This book examines the role religion played in the dismantling of Yugoslavia; addressing practical concerns of inter-ethnic fighting, religiously-motivated warfare, and the role religion played within the dissolution of the nation.

(Ab)use of religion as a political means to an end: the achievement of nationalist political goals, analyzing 'how' through which mechanisms this phenomenon has been and still is practiced in South-Eastern Europe.

This book explores the interaction between two of the most charged topics in the modern world, religion and politics. It shows the inextricable connection between religious attitudes and representations, and political activities. After an introductory chapter explores theoretically the religious articulations of political power, the authors examine the role played by religion in the current political situation in several countries. Approaching these cases as anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and political scientists, the authors make visible the dialectical relationship between religion and the pursuit of political power—on the one hand, the political significance of religious choices, and on the other, the almost unavoidable need to articulate in religious terms a group’s attempt to acquire, maintain, or expand political power.

Emilio Gentile, an internationally renowned authority on fascism and totalitarianism, argues that politics over the past two centuries has often taken on the features of religion, claiming as its own the prerogative of defining the fundamental purpose and meaning of human life. Secular political entities such as the nation, the state, race, class, and the party became the focus of myths, rituals, and commandments and gradually became objects of faith, loyalty, and reverence. Gentile examines this "sacralization of politics," as he defines it, both historically and theoretically, seeking to identify the different ways in which political regimes as diverse as fascism, communism, and liberal democracy have ultimately depended, like religions, on faith, myths, rites, and symbols. Gentile maintains that the sacralization of politics as a modern phenomenon is distinct from the politicization of religion that has arisen from militant religious fundamentalism. Sacralized politics may be democratic, in the form of a civil religion, or it may be totalitarian, in the form of a political religion. Using this conceptual distinction, and moving from America to Europe, and from Africa to Asia, Gentile presents a unique comparative history of civil and political religions from the American and French Revolutions, through nationalism and socialism, democracy and totalitarianism, fascism and communism, up to the present day. It is also a fascinating book for understanding the sacralization of politics after 9/11.