{"title":"Religious Violence and Democracy in Niger","authors":"L. Mueller","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.6.1.05","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Deadly attacks on Christians and mounting resistance to secularism in Niger raise the question of whether the Muslim-majority country is turning away from democracy and toward a repressive form of Shari’a law. I argue that religious extremism in Niger has largely external roots and that domestic religious leaders are not pursuing a revolutionary agenda, even though they are increasingly involved in organizing social movements. The foreign nature of terrorist threats may even help preserve democracy by raising nationalist support for the state.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2016-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"15","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.6.1.05","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 15
Abstract
Deadly attacks on Christians and mounting resistance to secularism in Niger raise the question of whether the Muslim-majority country is turning away from democracy and toward a repressive form of Shari’a law. I argue that religious extremism in Niger has largely external roots and that domestic religious leaders are not pursuing a revolutionary agenda, even though they are increasingly involved in organizing social movements. The foreign nature of terrorist threats may even help preserve democracy by raising nationalist support for the state.