Diversionary desecration? Regime instability and societal violence against minority sacred spaces

ABSTRACTFrom the October 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the April 2022 bombing of the Sufi Khalifa Sahib mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, religious minority sacred spaces are a conspicuous target of societal violence. While the potency of these attacks as instruments of symbolic and physical intimidation against vulnerable communities is well-recognized, comparatively little research has examined the larger societal and political forces that motivate them, particularly outside conflict zones. Employing data on individual religious minorities in 162 states from 1991–2014, we conduct quantitative analyses demonstrating that severe violence against religious minority sacred spaces is significantly correlated with increasing regime instability, particularly in more democratic states that strongly support religious institutions. Our findings suggest that the most violent outcomes tend to be diversionary, redirecting public anger toward internal ‘enemy’ others, rather than reactionary or retaliatory behavior toward already persecuted or genuinely threatening out-groups. AcknowledgmentsAn earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2023 International Studies Association Conference in Montreal. The authors would like to thank Jonathan Fox, Zorana Knezevic, Jacob Lewis, Chirasree Mukherjee, and the anonymous reviewers and editors at Politics, Religion Suspect Charged With 29 Counts’, The New York Times, October 27, 2018, sec. U. S. , https: //www. nytimes. com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting. html. 2 Jay Croft and Saeed Ahmed, ‘The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting Is Believed to Be the Deadliest Attack on Jews in American History, the ADL Says’, CNN, October 28, 2018, https: //www. cnn. com/2018/10/27/us/jewish-hate-crimes-fbi/index. html. 3 Gary C. 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Fox, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me, op. cit. 63 As concerns may be raised regarding the combination of major vandalism and minor violence into a single conceptual category. we offer robustness checks with a five-point scale wherein these categories remain distinct. Results of this analysis provided in the Appendix do not substantially deviate from our primary model and confirm the theoretical inferences upon which it is based. 64 Descriptive statistics regarding these variables are provided in the Appendix. Full descriptions of all variables in the RASM dataset are online https: //ras. thearda. com/ARDA/ras/download/RAS3MIN%20Codebook. pdf. 65 Fox, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me, op. cit. , p. 20. 66 Ibid. , p. 56. 67 See the REIGN dataset codebook (https: //raw. githubusercontent. com/OEFDataScience/REIGN. github. io/gh-pages/documents/REIGNCODEBOOK. pdf) for a description of how this measure is calculated. Curtis Bell, Clayton Besaw, and Matthew Frank, The Rulers, Elections, and Irregular Governance Dataset (REIGN) (Broomfield, CO: One Earth Future, 2021), https: //oefdatascience. github. io/REIGN. github. io/. 68 Graeme A. M. Davies, ‘Policy Selection in the Face of Political Instability: Do States Divert, Repress, or Make Concessions? ’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 60: 1 (February 1, 2016), pp. 118–142; Klein and Tokdemir, op. cit; Savun and Gineste, op. cit; Tir and Jasinski, op. cit. Given potential ambiguities regarding the substantive meaning of this measure, we provide robustness checks employing instead domestic unrest measures taken from the Cross-National Time Series (CNTS) dataset, which are much more commonly employed in diversionary conflict research but for which we have limited temporal coverage. Arthur Banks and Kenneth Wilson, Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive (Jerusalem, Israel: Databanks International, 2021), https: //www. cntsdata. com/. 69 Tianjing Liao and Wonjae Hwang, ‘Political Protests and the Diversionary Use of Media: Evidence from China’, International Interactions, 48: 5 (September 3, 2022), pp. 1027–1055; Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Brandon Prins, ‘Rivalry and Diversionary Uses of Force’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 48: 6 (December 1, 2004), pp. 937–961; John R. Oneal and Jaroslav Tir, ‘Does the Diversionary Use of Force Threaten the Democratic Peace? Assessing the Effect of Economic Growth on Interstate Conflict, 1921–2001’, International Studies Quarterly, 50: 4 (December 1, pp. World World 2022, Fox, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me, op. Montalvo and Reynal-Querol, op. et al. , ‘The Analysis for Cross-National and Data’, of of are presented in in the Davies, op. cit. ; Oneal and Tir, op. cit. ; Savun and Gineste, op. that in a as a potential for societal instability, is significantly with minor vandalism and major vandalism or minor violence minority sacred this is nearly of the of in only at the or other substantive is are provided in the U. S. of State, International Religious Freedom U. S. of State, 2003), Minorities Hate Crimes and Intolerance in the (New York: Human Rights June 26, and Violence in the Studies, 63: 1 (January 1, 2011), pp. Nationalism and the State of the in Pakistan’, Studies in and Nationalism, (2007), pp. of in Pakistan’, June Asian Human Rights The for Asian Human Rights CNN, to after CNN, May ‘Religion and in and Afghanistan’, Center for and International Studies, June The (blog), and Mosque in after 21, sec. World News, Place of in The sec. News, and Political and for Peace and State 2009), Banks and Wilson, op. M. and and the Human Rights International (October 2008), pp. Matthew Does and the of or International Studies Quarterly, (September 1, 2012), pp. the Religious and Policy The of & International (April 3, 2019), pp. Stephen and The the International Journal, (June 1, 2012), pp. on Zellman is a in the of Political Studies at University and the most of Religious Minorities at with and Jonathan at Oxford University is in the of History, and International Studies at University and the most of Religious Nationalism in Contemporary South Asia with Cambridge University