Vít VOLNÝ, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Czechia
Religion holds status as an ancient element of power as the states have used religious groups/denominations to develop nets of missionaries and agencies/funds all around the world which has helped them to obtain the foreign power goals. However, as Ozturk (2021) points out that this was omitted by modern realism theories in the social sciences because of the hegemonic secularisation paradigm. Only in the post-9/11 period religion has again come to be recognized as a possible element of soft power in the modern world (Marsden 2013).
The goal of the paper is to show the interconnection between donors’ goals in the religious sphere and its development assistance. It will try to explain the motivation of the donor’s state to improve the image of its preferred religious denomination/branch in the receiver’s society. It focuses on the situation when the development assistance and aid are specifically channelled through religious organisations and charities or when assistance is given conditionally to the community if they adhere to the donor’s preferred religious denomination/branch.
The paper is concentrated on the predominantly Christian and Muslim examples. In the case of Islam and assistance/aid, the connection is natural. The tradition of voluntary charity has existed since the birth of Islam. Danish anthropologist Juul Petersen (2016) conceptualised this as all-encompassing Islam. The condition is put on the investment, such as building a mosque together with a school with the premise that regular Qur’an lessons be held in the school. In Christianity, various religious denominations use similar conditionalities in their system of aid/assistance as their Muslim counterparts.
The paper is a base of the theoretical part of my PhD. thesis and it will engage mostly in theoretical concepts and ideas. However, I have already done field research in Kosovo in 2019 on a similar topic and the field research based on the conference paper is planned for early 2023.
Keywords: soft power|religion|development assistance|post-9/11 world
A103383VV