ABSTRACT
The study of religion within International Relations has come a long way. Gone is the ignorance or dismissal of religion as irrelevant. More than a decade after 9/11, it cannot be said anymore that religion is the ‘black hole’ of IR theory. In fact, one of the unexpected consequences of this tragic event has been to put religion on the agenda of IR. As noted by Sandal and Fox (2013), most of the post 9/11 literature is actually an attempt to explain “the secularizing silence” (Sheikh 2012), scholars who attribute this neglect to the nature of Westphalian order and the consequential influence of secular principles on international affairs.
