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In the past few decades, discussions on the role of religion in shaping the
interconnections of politics, society, and culture have acquired a particular
urgency. Since the end of the Cold War, after 9/11, and even more so with
the surge of IS, religion has come to occupy a central position in discourses
on the most sensitive aspects of globalization. 2 Popular media, public intel-
lectuals, and academics regularly address religion either as the main cause of
conflict or as the potential basis for a harmonious intercultural dialogue. In
either case, most analyses tend to reify religion as if it were an independent
historical subject endowed with agency, and—more or less explicitly—regard
it as the foundation stone of collective cultural identities. In other words,
once it is redefined more broadly as an essential component of “culture,”
religion constitutes a pivotal factor in the study of group attitudes toward
politics and institutions, social distinctions, economic behaviors, gender
relations, and sexuality. These ideas are so ingrained in Mediterranean and
Euro-American worldviews that even openly secular or atheist authors tend
to articulate their arguments within ethical and epistemological parameters
that reflect the unitary and totalizing bias of monotheism.
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