Sacralized territorial claims have become a shared vocabulary among rival post-imperial nations

Evidence

In a cynical statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the 2014 Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in these words: “The Crimea has a sacred meaning for Russia. Like the Temple Mount for Jews and Muslims, the Crimea is the spiritual source of the formation of the multifaceted but monolithic Russian nation … It was on this spiritual soil that our ancestors first and forever recognized their nationhood” (Coyer 2015). In a similar vein, Serbia’s main Balkan rivals, the Croats, invoked Israel as a role model in the struggle for territory with Serbs and Muslims in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1525

Categorization

• XREF: Direct comparative evidence for the MOC thread: sacralized land claims recur in Russia (Crimea), Croatia, Serbia — states with very different relationships to Western governance. Suggests the religion-as-territorial-claim grammar is a broadly nation-state phenomenon, not Western-specific. Recommend adding a comparative study of Russian sacralized nationalism. — connects to: Sacralized territorial rhetoric travels across unrelated national conflicts; Sovereignty claims hinge on genealogical parity with rival empires — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 133; Sacralizing territory lets political claims override demographic and geographic facts — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 561 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Putin’s Temple Mount analogy and the Croatian ‘another Israel’ framing both borrow the Israeli template — how much of this grammar is diffusion from Israel-Zionism as a global ‘role model’ rather than independent parallel emergence?

Broader Connections

• Sacralized territorial rhetoric travels across unrelated national conflicts #expands (0.95)
• Sacralizing territory lets political claims override demographic and geographic facts #expands (0.85) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 561
• Archaeology and renaming manufacture an originary claim to contested land #exemplifies (0.85)
• Claims of sacred land ownership secure one group’s dominance over others #expands (0.85) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 120
• The above-parties claim recurred across Europe and coincided with early imperialism #exemplifies (0.80)
• Sovereignty claims hinge on genealogical parity with rival empires #qualifies (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 133