Religion: A silence in I/international R/relations. Causes of an Academic Exile and Theoretical Challenges of a Forcible Return

Since 9/11, with few exceptions, the theorists of International Relations started to include religion into their explanations of international politics, which is an interesting challenge for a discipline built on modern and secular foundations such as the state, sovereignty, national identity or instrumental rationality. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to explain the causes why religion has been until now a “silence” in the discipline. Following this explanation the article analyzes in depth whether the inclusion of religion in the explanations of International Relations beyond the primordialist and instrumentalist approaches needs a “reformist” or “revolutionary” change in the theoretical apparatus of the discipline.