted several legislations and created a series of governmental organizations and programs to advance women’s modernity. The significant developments

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

171

were the creation of the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in 1995, the National Gender Policy of 2006, and the Violence against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015. Internationally, Nigeria is a signatory to United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children; United Nations Convention Against Torture, and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment; and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. Nigeria is also a signatory to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, African Union Declaration for Gender Equality, and the African Protocol on People’s Rights and the Rights of Women. Section 18 (3) of the African Charter on Human and People Rights. For advancing women modernity, Nigeria has set up expanded governmental machinery and legal framework in compliance with international instruments and protocols for gender advancement. During the last two decades, a considerable number of Nigerian women entered politics, became political and governmental leaders, went on to higher education, enlisted in foreign services and military, and became aggressive economic entrepreneurs. The problem of women’s modernity in Nigeria, however, has a series of challenges, and most of them are cultural. They are the institutions and practices of polygamy, child marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence, sexual violence, genital mutilation, and sex trafficking. These issues, ingrained in the culture of tribal patriarchy, sanctified partly by the worldviews of traditional Islam and Christianity, severely limit the progress of women’s modernity in Nigeria. This conflict between tradition and modernity probably is inevitable in all cultures and civilizations destined to advance women’s modernity.

REFERENCES Akpan, N. E. (2015). Men without women: an analysis of the 2015 General Election in Nigeria, Independent National Electoral Commission 2015. Amoo, A. (July 2018). Young Adult Literacy Rate in Nigeria (State by State). www.educcleb.com retrieved on May 15, 2019. British Council Nigeria (2012). Gender in Nigeria Report 2012: Improving the Lives of Girls and Women in Nigeria. British Council. Abuja: Nigeria. Bvukutwa, G. (June 2014). Gender Equality is not a Western Notion: Patriarchy in Africa. Retrieved from http://thisisafrica.me.gender-equality-western-notion on March 2019. Chuku, G. (2009). Igbo Women and Political Participation in Nigeria, 1800s-2005. International Journal of African Historical Studies, 42 91), pp. 81-102. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1990), Federal Government of Nigeria: Federal Ministry of Information Publications. Retrieved from http://www.nigerialaw.org/ConstitutionOfTheFederalRepublicOfNigeria.htm. Damon, A., Swails, B, and Laine, B. (March 2018). Sex Trafficking Train from Nigeria to Europe. CNN International, Africa. European Union Election Observation Mission. (July 2015). Federal Government of Nigeria: Final Report – General Elections). Retrieved from http”//eeas.eu/archives on May 2, 2019.

172

Dorothy Kersha-Aerga

Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development. (2008). Nigeria: National Gender Policy Strategic Framework (Implementation Plan). Abuja, Nigeria: Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development. Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development (2017). National Action Plan for the Implementation of UNSCR 1325 and Related Resolution on Women, Peace, and Security in Nigeria. Abuja, Nigeria: Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development. Japan International Cooperation Agency. (2011). Country Gender Profile: Nigeria (Final Report). Tokyo: Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting. Kolawale, T. O., Abubakar, M. B., Owonibi, E., & Adebayo, A. A. (2012). Gender and Party politics in Africa with reference to Nigeria. Online Journal of Education Research, 1(7):132-14. Luka, R. C. (2011). Women and political participation in Nigeria: The imperative of Empowerment. Journal of Social Sciences and Public Policy. 3, pp. 24-37. Mbaebie, J. (2015). Human Rights and Women Political Participation in Nigeria: A Veritable tool for Development and Social Reconstruction. Journal of Resourcefulness and Distinction, 10 (1), pp. 1-9. Mcdermott, H. R. and Cowden J. (2015). Polygyny and Violence against Women. Emory Law Journal, 64 (6), pp. 1767-1814. Migration Policy Institute. (2005). Trafficking in Women from Nigeria to Europe (by J. Carling). Brussels, Belgium: MPI. Muftau, R., (2016). An Appraisal of the Legal Rights of Women in Nigeria. Journal of Law, Policy and Globalization 52, pp. 69-86. Ogwezzy-Ndisika, A. O. and Faustino, B. A. (2016). Gender Responsive Election Coverage in Nigeria: A Score Card of 2015 General Elections. Comunicazione Politica, 2. pp. 287296. Oluremi, F. D. (2018). Nigerian Women in Politics. Gender & Behavior, 16 (1), pp. 1071010718. Onyemelukwe, C (2015). Legislating on Violence against Women: A Critical Analysis of Nigeria’s Recent Violence against Person (Prohibition) Act of 2015. DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law, 5 (2), pp. 1-58. Pathfinders Justice Initiative. (November 2018). Nigeria: Human Trafficking: Factsheet. Retrieved from www.pathfindersji.org on May 2019. Sahel and West Africa Club. (January 2019). Polygamy Remains Common and Mostly Legal in West Africa. Retrieved from www.OECD.org on May 20, 2019. Shepard, L. D. (March 2012). The Impact of Polygamy on Women’s Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Retrieved from www.cambridge.org on May 10, 2019. Solanko, B. L. (2014). Association between Intimate Partner Violence and Utilization of Maternal Health Services. African Population Studies, 28 (2), pp. 933-945. United Nations Children’s Fund (2017). Factsheet on Girls’ Education in Nigeria. September 2017. United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). (2016). Consideration of Reports Submitted by State Parties under Article 18 of the Convention: Nigeria. New York, NY: United Nations. United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). (2017a). List of Issues and Questions Related in relation to the

Women’s Modernity in Nigeria

173

Combined Seventh and Eighth Periodic Reports: Nigeria. New York, NY: United Nations. United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). (2017b). Women, Peace, and Security in Nigeria. New York, NY: United Nations. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (2013). Education for All Global Monitoring Project: Girl’s Education -The Facts. Paris: UNESCO. UN-Women. (2016). Global Database on Violence against Women: Nigeria. New York, NY: The United Nations. World Economic Forum. (2006). Global Gender Gap Report. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum. (2018). Global Gender Gap Report. Geneva. Switzerland: World Economic Forum. World Policy Institute. (May 2014). Boko Haram: Spotlight on Human Trafficking (by K. Patel). Retrieved from www.worldpolicy.org on May 10, 2019. World Health Organization. (2013). Global and Regional Estimates of Violence against Women: Prevalence of Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-partner Violence. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 8

ISLAM, ETHNICITY, AND MODERNITY IN AFRICA: COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL MODERNIZATION IN THE WEST AFRICAN STATE OF SIERRA LEONE Mohammed B. Sillah, PhD Department of History and Political Science, Hampton University, Hampton, VA, US

ABSTRACT There is a continuing debate in the literature on modernization whether Islam and modernization and modernization and ethnicity can co-exist. On one side of the debate, there is a group of scholars who argues that some of the core values of Islam are fundamentally different from those of modernity. So, there is a concern about the future of modernity in the Islamic civilization of the Middle East, West Africa, and South Asia. Another group of scholars argues that modernization and attachment to primordial ethnicity are incompatible. A deep sense of ethnicity is inimical to the formation of collective national identity and citizenship. So, there is a concern about the future of modernity in the African civilization where people have remained deeply divided for centuries along the lines of tribalism and ethnicity. This chapter has examined this problematic of compatibility between Islam and modernization and modernization and ethnicity in the context of the West African State of Sierra Leone. Since the seventeenth century, two major civilizational forces—Islam and colonial modernity—have been in progress in the state of Sierra Leone that was deeply embedded into the native African civilization of diverse ethnicities. After decades of social and political changes, conflicts, and transformations, Sierra Leonne today is one of the unique African countries dedicated to progress based on consensus between Islam and modernization and modernization and ethnicity.

Keywords: Sierra Leone, African culture, Islam, Christianity, modernity, modernization theory, culture of tolerance



Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

176

Mohammed B. Sillah

INTRODUCTION The West African country of Sierra Leone was discovered in 1462 by Piedro de Cintra, a Portuguese sailor, who called it, in the Portuguese language, “Sierra Leona, because of the lion-like roaring of the thunder on its [mountain] tops” (Macmillan, 1968, p.131). The indigenous people called it Romarong, meaning in English the mountain. The country is bounded on the northeast by Guinea (Conakry), on the southeast by Liberia, and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Present Sierra Leone is the product of three competing civilizations: indigenous African civilization, Islamic civilization, and western civilization. Out of the country’s 6.3 million people (2018 estimate), 78.6 percent are Muslims, 20.8 percent are Christians, and the rest belong to other indigenous religions. Islam arrived in Sierra Leone between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the last two hundred years, the country has been significantly transformed by Islamic religion, politics, education, and culture. “For several centuries, Islamic ideas, institutions, and leadership have contributed significantly to the cultures, political systems, and economic activities of the Upper Guinea Coast; migrants introduced and promoted Islam among the coast and in the hinterland of what developed into the modern state of Sierra Leone” (Skinner, 2016, p. 1). Christianity arrived in West Africa in the seventeenth century as an extension of European commercial capitalism. A more systematic process of the spread of Christianity in Sierra Leone began in the late eighteenth century. “The first Europeans arrived at the West-African Coasts at the end of the fifteenth century. For several years they paid attention to the slave trade rather than evangelization and Christianization of the people of West-Africa. A new era began with the settlements of Black Christians from Nova Scotia in Sierra Leone in 1787” (Adu-Gyamfi and Ampadu, 2019, p. 1). The Christian Missionary Society in Sierra Leone “offshoot of the Anglican Church, was the first to become firmly established chiefly among the freed – captive and freed – slave settlers from Britain, Nova Scotia and other parts of the New World. They were followed by other major missionary bodies, including the Methodists and the Roman Catholics” (Adu-Gyamfi and Ampadu, 2019, p. 6). Both Islam and Christianity in Sierra Leone are more than two hundred years old. While Islam came and spread the culture of Islam, Christianity came and spread the culture of the west in Sierra Leone. The modern culture of the west began to spread in Sierra Leone in many different ways after it became a British Crown colony in 1808. Throughout the nineteenth century, Sierra Leone remained as a British Crown colony. It got independence in 1961. Sierra Leone is described as a unique country, not just in Africa, but the world as a whole, because of its unique culture of assimilation of both Islam and Christianity within the framework of its African civilization. Sierra Leone has many political and economic problems, but throughout the centuries Islam and Christianity or Islam and modernity relatively peacefully intermingled and co-existed. This chapter examines this problematic compatibility between Islam and modernization as well as modernization and ethnicity in the context of Sierra Leone. The chapter further discusses the British colonial resection to Islam in Sierra Leone, and the role played by Islam in creating national identity and unity within the framework of modernity.

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

177

ISLAM AND MODERNIZATION, MODERNIZATION AND ETHNICITY The Western idea of modernity spread in Islamic cultures through the process of European colonialism. Through the use of the military and political administration, the imperial powers introduced secular laws in their newly conquered dependencies, and in doing so, they eventually succeeded in undermining Islamic principles and the Shari’a (Islamic Law). Modernization deals with Western Vision and method of development vis-à-vis their science, technology, democracy, and free markets. Modernization theory is based on the “dichotomy” between modernity and tradition (Roberts, 2000). In the words of Anas B. Malik, “…the level of political community a society achieves reflects the relationship between its political institutions and the social forces which comprise it [such as]… ethnic, religious, territorial, economic, or status group”(Malik, 1999, p.23). In the context of development in the Muslim world, modernization theorists have been hard-pressed to deal with problems. While some Muslim thinkers have interpreted the Western version of modernity as a phenomenon ingrained in “materialism with an aversion to moral and spiritual values" (Kamali, 1995, p.11), the Orientalist and modernization theorists, on the other hand, thought that Muslim societies have no option but to modernize by emulating the West. “Islamologists” like Hamilton A.R. Gibb and his compatriot Gustave E. Von Grunebaum put forth the argument that Islam had no “chance” to advance unless it accepts the Western paradigms of development. They claimed that "Islam [a] backward-looking traditional culture, [constitutes] an obstacle for Muslims' effort to cope with modernity"(Masud et al., 2009, p. 51). Grunebaum and Gibb are depicted as among the severest critics of Islam’s weakness to cope with the challenges of modernity. Muslim thinkers and societies respond to liberal democratic capitalism with ambivalent attitudes: while they reject specific versions of it, they accepted others. In essence, a Muslim may admire Western Sciences and technology, but he could very well be critical of the motives of the West (Roy, 2004). Young Muslims in new schools tend to associate modernization with westernization. For that reason, Islamic modernists may regard this misconception as a “threat” to the Muslims’ religious and cultural values and identity. Muslim scholars see modernity as a value not in “conflict” or contention with the Islamic faith, for many of them admire the modern concepts of liberty and “constitutionalism.” To some of the Muslim thinkers, the modern concepts of liberty (hurriya), republicanism and democracy (jumhurriyya) and constitutionalism (mashurutiyya)” (Masud et al., 2009, p.246) - are embedded in Islamic tradition. Islamic thinkers such as Abu’l –A’la Maududi equated modernity to secularism. He argued that the Islamic state is a "theo-democracy" as opposed to secular democracy. In Islam, he argued, "people are not free to make their laws; there are Divine limits (hudud) on human freedom” (Masud et al., 2009, p. 252). According to Maududi's doctrine, "the economy is regulated through the principles of private property, the collection of Islamic taxes and the replacement of banking and usury by contacts of the business partnership (mudaraba). Family life is governed by the laws [of Islam]… laws about crime and punishment are divinely prescribed; there is no place for human legislation” (Masud et al.2009, p. 246). Maududi is suggesting that Muslims, whether acting as individuals or as a collective, cannot afford to compromise their loyalty to the Divine Law for positive law.

178

Mohammed B. Sillah

Constructed Islamic identities in late modernity emerged because of broken promises. At independence, some leaders of predominantly Muslim countries like Algeria and Indonesia promised that the fundamental basis of their states would be structured within the framework of indigenous culture and Islamic beliefs and value systems. However, Pakistan and Bangladesh did not throw away their “secular policies” as members of the Islamic community (Ummah). They utilized both modernist and Islamic constructs and “symbols” to promote their political and socio-economic agenda. The underlying assumption is that Muslim societies can modernize without becoming Western. They can "simultaneously" seek the benefits of modernization while maintaining their Islamic traditions. As Jeane Kirkpatrick, former professor and ambassador of the United States to the United Nations, says, [Muslim nations can] preserve [their Islamic] traditions while accepting the endless changes of modernizations. Our differences from one another will be preserved, and pluralistic society and the pluralistic world will grow over more acute” (Kirkpatrick, 1993, p. 24). Many believe that modernization and traditions are completely antithetical. This is, however, a misleading notion. Human nature loves to preserve customs and traditions alongside modern progress and development of new ideas. The balance between the two ensures modernization and progress. Muslims are aware of and familiar with these trends. Nevertheless, some Muslim leaders have experimented secular politics by embracing authoritarian or liberal aspects of modernity. For instance, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey decided to emulate the Western paradigm of modernity through the use of the authoritarian style of leadership. He banned many Islamic values or traditions and tilted his country to the direction of the Western model of development. Despite his evolutionary reforms, Turkey remained an underdog in the advanced industrialized world. Another notable figure was Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia in North Africa. He maintained Islam as a state religion, but he made some unpopular changes, such as prohibiting women from wearing a hijab (veil or headscarf) and in 1961, he announced to the “Tunisians not to fast in the month of Ramadan, in order to fight underdevelopment” (Moten, 1996, p.3). In terms of gender on the issue of modernization, several works have been conducted concerning women in the Muslim world. The theories about women’s rights and their role in the modernization process were developed in the West in the context of feminism. The Western media depict Muslim women negatively, with the generalized notion that Islam “oppresses women.” On the contrary, Islam plays a pivotal role in the identity of Muslim women. The idea of the feminist movement became linked to “Western thought,” which claimed that “being a feminist means being Western” (Ventura, 2018, p.353). In other words, the term “feminist is interpreted as a “Western-based conception [that] implies a dichotomy between men and women based on Gender differentiation” (Waugh and Wannas, 2003, p. 24). The discourse of feminism in Islam derived from the English language; it did not come from the Arabic linguistic culture. The process by which the Western version of feminism has been exported to the Muslim world has been labeled as “cultural imperialism.” We may also mention the fact that some feminist movement was not imported from the West, instead it was homegrown. For instance, one Margot Badran claims that “Egyptian women created their feminism and that it was indigenous, not western” (Ventura, 2018, p.353). The Qur’an and Sunnah (the legal ways of the Prophet of Islam) guaranteed the rights of women but were undermined by “patriarchy.” Also equally valid is that the order for Muslim women to veil is not from the command of man but a Quranic injunction.

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

179

Inversely, some Muslim circles have rejected feminist movements within Islam, working on the assumption that "feminist discourse is an extension of hegemonic neocolonial agenda” (Waugh and Wannas, 2003, p.16). Islamic feminism was “coined” by female Muslim thinkers in the West. The attempts were to make Muslim women achieve equality with their Muslim male counterparts within the Islamic community. On the other hand, Islamic womanist theory works on the idea that Muslim women should not try to attain "parity" with Muslim male, by posing the notion that is “un-Islamic.” In the modern context, the fact remains that Muslim women have been active players in their countries’ socio-political development. For instance, Muslim women have served as members of parliaments and held cabinet positions, as well as “headed” governments in Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Liberia, a predominantly Muslim state in West Africa, democratically elected Christian women as president of that nation. The treatments and experiences of Muslim women remarkably vary from one Muslim society to another. It is not wholly and solely based on religion but culture as a primary factor. Generally, religion is not an "enemy" to modern science and technology. It is a "friend." In particular, Islam is in "harmony" with modern science and technology. Of course, science deals with the realities of this material world, while religion is concerned with the eternal world. Equally valid, both are "distinct" entities. Having said that we might equally reflect on the fact that European "domination of Muslim world made the Muslims weak and powerless; it had made them cynical and despondent as well” (Siddiqi, 1982, p86). However, the West is also passing today through a "crisis of modernity, [in that] the forces of attraction combined with efficiency, productivity, growth investment, and consumption have dispossessed a part of [man's, in a generic term,] humanity" (Ramadan, 2009.pp. 6-7). Islam is not opposed to social reform, progress, and the general well-being of humans, as long as they are pursued without harm. The object of contestation is the "manner" in which they are pursued. Within the Islamic world itself, there are "differences between persons, parties, and governments who are moderate, non-expansionist and nonviolent and those who are anti-modern and antiWestern, extremely intolerant, expansionist and violent” (Kirkpartick, 1993, p 23). The West refers to the latter group as Islamic fundamentalists whose primary "target" is their regimes and their external supporters. For the benefit of hindsight, the word “fundamentalism” is a term invented far back in 1920 by one Rev. Curtis Lee Laws. The term was further used by his Baptist and Presbyterian fellows who took an oath to be loyal to the fundamental basis of their Christian faith (Mamdani, 2004, p.38). Some international relations scholars define “Islamic Fundamentalist movements as reactive phenomena to the social, cultural, political, and economic effects of rapid modernization and neoliberal globalization” (Waugh and Wannas, 2003, p.22), happening in Islamic areas such as the Middle East. Islamic revivalism is not only men’s affairs but also women. For instance, fundamentalist Muslim sisterhood movement upholds “conservative values,” by putting on a hijab or headscarf. Fundamentalism is associated with religious extremism and terrorism. Thus, for many Western secularists, moderate Muslims are those who advocate secular liberalism. Conservative or traditionalist Muslims are regarded as fundamentalist, theologically close-minded, suspicious or extreme (Roose 2013, pp.483-484). The image of Islam is fabricated in western mass-media. Western cultural values are portrayed in the mass media as the culture par-excellence, a paradigm for an individual society to emulate with relative ease. The fact also remains that every religion has its cultural characteristics, and Islam is not an exception. With these backdrops, Muslims and advocates

180

Mohammed B. Sillah

of modernization should "avoid encounter," instead of both parties should create a transparent balance of mutual understanding, through the lenses of "trust" and "dialogue." They should seek to create a balance between traditional forces and the inevitable necessities of modern life. On the subject of ethnicity and modernization, social scientists often use the word tribe and ethnicity group "synonymously." It denotes groups that have an ancestral, lineage, and linguistic culture. One may wonder if there is any inhabited continent in the world that is more ethnically diverse than Africa. Ethnic “fragmentation” has been a traditional reality on the continent. Ethnic groups are not the same people, even though they may share the same territorial nationality or citizenship. They are “distinct” from one author, just like how Swiss, Swede, and Spaniards are different. In West Africa, like the rest of tropical Africa, all of the ethnic groups speak different languages; they may do things distinctly, and their thinking processes and behavior patterns vary significantly. However, the fact remains that there are cross-culture continuities underneath these ethnic differences. At independence Africans would “inherit” three levels of “subjective identity”: one was “racial identity,” which resulted in the formation of Pan-African consciousness and became a belief and rational as well as a rallying mechanism for the “ideology” of continental unity; the second was “territorial identity” which was used as a platform for “nationalism”; and the third was “ethnic identity” which was associated with tribal sentiment. These underlying factors became their basis for African nationalism, an ultimate “tool” for self- determination. Precisely, forces that propelled African nationalism were the “movements of raciallyconscious [African] modernists [then] seeking to create new politics and cultural nationalities out of the heterogeneous peoples living within the artificial boundaries” imposed by the former (Englebert and Dunn, 2013 p. 90) imperial powers. During the struggle for independence, ethnicity was the main "levers” of social mobilization and would continue to be used following independence. The new elites saw ethnic groups as “efficient conditions” that usually form a unified force in order to secure the distribution of the sources of modernization. For instance, they may have a shared desire for the building of schools, construction of roads, and other modern infrastructural initiatives in their region. They may also endorse the granting of agricultural subsidies for the crops grown in their region (Englebert and Dunn, 2013, p. 76). In terms of modernization, the paradigm revolves around “dichotomy” between modernity and tradition. Technologically developed nations are “playing a game of global ‘keep up’, not ‘catch-up’. They want to stay competitive in knowledge-based industries and nurture creative industries” (Balaam and Dillman, 2011, p. 240). Modernization policy changes are designed and implemented to fit into the new systems of Western Technological and industrial societies. In the words of Balaam and Dillman; “Innovation is promised for political openness, vast educational opportunities, labor, mobility, and other characteristics that only a limited number of countries can quickly turn [it] to their advantage” (Balaam and Dillman, 2011, p. 240). The core-peripheral asymmetry revolves around modernization theories, uni-linear growth models, and efficiency-equity debates” (Aryeetey-Attoh, 1997, p. 239). Modernization theory attracted African leaders in the 1950s and 1960s because it gave them the road to “catch up" with the Advanced Western nations at a rapid state. Modernization theorists assumed that a blend of "capital know-how," coupled with economic growth would "proceed on a uni-linear path of self-persistence and prosperity, and [developing] countries would make a transition from traditional to modern states” (Aryeetey-

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

181

Attoh, 1997, p. 239). In other words, Modernization theorists sought to transform African nations through the introduction of modern industries and modern models of organization. They thought that for Africa to develop, it must break away from shackles of traditional social institutions and communal land ownership. The contending school against the democratic capitalist school has been the “Marxian,” a doctrine exported by the former Soviet Union and China. Their prescription for development was that developing nations could emancipate themselves from the trap of the global “capitalist stronghold” only if they take the path of “non-capitalist” development strategy. Generally, the Marxian assumption holds that developing nations such as the African states "could secure a brighter future only when they control the means of production through central planning.” (Nyang, 1992, p. 431). Critics of modernization theory argue that modernization process comes with some cost, in that it “alters the physical environment by introducing heavy machinery and cutting down trees to make room for factories and plantations where new materials are grown and shipped abroad for profit… which affects mental changes in the way the modernizing people see and relate to their social reality” (Nyang, 1992, p. 431). One may observe that since the era of colonialism, the tools for Western-style industrialization was denied to almost all African nations. The transfer of technology from the West to Africa is mainly still a remote possibility. On the political front, scholars dealing with modernization theory claim that the politics of participation is what defines modernity. In other words, political modernity is associated with the inception of democratic ideals. In this regard, "political institutions, norms, and power configuration are beyond… the family, lineage and tribal structures” (Kilson, 1969, p. 7). In another perspective, Anas B. Malik believes that the “level of political community a society achieves reflects the relationship between its political institutions and social forces which comprise it, where a social force is an ethnic, religious, territorial, economic, or status group” (Malik, 1999, p. 23). However, revisionists on the theory of modernization assume that "tradition" and modernity "coexist" and are not mutually exclusive categories” (Malik 1999, p. 23). Regarding ethnicity, “the search for identity in multiethnic nation-states is exceedingly crucial and problematic” (Mujahid, 2001, p.15). Like other regions of tropical Africa, ethnic identity in West African nations can pose severe challenges to governments. The newly independent states are confronted with the question of ethnic communities, each with its priority and interest, coupled with competing loyalties. Scholars like Robert Bates uses the "rational choice approach" to the analysis of ethnicity. Bates’ approach is based on the assumption that “individuals make minimal cost-benefit decisions to maximize their selfinterest” (Englebent and Dunn, 2013, pp. 75-76). In Africa’s multiethnic structures, it was believed that there was a possibility to attain an “ethnic compact” between the national regime and ethnic heads that would be endorsed by all ethnic groups in the society. It was claimed that African governments could deal with this divergence of ethnicity with equity, whether the community is more significant or small. It was taken for granted that the state was “capable of resolving conflicts between minorities and majorities by protecting individual rights” (Schraeder, 2000, p. 140). To put this argument in another perspective, African rulers dedicated to creating an ethnic compact would endeavor to foster an “ethnic balance” by using the value of “proportionality principle,” the process in which the nation’s resources, such as government jobs, federal budget allocations, and even political representations are carried out in accordance with ethnic community’s “percentage” of the

182

Mohammed B. Sillah

country’s population. By using the concept of “proportionality,” would be attempting to make each group happy of its share of economic and political benefits. According to Peter J. Schraeder, even those who governed their nations with authoritarian styles would take consideration of the significance of creating an ethnically balanced regime. As Schraeder further observed: "a democratically elected president, an authoritarian military leader, a hereditary monarch, a revolutionary Marxist, or Islamic revivalist” (Schraeder, 2000, p. 142), usually acknowledge the ethnic composition of the nation and try to secure ethnic interests in order to maintain national stability. Further, the social dimension of modernization theory is found in the disciplines of sociology and other social sciences such as psychology. Some scholar’s defined modernization as the process by which individuals replaces their old ways of doing things in favor of advanced modern “outlook on life.” Modernization theorists claim that, “ethnic divisions in African states are impediments or hindrance to material progress. The prescription is that ethnic cleavage has to "fade" away and substituted in its place modernizing societies in order to achieve “melting pot” nationalism like what the United States and Western Europe has achieved. A unified effort on the part of the Africans would produce a modern society composed of “urbanization” which entails human mobility from a rural setting to towns or cities, “exposure” to print and electronic media, as well as modern schools and factories. There are modernization theorists, such as Peter J. Shrader, who believe that African nations are treading on the path leading to the achievement of industrialization and modern form of comparative democracies. The dilemma of African development has been premised on external machination and internal contradictions, especially during the Cold War when the East and West bipolarity used Africa as one of the theaters of conflict. The post-colonial broad-based social progress continued to be measured through the lens of Western modernity in terms of democracy and economic development. Africans should adopt the synthesis of tradition and modern necessities in the process of their development programs. Africa’s economic problems per se do not stem from its traditional social structures but derive from colonial and neocolonial intrusion. The massive influence of capital into manufacturing sector required for Africans to make a transition to modernity. The surplus income they generate from the sale of agricultural and mineral products should be used into the manufacturing sector in order to free themselves from the endless cycle of dependence on imports. This prospect would strengthen the export sector. Equally significant is that African states should strengthen the African Union (AU) as a supranational entity. The formation of a common market can help solve most of the social problems Africa has been experiencing since independence. Continental integration is imperative for the common good of its people. Africa’s economy continues to thrive, even though it still suffers from the legacy of colonialism and corrupt leadership.

ETHNIC COMMUNITIES IN GENERAL PERSPECTIVE Scholars like Joshua Goldstein defines an ethnic group as "a people who share an ancestral language, cultural… ties and common identity (Golstien, 1994, p.154). Dominik Koter in a similar note defines ethnic identity as "identities based not only on ethnicity per se

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

183

but also on language, race, religion, caste and tribe” (Koter, 2016, p.1). In the process of natural growth and maturity, the individual gradually becomes conscious of his ethnic identity through group interaction. In some cases ethnic group consciousness may develop into “nationalist sentiment.” For example, the United States is inhabited by different ethnic communities, but they all collectively identify themselves as Americans, a common denominator. However, in countries “where millions of members of a single ethnic group live as the majority of the population in their ancestors’ land, they usually think of themselves as a nation” (Goldstein, 1994, p.154). This group of people with the same cultural lineage may develop an aspiration to establish its nation with all the characteristics or features of a state. Similar to the definition of ethnic groups, Raju G.C. Thomas succinctly defines a nation as “a group of people who share a language and culture, often belong to the same race and religion, and share the historical experience" (Thomas, 1994, p. 41). For instance, the constellations of Igbo people in eastern Nigeria and the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey. The Japanese, Italians, and Iranians may be classified as single national ethnic communities comprising the "overwhelming bulk" of those countries' demographics. Iran, in particular, constitutes about "7 percent" or more ethnic groups called Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Jews, Bahais, and other minorities. However, the majority of the Ethnic Iranian composition is the Persians, a group of people who embrace the religious version of Imamate Shia Islam. Further, despite time and space since the Italian unification, Italians continue to see themselves as Sicilians, Sardinians, Romans or Florentines. The "Italian linguistic-cultural unity" (Thomas, 1994, p.42) continues to scheme. As Massima d'Azeflio declared in the chamber of the newly created Italian general Assembly in 1860, "Having made Italy, we must now make Italians" (Thomas, 1994, p.42). The Somalis in Eastern Africa are also considered one linguistic-cultural group, notwithstanding they constitute various family clans, a recipe for an inter-clan war, present reality in Somalia. Arabs may be categorized as a nation based on their common Arabic language, culture, and shared historical experience, and to a particular degree, religion and race. However, the fact also remains that the Gulf Arabs are racially different from the North African Arabs. Religiously, there are Christian Arabs as minorities in “predominantly” Muslim Arab Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt. Because of these differences, the Arabs have a serious obstacle; that is, their dream of “panArab unification remains elusive” (Thomas, 1994, p.42). In this same vein, some define an ethnic group as a term synonymous of a nation. However, this is problematic, for the word “community” endorses the "minority status of groups within a state dominated by another national group" (Anderson et al., 2013, p.149). Classic examples are the Albanians in Serbia and the Basques in northern Spain. The Principle of national self- determination gives nations of the legal right to “choose their own political status, whether that be an autonomous unit within an existing state or a new state based in this common indemnity, [which] obviously entails some degree of a political control over a geographic area” (Viotti and Kauppi, 2013, p235). A classic example is one major successful breakup of an existing state during the Cold War is Bangladesh, which was East Pakistan, declaring itself as an independent sovereign nation. It accomplished this goal through a bloody war. Ethnic identity as a cultural phenomenon is a long-standing tradition in Africa. The paradox is that most of the time, groups coexist in peace and harmony; but at times they are "understood" as cause of disunity and conflict. Such as the war of secession of the Igbos in eastern Nigeria against that nations federal government, and the war of genocide carried out by the Hutu against the minority Tutsi in Rwanda. Some scholars and political observers have

184

Mohammed B. Sillah

expressed the view that colonial agents and their governments also “contributed to the creation of identity, [because] populations that may originally have been fragmented with complex patterns of cultural identity started identifying with the new categories” (Englebert and Dunn, 2013, p.68). The assertion is validated through the framework of rural-urban migration. As some areas of West African landscapes become urbanized, they gravitated rural migration to the cities constructed by the colonial governments. These new developments “reinforced [the already established] patterns of identity formation” (Englebert and Dunn, 2013, p. 71). In this case, Africans from diverse ethnic backgrounds met each other in the newly built towns and cities. Many rural migrants rented accommodations where different tribes and classes share the same apartment units, or live in the same compound. On these premises, they had acquaintances and also indifferences based on their ethnic outlooks. Employment opportunities to earn wage income were motivating factors for domestic and intra-African economic migrants. Different ethnic compositions do not support policies of separation and segregation, for the ethnic group can live together in harmony for success. It is a viable lesson to learn in the process of nation-building. In modern Africa, ethnicity is used as a source of personal identity. It is the fundamental pillar of society and state. Some commentators term ethnic loyalty as "tribalism instead of nationalism" (Curtain, 1990, p. 579). In Sierra Leone, wherever Muslims and Christians are in contact, there is often an atmosphere of tolerance and understanding, regardless of ethnic affinity. Even though some social science analysts deemed ethnicity as the principal source of conflict in the African continent. Ethnicity indeed has continued to be the visible determinant factor of individual and group political behavior in Africa at large. In certain scholarly circles, it is assumed that ethnic sentiment could reduce: “… as the habit of national citizenship becomes the norm; as the state penetrates to the far reaches of society, and as the African economies become more diversified” (Ziegler, 1991, p. 473). In a nutshell, the prediction reflects the heterogeneous nature of African societies as Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is composed of seventeen ethnic groups. During the colonial era, a sharp distinction existed between the people of Freetown and those who lived in the interior. The residents of Freetown were collectively known as Creoles (former African freed slaves brought back to the African nation from England and the Americas). Sierra Leone became their permanent home. They were Westernized people who introduced a new linguistic culture called Krio (derived from a “West Indian Patios” of English). The language subsequently became a lingua-franca in the nation. They became traders, and many of them became "barristers, doctors, and clerk in colonial Government and mercantile service" (Macmillian, 1968, p. 234). Another group that played a role in the art of creativity were the Vai. The Vai, in particular, had a distinction of having developed over a century ago a "syllabi script of 160 symbols, one of the indigenous African scripts" (Clifford, 1974, p.130). However, the intrusion of the British colonizers and the introduction of their language as an instrument of domination interrupted the full development of the Vai script. Though the tribes speak different languages, they live close to each other. Ethnicity and nepotism are factors in national politics, but there has been no serious conflict between or among groups. Each group feels secure in the country. This, therefore, militates against David Ziegler’s assertion that “… security for an ethnic group can be found only when that group controls its state" (Ziegler, 1991, p. 475). In essence, within the Sierra Leone social milieu, there is cross-cultural ethnic interaction manifested in the form of inter-marriages, friendships, and other social areas of human relationship. It must, however, be noted that none

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

185

of the languages is developed as an official means of communication. Further, a collective ethnic identity is "secured" with the different ethnic groups through the creation of social institutions. The principal organization in Medeland is the Poro Society, whose membership constitutes all adult males. Another all-male organization in Mendeland is Wunde (pronounced as Wonday). In Temmeland, specifically Tonklili District is the Poro/Soco Society. Among the Limbas in the north and Western area is the Gbangbani Secret Society. The other smaller secret societies such as Orjeh are less significant in Sierra Leone’s political contest. The Creole communities within the Western area have the Free Mason secret societies as John R. Cartright states: These [secret] societies seem to have been the indirect means by which uniformity both in government and social customs was made possible among the categories of widely scattered and relatively independent communities. However, this uniformity of structure did imply any limiting of the autonomy of different chiefdoms; each would go its own way (Cartwright, 1970, p.13). The Poro/Soco, the Wunde, and the Gbangbani- all conducted most of their rituals and meetings in the bush. The physical environment or ecology is essential for their social existence. Saving the forest, therefore, is imperative, which qualifies them as friends of the environmentalist. Besides the indigenous ethnic communities, we also have the settlement of the Lebanese and other people of Middle Eastern origin. The Lebanese arrived in Sierra Leone dates back to the nineteenth century. Today, many of them are citizens of the country, deriving this status from African mothers by the Sierra Leone Citizenship Act. There are also small groups of Indian, Pakistan, Chinese, and other Asian nationals. Multiculturalism is a fact of life, and the Lebanese and other Asians are now integrated part of the melting pot reality of Sierra Leone's socio-economic and political nationalism.

ISLAM IN SIERRA LEONE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Islam was brought to Western Sudan (now West Africa) by the Arab-Berbers from North Africa since the seventh century. It first entered the ancient empire of Ghana and later spread to the various part of West Africa at different periods. By the sixteenth century or even earlier it had reached Sierra Leone and was disseminated in this country by the Susu, Fulah and Mandinka tribes from Futa Jallon in Central Guinea. This group immigrated to Sierra Leone after Alfa Karamoko of Futa Jallon in present-day Guinea had declared a holy war in 1726 against those Muslims who were not living according to the fundamental tenets of Islam and against non-believers (Clark, 1982, p.102). Hence, the spread of Islam in the country was facilitated by the local and immigrant Muslims (Trimingham 1968). In 1767 the Fulani Muslims invaded the land of the Limbas in the northern part of Sierra Leone and defeated the inhabitants. In 1798-1799, under the leadership of Alimamy Bedemba, they launched a war against the Yalunka in the north and later took the war of conversion/reversion to Sumbaya, Solima, and Falaba. Some of the new settlers in the Falaba area prospered in trade and farming and undertook the teaching of Islam. Some became pastoralists, rearing cattle. These groups of Fulah and Yalunka also became prominent in local politics and eventually became sub-chiefs in Korinadugu District (Bah, 1989, pp.2-3). In the mid-nineteenth century, a member of the Mande-speaking group, Mansa Kelle, conquered Yoniland, an area which is today part of the Tonkolili District in the north, and

186

Mohammed B. Sillah

facilitated the spread of Islam in the region. Mansa Kelle appointed some prominent figures in the Fulah community to administer certain areas in Yoniland. One of these men was Ahmadu Jalloh who is now regarded as the founder of the Fula-Mansa dynasty of Yoniland (Bah, 1989, p.4). It is, however, essential to note here that the Temne predominantly inhabited Yoniland, and the Fulah community came there as conquerors and settlers. As they were a minority, the Fulah fell under the influence of the Temne culture. This cultural assimilation also came about as a result of intermarriages between Fulahmen and Temne women. Hence, many in the succeeding Fula generations could identify themselves as Fulah-Temne. Most of them could no longer speak the Fulah language. Thus, while the Fulah made a breakthrough in converting the Temne to Islam, they (Fulahs) themselves lost part of their viable culture in the process. One of the members of the Fulah generations, Amadu Wurie (of Gbinti), became a notable educator in Sierra Leone in the1950s and 1960s and subsequently served as minister of education before his retirement from office.

THE ADVENT OF COLONIALISM IN SIERRA LEONE The general claim posed by some political commentators and historians alike is that the European imperial powers “Balkanized” Africa by partitioning the continent into a “multitude of small and big states in the manner of the Balkans Europe” (Englebert and Dunn, 2013, p. 27), needs to be carefully re-examined. For scientific argument, pre-colonial Africa had no political unity in terms of the physical integration of states or societies. In reality, European colonization “actually consolidated the myriad of the different political system into some 50 territorial states. Each country in Africa is a product of European territorial construct. We should also make it categorically clear that European imperial ambition to colonize Africa was based on economic and strategic interests, which they accomplished through the use of force and diplomacy. Africa itself is a diverse landmass and is the richest in the world in terms of natural resources. It is naturally endowed with abundant deposits of gold, and diamond, rutile, uranium, iron ore, copper, platinum, bauxite, and the strategic resources such as oil and gas. These resources are essential elements of industrial development. The subsequent development of European economic appetites for these products, coupled with other factors, resulted in their occupation of all the regions of Africa, including West Africa. The first European to set foot on what is now the West African state of Sierra Leone was Pedro de Cintra, a Portuguese sailor who arrived there in 1462. He gave the present Portuguese name (Sierra = mountain and Leona = lion) to the area. Perhaps he and his crew were under the impression that the strange sounds coming from the mountains were roaring of lions. When the Portuguese researched the area, it was inhabited by the Temne who called it Kaimp, which was later renamed Freetown by the British. However, they retained the Portuguese name of the country (MacMillan, 1968, p.131). The Portuguese stayed on the peninsula for about a century, competing with the British and the French for the sphere of influence. In the early nineteenth century, the British succeeded in planting the Union Jack to assert their claim over the area. They also took the initiative to abolish the slave trade in 1807 and urged other European traders to follow the British example. In retrospect, however, in 1787 the English abolitionists had decided to use Sierra Leone as an experimental place for freed slaves from England and elsewhere following the English Chief Justice Lord

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

187

Mansfield’s decision in 1772 to make slavery illegal on English Soil. Sierra Leone subsequently became a British colony. But, before this period, the British held the peninsula (Freetown) through negotiations with the local population. Before the arrival of the Europeans, the region had several small kingdoms. In other words, the indigenes had already established traditional political hierarchical order before the European introduction of their modern political system. In 1896 the British declared the interior of Sierra Leone a Protectorate; traditional rulers were forced to relinquish their titles for new ones such as paramount chiefs. The new title made the indigenous king or queen’s political power subordinate to the District Commissioner (now District Officer) who had jurisdictional powers over the chiefdoms. The paramount chiefs were assigned new tasks of collecting taxes, maintaining peace and other, recruiting young men and women for labor or works such as road and railway constructions, and others. This system became known as an indirect rule, initially experimented in Northern Nigeria by Lord Lugard. The chiefs became intermediaries between their people in the chiefdoms and the British colonial administration in Freetown, the central seat of the government. In the words of Mahmood Mamdani, “indirect rule signified a mediated despotism” (Mamdani 1996, p.17). Those hereditary rulers who opposed the new policy were arbitrarily deposed from their thrones and replaced by surrogate leaders — those chiefs who supported the British rules for life. The chiefs were included in the payroll of the colonial government. Some chiefs’ incomes even became higher than the"… new African income groups such as merchants, businessmen, lawyers, and doctors" (Kilson, 1966, p.59). The Chiefs' financial status became parallel to that of the "urbanized" modern elite groups and would continue in the contemporary post-independence period. The new constitution for a representative or electoral government has guaranteed the preservation of the institution of the Chieftaincy, as established by customary law and by legislation (see the New Constitution of Sierra Leone 1991, and Sierra Leone Gazett Extraordinary, 1991, p.53). In sum, the new colonial order brought together the community of diverse ethnic groups whom we now call Sierra Leoneans, Those African Creoles with European names, European religion (Christianity) and a resemblance of European culture, became the models of the highly assimilated Africans. They accepted the system and the rewards it provided for those who embraced; others who were critical, championed the cause of African culture and African identity (Sillah, 1987, p.11) instead.

COLONIAL REACTION TO ISLAM IN SIERRA LEONE The colonial government in Sierra Leone at first reacted to the rapidly growing influence of Islam in that country with an ambivalent attitude. While they could not suppress the further propagation of this faith, they soon began to perceive its rapidly growing influence in the country as a threat to their interest. They had learned their lessons in certain parts of West Africa, where Islam was a threat to their political domination. The dual mandate tested on the Nigerian experience by Lord Lugard had taken effect in almost all of the British colonies in Africa. Interestingly, during the period of the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, some Muslims in Sierra Leone made tremendous progress in Islamic Sciences and were considered specialists in Islamic law (sharia) and theology. Learned Muslim scholars acquired

188

Mohammed B. Sillah

local names such as Alfa Karamoko, Fode and Alimamy. Thus, the British saw the Muslims as their potential rivals for the hearts and minds of Africans. Islam indeed had "certainly provided a basis for trans-ethnic co-operation and interaction” (Harrel-Bond, 1978, pp.105106) between or among Sierra Leoneans and other African Muslims both in Freetown and in the provinces. In particular, the British feared the spread of Islam following their experiences with the AKU Muslim community in Freetown. The AKU was ex-African slaves who had both Christian and Muslim names such as Mohammed Savage or Samson Ahmad Dean. However, despite their prolonged exposure to Christianity, they had rejected that faith and had continued to practice Islam. On several occasions, they “made separate demands to the colonial administration, sometimes resulting in indirect confrontation" (Bah, 1983, p.125) with the latter. The British intended to discourage the further spread of Islam. Interestingly, though the AKU had embraced Islam and had identified themselves with the broader Muslim community in Sierra Leone, they continued to maintain close social contact with the Christian community. As it is said, "T (heir) Anglo-African culture created anxiety in their search for an identity” (Bah, 1983, p.125). Indeed, Islamic education was also used to assert their identity as individual Muslims, and to promote unity within the Muslim community. In particular, Muslim leaders in Freetown not only want Muslim children to study or learn English, Science, and mathematics in school but also Islamic Studies. A Presbyterian Christian by the name of Edward W. Blyden developed an interest in the establishment of Islamic schools. Most Christians failed to realize that Islam pays excellent attention to education. To know how to read and write are the fundamental basis or foundations of Islam. Literacy is the first essential tool for communication in Islam. The fact, however, remains that many Muslims are considered backward and illiterate due to their lack of Western education. This assumption is sheer abysmal ignorance. It must be noted that before the arrival of Europeans in Africa, Muslims had educated elites in their respective societies. West Africa per se had established an “intellectual tradition…which studied Logic and Prosody as well as the technological sciences” (Hunwick, 1992, p105). Thus, Blyden’s endeavors in promoting Islamic schools in Sierra Leone was a continuation of the already established tradition, though not on the Western model. Blyden originally came from the Virgin Islands in the West Indies. The New York Colonization Society offered him a free passage to Liberia (Blyden, 1873, p.14 and Lynnch, 1963, p. 53). A West African state established in 1822 by that organization for the relocation of emancipated blacks, Liberia was given independent status in 1847 and Blyden arrived there in 1851. After his school career, he became a West Indian Pan-African intellectual and spent most of his life in West Africa. During the first phase of Blyden's service in Sierra Leone in 1872, he was appointed Agent of Interior of that country. Under the auspices of Governor Arthur Kennedy, Blyden explored the interior of Sierra Leone and went as far as Timbo, the then administrative center and the seat of Islamic education in the Kingdom of Futa Jallon, which is now part of Guinea (Conakry). Upon his return to Freetown, he resigned from his post in October 1873 and returned to Liberia (Givens, 1976, p.vi; Sillah, 1991. pp23-42). He went to Lagos (Nigeria) and worked as Director of Islamic Education there from 1896-1897. He left Lagos and visited England and later returned to Sierra Leone. In 1899 he worked under the auspices of Governor Nathan. Towards the end of 1899, he returned to Liberia and

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

189

in the following year (1900) assisted in reorganizing Liberia College. For the next twelve years until his death in 1912, Blyden would work to promote Islamic Studies in Sierra Leone. Blyden intended to give opportunities to young Sierra Leone Muslims to attend schools that were not under the operation of Christian order. Even though the British themselves intended to make Sierra Leone a Christian colony, the Government recognized the significance of Islam and its Muslim clerics. Furthermore, realizing the nature of the Islamic movement in Sierra Leone, the imperial authorities began to tolerate and accommodate it. They began to use its literate members to administer the newly colonized Africans and to communicate with the collaborating local rulers (chiefs). The British employed learned Muslims to translate letters and other pertinent documents from Arabic to English and vice versa. Having realized the potential of the Arabic script, the government began to encourage the establishment of Islamic elementary schools in the country. Thus, in 1901, Governor C.A. King-Herman appointed Blyden to serve a five-year term as Director of Islamic Education (Lynnch, 1965, p.250). Blyden had developed an interest in the study of Arabic literature in the early 1860s, which motivated him to visit Egypt and the Middle East in 1867 to acquire basic training in Islamic teachings. He later wrote on Islam in West Africa. He perceived this religion as a unifying force in that part of the region of the African continent (Jamburiah, 1903, Minute paper 2037, S.L. Public Archive). Even though he was a Christian, he was impressed by the message of Islam. As he eloquently put it: “If the divinity of religion may be inferred from the variety of races among whom it has been diffused, and the strength of its hold upon them, then there is no religion that can proffer greater claims than Islam” (Beshir, 1967, p.241). Though Blyden was a non-Muslim, he played a prominent role in the development of Islamic influence in Freetown and its vicinity. For example, in 1828, the Church Missionary Society issued a report in the form of a petition to the colonial authorities that Muslim teachers and their followers had overwhelmingly settled in the Western area. In light of this complaint, Lieutenant-Governor Findlay forbade the Muslims from settling in the villages occupied by the “Liberated Africans” (Givens, 1976, p.vi). The governor advised the Creole community not to imitate the Muslim and traditional African code of dressing but to dress like the Europeans. This warning of the colonial authorities was taken seriously because earlier, these same people had encouraged Muslim traders to come to the Western area. Some of these British officials thought that Muslim traders would bring lucrative economic benefits to the area. However, despite some official opposition to the Muslims, the development of Islamic schools, mosques and other Islamic institutions continued unabated. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Muslim clerics and Islamic schools were already on the rise to higher levels (Skinner, 1989 p.106). Some Christians in Sierra Leone held Islam in high esteem and admired the role of the faith in community values. For instance, in 1904, F.A. John, a Wesleyan missionary, told his congregation in Freetown that “Christians could learn a great deal about piety, simplicity, African identity, attention to religious devotions, marriage and conversion of the “heathen” by studying the Islamic belief and practices” (Skinner 1989, p.107). He blamed the African Christian community for their ignorance of Arabic, Islam, and of another African identity. Dr. John A. Scotland, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, advised his Christian brethren to go to the interior of Sierra Leone and learn about African civilization rather than spending their vacations in Europe (Harrel-Bond, 1978).

190

Mohammed B. Sillah

Blyden indeed capitalized on this new call from Islam identity by closely working with the British to set up Islamic schools. However, most of the schools were established in Freetown and the neighboring areas. In retrospect, the first Islamic school that was established in the country was Madrasa Harunia. It was established under the auspices of the government. It had its origin during the administration of Sir James Hay in1891 and was established following the recommendation of Acting Governor Nathan who opened the school in person. The project for the establishment of the Madrasa Sulaimania was approved after Blyden had decided to take over the immediate supervision of the school. It came under the government grant in May 1902 and opened in January 1903 (Harrel-Bond, 1978). Further, those Muslims in Sierra Leone who tried to create schools based on ethnicity met strong reaction or opposition from the Director of the Islamic schools. For instance, the Mandinka School, which was set up in 1899, did not win the approval of the Blyden. He objected to the idea for the mere fact that other Sierra Leoneans would perceive the school as an exclusively Mandinka institution. He thought that this would be a dangerous precedent for the entire society. When the leading members of other ethnic groups failed to develop an interest in the school, the Mandinka community reacted indifferently and began to neglect its welfare. Because of its ethnic group affiliation, the school never had a regular Arabic teacher. On Blyden’s recommendation, the Mandinka School was reorganized and renamed “Madrasa Islamia” to remove all vestiges of tribal exclusiveness. Blyden appointed Omaru Jamburuyah, the Fula Alimamy (head man) as the headmaster of the school, whom he praised as “a man of Arabic education and …of great force of character, and highly respected” (Blyden, Minute Paper 1726, 1903, S.L. Public Archive). Blyden’s distaste for ethnic-group sentiment came from his realization that it would not promote unity in the country. Even though his schools were Islamic oriented, they admitted children of different religious backgrounds (Blyden, Minute Paper 1726, 1903, S.L. Public Archive). He persuaded the colonial government to encourage this pattern of education to bring the children from various ethnic groups closer to each other. Retrospectively, by 1826 the Mandinka community had increased in Freetown. They were known for their commercial skills, their devotion to Islam and knowledge of Arabic. Because of their Islamic exposure, they exercised a great degree of influence among the Temne in the Western area. By 1827, the Mandinka and Susu Muslims from the north had "gained a formidable impact on the economic and social development of the colony” (Mohammedan Education 1901, S.L. Public Archive). Because of his respect for the Muslim community, Blyden appealed to the British authorities to upgrade the standard of Islamic schools to the level of other non-Islamic schools in the colony. He further urged the authorities to “devise a system of instruction for the training of the Muslim suited to his tastes and adapted to the necessities of his future life” (Skinner, 1989, p.105). The early colonial establishment witnessed a large concentration of the Muslim communities in the various parts of the country. The authorities recognized this growing religious influence, and there was a dire hand need for more Islamic schools. But there were no sufficient funds to do so. The government bore only about thirty percent of the cost of the Islamic schools. (Mohammedan Education 1901, S.L. Public Archive). The Governor of the colony must approve the fund by the recommendation of the Director of Education. The colonial policy further specified that it was not only Muslims who would be appointed as headmasters by the colonial authorities but also Christians who had some excellent

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

191

knowledge of Islamic values and had the appropriate credentials to run the schools. It must further be stated since 1909 the colonial authorities in charge of education had decided to help the Muslim community in Sierra Leone to run their educational institutions, though the Government originally founded them. Government assistance, in this regard, included (but not limited to) elementary school buildings, furniture, and appropriate budgets (Hunter 1915, papers No. 43, S.L. Public Archive). In section 16, sub-section I of the Educational Ordinance 1911, the Manager or local manager was responsible for the payment of the teachers’ salaries. Under Section 13, Islamic schools would receive from the public funds of the colony and grants for the payment of teachers’ salaries (Hunter, 1918, papers e26, S.L. Public Archive). According to government policy, those indigenous Sierra Leonean Muslims who were entrusted to teach at the Madrasas (Islamic Schools) and secondary schools must be welltrained in their subject areas such as Arabic, Quranic and Islamic studies. In 1913, the colonial educational decision-makers introduced some handicraft manufacturing process or agricultural work for men. For females, they introduced domestic science such as needle work-embroidery as a compulsory subject in the elementary schools. This was to give the children a healthy and practical outlook on life. To the British, Islamic schools in Sierra Leone were yet in their infancy and that the people had not been accustomed to the new system of education. The equipment and apparatus had been confined within the narrow compass of their private Arabic schools, wherein the Reed-pen, the wooden slab (or slate) and the bare ground were the appliances and furniture necessary for learning. The introduction of the Western model of classroom education did contribute to the propagation of knowledge. Meanwhile, Islam was steadily spreading among the Mende and other ethnic groups in the eastern and southern parts of the country where many of the ethnic groups were practicing Christianity. Islam has thus become the predominant faith throughout the country today. Observers have identified the fastest growth area in the east and south, although the north remains the largest concentration of Muslims in the country. In assessing the place and role of Islam in Sierra Leone, one must state that this religion has created a bond of solidarity among people of different ethnic backgrounds. Muslim organizations also played an essential role in the spread of Islam. For example, the Sierra Leone Muslim Congress (SLMC) was formed in 1932 to unite the various Muslim communities in order to promote Islam and to give the community “a concerted effort in dealing with colonial Christian society,” (Kaplan, 1976, p.101). They endeavored to protect Muslim institutions and funded Islamic schools. However, in 1942, some members of Congress broke away and created the Muslim Association and established separate schools. The AKU (also known as the “Fourah Bay people’) live in the eastern part of Freetown. This Muslim community is said to be the descendants of the Yoruba ethnic group from Nigeria and Benin. They represent the earliest Muslim community in Freetown. They played a leading role in the founding of both the Muslim Congress and the Breakaway Muslim Association. Though they observe their African customs, they are strongly committed to the practice of Islam. They have established a big mosque in the eastern part of Freetown and have also built schools. The Ahmadiyya community established a mission in Magburaka, the administrative headquarters of Tonkolili District in the north. In 1945 an Ahmadiyya school was established in Bo, southern province, and this place later became the citadel of the movement. Three years later (1948), a prominent mission was established in Freetown (Fisher, 1962, p.73). Reports have shown that during the early period of the Ahmadiyya movement in Sierra Leone, the government terminated its support for the mission and the community was on the

192

Mohammed B. Sillah

brink of collapse. This decision was later reversed and the government decided to encourage the operation of the mission in the country. (Fisher, 1962, p.73). Today, the mission has established many primary and secondary schools all over the country. It has set up medical dispensaries or clinics in various parts of the nation. Regardless of one’s attitude toward the movement, the fact remains that it provides many services to Sierra Leoneans without necessarily making any significant breakthrough in conversion. Orthodox Muslims stay away from Qadiani institutions and also refuse to join other secret societies such as Poro in the Tonkolili Districts in the north, and the districts in the east and south. As said earlier, the Poro is a male-oriented secret society that exercises political and judicial influence in the community. The primary duty of society is to prepare young boys for initiation to adulthood. The Wunde perform a similar responsibility for young women. Some Muslims reject the activities of the Poro society, particularly, on the grounds that they are contrary to the tenets of Islam (Bah, 1983, pp.98-99). Thus, the influence of such secret societies is declining in areas that are under the influence of the Islamic faith. Muslim girls are still initiated into the female secret societies like the Sande or Bondo School. Each ethnic group has its name for this female society. The AKU of Fourah Bay, in the east of Freetown, have their own Bondo bush in the outskirts of the city. Both education and uneducated young girls are supposed to undergo the essential practical experience (including circumcision) and other training in child care and housekeeping at a certain period of their lives. In particular, female circumcision (graphically called in the Western world as “genital mutilation”) has been legislatively banned in Sierra Leone, but it is believed that some families persist in practicing it secretly.

THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE AND NATIONAL POLITICS When Sierra Leone became a Crown colony in 1808, the British decided to have firm control over the economy and politics of the country. In 1898, the Colonial Government Levied a hut tax on the inhabitants of the Protectorate. Bai Bureh, who was a chief in one of the chiefdoms in the area known as Port Loko, decided to defy the colonial order by mobilizing his warriors against it. After several fierce battles, Bai Brueh was defeated, captured, and sent into exile (Clifford, 1974, p. 68). The British authority did not disclose his destination. However, his name continued to be mentioned in the anal of history as a national hero of the resistance against injustice. Meanwhile, the news of Bai Bureh's war against the British researched the east and south of Sierra Leone. The Mende chiefs in these regions organized their warriors through their secret Poro Society. The Mende chiefs resented the idea and reality to rule their people under the auspices of the British and Creole hegemony. Influenced by the Poro Order, the people of the Mendeland regions "exploded.” Warriors moved with fury from one place to another, killing Europeans, Creoles indiscriminately, and "unpopular" chiefs deemed as collaborators. The British responded by sending a West African regiment loyal to them. The major weakness of the Mende uprising was the lack of better weapons and “effective leadership.” Before the conflict was over hundreds of Europeans and creoles and a few American Christian missionaries were killed. The leaders for the rebellion were apprehended, and it is reported that “eighty-three chiefs were executed, ninety-six imprisoned” (Clifford, 1974, p.68) and some were forced into exile with no

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

193

information about their destinations. After the Bai Brueh-Mende wars against their British adversaries, the tax system was reinstated. The chiefs who had maintained their loyalty to the British Crown remained in power with the latter's support. After these wars, the British consolidated their power firmly in these and all other areas of the country at large. Nonetheless, this struggle against colonialism helped create a community of sentiment that developed into African nationalism. The Swiss-French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau once expressed the view that: “the strongest is never strong enough to be always the master unless he transforms strength into right and obedience into duty” (Ebenstine, 1960 p.160). Rousseau was a member of the Enlightenment movement, which was international in scope. The goal of the Enlightenment thinkers was to give humanity progress and hope as well as human liberty. As Martin Kilson sums it up best: “The process of decolonization recognizes that African elite will replace the colonial oligarchy in the modern social system” (Kilson 1969, p.171). In West Africa, just like somewhere else in the continent, "…nationalist politicians seriously weakened the power of the colonial administration and significantly hastened their rise to power" (Bates, 2005, p.31; Thomas, 2007). The African nationalism in Sierra Leone was partially realized following the formation of political parties in the 1940s and 1960s, revealing the efforts towards national unity among the various ethnic groups. Notable amongst these parties were the current ruling party Sierra Leone People’s Party and All People’s Congress. The SLPP was formed in 1951, the outcome of a merger of three political parties: The Protectorate Educational Progressive Union (PEPU), The Peoples Party (PP) and the Sierra Leone Organization Society (SLOS). Milton Margai headed the SLPP: Following his elected victory in 1953, Dr. Margai became a leader of the government. In the following year (1954) he was accorded the title of the Chief Minister. In 1956 the Legislative Council was renamed the House of Representatives, and the same year civil unrest broke out in the chiefdoms of northern provinces. As Joyce P. Kaufman notes: "There are lessons to be learned from history, but we need to be willing to learn them" (Kaufman, 2017, p. x.) Indeed, the British did not learn their lesson in terms of the excess of their taxation system that resulted in the upheavals against them in the late nineteenth century. Also since chiefs became surrogate leaders of the British power politics arrangement, the former became unpopular in the eyes of their people. The chiefs were seen as colonial agents who have resorted in the systematic exploitation of their people as they (chiefs) assumed the role of tax collectors, labor supply, and other tasks. Some chiefs rule their people with British-style draconian policies. The agitation in the mid-twentieth century was directed against the colonial government in increasing taxes. Many people were wounded and killed during the turmoil. Many properties (including livestock) belonging to the paramount chiefs, section chiefs, ethnic group herdsmen and tribal authority members, were destroyed. The rebellious leaders passed an order requiring all members of the traditional ruling families to be killed on sight (Sillah, 1987, p. 12). It was a destructive, bloody crisis that nearly tore the country apart. That was one of the dark days in the political history of Sierra Leone, and was reminiscent of Bai Brueh’s tax war and Mendeland revolt against the same taxation system, except that their uprisings were direct toward foreign rules rather than their fellow local heads. Sierra Leone became an independent sovereign country in 1961 with Margai as head of the government. The African elite had successfully taken over the reins of governance from the “colonial oligarchy.” However, prior to the declaration of independence, there was a

194

Mohammed B. Sillah

political break down in the SLPP. One of its members, Siakas Stevens, broke away and formed the APC in July 1960. The initial slogan of the party was “elections before independence.” It is important to note that when the APC was formed, it promised to serve the interests of the masses by professing socialism. This doctrine was meant to introduce an egalitarian society, irrespective of class or ethnic origins. It asserted itself as a radical party seeking to establish a welfare state for the underprivileged. However, as we shall examine later, this avowed good was not pursued when the APC party took over the reins of the government. Even though Margai introduced the SLPP as a national party, it was predominantly a Mende party, dominated by Western-educated men and women and the southern chiefs (Sambomah, 1989, p. 9). Based on this Mende cultural affinity, Siaka Stevens, a trade unionist, saw political advantage in the injection of ethnicity in the political question of the country. He restructured his political platform and his APC party attracted northerners and the Creoles who developed an interest in hearing his great talks on the Mende political hegemony. Margai himself, it is known, used authoritarian methods in his party and the government; but on the national platform, he presented himself as a Democrat. Because of his move to secure the political rights of the people in the provinces who are the majority, he fell out with the Creole community in the western area (Freetown and its neighboring suburbs). However, he fully acknowledged the talent of the Creoles and their potential contributions to the welfare of Sierra Leone. Being an experienced and shrewd politician, he used the chiefs and his friends as his “personal information network, (Williams, 1991, p. 644) which it is said, was superior to the police or intelligence agencies. He tolerated opposition but remained suspicious. Reportedly, he “tried to suppress the results of a census which showed his Mende people in the minority in the provinces,” (Williams, 1991, p. 645) as compared to the Temne ethnic community. Because of this interethnic cleavage, some political analysts thought that “ethnic politics violate important democratic ideals, such as accountability, voter choice, and exclusiveness" (Koter, 2016, p. 31). His death in 1964 created a vacuum in the SLPP government. The nearest to the leadership helm was John Karefa-Smart, a medical doctor from the north, then serving as the minister of external affairs. He was denied succession, and instead Albert Margai, a lawyer, cabinet member, and the brother of the late Margai, was sworn in as the new prime minister. However, in March 1967 the APC won more seats than the SLPP. This electoral victory of the APC was unprecedented in Africa. Until the electoral upset of former President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia in November 1991, nothing like it has taken place in Africa. On March 27, 1967, the Governor General Sir Henry Lightfoot-Boston appointed Siaka Stevens as Prime Minister. Some political analysts have argued that the Governor General should have waited for the election results of the twelve paramount chiefs (representing each district). A few minutes after taking the oath of office, Stevens was placed under house arrest by the army led by Brigadier David Lansana. The Governor-General was also placed under restriction for acting unconstitutionally. However, a few minutes after Brigadier Lansana had declared martial law, he too was arrested by his junior officers who claimed that the former intended to restore Sir Albert Margai as Prime Minister and that could be a dangerous precedent for the country. The new military junta declared a curfew and created the National Reformation Council (NRC) as their party. The NRC needed leadership that was neither tied to the Mende clan nor to the Temne group. However, this was a complex issue, for considering the nature of cultural affinity and extended family systems in Sierra Leone, one cannot rule out the possibility of mixed lineage

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

195

or multi-ethnic backgrounds. Nonetheless, Lieutenant Colonel Ambrose Genda was appointed as the chairman of NRC. Later the junior officers felt that he was not the best candidate and opted for Lieutenant Colonel Andrew T. Juxon-Smith, who was later revealed to have come from the different parental background. He was thought to be a Shebro, a minority ethnic group. During this period, Siaka Stevens had fled to neighboring Guinea as a political refugee. His adversary, Albert Margai, went to London. After a few weeks, Lieutenant Colonel Juxon-Smith became a, and this promotion brought severe criticism from civilian politicians who had begun to resent the military rule. They accused the military junta of taking power with the intent of promoting themselves, raising their salaries, and staying in politics for an indefinite period. During his tenure of leadership, Juxon-Smith made some social reforms and in his bid to improve the economy; he reduced imports and scaled down public spending. He forced most of the senior civil servants to retire to open jobs for the younger generation, particularly for the secondary school and college graduates. He also instituted a two-shift work policy with a biweekly payment system in most governmental and private enterprises. He closed the railways, except those operating in the mining areas such as Marampa iron ore. However, some of these austerity measures made Juxon-Smith an unpopular figure among both politicians and intellectuals who resented his style of leadership. His opponent perceived his policies as too harsh and unrealistic. There followed intense opposition to his regime and popular agitation for civilian rule became louder (Sillah, 1990, p.25). Thus, when Juxon-Smith became reluctant or unwilling to return the country to constitutional rule as he was advised, a group of junior officers collaborated with some civilian elements and overthrew his military junta on Thursday, April 18, 1968. In the same month, the National Interim Council (NIC), led by Colonel John Bangura, invited Siaka Stevens, the leader of the APC party, handing power to him (Mazrui and Tidy, 1987, p.281). History, indeed will eventually by the best judge. This change of National Guard from the military panthers to the civilian paper tigers further cast a dark shadow on the democratic process in the country. Today, Juxon-Smith is remembered in the annals of Sierra Leone history as a man who instituted discipline and hard work in that country. On March 23, 1971, Brigadier John Bangura and his senior officers made an abortive coup and assassination attempt against Stevens and some of his cabinet ministers. Steven condemned the plot: “Vigilance is the price we have to pay for our liberty” (Williams, 1987, p.643). Subsequently, Bangura and some of his senior and junior officers were executed. Sierra Leone’s political history took a new turn. Those Sierra Leoneans who opposed Juxon-Smith’s military style of dictatorship for a constitutional government now began to develop second thoughts. Because of the fear and terror the execution created in the nation, since it was the first of its kind in post-independence in Sierra Leone, some members of Siaka Stevens’ government broke away from the party and formed a new party, the United Democratic Party (UPD) in October, 1970 under the leadership of Dr. John Karefa-Smart. Stevens reacted by declaring a state of emergency and banning the UDP. Two of the prominent leaders of that party, Mohammed Sorie Fornah, a medical doctor, and Ibrahim Taqi, a former journalist, were convicted of treason and executed. This event prompted one political analyst to say: “Stevens has only just started showing his true colors” (Williams. 1991, p. 643). The then Governor General of Sierra Leone, Sir Banja Tejan Sie, was dismissed from office by Stevens. Because of his mistrust of the Sierra Leone armed forces, Stevens invited Guinean troops under the defense treaty signed by President Ahmed Sekou Toure and

196

Mohammed B. Sillah

himself. On April 19, 1971, Stevens declared Sierra Leone a republic. The chief justice, Okoro Cole, then acting governor-general, became the first president. He appointed Siaka Stevens as Prime Minister that day, and on April 21, 1971 Justice Cole again swore in Stevens as the Executive President. Okkoro Cole was given back his post of the chief justice and head of the judiciary. Back in 1966, Sir Albert Margai had declared his intention of introducing a one-party state system in the country, but the idea was opposed by the APC and its supporters and was consequently shelved. But in subsequent years Steven foresaw the weaknesses of the SLPP, as some of its prominent members begun to defect to his ruling party (APC). He capitalized on the situation and declared a one-party state in June 1978. Before this declaration, however, Stevens’ government had experienced a series of student demonstrations and workers' strikes against the existing system. However, he survived the ordeal of "people's coup" and surrounded himself with young and dynamic talented men and women. Stevens himself was a high-school dropout, but his ambition made him a renowned leader in national and perhaps international political circles. He claimed that his father was a Limba (a northern ethnic group who are ten percent of the population) and his mother a Mende, who comprise thirty percent. He shrewdly used his bi-lateral lineage to further his political objectives. He is credited for integrating all ethnic factions in his government and for promoting national stability. However, some of his critics have labeled him as a man who tribally polarized the social fabric of the country through the method of “divide and rule.” As one writer puts it: “…ethnic competition was to take a more vicious form. The national wealth was mercilessly plundered by individuals who had far greater loyalty to their ethnic group than they had to the state. The institutionalization of corruption was the result of power sharing among the different ethnic groups” (West Africa No.3637, 1987, p. 808). Interestingly, individual candidates who attempt to run for political office usually utilize ethnicity as a political instrument. They also use “political parties under whose auspices they run” (Posner, 2005, p.107) for office. It is a usual pattern for political parties to invoke the term “national unity,” as they [parties] need to campaign across the ethnic divide for support. It is an existential precondition for winning elections, particularly for those candidates who come from minority groups; that they must present themselves above tribal affinities by following on “non-ethnic matters” to draw the attention of voters outside their ethnic circles. The fact also remains that ethnic cleavages drastically undermine nationalism. Siaka Stevens failed to direct the country toward progress. Under his government, Sierra Leone lost its status as a food exporter and became a net importer. A once prosperous nation was now drifting backward. Because of this economic malaise, it became classified among the least developed countries in the Global South. Henceforth, the country has continued with its struggle to develop in the twenty-first century. Finally, after seventeen years in power, Stevens retired from active politics in 1985. It was assumed that his vice president Sorie Ibrahim Koroma would succeed him, but the latter’s poor health, coupled with political intrigues within the administration itself, worked against him. President Stevens' second nominee, second vice president Francis Minah, was received with political discontent. However, President Stevens' critics thought that he deliberately stood in the way of his first and second vice presidents because he was not sure of his fate in their hands once he retired. Perhaps it was under this circumstance he chose a member of his Limba clan and close friend, the force commander Major General Joseph Saidu Momoh to succeed him. Therefore, besides being the first country where the incumbent

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

197

party lost to the opposition party, Sierra Leone remains the only country in Africa where a civilian ruler peacefully handed over power to a military officer. When President Momoh took over the seat of power in 1985, it was hoped that he would bring a new order leading to economic growth and the improvement of life. In his inauguration address, he talked about his new philosophy of Constructive Nationalism in which the interests of the nation were to supersede the interests of specific individuals, groups, and factions, "but without neglecting the legitimate and defensible needs and interests of individuals and groups” (West Africa, no.3637, p.808). To execute this public declaration into action, he instituted price controls on essential commodities. He established special squads with the intent of combating the “hoarding of price-controlled goods and the smuggling of imported and exported goods to neighboring countries” (West Africa No. 3637, p.808). However, most of those policies were not implemented. Instead, inflation continues at 124.2 percent, prices of essential goods remain too high for the consumers, especially the poor masses, and resources such as gold, diamonds, and cash crops are being smuggled out of the country. Students strike because of the lack of adequate educational facilities, and teachers strike because of late payment of salaries. All these problems created doubt in the nation as to the qualifications or ability of President Momoh to govern. His critics accused him of polarizing the country through the practice of tribalism as well as political and economic nepotism. For example, he became the chairman of EKUTAY. This “divide and rule” policy created suspicion among his ministers, cabinet members and even among some elements in the armed forces. Perhaps with this background in mind, a group of Mendes, Creoles, and other Sierra Leonean elements led by a police officer Kai carried out an abortive coup against President Momoh’s government in 1987. His vice president Francis Minah (an easterner) was also implicated in the coup plot. Moreover, "of the eighteen men who were sentenced to death for their part in the alleged coup plot, sixteen were Mende, the remaining two were Creole” (William, 1991, p.642). One must, nonetheless, state that the tide of political and social changes in Eastern Europe over the years inspired similar changes in Africa, particularly after the total demise of communism and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. The old order of bipolar politics had vanished and a new order of democratization had emerged. Before these events, most of the African nations had abandoned political pluralism for one-party systems in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In essence, the wind of change in Africa affected Sierra Leone. By 1991 President Momoh set up a Constitutional Review Commission under the chairmanship of Peter Tucker. Following the result of a national referendum which overwhelmingly supported the creation of a constitutional government, President Momoh and his APC government adopted a new constitution for the re-introduction of liberal democracy. As anticipated, the new constitutional development would place Sierra Leone on the map of democratic nations. Even though it used non-aligned concepts for the basis of its foreign Policy, Sierra Leone is a member of many international and regional organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Mano River Union, the African Union, the World Trade Organization, and a host of others. Sierra Leone demonstrated its commitment to world peace and respect for the sovereignty of nation-states by sending a contingent of military medical personnel to participate in the Gulf crisis alongside the coalition forces led by the United States. Sierra Leone also sent a military contingent to Liberia to join other members of the Economic Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) as a peace-keeping force in the civil war in Liberia

198

Mohammed B. Sillah

between the factions of the late President Samuel Doe, Prince Johnson, and Charles Taylor. Ironically, the war later spilled into Sierra Leone under the direction of Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh a former junior army officer in Sierra Leone. The country’s army is also part of the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, a war-ravaged nation in East Africa. The civil war that broke out in Sierra Leone in 1990 under the command of a former junior army officer, Foday Sankoh, was against government forces and their local foreign supporters. The war was neither ethnic nor a religious conflict. It was a war of greed, a situation in which the warlords fought against each other and the state for control of political power and the diamond and gold fields as well as other precious resources. The rebel leader Foday Sankoh, was a nominal Muslim from the Temme clan but had a large number of both Muslim and Christian as well as other ethnic group fighters (outside the clan) in his guerilla insurgent squads. Thus, the “New World Disorder” that emerged following the end of the Cold War did not spare Sierra Leone, where a bloody civil war raged for a decade (19902000). Before the war erupted, the unemployment rate had gone beyond control with inflation, corruption, and economic mismanagement. The jobless, particularly the youths, had become disenchanted. In a desperate search for means to survive with a decent life, the disgruntled elements of the Sierra Leonean society resorted to taking up the implements of war, in the hope that their conditions would change once the war was over in their favor. The disintegration of the country's social fabric was the result of the state's inability to govern with accountability, and to deliver the necessary social amenities to its people. In other words, the government failed to administer the affairs of the state with political flexibility and transparency. The protracted conflict ravaged the nation and disconnected families. The state itself was near collapse if foreign forces, that is, the Nigerians, the British, the Guineans and others had not intervened to rescue the nation-state from the abyss. A Nobel Prize winner in economics, Joseph E. Stigliz, describes Sierra Leone as a mineral-rich nation, but that these resources became a source of conflict that “fueled corruption and spawned privilege elites that engaged in internecine struggles for control of [the] country's wealth" (Stiglitz, 2003, p. 37). Amid the turmoil, President Momoh's government was overthrown by Valentine Strasser’s led military coup. Strasser ruled from 1992-1996 and was ousted from power by a counter-coup led by Brigadier General Julius Maada Bio. He fulfilled his promise to return the country to civilian rule. After a highly contested election process between the SLPP and APC, the former won the support of the voters and Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the party leader, was sworn in as president. But he was barely one year in power (1996-1997) when Lt. Colonel Johnny Paul Koroma overthrew his government. However, Koroma's regime was short-lived, for he was ousted by the pressure of foreign and local forces. He disappeared and was never seen again. Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was reinstated to head the nation again (19982007). He was an economist and attorney by profession. He was succeeded by Ernest Bai Koroma, the leader of the APC party. He served two consecutive terms (10 years) in the office and was succeeded by the former military leader Maada Bio. He took over the reign of government in 2018 through the SLPP party platform. The rebel leader Foday Sankoh died July 29, 2003 (Anthony, 2017, p.10). Metaphorically, he was buried with his self-proclaimed socialist rhetoric; only that he left behind a thriving liberal democracy in Sierra Leone. Regardless of its present difficult circumstances, Sierra Leone remains endowed with immense human and physical resources to become, as one commentator put it, “a perfectly

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

199

operational state, and not a basket-case near the bottom of the table of the least developed, a cause for donor despair” (Anthony, 2017, p.10). Corruption must be de-institutionalized.

THE ROLE OF MUSLIMS IN NATIONAL POLITICS: COLONIAL AND POST-INDEPENDENCE ERAS Because of colonialism, Sierra Leone has a significant element of Anglo-Christian culture. As a result of these factors, most Sierra Leoneans are bilingual or multi-lingual. Ethnic identity is used as a tool in defining community life. We must, however, note that the Muslims were not well represented in the colonial government. The Creoles and other Christian elements were closer to British administrators than Muslims. Nevertheless, it is also true that the Muslim community produced prominent leaders in the early part of the twentieth century. Many of these were literate in Arabic or in African languages written in Arabic script (Skinner, 1981, p.16). Some Muslims were literate in English and another Western-oriented subject of learning and worked under the auspices of colonial government as civil servants, teachers, translators, interpreters (for colonial administrators), and others. Some of these Muslims had attended government-sponsored schools, and others attended those established by Christian missionaries. When the SLPP was formed in 1951, some of the Muslims asserted their political rights side-by-side with their Christian compatriots for national unity and independence. Notable among these Muslim political activists were Kandeh Burah, Banja Tejan-Sie, and Sorie Ibrahim Koroma. Kandeh Bureh adopted this title in 1945 when he became a headman of the Temne (his ethnic community in Freetown). Before this change of personal identity, he was called Saidu Bai Kamara. He became one of the leading figures and idols in national politics. He abandoned the teaching profession. As a headman, he instituted the policy of inter-ethnic integration in a bid to unify the various ethnic communities. He established Friendly Societies such as Markarian, Ambas Ceda, and the Temne Progressive Union. Through the financial contributions and activities of these organizations, he built mosques and encouraged his unIslamized brethren to become Muslims. In light of this, Kandeh Bureh initiated “a synthesis between religion and politics, a move which motivated many of his countrymen to become enlightened in the drive towards independence and self-government” (Sierra Leone Heroes, 1989, p.25). Further, he supported the Ahmadiyya Muslim Movement in Freetown and helped them to establish branches in the provinces such as Bo, Boajibu (in the south and east), Ropkupr (in the north), and other areas. As his popularity grew, he won the attention of prominent national leaders such as Sir Milton Margai and Sir Albert Margai. Both of them invited Kandeh Bureh to join them in the struggle against colonialism. Since the Margais were Mende representing the east and south, they saw Kandeh Bureh as an ideal man they could ally themselves with to win support of northerners. As a result, Kandeh Bureh joined the SLPP and in1957 he became Minister of Works and Housing. After the 1962 elections, he assumed a new cabinet position—Minister of Transport and Communication. Neither Sir Milton Maigai nor Sir Albert Margai created the office of deputy prime minister. In this regard, Kandeh Bureh acted as Prime Minister on several occasions during the tenure of Sir Albert Margai. The defeat of SLPP in the 1967 elections by APC, terminated the political career of Kandeh Bureh. His refusal to support the northern-based APC party further eroded

200

Mohammed B. Sillah

his support and popularity among the Temne. Nonetheless, because of his loyalty to the SLPP and because of his fervent stance on inter-tribal integration for national unity and nation building, he gained respect in social and political circles in Sierra Leone. He earned his place in the annals of his country’s political history before his death. Sir Banja Tejan-Sie was also a notable Muslim politician in Sierra Leone during the colonial and post-independence period. He studied law at the London School of Economics and Lincoln's Inn and was called to the Bar in 1951 (Sierra Leone Heros 1987, p.25). Upon his return to Sierra Leone, he entered local politics and demanded an end to colonial rule. He became a member of the SLPP in 1955, and in 1958 was appointed Police Magistrate. He became a member of the Constitutional Committee established by the British colonial government as a preparation for independence. In April 1967 he was appointed Chief Justice and in April 1968 appointed to execute the functions of the Governor General. When President Siaka Stevens introduced a Republican Constitution in 1971, he relieved Sir Banja Tejan-Sie from office, and the latter went to London where he lived in self-exile till his death. However, he continued to use his political ideas to articulate his views on the social and economic situations in Sierra Leone. In April 1987, President Momoh invited him to come to Sierra Leone for independence anniversary celebrations. As a political activist, he contributed to bringing about a self-conscious awareness of nation-hood in Sierra Leone. Soria Ibrahim Koroma was a trade unionist and actively participated in the labor movement “that characterized Sierra Leone’s political scene in the 1950s” (Sierra Leone Heros, 1987 p.28). He became an active member of the APC when it was formed in 1960. He became the party’s first National Propaganda and Organization Secretary. During this period, he tried to educate his people about their political rights. He was elected in 1962 as a Member of Parliament from Freetown Central Constituency. In 1965 Sir Albert Margai’s government accused Koroma of inciting violence and sent him into detention. His parliamentary seat was subsequently declared vacant on the pretext that he had been absent for thirty days as stipulated in the constitution. Upon his release from detention, he resumed his political role in his constituency and 1967 he was re-elected to Parliament. In the following year, he was appointed Minister of Trade and Industry in Siaka Stevens' first cabinet. When Stevens reshuffled the cabinet in1969 he appointed Koroma as Minister of Agriculture and National Resources and he became Vice-President and Prime Minister when Sierra Leone became a Republican state. In another cabinet reshuffle in 1975, Koroma became Vice President and Minister of Finance. Following the declaration of a one-party state system in 1978, he became Vice-President. He retired from active politics in 1986. As a Muslim, he used his official influence and built a mosque in Port Loko town, the headquarters of the district. He also built a modern hospital and Community Center in the same town. He was popularly known in Sierra Leone as “S.I.” His Orjeh (a Temne secret society) colleagues called him Agba. Though he was serious about his Islamic faith, Koroma seemed to practice it side by side with his African cultural values. He was described as a hard-working man, a “disciplined and fearless leader who was willing to lead his forces against any foe” (Sierra Leone Heros, 1987 p.28). But because of his dictatorial style of leadership as well as the violent nature of the then APC government, he lost popularity. His critics characterized his leadership with violence, but they also acknowledged that he was not a member of the corrupt elements in Siaka Steven's regime. He was termed as a patriotic man, though one may equally question this fervent nationalism, for Koroma himself had put the party above the state which had wrecked the progress of the country. In his early political

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

201

career, he presented himself to the people in his constituency as a Temne but as Sierra Leoneans began to lose faith and confidence in the northern-based APC party, Koroma redefined his Temne ethnic affinity by identifying himself as a Mandinka. This outraged his Temne supporters, who saw him as a man of double standards and divided loyalty and could not, therefore, be trusted. Indeed, this symbolic event later affected his political career. Allegedly, Stevens' skepticism of Koroma's loyalty to him played a role when the former chose his force commander Major-General Momoh to succeed him in office. Koroma was dumped, but he gracefully accepted his fate and went back to Port Loko and assumed the management of his oil palm plantation till his death. Other notable Muslims who made a difference in national politics were Sanusi Mustapha, a cabinet minister in the Margai regimes; Gibril Sesay, regarded as a doyen in the Muslim community in Sierra Leone who served as ambassador to Egypt; Salia Jusu-Sheriff, former vice-president; the late Dr. Mohammed Sorie Fornah served as deputy minister; the late Ibrahim Taqi, former minister of information; the late Alimamy Khazali, former minister of information and Amadu Wurie, former minister of education. On October 30, 1992, the military overthrew the government of President Momoh. The military takeover was an alternative simply because of the absence of an established opposition to the then ruling party, All People’s Congress (APC). The coup itself was engineered and led by two army officers, namely Lieutenant Colonel Yahya Kanu (a Muslim) and Captain Valentine Strasser (a Christian). The initial announcement of coup proclaimed Kanu as the leader of the military regime. However, this prospect was dashed away when Kanu's junior officers alleged that he had all the opportunity to arrest the ousted President Joseph Saidu Momoh, but instead, he decided to help the president escape to neighboring Guinea for political asylum. This alleged negligence of duty on the part of Kanu led to his arrest and subsequent detention. His deputy leader, Valentine Strasser, replaced him as chairman of the military party National Provisional Defense Council (NPRC) and as head of state (Sillah 1992, p.9). Another Muslim, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, attained the highest seat of power in Sierra Leone when he was sworn in after victory through the ballot box on March 29, 1996. A lawyer and economist by training, he believed in the democratic ideals of governance, and to him, politics is the exercise and distribution of power (Sillah, 2002). He served for two consecutive terms in office as leader of the SLPP party and the state. He was a Mandinka by ethnicity. He inherited the civil war (1991-2002) and managed to bring it to an end through diplomacy and coercion. Another notable Muslim that rose to national prominence is Dr. Abdulai Conteh, a lawyer by training and a doctorate holder. He held high positions in Siaka Stevens and Momoh's administration, as foreign affairs minister and attorney-general of the state, respectively. The vice-president of the current SLPP government is Mohamed Judeh Jalloh (a Foulah), and the president Julius Maada Bio (a Mende Christian). The latter is a former leader of the NPRC military regime (Sillah, 1992, pp.879-880). He handed power to Ahmed Tejan Kabbah after the latter’s democratic election victory in 1996.

SIERRA LEONE: A CULTURE OF RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE The white missionaries who came to convert people in the hinterland and interior of Sierra Leone encountered severe "problems," including resistance from the followers of

202

Mohammed B. Sillah

African traditional religions, even though Islam had already made successful inroads in the country (Sillah, 1992, pp.879-880). Members of the British Church Missionary Society (CMS) arrived in Freetown in 1804, and the Catholics came in 1859 and were based in the south-east. In essence, the process resulted in a situation in which the customs and traditions of Sierra Leone were now fused into a permanent new reality of the country’s religious composition. The relationship between Muslims and Christians in post-colonial Sierra Leone has been a model of interfaith harmony in a continent where religious and ethnic conflicts abound. Of course, many of the civil wars around the globe have their root causes in religious intolerance. Examples include conflicts in Lebanon between the Christian Falanges and Muslims and in Ireland between Protestants and Catholics. Europe also had its scars of religious conflicts such as the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) between the Protestants and Catholics, and before the Westphalian Treaty came to effect in 1648, about 2.5 million lives had been wasted (Viotti and Kauppi, 2013, p.296). Before this war, the Protestants and Catholics had fought each other, resulting in the Augsburg Treaty in 1555. This preceded the Westphalian agreement. Toward the closing of the 20th century, humanity witnessed the horrific Serbian ethnic cleansing crusade against the Bosnian Muslims, showing that the power of sectarianism has not yet entirely eroded in Europe. Muslims and Christians in Sudan, resulted in the division of the country into Sudan and South Sudan. In West Africa, there have been sporadic clashes between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. Another crisis region is the Central African Republic, where Muslims and Christians have clashed against each other. As said earlier, the civil war that occurred in Sierra Leone was neither an ethnic nor religious conflict. It was a situation in which the warlords fought against each other and the state for control of political power and precious mineral resources. The rebel leader Foday Sankoh, a nominal Muslim, had a large number of both Muslim and Christian fighters in his guerilla insurgent forces. Both Muslims and Christians, whether indigenous or foreign, have established numerous schools in Sierra Leone. While one will find Muslims in Christian schools, one will also find Christians in Muslim schools, both in elementary and secondary institutions. In Sierra Leone, one will find Muslim schools in predominantly Christian areas and vice versa. During the colonial era, the church established mostly primary and secondary schools. These schools admitted Christian children, Muslim children, and children from African traditional religious backgrounds. So, Western education set a precedent, and this legacy has led to a deeper interaction between Christians and Muslims, leading to constructive dialogue and life-long friendships. With the rise of party politics. Sierra Leoneans elect their leaders without considerations of religious affiliations. The interfaith harmony in post-colonial and post-civil war periods in Sierra Leone could serve as a potentially effective source of inter-religious and inter-ethnic cooperation as well as conflict resolution for national unity (Sillah, 2006, p.23). The post-independence state of Sierra Leone has not allowed religious differences to hinder the call for national unity.

CONCLUSION Despite the continuation of certain tribal, non-Islamic practices, and despite British domination to arrest the spread of Islam, the faith has gained strong ground in Sierra Leone. Spreading from the provinces, it has become the predominant religion in the capital city,

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

203

which houses many Muslim associations such as the Supreme Islamic Council of Sierra Leone, the Sierra Leone Muslim Congress, and Sierra Leone Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, the popularity of Islam in Sierra Leone is not the result of historical accident. Propagated by the indigenous Muslims, it was perceived as a viable part of the African culture vis-à-vis Western culture. Though the arrival of Islam in Sierra Leone changed the original social complexity of the land, it introduced new ideas and innovations and blended these new concepts and percepts into the social milieu of the Sierra Leonean Society. The British abolitionists had used the Freetown peninsula as an experimental place for the liberated Africans and had colonized the entire land. It was indeed the encounter between Creoles and the people of the provinces that triggered the modern history of Sierra Leone. It generated their common struggle against colonialism and helped create a community of sentiments now popularly known as African nationalism. The struggle for self-determination was partially realized in the1940s and 1960s following the formation of political parties. This consensus was made possible through the efforts exerted by the various ethnic groups, now unified by Islam, which transcended ethnic lines and thus facilitated the emergence of national unity.

REFERENCES Adu-Gyamfi, S., Ampadu, B. K. (2019). Christian Missionary Activities in West Africa. Retrieved from www.wasscehistorytextbook.com on April 2, 2019. Alie, Joe A.D (1990). A New History of Sierra Leone. Oxford: Macmillan education. Anderson, Sheldon, Hey, Jeanne A. K., Paterson, Mark Allen., & Toops, Stanley W. (2013). International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues. Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A: Westview Press. Anthony, Claudia. (31st July 2017). “An evil man in Sierra Leone passed away after thousands were hacked to death…” Awareness Times. Freetown. Aryeetey-Attoh, Samuel. (1997). Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa. New York: Prentice Hall, Inc. Bah, Mohamed Alpha. (1983). "Fulbe Migration and Settlements in Koidu among the Kissi of Sierra Leone" Ph.D. Dissertation. Howard University, Washington, D.C. Bah, Mohamed Alpha, (1989). “Fulbe Settlement, the Introduction and Spread of Islam in Sierra Leone.” Unpublished Paper. Department of History. College of Charleston, South Carolina U.S.A. Balaam, David N. & Dillman, Bradford. (2011). Introduction to International Political Economy. Fifth Edition. New York: Pearson Education, Inc. Bates, Robert H. (2005). Markets and states in Tropical Africa: The Basis of Agricultural Politics. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Bashir, Mohammed Omar. (1982). Terramedia: Themes in Afro-Arab Relations. London: Ithaca Press. Blyden, Edward. (1873). From West Africa to Palestine. Freetown: T. J. Sawyer Publishers. Blyden, Edward. (24 April 1903). Director of Mohammedan Education. “Report on the Scheme of Effective Development of Education on European Western Lines Among the Mohammedan on the Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone.” Minutes Papers. No. 1726/03. Freetown: Fourah Bay College. Sierra Leone Public Archives.

204

Mohammed B. Sillah

Blyden, Edward. (1967). Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Cartwright, John R. (1970). Politics in Sierra Leone. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Clark, Peter B. (1982). West Africa: A Study of Religious Development from the 8th to the 20th century. London: Edward Arnold Publishers, LTD. Clifford, Louise Mavy. (1974). The Land and People of Sierra Leone. New York: J.B. Lippincott, Co. Curtain, Philip. (1990). African History. London: Longman, Inc. Ebenstein, William (1960). Modern Political Thought: The Great Issues. New York: Holt Rhinehart &Winston Inc. Englebert, Pierre. & Dunn, Kevin C. (2013). Inside African Politics. Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Fisher, Humphery. (20 January 1962). “Ahmadiyy in Sierra Leone.” West Africa No. 2329. Givens, Willie A. (1976). Selected Works of Dr. Edward Wilmont Blyden. Robert post, Liberia, West Africa: Grand Cape Mount County. Goldstein, Joshua S. (1994). International Relations. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers. Harnell-Bond, Barbara E. (1978) Community Leadership and the Transformation of Freetown 1801-1975. New York: Mount Publishers. Hunwick, John O. (1992). Religion and National Integration in Africa: Islam, Christianity, and Politics. Evanston, Illinois U.S.A: Northwestern University Press. Kamli, Mohammed H. (January- March 1995). “Shari’ah and the Challenge of Modernity.” The Islamic University: Quarterly Academic Journal. Vol. 2 No.1 pp.7-35. Kaplan Irving. (1996). Area Handbook for Sierra Leone. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office. Kilson, Martin. (1966). Political Change in West Africa: A Study of Modernization Process in Sierra Leone. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Kirkpatrick, Jeane F. (1993). “The Modernizing Imperative: Tradition and Change.” In Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. Koter, Dominka. (2016). Beyond Ethnic Politics in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lynch, Hollis R. (December 1965). “The Attitude of Edward W. Blyden to European Imperialism in Africa. Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria. P. Macmillan, Allister. Ed. (1968) The Red Book of West Africa. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. Malik, Anas B. (Spring 1999) “Understanding the Political Behavior of Islamists: The Implications of Socialization, Modernization, and Rationalists Approaches.” Studies in Contemporary Islam. Vol.1 No.1. pp 14-28. Mamdani, Mahmood. (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A. Princeton University Press. Mamdani, Mahmood. (2004). Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The cold War, and the Roots of Terror. New York: Random House, Inc. Masud. Muhammad Khalid; Salvatore, Armando. & Bruinessem, Martin van (2009). Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press. Mazrui, Ali A & Tidy, Michael. (1987). Nationalism and the New States in Africa. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Islam, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Africa

205

Minute Papers 2037. (11 May 1903). Address to Sierra Leone Muslims by Alimamy Jamburiah on the Establishment of a School Madrasa Islamia. Freetown: Fourah Bay College. Sierra Leone Public Archives. Moten, Abdul Rashid. (1996). Political Science: An Islamic Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Nyang, Sulayman S. “The Cultural Consequences of Development in Africa.” & Sevageldin, Ismail and Taboroff, June. Eds. (1992). Culture and Development in Africa. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank Series, No.1. Pp.429-446. Posner, Daniel N. (2005). Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ramadan, Tariq. (2009). Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity. Mankfiels, Leicester, U.K: The Islamic Foundation. Roberts, Timmons. Moreover, Hite, Amy. Eds. (2000). From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publications Ltd. Roose, Joshua M. (October 2013). “Contesting Islam through the 2012 Sydney Protests: An Analysis of Post-Protest Political Discourse amongst Australian Muslims” Islam and Christian- Muslim Relations. Vol. 24, No.4, 479-499. Roy, Oliver. (2004). Globalized Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. Sambomah, Lahai. (31 July 1989).”Politics of Divide and Rule: President Momoh Accused of Tribally Polarizing the Nation.” African Concord. Vol.4, No. 14. Schraeder, Peter J. (2000). African Politics and Society: A Mosaic in Transformation. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Siddiqi, Mazheruddin (1982). Modernization Reformist Thought In The Muslim World. Islamabad, Pakistan, South Asia: The Islamic Research Institute Press. Sierra Leone Heroes: Thirty Great Men and Women Who Helped to Build Our Nation. (1987) Freetown: Government Printing Press. Sillah, Mohammed- Bassiru. (May 1987). “Independence: A Two-Edged Sword.” Africa Concord. No.19. London, UK. Sillah, Mohammed- Bassiru. (Summer 1990). “The Soldier Politician: Brigadier Andrew Juxon-Smith and Sierra Leone Destiny.” Sierra Leone Newsletter Vol.5 Washington, D.C. Sillah, Mohammed- Bassiru. (Winter 1991). “Edward Blyden and Islam in Sierra Leone: A Study of African Intellectual Response to British Colonialism.”Hamdard Islamicus: A Quarterly Journal. Vol. 5. No. 4. Sillah, Mohammed-Bassiru. (July 1992). Sierra Leone and Muslim Leadership." The Message International. New York City. Sillah, Mohammed-Bassiru. (July 2002). “Reflections on Kabbah’s Presidency: Character is What Defines a Leader.” West Africa. Issue 4334. London UK. Sillah, Mohammed-Bassiru. (May 1992). “Theories and Reflections on Military Intervention: Justifying the Coup.” West Africa. No. 3897. London, UK. Sillah, Mohammed-Bassiru (April 2006). “Sierra Leone: A Haven of Religious Tolerance.” Africa Week. Issue 24. London UK. Skinner, David (January 1989). Sierra Leone Relations with the Northern Rivers and the Influence of Islam in the Colony.” International Studies of Sierra Leone Vol.I pp.105107.

206

Mohammed B. Sillah

Skinner, David. (1981). “A Profile of Urban Leaders in Freetown. Sierra Leone 1905-1945.” Tarik. Vol.7 No.1 pp.16-17. Skinner, D. E. (2016). The Influence of Islam in Sierra Leone History: Institutions, Practices, and Leadership. Journal of West African History, 2 (1), pp. 27-71. Stiglitz, Jospeh, E. (2003). Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton Company. Thomas, Rau G. C. (Fall, 1994). "Nations, States, and Secession: Lessons from former Yugoslavia." Mediterranean Quarterly: A Journal of Global Issues. Vol. 5. Number 4. Pp.40-65. Thomas, Alex. (2007). An Introduction to African Politics. Second Edition New York: Routledge. Trimingham, Spencer J. (1968). The Influence of Islam upon Africa. New York: Fredrick A. Praeger Publishers. Ventura, Lorella. (July 2018). “Thank God we are in Syria! Modernization, Interfaith Relations and Women’s Rights in Syria before the Arab Spring (200-201)” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations Vol 29. No.3 pp.349-369. Viotti, Paul R., and Kauppi, Mark V. (2013). International Relations and World Politics. Fifth Edition. New York: Pearson Education, Inc. Waugh, Earle H., and Wannas, Jenny. (2003). "The Rise of a Womanist Movement among Muslim Immigrant Women in Alberta, Canada." Studies in Contemporary Islam. Vol 5. Nos 1-2. Pp. 5-36. William, David W. (29 April- 5 May 1991). “Sir Milton Margai: Pragmatic Tactician.” West Africa. No.3843. London, UK. Ziegler, David W. (1991) War, Peace, and International Politics. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Zuberi, Tukufu (2015) African Independence: How African Shapes the World. New York: Rowman &Littlefield.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 9

MODERNITY AND GLOBAL ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND TOLERANCE: THE CASE OF SOUTH ASIA (INDIA, PAKISTAN, AND BANGLADESH) Shahid M. Shahidullah1,, PhD and Shyamal K. Das2, PhD 1

Department of Sociology, Hampton University, Hampton, VA, US Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elizabeth City State UniversityUniversity of North Carolina, Elizabeth City, NC, US

2

ABSTRACT The global rise of religious violence and hostilities that began from the first decade of the 21st century is intimately connected to the rise of global terror and the war on terror. More specifically, they are connected to the rise of the ultra-rights in global politics. The growth of global terror has been responsible for the rise of the global war on terror. The global war on terror escalated the boundary of worldwide terror and displaced millions of Muslims and Christians from their homeland. The global war on terror created opportunities for the emergence of many ancient hostilities between and among the different great religions, particularly hostilities against the Muslims. The global terror and the war on terror created a particularly new generation of “nomadic” Muslims, many of whom sailed to the west to take refuge. This global scenario created a fertile ground for the regrouping and reemergence of the anti-modernists and the right-wing political parties in the global political landscape. The rise of far-right political parties, in turn, is further escalating the global religious hostilities and violence. The increased religious violence and resentments that the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are experiencing from the second decade of the 21st century, are closely connected to the rise of global terror and the global war on terror. The contemporary global resurgence in religious violence and hostilities is essentially a political phenomenon. None of the great world religions of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam condone and forgive violence and human degradations in the 

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

208

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das name of religion. Modernity and the philosophy of secularism is one of the core themes guarding the boundaries of these and other great world religions and world faiths. There can be no progress in modernity without preserving religious liberty and expanding the boundaries of religious tolerance.

Keywords: modernity, secularism, church-state separation, religious liberty, religious tolerance, global religious restrictions, global religious hostilities, South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh

INTRODUCTION One of the core philosophical principles of modernity is the separation between the sacred and the secular. The struggle for modernity is essentially a struggle to institutionalize this separation principle in law, power, politics, and culture. From the ancient time, particularly since the rise of the great world religions, to the end of the medieval civilization, the sacred and the secular were inseparable. They were intimately connected to law, power, politics, and culture. For thousands of years, the King and the Pope were the same. The idea of modernity brought a new philosophy of separation and disentanglement between these two crucial domains of human thought and actions. As Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.” During the last two hundred years of the global progress of modernity, different countries of the world have been struggling to achieve a balance of separation between the two domains of the sacred and the secular. The extension and the institutionalization of religious liberty have remained one of the core concerns for the progress of modernity even in the 21st century—a century that came in the backdrop of remarkable achievements in politics, economics, democracy, science, culture, and technology. This chapter examines the issue of religious liberty and tolerance in the context of the spread of global modernity with a special focus on South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). The chapter does not address theological issues. The chapter proceeds in three directions. First, the chapter examines the conceptual problem of defining religious liberty and religious tolerance. This is done particularly in the context of the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, United Nations interpretation of religious freedom, and relevant constitutional provisions of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Second, the chapter describes the present state of religious freedom focusing on the rise of religious conflicts and violence around the world. Thirdly, it examines the historical, political, and social contexts of religious liberty and tolerance in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. One of the key arguments of this chapter is that the issues of religious liberty and tolerance are essentially political. In all countries of the world, those issues are connected to the dynamics of internal politics and the culture war—the struggle between the modernists and the anti-modernists. They are also connected to global political dynamics and the dynamics of the progress of global modernity. When modernist elites rule a country, the degree of religious liberty and tolerance is more likely to be higher than when anti-modernist elites rule it. Religious freedom and tolerance in society are, however, not achieved once and for all. It is constructed and deconstructed from time to time in response to the dynamics of local and global politics and modernization. The present global trend in the rise of religious conflicts and violence is evidence to this process of change and transformation in religious

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

209

liberty and tolerance in various countries in response to local and global political change and transformations.

GLOBAL RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPES: HOMOGENEITY, DIVERSITY, AND PLURALISM Most of the world’s 7.7 billion people belong to five major world religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. In terms of these world religions, various regions of the world are characterized by enormous homogeneity as well as diversity and pluralism. The issues of religious homogeneity, diversity, and pluralism of a country are significant to understand the nature and dynamics of its religious liberty and tolerance. Out of the five world religions, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism are open to conversions. Christianity and Islam particularly spread around the world, mainly through conversions. Hinduism and Judaism generally do not accept conversions. Christianity today is the largest world religion, with about 2.2 billion people (Pew Research Center, 2015a). It is the dominant religion in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, East and Western Europe, and Oceania including Australia and New Zealand. These countries are highly homogeneous in terms of the dominance of Christianity. However, there are Christians in all regions of the world. As of 2015, the highest number of Christians were in the United States (76.9 percent), Brazil (88.5 percent), Mexico (94.6 percent), Russia (73.1 percent), Philippines (92.5 percent), Democratic Republic of Congo (95.9 percent), Ethiopia (62.4 percent), Germany (67.3 percent), and Nigeria (48.1 percent) (Pew Research Center, 2015). Out of Africa’s 1.2 billion people (2016 estimate), about 460 million are Christians. In 17 African countries, more than 80 percent of the people are Christians. In 31 African countries, more than 55 percent are Christians. About 24 percent of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians are in Sub Saharan Africa. As of 2010, about 13 percent of the people in Asia and the Pacific were Christians. Research suggests that Christianity is rapidly growing as a global religion. “Christianity has grown enormously in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, where there were relatively few Christians at the beginning of the 20th century. The [share of Christians] in sub-Saharan Africa climbed from 9% in 1910 to 63% in 2010, while in the Asia-Pacific region it rose from 3% to 7%. Christianity today– unlike a century ago – is truly a global faith” (Pew Research Center, December 2011, p. 2). As of 2010, among the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, 50.1 percent were Catholics, and 36.7 percent were protestant (Pew Research Center, December 2011). Islam is the world’s second largest religion. “There were 1.8 billion Muslims in the world as of 2015 – roughly 24% of the global population. However, while Islam is currently the world’s second largest religion, it is the fastest-growing major religion. Indeed, if current demographic trends continue, the number of Muslims is expected to exceed the number of Christians by the end of this century” (Pew Research Center, August 2017, p. 1). Asia and the Pacific region contain the majority of the world’s Muslim population (62 percent). Three of the largest Muslim countries of the world are in Asia: Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. “Indonesia is currently the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, but Pew Research Center projects that India will have that distinction by the year 2050 (while remaining a majority-Hindu country), with more than 300 million Muslims” (Pew Research

210

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

Center, August 2017, p. 2). There are 57 countries of the world where the Muslims are in the majority, and these countries belong to the region of the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia and the Pacific. The population of the Middle-East and North Africa are predominantly Muslims, and they constitute 20 percent of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims. There are also Muslims in almost all countries and regions of the world. As of 2017, there were 3.5 million Muslims in America. It is projected that “Muslims will make up 2.1% of the U.S. population by the year 2050, surpassing people who identify as Jewish based on religion as the secondlargest faith group in the country” (Pew Research Center, August 2017, p. 3). In Europe, as of 2016, there were about 26 million Muslims (4.9 percent of the regions’ population). The most significant percentage of Muslims are in France (8.8 percent), followed by Germany (6.1), United Kingdom (6.3), Italy (4.8), and Spain (2.6). It is observed that, “From mid-2010 to mid-2016 alone, the share of Muslims in Europe rose more than one percentage point, from 3.8% to 4.9% (from 19.5 million to 25.8 million). By 2050, the share of the continent’s population that is Muslim could more than double, rising to 11.2% or more” (Pew Research Center, November 2017, p. 2). It is also projected that by 2015 for the first time in the history of the world’s population “there will be near parity between Muslims (2.8 billion, or 30% of the population) and Christians (2.9 billion, or 31%)” (Pew Research Center, April 2015a, p. 5). Hinduism, the world’s third largest religion, is concentrated mainly in India. Out of India’s 1.2 billion people, about 1 billion are Hindus. There are also Hindus in the neighboring countries of India including, Nepal (about 21 million), Bangladesh (about 13 million), Pakistan (about 4 million) and Sri Lanka (2.5 million). Outside the sub-continent of India but within the Asia-Pacific region, Indonesia has the most significant percentage of Hindu population (about 4 million), followed by Malaysia (1.7 million). Outside the AsiaPacific region, the most significant number of Hindus, as of 2010, was in North America (2.2 million), followed by the Middle East and North-Africa (1.7 million), Sub Saharan Africa (1.5 million), and Europe (1.3 million). “The number of Hindus around the world is projected to rise from slightly more than 1 billion in 2010 to nearly 1.4 billion in 2050” (Pew Research Center, April, 2015b, p. 1). Buddhism is the world’s fourth largest religion and it was born in India about 2,500 years ago. Currently, there are about 500 million Buddhists in the world, and half of them live in China. “Most of the rest of the world’s Buddhists live in East and South Asia, including 13% in Thailand (where 93% of the population is Buddhist) and 9% in Japan (35% Buddhist). Only about 1.4% of the world’s Buddhists live in countries outside of Asia” (Pew Research Center, April 2019, p.1). The world’s fifth great religion is Judaism. As of 2010, there were about 14 million Jews in the world (about .02 percent of the world’s population). “Jews were largely concentrated in North America (44%) and the Middle East-North Africa region (41%) in 2010. Most of the remainder of the global Jewish population was found in Europe (10%) and the Latin AmericaCaribbean region (3%)” (Pew Research Center, April 2015c. p. 5). As of 2010, the highest number of Jews lived in the United States (5.7 million). During the same time, the total number of Jewish populations in Israel was 5.6 million. However, by 2050, “Israel's Jewish community (8.1 million) is expected to be significantly more than the U.S. Jewish population (5.4 million). Between 2010 and 2050, Israel’s Jewish population is expected to grow by about 2.5 million people while the U.S. Jewish population declines by about 330,000 (Pew Research Center, April 2015c. p. 5).

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

211

All great religions have their own homes and lands, and their believers are greatly homogeneous in terms of faith and beliefs in the divinity. The Christians living in Europe and North and South America, Muslims living in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, the Buddhists living in China and Thailand, the Hindus living in India, and the Jews living in Israel are the dominant faith groups in those lands and they live within the bounds of their own religious and cultural trajectories. However, the global religious landscape is also genuinely diverse and pluralistic. The Christians in the Middle East and Asia and the Pacific region; Muslims in India, China, Europe, and North America; Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh; and the Jews in the Middle East, Europe, and North America live in a diverse and pluralistic world of faith and religion. The groups that are religious minorities in the lands of religious homogeneities are relatively more concerned about religious liberty and tolerance, even though religious hostilities are currently growing also in countries characterized by religious homogeneities.

MODERNITY, SECULARISM, AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND TOLERANCE: A CONCEPTUAL EXPLORATION One of modernity’s significant meanings is the dualistic notion between and among the different domains of life. The idea of modernity essentially presumes the separation between economy and politics, politics and religion, family and economy, science and religion, society and individual, and private and public domains of life. In pre-modern societies, these different domains of life were mostly inseparable and undifferentiated, and they were defined and empowered by religion. Religion was the central organizing theme in the construction of premodern medieval civilizations. Religion legitimized the King, power, and politics. The King and the Pope, or the King and the Caliphs, or the King and the Brahmins were the same for centuries in the middle ages. One of the fundamental principles of modernity is the construction of a new social order based, not on the negation of religion, but the separation between religion and politics described as the doctrine of the Church and state separation. Modernity does not believe in Nietzsche’s epitome that “God is Dead” in the face of advancing Enlightenment. Modernity does not prescribe the demise of religion. Secularism does not mean the abandonment of faith and belief. The classical sociologists of the nineteenth century discovered that religion is an inviolable part of human social organization. French sociologist Emile Durkheim theorized that religion, as a set of sacred meanings, rituals, and symbols, exerts enormous power in the construction of the socialness of an individual. Faith makes us social and remains as the glue to our social groups and collectivities (Durkheim, 2012). Religion, Durkheim argues, not only exerts external controls on our lives, it is also internal, and it lives and thrives in our body, mind, and the soul. According to Durkheim, “a religion comes into being and is legitimated through collective effervescence. Collective effervescence refers to moments in societal life when the group of individuals that makes up a society comes together to perform a religious ritual” (Carls, 2019, p. 15). The collective effervescence is “impersonal” and an “extraindividual” force, and it is the core of religion. It “transports the individuals into a new, ideal realm, lifts them outside of themselves, and makes them feel as if they are in contact with extraordinary energy” (Carls, 2019, p. 15).

212

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

German sociologist Max Weber defined modernity as an expansion of rationalization in all realms of life, but he believed that rationalization could be a significant social force if it is theologically justified. He theorized that modern capitalism, modern state, modern bureaucracy, modern science, and modern cities evolved first in the Protestant regions in Europe because the Calvinist theology of the Protestants justified the construction of an earthly rational social order as a sign for salvation (Weber, 2013). Borrowing ideas from Durkheim and Max Weber, many contemporary sociologists argued that the new values and institutions of modernity need religious justifications. Without religious grounds, the progress of modernity and rationalization may bring a massive sense of disenchantment about the human world. Modernity without religion can deliver, as a noted American sociologist claimed, a “Homeless Mind.” Berger theorized that the human social world is a constructed reality. A social world is being continuously created and recreated by individuals by roleplaying and conforming to social rules, norms, and values. Once built, the social reality, however, emerges as an objective and external reality to an individual. At the same time, in constructing it, an individual also internalizes the social reality. In these processes of externalization, objectification, and internalization of social reality by an individual, religious values and symbolism play a crucial role. Religion stands as a “sacred canopy” for the ordering and the construction of social life. The relations between the sacred and the secular under modernity, so, according to Berger, must have a delicate balance (Berger, 1990; Berger, Berger, Kellner, 1974). Because of the crucial role of religion in the construction of human social life, and because of the diversity in religion, modernity presumes a central role for the modern state of being the guardian for navigating the relations between the sacred and the secular. A modern state is fundamentally responsible for the legal protection of religious liberty and tolerance of religious diversity. The notion of secularism essentially means three things. The first is the disentanglement between religion and politics. Religion must not entangle with earthly political affairs of the state. The state must not also involve itself with godly and spiritual issues of religion. This is one of the fundamental principles of building a modern state. A modern state will have to be based not on the legitimacy given by religion (i.e., a Pope in medieval Europe) but on the legitimacy based on the consent of the governed. The second meaning of secularism is the disentanglement between public and private domains concerning religion. Religion under modernity is exclusively a matter of the private sphere of the individuals. Modernity brings the doctrine of natural rights of an individual to pursue a faith of his or her choosing within his or her domain. Every individual under modernity has the right to choose his or her “sacred canopy.” The third meaning of secularism is that governing religion is one of the crucial tasks of a modern state. However, in guiding religion, the state must be a neutral actor. A modern state must ensure that it does not encroach into the affairs of religion, prescribe an official religion, or promotes the expansion of a particular religion. It is also essential for a modern state to ensure that people are free to exercise their faith and belief as one of their fundamental human rights. The construction of a legal boundary within which individuals are free to build, enlarge, and enrich their sacred canopy without fear and violence is an essential task of a modern state. The issues of religious liberty and tolerance under modernity are, therefore, rooted in the Hobbesian dilemma that the state must be supreme and dominant because, without the legal control from the state, violence caused by competing faiths and religions will make life “nasty, brutish and short.” The core of the principle of secularism is that a modern state must remain engaged in

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

213

governing the affairs of religion, but it must guide as a neutral actor and with an essential sense of disentanglement. John Locke (1632-1704) was one of the great Enlightenment philosophers who was the first to systematically deliberate on the problematic nature of religious liberty and tolerance in a modern state. The church and state separation doctrine remained also philosophically grounded in Locke’s theory of the tolerance of religious pluralism within the framework of a modern state. Locke’s theory of religious tolerance appeared in his A Letter Concerning Tolerance published in 1689. Locke theorized that understanding of religious pluralism is theologically essential and justified by Scriptures. In the Letter, he said that religion was not “instituted in order to the erecting of external pomp, nor the obtaining of ecclesiastical domination, nor to the exercising of compulsive force; but to the regulating of men’s lives according to the rules of virtue and piety” (as quoted in Horton and Mendus, 1991, p. 14). Locke further said that, “It is in vain for any man to usurp the name of Christian, without holiness of life, purity of manners, and benignity and meekness of spirit” (as quoted in Horton and Mendus, 1991, p. 14). Locke insisted that, “The Toleration of those who differ from others in matters of religion is not only consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ but required by Christian faith” (as quoted in Waldron, 1991, p. 99). Religious torture and cruelties, forceful imposition of one's religious faith on others, and to deny the freedom of religion and worship, Locke wrote in his Letter “are contrary to the glory of God, to the purity of the Church, and the salvation of souls.” The issue of religious liberty and tolerance became the central focus of deliberations by the Founding Fathers of the American Republic at the beginning of America’s modernity experiment in the late eighteenth century. The Virginia Statute, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, declared that, “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or gods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinion or belief, but all men should be free to profess...their opinions in matters of religion.” (as quoted in Ragosta, 2012, p. 1). These religious rights, the Statute asserted, “are of natural rights of mankind.” Any legislation to diminish these religious rights “will be an infringement of natural right” (as quoted in Ragosta, 2012, p. 2). The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the American constitution is an extension of the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom. The Virginia Statute “is generally credited with influencing the requirement in the First Amendment that 'Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (Ragosta, 2012, p. 3). The crucial part of the First Amendment of the American constitution is concerned with the principle of religious liberty and tolerance. This principle has been elaborated in terms of two separate but interconnected clauses: The Establishment Clause and The Free Exercise Clause (Abrams, 2018; McWhirter 2017; Haynes and Chaltain, 2006). The Establishment Clause made the “wall of separation” between church and state a constitutional doctrine. The Establishment Clause states that, “Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from Church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion” (Legal Information Institute, 2019, p. 1). The Establishment Clause further states that, “No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.

214

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa” (Legal Information Institute, 2019, p. 1). During the last four decades, the Lemon Test came out of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman in 1973, has remained the guiding principle of interpreting cases related to the Establishment Clause. The Lemon Test is a three-prong test to examine whether specific governmental actions violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. These three tests are: 1) in aiding religious organizations or promoting religious issues, the government must have a secular purpose; 2) the government action must not have the primary effect of promoting or inhibiting religion; and 3) state action must not lead to excessive “entanglement” with religion. In delivering the majority opinion in Lemon v. Kurtzman in 1973. Justice Warren Berger said that, “In the absence of precisely stated constitutional prohibitions, we must draw lines concerning the three main evils against which the Establishment Clause was intended to afford protection: sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity.” Justice Burger further added that, “In order to determine whether the government entanglement with religion is excessive, we must examine the character and purposes of the institutions that are benefited, the nature of the aid that the State provides, and the resulting relationship between the government and the religious authority.” Many similar rulings on the Establishment Clause were made by the Supreme Court in such cases as the Torcaso v. Watkins in 1961; School District of Abington, Pennsylvania v. Schempp in 1963; Murray v. Curlett in 1963; Epperson v. Arkansas in 1968; Stone v. Graham in 1980; Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987; Lee v. Weiseman in 1992; Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe in 2000; and Town of Greece v. Galloway in 2014. Concerning issues with religious liberty and tolerance across the world today, more fundamental and relevant is The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the American constitution. Justice Scalia once defined the Free Exercise Clause in the following way. It “means, first and foremost, the right to believe and profess whatever religious doctrine one desires…. [It] often involves not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts: assembling with others for a worship service, participating in sacramental use of bread and wine, proselytizing, abstaining from certain foods or certain modes of transportation” (Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494- US 872, 1992). The Free Exercise Clause suggests that the government must not prohibit the free exercise and free expression of religious faiths, beliefs, opinions, ideas, and symbolism. The Free Exercise Clause implies that one should not be coerced in public places to follow and oblige to the rites, rituals, and symbolism of another religion. It conveys, as Justice Scalia wrote, the political exclusion of endorsing, affirming, regulating, and punishing religious beliefs, and doctrines (Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494- US 872, 1992). The Free Exercise Clause at the same time empowers the government to make laws to ensure that people, particularly the religious minorities, are not discriminated against for the free exercise of their religious beliefs, rites, and symbolism. Some of the landmark cases decided by the U.S Supreme Court with respect to The Free Exercise Clause in the last half of the twentieth century include Cantwell v. Connecticut, 1940; Braunfeld v. Brown, 1961; Sherbert v. Verner, 1963; Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972; McDaniel v. Paty, 1978; Marsh and Chambers, 1983; Employment Division of the Department of Human Resources, Oregon v. Smith, 1990; Church of the Lukumi Babalu v.

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

215

City of Hialeah, 1993; Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 2014; and Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 2018). The issues of religious liberty and tolerance in a country are broadly connected to problems of its constitutional protection of the fundamental human rights. The Declaration of Universal Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations in Paris in 1948, created the modern universal human rights framework applicable to all Member countries of the United Nations. Article 18 of the Declaration of Universal Human Rights stated that, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.” The preamble of the Declaration stated that The General Assembly, Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” Subsequently, the United Nations made two significant Declarations on issues of religious liberty and tolerance: one was made in 1981, and the other was made in 1993. The 1981 Declaration was on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Article 1 of the Declaration stated that, “No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have a religion or belief of his choice,” Article 2 of the Declaration defines the notions of religious intolerance and discrimination. The Article stated that, “intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on religion or belief and having as its purpose or as its effect nullification or impairment of the recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis.” The 1981 Declaration made it mandatory for the Members States of the United Nations to enact legislation for the prohibition of religious intolerance and discrimination. Article 4 of the Declaration stated that, “All States shall make all efforts to enact or rescind legislation where necessary to prohibit any such discrimination, and to take all appropriate measures to combat intolerance on the grounds of religion or other beliefs in this matter.” The 1993 Declaration of the United Nations, described as the “Elimination of all Forms of Religious Intolerance”, outlined the roles and responsibilities of the Member States to control and criminalize religious hatred, extremism, violence, and intolerance. The Declaration “Urges States to ensure that their constitutional and legal systems provide full guarantees of freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the provision of effective remedies where there is intolerance or discrimination based on religion or belief.” The Member states were instructed to, “take all appropriate measures to combat hatred, intolerance, and acts of violence, including those motivated by religious extremism, and to encourage understanding, tolerance, and respect in matters relating to freedom of religion or belief.” In 2011, the United Nation’s Human Rights Council’s further refined and strengthened the U.N. Declarations on religious liberty and tolerance of 1981 and 1993 through the development of the Rabat Plan of Action on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes an incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. The Rabat Plan recommended that Member States should make a clear distinction between three types of expression of religious hatred and intolerance: “expression that constitutes a criminal offence; expression that is not criminally punishable, but may justify a civil suit or administrative sanctions; expression that does not give rise to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, but still raises concern in terms of tolerance, civility and respect for the rights of others.” The Rabat Plan also recommends that, “States that have blasphemy laws

216

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

should repeal them, as such laws have a stifling impact on the enjoyment of freedom of religion or belief, and healthy dialogue and debate about religion.”

MODERNIZATION, ECONOMIC GROWTH, AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AND TOLERANCE Religious liberty and tolerance are issues not merely of human rights, human dignity, and human decency in a nation. They are not solely an extension of the philosophical ideas of secularism and individualism. Religious liberty and tolerance are deeply connected to almost all facets of modernization such as democracy, the rule of law, equality, privacy, economic growth, and equal justice. Research has found that religious liberty and democratization and economic growth are positively connected. The countries that are low in religious hostilities are high in economic innovations, and the countries that are high in religious hatreds are weak in economic innovations. Grim, Clark, and Snyder (2014) conducted a study in 2011 based on economic data and data on religious hostilities in 173 countries, and they found that “Religious hostilities and restrictions create climates that can drive away from local and foreign investment, undermine sustainable development, and disrupt large sectors of economies. Such has occurred in the ongoing cycle of religious regulations and hostilities in Egypt, which has adversely affected the tourism industry” (p. 4). The study noted that, “A few current examples from the Muslim-majority countries, which are countries with particularly high levels of religious restriction, illustrate how the lack of religious freedom contributes to worse economic and business outcomes” (p. 4). Global research on religious restriction and hostilities has found that higher level of religious freedom is positively connected to a higher level of economic growth. “More generally, research has shown that religious freedom is a key ingredient to peace and stability, as measured by the absence of violent religious persecution and conflict. This is particularly important for business because where stability exists, there are more opportunities to invest and to conduct normal and predictable business operations, especially in emerging and new markets” (Grim, Clark, and Snyder, 2014, p. 4). The study found “a positive relationship between religious freedom and 10 of the 12 pillars of global competitiveness, as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index” (Grim, 2014, p. 1). Amartya Sen, a Noble Laurate Harvard economist, defined that development is not merely a matter of growth of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Development, he argues, broadly means the expansion of human freedom. “There is deep complementarity" he claimed, “between individual agency and social arrangements [development]. It is important to give simultaneous recognition to the centrality of individual freedom and to the force of social influence on the extent and reach of individual freedom (Sen, 2000, p. xii). Sen argues that that “Expansion of freedom [is]… the primary end and as the principal means of development. The development consists of the removal of the various types of un-freedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity to exercise their reasoned agency” (p. xii). Sen further elaborated that, “Development requires the removal of major sources of un-freedom: poverty as well as tyranny…systematic deprivation as well as tolerance or overactivity of repressive states” (p. 3). Religious restrictions and intolerance are probably two of the most basic types of denials of human freedom. When these fundamental freedoms are

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

217

violated, Grim, Clark, and Snyder’s (2014) global study has observed, corruptions go up, economic regulations that limit business growth increase, business liabilities expand, the growth and diversity in business are stunted, and peace and stability are broken. “When religious freedoms are not respected, the result can be violence and conflict. Normal economic activities become vulnerable to disruption, with local and foreign investment driven away and sustainable development undermined. More generally, tolerance is a key ingredient in peace and stability" (Grim, 2014, p. 2). The Global Institute for Economics and Peace, based New York, Sydney, and Oxford, conducted an empirical study on relations between peace and religion in 2014 based on data from the Global Peace Index and Pew Research Center’s indices on government restrictions on religion and religious hostilities. The study found that “Countries with greater religious freedoms are generally more peaceful, whereas countries with less religious freedom are generally less peaceful. The most influential factor affecting religious freedom is the government type. Full democracies are the most peaceful and have the greatest level of religious freedom, regardless of the type of religious belief or various religious characteristics” (Institute for Economic and Peace, 2014, p. 3). Religious liberty and tolerance are at the core of liberal democracy and the progress of democratization. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) has been studying the progress of global democratization for decades, and one of its observations is that, “Today, religious freedom and freedom from religious coercion are near universally recognized principles of liberal democracy. No state can today be regarded as free unless it guarantees freedom of religious belief and practice, including the freedom of religious minorities and of dissenters” (International IDEA, 2017, p. 7). There is no one or a single type of state-constitution relationship in various countries of the world, but all constitutions of liberal democracies must address the issues of separation between politics and religion and religious liberty and tolerance. Article VI, Section 3 of the American constitution states that, “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States’. . . Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Constitution of the Fifth French Republic States that, “France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic. It ensures the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race or religion. It respects all beliefs.” The German Constitution holds that, “Religious bodies shall have the right of entry for religious purposes into the army, hospitals, prisons, or other public institutions, so far as is necessary for the arrangement of public worship or the exercise of pastoral offices, but every form of compulsion must be avoided.” While in the United States, the neutrality of the state in matters of religion is the key, in France, the state seeks to remain secular. In Germany and many other countries, the constitution wants accommodation with religion but at the same time aims to maintain neutrality (International IDEA, 2017, p. 7).

THE GLOBAL RISE OF RELIGIOUS HOSTILITIES AND INTOLERANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY The twenty-first century came in the wake of significant advancement in the progress of global modernity. Since the end of the Cold War in the middle of the 1980s, more countries

218

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

are advancing towards democracy and economic growth. The size of the global middle class is widening, and women in almost all countries are becoming economically and politically empowered. The economic and cultural connectivity between and among the world nations are growing at a rate unprecedented in human history. Out of the world’s 7.7 billion people, about 4.5 billion are now connected through the Internet. The world of digitalization has brought remarkable opportunities for unbounded economic growth and innovations. The 5G connectivity and the discovery of the Internet of Every Thing (IoE) are indeed giving birth to a new form of civilization. However, the irony is that at the same time, the world is witnessing a significant resurgence in religious restrictions and hostilities all across the world societies. The Pew Research Center has been researching global religious restrictions and hostilities since 2007. The 2016 study of the Pew Research Center surveyed 198 countries in terms of two indices: The Government Restrictions Index (GRI), and Social Hostilities Index (SHI). “The Government Restrictions Index is based on 20 indicators of ways that national and local governments restrict religion, including through coercion and force” (Pew Research Center, 2018a, p. 13). The Center’s Social Hostilities Index “is based on 13 indicators of ways in which private individuals and social groups infringe on religious beliefs and practices, including religiously biased crimes, mob violence and efforts to stop particular religious groups from growing or operating” (Pew Research Center, June 2018b, p. 13). The study found that “More than a quarter (28%) of countries [55 countries] had “high” or “very high” levels of government restrictions on religion in 2016, an increase from 25% the year before” (Pew Research Center, 2018a, p. 1). According to the study, government restrictions on religion significantly increased between 2007 and 2016. In 2007, 20 percent of the countries (40 countries) had a high or very high level of religious restrictions. In 2007, 39 states had a high or very high level of social restrictions on religion. In 2016, the number increased to 54 countries. The study found that “A growing share of the incidents of government restrictions or social hostilities in 2016 involved political parties or social groups espousing nationalist positions. About one-in-ten countries (11%) had government actors (including public officials or political parties) that used nationalist rhetoric against members of a particular religious group” (Pew Research Center, 2018a, p. 2). The study found that “Overall, the number of countries where various religious groups were harassed either by governments or social groups increased in 2016” (Pew Research Center, 2018a, p. 2). It was further observed by the study that government restrictions and social hostilities victimized more the Christians and Muslims. “The most widely targeted groups in 144 and 142 countries respectively experienced religious hostilities were Christians and Muslims, the world’s two largest religious groups. Jews were harassed in 87 countries” ((Pew Research Center, 2018a, p. 2). In 2007, Christians experienced religious hostilities in 107 countries. In 2016, the number increased to 144 countries. In 2007, Muslims experienced religious hostilities in 96 countries. In 2016, the number increased to 142 countries. In 2007, Jews experienced religious hostilities in 51 countries. In 2016, the number increased to 87 countries (Pew Research Center, 2018a).

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

219

RELIGIOUS RESTRICTIONS, HOSTILITIES, AND VIOLENCE IN SOUTH ASIA: INDIA, PAKISTAN, AND BANGLADESH The region of South Asia is composed of eight countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. With about 1.9 Billion people, South Asia represents 24.81 percent of the world’s population (2019 estimate). Out of South Asia’s 1.9 billion people, about 1.8 billion live in the three counties of India (1.3 billion), Pakistan (205 million), and Bangladesh (168 million). These countries of South Asia were under British colonial rule for more than two hundred years. Before 1947, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh belonged to greater India. In 1947, the British divided India into two independent countries, India and Pakistan, based on the religion of Islam. The Muslim majority regions of India comprised the state of Pakistan. In 1971, the Eastern part of Pakistan, through a liberation war, became the independent country of Bangladesh. Modernization in South Asia began from the middle of the nineteenth century under British colonialism with the development of modern law and justice, a modern structure of bureaucracy, and a modern system of education (Cady and Simon, 2006; Hinnells and King, 2006). Although there were movements against British colonialism during the colonial time, India, particularly the Hindus, were open to the growing culture of modernity. The Muslims of India were behind the Hindus, but they also, by the beginning of the twentieth century, began to accept the growing culture of modernity brought by the British colonial government. Out of all the British colonies, including colonial America, modernization rapidly progressed in India. The countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have a vast reservoir of modernized elites, and many of them made significant contributions in the world of science, technology, peace, and literature. Mahatma Gandhi, the father of Modern India, is considered as one of the world’s great champions of non-violence along with Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandala. However, the irony is that the dreamland of Gandhi’s non-violence, India, today is making a global headline as one of the most religiously repressive and violent countries in the world.

Religious Restriction and Hostilities in India The Pew Research Center’s 2016 study on the global rise in religious restrictions cited India as one of the 25 most populous countries in the world having the highest overall levels of religious restrictions. The study confirmed that “Among the 25 most populous countries in the world, Egypt, Russia, India, Indonesia, and Turkey had the highest overall levels of religious restrictions” (Pew Research Center, June 2018a, p. 3). The study further added that “China had the highest levels of government restrictions on religion, while India had the highest levels of social hostilities involving religion. Both countries had the highest levels of restrictions in these respective categories, not only among the 25 most populous countries but also in the world at large” (p. 3). The 2017 report from the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) similarly observed that “In 2017, religious freedom conditions continued a downward trend in India. India's history as a multicultural and multi-religious society remained threatened by an increasingly exclusionary conception of national identity based on religion. During the year, Hindu-nationalist groups sought to 'saffronize' India

220

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

through violence, intimidation, and harassment against non-Hindus and Hindu Dalits" (as quoted in The Economic Times, April 2018, p. 1). The report placed India “in the Tier 2 countries of particular concern along with Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia and Turkey” (as quoted in The Economic Times, April 2018, p. 2). It is mostly the minorities, the Muslims who comprise about 18 percent of the population and the Christians who comprise about 2 percent of the population, who are the targeted victims of religious harassment and violence in India. An Indian Hindu woman, named Kavita Krishnan (2015), wrote an article in Daily O (an online opinion platform in India) in 2015, titled “How Hindus Killed a Muslim over Beef and Murdered India’s Secularism.” In this article, she reminded the Indians of a poem written by Abel Meeropol in 1937 against the lynching of Black men in America. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” Religious tensions and violence between the Hindus and Muslim in India are as old the beginning of the spread of Islam in India in the eighth century, or as old as the beginning of Muslim invasion in India in the eleventh century. During the two hundred years of British colonial rule, the Hindus and Muslims in India relatively peacefully coexisted. However, more than a million Hindus and Muslim were killed over the partition of India in 1947. Still for about 70 years from 1947 to 2014, primarily under the rule of the modernized Nehru elites, India rapidly progressed as a secular nation, and became, not just one of the largest economies but also one of the largest democracies in the world. A wall of separation between politics and religion was slowly built and strengthened. From the closing decade of the 20th Century, India’s wall of separation between politics and religion, however, began to crumble, and it began with the demolition of the Babri Masjid (mosque), built by Emperor Babur in 1530, by the Hindu nationalists in 1992. The Hindu nationalists claimed, about which most Indian archeologists are skeptical, that Hindu Lord Ram was born in the place where Babri Mosque was built (Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh). The demolition led to the eruption of several riots among the Hindus and Muslims and more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. Hundreds of Hindus were also killed in Pakistan and Bangladesh. A senior Indian Hindu journalist described that, “In a way, with the demolition of the Babri Masjid, everything broke, there began a normalization of the hatred between the communities. The destruction of the mosque unleashed all the dark forces within the community” (as quoted in Saberin, December 2017, p. 2). India began the 21st century with another major rift between the Hindus and Muslim. In 2002, a train carrying Hindu Pilgrims from Ayodhy was set in fire by the Muslims, and that led to the eruption of a riot in Gujrat. It is alleged that the Gujrat riot was deliberately allowed to expand by Narendra Modi who was then the Chief Minister of Gujrat (In 2005, at the time of the expanding war on terror, Narendra Modi was denied a visa to enter into the United States for his alleged role in the Gujrat riot). The demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 was the beginning of the rise of the ultraright in the horizon of Indian politics. The Gujrat riot and the rise of Narendra Modi galvanized India’s anti-modernist right-wing political forces under the banner of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). In 1984, BJP won only two seats out of 545 seats in the India Parliament. In the general election of 1991, during the Babri Masjid crisis, BJP’s seats in the parliament rose to 120. In 2014, BJP scored a landslide victory and won the majority (282 seats) in the Indian parliament (Saberin, December 2017, p. 6). In 2019, BJP became more invincible. Winning 303 seats out of 545 seats in the parliament, Narendra Modi and his right-wing

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

221

regime came to power for another term of five years. The first wave of Indian modernity reached a significant “breakdown” with the coming to power of the BJP in 2014. From 2014 to 2019, under the control of the BJP, India has seen the reincarnation of medievalism, bigotry, nationalism, and nativism. One of the major studies on communal riots in India (Graff and Galonnier. 2013) suggest that in the period from 1950 to 1975, during the dominance of the Nehru elites in power, the number of death tolls from the religious violence in India was less than 6. The number began to increase with the increasing dominance and the eventual coming to power of the BJP. Between 2005 and 2013, death toll per year from religious violence rose to 120. Pew Research Center’s 2018 study on Global Restrictions on Religion shows India’s poor performance on many items related to religious hostilities (see Table 9. 1).

Table 9.1. India’s performance on items related to religious hostilities Hate Crimes Armed Conflict Leading to Displacement Hostility Against Conversion Women Harassed for Violating Dress Code Assaulted or Displaced for Preaching and Expressing Minority Religion

2007 100 50 100 0 100

2015 83 50 100 0 100

2016 83 75 100 100 100

Source: Pew Research Center. (2018). Global Restrictions on Religion.

Table 9.2. India’s performance on various indicators of religious freedom, 2008-2016 Year

Religious Freedom

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

8.5 8.5 8.4 8.5 8.2 8.2 6.7 5.9 5.5

Freedom to Establish and Operate Religious Organizations 10 10 10 10 10 10 5 5 5

Harassment & Physical Hostilities

Legal and Regulatory Restrictions

9.3 9.4 9.4 9.3 9.3 9.2 9.1 6.2 5.5

6 6 5.7 6.4 5.3 5.4 6 6.5 5.9

Source: Cato Institute. (2018). Human Freedom Index, 2018.

The Washington-based think tank Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index (HFI) ranks countries, on a scale of 0 to 10, in terms of personal, civil, and economic freedom. The 2018 HFI shows that India’s level of religious freedom was worse than 111 out 176 countries studied. In 2008, India’s overall religious freedom score was 8.5. With the dominance of the BJP and its coming to power in 2014, India’s religious score began to sharply decline. In 2016, India’s religious score came down to 5.5 (see Table 9.2). Hate, harassment, and violence against the religious minorities, particularly against the Muslims that are being perpetrated today by the Hindu nationalist supporters of the BJP are in no way less cruel and less barbaric than what the world has seen from the ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In different parts

222

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

of India, incidents of lynching Muslims by the Hindu nationalists (allegedly for eating beef) are growing at an alarming rate, and that is the reason why Kavita Krishnan reminded all about the poem written on the lynching of Blacks in America. In 2017, “A Muslim man has been brutally hacked to death and then set on fire” (Morely, December 2017, p. 1) by a Hindu nationalist in the Indian state of Rajasthan who is described to have hated intermarriage between the Hindus and Muslims. In 2015, in a village near the capital of New Delhi, a Muslim man named Mohammed Akhlaq, was beaten to death by a group of Hindu nationalists in front his young daughter allegedly for eating beef (it was later discovered that he was eating mutton, not beef). An Indian parliamentarian, Shashi Tharoor, described that this "horrific killing shows this meat bigotry has gone out of control" (as quoted in The Associated Press, September 2015, p. 1). In June 2017 alone, according to the Amnesty International, “at least 10 Muslim men had been lynched or killed in public in Hindu majority India amid what it called a ‘rising tide of Islamophobia in the country’ (Time, June 2017, p, 4). One of the studies conducted by Open Doors found that in recent years Christian prosecution in India has also significantly increased “driven by extreme religious nationalism, which is often tacitly condoned – and sometimes actively encouraged – by local and national governments” (as quoted in The Guardian, January 2017, p. 1). It is estimated that “a church was burnt down or a cleric was beaten on average ten times a week in India in the year to 31 October 2016, a threefold increase on the previous year” (as quoted in The Guardian, January 2017, p. 1). The Christians who are particularly victimized are those who belong to the lower caste described as Dalit Christians. “Religious nationalists attempt to forcibly convert people to the dominant faith of their nation, often turning to violence when community discrimination and non-violent oppression do not succeed in imposing their religious beliefs on minority Christians” (The Guardian, January 2017, p. 2). The Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship (2018), an organization that is in existence in India for almost 50 years, similarly observed that “Targeted violence and hate crimes against the Christian community in India continued unabated in 2018. The Religious Liberty Commission (RLC) of the Evangelical Fellowship of India has recorded 325 incidents where Christians have been targeted using violence, intimidation or harassment” (p. 1) (see Table 9.3). One of the worst places for the Christians in present India, the study noted, is Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India with less than 0.18 percent of Christians. In 2014-2017, the state had the most incidents (645) of communal (sectarian) violence as well as the most deaths (121) in these communal incidents. The state saw 94 incidents in total against Christians, between September and December of 2018 alone. In comparison, the number of incidents against Christians recorded in other states in 2017 was only 50 for the entire year” (as quoted in The Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship, 2018, p. 2). The other states with a high level of violence against the Christians include Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. “The state of Tamil Nadu came as a distant second compared to the state of Uttar Pradesh and registered 40 incidents while Telangana stood third with 24. Bihar and Jharkhand recorded 17 and 16 incidents respectively, and Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh witnessed 12 incidents each” (The Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship, 2018, p. 2). In recent years, concerns have grown among India’s large segment of the modernist elites and masses about the coming crisis of India’s secularism. As Saba Dewan, a noted Indian filmmaker, said: “We are laying our claim as Indian citizens upon this country … we

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

223

are outraged at the attacks on human life, human dignity at the systemic violence unleashed on Dalits and minorities. This is not the India we want” (Time, June 2017, p. 3).

Table 9.3. Incidence of religious harassment against Christians in India, 2012-2018 Year 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Number of Incidents 130 151 146 177 247 351 325

Source: The Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship, 2018.

Table 9.4. Types of harassment and violence against Christians in India, 2018 Type of Incident Arrested Church/Worship Stopped Church Burnt Demolition of Church Falsely Accused Forced Conversion Gender Violence Hate Campaign House Burnt Murder Physical Violence Physical Violence Arrested Social Opposition/Boycott Theft Threat and Harassment Vandalism Grand Total

Number of Incidents 38 81 3 5 32 3 1 6 1 2 53 17 12 1 44 26 325

Source: The Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship, 2018.

The 2018 report by The Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship (2018) documented various types of religious harassment and violence against the Christians, and most frequent of those are physical violence and the stopping of worship (see Table 9.4). A report published in 2018 suggested that “In 2017, the Evangelical Fellowship of India documented 351 instances of violence against Christians, but activists and scholars believe that this is only a fraction of the actual violence as many cases go unreported” (Selvraj, August 2018, p. 1). Many Christians in India, particularly the Dalit Christians, also face structural violence. Structural violence “is the denial of rights and protections afforded to Dalit Christians, who constitute an estimated 70 percent of India’s Christian population. Dalit Christians are excluded from receiving the benefits of affirmative action from the government in the form of reserved seats in government education and employment” (Selvraj, August 2018, p. 1.

224

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

Religious Restrictions and Hostilities in Pakistan Out of 200 million people in Pakistan, 96.5 percent are Muslims, 1.6 percent are Christians, 1.9 percent are Hindus, and less than one percent are Buddhists. Pakistan is an example that religious homogeneity in a country can also be associated with a high level of governmental restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 report on global restrictions on religion, Pakistan is one of the 24 countries in the world with a high level of religious restrictions. “Among the world’s 25 most populous countries, the highest overall restrictions on religion were in Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, where both the government and society at large imposed numerous limits on religious beliefs and practices” (Pew Research Center, 2016, p. 6). Pakistan also was one of the 20 countries that had a high level of religious restrictions in 2009. “ Among the world’s 25 most populous countries, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India stand out as having the most restrictions when both measures are taken into account [government restrictions and social hostilities]” (Pew Research Center, December 2009, p. 2). In Pakistan, not just the minorities of Christians and Hindus are the targets of religious restrictions and hostilities. Pakistan’s different minority Islamic sects such as the Shiites and Ahmadiyya are also victimized. There are also conflicts between the Muslims who are liberal and mainstream and those are the believers in the ultra-conservative Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. The recent years in Pakistan have seen increased hostilities and violence against Christians. The Open Doors USA’s 2019 report observed that, “Under Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws, Christians continue to live in daily fear they will be accused of blasphemy— which can carry a penalty of death.” (Open Doors USA, 2019, p. 1). The Open Doors USA further noted that persecution against Christians is rampant. Increasingly, Muslim youth are taught to treat believers with contempt and persecute Christians, commonly regarded as an “untouchable caste” (Lowry, 2018, p. 1). On August 30, 2017, a Christian student named Sharoon in a village school was “beaten to death in his classroom by another student— because Sharoon was thirsty and had drunk from the same cup of water as his Muslim classmates…To them, Sharoon was an infidel who should have never even touched the same glass Muslims were using, much less drank from it” (Lowry, 2018, p. 1). The Christians in Pakistan “make up only 1.5 percent of the total population, but over a quarter (187) of the 702 blasphemy cases registered between 1990 and 2014 were against Christians” (Lowry, 2018, p. 1). In 2010, a Pakistani Christian woman named Aasiya Noreen (Asia Bibi) was sentenced to death by hanging for Blasphemy. She was in prison for nine years before her sentence was struck down by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. However, her life was not safe in Pakistan. She was granted asylum in Canada in 2019. In 2011, two Pakistani Christians politicians were murdered for speaking against the Blasphemy law. One of the reporters from The Guardian described the incident in the following way: “Shahbaz Bhatti – a Christian critic of Pakistan's blasphemy laws – killed by assassins who left leaflets signed 'Taliban al-Qaida'. Two assassins sprayed the Christian minister's car with gunfire, striking him at least eight times, before scattering pamphlets that described him as a ‘Christian infidel’. The leaflets were signed Taliban al-Qaida Punjab” (Walsh, March 2011, p. 1). The report further noted that, “Bhatti's assassination was the second killing of a [Christian] politician in Islamabad over blasphemy in as many months, following the assassination of the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer outside a cafe a few miles away on 4 January [2011]” (Walsh, March 2011, p. 1). According to data from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

225

(2017), the number of deaths in Pakistan over time for the Blasphemy law has steadily increased. Before 1986, the number was 14. Between 1987-2016, the number of death tolls increased to 1,472. Out of 1,472 deaths, 49 percent were non-Ahmadi Muslims, 34 percent were Ahmadi Muslims, and 14 percent were Christians. During the last two decades, thousands of Pakistanis of Shiites and Ahmadiyya sects were killed in religious violence, and severe restrictions were imposed on the practice of their faith. One of the sources claimed that between 1984 to December 31, 2017, a total of 260 Ahmadiyya (Ahmadis) were killed and 379 were assaulted for their faith. During the same time, 22 Ahmadi mosques were set on fire, 27 mosques were demolished, the authorities sealed 33 mosques, 17 mosques were forcibly occupied, and 39 Ahmadis’ bodies were exhumed after burial. It is also claimed that during the same period, 765 Ahmadis were arrested for displaying the Kalima (i.e., ‘There is none worthy of worship except Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”), 447 Ahmadis were arrested for posing as Muslim, and 815 Ahmadis were arrested for preaching (South Asia Terrorism Portal, 2019). Out of 95.5 percent of the Muslims in Pakistan, 20 percent are Shiites. Severe religious hostilities are also directed towards the Shiites in Pakistan, particularly towards the Shiite ethnic group of Hazara. The Shiite Islam is said to have begun about 200 years ago in the city of Multan, Panjab. “It is said that Shiite Islam in Pakistan began here, in this dusty corner of Punjab, more than 200 years ago. Shiites, who constitute only 20 percent of Pakistan's 165 million people, have found themselves beleaguered ever since. As many as 4,000 people [Shiites] are estimated to have died in sectarian fighting in Pakistan in the last two decades, 300 in the last year alone (Christian Science Monitor, February 2007, p. 1). It is estimated that between 2002 and 2018, because of sectarian attacks on Mosques in Pakistan, 1,368, Shiites and Ahmadis were killed, and 2,748 were injured (South Asia Terrorism Portal, 2019). According to the Cato’s Institute’s Human Freedom Index 2018, Pakistan’s overall score in religious freedom was 7.5 in 2008. In 2016, the score came down to 4. Pakistan’s performance in other religious areas such as freedom to establish and operate religious organizations, harassment and physical hostilities, and legal and regulatory restrictions also steadily declined between 2008 and 2016 (see Table 9.5). Particularly alarming is the steady growth in governmental restrictions and hostilities. In 2008, in terms of legal and regulatory restrictions on religion, Pakistan received a score of 8.9 in 2008. In 2016, the score came down to 3.7 (Cato Institute, 2018). Religious hostilities and violence in Pakistan are closely connected to domestic Islamic terrorism. There are numerous domestic Islamic terrorist groups in Pakistan (see Table 9.6). Some of these groups are also linked to ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban of Afghanistan. In 2012, the world learned of the shooting of a young school girl in Pakistan by a Pakistani Taliban who professed that western education for women is against the injunctions of Islam. “In 2012, the year Malala was shot, social hostilities involving religion hit a six-year high worldwide as well as in Pakistan, which scored a 9.8 that year. During this time, Pakistanis accused of blasphemy were killed…discriminations against the country’s religious minority groups, such as Shiite Muslims and Christians, remained prevalent” (Pew Research Center, October 2017, p. 1). The rise of domestic terrorism during the last two decades has severely worsened Pakistan’s pre-existing grounds of religious hostilities and religious restrictions. One study has found that between 2000 and 2019 in Pakistan, because of Islamic terrorist violence, 22,656 civilians, 7,125 security forces personnel, and 34,110 terrorists were killed (South Asia Terrorism Portal, 2019).

226

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

Table 9.5. Pakistan’s performance on various indicators of religious freedom 2008-2016 Year

Religious Freedom

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

7.5 7.5 7 7.6 7.5 7.3 6.7 4.5 4

Freedom to Establish and Operate Religious Organizations 4.2 4.2 4.2 5 5 5 2.5 2.5 2.5

Harassment and Physical Hostilities 9.3 9.2 9.4 9.4 8.9 8.4 9.2 5.7 6

Legal & Regulatory Restrictions 8.9 9.1 7.4 8.4 8.7 8.5 8.2 5.3 3.7

Source: Cato Institute. (2018). Human Freedom Index, 2018.

Table 9.6. Major domestic and international Islamic extremist groups in Pakistan Domestic Terrorist Groups Lashkar-e-Omar Harkat-ul-Mujahidden Sipah-e-Shahaba Pakistan (SSP) Tehreek-e-Jaferia Pakistan (TJP) Lashkar-eJhangvi (LeJ) Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan (SMP) Jamaat-ul-Fuqra Popular Front for Armed Resistance

International Terrorist Groups Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) Jaish-e-Muhammad Mujahideen (JeM) Al Badr Jamait-ul-Mujahideen (JuM) Lashkar -e-Jabbar (LeJ) Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami

Source: Compiled by the Authors.

Religious Restrictions and Hostilities in Bangladesh Out of Bangladesh’s 168 million people, 90.8 percent are Muslims, 8.2 percent are Hindus, and less than 1 percent are Christians and Buddhists. According to the Pew Research Center’s global studies on religion, Bangladesh is also one of the countries with high level of religious violence and social hostilities against the religious minorities. The main targets of religious violence in Bangladesh are the Hindus and the liberal and modernist intellectuals, civil society leaders, and bloggers. The country is sharply divided between the radical Islamists and the liberals. There are many domestic radical Islamic organizations (see Table 9.7) in Bangladesh. One of their missions is to establish an Islamic State in Bangladesh by driving the Hindus to India and destroying the liberal cultural foundations of the state of Bangladesh. “According to the 1951 census, Hindus were 22 percent of the population, in 1974 the figure came down to 14 percent and the last 2011 census suggests the followers of faith consists only 8.4 percent of the population” (The Economic Times, June 2016a, p. 1). It is believed that the fear of prosecution is the reason why the Hindu population is rapidly shrinking in Bangladesh. Rana Dasgupta, General Secretary of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, recently put it in the following way: “fundamental groups want the

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

227

Hindus to leave this country, where we are born and brought up…Hindus are under the ‘constant fear of persecution’ by fundamentalists“(The Economic Times, June 2015, pp. 1-2). It is also reported that “Bangladeshi Hindus faced massive violence in 1992 after the Babri Masjid demolition in India. About 30,000 homes, offices and places of worship were destroyed” (The Economic Times, June 2016a, p. 3).

Table 9.7. Major domestic Islamic extremist groups in Bangladesh Jamaate-e- Islami (JEI) Jangrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJOB) Hizb ut-Tahrir in Bangladesh

Jamat-ul-Mujahedeen (JMB) Islamic Chhatra Sibir (ICS) Ahle Hadith Andolan Bangladesh (AHAB) Islamic Oikya Jote

Source: Compiled by the Authors.

In recent years, hundreds of Hindus were killed, dozens of Hindu temples were vandalized, thousands of Hindus were driven from their homes, and the fundamentalists grabbed acres of Hindu lands. The 2009 report from the Pew Research Center cited that, “In Bangladesh, there was repeated violence and discrimination against Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists. The Bangladesh Buddhist-Hindu-Christian Unity Council reported, for instance, that from July 2007 to April 2008, Hindus were targeted in 58 killings, 52 attacks on or occupation of temples, 39 incidents of land grabbing and 13 rapes” (Pew Research Center, 2009, p.4). The Islamic extremists assassinated four Bangladeshis (Rahman Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Chatterjee, and Faisal Arefin Dipan) and one Bangladesh-American (Avijit Roy) in 2015 for their secular views and writings (Bandow, January, 2018). On June 7, 2016, a seventy-year-old Hindu priest was hacked to death by the fundamentalist in Southeastern Bangladesh. A journalist described this horrific incidence in the following way: “After reciting all his morning shlokas and mantras, 70-year-old Ananda Gopal Ganguly walked out of the temple, climbed his bicycle and pedaled slowly through the paddy fields. The incense and the oil lamps might have still been burning in the sanctum sanctorum when three bikers’ blitz through, hit him with sharp-edged weapons and slit his throat, leaving his head barely hinged on the neck “(The Economic Times, June 2016b, p. 1). Kajal Debnath, a leader of Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist, Christian Unity Council (HBCUC), claimed that the decapitating of the Hindus in Bangladesh is “a new phenomenon. Earlier, they would rape Hindu girls or torch our temples and houses, forcing Hindus to abandon their properties and migrate to India. It was mostly about grabbing Hindu land and property. However, now they are slaughtering ordinary landless poor Hindus with no social or economic standing, and the message is entirely different” (as quoted in The Economic Times, June 2016b, p. 2). Many observers noted that targeted killing of the Hindus in Bangladesh began to increase from “2014 after al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), now called Ansar-ul-Islam (AuI), announced its arrival in 2014” (The Economic Times, June 2016b, p. 4). Many intelligence sources claimed that AuI “is behind the killings of most of the atheist bloggers” in Bangladesh) (The Economic Times, June 2016b, p. 4). The ISIS claimed the responsibility of killing scores of Hindus and liberal bloggers in 2015 and 2016 in Bangladesh. The impact of global terrorism was vividly observed when a group of Bangladeshi Islamic extremists in July 2016 stormed the Holy Artisan Bakery Café in Dhaka and slaughtered 20 hostages, 17 of them were foreign nationals. According to the Pew Research Center’s (2018b) Global

228

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

Religious Future Project report, the social hostility index score for Bangladesh was 8.3 (on scale of 0 to 10), in 2007. In 2014, the score came down to 5.8, and in 2016, it went up to 7.6. The Cato Institute’s 2018 Human Freedom Index shows that Bangladesh’s overall religious freedom index score in 2008 was 6.1. In 2015, the score went up to 6.6. From 2009 to 2013, the religious freedom score of Bangladesh steadily declined (see Table 9.8). This was the time when there was a political turmoil, and Bangladesh was transitioning from a fundamentalist government to a military rule, and from military rule to a liberal democratic form of government.

Table 9.8. Bangladesh’s performance on various indicators of religious freedom 2008-2015 Years

Religious Freedom

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

6.1 5.9 5.8 5.9 6 5.5 6.9 6.6

Freedom to Establish and Operate Religious Organizations 5.8 5.8 5.8 5 5 5 7.5 7.5

Harassment & Physical Hostilities 7.5 6.9 6.1 7 7 6.1 7.2 7.1

Legal & Regulatory Restriction 4.9 4.9 5.5 5.8 6.1 5.3 6.1 5

Source: Cato Institute. (2018). Human Freedom Index, 2018.

POLITICS OF GLOBAL RELIGIOUS RESTRICTIONS, HOSTILITIES AND VIOLENCE Religious hostilities and violence in a country are related in many complex ways to its specific political dynamics and the distinct patterns of evolution of different religious groups within its national boundary. The nature and dynamics of religious hostilities and violence of India, for example, are different from those of Pakistan and Bangladesh, or Turkey and Egypt. The contemporary trends in worldwide growth in religious hostilities, however, exhibit some general patterns. The global rise of religious hostilities is essentially a political phenomenon. Religious hostilities and violence may be expressed in economic terms such as land grabbing of the Hindus by the Muslim extremists in Bangladesh. They may also be expressed in cultural terms such as the destruction of religious signs and symbols. The demolition of the Babri Mosque in India caused a religious right that took the lives of more than 2,000 people. The ISIS demolished a massive Buddha statue in Afghanistan in 2001 and many Muslim Shrines in Iraq and Syria because they believe, worshiping the Shrines and statues are against the injunctions of the Quran. The Communist Party of China is asking the Chinese Christians not to use the symbolism of Jesus but those of the party and its leader, Xi Jinping. These types of religious violence and hostilities are intrinsically political. The global rise of religious violence and hostilities that began from the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century is broadly connected to the rise of global terror and the war on terror. More specifically, they are connected to the rise of the ultra-rights in global politics.

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

229

Since the 1950s and 1960s, particularly since the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, the worldwide economic progress has been remarkable. More countries in the world today are in the process of democratization. During the last decades, millions of women have been economically and politically empowered. The size of today’s urban and college educated global middle-class is remarkably more prominent than what it was a half a century ago. Out of the world’s 7.7 billion people, 4.5 billion are connected through the Internet. With the onset of globalization and 5G connectivity, the people all over the world are becoming unceasingly curious about different and distant lands, peoples, cultures. The 21st century has, indeed, brought a new global tribe of Homo sapiens. The present rise of global religious violence and hostilities is not part of overall global trends in social change and transformations. It is an extension of the rise of global terror and the global war on terror that began from the beginning of the 21st century. The global war on terror further escalated the boundary of global terror and displaced millions of Muslims and Christians from their homeland. The global war on terror created opportunities for the emergence of many ancient hostilities between and among the different great religions, particularly hostilities against the Muslims. The global terror and the war on terror created a new generation of “nomadic” Muslims, many of whom in desperation sailed to the west to take refuge. This global scenario created a fertile ground for the regrouping and reemergence of the anti-modernists and the right-wing political parties in the global political landscape. The rise of the ultra-rights, in turn, is further escalating the global religious hostilities and violence. The Pew Research Center’s 2018 study found that “Government actors…at times used nationalist, and often anti-immigrant or anti-minority, rhetoric to target religious groups in their countries in 2016. About one-in-ten (11%) countries had government actors that used this type of rhetoric. This marks an uptick from 2015, when 6% of cases involved political parties or officials that espoused nationalist views” (June 2018, p. 2). The same study observed that the involvement of right-wing political parties in fueling religious hostilities in recent years was more common in Europe. “About a third of European countries (33%) had nationalist parties that made political statements against religious minorities, an increase from 20% of countries in 2015. In France, for example, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, promised to continue the ban on religious clothing and symbols in public places specifically to fight the advance of political Islam (June 2018, p. 4). The study further noted that “The majority of social groups displaying this nationalist or anti-immigrant and antiminority activity – 25 out of the 32 – were in European countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Hungary” (June 2018, p. 6). In the Asia-Pacific region, the right-wing political parties similarly imposed restrictions on religion and deliberately inflamed religious hostilities in India, Burma, Australia, and New Zealand. Globally, most of the religious hostilities incited by the right-wing political parties were against the Muslims. “Muslims were the focus of nationalist groups in 20 of the 25 European countries where these types of groups were active. Following the terrorist attacks in Brussels in March 2016, for example, the Spanish nationalist group Madrid Social Home hung signs near a major mosque in Madrid reading ‘Today Brussels, tomorrow Madrid?’ and posted ‘Mosques out of Europe’ on Twitter” (Pew Research Center, June 2018, p. 6). In the United States, for the ultraconservative regime of Donald Trump, inciting hostilities against the Muslims is one of the significant political strategies for widening the support base. On March 9, 2016, Trump told CNN that, “I think Islam hates us. There’s something there that — there is a tremendous hatred there. There is tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There is an

230

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

unbelievable hatred of us” (The Washington Post, May 20, 2017, p. 3). On January 27, 2017, “Within a week of becoming president, Trump signed an executive order blocking Syrian refugees and banning citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States for 90 days (The Washington Post, May 2017, p. 5). Although there are concerns about the global terror in the minds of most Americans, about 80 percent of Trump supporters were in favor of the Muslim Travel Ban in comparison to about 50 percent within the general population. The global rise in religious hostilities is historically a complex phenomenon, but its present nature and escalation are connected to the rise of the ultra-right in the global political landscape that has reemerged in the context of the rise of global terror and the global war on terror started from the beginning of the 21st century. The phenomenon of the rise of new religious violence and hostilities in South Asia is also profoundly connected to the rise in global terror and the emergence of ultra-rights in global politics, even though the three countries of South Asia—India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh— have their own local and historical peculiarities. One of the unique features of religious conflicts, particularly between Hinduism and Islam in South Asia is that it is structural and, hence, its expressions are relatively violent and destructive. The expression of religious hostilities in Europe and America, in comparison to South Asia, is less violent. What is happening in South Asia, as a result of the expansion of global terror in the region, is that ancient religious hatreds and politico-religious ideologies are being reinforced and recast by the anti-modernists to capture the political power. In India, the recent growth in violence and hostilities against the Muslims and Christians is directly connected to the rise of the fundamentalist right-wing regime of BJP led by Narendra Modi. Modi is bringing back the old and historically discarded nativist ideology if Hindutva into the center of politics in modern India where the constitution is based on the principle of secularism. Articles 25 of the Indian Constitution states that, “Subject to public order, morality, and health and the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.” Article 26 of the Indian Constitution has a provision that “Every religious denomination or any section thereof shall have the right (a) to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes; (b) to manage its affairs in matters of religion; (c) to own and acquire movable and immovable property; and (d) to administer such property in accordance with law.” The BJP ideology of Hindutva that aims to create a new Hindu state in India is a gross violation of the Indian constitution and destruction of the status that modern India has achieved in the community of world nations during the last 70 years of its modernization after independence. It is projected that by 2050, the number of Muslim populations in India will reach to about 300 million. The further strengthening of the political power of the BJP, and the further growth in the Muslim population to 300 million is likely to bring more religious hostilities and violence in India. In Pakistan, the history of religious violence and hostilities is vastly different. Pakistan was born in 1947 basically based on an anti-modernist ideology. Pakistan was born based on the ideology of building an Islamic state. Part 2 of the 1973 constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan states that, “Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan.” In the Preamble, the constitution writes that, “The principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam, shall be fully observed; Wherein the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah.” In part 20, the constitution also states that, “Freedom to profess religion and to

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

231

manage religious institutions.− Subject to law, public order and morality,- (a) every citizen shall have the right to profess, practice and propagate his religion; and (b) every religious denomination and every sect thereof shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions.” The nature of religious liberty in Pakistan, from the very beginning, therefore, was different. The constitution demands that while the minorities can observe and profess their respective religion, the lives of the majority of Muslims (96.5 percent) shall be guided by the Quran and Sunnah. From 1947 to 1977, Pakistan’s legal and judicial system was based on the Common Law. In 1979, Pakistan’s President General Zia-ul-Haq, introduced the Sharia Law as an integral part of Pakistan’s legal and judicial system. In 1979, Zia-ul-Haq introduced five ordinances, and they are collectively described as “Hudood Ordinances.” These ordinances are The Offences against Property (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance; The Offence of Zina [rape] (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance; The Offence of Qazf [false imputation of Zina or rape] (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance; The Prohibition (Enforcement of Hudood) Order, and The Execution of Punishment of Whipping Ordinance” (Shahidullah, 2012, p. 499). In 1982, President Zia-ul-Haq introduced the Blasphemy Law through an amendment to Pakistan’s Penal Code—Pakistan Penal Code (Amendment) Ordinance of 1982. “In 1986, the Parliament of Pakistan further tightened the blasphemy law of Pakistan by passing the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act III of 1986. The new Act (Schedule 2) introduced the death penalty for the crime of blasphemy (derogatory terms against Prophet Muhammad) in addition to the punishment of life imprisonment” (Shahidullah, 2012, p.513). The government of Nawaz Shariff in 1992 further tightened the Blasphemy Law and “removed the provision of life imprisonment from Section 295-C and made the death penalty mandatory for the crime of blasphemy (derogatory terms against Prophet Muhammad) (Shahidullah, 2012, p. 513). The introduction of the Sharia Law and the Blasphemy Law severely reduced and restricted the rights of religious liberty of the minorities in Pakistan. The Blasphemy Law particularly created huge tensions among the Christians and Hindus. “A report from Freedom House published in 2010 noted that, “a total of 695 people was accused of blasphemy in Pakistan between 1986 and 2006. Of those, 362 were Muslims, 239 were Ahmadis, 86 were Christians, and 10 were Hindus. Dawn has reported that some 5,000 cases were registered between 1984 and 2004, and 964 people were charged with blasphemy” (Freedom House, 2010, p. 69). The World Report 2012 from Human Rights Watch (2012) noted that in Pakistan “Freedom of belief and expression came under severe threat as Islamist militant groups murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer and…Minister Shahbaz Bhatti over their public support for amending the country’s often abused blasphemy laws” (as quoted in Shahidullah, 2012, pp. 515-516). These internal developments, started from the late 1970s in search of building a strong Islamic State, made Pakistan a fertile ground for the global terror to further eliminate the religious minorities and expand the Wahhabis’ version of pure Islam. In Bangladesh, the contexts of the rise of religious violence and hostilities are again vastly different from that of India and Pakistan. India was a born as a secular state, and the post-colonial Nehru elites promised to progress towards development as a part of the movement for global modernity. After 70 years of modernity, the BJP elites want to transform India into a Hindu state. Pakistan was born in 1947 with the mission to build an Islamic state, and it is still struggling to find a balance between religion and secular modernity. Pakistan’s strategic elites do not reject modernity and globalism, and they do not have a nativist ideology like that of India under the rule of the BJP. The search for Pakistan is to make Islam co-exist

232

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

with modernity, and this duality is behind Pakistan’s uncontrollable religious violence and hostilities. Pakistan is a partner in the global war on terror, and this further contributed to the widening of internal religious hostilities. Bangladesh was born in 1971 as a secular state. Secularism was one of the basic state ideologies that guided the war of liberation in 1971. The military regime of Pakistan in 1971 unleashed a war and killed about 2 million people in the then East Pakistan primarily on the ground of the ideology of Islam. Pakistan’s military elites believed that without destroying the basis of the culture of Hinduization, East Pakistan could not be kept within the framework of the Islamic State of Pakistan. This fundamentalist reading of the realities on the ground in East Pakistan by Pakistan’s military elites led to the separation of East Pakistan from West Pakistan, and the creation of the independent state of Bangladesh in 1971. East Pakistan’s secular movement against West Pakistan began in the early 1950s, and it culminated in the war of liberation in 1971 led by a group of secular political and intellectual elites under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the political party of the Awami League. Secularism was one of the four fundamental principles of the first constitution of Bangladesh promulgated in 1972. The constitution stated that, “The principles of nationalism, socialism, democracy, and secularism…shall constitute the fundamental principles of state policy.” The constitution further stated that the “principle of secularism shall be realized by the elimination of a. communalism in all its forms; b. the granting by the State of political status in favor of any religion; c. the abuse of religion for political purposes; d. any discrimination against, or persecution of, persons practicing a particular religion.” Out of the four principles, fundamental were the principles of democracy and secularism because these were the guiding principles of the liberation movement, the roots of which go back to Bangladesh’s language movement in 1952. Different Islamic forces within Bangladesh could not accept the break-up of the Islamic state of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh as a secular state. The break-up of the state of Pakistan was perceived mainly by Pakistan and the Islamic forces of Bangladesh as a conspiracy of Hindu India and a design of Indian expansionism (Fink, 2010). From the beginning days of the birth of Bangladesh, a clandestine movement, so, began to be organized by the country’ Islamic forces to dismantle the new state, recapture the political power, and build a new Islamic state in this region. The Father of the Nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated on August 15, 1975. The army also killed many members of his family, including the First Lady and their three children. Through a series of military coups and counter-coups for two years, a new right-wing military regime under the leadership of General Ziaur Rahman came to power in 1977. From 1977 to 2007, for about 30 years, different successive right-wing military governments ruled the country (except for the period from 1996-2000). During those three decades, Bangladesh saw the emergence of different Islamic religious groups, some of which were extremely violent and radical. The roots of present religious violence and hostilities go back to the dominance of right-wing militarysupported political regimes of the 1980s and 1990s who made many political alliances with radical Islamic groups. While the interest of the army, sometimes under the guise of civilian governments, was to stabilize the political power, the interest of the Islamic forces, particularly of the political party of Jamaat-e-Islami, was to galvanize the agenda for an Islamic state in Bangladesh. From the beginning of 2000, Bangladesh’s political landscape began to change. The Awami League, under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the daughter of the Father of the Nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, came to power, and the army went back to the barrack.

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

233

A process of secularization and democracy began in 2008 when the Awami League, after more than two decades of the eclipse, won the general election and Sheikh Hasina Wajed became the country’s prime minister. This change in the political landscape, however, led to the further escalation of religious violence and hostilities against the minorities. The radical Islamic forces became far more violent, in collaboration with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) created in the late 1970s by the then President General Ziaur Rahman. The aim was to destabilize the secular government of the Awami League and to recapture the political power to pursue the same agenda for an Islamic State that was drawn by many disparate Islamic groups immediately after the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. The rise and the arrival of ISIS in South Asia contributed to the further escalation of more religious violence and hostilities against the minorities and liberal elites and political forces. Bangladesh currently is in the middle of a fierce battle, if not a war, with the forces of domestic and international Islamic extremist forces. The future of secularization and religious peace and harmony in Bangladesh will depend on the directionality of this battle between the forces of modernism and anti-modernism. What has transpired from the above discussion and analysis is that South Asia’s issues and challenges of religious violence and hostilities have their historical roots. They are also closely connected to the rise of global Islamic extremism and the worldwide resurgence of right-wing political ideologies. The present global rise in religious hostilities is essentially a political phenomenon. None of the great world religions of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam condone and forgive violence and human degradations in the name of religion. The Quran, in Surah Al-Baqarah, said: “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion.” In Surah Al-Maida [5:32], the Quran ordained that, “We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.” Modernity and the philosophy of secularism's one of the core themes are guarding the boundaries of the world faiths and religions. There can be no progress in modernity without preserving religious liberty and expanding the boundaries of religious tolerance.

CONCLUSION Religious liberty and tolerance are not issues merely of human rights, human dignity, and human decency in a country. They are not merely an extension of the philosophical notions of secularism and individualism. Religious liberty and tolerance are deeply connected to almost all facets of modernization such as democracy, the rule of law, equality, privacy, economic growth, and equal justice. The twenty-first century came in the wake of significant advancement in the progress of global modernity. Since the end of the Cold War in the middle of the 1980s, more countries are advancing towards democracy and economic growth. The size of the global middle class is widening, and women in almost all countries are becoming economically and politically empowered. The economic and cultural connectivity between and among the world nations are growing at a rate unprecedented in human history. Out of the world’s 7.7 billion people, about 4.5 Billion are now connected through the Internet. The world of digitalization has brought extraordinary opportunities for unbounded

234

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

economic growth and innovations. The 5G connectivity and the discovery of the Internet of Every Thing (IoE) are indeed giving birth to a new form of civilization. However, the irony is that at the same time, the world is witnessing a significant resurgence in religious restrictions and hostilities all across its societies. Research has shown that there are high-level religious restrictions in 55 of the world’s 198 countries. In 2007, Christians experienced religious hostilities in 107 countries. In 2016, the number increased to 144 countries. In 2007, Muslims experienced religious hostilities in 96 countries. In 2016, the number increased to 142 countries. In 2007, Jews experienced religious hostilities in 51 countries. In 2016, the number increased to 87 countries. The global rise of religious violence and hostilities that began from the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century is significantly connected to the rise of global terror and the war on terror. More specifically, they are connected to the rise of new right-wing political regimes and ideologies in global politics. The rise of global terror has been responsible for the rise of a global war on terror. The global war on terror escalated the boundary of global terror and displaced millions of Muslims and Christians from their homeland. The global war on terror created opportunities for the emergence of many ancient hostilities between and among the different great religions, particularly hostilities of different religions against the Muslims. The global terror and the war on terror created a new generation of “nomadic” Muslims, many of whom in desperation sailed to the west to take refuge. This global scenario created a fertile ground for the regrouping and reemergence of the anti-modernists and the right-wing political parties in the global political landscape. The rise of the ultra-rights, in turn, has further escalated the global religious hostilities and violence. The increased religious violence and hostilities in the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are closely connected to the rise of global terror and the global war on terror. The contemporary global resurgence in religious violence and hostilities is essentially a political phenomenon. None of the world’s great religions of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam condone and forgive violence and human degradations in the name of religion. The Quran, in Surah Al-Baqarah, said: “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion.” In Surah Al-Maida [5:32], the Quran ordained that “We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.”

REFERENCES Abrams, F. (2018). The Soul of the First Amendment. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bandow, D. (January 2018). Will Religious Instability Destroy Bangladesh? The National Interest. Retrieved from www.nationalinterest.com on April 2, 2019. Berger, P. L. (1969). Sacred Canopy: The Element of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York, NY: Anchor. Berger, P. L, Berger, B., and Kellner, H. (1974). The Homeless Mind. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Cady, L. E., Simon, S. W. (eds.). (2006). Religion and Conflict on South and Southeast Asia: Disrupting Violence. London: Routledge.

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

235

Carls., P. (2019). Emile Durkheim (1858-1917). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from www.iep.utm.edu/dirkheim on May 2, 2019. Cato Institute. (2018). The Human Freedom Index, 2018: A Global Measurement of Personal, Civil, and Economic Freedom (by I. Vasquez and T. Porcnik). Washington, DC: Cato Institute. Christian Science Monitor. (February 2007). Shiite-Sunni Conflict in Pakistan (by D. Montero). Retrieved from www.csmonitor on May 2, 2019. Durkheim, E. (2012). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. www.forgottenbook.com Fink, N. C. (2010). On the Borderlines: Politics, Religion, and Violence in Bangladesh. In N. Abraham, Newman, and Weiss (eds.). Political Violence in South and Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives (pp.91-111). Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Freedom House. (2010). Policy Brief: The Impact of Blasphemy Laws on Human Rights. Washington, DC: Freedom House. Graff, V., and J. Galonnier (2013). Hindu-Muslim Communal Riots in India, Part 1 and II. Retrieved from www.massviolence.com on March, 2019. Grim, B. (2014). The Link Between Economic and Religious Freedom. Geneva: Switzerland: World Economic Forum. Grim, B., Clark, G., and Snyder, R. E. (2014). Is Religious Freedom Good for Business? A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 10 (4), pp. 1-17. Haynes, C. C., and Chaltain, S. (eds.). (2006). First Freedoms: A Documentary History of the First Amendment. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hinnells, J., and King, R. (eds.). Religion and Violence in South Asia: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Horton, J., and Mendus S. (1991). A Letter Concerning Toleration: In Focus. London, UK: Routledge. Human Rights Watch. (2012). World Report 2012: Pakistan. Retrieve from www.hrw.org on May 17, 2019. Institute for Economics and Peace. (2014). Five Key Questions Answered on the Link Between Peace and Religion: A Global Statistical Analysis on the Empirical Link Between Peace and Religion. New York, NY: Institute for Economic and Peace. International IDEA. (2017). Religion-State Relations: International IDEA ConstitutionBuilding Primer 8 (by D. Ahmed). Sweden: Stockholm. Krishnan, K (March 2015). How Hindus Killed a Muslim Over Beef and Murdered India’s Secularism? Retrieved from www.dailyo.in on May 2, 2019. Legal Information Institute. (2019). Establishment of Religion: US Constitution Annotated. Cornell: Legal Information Institute. Retrieved from www.law.cornell.edu on April 2, 2019. Lowry, L. (January 2018). Killed over a Cup of Water- in Pakistan, Christians are the Untouchables Castes. Santa Ana: CA: Open Doors USA. McWhirter, R. (2017). The First Amendment: An Illustrated History. New York, NY: Constitution Press. Morely, N. (December 2017). Muslim Hacked to Death and Then Set on Fire by Hindu in Religious Attack in India. Retrieved from www.metro.co.uk on April 2, 2019. Open Doors. (2019). Open Doors World Watch List: Pakistan. Retrieved from www.opendoorsUSA.org on March 2, 2019.

236

Shahid M. Shahidullah and Shyamal K. Das

Pew Research Center (April 2019). 5 Facts about Buddhist Around the World (by K. J. Starr). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (June 2018a). Key Findings on the Global Rise in Religious Restrictions (by K. Kishi). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (June 2018b). Global Uptake in Government Restrictions on Religion: Methodology. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (October 2017). Malala’s 2012 Shooting Came at a Time of High Social Hostilities in Pakistan (by A. Sandstrom). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (November 2017). 5 Facts about the Muslim Population in Europe (C. Hackett). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (June 2016). Trends in Global Restrictions on Religion. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (April 2015a). The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (April 2015b). The Future of World Religions: Population Growth in Projections. 2010-2050: Hindus. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (April 2015c). The Future of World Religions: Population Growth in Projections. 2010-2050: Jews. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (August 2015). Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world (by M. Lipka.). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (December 2011). Global Christianity- A Report on the Size and Distribution of World’s Christian Population. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. (December 2009). Global Restrictions on Religion: Social Hostilities Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Ragosta, J. (2012). Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom. Encyclopedia of Virginia: Virginia Humanities. Retrieved from www.encyclopediavirginia.org/VirginiaStatute on May 1, 2019. Religious Liberty Commission of Evangelical Fellowship of India. (2018). Hate and Targeted Violence Against Christians in India. New Delhi, India: Religious Liberty Commission of Evangelical Fellowship. Saberin, Z. (December 2017). Babri Mosque Demolition: A Watershed Moment. Retrieved from www.alzazeeranews.com on April 2, 2019. Selvaraj, M. S. (August 2018). Violence Against Christians in India: A Decade After Kandhamal. Retrieved from www.diplomat.com on May 2, 2019. Sen A. (2000). Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Reprint Edition. Shahidullah, S. M. (2012). Comparative Criminal Justice Systems: Global and Local Perspectives: Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning. South Asia Terrorism Portal. (2019). Sectarian Attacks on Mosques in Pakistan, 2002-2018. Institute for Conflict Management. Retrieved from www.satp.org on April 2, 2019. The Associated Press. (September 2015). Indian Man Beaten Death for Allegedly Eating Beef. Retrieved from www.cbsnews.com on May 12, 2019. The Economic Times. (April 2018). Religious Freedom Conditions ‘Downward Trend in India in 2017: USCIRF. Retrieved from economictimes.indiatimes.com on April 10, 2019. The Economic Times. (June 2016). Migration Fears as Bangla Zealots Go After Hindus (by A. T. Singh). Retrieved from economictimes.indiatimes.com on April 5, 2019.

Modernity and Global Issues and Challenges …

237

The Economic Times. (June 2016). Hindu Population in Bangladesh Grew By 1 Percent in 2015: Report. Retrieved from economictimes.indiatimes.com on April 10, 2019. The Economic Times. (June 2015). Hindu Community Today Live in “Constant Fear of Persecution” by the Religious Fundamentalists. Retrieved from economictimes. indiatimes.com on April 12, 2019. The Washington Post. (May 2017). ‘I Think Islam Hates Us’: A Timeline of Trump’s Comments about Islam and Muslim (by J. Johnson and A. Hauslohner). Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com on May 2, 2019. Time. (June 2017). India’s Modi Speaks Out Against Cow Vigilantes After ‘Beef Lynching’ Spark National Protest. Retrieved from www.time.com on April 2, 2019. The Guardian. (January 2017). Christians in India Increasing Under Attack. Study Shows (by H. Sherwood). Retrieved from www.the guardian.com on 20th May 2019. United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (2017). 2017 Annual Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Waldron, J. (1991). Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution. In J. Horton and S. Mendus (eds.). A Letter Concerning Toleration: In Focus (pp. 98-124). London, UK: Routledge. Walsh, D. (March 2011). Pakistan minister Shahbaz Bhatti shot dead in Islamabad. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com on May 14, 2019. Weber, M. (2013). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York, MY: Merchant Books.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 10

THE MODERNITY OF THE OPPRESSED: CHAINED REPRESSION AMONG MINORITY FEMALES IN AMERICA’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM Zina T. McGee, PhD Department of Sociology, Hampton University Hampton, Hampton, VA, US

ABSTRACT This chapter explores the impact of modernization on the current disparate treatment of women and girls in the criminal and juvenile justice systems, respectively. Emphasis is placed on the extent to which convict labor and punitive policies regarding parole and probation have had a lasting impact on the experiences of women and girls of color, many of whom have entered the carceral systems for non-violent crimes in response to repeated patterns of traumatic victimization throughout their lives. Guided by components of the feminist and black feminist framework, the analysis explores the relationship between race and social class as risk factors for disparate treatment for medical disorders and substance abuse/addiction, in particular. Hence, the current chapter emphasizes the roles medical disorders, drug usage, and unequal handling have on treatment policy implications, as fewer women and girls are given access to services and resources because of the structural conditions imposed on them both during and after incarceration. A review of the historical management of female offenders during the Jim Crow era lends support to the current realities of challenges that these women and girls face, as many of them will ultimately be released without stable housing or legal sources of income and limited substance abuse intervention, mental health counseling, and vocational/educational training within the prison system. Further emphasis is placed on dismantling current punitive policies that lend themselves to higher rates of recidivism, family separation, and cumulative disadvantage among this group of marginalized offenders.



Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

240

Zina T. McGee

Keywords: minority females, victimization, female offending, criminal justice system, posttraumatic stress disorder, mental health treatment, Beijing rules

INTRODUCTION One of the core themes of modernity is the advance of human rights for all groups of people—those of different genders, races, ethnicities, classes, faiths, and physical and mental abilities. Universal human rights are not solely for those who are free, but also for those who are incarcerated. The concerns about the human rights of those who commit crimes and are incarcerated are, in fact, at the basis of the rise of modern criminology and criminal justice. Modern criminology, born in the eighteenth century through the writings of Cesare Beccaria and Cesare Lombroso, was not designed to discover new methods and styles of punishment, but instead to humanize and modernize the system of reprimand. Additionally, modern criminology was developed to understand the science of crime and criminality, and to devise a system of punishment and incarceration based on the principles of universal human rights. Moreover, the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, “prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, without exception or derogation.” Article 10 of the ICCPR, besides, mandates that ‘[a]ll persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.’ It also requires that ‘the reform and social readaptation of prisoners’ be an "essential aim" of imprisonment (Human Rights Watch Prison Project, 2019, p. 1). Further, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Prisoners, Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, and Standard Minimum rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (known as the "Beijing Rules"), are based on the recognition that “Except for those limitations that are demonstrably necessitated by the fact of incarceration, all prisoners shall retain the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (Human Rights Watch Prison Project, 2019, p. 1). Hence, this chapter examines the problem of the treatment of incarcerated minority females within the American criminal justice system. The core argument of this chapter is that the same minority females incarcerated for non-violent crimes within America’s prison system are themselves the victims of repeated patterns of domestic and sexual violence in their homes and communities. Within the prison system, they are doubly victimized because of their skin color and the lack of access to mental health treatment, primarily for their victimization experiences. The penal system of corrections and the lack of access to mental health treatment in such institutions suggest that there is a need for a more modernist approach to prison management overall in America.

MINORITY FEMALE CRIMINALITY IN AMERICA: BACKGROUND Females comprise the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population in America’s federal, state, and local prisons. In 2000, there were 76,647 women in state prisons

The Modernity of the Oppressed

241

(53.1 percent). In 2015, the female population in state prisons increased to 93.360 (57.1). In 2000, there were 8,397 females in federal prisons (5.8 percent). In 2015, the female population in federal prisons increased to 11,608 (7.1 percent). In 2000, local jails and prisons incarcerated 71,000 females (49.4 percent). In 2015, the number increased to 99,100 (57.1 percent) (Prison Policy Initiative Report, 2018, p. 4). It is estimated that “Nationwide, women’s state prison populations grew 834% over nearly 40 years — more than double the pace of the growth among men” (Prison Policy Initiative Report, 2018, p. 3). A 2019 report from the US Sentencing Project recognized that during the last three decades, "There has been a profound change in the involvement of women within the criminal justice system. The female prison population stands [in 2019] nearly eight times higher than in 1980. More than 60% of women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18” (The Sentencing Project, 2019, p. 1). In recent years, in the context of controversies concerning the effects of the “get tough” approach that dominated America’s penal system for almost 40 years, many states have taken measures to reverse the prison population. There has remained a gender gap in this new trend of reducing the prison population. “The most troubling finding of women's incarceration is how little progress states have made in curbing its growth, especially in light of the progress made to reduce men’s prison populations. The total number of men incarcerated in state prisons fell more than 5% between 2009 and 2015, while the number of women in state prisons fell only a fraction of a percent (0.29%)” (Prison Policy Initiative Report, 2018, p. 4). Further, the 2019 report of the Sentencing Project noted that Black females are disproportionally represented in the female prison population. In 2017, the imprisonment rate for African American women (92 per 100,000) was twice the rate of imprisonment for white women (49 per 100,000) (The Sentencing Project, 2019, p. 3). Additionally, most females in state and local prisons are convicted for drug and property related non-violent offenses. Here the Sentencing Project found that "Twenty-five percent of women in [state] prisons have been convicted of a drug offense, compared to 14% of men; 26% of incarcerated women have been convicted of a property crime, compared to 17% among incarcerated men” (2019, p. 5). Although many remain non-violent offenders, these women continue to bear the burden in punitive philosophies and policies through harsher sentences for lesser crimes.

FEMALE CRIMINALITY, FEMALE VICTIMIZATION, AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS-DISORDER A review of the literature suggests that readings of female criminality tend to report sociodemographic background characteristics such as age, marital status, lack of education and underemployment, while at the same time disregard the numerous psychosocial and mental health needs of women and girls in the criminal justice system and juvenile justice system, respectively (McGee et al., 2018; Schaller and Smykla, 2011). Further, little stress is located on the conditions of women and girls in confinement, many of whom suffer from a loss of self-esteem, and are at a larger risk for dejection, self-harm, and suicide. This is particularly problematic since many of them processed through these systems have a part of social, educational and health problems, in addition to being victims of injury and sexual assault before arrest and detainment (McGee et al., 2018a; McGee et al., 2017). Women and

242

Zina T. McGee

girls of color suffering cumulative disadvantage, especially, continue to shoulder the brunt of punitive policies within the criminal and juvenile justice systems and have endured the highest growth in criminal justice control of all demographic groups. Traditionally, changes have been observed that have had profound effects on the involvement of minority women and girls within the carceral structure. This has been primarily in response to more significant efforts in corrections, stricter drug sentencing laws, and post-release obstacles to reentry that distinctively affect this population (McGee et al., 2014; Schmalleger & Smykla, 2011). Compared to figures in 1980, female incarceration is nearly eight times higher, while more than an estimated sixty-percent of women in state prisons have a child or children under the age of 18 (The Sentencing Project, 2018). As noted earlier, compared to their male counterparts, they are more likely to be incarcerated for drugor property-related offenses and have been processed through the correctional system in harsh manners, although there has been less involvement in violent activities. Moreover, recent statistics have estimated that twenty-five percent of female prisoners have been sentenced for drug-related offenses compared to fourteen percent of male inmates (The Sentencing Project, 2018). Additionally, twenty-seven percent of detained women have been condemned for property crimes, in comparison to seventeen percent of incarcerated men. Scholars discovering the fundamental causes of criminal behavior among women have noted that the increase in incarcerated females, minority females, in particular, is not the outcome of greater participation in more serious crime, but instead, the emphasis is placed on fluctuations in penalties and such practices as current sentencing guidelines. These, in turn, have resulted in higher rates of custody for economic misconducts, many of which involve a different number of women (McGee et al., 2018a; Schmalleger & Smykla, 2011). With the exclusion of larceny-theft, degrees of arrest and detainment among females have increased faster for drug-related crimes than for any other group within the crime index, prompting researchers to consistently examine the repercussions of crime-control procedures on females’ participation in the correctional systems. From a sociological standpoint, the upsurge in felony drug-related charges among females can be regarded principally as a reaction to deteriorating socioeconomic conditions, as many underprivileged women are forced to participate in drug-related crimes to both escape domestic abuse and sustain their families since they are the primary caretakers of their children. Further, matters of effective treatment and increased financial resources among female offenders to prevent recidivism are rarely addressed, while studies have shown that more than two-thirds of all females incarcerated are repeat offenders. Additionally, one-third of them are expected to return to the penal system within three years of their initial release (McGee et al., 2017). Additional research has pointed toward the fact that for many females, amplified drug use and addiction are symptomatic of the desire to escape regular abuse, economic adversity and childhood hurt, yet these same individuals are less likely to receive adequate drug and mental health treatment while confined. Further, disproportionate numbers of women and girls who have been classified as offenders have been victims of domestic and family violence at some point in their lives. Additionally, they are more likely to have been reared in marginalized families, a concern that is infrequently addressed in deliberations of counseling of, and providing resources to, female offenders suffering from traumatic victimization (Fernandes, 2009; McGee et al., 2014). Moreover, the inhumane treatment of pregnant women in jails or prisons, many of whom are forced to give birth in shackles, remains apparent since they are often afforded limited prenatal care or adequate nutrition. Finally, they have even less access

The Modernity of the Oppressed

243

to special facilities or any material about their alternatives, such as termination or adoption (Fernandes, 2009). The problems mentioned above point toward the massive difficulties that many incarcerated females face, as investigations continue to suggest that women offenders with histories of substance abuse and traumatic victimization, specifically, present complex profiles with a range of clinical, emotional, and social complications (Nighawan et al., 2010).

TREATMENT OF MINORITY FEMALE INMATES IN AMERICAN PRISONS: THE NATURE OF THE “GET TOUGH APPROACH” TO PENALITY The current state of females, particularly black females, in the corrective system can be assessed historically since scholars have argued that many of the experiences of black women in the South’s corrective structure underwrote the creation of what is considered New South modernity. The subjugation of black women offenders to forced labor and state assault, for example, reveals the consequence of the prison administration on the construction of specific gender- and race-based oppression (LeFlouria; 2015; Haley, 2016). Here, ceremonies of torment often categorized the life of the black female convict, as the devaluing and marginalizing of this group were best evidenced in relegation to an object for manual labor. Analyses further suggested that black women’s first experiences with parole upon reentry involved forced labor as domestic workers for white families, which was often characterized as a form of “prison in the home” (LeFlouria; 2015; Haley, 2016). Today, as many black women continue to struggle with the disproportionality of probation and parole, historical remnants of their persecution persist, in that many of them remain poor, undereducated, unskilled, single mothers with children under the age of 18 upon their release into society. Issues relating to adequate health care, training, job placement, and treatment for substance abuse also remain disregarded from the women's prison system. The historical analysis of women’s treatment and its applicability to present conditions also points toward the fact that as the incarceration of women of color increased dramatically, sanctions were imposed by the state as punishment reflecting the efforts of those with the highest power and control. Hence, the black woman as a convict was essential to the expansion and growth of the New South as her intensive labor became part of modernization and industrialization. Issues of violent victimization and systemic oppression were dismissed, as many of these women held the sole responsibility of creating railways, streets, and clearing woodlands (LeFlouria, 2015; Haley, 2016). In today’s society, many minority women enter the corrective system with a diminished self-concept and a history of trauma and abuse; complications that are further worsened by the perimeters placed on them with regard to resources both while detained and upon reentry. The pervasive lack of proper resources and treatment programs is demonstrated in the fact that in recent years, dwindling tax dollars for community-based and employment-related programs has led those within the criminal justice system to believe that the best chance that marginalized women of color have for treatment and rehabilitation is through harsher sentencing and long-term incarceration (McGee et al., 2014; McGee et al., 2018a). The punitive treatment of minority women historically can also be traced through consistent patterns of sexual violence as a form of correctional governance. Here, these

244

Zina T. McGee

women experienced a widespread forfeiture of control as they endured the threat of violence that marginalized, oppressed, and disempowered them. Chronological reports have shown that they were more likely to be arrested and receive chain-gang sentences, as many of them faced violence in townships and communities of disadvantage (LeFlouria; 2015; Haley, 2016). Moreover, they were subsequently labeled for their sexuality and were at the highest risk for being blamed for their victimization. The impact of such maltreatment is still evidenced today, in that the focus of the criminal justice system remains steadfast on the disproportionate number of lower-income women of color, African American women in particular, who abuse illegal substances (McGee & Gilbert, 2010). These women are still denied comprehensive services including reentry transition programs, aftercare, job readiness, and mental health treatment, and even less emphasis is placed on specialized programs that incorporate minority women’s victimization as part of their treatment for drug abuse and criminal behavior. Subsequently, fewer programs address the impact of domestic violence on substance abuse, a problem which is more pronounced for African American women, who are disproportionately more likely to be the victims of traumatic childhood victimization and severe family violence (McGee et al., 2018a; Bloom and Covington, 2008). Circumstances for these women are aggravated by their deprived educations, incomplete resources, and their placement in high crime neighborhoods. As noted earlier, many of their crimes are nonviolent, and they are more likely to face extended charges of child abuse and neglect, much of which is due to the impact of race and gender oppression on addiction (McGee & Gilbert, 2010). The far-reaching influence of such disparity is evidenced within the family itself since it has been proposed that the children of incarcerated minority women will disproportionately continue to comprise the next generation of prisoners without access to effective intervention plans and the essential financial capitals to escape poverty and violence. The intricate plight of poor, minority females within the penal system can best be understood through the feminist and black feminist paradigms, which address the position of individuals in society with the resolution of using that information to improve women's lives in particular (Richie, 2012; Crossman, 2012). While these approaches give a voice to silenced women, they also help to explain gender inequality, cumulative disadvantage, and structural oppression, including those which relate specifically to the criminal justice system and its handling of poor, minority women. The structural oppression framework is of particular relevance here since it purports that women’s oppression and inequality are a result of capitalism, patriarchy, and racism (Richie, 2012; Crossman, 2012). Moreover, the concept of intersectionality is used to explain oppression and inequality across a variety of variables, including gender and race. The application of the black feminist framework to minority women in the criminal justice system, in particular, focuses heavily on the criminalization of poverty and the perception of these women as moral failures. What is ultimately denied, then, is the fact that their unique experiences fail to be positioned within the context of structural conditions and lack of opportunity (Richie, 2012). Consequently, scholars have argued that welfare reform and criminal justice reform have severely affected them as they lose their rights to privacy and are afforded no consideration when victimized. Hence, these women are often consigned to the status of an undeserving victim with the least privilege (Richie, 2012). These experiences are likened to the understanding of black convict women who comprised part of the New South modernity as they continued to withstand the threats of attack and actual assault during their arrests, detainment, and subsequent relegation to chain gangs (LeFlouria; 2015; Haley, 2016). Hence,

The Modernity of the Oppressed

245

as a result of the historical repercussions of such ill-treatment, many current administrators within the correctional settings continue to treat victimized minority women solely as offenders (Schmalleger and Smykla, 2011), as the penal system does very little to address their specific needs, both during and after detainment. Moreover, in light of these disparities, less is still provided for the critical evaluation of existing programs to further determine what is operative, what adds best to the reduction of recidivism, and what endorses the maximum mental and physical health consequences among the diverse yet unequal population of marginalized women in prison and the children that they ultimately leave behind. Much of the discussions surrounding the experiences of the black female convict in the New South have addressed the complexity of the relationship between offending status and traumatic victimization. As noted previously, the violent assaults that women endured during this period were met with grave resistance to the notion of victimization, as many of these women were blamed for their persecution. This level of ill-treatment is also reflected in current descriptions of the minority female inmate, who often becomes a part of the penal system in response to her need to escape the horrors of abuse in her community and family. In this regard, studies suggest that a disproportionate number of minority women engaged in both drug and alcohol abuse at the time of their infraction, and although they were more likely to present noteworthy substance abuse problems, they were less likely to obtain substance abuse management while confined. In its place, negligible treatment was offered to these women suffering from a variety of other complications (McGee et al., 2018a; McGee et al., 2014; Hotelling, 2008). Additionally, these women have transitional needs that are insignificantly met by the custodial systems, forcing them to face then additional economic and social problems that led them to be incarcerated at the onset (i.e., poverty, lack of education) (Association of Women's Health, 2011). Issues of resocialization and reentry are rarely focused on in discussions of what occurs for many minority women who will eventually be released from jails and prisons, only to re-offend because of the lack of proper rehabilitation. Nevertheless, readings continue to illustrate that when supervising female offenders within a correctional setting, a smaller amount of stress is placed on dealing with concerns of incest, childhood sexual abuse, and neglect, notwithstanding the circumstance that many of these women endure since they are also mothers with children under the age of 18 (Crossman, 2012; Hotelling, 2008).

MODERNIZATION AND PENAL REFORMS IN AMERICA: THE CASE OF MINORITY FEMALE INMATES AND THEIR CHILDREN Research (McGee & Gilbert, 2010) has also supported the assertion that minority women continue to face collateral destruction within the penal system as they are required to stand the burden of punitive guidelines and extreme penalizing, only to find themselves confronting another predicament as they are deprived of operative management for the difficulties that they may experience beyond drug addictions. Their steady lack of inclusion in basic economic and educational programs is further supported by the discriminatory practices that will prevent them from achieving outcomes relating to financial independence, family reintegration, and reduced criminal involvement. Hence, investigations of the unique experiences of African American women in the criminal justice system, which have been

246

Zina T. McGee

pervasively overlooked, can be best understood through the lens of their social history that has its origins in their convict status in the New South. As a result, researchers and historians alike have carefully examined the feminists’ and black feminists’ models to observe the full milieu of these women’s lives since efficacious mediation requires an all-inclusive method. Additionally, they note that the oppressive crossing of race, class, and gender must be scrutinized within the situation of domestic violence and addiction among females, women of color in particular (Richie, 2012). It must also be distinguished that the cumulative effects of the feminization of poverty and systemic racism experienced by many black mothers will eventually become the identifications of their children, thus creating a new generation of youth at risk of criminal justice experiences. The lasting impact of disproportionate minority female confinement drawn from the Jim Crow era can also be witnessed in the current child welfare system, as the chief source of family disruption remains the high confinement rate among Black mothers. The criminal justice system in itself also seizes custody of large numbers of Black children, thus constraining them to juvenile detention facilities and adult prisons. Hence, there is an intersection between the poor Black children comprising the foster care and juvenile justice systems (McGee et al, 2014). Children who “act out” in foster or group homes are habitually punished by reassigning them to juvenile detention facilities, while adolescents who “age out” of the foster care system will ultimately spend an inordinate amount of time in prison as adults. The movement toward commanding long mandatory prison sentences for drug-related offenses and handling juvenile offenders as adults escalate the disintegration of the family unit, as the effects of prisons, juvenile detention, and foster care produce an astonishing level of state supervision of Black children. Studies have additionally shown that children’s lives are disrupted more by women’s incarceration than by men's since mothers are far more likely to have lived with their children before going to prison. Female inmates were usually the primary caretakers of their children, often providing their sole economic and emotional support (Muraskin, 2012). Moreover, a substantial number of mothers in prison had been living alone with their children when they were arrested. As noted previously, regulations to combat drug-related crime have directed sharp increases in the proportions of incarcerated women, most of whom were raising children at the time of their arrest and confinement (Muraskin, 2012). Consequently, research has shown that maternal incarceration is the strongest predictor of imminent unlawful conduct and detention among children. Matters of stigmatization and fault also emerge, while studies have specified that many minority female teenagers will become detained as juveniles as a consequence of the incarceration of their mothers.

MINORITY FEMALE CRIMINALITY AND REENTRY INITIATIVES: CHALLENGES FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS The implications of criminal justice within the New South modernity can also be applied to the experiences of young Black females, who were trademarked effortlessly during that period for being non-conformists in the school systems while discounting the indication that most demonstrated behavior was due to hardships of their immediate environment (Morris, 2016). Many facilities within the juvenile justice system, including corrupt and inhumane

The Modernity of the Oppressed

247

reform schools, in effect, were designed instead to correct their behaviors since they were perceived as “morally depraved.” Consequently, patterns of premature confinement of many minority girls in the system occurred, as they were both labeled socially improper and institutionalized for what was deemed as sexual deviancy (Morris, 2016; McGee et al., 2018b). Currently, of the 48,043 youth in domiciliary placement, 15% are girls. Girls of color are much more likely to be confined and are more likely to experience long-term restrictions. Further, they comprise a much higher proportion of those incarcerated for the lowest level, nonviolent offenses, similar to situations regarding minority women in the criminal justice system (The Sentencing Project, 2018). For this group, race and gender have also had an impact in detention, as 21% of juvenile court cases are comprised of girls universally, while a significant fraction of them have had a history of distress, rape, and physical and emotional abuse. Moreover, little emphasis is placed on providing educational resources or other resources as they return to their communities. Accordingly, their identities are often shaped by systematic discipline and recurrent victimization where there is no chance of educational success, but instead the persistence of highly punitive strategies (Morris, 2016). Perceptions such as the “hypersexualization” or sexual deviance of these young girls are also existent, preventing complete and successful reintegration. Hence, these youth are more likely to gain familiarity with many ecological circumstances specific to the urban dwelling that may have a significant impact on future criminal activity (McGee et al., 2018b; Coleman et al., 2009; Welch-Brewer et al., 2011; Welch-Brewer et al., 2009). Regional gangs, firearm usage, adolescent pregnancy, and deprived education, for example, are all causative aspects to race and class differences in female adolescent’ behavior, while readings have recurrently revealed the construction of early sexual activity, harmful peer groups, adverse familial associations and delinquent action among African American girls in particular (Tzoumakis et al., 2010; Foy et al., 2012). While examinations have addressed relative degrees of female delinquency across magnitudes of race, fewer have examined the historical impact of oppression within the juvenile justice system and the following factors that significantly influence early onset juvenile delinquency. As with the traditional ill-treatment of minority women within the criminal justice system, the same can be applied to understandings of the plight of minority juvenile females. In this regard, historical accounts point toward the devaluing of talent and potential among young black girls within the educational system, as many were consigned to characterizations of criminality, as seen through extreme levels of expulsion and suspension for minor infractions (Morris, 2016). Single-parent households, parental influence, and systematic violence within the school and community also presented and continues to manifest, a unique set of problems for this population, many of whom hold an advanced risk for adjustment problems (Shook et al., 2010). Familial effects remain applicable when considering limited monitoring, which allows for greater engagement in more delinquent behavior (Shook et al., 2010; Rankin & Quane, 2002). Financial stressors within truncated income among African American households often prevent high levels of parental observing, while additional research has suggested (Tzoumakis et al., 2010) that mothers reporting a past of juvenile delinquency, substance abuse throughout pregnancy, and social hardship, are more likely to have children who are physically violent and at a greater risk of felonious behavior in the transition to adulthood. Concerning minority females' delinquency, higher patterns of

248

Zina T. McGee

adult arrests have been directly linked to family disruption and child maltreatment during adolescence (Coleman et al., 2009; Miller et al., 2009). As with minority women, the research shows that young girls of color bring a variety of unique mental health and familial issues to the juvenile justice experience. Again, without understanding the many characteristics of female delinquency, intervention, and treatment programs cannot be suitably personalized to address their needs (Morris, 2016). This poses a particular problem for mothers of these young girls as well, since many of them are more likely to have been sexually, physically, and emotionally abused as children with complications that were not correctly diagnosed and treated before incarceration (McGee & Gilbert, 2010). Studies have further shown that experience with violence significantly increases emotional anguish as observing amplified intensity, or being the target of a violent incident at school or in the community, can disrupt the urban female minor’s progress and improvement (McGee & Foriest, 2009). Transporting weapons to and from school has also become progressively widespread among juvenile females in reply to the general fear of being abused or victimized, which can, in turn, lead to reduced regulation and increased rebellious behavior (McGee et al., 2019; McGee, 2014). The pervasiveness of weapons, drugs, and illegal activities worsens their anxiety and the familiarity that there is no security from parents, police forces, or others in their community. Hence, these harsh environmental conditions can deleteriously upset the development of young people, minority girls in particular (Reese et al., 2001). Moreover, they are more likely to exhibit the dread of violence and victimization, and symptomatology in the form of despair and nervousness, both of which are seen as internalizing emblems that may lead to augmented proportions of wrongdoing as issues of defeatism and desensitization arise. Research has also exemplified a direct correlation between negative peer relationships and lawbreaking among African-American female adolescents, as those reporting misbehavior are more likely to have female peers that have, at some point been detained or suspended. These associations with other antisocial girls have a more substantial influence on their outlooks concerning delinquency and can ultimately lead to amplified disruptive behavior (McGee & Foriest, 2009). Moreover, they often describe explicitly looking for delinquent female peers for protection or security. However, in some instances, this type of safeguard involves preservation of a drug deal or retaliating from a fight, further suggesting a direct correlation between victimization and criminal behavior among this group (McGee & Foriest, 2009). Finally, many of these female youth describe an earlier onset of violent behavior comparative to populations where recurring trauma is not present, perhaps clarified, in part, by their often disordered and abusive backgrounds. Identity development among this group is reflective of the historical oppression and maltreatment within the penal system that has shaped their progress according to methodical punishment and persistent harassment. Thus, this leaves little chance for them to escape the realities of an oppressive structure and societal views of the black female adolescent as a moral failure, further preventing the likelihood of effective reform (McGee et al., 2018).

The Modernity of the Oppressed

249

CONCLUSION: THE LASTING IMPACT OF SYSTEMIC OPPRESSION AMONG FEMALE OFFENDERS As anticipated, the historical accounts of the ill-treatment of minority and girls in the penal system have more extensive treatment and social policy implications within the current structure. Fewer of those disproportionately impacted by confinement have access to services designed to prevent repeat offending, and many of these women and girls will eventually be released into their communities without long-term treatment, stable housing, and economic resources. Discussions of the handling of released jail and prison detainees continue to utilize a pathological framework while repudiating the multidimensional prerequisites of women and girls who have been victimized by physical mistreatment, sexual abuse, and drug addictions. The greatest danger for adult female inmates is their loss of parental privileges, which results principally from parental substance abuse and the lack of reintegration amenities for women offenders (Bloom & Covington, 2008). The possibility of mother/child reunification deteriorates with prior maternal incarceration, and as women are arrested, sentenced, and confined numerous times, the degrees at which they will be continually separated from their children are swiftly rising, further signifying the need to discover additional management options for these women beyond the traditional substance abuse programs. The needs of these women are multidimensional, and research findings continue to show that effective treatment programs should be designed to address all aspects of their incarceration and subsequent release, while at the same time providing them with adequate resources to withstand the societal disparities in education, employment, and housing (Bllom & Covington, 2008). Some research supports the contention that although there are programs that target the female offender and her addictions, there are fewer that incorporate family reintegration, traumatic victimization, developing childrearing skills, and therapy and treatment for mothers and their children (Bloom & Covington, 20018; McGee & Gilbert, 2010). It can be argued that the criminal and juvenile justice systems continue to dismiss the need for more enhanced alternatives to incarceration, as best seen in the lack of appropriate funding for genderspecific treatment programs and greater emphasis on family-based correctional programs. There remains a strong need for parenting courses, substance abuse management, mental health therapy for post-traumatic involvements, educational training, and perhaps most importantly, programs and resources for sustaining women’s and girls’ overall functioning after confinement. Only then can we lay the underpinning for rehabilitating women and girls who spend a disproportionate amount of time in custody. Moreover, more considerable attention must be placed on the strong association between family upbringing, traumatic victimization and violent conduct, and how these influences add to regulation consequences among African-American females (McGee et al., 2018b). As a result, the supplementary examination is needed to advance protective strategies and material resources for African-American female adolescents. As with women, improving community assets and creating more chances for disadvantaged female youth can lessen the possible threats for juvenile delinquency (Mellien et al., 2010; Lanctot et al., 2001; Lanctot & Corneau, 2004). Hence, there is a need to specifically target African-American female adolescents to provide more significant alternatives to delinquent behavior and fewer disproportionate crime rates. Presently, less consideration focuses exclusively on AfricanAmerican female adolescents and the core undercurrents that have a substantial influence on

250

Zina T. McGee

violent criminal behavior (McGee et al., 2018b). Many of these circumstances only exist within the urban community, do not affect society as an entirety, and consequently, are not beheld with urgency when approaches for deterrence and mediation are introduced. Underprivileged minority female youth often suffer from punitive living situations and may retort to their setting with antagonism and violence. Therefore, when leading research on delinquency, scholars should adjust to a relational process in order to provide a detailed representation of African-American participants, and practitioners must also deliver gender explicit training to judiciously discern variations in African American female youth criminality. As convict labor, parole as forced work, unmerciful chain gangs, and corrupt and inhumane reform schools from the New South modernity remain part of offending minority women’s and girls’ brutal history, years of “get tough on crime” strategies that increase the likelihood and length of incarceration, such as mandatory minimums, three-strikes laws, truth-in-sentencing laws, and disparate sentencing for different drugs, continue to hold remnants of an oppressive past since they are neither gender neutral nor advantageous to this population (McGee et al., 2016). In fact, these policies, some of which are rooted in sanctions from the Jim Crow era, contain significant consequences for minority women and girls alike. Cutting social services, for example, from which women and girls benefit, pays for a percentage of the expenses of penal construction and maintenance. Moreover, the disproportionate confinement of poor and minority leaves behind children who may be traumatized, and whose emotional and economic care was once left to their mothers (McGee et al., 2016). Increased barriers to economic, emotional, and social well-being among those women and girls, some of whom will ultimately be released from prison and detention, further impair this situation, as many will continue to endure the brand of “forgotten offenders.”

REFERENCES Association of Women’s Health. (2011). Shackling incarcerated pregnant women. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing, 817–818. Bloom, B. E., & Covington, S. S. (2008). Addressing the mental health needs of women offenders. In R. Gido and L. Dailey eds. Women’s Mental Health Issues Across the Criminal Justice System. Columbus, OH: Prentice Hall, 2008, 160-176. Coleman, R., Kim, D., Mitchell, S., & Shady, T. 2009. “Delinquent girls grown up: young adult offenders’ patterns and their relationship to early legal, individual, and family risk.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 38, 355-366. Crossman, A. (2012). Feminist Theory: An Overview. Retrieved October 9, 2012, from sociology.about.com: http://sociology.about.com/od/Sociological-Theory/a/FeministTheory.htm. Fernandes, G. K. (2009, November 2). Pregnant Prisoners: Enduring Labor Behind Bars. Retrieved November 14, 2011, from MomLogic.com. Foy, D., Ritchie, I. & Conway, A. (2012). Trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress, and comorbidities in female adolescent offenders: findings and implications from recent studies. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 1-28.

The Modernity of the Oppressed

251

Haley, S. (2015). No mercy here: gender, punishment, and the making of Jim Crow modernity. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Hotelling, B. A. (2008). Perinatal Needs of Pregnant, Incarcerated Women. The Journal of Perinatal Education, 37-44. Human Rights Watch Prison Project. (2019). International Human Rights Standards Governing The Treatment of Prisoner. Retrieved from www.hrw.org on May 10, 2019. Lanctot, N. & Smith, C. (2001). Sexual activity, pregnancy, and deviance in a representative urban sample of African American girls. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 30, 349-372. Lanctot, N. & Corneau, M. (2004). Mental health outcomes of adjudicated males and females: the aftermath of juvenile delinquency and problem behavior. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 14, 251-262. Leflouria, T. (2015). Chained in silence: black women and convict labor in the new south. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. McGee, Z. T., Alexander, C., Cunningham, K. Hamilton, C. & James, C. (2019). Assessing the linkage between exposure to violence and victimization, coping, and adjustment among urban youth: findings from a research study on adolescents. Children, 6 (36). McGee, Z. T., Gipson-Jones, T., Davis, B. & Saunders-Goldson. (2018a). The impact of family- and community-level victimization on the mental health of female substance users: results from a national longitudinal study of adolescent to adult health. SOJ Nursing & Health Care, 4 (2), 1-7. McGee, Z. T., Richeson, B., Ducoste, M., Jones, C. & Nunn, T. (2018b). A correlational study of the relationship between risk factors and gun-related delinquency among urban female adolescents. Youth Voice Journal, 8 (1), 1-18. McGee, Z. T. (2014). Exposure to violence and problem behavior among urban adolescents: assessing risk factors and coping strategies. Journal of the Institute of Justice & International Studies, 660:14, 73-86. McGee, Z. T., Davis, B. L., Saunders-Goldson, S., Fletcher, M. & Fisher, L. (2017). The impact of maternal incarceration on emotional and behavioral outcomes; research findings from a national longitudinal study on adolescent health. SOJ Nursing & Health Care, 3 (10), 1-7. McGee, Z. T., Baker, S. R., Davis, B. L., Mullere, D. J. & Kelly, A. B. (2014). Examining risk factors for recidivism and disparities in treatment among female probationers. Journal of Sociology and Social Work, 2 (2), 219-232. McGee, Z. T., & Gilbert, A. N. (2010). Treatment programs for incarcerated women and mother-child communication levels. Criminal Justice Studies: A Critical Journal of Crime, Law, and Society, 23(4), 337-345. McGee, Z. T. & Foriest, W. (2009). African-American female delinquency: examining environmental and school risk factors. Contemporary Issues in Criminology and Criminal Justice 3:2, 30-44. Mellien, E. & Hong-Ning, F. (2010). Exploration of pathways to delinquency for female adolescents with depression: implications for cross-systems collaborations and counseling. Journal of Addictions and Offending Counseling, 30, 58-74. Miller, S., Loeber, R. & Hipwell, A. (2009). “Peer deviance, parenting and disruptive behavior among young girls. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 37, 139-152. Morris, M. (2016). Pushout: the criminalization of black girls in schools. New York, NY: The New Press.

252

Zina T. McGee

Muraskin, R. (2012). Women and Justice: It's a Crime. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education. Nijhawan, A. E., Salloway, R., Nunn, A. S., Poshkus, M., & Clarke, J. G. (2010, January 19). Preventive Healthcare for Underserved Women: Results of a Prison Survey. Journal of Women's Health, 17-22. Prison Policy Initiative Report. (2018). The Gender Divide: Tracking Women’s State Prison Growth. Retrieved from www.prisonpolicy.org on May 14, 2019. Rankin, B. and J. Quane. (2002). Social context and urban adolescent outcomes: the interrelated effects of neighborhoods, families, and peers on African-American youth. Social Problems 49(1):79-100. Reese, L., Vera, E., Thompson, K & Reyes, R. (2001). A qualitative investigation of perceptions of violence risk factors in low-income African American children. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 30(1):161-171. Richie, B. (2012). Arrested Justice: black women, violence, and America’s prison nation. New York: New York University Press. Schmalleger, & J. O. Smykla, Corrections in the 21st Century (pp. 351-356). (2011). Chapter 10: The Inmate World. New York: McGraw-Hill. Sentencing Project. (2018). Incarcerated women and girls, 1980-2016. [Electronic version]. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. Shook, S., Jones, D., Foreshand, R., Dorsey, S. & Brody, G. (2010). The mother–co-parent relationship and youth adjustment: A study of African American single-motherfamilies. American Psychological Association, 24(3):243-251. The Sentencing Project. (2019). Incarcerated Women and Girls. Retrieved from www.sentencingproject.com on May 14, 2019. Tzoumakis, S., Lussie, P. & Corrado, R. (2010). Female juvenile delinquency, motherhood, and the intergenerational transmission of aggressive and antisocial behavior. Behavioral Science and the Law, 30, 211-237. Welch-Brewer, C., Lewis, A. & Parker, S. (2009). Incorporating gender-specific approaches for incarcerated female adolescents: multilevel risk models for practice. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 48, 67-83. Welch-Brewer, C., Stoddard, P., Dave, C. & Mallett, A. (2011). Race, substance abuse, and mental health disorders as predictors of juvenile court outcomes: do they vary by gender?” Child Adolescent Social Work Journal, 28, 229-241.

In: Modernity, Modernization, and Globalization Editor: Shahid M. Shahidullah

ISBN: 978-1-53616-323-0 © 2019 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 11

MODERNITY AND THE BIRTH OF UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS: THE EVOLUTION OF LEGAL STATUS AND CULTURAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS DISABILITY IN AMERICA Melody Brackett*, PhD, Kim S. Downing, PhD and Deborah Riddick, PhD Elizabeth City State University-University of North Carolina, Elizabeth City, NC, US

ABSTRACT With the rise of modernity, one of the crucial transformations has occurred in the area of science and humanism concerning people with disabilities. During the medieval time, there was a common assertion that disabled persons were demon-possessed and cursed by God. In some cases, disabled individuals were intentionally killed or abandoned, and left to die. Because of their deformities, they were condemned to a life of poverty, begging, and prejudice. However, as the world transitioned from the middle ages into the age of Enlightenment, perceptions about disability began to change. By the 19th century, institutionalization became the norm for managing persons with disabilities. While this change promoted a higher quality of care offered to disabled persons, their societal status and the ways in which they were treated by the general population largely remained the same. For many, the treatment was still inhumane and deplorable. The 20th century saw the development of legal interventions to protect the rights of the disabled, advancement in the science of human growth and disability, and a change in the cultural perception about disability. Since the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Disabled (CRPD) and its Optional Protocol adopted in 2006, a global movement is growing across the world societies for advancing the human rights of people with disabilities. In every country of the world today, new legislations are being enacted to protect and ensure the universal human rights of the disabled. In every country, there are also growing advocacy organizations for advancing the agenda for a cultural transformation about the idea of *

Corresponding Author’s E-mail: [email protected].

254

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick disability. The recent years have also seen remarkable advances in the science of physical and mental disability, and technological interventions for providing equal access to various forms of life-style and life-opportunities to people with disabilities. In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) has been a major turning point in the modernization of the idea of disability. The ADA has not only made a series of laws protecting the universal human rights of the disabled, but it also mandated advancement in the science and the culture of understanding human disability. By the 21st century, the paradigm shifted even further. With the support, voice, and vision of different advocacy groups, people with disabilities are no longer relegated to live on the periphery of human existence. Along with the aid of modern science and digital technology, they are becoming a part of an inclusive modern culture.

Keywords: disability, demonology, middle ages, human rights, rights of the disabled, Americans with Disabilities Act, science of disability, disability laws, cultural perception of disability

INTRODUCTION One of the core principles of modernity is the universalization of human rights irrespective of their gender, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientations, height, weight, and disabilities. When the enlightenment philosopher John Locke defined that humans are born with certain natural rights, he visualized the universalization of human rights. When Thomas Jefferson surmised in the American Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” he was aspiring for a world based on the glory of the universalization of human rights. When Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his dream speech that “I have a dream today, I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together,” his vision was the universalization of human rights—a new age of modernity. The transformation from the middle ages to modernity that began from the days of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment was primarily a transformation from the God-centered to naturalistic and human-centered worldview. With the birth of the naturalistic and humancentered worldview, human facts and issues began to be seen as issues of naturalism and humanism. Human facts and frailties began to be understood as cultural and social constructions. The world nations, for the first-time in human history, came together to define universal human rights in 1948, and it came through the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected” (United Nations, 2019, p. 1). Section 1 of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

255

the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” Article 22 states that “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.” The US Census Bureau estimated that in 2015, there were 12.6 percent of civilian noninstitutionalized Americans (nearly 40 million) who were defined as disabled. Many other surveys estimate that “a considerably larger share of Americans have disabilities” (Pew Research Center, 2017, p. 1). The purpose of this chapter is to examine how and what extent some of the ideals, dreams, and principles of humanism and universal human rights—ideals of modernity—are being realized in the treatment and perception of disability in America. How is disability defined and codified in American law? How are laws of disability evolving in response to the evolution of American politics, economy, and technology? How does law extend and protect different rights of the disabled? What is America’s evolving nature cultural perception about disability? This chapter will explore and examine these and other issues and challenges related to modernity and disability in America.

CULTURE, LAW, AND DISABILITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES Historical research has shown that in all ancient and medieval civilizations, people with mental and physical disabilities were despised, abandoned, ignored, isolated, tortured, poisoned, and imprisoned. Sometime, they were deliberately brutalized and killed. Historians have observed that in the middle ages, “the mentally ill in the custody of family were widely abused and restrained, particularly in Christian Europe. Due to the shame and stigma attached to mental illness, many hid their mentally ill family members in cellars, caged them in pigpens, or put them under the control of servants. Others were abandoned by their families and left to a life of begging and vagrancy” (Foerschner, 2010, p. 3). In many parts of medieval Europe “beatings were administered to the mentally ill who acted out as punishment for the disturbances their behavior caused and as a means of “teaching” individuals out of their illnesses. Others who were considered nuisances were flogged out of town” (Foerschner, 2010, p. 3). Similarly, “The medievals felt that disfiguration or any physical abnormality was a sentence imposed by God. They freely laughed at such people. Throwing stones at cripples and lepers was considered great fun” (Metzler, 2006, p. 9). “In the thousands of years of human existence before 1800, historian Winzer argued: “life for most exceptional people seems to have been a series of unmitigated hardships. The great majority of disabled persons had no occupation, no source of income, limited social interaction, and little religious comfort (Rushton, 2013, p. 4). The dominant perspective of explaining disability in ancient and medieval civilizations was that it was a sin. The belief that being born disabled was a curse from God due to sin was pervasive and it was sanctioned by the Catholic Church (Caciolo, 2006). In all ancient civilizations, as one historian argued “mental illness was attributed to some supernatural force, generally a displeased deity. Most illness, particularly mental illness, was thought to be afflicted upon an individual or group of people as punishment for their trespasses”

256

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

(Foerschner, 2010, p. 3). Another historian observed that “One aspect of disability that is very important with regard to the medieval period is the apparent connection between physical disability and sin made in medieval times (Metzer, 2006, p. 8). The medieval culture dominated by the God-centered perspective, therefore, believed that trephining and exorcisms were the only method through which the evil spirit provoking the disability could be extracted. The focus was on spiritual redemption and seeking penance from God (Espi and Forcen, 2014). The lives of the disabled “were severely limited by widely held beliefs and superstitions that justified the pervasive prejudice and callous treatment. Individuals seen as different were destroyed, exorcised, ignored, exiled, exploited—or set a part because some were even considered divine” (Rushton, 2013, p. 4). Another perspective that was dominant in medieval law and culture about disability is what the historian described as the Monster Theory. The Monster Theory “purports to examine the human and the marginalized in medieval culture by focusing critical attention on the monsters found in medieval travel narrative and romance: these include the dog-headed people, giants, and so on” (Rushton, 2013, p. 8). The medieval historians of disability described that “monstrosity is reflected in one of the following ways: (1) hypertrophy of the body, (2) atrophy of the body, (3) excrescence of bodily parts, (4) superfluity of bodily parts, (5) deprivation of parts, (6) mixture of human and animal parts, (7) animal births by human women, (8) mislocation of organs or parts in the body, (9) disturbed growth (being born old), (10) composite beings, (11) hermaphrodites, (12) monstrous races” (Rushton, 2013, p. 8). Medieval laws on disability were based on the paradigms of both sin and monstrosity. “Medieval law would agree that the disabled are not simply human, but something else. They are metaphor, in large part because their full humanity is itself in question” (Rushton, 2013, p. 10). Although there were some provisions in medieval law for compensation and protection for the disabled, the key legal strategy was exclusion. “Exclusion relates to the restriction imposed on impaired persons to participate fully in public life. Roman law in the case of the Justinian codes was particularly concerned about impaired people and their ability to make property transactions of various kinds (be it wills, stipulations, promises)” (Metzler, 2013, p. 22.) In the Roman Justinian Law, people “born with conditions such as deafness, blindness or muteness, were excluded from certain legal transactions or their transactions were regarded as not valid. For example, a blind man could not make a will” (Metzler, 2013, p. 22). The Anglo-American Law of the thirteenth century shows that the “following kinds of people are forbidden from making appearance by attorney: ‘no child under-age, no-one deaf, mute, nor natural fool, no purely demented man, nor anyone else without discretion [i.e., rational sense], nor anyone accused of a felony ... nor lepers ousted from the community of men” (Metzler, 2013, p. 22).

CULTURE, LAW, AND DISABILITY: AMERICA IN THE 19TH CENTURY The cultural perception about disability in America slowly began to change from the beginning of the 19th century. The historians of disability have rightly argued that disability “is a cultural construction (Metzler, 2006, p. 9). The notion of disability has “no inherent meaning outside the culture” (Metzler, 2006, p. 9). The God-centered worldview that was dominant in medieval culture constructed the meaning of disability as a sin. In the 19th century, the birth of modernity brought the prominence of science and naturalist explanation

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

257

of human facts and events and that brought a new perspective of the medicalization of disability. The 19th century America was a time for industrialization, urbanization, and growth of science and technology. The newly emerging scientific and industrial culture in the 19th century expanded the medical model of disability. Disability began to be defined as both physical and social impairments. The reality of physical impairment is the crux of the medical model. The reality of cultural construction is at the core of social impairments. Children with autism, for example, are neurologically impaired, and the medical model of autism seeks to explore the underlying neurological and developmental disorders. The medical model that seeks to explore mental and physical disabilities in terms of the complexities of the genes and the evolution of the body is a major transformation from the medieval perspective of connectivity between sin and disability and demonology and disability. The medicalization of disability, however, should not be confused with the cultural construction of disability. The cultural model or the social model of disability seeks to explore how social and cultural factors impinge on disability and lead to the further social peripheralization, stigmatization, and impairment of the disabled people. One of the major developments in disability studies that came from the 19th century is the birth of the perspective of the medicalization of disability. The cultural perspective began to slowly change from that time, but the human rights model of disability remained, particularly during the 20th century. As the medical model of disability began to be prominent in disability studies and discourses from the 19th century, the general cultural perception about disability also slowly began to change. One of the developments was the beginning of the process of institutionalization. The building of numerous asylums, institutions, and houses of refuge, orphanages, and other institutions for the disabled, including deaf people, became a common practice in America in the 19th century. Institutionalization soon became an accepted part of society. Institutions were designated for people whose differences set them a part from others and provided shelter, care, education, and training (Cleall, 2015; Safford, 2019). However, institutions proved to be more of a barrier then a help for people with disabilities. These institutions rapidly expanded and impacted towns and villages. Institutions, also known as workhouses, poorhouses, and houses of refuge were built following the Poor Law of 1834. They housed destitute disabled individuals from the local parish. By mid-century, almshouses became living quarters for children who had cognitive and physical impairments. Many disabled people were placed in institutions that were already filled to capacity (Wright, 2000). During the latter half of the 19th century, a new kind of institution was built. These were places where people with a wide range of intellectual disabilities including developmental disability were sent to live. These institutions were known as asylums for idiots, lunatics, imbeciles, feeble-minded, morons, and epileptics. The goal of those institutions was to change from a training environment, to one of increased institutional control of disabled individuals and control of sexual behavior which deviated from the norm of the well-established institutions. As a result, disabled individuals were taught fundamental skills and used as labors to help reduce the cost of the institution (Wright, 2000; Trent, 1994). The first residential institution for people with mental retardation was established in North America by Samuel Gridley Howe in 1848. It was known as the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth. It served as an experimental boarding school for youth with intellectual deficiencies. Furthermore, the state of Pennsylvania in 1852 funded a private school to educate mentally retarded children. The first state school for the deaf was established in Kentucky in 1823. It was known as the Kentucky Asylum for the Tuition of the

258

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

Deaf and Dumb. Established by Kentucky representatives Elias Barber and John Rowan, this school received two federal law grants in 1826 and 1836 to aid in the education of these students. Soon other state schools were established for the blind. The first school for the blind was established in 1832 in Massachusetts. It was known as the Perkins School for the Blind founded by Samuel Gridley Howe (Thornberry & Olson, 2005). The new institutions reflected society’s attitude towards people with disabilities which was to keep the disable person from interacting with community people and the Eugenics movement. In the beginning of the institutionalization movement, there was much hope and optimism for a better life for the disabled. Many institutions, however, were no better than jails and prisons. Dorothy Dix, a prominent reformer of that time observed that “More than nine-thousand idiots, epileptics, and insane in these United States, destitute of appropriate care and protection. Bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls, attached to drag-chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods, and terrified beneath storms of profane execrations and cruel blows; now subject to jibes, and scorn, and torturing tricks, now abandoned to the most loathsome necessities or subject to the vilest and most outrageous violations” (http://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels/four/4b/1.html). The last decades of the 19th century viewed the poor, unemployed, mentally ill, and mentally retarded as somehow responsible for their own fate. Thus, people with physical and developmental disabilities were now seen as a menace to society – a society that had to be protected (Thornberry & Olsen, 2005). Disability in the 19th century, however, was not always viewed as negative, or something to be hidden or seen as though the disabled person was the one who was always in misery. The level of comfort and access to new technology for a person with disabilities depended on his or her wealth. Many institutions that existed were focused on “normalizing” disabled people, integrating them into society as productive citizens, or isolating them within secure gates, especially the wealthy. These institutions were based on the assumption that there was a clear line between what was normal and pathological (Hix, 2015). People from the upper classes with physical or mental impairments were placed in elegant country institutions which resembled spas or vacation resorts. Institutions for the “mad” provided a sense of care and provided comfortable and accommodating space in order to allow their bodies time to heal. These institutions were privately managed and designed for the wealthy. Treatment in these institutions included “the use of tea parties, gardening, and domestic rituals in order to reinforce good manners” (Hix, 2015, p. 32). Institutions focused on education began to exist in the 1830s which separated the disabled person from the non-disabled person and educated children who were blind, deaf or had an intellectual disability (Wehmeyer, 2014; Wehmeyer, 2013). The process of institutionalization gave birth to many social movements for social reforms. Many institutions created for the disabled advocated intellectual development, religious instructions, material well-being, and protecting the deaf and blind until they were trained to venture or assimilate into society. Disabled people also began to form self-help groups. According to Hix (2015, p. 21), employment, events, and even newspapers were created to help solidify a sense of belonging and community for the disabled person. By the middle of the 19th century, society became even more aware of people with disabilities. In a time of economic progress, people became alerted to the horrible living conditions of those who had been cast out. Nellie Bly’s book in 1887 entitled, “Ten Days in a Mad House” provides graphic depiction of conditions at one of the Women’s Lunatic Asylum. The grand jury launched its own investigation into the living conditions at this

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

259

institution which resulted in more money being provided to the Department of Public Charities and Correction to aid and care for people institutionalized with disabilities. The law stated that the grand jury would make sure that future examinations of institutions were more thorough so that only the seriously ill individuals were sent to asylums (Schweik, 2009). Insight into the culture context of disability and how people were treated was portrayed in literature through children fiction books. According Dowker (2004), the literature reflects the attitude of the people and the language use at this time. Terms like “crippled”, “deformed”, “lame”, and “blind” were often referred to in the literature (Dowker, 2004). Many characters in the books had disabilities. Disabled children were often seen as being blessed or angels despite their condition. They were generally portrayed as heroic, sweet, saintly or reformed invalids and able to rise above their disability. Most of the saintly or reform invalids were girls. Rarely did the disable child become a disabled adult. Most of the early books on disability did not provide the exact physical nature or cause of the disability. In most cases the characters are simply described as lame. The lack of specific medical conditions in these books reflects society facilitating highly unlikely and stylized treatment of disability. Dowker further contends that disability and its cure were often associated with the character. The cure for the disability resulted from a healthier attitude toward life and often included volunteering to let go of the disabling role. Most of the time the disability was not cured simply by a change of heart, but by spiritual discipline. In these books, individuals learn patience obedience and how to make the most of things as they endure pain and discomfort. Some of the characters who were permanently disabled in 19th century children books were portrayed as “saintly invalids” who primarily role was to set an example for other people. Although children were disabled, the disability did not set them apart from others. Some of the characters had to be disciplined, which came though suffering and doing good deeds. The literature frequently displayed the idea that a person’s disability or misfortune was an accepted part of a higher plan. Stories reflect being led by an almighty spirit in a way that was seen as the least good for them and least like them, yet it was useful to others and fitting to “Him” for a brighter glory. Disability was seen as that which God did and God was responsible for. The person is blessed to have it, learns to live with it, and ascribes to be the best they can be. As a result, people with disabilities submitted to the misfortune as a form of obedience to God’s will because these misfortunes are ultimately for their own good (Dowker, 2004). Characters in children books who were disabled were not always treated as helpless, hopeless, and pitiful creatures or saintly invalids. Instead characters were defined by their talents. Their abilities were more important and crucial to the story than the disability. Disfigurement, concealment, respectability and reconstruction also contribute to the culture and how people responded to the disability. Rather than hide the disfigurement, inventors created an assortment of devices to help people to adjust to their disabilities in society. Prosthetic legs soared greatly after the outbreak of wars and attempted to mask the disability of the user by resembling the organic human form. Realistic designs of prosthetic legs were sold alongside of self-image and self-esteem with a promise of transformation. Thus, providing greater insight into fashion, identity and consumerism (Mathews-Jones, 2014; Hix, 2015). An ear trumpet, the earliest device designed to bring about more effective sound to the ear, was used to cover up hearing loss. The ear trumpet when covered in black fabric, lace, ribbon and ear wrappings not only concealed hearing loss, but showed the elaborate account of Victorian mourning culture. In addition to the ear trumpet, other types of hearing aids came

260

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

into existence. Some were camouflaged as furniture, headbands and walking canes. Shaded glasses were designed for people who were blind. Even with these inventions, the belief existed that the disabled person was responsibility for striving to become more normal (Mathews-Jones, 2014; Hix, 2015). Braille, the Braille-writer, wheelchairs, typewriters, and phonographs were created in the 19th century and provided more autonomy, independence and access to education for the disable person. Braille provided a way for the blind person to listen to books and the Braille-writer made it possible for letters to be written. Sign language, invented in the 18th century as a method of communication, met with much opposition in the 19th century. Leading the movement against sign language was Alexander Graham Bell. According to Bell, sign language was not a language. He stated that the deaf person needed to learn how to speak by controlling the shape and volume of the sounds they made. Speaking is what makes a person human and separates them from other animals. Thus, Bell fought to forget deafness, especially sign language, seeing it as something undesirable and fostering normalcy so the deaf person would be able to share in the same oral culture as others (Cleall, 2015; Hix, 2015). As a result of this movement, conflict existed between people who advocated for sign language (manualists) and (oralists) those who pushed for speech and articulation (oralists). Sign language was eventually banned from the schools, but continued to grow and thrive in communities. This method of assisting the deaf did not return to the classroom until the 20th century. As people with disabilities started telling their story in the public arena; pictures were taken which accented their disability (Hix, 2015). This suggested that the disability was crucial to their identity. These inventions put pressure on the disable person to fit in and become more “normal. By the latter half of the 19th century, many social science professionals and social activists began to dominate the disability movement and the term disability from then began to embraces not only mental, physical, and cultural disability, but also emotional disability and deafness. The disability rights activist by the end of the 19th century prepared a new ground for a more social and cultural approach to the understanding of the problematic disability. In the area of 19th century disability law, the English Poor Law was the basis for some legal developments. The English Poor Law was the foundation on which a legal system was created in 19th century America to care for the worthy poor (disable, insane, poor, orphan, widows). Throughout the 19th century individuals that were poor and/or disabled received charity in two forms: outdoor relief which provided aid to people in their homes or on the street and indoor relief which provide aid to people living in poor houses, hospitals and other institutions. Both acts of charity were designed to keep these individuals from public view and provide a means of social control (Coco, 2010). As people with disabilities became more visible and regarded as problematic, society began to make decisions about what to do with these “unproductive individuals”. The desire by the localities to control their streets and control the poor and disabled permitted the use of ordinances that prevented unsightly beggars from seeking public assistance from others and prevented the disabled from improving their economic status. Lasting from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century individuals with disabilities were prohibited by law from begging and even remaining on the street. The first Ugly Law appeared in San Francisco in 1867. The most famous disability ordinance designed to regulate the poor, disabled and beggars was the Chicago Ugly Law of 1881. This law, also known as the “unsightly beggar ordinance”, fined any person deemed to be an unsightly or disgusting object for appearing in

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

261

public. Specifically, the ordinance stated, “Any person who is diseased, maimed mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares or public places in the city not therein or thereon exposed himself or herself to public view under penalty of one dollar for each offense. On the conviction of any person for a violation of this section, if it shall be proper and just, the fine provided for may be suspended, and such person detained at the police station, where he shall be well cared for, until he can be committed to the county poor house” (Coco, 2010, p. 1; Schweik, 2009, pp. 85-87). The Ugly Law lasted for nearly a century and made it illegal for people with physical disabilities to appear in public and to solicit alms in public places. In the 1860s and 1870s similar laws were enacted in California, Nebraska, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. In New York in 1877, a disabled person who simply displayed their disability in public, without speaking, constituted begging and violated the state law (Schweik, 2009). In these and several states, individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities were legally denied rights, dignity, and socioeconomic mobility and they endured continuous discrimination. In many cities, as an extension of the Ugly Law, many special clubs were created for disabled people from upper-socio-economic class described as Ugly Face Club. Known as high-class gentlemen clubs, these clubs were for white men who had physical deformities or who were not conventionally attractive. Although an object of ridicule on the street, they were perceived as super-stars within the realms of the club. The club members criticized deformity instead of hiding it. They prided themselves on face eccentricities, and pledged their theoretical allegiance to physiognomy. The Ugly Face Clubs provided social exclusion, aesthetic inclusion and a portal to view the relationship between culture and disability (Hix, 2015; Mathews-Jones, 2014; Schweik, 2009). Their actions shifted the meaning of disability from solely physical impairment to that of social stigma. In addition to the Ugly Law, Chicago also enacted another law described as the Freak Law. The 1881 Municipal Code of Chicago sanctioned the exhibition of people considered to be monsters or freaks of nature underneath a canvas tent as long as the proprietors of the show obtained necessary permits. The Freak Law adapted the language of the Ugly Law and specifically prohibited the display of people with disabilities in sideshows and museums. It banned the exhibition in any public place for person or animal diseased, maimed or mutilated as to be unsightly or disgusting. It also banned wax figures of representing the same disfigurement. The unconstitutionality of the Freak Law lasted for only a year, before being over turned because it violated the right of the freak show performers to make a living contracting with their employers. For many people with a disability, the freak shows were preferred to begging and becoming destitute. In fact, the purpose of the freak show was to make a living displaying people with extreme disabilities as an accepted part of the American culture in the middle and late nineteenth century. It was socially accepted to laugh at people who look different. As a result, the general public believed freak shows to be a viable form of employment (Hix, 2015; Coco, 2010). President Lincoln signed a bill into law in 1864 creating Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf, Dumb and Blind now known as Gallaudet College. It was the first institution of higher learning in the world providing college degree for the deaf (Koch, 2016). After the enactment of this bill, the federal and state governments began to be more involved in special education. Boston established the first public day school for the deaf in 1869. Rhode Island established schools for the mentally retarded children. Chicago established

262

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

schools for the physically and mentally handicapped and blind individuals. In 1890, Congress enacted the Dependent and Disability Act of 1890, and it made provisions of pensions for disabled civil war veterans of the Union Army.

CULTURE, LAW AND DISABILITY: AMERICA IN THE 20TH CENTURY In the 19th century, the birth of the medicalization of disability was certainly a major transformation from the medieval perspective of disability as a sin and the sign of monstrosity. From the late nineteenth century, the federal and state governments also began to enact some legislation to address the issues of disability. The movement of institutionalization also mobilized many social reformers for a change towards the social acceptance of disability. But culturally, the 19th century was not that different from the middle ages in recognizing the humanity of the disabled. People with disability in the 19th century America were still neglected, isolated, despised, stigmatized, discriminated, and exploited (Hinckley, 2010; Mackelprang, 2013; Mackelprange & Salsgiver, 1996; Rozalski, Katsiyannis, Ryan, Collins, & Stewart, 2010). The culture of tolerance and the respect for the human rights of the disabled was yet to be born in America the 19th century. The modern history of the recognition of humanism and human rights of the disabled in America began from the 20th century (Mackelprang, 2013). The 20th century saw the development of a number of significant laws and statutes criminalizing discriminations against people with disabilities and protecting the universal human rights of the disabled. The starting point of new legislative activities was the United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights in 1949 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Disabled (CRPD) and its Optional Protocol adopted in 2006. Article 4 of the CRPD made it mandatory for the member States of the United Nations a) To adopt all appropriate legislative, administrative and other measures for the implementation of the rights recognized in the present Convention; b) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices that constitute discrimination against persons with disabilities.” The CRPD further added that the Member states are obligated to “To take into account the protection and promotion of the human rights of persons with disabilities in all policies and programs; and to refrain from engaging in any act or practice that is inconsistent with the present Convention and to ensure that public authorities and institutions act in conformity with the present Convention.” The United Nations United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights in 1949 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Disabled (CRPD) and its Optional Protocol adopted in 2006, in fact, galvanized a global movement for the extension of human rights to people with disabilities in all countries of the world. With the beginning of enactment of new laws and statues prohibiting discriminations against people with disability in different countries of the world from the middle of the 20th century, a new culture of science, humanism, and inclusion of disability also began to expand and spread.

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

263

Legal Advancement in Disability Laws in America Some of the key legislation enacted by Congress in America in the first half of the 20th century included the Social Security Act of 1935, the enactment of the PL-176 in 1945, HillBurton Act of 1946, National Mental Health Act of 1946, and the Social Security Amendments Act of 1950. The Social Security Act of 1935 established an old-age pension system that also covers people with disability. The Act made provisions to provide grants to states to service blind people and crippled children (Segal, Gerdes, & Steiner, 2013). The PL176 of 1945 established the legal basis of what is now described as “National Disability Employment Awareness Month.” The Hill-Burton Act of 1946 created the provision of federal grants for the establishment of hospital and health care centers for people with disability. The National Mental Health Act was signed by President Truman in 1946, and it created the National Institute Mental Health for scientific research on mental health disabilities. The second half of the 20th century saw the enactment of a large number of legislations in a variety of areas related to the rights of the people with disability. Some of the significant enactments in the 1960s and 1970s included the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare and Medicaid Laws of 1965, Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, Fair Housing Act of 1968, Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Education for all Handicapped Children Act of 1975. Voting is one of the fundamental liberty rights in a democratic society (see Table 11.1).

Table 11.1. Major Disability Legislations Enacted in the 1960s and 1970s Legislation Social Security Act of 1935 Voting Rights Act of 1965 Medicare and Medicaid Laws of 1965 Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 Fair Housing Act of 1968 Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.

Disability Rights Established social insurance and public assistance programs to meet the economics needs of older people, dependent survivors, people with disabilities, and families in need. Protected the rights of the disabled to vote and to receive assistance in voting by “a person of the voter’s choice.” People with disabilities were granted the rights to receive federally funded health care benefits and services. This became a law after the 1965 Amendment of the Social Security Act of 1935. The Act made it legally mandatory for all federally owned and leased building to be accessible to people with disabilities. The Act particularly mandated disability-access bathroom facilities. Prohibited discrimination in sale, rental, financing, or advertising of housing on the basis of disability. The Act protected qualified individuals from discrimination based on disability. The Act for the first-time, defined the exclusion of people with disabilities as discrimination. The Act made provisions for federally funded public schools to provide equal and appropriate educational opportunities and free special services for all children with learning and other disabilities.

Source: Segal, E.A., Gerdes, K.E., & Steiner, S., (2013). Timeline of Disability Rights in the United States.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Congress enacted a number of more significant legislation to define, protect, and extend the rights of the people with disability. One of the landmark legislations enacted at that time was the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act of 1990 signed into law by President George H. W. Bush. The enactment of the ADA is based on

264

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

some substantial historical findings recognized by the Congress. The Congress recognized that: 1) physical or mental disabilities in no way diminish a person’s right to fully participate in all aspects of society, (2) historically, society has tended to isolate and segregate individuals with disabilities, 3) discrimination against individuals with disabilities persists in such critical areas as employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting, and access to public services.” Congress further recognized that “individuals with disabilities continually encounter various forms of discrimination, including outright intentional exclusion, the discriminatory effects of architectural, transportation, and communication barriers, overprotective rules and policies, failure to make modifications to existing facilities and practices.” Before the enactment, Congress established that “the continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous.” The ADA was enacted with the objectives of providing “a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination” and “clear, strong, consistent, enforceable standards addressing discrimination” (https://www.u-s-history.com/ pages/h2050.html). The ADA defines disability of an individual broadly as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual.” Some of the major life activities, according to the ADA include “caring for oneself, performing manual task, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating and working.” The ADA further defines that a major life activity includes “the operation of a major bodily function, including but not limited to functions of the immune system, normal cell growth, digestive, bowel, bladder, neurological, brain, respiratory, circulatory, endocrine, and reproductive functions.” The ADA mandated that “No covered entity shall discriminate against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.” The ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, governmental programs, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications (Powell, 2019; Davis, 2016; Segal, Gerdes, & Steiner, 2013) (see Table 11.2). The ADA is regarded as the most comprehensive legislation for people with disabilities ever enacted in America (Karger & Steosz, 2006; Mackelprang, 2013). Mackelprang (2013) argues that the ADA is the most significant disability civil rights law because “it expanded the rights of the disabled to all areas of society whereas previous legislation such as Rehabilitation Acts applied only to governmental entities and organizations receiving governmental support”. After the enactment of the ADA in 1990, the United States Supreme Court in a number of cases narrowly interpreted some of the key definitions of contained in the ADA such as the notions of disability, impairment, and protections in violation of the actual intent of the Congress. To address these violations and restricted interpretations of disability, Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAA) of 2008. In enacting the ADDA in 2008, Congress found that the expectation of the ADA of 1990 “has not been fulfilled.” Congress, therefore, enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAA) in 2008. In enacting the ADDA in 2008, one of the major purposes was of Congress was to “to reject the standards enunciated by the Supreme Court…that the terms

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

265

“substantially” and “major” in the definition of disability under the ADA need to be interpreted strictly to create a demanding standard for qualifying as disabled.” The ADAA clearly noted that its purpose was also “to convey congressional intent that the standard created by the Supreme Court in the case of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams, 534 U.S. 184 (2002) for ‘substantially limits”, and applied by lower courts in numerous decisions, has created an inappropriately high level of limitation necessary to obtain coverage under the ADA. The ADAA further reinforced the broad interpretations of disability, impairment, and discrimination contained in the ADA of 1990. The ADDA further recognized that “The definition of disability…shall be construed in favor of broad coverage of individuals under this Act, to the maximum extent permitted by the terms of this Act; the term ‘substantially limits’ shall be interpreted consistently with the findings and purposes of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008; and an impairment that substantially limits one major life activity need not limit other major life activities in order to be considered a disability” (www.ada.gov).

Table 11.2. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 Title Areas of the ADA Employment Transportation

Public Accommodations

Telecommunications

Miscellaneous Provisions

Focus of the Coverage Addresses equal employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Aims to eliminate barriers in hiring and promotion. Addresses the right to access public transportation by individuals with disabilities. Public transportation includes but not limited to buses, trains, or other rail systems. Addresses requirements for public accommodations in all public and privately own facilities. Individuals with disabilities must have equal access to hotels, restaurants, stores, parks, museums, movie theaters, stadiums, doctor’s offices, etc. Addresses telephone, television, and internet access for individuals with speech and hearing impairments. This includes telecommunications services and systems for the deaf (TDDs). Addresses miscellaneous provisions such as state immunity, retaliation, attorney’s fees, coverage of Congress, relations to other laws, and the impact on insurance providers.

Source: Karger H. J. and Stoesz, D. 2006

Modernity and the Culture of Disability in America in the 21st Century It is well known that disability, regardless of the type, has historically posed challenges to the individual as well as their families (Zisser & Stone, 2015; Burgdorf, 2008). What may not be as well-known or emphasized is the vital role and significant contributions that disability advocacy groups, professional associations, and various organizations have long played and continues to play in advancing the agenda for disability reforms, with particular emphasis on prohibiting discrimination and increasing access to resources, services, and opportunities. Disability advocacy is defined as “acting, speaking or writing to promote, protect and defend the human rights of people with disabilities” (Disability Advocacy Resource Unit, 2012). According to the Disability Advocacy Resource Unit (2012), the most common types of disability advocacy are: 1) Self-advocacy; 2) Individual advocacy; 3) Group advocacy; 4)

266

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

Citizen advocacy; 5) Systematic advocacy, and 6) Legal advocacy. Self-advocacy refers to an individual with a disability who speaks out about their lives and represents themselves. Individual advocacy refers to working one-on-one to prevent or address unfair treatment. Group advocacy refers to different types of advocates speaking out on behalf of a group of people with the same type of disability. Citizen advocacy refers to community volunteers speaking out on behalf of a person with a disability or disability-related cause, with the support of a Citizen Advocacy organization. Systemic advocacy refers to speaking out and working for social justice and permanent social change in efforts to protect the rights of people with disabilities through development and implementation of legislation, policies, and practices that provide the same opportunities for disabled people as non-disabled people. Legal advocacy refers to an attorney providing legal assistance or representation to people with a disability regarding discrimination and human rights (Disability Advocacy Resource Unit, 2012).

Table 11.3. Major Disability Advocacy Organizations in America Groups/Associations/ Organizations Administration on Disabilities (AoD) American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Centers for Independent Living (CILs) Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF) Easter Seals Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) State Councils on Developmental Disabilities

Role Works with states, communities, and partners in the disability networks to increase the independence, productivity, and community integration of individuals with disabilities. Founded in 1921, works to ensure that individuals who are blind or visually impaired have access to the information, technology, education, and legal resources. Community-based non-profit organizations that provide a wide range of support, advocacy, and information to foster empowerment and independence among people with disabilities. Nonprofit charity organization that provides free, professional assistance to veterans and their families. Advance the civil and human rights of people with disabilities through legal advocacy, training, education, and public policy and legislative development. Provides a wide range of services such as education, outreach, and advocacy to children and adult with disabilities. Enforces federal laws to prevent employment discrimination based upon race, color, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin or age (40 or older). Promote and support advocacy, systems change, and capacity building for people with developmental disabilities

Source: The Administration for Community Living, 2019 (Division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

O’Day and Goldstein (2005) contends that one of most important contributions of disability advocates has been “to promote a shift away from a medical model of disability and toward a sociopolitical model that stresses the interaction between the person with the disability and his or her environment.” A sociopolitical perspective posits that most problems associated with disability could be addressed best through self-advocacy and the elimination of disabling environmental barriers, stigma, and legislation that restrict the independence and productivity of people with disabilities (O’day and Goldstein, 2005). Beaulaurier and Taylor

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

267

(2001), argues that “the crux of the new thinking about disability is that it is not so much a person’s impairment that is disabling, but rather the lack of accommodation for them that creates problems”. They further contend that “failure to be responsive to the needs of people with disabilities has resulted in social and physical conditions that effectively bar many people with disabilities from full participation in society.” Some of the most effective efforts to prohibit discrimination and to support, advocate, and advance the civil and human rights of people with disabilities occurred as a result of the disability rights movement and continues today. Through the organized and untiring efforts of a wide range of disability advocacy groups, professional associations, various organizations and other allies, cultural beliefs and societal attitudes about people with disabilities have shifted, policies that promote equal access and opportunities have been drafted and implemented, and people with disabilities and their families continue to be supported and empowered through various resources and services (Mackelprang, 2013) (see Table 11.3).

Moving Forward: Science, Technology, and Disability Society has progressed with its understanding of persons with disabilities from being demon-possessed and cursed by God, requiring trephining and exorcisms to release the evil spirit, and/or intentionally killing, abandoning, and leaving them to die to recognizing the physiological and psychological manifestations of disability. Many recent advances in biology, molecular biology, genetic science, brain science, neuro-physiology, and behavioral neurology have shown that many forms of common physical and mental disabilities such as autism, learning disorder, bi-polar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, and down-syndrome are related to genetic and neurological abnormalities. Scientific research, for example, have shown that “Emotional regulation in people with autism may be related to differences in how the amygdala, an emotional center in the brain, changes from childhood into adulthood; Genes linked to autism may affect how neurons function and communicate in individuals with ASD” (Autism Speaks, 2019, p.1). Scientific research has established that “Behavioral problems in young people with severe antisocial behavior -- known as conduct disorder -could be caused by differences in the brain’s wiring that link the brain’s emotional centers together” (University of Birmingham, 2019, p. 1). Scientists are also investigating “whether certain antisocial behaviors, such as aggression, or personality traits, such as reduced empathy or guilt, were linked to the observed changes in brain structure. They found that the differences in the corpus callosum were linked to callous behavior, including deficits in empathy and a disregard for other people’s feelings” (University of Birmingham, 2019, p, 2). Numerous of similar studies have shed new lights on the understanding of human disability, and they are remarkably changing cultural perceptions about disability in modern societies. Along with advances in the science of understanding disability in America, there has also been a considerable progress in technological innovations to deal with disability. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), for example, offers comprehensive services to active duty and retired (veterans) men and woman in the armed forces. These services address disabilities which can impact both the physical and mental health. “Traditionally, veterans seeking health care traveled to the VA hospital or medical center. In order to increase Veterans’ access to health care, VA has created over 700 community-based outpatient clinics to bring VA care closer to home for veterans.” (https://www.telehealth.va.gov/). To improve

268

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

access to (especially in rural and underserved areas and for the elderly and incapacitated) and timeliness of services, the VA instituted VA Telehealth Services. The VA Telehealth Services provide physical and mental health care in synchronous and asynchronous formats. Clinical Video Telehealth (CVT) uses these telehealth technologies to make diagnoses, manage care, perform check-ups, and actually provide care in the following areas: Polytrauma, Tele Mental Health, Tele Surgery, and Tele Rehabilitation (https://www.telehealth.va.gov/).

Technology for Civilians with Disabilities As with the military, civilian adults also experience issues with physical and mental health disabilities. Autism is a disability that impacts the functioning of adults. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “approximately 1 percent of the world population has a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. The prevalence of autism in U.S. children increased by 119.4 percent from 2000 and autism is the fastest-growing developmental disability. More than 3.5 million Americans live with an autism spectrum disorder.” (CDC, 2018, p 1). Specifically, autism can negatively impact the lives of adults with this diagnosis and directly interfere with the natural maturation process. Some of the barriers to healthy development are “poor communication skills; lack of social ‘soft skills’ such as small-talk, office politics, and unspoken requirements; the ability to complete the job independently without a job coach; or sensory issues within the work environment” (Lofland, 2019, p. 2). Digital technology can be utilized to address these barriers and because of the common use in society it can promote peer acceptance, thus minimizing being further ostracize. As well, technology has been effectively used by adults to address physical impairments and disabilities e.g., vison, hearing, speech, motor, and, etc. “The touch screen and layout are more accessible for individuals with coordination. Often individuals with ASD have difficulty with fine motor skills making handwriting difficult. Lastly, for individuals that do not use speech for communication, they can use technology as a voice output device to speak for them and help them express themselves more fluently” (Lofland, 2019, p. 2).

Technology for Children with Learning Disabilities Institutions of higher learning are federally mandated to have an office of disability services that addresses and authorizes accommodations for students with documented disabilities. According to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 11 percent of undergraduates reported having a disability during the 2011–12 academic year. Therefore, colleges and universities must make academic adjustments that include auxiliary aids and services. Some of the various types of technology-driven aids and services may include taped texts, video displays, voice synthesizers, assistive learning systems, talking calculators, and calculators and keyboard with large buttons. These aids enhance the quality of the students’ academic experiences and increase their opportunities for success. The availability of aids and services vary depending on the resources of the college or university (Michaels, Fran, and Jackson, 2002). Children with disabilities that are enrolled in public schools are entitled to receive federally mandated services. These students are placed in inclusion classes and offered supportive services. Students with varying disabilities and diagnoses are assessed and

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

269

given an individualized Education Plan (IEP) to address their academic challenges. As well, students aged 16 and older are expected to receive an Individualized Transition Plan (ITP) to formally address their intended exit from public school. Like adults, children also have diagnoses of physical and mental health disabilities. Autism is one of the leading developmental disability diagnoses for children. Reportedly, 1 out of 68 children in the United States will be diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This diagnosis may impact their functioning at various level. Thus, effective interventions have been developed to address their needs. Millions of students are being benefitted from using assistive and instructional technology to attain course content and skills. One tool that has been beneficial is digital pen. The digital pens can be used discretely as they are similar to regular writing pens (Ok and Rao, 2017). Some of the features of the pen include assisting with note taking with multiple modes for auditory and written notes; reading, content review, and test preparation by scanning words or sentences; formative assessment; testing accommodations and as a math calculator; portable scanner; voice recorder (Pacheco, Lips, and Yoong, 2018). Persons with disabilities and their families are taking advantage of the ever-evolving advances in technologies. Today, there are over one million apps available, and the number continues to grow daily. The apps range in price from free to several hundred dollars (Lofland, 2019). According to Ayres, Mechling, and Sansosti (2013), persons with disabilities will take advantage of new and existing technology that can be infused with digital technology. Some of the technology include: “GPS capabilities for navigational and location purposes; bug-in-ear for covert audio coaching; Google Glasses; and Social Compass.” Likewise, the National Institute of Mental Health is researching and engaging is exploration of utilizing technology to effective address mental health issues. “There is current evidence that the use of landline and cellular telephones, computer-assisted therapy, and videoconferencing can be effective in improving treatment outcomes. Smartphones, as the newest development in communications technology, offer a new opportunity to improve mental health care through their versatile nature to perform a variety of functions” (Susick, 2011, p.1). Infusing this technology with services to address physical and mental health disabilities has led to a robust interest and creation of apps specifically designed to meet these needs in an unconventional way.

CONCLUSION With the rise of modernity, one of the crucial transformations has occurred in the area of science and humanism concerning people with disabilities. During the medieval time, there was a common assertion that disabled persons were demon-possessed and cursed by God. In some cases, disabled individuals were intentionally killed or abandoned, and left to die. Because of their deformities, they were condemned to a life of poverty, begging, and prejudice. However, as the world transitioned from the middle ages into the age of Enlightenment, perception about disability began to change. By the 19th century, institutionalization became the norm for managing persons with disabilities. While this change promoted a higher quality in the care provided to disabled persons, their societal status and the ways in which they were treated by the general population, however, largely

270

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

remained the same. For many, the treatment was still inhumane and deplorable. The standardization of facilities and equal protection to the disabled population were not guaranteed. Despite the substandard treatment, institutionalization, however, was a step in the direction of recognizing the basic and universal human rights of people with disability. The 20th century saw the development of legal interventions to protect the rights of the disabled, advancement in the science of human growth and disability, and a change in the cultural perception about disability. Since the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Disabled (CRPD) and its Optional Protocol adopted in 2006, a global movement is growing across the world societies for advancing the human rights of people with disabilities. In every country of the world today, new legislations are being enacted to protect and ensure the universal human rights of the disabled. In every country, there are also growing advocacy organizations for advancing the agenda for a cultural transformation about the idea of disability. The recent years have also seen remarkable advances in the science of physical and mental disability, and technological interventions for providing equal access to various forms of life-style and lifeopportunities to people of with disabilities. In the United States, the Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA) has been a major turning point in the modernization of the idea of disability. The ADA has not only made a series of laws to protecting the universal human rights of the disabled. It also mandated advancement in the science and the culture of understanding human disability. By the 21st century, the paradigm shifted even further. With the support, voice, and vision of different advocacy groups, people with disabilities are no longer relegated to live on the periphery of human existence. And, with the aid of modern science and digital technology, they are becoming even more a part of modern inclusive culture.

REFERENCES Administration for Community Living (ADL). (2019). Retrieved from https://acl.gov/programs on June 12, 2019. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Retrieved from www.u-s-history.com/pages/ h2050.html on June 12, 2019. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Amended. Retrieved from www.ada.gov/pubs/ adastatute08.htm on June 12, 2019. Autism Society. Retrieved from www.autism-society.org/what-is/facts-and-statistics/on June 6, 2019. Autism Speaks. (2019). Six Autism Speaks Study on 2018 List of Top Advances in Autism. Retrieved from www.autismspeaks.org on May 3, 2019. Ayres, K. M., Mechling, L. & Sansosti, F. (2013). The Use of Mobile Technologies to Assist With Life Skills/Independence of Students with Moderate/Severe Intellectual Disability and/or Autism Spectrum Disorders. Psychology in the Schools, 50 (3), pp. 259-271. Bialik, K. (2017). Pew Research Center. 7 Facts About Americans with Disabilities Washington DC: Pew Research Center. Beaulaurier, R. L. & Taylor, S. H. (2001). Social Work Practice with People with Disabilities in the Era of Disability Rights. Social Work in Health Care, Vol. 32(4). pp. 67-91.

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

271

Burgdorf, R. L. (2008). Restoring the ADA and Beyond: Disability in the 21st Century. Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights. Austin, 13 (2), pp. 241-365. Caciolo, N. M. (2006). Discerning Sprit: Devine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Center for Disease Control (CDC). Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/ autism/ data. html on June 6, 2019. Cleall, E. (2015). Silencing Deafness: Displacing Disability in the Nineteenth Century, Sydney Portal, 12 (1), pp. 1-18. Coco, A. P. (2010). Diseased, Maimed, Mutilated: Categorization of Disability and Ugly Law in Late Nineteenth-Century Chicago. Journal of Social History, Oxford, 44 (1), pp. 1-11. Davis, L. J. (2016). Enabling Acts. The Hidden Story of How Americans with Disability Act Gave the Largest US Minority its Rights. New York: Beacon Press. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2016). Fact Sheet. Retrieved from www.va.gov/ COMMUNITYCARE/docs/news/VA_Telehealth_Services.pdf on June 6, 2019. Disability Advocacy Resource Unit. (2012). Retrieved from www.daru.org.au on May 3, 2019. Dowker, A. (2004). The Treatment of Disability in the 19th and Early 20th Century: Children’s Literature. Disabilities Studies Quarterly, 24, (1), pp. 1-8. Espi, C. & Forcen, F. E. (2014). Demonic Possessions and Mental Illness: Discussion of selected cases in Late Medieval Hagiographical Literature. Early Science in Medicine., 19, pp. 258-279. Foerschner, A. M. (2010). The History of Mental Illness: From Skull Drill to Happy Pills. Inquiries, 2 (9), pp. 1-4. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Hinckley, R. H. (2010). Evading Promises: The Promise of Equality under U.S. Disability Law and How the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Can Help. Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law, 39 (1), 185–214. Hix, L. (2015). Healing Spas and Ugly Clubs: How Victorians Taught Us to Treat People With Disabilities. Retrieved from www.collectorsweekly.com on May 21, 2019. Karger, H. J. & Stoesz, D. (2006). American Social Welfare Policy: A Pluralist Approach. Boston. Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. Koch, C. (2016). Presidents who Enacted Laws to Assist People with Disabilities. Retrieved from www.the weco.com on May 7, 2019. Lofland, K. B. (2019). The Use of Technology in Treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Retrieved from www.iidc.indiana.edu on June 6, 2019. Mackelprang, R. (2013). Disability: Overview. Encyclopedia of Social Work Ed. Retrieved from www.oxfordre.com on May 20, 2019. pp. 1-14 Mackelprang, R. W. & Salsgiver, R. O. (1996). People with disabilities and social work: Historical and Contemporary Issues. Social Work. Vol. 41(1) pp. 7-14. Mathew-Jones, L. (2014). A Digital Reader; 19th Century Disability-Cultures and Contexts, Journal of Victorian Culture Online. Retrieved from www.nineteenthcenturydisability on May 5, 2019. Metzler, I (2013). Reflection on Disability in Medieval Texts: Exclusion, Protection, Compensation. In C. J. Rushton (ed.). Disability and Medieval Law, Literature, and Society, pp. 19-53. UK: Cambridge Scholarly Publishing. Metzler, I. (2009). Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, 1000-1400. London: Routledge.

272

Melody Brackett, Kim S. Downing and Deborah Riddick

Michaels, C. A, Fran, P. P. & Jackson, K. (2002). Assistive and Instructional Technology for college students with disabilities: A national snapshot of postsecondary service providers. Journal of Special Education Technology, 17 (1). National Center on Disability and Journalism. Retrieved from www.ncdj.org/resources/ organizations/ on June 12, 2019. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from www.nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/ display.asp?id=60 on June 12, 2019. National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved from www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/ technology-and-the-future-of-mental-health-treatment/index.shtml on June 6, 2019. O’Day, B. & Goldstein, M. (2005). Advocacy Issues and Strategies for the 21st Century. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 15 (4), pp. 240–250. Ok, M. W. & Rao, K. (2017). Using a Digital Pen to Support Secondary Students With Learning Disabilities, Intervention in School and Clinic., 53 (1), pp. 36-43. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1053451217692567 Pacheco, E., Lips, M. & Yoong, P. (2018). Transition 2.0: Digital technologies, higher education, and vison impairment. The Internet and Higher Education, 37, pp 1–10. Parallels in Time: A History of Developmental Disabilities. Retrieved from www.mn.gov/ mnddc/ parallels/ four/4b/1.html on June 12, 2019. Powell, R. (2019). Family Law, Parents with Disabilities, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Family Court Review, 57(1), pp. 37-53. Rozalski, M., Katsiyannis, A., Ryan, J., Collins, T. & Stewart, A. (2010). Americans With Disabilities Act Amendments of 2008. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 21 (1), pp. 22–28. Rushton, C. J. (2013). Disability and Medieval Law, Literature, and Society. UK: Cambridge Scholarly Publishing. Schweik, S. (2009). The Ugly Law: Disability in Public. New York: University Press. Segal, E. A., Gerdes, K. E. & Steiner, S. (2013). An Introduction to the Profession of Social Work: Becoming A Change Agent. New York: Brooks/Cole. Skinner, P. (2016). Better Off Dead Than Disfigured? The Challenges of Facial Injury in The Pre-Modern Past. Royal Historical Society (London, England). Transactions of the Royal Historical Society; Cambridge., 26, pp. 25-41 Stafford, P. L. (2018). Children and Disability (19th, 20th c.). Children and Youth in History, Item #110, retrieved from www.chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/items/show/110 on April 18, 2019. Susick. M. (2011). Application of Smartphone Technology in the Management and Treatment of Mental Illness. Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Graduate School of Public Health in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Public Health University of Pittsburgh. Thornberry, C. & Olson, K. (2005). The abuse of individuals with developmental disabilities. Developmental Disabilities Bulletin, 33 (1 & 2), pp. 1-19. Trainer, M. (2017). Equality for Americans with Disability: A Timeline. Retrieved from www. shareamerica.gov on May 20, 2019. Trent, J. W. (1994). Inventing the Feeble Minded: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States. Berkley: University of California Press. United Nations. (2019). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York, NY: United Nations.

Modernity and the Birth of Universal Human Rights

273

University of Birmingham. (2019). Brain Wiring Differences Identified in Children with Conduct Disorder. Retrieved from www.sciencedaily.com on May 23, 2019. U. S. Department of Education. Retrieved from www.2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/ transition. html and www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/auxaids.html on June 6, 2019. U. S. Department of Veteran Affairs. (2016). Fact Sheet. Retrieved from www.telehealth. va.gov/on June 6, 2019. Wehmeyer, M. (2014). Disability in the 21st Century: Seeking a Future of Equity and Full Participation, in M. Agran, Equity and Full Participation for Individuals with Severe Disabilities. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Wehmeyer, M. (Ed.). (2013). The Story of Intellectual Disability. An Evolution of Meaning, Understanding, and Public Perception. Baltimore, MD. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Wright, D. (2000). Learning disability and the new poor law in England, 1834-1867. Disability & Society; Abingdon, 15(5), pp. 1-14. Zisser, A. R. & Stone, M. (2015). Health, Education, Advocacy, and Law: An Innovative Approach to Improving Outcomes for Low-Income Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Journal of Policy & Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 12(2), pp. 132–137.

ABOUT THE EDITOR Shahid M. Shahidullah, PhD Professor, Department of Sociology, Hampton University, Hampton, VA, US

Shahid M. Shahidullah, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Hampton University, Virginia, USA. Dr. Shahid was educated in Bangladesh, Canada, and the United States. From McMaster University in Canada, he received a Master of Arts degree in Sociology. Dr. Shahid received his M.P.I.A. (Master in Public and International Affairs) and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Before joining Hampton University, Dr. Shahid taught at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, Virginia State University, Christopher Newport University in Virginia, and St. John’s University in New York. His major research interests include Modernity and Globalization, Transnational Organized Crime, Comparative Criminal Justice, Cyber Security, and Crime Policy in America. The Westview Press of Boulder, Colorado, published Dr. Shahid’s first book “Capacity Building in Science and Technology in the Third World” in 1991. His book on “Globalization and the Evolving World Society” (with P.K. Nandi) was published in 1998 by E. J. Brill of the Netherlands. American University Press published his book on “Crime Policy in America: Laws Institutions, and Programs” in 2008. In 2012, Jones and Bartlett Learning of Massachusetts published his book on “Comparative Criminal Justice: Global and Local Perspectives.” He has also authored and co-authored numerous articles and they were published in such journals as Global Crime, Criminal Law Bulletin, Violence and Aggression, Future Research Quarterly, Knowledge-Creation, Diffusion, and Utilization, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer, and Journal of Developing Societies. He has served as a member of the Editorial Board of Victims and Offenders: Journal of Evidence-Based Theory and Practice and the Journal of Developing Societies. His major editorial experience includes among others the editing of a book on Crime, Criminal Justice, and the Evolving Science of Criminology in South Asia published by Palgrave-Macmillan; a special issue on Science in Changing Civilizations for the Journal Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, and Utilization, and a special issue of the Journal of Developing Societies on globalization and a book on Globalization and the Evolving World Society (with P. K, Nandi).

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Melody G. Bracket, PhD: Melody G. Brackett is an Associate Professor and Director of the Social Work Program in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, USA. She received her Ph.D. and MSW from Norfolk State University and her BA Degree in Sociology/Social Work from Elizabeth City State University. Her research interests include the role of spirituality and religion in social work, education and practice, faith-based initiatives, and financial social work. She has conducted several workshops at national conferences. Topics have included: This Far by Faith: The Role of the Black Church in Ministering to Families Affected by Deployment, Spirituality and End-of-Life Care, A Financial Social Work Curriculum: Tools for Social Work Educators, and Financial Capability and Asset Building: Leadership for Social Work Practice. In addition, she has collaborated with the Center for Social Justice at Washington University in St. Louis with the implementation of a Financial Social Work Curriculum and training of social work educators and practitioners in Financial Social Work. Shyamal K. Das, PhD: Shyamal K. Das is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina, USA. He received his MA in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, and his Ph.D. in sociology from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL. USA. His major research interests include human sexuality, quantitative criminology, crime mapping and the GPS system, and sociology of South Asia. Dr. Das has published his research in numerous peer- reviewed journals including Sociation Today, Journal of Race, Sex, and Class, Journal of Natural Science, Journal of Urban Education, Sociological Bulletin, Archives of Sexual behavior, Journal of Social Science, Journal Personality and Individual Differences, and International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminal Criminology. Kim S. Downing, PhD: Kim S. Downing is an Associate Professor of Social Work in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina, USA. She received her Ph.D. in Social Work from Norfolk State University and a Graduate Certificate in Leadership Development from The George Washington University. Also, she is licensed in Virginia as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and certified by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) in the Academy of Certified Social Workers (ACSW). Her major research interests include poverty and women’s issues, with

278

About the Contributors

special emphasis on African American women. She has published in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment. Colette B. Harris, JD: Colette B. Harris is a doctoral student in Juvenile Justice in the Department of Justice Studies at Prairie View A&M University, Texas, USA. She earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Florida Levin College of Law in 2016, and her Bachelor of Arts in English (New Media and Technical Communication) from the University of South Florida in 2013. Her publications include, “Understanding the 2017 ‘Me Too’ Movement’s Timing”, and “Violent Men: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Violence” (Book Review). Dorothy Kersha-Aerga, PhD: Dorothy Kersha-Aerga is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice with the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, at Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina. She is a Nigerian trained attorney and holds an MS and Ph.D. in Juvenile Justice from Prairie A&M University, Texas. Her research interests include Gender Issues, Gender Gap in Africa, Women Empowerment in Nigeria, and Gangs and Juvenile Delinquency. Dr. Kersha-Aerga’s research works have been published in several peer-reviewed journals including, The Journal of the North Carolina Justice Academy, and Journal of Criminal Justice and Law Review. In 2018, her book chapters on “Cyber Policing” and “Phishing” were published in P. Reichel (ed,). Global Crime: An Encyclopedia of Cyber Theft, Drug Smuggling, Human Trafficking, Weapons Sales, and Other Illicit International Activities. Santa Barbara, CA. ABC-CLIO/Greenwood/Praeger. In 2017, she co-authored a chapter on “Recidivism” and it was published in G. Robertiello (ed.). The Use and Abuse of Police Power in America: Historical Milestones and Current Controversies. Santa Barbara, CA. ABC-CLIO/Greenwood/Praeger. Sesha Kethineni, PhD: Sesha Kethineni is a Professor and Head of the Department of Justice Studies, College of Juvenile Justice and Psychology, Prairie View A&M University, Texas, USA. Before joining Prairie View, A&M University, she taught for twenty-five years at Illinois State University, Illinois. Dr. Kethineni received her M.A. and LL.B. from India, Ph.D. in criminology from the Rutgers-the State University of New Jersey, and LL.M. from the University of Illinois. She has widely published in the area of comparative criminal justice, juvenile justice, program evaluation, and domestic violence. She authored, edited and co-authored three books, and published researched articles in many peer-reviewed journals including Juvenile and Family Court Journal, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Journal of family Violence, International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, and Journal of Crime and Justice. Her edited book Comparative and International Policing, Justice, and Transnational Crime was published by Carolina Academic Press in 2010. Dr. Kethininei’s recent research includes evaluation of Redeploy Illinois Program (funded $110,000); comparative juvenile justice, domestic violence, International Criminal Justice, and human rights. She served as the Chair of the International Division of the American Society of Criminology in 2013-2015. She received many awards for work and services in criminal justice. Some of them include the College of Applied Science and Technology’s (Illinois State University) Outstanding Researcher Award (2002) and the Illinois State University’s Outstanding Researcher of the Year Award (2010).

About the Contributors

279

Zina T. McGee, PhD: Zina T. McGee is an Endowed University Professor, Department of Sociology, Hampton University, Virginia, USA. She received her B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from the University of New Orleans and Ph.D. in Sociology from Tulane University. Her areas of specialization include community-based participatory research, juvenile delinquency, violent victimization among minority youth, patterns of coping among women in prison, and prison reforms. She is the recipient of a faculty research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, which examines patterns of coping, victimization and offending among minority youth and the recipient of a Hampton University faculty development award to investigate patterns of drug addiction among minority women in prison. To date, survey data have been collected on 1,500 youth in the Hampton Roads area and 500 women in prisons and jails in four states including Virginia, Maryland, District of Columbia and New York. She is also Co-PI of the MMHI Men’s Violence Prevention Research Project. Publications include “Exposure to Violence and Problem Behavior among Urban Adolescents: Assessing Risk Factors and Coping Strategies” and “Assessing Risk, Protective Factors and Symptomatology among African America Youth.” She has also published “Examining Risk Factors for Recidivism and Disparities in Treatment among Female Probationers” and “Examining the Relationship between Children's Behavioral Outcomes and Life Events among Incarcerated Mothers” with Hampton University undergraduate students as co-authors. She is a Career Development Fellow at the National Consortium on Violence Research at Carnegie Mellon University, recipient of the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) Outstanding Faculty Award, and author of the recent book, “Silenced Voices: Reading in Violence and Victimization.” Deborah Riddick, PhD: Deborah Riddick is a former Associate Professor and Director of the BSW Program Application Review Committee for the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina. She received her Ph.D. and MSW from Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia. She has over 30 years of experience in the profession of Social Work and served as the Director of Social Work Field Education for 19 years. She created and implemented eight new courses in the Social Work Program. Research interest includes gerontology, spirituality, end-of-life, end-of-life care with special attention on rural Elderly African Americans, as well as, the military experience. She has conducted local workshops and presented at regional and national conferences on the topics of modernization and the end-of-life care, modernity and spirituality, and social work with military families. Dr. Riddick currently serves as a peer reviewer for many professional organizations including, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), North American Association of Christians in Social Work (NACSW), and Phi Alpha National Honor Society-Social Work. Mohammed B. Sillah, PhD: Mohammed B. Sillah, a Sierra Leonean American, is an Associate Professor of Political Science and History, Hampton University, Virginia, USA. He received his Ph.D. from Howard University. Dr. Sillah’s research interests are in African Studies and the Middle East. His research is focused on socio-economic development in Africa, Islam and Christianity, and African-Arab relations. His research works have been published in a number of national and international peer reviewed journals, including Virginia Social Science Journal, Studies in Contemporary Islam, Journal of Islam and Culture, Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, Presence Africaine, African Studies

280

About the Contributors

Journal, Journal of Islamic Studies and Hamdard Islamicus, Muslim Quarterly Education Journal, and Islamic University Quarterly Journal. Dr. Sillah has presented papers and served as chair and discussant on panels at several professional conferences, such as Regional Approaches to Strategy and Partnership in Africa—NATO ACT OPEN Experiment— AFRICOM, NATO Command Center, Norfolk Naval Base, and Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Sillah served as an advisor on many local and international matters related to Sierra Leone. Yuriy Savelyev, PhD: Yuriy Savelyev is an Associate Professor, Faculty of Sociology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. Dr. Savelyev received his undergraduate degree from Luhansk State University with Honors in History and Social Science and minor in English. He has a Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) in Sociology. His major research interests are in comparative sociology, social change and modernization, and civic engagement, and inclusion in European societies. Dr. Savelyev has over 50 publications in international and Ukrainian academic journals including International Sociology, Sociológia, Ideology and Politics, Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya and Ukrainian Society. He authored a book Multidimensional modernity: social inclusion in assessment of social development published by Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 2017 and a chapter on Ukrainian Sociology in the 21st Century: Theory, Methods, Research Results in B. V. Golovakha (Eds.). Kharkiv: Karazin National University, 2018. He received Merit Award of the Worldwide Competition for junior scholars from International Sociological Association in 2006, and was Carnegie Research Fellow at Boston College in 2011. In 2013 he conducted a research at EUROLAB, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne, Germany funded by GESIS Research Grant. Serita Whiting, MA: Serita Whiting is a doctoral student in the Department of Justice Studies at Prairie View A&M University, Texas. She received her Master’s in criminal justice from the University of Houston Downtown and her Bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Houston Downtown. Her research interests include victimization, racially biased sentencing, and theoretical explanations of criminal offending throughout the criminal/juvenile justice system nationally and internationally.

INDEX # 1879, 32 1972, 13, 34, 36, 134, 214, 232 1973, 13, 37, 62, 100, 134, 214, 230 2018, ix, 5, 6, 10, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 34, 37, 40, 41, 42, 44, 48, 55, 61, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82, 84, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, 116, 117, 123, 124, 129, 135, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 156, 160, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 176, 178, 198, 206, 213, 215, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 234, 235, 236, 241, 242, 247, 248, 252, 268, 269, 270, 272, 278, 280 5G connectivity, 96, 104, 218, 229, 234

A A Letter Concerning Tolerance, 213 Adams, John, 49 Adams, John Quincy, 52, 77 African culture, 175, 187, 188, 203 African elite, 193 African Union, 96, 151, 162, 171, 182, 197 Age of Enlightenment, 2, 3, 12, 25, 26, 28, 30, 45, 46, 75, 83, 112, 128, 132 Ahmadi Muslims, 225 Ahmadiyya community, 191 AKU, 188, 191, 192 Al-Baqarah, Surah, 233, 234 Algeria, 89, 178 Alimamy Khazali, 201 Al-Maida, Surah, 233, 234 almshouses, 257 Al-Qaida, 71, 101, 103 America First, 73, 74, 77 American Civil War of 1865, 7

American constitution, 12, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 39, 40, 41, 75, 213, 214, 217 American Constitution, 28, 31, 32 American exceptionalism, 46, 104 American Exceptionalism, 45, 75, 104 American experiment, 35, 46, 49, 50, 55, 64, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 75 American Experiment, 67, 72 American Revolution, 5, 7, 48, 52, 84 Americanization, xii, xvii, 1, 4 Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act of 1990, x, 254, 263, 264, 265, 270, 272 Americans with Disabilities Act, x, 254, 264, 265, 270, 272 Americans with Disability Act, 17, 270, 271 Anglo-American Law, 256 Ansar-ul-Islam (AuI), 227 anti-modernism, 46, 47, 76, 83, 94, 99, 233 anti-modernist, xiv, 2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 16, 24, 38, 40, 45, 68, 72, 73, 75, 76, 81, 82, 85, 99, 105, 207, 208, 220, 229, 230, 234 anti-modernist group, 2, 6, 7, 45, 72, 76 anti-modernists, xiv, 2, 6, 10, 11, 16, 24, 38, 40, 76, 81, 85, 99, 105, 207, 208, 229, 230, 234 Arabic, 178, 183, 189, 190, 191, 199 Architectural Barriers Act of 196, 17, 263 aristocracy, 5, 26, 132 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 178 Augsburg Treaty, 202 autism, 257, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 Autism Spectrum Disorder, 269, 270, 271

B Babri Masjid, 220, 227 Badran, Margot, 178 Bai, Ernest, 192, 193, 198, 199

282

Index

Bangladesh, viii, ix, x, xii, 7, 16, 96, 103, 178, 179, 183, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 219, 220, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 237, 275 Bangladesh Hindu, 226, 227 Bangura, Colonel John, 195 basic clash of ideas, 62 Bates, Robert, 203 behavioral neurology, 267 Beijing rules, 240 Belarus, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121 belief communities, 2, 6 Berlin Wall, 58, 63, 85 better angels of our nature, 14, 46, 76 Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, 142 Bhartiya Janata Party, 5, 220 Bhatti, Minister Shahbaz, 224, 231, 237 Bibi, Asia, 224 biblical meaning of sex, 22, 41 bigotry, xiv, 4, 5, 34, 47, 56, 65, 74, 82, 105, 221, 222 Bill of Rights, 12, 28, 36, 50, 75, 129, 213 bi-polar disorder, 267 birth of individualism, 25 BJP ideology of Hindutva, 230 black female convict, 243, 245 blasphemy, 11, 215, 224, 225, 231, 235 blasphemy law, 11, 215, 224, 231, 235 Blyden, Edward W., 188, 189, 190, 203, 204, 205 Bolshevik Revolution, 58 Bosnian Muslims, 202 Bourguiba, Habib, 178 breakdown of the continuity, 72 breakdowns of modernization, 10, 18 British colonialism, 4, 15, 132, 205, 219 Buddhism, 127, 129, 207, 209, 210, 233, 234 Buddhist, 13, 129, 138, 210, 226, 227, 236 Bulgaria, 61, 63, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122 Burah, Kandeh, 199 Bureh, Bai, 192, 199 Bush, George H. W., 64, 73, 263 Bush, George W., 66, 67, 72, 73, 100

C Calvinist theology, 212 Catholic Church, 255 Catholics, 9, 29, 30, 40, 48, 176, 202, 209 Central and Eastern Europe, 14, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 119, 121, 122 chain-gang sentences, 244 Chicago Ugly Law of 1881, 260 child marriage, 15, 127, 132, 133, 143, 147, 151, 160, 162, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171

Child Marriage Restraint Act, 15, 127, 133, 147 Christian Arabs, 183 Christian Unity Council, 226, 227 Christianity, 27, 29, 39, 152, 154, 171, 175, 176, 187, 188, 191, 204, 207, 209, 233, 234, 236, 279 church and state, vii, xi, 13, 21, 22, 28, 30, 31, 32, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 213 church and state separation, vii, xi, 13, 21, 22, 28, 30, 31, 32, 35, 213 church-state separation, 208 city upon a hill, 52 Civil War, 14, 45, 50, 67, 75 civilization of modernity, 6, 7, 48, 50 civilizational clash, 7, 46, 72, 74, 76 civilizational concept, 1 civilizational symbolisms, 8 Clinton, William J., 55, 64, 65, 68, 99, 100 Cold War, xiii, xvii, xviii, 2, 6, 14, 35, 45, 52, 54, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 75, 76, 78, 82, 88, 99, 100, 104, 105, 112, 114, 122, 182, 183, 198, 217, 229, 233 Cole, Christpher Okoro, 196, 272 collective consciousness, 25 collective effervescence, 211 collectivism, 12 colonial rule, 86, 127, 132, 153, 155, 170, 200, 219, 220 colonialism, xviii, 7, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 59, 84, 86, 127, 132, 143, 154, 177, 181, 182, 186, 193, 199, 203, 204, 219 Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf, 261 Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 15, 136, 141, 147 common law, 9, 11, 231 communism, xvii, 2, 6, 9, 54, 58, 61, 64, 65, 86, 88, 104, 197 Comte, Auguste, 4, 25 conflicts and convergence, xiii, 7, 9, 13, 21, 22 Constitution of India, 134 constitutional doctrine of privacy, 22, 38 Constitutional Review Commission, 197 constructive nationalism, 197 Conteh, Dr. Abdulai, 201 Copernicus, Nicolaus, xiii, 4, 23, 24, 25 corrupt and inhumane reform schools, 247, 250 council, ix, 15, 93, 94, 96, 107, 149, 151, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 171, 193, 194, 201, 204, 215, 227, 279, 280 Creoles, 184, 187, 192, 194, 197, 199, 203 criminal justice system, viii, 16, 19, 236, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 250 criminalization, 4, 8, 142, 162, 244, 251

283

Index cultural code and scripts, 2 cultural codes, 1, 3, 5, 8, 13, 112 cultural consciousness, 3, 82, 86, 97, 98, 105 cultural consciousness of modernity, 3 cultural construction, 256 cultural heterogeneity, 2 cultural homogeneity, 2 cultural logics, 1, 3, 85 cultural model, xii, xiii, xiv, 1, 4, 13, 112, 257 cultural model of modernity, xiv, 1, 4 cultural perception of disability, 254 culture of modernity, xiii, 3, 11, 12, 22, 28, 46, 49, 64, 65, 98, 219 culture of patriarchy, 15, 128, 130, 153 culture of religious tolerance, 201 culture of science, 27, 262 culture of sexual liberty, 37 culture of tolerance, 175, 262 culture war, vii, 2, 13, 18, 21, 22, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 43, 46, 61, 68, 72, 74, 76, 81, 85, 105, 208 current child welfare system, 246 Czech Republic, 66, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121

D Dalit Christians, 222, 223 de Cintra, Pedro, 176, 186 death of democracy, xiv, 81, 82, 105 declaration of independence, 12, 28, 48, 49, 50, 52, 75, 84, 254 decriminalization, 8 democracy, vii, xiii, xiv, xviii, 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 14, 26, 28, 35, 46, 48, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112,123, 124, 128, 170, 177, 182, 208, 216, 217, 218, 230, 232, 233 democracy and the middle class, 95 democracy index, 87, 106 democratic tradition, 14 democratization and modernization, 153, 154, 157 Democrats, 6, 10, 12, 103 demonic, 17, 29, 271 demonology, 17, 254, 257 denials of human freedom, 216 Dependent and Disability Act of 1890, 262 depression, 56, 166, 169, 251, 267 Descartes, Rene, 4, 23, 26, 42 development, vii, xii, xvii, 7, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 24, 26, 27, 50, 52, 59, 61, 62, 71, 85, 86, 92, 93, 94, 96, 105, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 123, 124, 144, 146, 147, 148, 151,

155, 157, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 167, 171, 172, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184, 186, 189, 190, 197, 203, 204, 205, 215, 216, 219, 231, 236, 248, 253, 255, 258, 262, 266, 268, 269, 270, 277, 279, 280 development as freedom, 92, 108, 236 digital dividends, 97, 108 digital technology, 17, 96, 98, 254, 269, 270 disability, viii, x, 17, 35, 36, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273 Disability Advocacy Resource Unit, 265, 271 disability in America, viii, 17, 253, 255, 256, 265, 267 disability in the 19th century, 258 disability laws, 254, 263 disentanglement, 208, 212 Dix, Dorothy, 258 Doctrine of Enlargement, 65 Doctrine of Strategic Engagement, 70 Doe, President Samuel, 33, 198, 214 domestic violence, 10, 92, 134, 136, 137, 152, 168, 171, 244, 246, 278 Domestic Violence, 140, 148, 162 down-syndrome, 267 drug-related crime, 242, 246 drugs, 160, 248, 250 due process clause, 22, 38, 40, 41 dumb and blind, 261 Durkheim, Emilie, 25, 211, 212, 235

E Eastern Europe, 6, 63, 64, 65, 74, 91, 111, 112, 115, 123, 124, 197 economic community, 197 economic monitoring group, 197 Egypt, 56, 60, 82, 183, 189, 201, 216, 219, 224, 228 Einstein, Albert, 24, 25, 41, 43 Eisenhower Doctrine, 60, 61 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 53, 60, 61, 62, 77 Eisenstadt v. Baird, 13, 36, 37 Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972, 36, 37 emancipative values, 14, 98, 111, 112, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123 empire of liberty, xiv, 13, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 69, 70, 75, 76, 79 English Poor Law, 260 Enlightenment, xiv, 19, 28, 32, 37, 42, 49, 50, 54, 61, 83, 84, 193, 211, 213, 253, 254, 269 equality, xiii, xviii, 1, 3, 4, 5, 16, 22, 26, 28, 34, 36, 41, 46, 51, 59, 60, 71, 75, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 98, 99, 107, 112, 128, 129, 133, 134, 136,

284

Index

137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 152, 155, 160, 161, 162, 164, 166, 171, 179, 216, 217, 230, 233, 271, 272 Establishment Clause, 30, 32, 33, 34, 213, 214 Estonia, 66, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121 ethnicity, viii, 5, 12, 15, 17, 65, 101, 175, 176, 177, 180, 181, 182, 184, 190, 194, 196, 201 Eugenics movement, 258 Europeanization, xii, xvii, 1, 4 Everson v. Board of Education, 32 expansion of freedom, 58, 92

F Facebook, 95, 96 Fair Housing Act of 1968,, 17, 263 fascism, 17, 54, 56, 58, 76, 86 female genital mutilation (FGM), 153, 160, 161, 162, 168 female incarceration, 242 female offending, 240 feminism, 19, 39, 145, 147, 178, 179 feminist and black feminist paradigms, 244 Fifteenth Amendment, 50 Findlay, Lieutenant-Governor, 189 First Amendment, 6, 21, 30, 31, 32, 33, 39, 41, 44, 208, 213, 214, 234, 235 First World War, 2, 6, 7, 67, 105 forced labor, 243 forced marriage, 151, 167, 169, 171 Fornah, Sorie, 195, 201 Foucault, Michael, 83, 106 Fourteen Points, 55 Fourteenth Amendment, 22, 33, 36, 38, 40, 41, 50 Freak Law, 261 free exercise clause, 21, 22, 32, 33, 34, 39, 214 Free Mason secret societies, 185 freedom of religion, 6, 31, 32, 75, 213, 215 French Revolution, 5, 7, 25, 84 Freud, Sigmund, 25, 84, 106 Friedman, Thomas, 95, 106 Fula Alimamy, 190 fundamental human rights, 16, 166, 212, 215, 254 fundamentalism, xviii, 5, 47, 72, 82, 85, 86, 179 fundamentalist reading, 232 fundamentalist regime, 82

G Galilei, Galileo, 4, 23, 24, 25, 26 Gbangbani, 185 Genda, Lieutenant Colonel Ambrose, 195

gender equality, vii, 6, 15, 36, 74, 76, 89, 90, 91, 94, 106, 107, 108, 127, 128, 129, 141, 143, 151, 152, 155, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 171 gender parity, 14, 15, 16, 82, 91, 98, 104, 164, 165 genetic and neurological abnormalities, 267 genetic science, 267 genital mutilation, 152, 160, 162, 166, 168, 169, 171, 192 geopolitical phase, 83 get tough on crime, 250 Gibb, Hamilton A.R., 177 girls of color, 239, 242, 248 global civil war, 62 global competitiveness index, 216 global connectivity, xiv, 14, 82, 86, 88, 95, 96 global cultural consciousness, 13, 14, 82, 97 global disengagement, 47 global empowerment of women, 14 global gender gap, ix, 91, 109, 165, 166, 167, 173 global infrastructure connectivity, 96, 108 global Islamic extremism, 233 global liberal social order, xiv, 14, 35, 81, 99, 100, 105 global liberal world order, 64 global middle class, xiv, xviii, 14, 82, 86, 88, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 105, 107, 109, 218, 233 global modernity, xiv, xviii, 7, 46, 52, 64, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 82, 83, 86, 91, 97, 103, 105, 208, 217, 231, 233 global peace index, 217 global project on modernity, vii, 13, 45, 75 global religious hostilities, xviii, 16, 207, 208, 229, 234 global religious restrictions, 208, 218, 228 global rise in religious hostilities, 230, 233 global terror, xiv, xviii, 2, 14, 16, 67, 74, 81, 82, 98, 100, 105, 207, 227, 228, 230, 231, 234 global trend of inclusivity, 89 Global Trends 2030, 94, 97 global village, 95, 106 globalization, 1, iii, vii, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, 1, 2, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 45, 46, 47, 50, 58, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 86, 88, 90, 96, 97, 98, 99, 105, 112, 113, 127, 128, 141, 145, 166, 172, 179, 205, 206, 229, 275 globalization of modernity, 2, 14, 45, 47, 58, 64, 68, 70, 75, 82, 98, 99, 141 Glorious Revolution, 5, 7, 48, 84, 112 God is Dead, 211 God-centered perspective, 256 God-centered worldview, 256 Goldstein, Joshua, 182, 204, 266, 272 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 63

285

Index governor, 133, 158, 188, 189, 190, 194, 195, 200, 224, 231 Governor Nathan, 188, 190 Griswold v. Connecticut, 13, 22, 36, 37, 41 Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, 13, 36, 37 Guinea (Conakry), 176, 185, 188, 195, 201 Gulf Arabs, 183

H heterogeneities, 2, 6, 13 Hill-Burton Act of 1946, 263 Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, 15, 127, 133, 147 Hinduism, 15, 127, 129, 130, 132, 141, 144, 147, 207, 209, 210, 230, 233, 234 Hindu-nationalist groups, 219 Hindutva, 230 historical oppression and maltreatment, 248 historical period effect, 111, 112, 114, 117, 118, 120, 121 Hobbes, Thomas, 4, 25, 26, 28, 83 Hobbesian dilemma, 212 Holy Artisan Bakery Café, 227 homeless mind, 18, 212, 234 homogeneities, 2, 6, 13, 211 homosexuality, 23, 38, 39 Hudood Ordinances, 11, 231 Human Development Index, xiv, 93, 94, 111, 114, 115 human freedom, 84, 177, 216, 221, 225, 226, 228, 235 Human Freedom Index (HFI), 221, 225, 226, 228, 235 human rights, viii, xi, xii, xiii, 1, 3, 17, 26, 35, 46, 71, 75, 86, 88, 98, 112, 137, 145, 147, 152, 153, 154, 160, 161, 163, 172, 215, 216, 231, 233, 235, 240, 251, 253, 254, 255, 257, 262, 265, 266, 267, 270, 278 human rights approach to disability, 17 human rights of the disabled, 253, 262, 270 humanism, v, xiii, xv, 1, 3, 4, 5, 16, 19, 26, 28, 43, 253, 254, 255, 262, 269 Hungary, xiv, 61, 63, 66, 82, 100, 101, 102, 104, 108, 115, 116, 229

I ideological war, 58, 81, 85, 86, 105 ideology of Marxism, 58 Igbos, 183 incarcerated minority females, 16, 240 inclusion of disability, 262

inclusive culture, 270 inclusive modern culture., 254 Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 15, 136, 141, 148 India, vii, viii, ix, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 15, 16, 22, 82, 88, 93, 96, 97, 99, 103, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 278 Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 135 Indian women, 15, 127, 128, 133, 137, 138, 142, 144, 146 indirect rule, 187 individualism, xiii, 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 35, 39, 43, 44, 46, 75, 112, 216, 233 Indonesia, 93, 103, 178, 179, 209, 210, 219, 224 Inglehart, Ronald, 14, 91, 98, 107, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124 inhumane treatment of pregnant women, 242 instinct of human domination, 84 instinct of human power, 84 institutionalization, 5, 196, 208, 253, 257, 258, 262, 264, 269 institutionalization movement, 258 instrumental rationality, 9 international communism, 60 International IDEA, 87, 88, 89, 90, 107, 217, 235 internet revolution, 2 internet users, 95 invisible hand, 4, 25 Iran, xiv, 5, 6, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 47, 73, 74, 82, 89, 90, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 183, 224 ISIS, 101, 103, 221, 225, 227, 228, 233 ISIS and Al-Qaeda, 225 Islam, viii, 7, 11, 15, 71, 102, 106, 129, 132, 144, 152, 153, 171, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 219, 220, 224, 225, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 236, 237, 279 Islam and Modernization, 177 Islamia, 190, 205 Islamic cultures, 177 Islamic revivalism, 179 Islamic schools, 188, 189, 190, 191 Islamic Sharia, 154, 166 Islamophobia, 222 isolationist foreign policy, 73, 74

J Jalloh, Mohamed Judeh, 186, 201 Jamaat-e-Islami, 232

286

Index

Jamburuyah, Omaru, 190 Jefferson, Thomas, xiv, 21, 31, 39, 41, 42, 48, 49, 51, 52, 66, 69, 75, 76, 79, 84, 213, 254 John, F.A., 12, 27, 28, 42, 43, 49, 51, 52, 61, 77, 185, 189, 194, 195, 204, 213, 254, 258, 275 Johnson, Lyndon B., 26, 28, 43, 61, 62, 198, 237 Joseph, Major General, 50, 196, 198, 201 Judaism, 207, 209, 210, 233, 234 Jusu-Sheriff, Salia, 201 Juxon-Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew T., 195, 205

K Kanu, Lieutenant Colonel Yahya, 201 Karamoko, Alfa, 185, 188 Karefa-Smart, John, 194, 195 Kaunda, President Kenneth, 194 Kennedy, Arthur, 188 Kennedy, John F., 61 Kentucky Asylum, 257 Kepler, Johannes, 4, 23 King-Herman, Governor C.A., 189 Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 178, 204 Koroma, Colonel Johnny Paul, 196, 198, 199, 200 Koroma, Sorie Ibrahim, 196, 198, 199, 200 Koter, Dominik, 182, 194, 204 Krio, 184 Krishnan, Kavita, 220, 222, 235

L Lansana, Brigadier David, 194 Latvia, 66, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121 Lawrence v. Texas, 13, 22, 38, 41 Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, 13, 38 Le Pen, Marine, 229 learning disorder, 267 Lemon Test, 33, 214 LGBTQ community, 21, 38 liberal and modernist intellectuals, 226 liberal civilization, 46, 47, 50, 54, 56, 57, 59, 61, 67, 75 liberal cultural foundations, 226 liberal democracy, 5, 70, 81, 83, 85, 88, 99, 104, 197, 198, 217 liberals, xiv, 6, 226 Liberia, 176, 179, 188, 197, 204 Lightfoot-Boston, Sir Henry, 194 Limba, 196 linear process, 13, 15, 112, 115, 117 literacy, 94, 129, 154, 167, 171, 188

Lithuania, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121 Locke, John, 4, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 40, 43, 83, 213, 254 lynching Muslims, 222

M Madison, James, 31, 41, 42 Madrasa, 190, 205 Magna Carta, 84 mahr property, 140 Malik, Anas B., 177, 181, 204 Mandinka School, 190 manifest destiny, 14, 45, 46, 48, 51, 52, 75, 76 Manifest Destiny, 50, 52, 78 Mano River Union, 197 Manu, 130, 131, 143 Margai, Albert, 194, 195, 196, 199, 200 Margai, Milton, 193, 199, 206 Marx, Karl, 4, 25, 61, 84, 112 Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded, 257 Masterpiece Cakeshop, 13, 22, 34, 41, 215 Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, 13, 22, 41 Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 34, 215 Maududi, Abu’l –A’la, 177 Mayflower Compact, 52 McDonaldization, 95, 108 medical model, 257, 266 Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 15, 136, 143, 148 medicalization of disability, 17, 257, 262 medieval, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 17, 22, 25, 26, 27, 42, 44, 46, 47, 48, 53, 104, 132, 135, 147, 153, 208, 211, 212, 253, 255, 256, 262, 269, 271, 272 medieval culture, 256 Mejia era in Japa, 8 Mende, 191, 192, 194, 196, 197, 199, 201 mental health treatment, 240, 242, 244 middle ages, 25, 153, 211, 253, 254, 255, 262, 269, 271 middle class, xiii, 82, 86, 92, 93, 94, 96, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107 Middle East, 14, 48, 54, 55, 60, 61, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 74, 77, 82, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 99, 100, 103, 104, 107, 175, 179, 185, 189, 210, 211, 279 middle-class size, 98 minority females, viii, 16, 239, 240, 242, 244, 247 model of new civilizational design, 13 modern individualism, 26, 27 modernist elites, 208, 222

287

Index modernists, xiv, 2, 6, 10, 12, 38, 81, 85, 105, 177, 180, 208 modernity and disability, 255 modernity experiment, xiii, 13, 14, 21, 35, 39, 41, 45, 66, 70, 72, 74, 75, 213 modernity in India, 15, 128, 129 modernization, vii, viii, xii, xiii, xvii, xviii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 35, 41, 42, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 129, 132, 133, 141, 142, 143, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 166, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 204, 205, 206, 208, 216, 219, 230, 233, 239, 243, 245, 254, 270, 279, 280 modernization from above, 113, 115 modernization theory, xvii, 124, 175, 177, 180, 181, 182 Modi, Narendra, 97, 146, 220, 230, 237 Mohammed, viii, 175, 188, 195, 201, 203, 204, 205, 222, 279 Moldova, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121 molecular biology, 267 monarchies, 3, 47, 48, 70, 104, 153 Monroe Doctrine, 50, 51, 54 Monroe, President James, 50, 51, 54 Monster Theory, 256 multiple rationalities, 9 Muslim organizations, 191 Muslim personal laws, 139 Muslim thinkers, 177, 179 Muslim Travel Ban, 230 Muslim Women’s Rights Network (MWRN), 142 Mustapha, Sanusi, 201 Muta marriages, 131

N National Institute of Mental Health, 269, 272, 279 National Interim Council, 195 National Mental Health Act, 263 National Reformation, 194 nativism, xiv, xviii, 7, 46, 72, 73, 76, 82, 85, 94, 97, 105, 108, 221 naturalist explanation, 256 naturalistic explanation, 22, 23, 25, 39 naturalistic philosophy, 24 naturalistic understanding, 17 Nazism, 54, 56, 58, 86 neo-conservative group, 68 neuro-physiology, 267 new elites, 180 New South modernity, 243, 244, 246, 250 Newton, Isaac, 4, 23, 24, 43

Nixon, Richard, 61, 62 North African Arabs, 183 notion of secularization, 28

O Obama, Barack, xiv, 13, 35, 45, 47, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79 Obergefell decision, 13, 21 Obergefell v. Hodges, 6, 22, 38, 39, 41 Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, 6, 38, 39 Operation Enduring Freedom, 68, 100 organization, 34, 46, 55, 58, 61, 89, 90, 94, 96, 107, 128, 133, 134, 135, 137, 147, 153, 155, 157, 167, 169, 170, 173, 181, 185, 188, 193, 197, 200, 211, 222, 255, 266 Organization of Islamic Conference, 197 Orientalist, 177 Orthodox Muslims, 192 Our World in Data, 86, 88, 108

P Pakistan, viii, ix, 7, 9, 11, 16, 18, 47, 96, 100, 101, 178, 179, 183, 185, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 219, 220, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237 paradigmatic communities, 2, 6 paramount chiefs, 187, 193, 194 pathological framework, 249 patriarchy, 5, 11, 15, 26, 127, 128, 130, 132, 141, 142, 143, 145, 152, 153, 166, 171, 178, 244 peace philosophy, 13 Perkins School for the Blind, 258 Personal Laws (Amendment) Act, 15, 139, 142, 148 Pew Research Center’s, 73, 217, 219, 221, 224, 226, 227, 229 philosophy of devotion, 13 philosophy of natural rights, 22, 28, 39 philosophy of Nirvana, 13 philosophy of Sufism, 13 Ping Pong Diplomacy, 62 pink wave, 89 Poland, 61, 63, 66, 88, 100, 104, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121 political dynamics, 7, 99, 208, 228 political empowerment, xiv, 89, 90, 91, 106, 164, 165, 166 political inclusivity, 14, 88 polygamy, 15, 32, 130, 131, 132, 151, 152, 153, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172 Poro Society, 185, 192

288

Index

post-materialism, 14, 112 post-materialist, ix, 14, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121 post-socialist countries, vii, 14, 111, 112, 113, 114, 122 post-traumatic stress disorder, 169, 240 pre-colonial Africa, 186 probation and parole, 243 project of modernity, 8, 124 Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 15, 137, 142 Protestants, 9, 29, 30, 40, 44, 48, 154, 202, 212

Q Qing dynasty, 8, 53 Quran, 131, 132, 139, 228, 230, 233, 234

R racial equality, 6, 36, 74, 76 Rahman, General Ziaur, 232, 233 Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur, 232 rationalization, 25, 84, 212 Reagan, Ronald, xiv, 63, 64, 73, 76 rehabilitating women and girls, 249 Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 263 religion, vii, 1, 3, 8, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 66, 70, 74, 86, 97, 101, 104, 127, 129, 132, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 160, 166, 167, 176, 178, 179, 183, 187, 189, 191, 199, 202, 204, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225, 226, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 236, 254, 266, 277 religious fundamentalism, 5 religious liberty, viii, 16, 30, 44, 53, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 222, 223, 231, 233, 236 religious liberty and tolerance, viii, 16, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 217 religious right, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 213, 228 religious tolerance, 29, 31, 41, 42, 71, 205, 208, 213, 233 religious violence, 16, 207, 221, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234 Renaissance, xiii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 25, 26, 27, 28, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 56, 75, 84, 132, 144, 254 reproductive rights, 13, 21, 23, 36, 37, 39, 74, 76, 129, 162 Republicans, 9, 10, 12, 74, 102 resocialization and reentry, 245

retreat of western liberalism, 18, 77, 81, 82, 104, 107 Reynolds v. the United States, 32 rights of the disabled, 17, 253, 254, 255, 262, 263, 264, 270 right-wing political parties, xiv, 16, 82, 105, 207, 229, 234 right-wing populism, 81, 103, 104 Roe v. Wade, 6, 9, 13, 22, 36, 37, 41 Roe v. Wade in 1972, 6, 9 Roe v. Wade in 1973, 36, 37 Romania, 61, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 56 Roosevelt, Theodore, 55 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 4, 25, 26, 28, 83, 193 rule of law, xiii, xviii, 1, 3, 16, 26, 47, 58, 71, 75, 84, 86, 94, 98, 216, 233 Russel, Bertrand, 83 Russian Federation, 115, 116, 119, 120, 121

S sacred, 36, 49, 130, 208, 211, 212, 234 sacred canopy, 212, 234 Saidu Momoh, Major General Joseph, 196, 201 salvation of souls, 31, 213 same-sex marriage, 6, 9, 10, 13, 19, 21, 23, 38, 39, 40, 41 Sankoh, Foday, 198, 202 schizophrenia, 267 Schraeder, Peter J., 181, 205 science of disability, 254 science of human growth and disability, 253, 270 Scotland, Dr. John A., 189 scripts of modernity, 5 Second World War, 2, 6, 7, 54, 57, 59, 67, 74, 86, 105 secular, 11, 22, 33, 34, 94, 133, 138, 177, 178, 179, 208, 212, 214, 217, 220, 227, 231, 232, 233 secularism, 28, 39, 41, 46, 177, 208, 211, 212, 216, 220, 222, 230, 232, 233, 235 selfish gene, 84, 106 Sen, Amartya, 53, 92, 104, 108, 132, 134, 135, 136, 146, 216, 236 sense of disenchantment, 212 separationist doctrine, 34 Sesay, Gibril, 201 sex trafficking, 152, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171 sexual deviance, 247 sexual harassment of women at workplace, 15, 137, 141, 148 sexual revolution, 37, 41, 42, 44 sexual violence, 10, 92, 137, 143, 152, 168, 171, 240, 243

289

Index Sharia Law, 9, 154, 166, 231 Shiite clergy, 11 Shiite Islam, 225 Shiites and Ahmadiyya sects, 225 shining city, 14, 45, 46, 63, 64, 75 Sierra Leone, viii, 16, 89, 175, 176, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 279 Sierra Leone People’s Party, 193 sign of salvation, 5 Slovenia, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121 Smith, Adam, 4, 25, 33, 44, 55, 79, 195, 214, 251 Social Hostilities Index, 218 social media users, 95 social scientists, xviii, 27, 35, 112, 180 Social Security Act of 1935, 263 socialization, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 204 South Asia, viii, 16, 90, 91, 94, 145, 175, 205, 207, 208, 210, 219, 225, 230, 233, 234, 235, 236, 275, 277 South Sudan, 202 spirituality, 21, 39, 277, 279 SShani Shingapur temple, 128 states, xiii, xiv, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 17, 18, 19, 22, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 40, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 71, 79, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 107, 108, 112, 113, 116, 119, 129, 154, 156, 157,160, 162, 163, 166, 167, 169, 170, 178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 197, 203, 204, 206, 209, 210, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218, 220, 222, 224, 229, 230, 237, 241, 254, 258, 261, 262, 263, 264, 266, 269, 270, 272, 275, 279 Stevens, Siakas, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201 Stigliz, Joseph E., 198 stigmatization, 246, 257 Strasser, Captain Valentine, 198, 201 substance abuse, 239, 243, 244, 245, 247, 249, 252 Sudan, 100, 101, 103, 185, 202 Supreme Islamic Council, 203 synthesis and synergies, 9

T talaq, 131, 139, 142, 143 Taqi, Ibrahim, 195, 201 targeted killing of the Hindus, 227 Taseer, Governor Salmaan, 224, 231 Taylor, Charles, 19, 78, 108, 198, 266, 270 Tejan-Sie, Sir Banja, 199, 200 Tele Surgery, 268

Temne, 186, 190, 194, 199, 200 The Bengal Sati Regulation, 15, 127, 133, 147 The Christian Missionary Society, 176 The Establishment Clause, 21, 39, 213 The Free Exercise Clause, 33, 213, 214 The Government Restrictions Index, 218 The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 15, 138, 148 The Virginia Statute, 213 therapy and treatment, 249 third generation of global connectivity, 97 Thirteenth Amendment, 50 Thirty Years' War, 202 this-worldliness, 28 Thomas, Raju G.C, xiv, 21, 31, 34, 39, 42, 49, 51, 52, 66, 69, 75, 76, 79, 84, 95, 183, 193, 206, 213, 254 threats to global democracy, 103 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 25, 92, 108 torch of liberty, 14, 45, 54, 70, 75 Toure, President Ahmed Sekou, 195 traumatic victimization, 239, 242, 245, 249 Truman Doctrine, 57, 58 Truman, Harry S., 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 263 Trump presidency, 14, 45, 75 Trump regime, 11, 14, 45, 73, 75 Trump, Donald J., 11, 14, 34, 45, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 99, 102, 106, 229, 237 Tucker, Peter, 49, 79, 197 Turkey, 55, 88, 99, 178, 179, 183, 219, 224, 228

U Ugly Law, 260, 261, 271, 272 Ukraine, 95, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 124, 280 ultra-conservatism, 6 ultra-right political regime, 12 ultra-right politics, 82 ultra-right regimes, 74, 82 ultra-rights, vii, 2, 5, 6, 7, 11, 14, 16, 36, 72, 73, 81, 82, 86, 94, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 104, 207, 228, 230, 234 ultra-rights in politics, 5, 6, 11, 14 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms Discrimination Against Women, 129 united, ix, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44, 48, 50, 51, 52, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71, 73, 79, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 107, 108, 109, 124, 128, 129, 134, 141, 143, 151, 152, 154, 155, 160, 162, 163, 164, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 178, 182, 183, 195, 197, 208, 209, 210, 215,

290

Index

217, 220, 224, 229, 235, 237, 240, 253, 254, 258, 262, 263, 264, 269, 270, 271, 272, 275 United Democratic Party, 195 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Disabled, 253, 262, 270 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, 128 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 87, 152, 163, 215, 240, 253, 254, 270, 272

V Vai, 184 vesico vaginal fistula disease (VVF), 167 victimization, 17, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 247, 248, 251, 279, 280 victimization experiences, 240 Vietnam War, 54, 62 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom,, 208 Von Grunebaum, Gustave E., 177 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 17, 263

W Wajed, Sheikh Hasina, 232 war for modernity, 83 war on terror, xiv, xviii, 7, 14, 16, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 79, 81, 82, 100, 101, 105, 207, 220, 228, 230, 232, 234 War Speech to Congress, 55

Washington, George, xiv, 13, 19, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 64, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 87, 100, 106, 107, 108, 143, 203, 204, 205, 221, 230, 235, 236, 237, 252, 270, 277 weapons, 59, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 103, 192, 227, 248, 278 Weber, Max, 4, 5, 19, 25, 27, 44, 46, 84, 109, 112, 212, 237 Welzel, Christian, 14, 91, 107, 111, 113, 114, 116, 121, 122, 123, 124 West African States, 197 western civilization, 4, 70, 176 westernization, xii, 1, 4, 46, 177 Westphalia, 48 Westphalian Treaty, 202 Wilson, President Woodrow, 27, 44, 55, 78, 79, 132 women development, 15, 152, 155, 160 women empowerment, 82, 92, 105, 128, 152, 161, 278 women rights, 128, 129, 143, 162 world of enlightenment, 5 World Trade, 70, 100, 197 World Values Survey, 98, 109, 111, 114, 117, 124 World War I, xiii, xviii, 14, 45, 54, 55, 56, 58, 75, 82, 85, 86, 100 World War II, xiii, xviii, 14, 45, 56, 58, 75, 82, 85, 86, 100 Wurie, Amadu, 186, 201