This chapter contains sections titled: Pope Benedict XVI on the Apostles' Creed “Who Are You to Tell Believers What to Believe?” What Judaism, Christendom, and Islam Have in Common: Theism Divine Command Theories Abraham and Isaac The Story of Abraham in the Qur'an The Story of Jephtha Adherents of Divine Command Theory Command Ethics or Divine Command Ethics? An Assessment of Divine Command Ethics Kierkegaard and Mill Kohlberg and Moral Education Religious and Secular Ethics Worship Kant's Struggle with Moral Autonomy (...) and Free Speech Kant's Legacy in Nineteenth‐Century German Theology Schleiermacher as the Father of Modern Hermeneutics Armstrong's Plea for Liberal Interpretation A New Way to Look at the “Sacredness” of Scripture? Classic Books and Sacred Books Violating the Integrity of the Text Is Hermeneutics the Only Way to Modernize Traditions? Is Islam “Secularization‐Resistant”? Two Kinds of Reformers: Liberal Islam and Secular Islam. (shrink)

Discussions about politics and human power, including discussions about the concept of the state, have been a discussion that has been going on since Greek times until the time of the growth of Islamic philosophy. The overemphasis on the power of reason led early modern Western societies to reject religion in all political discourse. At this stage, all views of man, power, the constitution, and the state eventually ceased to be associated with God. On the other hand, especially among (...) Muslims, religion is still connected with discussions of politics and human power. This paper will reveal how secularization in political thought grew and developed through principles such as the state of nature and the social contract. Then, based on the thought of one of the influential Muslim scholars, Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, the author tries to provide a critique of the views of Western thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and other philosophers, by presenting the concept of the ideal state form derived from the concept of tamaddun formulated by Al-Attas. This research is literature review research using the descriptive method. The findings of this research show that secularization is a product purely born by Western secular thinkers and not taken from any religious teachings, so Western political concepts cannot always be applied, especially in Muslim societies. (shrink)

_The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism_ shows how people can live together and overcome the challenge of religious terrorism by adopting a "secular outlook" on life and politics. Shows how secularism can answer the problem of religious terrorism Provides new perspectives on how religious minorities can be integrated into liberal democracies Reveals how secularism has gained a new political and moral significance. Also examines such topics as atheism, religious criticism and free speech.

_The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism_ shows how people can live together and overcome the challenge of religious terrorism by adopting a "secular outlook" on life and politics. Shows how secularism can answer the problem of religious terrorism Provides new perspectives on how religious minorities can be integrated into liberal democracies Reveals how secularism has gained a new political and moral significance. Also examines such topics as atheism, religious criticism and free speech.

This article investigates the politics of translation at work in contemporary theories of secularism. It turns to the thought of Jacques Derrida in order to challenge liberal and more critical perspectives. Without a complex analysis of translation and its ethico-political effects, the revisitation of secularism remains deficient, leaving the liberal politics of translation exclusionary and that of their critics ineffective. Pointing to the resources Derrida offers for a deeper understanding of the nature, political stakes, and implications (...) of translation, this article illuminates an understudied and yet crucial dimension of the relationship between religion and politics, and more generally of public life. (shrink)

Working in four scholarly teams focused on different global regions—North America, the European Union, the Middle East, and China—the contributors to _Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging_ examine how new political worlds intersect with locally specific articulations of religion and secularism. The chapters address many topics, including the changing relationship between Islam and politics in Tunisia after the 2010 revolution, the influence of religion on the sharp turn to the political right in Western Europe, understandings of (...) Confucianism as a form of secularism, and the alliance between evangelical Christians and neoliberal business elites in the United States since the 1970s. This volume also provides a methodological template for how humanities scholars around the world can collaboratively engage with sweeping issues of global significance. Contributors. Markus Balkenhol, Elizabeth Bentley, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, David N. Gibbs, Ori Goldberg, Marcia Klotz, Zeynep Kurtulus Korkman, Leerom Medovoi, Eva Midden, Mohanad Mustafa, Mu-chou Poo, Shaul Setter, John Vignaux Smith, Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Ernst van den Hemel, Albert Welter, Francis Ching-Wah Yip, Raef Zreik. (shrink)

The principles of liberal political theory are often said to be “freestanding.” Are they indeed sufficiently detached from the cultural setting where they emerged to be intelligible to people with other backgrounds? To answer this question, this essay examines the Indian secularism debate and develops a hypothesis on the process whereby liberal principles crystallized in the West and spread elsewhere. It argues that the secularization of western political thought has not produced independent rational principles, but transformed theological (...) ideas into the “topoi” of a culture. Like all topoi, the principles of liberalism depend on other clusters of ideas present in western societies. When they migrate to new settings, the absence of these surrounding ideas presents fundamental obstacles to the interpretation and elaboration of liberal principles. The case of Indian secularism illustrates the cultural limitations of liberal political theory rather than showing its universal significance. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze Cecile Laborde's conception of justificatory secularism. Laborde points out that in her formulation and defense of the conception of justificatory secularism, she follows Rawls' conception of political liberalism to a certain extent. For that reason, I first provide a sketch of Rawls' conception of political liberalism. Then I focus on justificatory secularism, trying to show to what extent it displays similarities with the conception of political liberalism, but also how (...) it differs. I am interested in whether justificatory secularism represents a better alternative to the conception of political liberalism or whether these two conceptions should be considered complementary. (shrink)

What is the relationship between cosmopolitanism and secularism—the worldwide and the worldly? While cosmopolitan politics may seem inherently secular, existing forms of secularism risk undermining the universality of cosmopolitanism because they privilege the European tradition over all others and transform particular historical norms into enunciations of truth, valid for all cultures and all epochs. In this book, the noted philosopher Étienne Balibar explores the tensions lurking at this troubled nexus in order to advance a truly democratic and emancipatory (...) cosmopolitanism, which requires a secularization of secularism itself. Balibar argues for the idea of the universal against its particular dominant institutions. He questions the assumptions that underlie popular ideas of secularism and religion and outlines the importance of a new critique for the contemporary world. Balibar holds that conflicts between religious and secular discourses need to be reframed from a point of view that takes into account the cultural hybridization, migration and mobility, and transformation of borders that have reshaped the postcolonial age. Among the topics discussed are the uses and misuses of the category of religion and the religious, the paradoxical genealogy of monotheism, French laïcité’s identitarian turn, and the implications of the responses to the Charlie Hebdo attacks for an extended definition of free speech. Going beyond circumscribed notions of religion and the public sphere, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a profound rethinking of identity and difference that seeks to make room for a renewed political imagination. (shrink)

"What is secularism? Is it possible to separate religion from politics? This critical volume examines the dynamic relationship between the state and religion in India and Europe. It first conceptualizes the nature and challenges of secularism in the wake of radical changes in post-9/11 world politics. Second, in assessing the scope and future of secularism in the actual contexts of its emergence and practice, it redraws the boundaries and definitions of the institutional pillars of the state - (...) judiciary, legislature, and executive - and their interactions with religion across democracies in South Asia and Europe. Including wide-ranging essays by leading scholars, the book stimulates renewed debate on secularism, democracy, identity and multiculturalism in the contemporary world. It will prove invaluable to scholars and students of political science, sociology, philosophy, history, human rights, and legal theory, as well as those concerned with religion and state." from back cover. (shrink)

In this article I analyse some of the reasons for a recent, resurgent interest in religion and theology by political philosophers and relate this interest to an inherent instability in modernity itself. In the first part I describe the landscape of current political philosophy with a particular emphasis on radical philosophers. In the second part I describe how the liberal distinction between religion and politics generates a theological instability due to the effective disappearance of the social embodiment of (...) religion within modernity. In the third part I draw some conclusions regarding the challenges the new post-secular condition presents to theology. (shrink)

This book confronts the key questions surrounding comparative secularism in historical perspective. The contributions critically consider the normative ideas and alternative political arrangements that govern religion’s relation to politics and to the public and private spheres. Containing contributions by world-renowned scholars such as Michael Walzer, Asma Afsaruddin and Sudipta Kaviraj, this book recounts the arguments, debates, and disputations regarding secular arguments for accommodating religion. It does so in both critical and appreciative ways and describes some of the outcomes (...) in actually existing institutions, policies, and practical arrangements. With the addition of many non-Western experiences and viewpoints on how secularism is theorized and lived, politically and historically and from Europe and Asia to Africa and the Americas, this volume is of great value political philosophers across the globe. (shrink)

"The religious" and "the secular" are often posed as a divide; a narrative which poses religion and secularism as antagonists. This long-standing habit of thought remains active in the contemporary United States, polarizing public debates and generating misunderstanding. Are there other ways of talking about and enacting the relations between "religion" and "secularism" that can avoid balkanization and stereotypification? This paper examines the need to complicate the terms of the secularization narrative that we have inherited from the Enlightenment, (...) explores the power dynamics involved, and suggests an approach to democratic moral engagement as a social bargain we make with each other, an "as if.". (shrink)

The work of Étienne Balibar—one of France’s leading intellectuals, from his remarkable chapter on historical materialism in Reading Capital, more than fifty years ago, to the present day—needs litt...

The myth of normative secularism -- Radical mediations: expressing the social -- Graham Ward, John Milbank, and the metaphysics of the social -- Jørgen Habermas and the validity of the social -- Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and the texture of the social -- Radical articulations: the phenomenology of the social -- Political articulations: the phenomenology of the political -- Democratic articulations: toward a radical and plural democracy -- Religious articulations: radical and plural democracy as religious vocation -- (...) Revisiting secularism. (shrink)

This article explores art cinema's association of long, straight, shimmering hair with an idealized white, secular, agentic version of girlhood in Deniz Ergüven's Mustang. With reference to...

The paper tries to show the importance of the writings of John Locke in preparing the way for secularism. He provides a theory for disentangling religion and the state for several main reasons, including the avoidance of religious persecution of minorties; the avoidance of civil strife; and the need to leave it to individuals to work out their own salvation by exercising their conscience free of state interference. Locke is a creative theorist; his creativity shows itself in the new (...) arguments he formulates and publishes on behalf of the freedom of religion from the state and the freedom of the state from religion. The influence of his Letter on Toleration and the Second Treatise in Two Treatises of Government has proved worldwide and lasting. The paper also takes up a later work by Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, where Locke retreats to some extent from the religious individualism, but not the religious toleration, of his most famous works. But even that retreat gives only a little comfort to those who deplore secularism. (shrink)

This paper is a historically based approach to the topic of contemporary political and religious status of Nigeria. Recently, the secular administration by Islamists has generated violence between Muslims and Christians. The latter view Islamism as a gradual Islamisation of the country. Modern Islamists plead for a re-introduction of shari’a and OIC membership. They reject the secular status of Nigeria, the Islamic banking and educational system, etc. The meaning and purpose of these are not different from hijrah, and mahdism (...) of early 20th century. The is- sue is about restoring the ousted Caliphal system, and about rejecting the Western system and secularism, which were introduced by imperialists. The spirit of Islamism is increasing, especially among the grass-roots, elite, and politicians. In these circumstances, the phe- nomenon has to be assessed in an interdisciplinary way. (shrink)

Featuring the work of both established and up-and-coming scholars, this collection takes stock of the recent turn towards religion in political theory, identifying unresolved challenges and suggesting new avenues for theoretical inquiry.

In a rigorous exploration of how secularism and identity emerged as conflicting concepts in the modern world, Akeel Bilgrami elaborates a notion of secular enchantment with a view to finding in secular modernity a locus of meaning and value, while addressing squarely the anxiety that all such notions are exercises in nostalgia.

Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor provide a clearly reasoned, articulate account of the two main principles of secularism—equal respect, and freedom of conscience—and argue that in our religiously diverse, politically interconnected world, secularism, properly understood, may offer the only path to religious and philosophical freedom.

Michael Walzer’s essay titled Secularism in US State and Society defends the American secular state. Walzer argues that the United States’ version of secularism is exemplary. The essay is divided into three parts, in which he describes a key element of separationist politics. The first is the law that no state can include any religious purpose within its programs (essentially the “wall” between church and state). The second element outlines that any civil religion sponsored by the state should (...) remain civil, and the third highlights the importance of religious tolerance, which is ingrained in the separation of church and state. Through these three points, Walzer proposes that American separationism is successful, and could be called “liberal separationism”. (shrink)

In Morocco’s process of liberalization (and democratization), the dynamics between social actors defining themselves as “secular” and those labeled “Islamist” are critical. This paper probes the possibility of these actors transcending their frequent opposition and building mutual trust and “civil” interaction, thereby strengthening civil society and the possibility of continued reform in Morocco. Using Morocco’s recent Equity and Reconciliation Commission as an analytical tool, the paper focuses on the human rights arena as a potentially fruitful place for Islamists and secularists (...) to meet. To what extent is a shared commitment to human rights norms possible for non-violent Islamists and secularists? And can a flexible idea of human rights be an effective tool to create trust despite mutual perceptions of threatening ideal aims in the “other”? (shrink)

Policies dealing with religious diversity in liberal democratic states—as well as the established institutions that enforce those policies—are increasingly under pressure. Politics and political theory are caught in a trap between the fully secularized state and neo-corporate regimes of selective cooperation between states and organized religion. This volume proposes an original, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary approach to problems of governing religious diversity—combining moral and political philosophy, constitutional law, history, sociology, and religious anthropology. Drawing on such diverse scholarship, _Secularism or (...) Democracy?_ proposes an associational governance—a moderately libertarian, flexible variety of democratic institutional pluralism—as the plausible third way to overcome the inherent deficiencies of the predominant models. (shrink)

Indian Secularism is different from the understanding of Secularism in the West. In India the concept of secularism is understood not as a separation of State and Religion but the recognition, protection and support of all religions by the State without any discrimination. Though Hinduism is the religion of about 80% Indians it is not a State religion. In the recent past some Hindu fundamentalist groups are trying to destroy the pluralist culture and multi-religious ethos of India (...) by using political power to make India mono-cultural and mono-religious. It is a threat to Indian Secularism. It is to be resisted by all right thinking Indian citizens. The present text is the Statement of the Indian Theological Association from its Annual Seminar conducted in 2009. (shrink)

This chapter examines the historical emergence of secularism through movements, debates and legal formulations to explain specific features that the concept has acquired in the context of India. The first part examines the tensions between the theoretical narratives of Indian constitutionalism and the practices of politics that lead to the acceptance of three essential conditions of secularism: (a) the state shall have no religion; (b) there shall be no discrimination on the ground of religion; and (c) the individual (...) shall have the freedom to practice, profess and propagate religion. This is followed by the approach towards secularism found in writings of Nehru, Gandhi and Ambedkar. The diversity of religious identities and the widespread religious prejudice, identity conflict and inter-religious strife are main worries of these nationalist ideologues. The third part of this chapter focuses on the ill-defined meaning of secularism that does not accurately reflect the conceptual shifts made by the modern legal system, in which interests of many religious and cultural groups within Indian society are accommodated. The final section critically examines the claim that secularism is a state-led exercise in the following domains: rights of religious denominations, gender justice and social justice. An overview of the legal literature, including pronouncements of the judiciary, shows that secularism is also the domain of experts, bureaucrats and professionals. The history of court decisions about what constitutes a religious practice that is protected by law reveals considerable variation and arbitrariness; it raises questions of group rights in a liberal polity, the limits of cultural accommodation and the conceptions of difference left behind in the realms of family and civil society. (shrink)

This article argues that secularism is not neutral. Secularization is a process, the secular state is a structure, whereas secularism is a political philosophy. Secularism takes two main forms: first, a “benevolent” secularism that endeavours to treat all religious and nonreligious belief systems even-handedly, and, second, a “hostile” kind that privileges unbelief and excludes religion from the public sphere. I analyze the European Court of Human Rights decision in Lautsi v Italy, which illustrates these types. (...) The article concludes that secularism as a political philosophy cannot be neutral, and the secular state is not neutral in its effects, standpoint, governing assumptions or treatment of religious truth claims. (shrink)

The "religious and secular divide" cannot be understood unless we think about the way sex gets mobilized on both sides of this supposed divide. In our joint writing, we have resisted thinking of the religious and the secular as a divide; we have rather been interested to think them relationally—as relations. Thus, the larger suggestion of this paper is that we cannot truly imagine and practice democratic politics—to name some keywords for this discussion—unless we rethink the relations between sex, (...) class='Hi'>secularism, and religion. (shrink)

This book uses the writings of Syed Alam Khundmiri to look at issues such as: Islamic traditionalism in the context of meodernization; Islamic theology and politics; and Western and Indian notions of secularism.

The resurgence of religious movements all over the world, their varying claims to identity and politics, and their success in generating system-transforming effects in both national and world politics have indicated clearly that there is a need to uncover the invisible interconnections between religion and politics. Moreover, the way in which religion has been striking back has taken different forms. From religious and terrorist fundamentalism to multiculturalism, from communitarian claims to the religious state to religion-based civil societal calls for pluralism (...) and freedom, it is possible to see different articulations of the resurgence of religion in the world in which we live. In this context, Turkey constitutes a sociologically illuminating, theoretically challenging and politically timely case study. As a modern republic on the margins of Europe and preparing for accession negotiations with the European Union for full membership, Turkey is both a Muslim society and a strictly secular nation-state. This article suggests, first, that the process of modernization and democratization in Turkey has always faced the problem of establishing a delicate balance between politics and religion, and, second, that in this process the more secularism is used by the state elite to control religion, the less pluralistic and democratic the state has become in governing a society where Islam has always played an important role in the symbolic formation of Turkish identity. What is needed in this context is a ‘democratic secular imaginary’ as a more dialogical, tolerant and accommodating strategy of living with difference, enabling us to understand religious claims to difference in their own right, and to approach them clearly and critically. (shrink)

In 2009, a law was passed in the Danish parliament, according to which judges cannot wear religious symbols in courts of law. First, I trace the development of this legislation from resistance to Muslim religious practices on the nationalist right to ideas in mainstream Danish politics about secularism and state neutrality – a process I refer to as ‘liberalization’. Second, I consider the plausibility of such liberal justifications for restrictions on religious symbols in the public sphere and, in particular, (...) for the ban on the wearing of religious symbols by judges. I argue that such justifications are flawed and so are not plausible corollaries of anti-Islamic justifications originating on the nationalist right. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction Tolerance and Blasphemy Muslim Identity and Internal Reasons Liberal Pluralism References.