**5. Conclusions**

The seven contributions to this collection provide some very di fferent approaches to the central question posed by this volume: the relationship between nationalism and religion. In the process, they also raise some interesting challenges to the pervading "modernist" orthodoxy in the field of nations and nationalism studies. Yet, one is struck by the fact that none of these essays (with the exception of Professor Grosby's contribution) necessarily contradicts the essential features of the "Secularization Thesis." While all of them provide ample evidence of the important linkages and relationships, of various kinds, between religion and nationalism, none of them (again with the possible exceptions of Grosby's and perhaps Janca-Aji's) demonstrate the dominance of "religion" over "nationalism" as a candidate for the decisive site of personal identity. While most of these contributions argue (persuasively, I think) for the tremendous influence religion and religious identities have had in the development of national identities, and even nationalism itself, at the end of the day, we are still left with cases in which a basically secular understanding of the nation is left as the main element in any nationalist narrative. This is certainly not to say that we lack examples of religion's continued capacity to provide symbols or rhetoric to a nationalist movement, but the actual content of a modern nationalist project remains nevertheless basically secular.

This is once again where "Islamism" or "Islamic Fundamentalism" o ffers such a challenge. Is Islamism a nationalist ideology and are groups such as Islamic State nationalist? These movements are political (like secular nationalist movements) in that they seek to control states, or perhaps more accurately, establish new states. However, the intellectual content of these movements is universal, not national. The foot soldiers of al-Qaeda or the Islamic State were/are a multinational group, all subsumed within the universalist Islamist ideologies of those organizations. As one scholar, writing on Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb (arguably the intellectual godfathers of modern political Islamism), notes "nationalism tends to see the freedom and greatness of the national community as a goal in itself. At least theoretically, this is not the case with the Islamic *umma*, which explicitly points beyond itself, and sees itself merely as a vehicle for facilitating man's relationship with God." (Brykczynski 2005, p. 15) Now, one could argue that the "nation" on which organizations such as Islamic State are built are defined religiously. Indeed, the term "umma," usually translated as the "community of believers (in Islam)," can also be translated as "nation." However, I think that we must be careful here. As Rogers Brubaker has perceptively warned, "nationalism is a useful concept only if it is not overstretched." (Brubaker 2011, p. 14) That is, terms such as "nation" and "religion" are useful

and expansive but they are not infinitely elastic. A religious community and a national one, if they are to maintain any sort of analytical rigor, must be kept conceptually separate. As Professor Grosby points out in his contribution to this collection, this might not always have been the case, as with the pre-axial-age monolatrous religions. However, it does become very problematic when dealing with a universalist, axial-age religion such as Islam (or, for that matter, Christianity). The national identities and nationalist movements of almost all historically Muslim nations (Arabs first and foremost but Iranians, Malays, Turks and others as well) have been tremendously influenced by Islam and have drawn freely and deeply on the rich cultural and symbolic storehouse provided by it. Yet, all of these movements, even the ostensibly "fundamentalist" Iranian revolution of 1979, were ultimately best understood as nationalist in character. They were, inter alia, concerned with issues recognizable to any other secular nationalist movements: the glorification and strengthening of the nation (even if the nation was largely described in terms of religion).

Groups such as the Islamic State are clearly different. Even though its immediate goals, such as those of a nationalist movement, involved the establishment of a state, the motivation for those goals and the ultimate vision of that state were quite different. The membership of the state was not limited to a certain group but was, in fact, explicitly intended to someday account for all people on Earth (who had been converted one way or another to Islam). Similarly, the goals of the state were not the glorification of a nation (even if religiously defined) but the implementation of God's will and law on Earth.

In an essay on the relationship between nationalism, religion, and secularism, Talal Asad wrote: "If the secularization thesis no longer carries the conviction it once did, this is because the categories of politics and religion turn out to implicate each other more profoundly than we thought, a discovery that has accompanied our growing understanding of the powers of the modern nation-state. The concept of the secular cannot do without the idea of religion." (Asad 1999, p. 192) As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Asad's assertion must be broadly correct. Yet, the "concept of the secular" and the "idea of religion" continue to exist as two distinct, ye<sup>t</sup> complementary, aspects of human consciousness.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** I thank Steven Grosby who initially recommended me for the position of gues<sup>t</sup> editor for this project, and the editors of *Genealogy*, especially Simi Wang, for their encouragemen<sup>t</sup> and support.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
