Elite Persuasion and Religious Extremism: A Study Among Sunni and Shia Muslims in Northern India
[Thesis]
Kunaal Sharma
Humphreys, Macartan
Columbia University
2017
179
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-0-355-37756-9
Ph.D.
Political Science
Columbia University
2017
In the opening chapter, I ask how changing political conditions shape the capacity of religious elites to mobilize extremism. In what ways might changing conditions lead to differential effects within religious groups? I study these questions based on primary field research in Lucknow and analysis of secondary historical sources. I demonstrate how the rise and fall state-sponsored religion, government regulation of religious rituals, and heightened foreign sectarian conflict structured efforts by religious elites to change norms in ways that increasingly permitted violence. For the Shia, such changing political conditions interacted with elements of their constitutive political myth in ways that strengthened perceptions of victimization. The ensuing difference in perceived group status has placed unique constraints on the persuasiveness of present-day Shia clerics who propagate pro-peace norms to their followers. Taken together, the study offers important lessons for the relationship between political conditions and the transmission of religious ideas, the durability of identities, and the effectiveness of elite persuasion in conflict settings.
Islamic Studies; Political science
Social sciences;Extremism;India;Islam;Persuasion;Religion;South asia