Institution building to prefigure sacred societies and states: The Muslim brotherhood in Egypt, Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the U.S.

Across the world today, religiously orthodox, "fundamentalist" movements of Christians, Jews, and Muslims have converged on a common strategy to install their faith traditions in societies and states that they see as alarmingly secularized. Many scholars, political observers, and world leaders, especially since September 11, 2001, see this shared line of attack as centered on armed struggle or terrorism. Political scientists and sociologists of politics and social movements also focus on strategies that directly engage or confront the state through petitions, boycotts, lobbying, mass rallies, and general strikes. In this paper, however, we show that the strategy-in-common of the most prominent and successful religiously orthodox movements is not terrorism or solely direct engagement of the state but a patient, beneath-the-radar takeover of civil society that we call "bypassing the state." One institution at a time, the most prominent orthodox movements have built massive, grassroots networks of autonomous, religion-based social service agencies, hospitals and clinics, clubs, schools, charitable organizations, old and media outlets, worship centers, and businesses—networks that we argue constitute “states within states,” “surrogate states,” or “parallel societies.” In this paper we show how four religiously orthodox movements—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sephardi Torah Guardians or Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the U.S.—use this institution-building strategy to prefigure new societies and states with religion at their core. These grassroots institutional networks allow skeptics to "try on" what life might be like if the movement's ideology and agendas were put into practice, encourage comparison with often ineffective, corrupt, or indifferent current governments, and empower followers as they work to bring the movement's ideology into reality.