Islam and secularism - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Secularism

Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...

in Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

means favoring a modern secular democracy with separation of mosque and state

Separation of church and state

The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....

, as opposed to Islam as a political movement. Secularism

Secularism

Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...

in the Muslim countries refers to the ideology of promoting the secular as opposed to the religion. It is often used to describe the separation of civil/government matters from religious theocracy. Secularism is often condemned by Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

s who do not feel that religious values should be removed from the public sphere, though "Muslim theologians have long distinguished between matters of din [religion] and dawlah [state]." Secular states had existed in the Muslim world

Muslim world

The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...

since the Middle Ages

Islamic Golden Age

During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...

. The quest for Secularism

Secularism

Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...

has inspired some Muslim scholars who argue that secular government is the best way to observe sharia and enforcing sharia through coercive power of the state negates its religious nature, because Muslims would be observing the law of the state and not freely performing their religious obligation as Muslims," says Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, a professor of law at Emory University and author of a book on the future of sharia. Majority of Muslim countries have a dual system in which the government is secular but Muslims can choose to bring familial and financial disputes to sharia courts. The exact jurisdiction of these courts varies from country to country, but usually includes marriage, divorce, inheritance, and guardianship. However, it has acquired negative connotations in some Middle Eastern countries and is often criticized by conflating it with anti-religion and colonial intervention.

Definition

The etymology of the Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

word for secularism can be controversial in itself. While some refer to ‘almaniyya which is derived from the word alam, suggesting that secularism is wordly, others prefer to think of ilmanniyya relating the word for secularism to the Arab word ilm (science, or knowledge). Some writers suggest another Arabic term ‘alamaniyya to avoid the confusion while others prefer dunyawiyya, meaning temporal, in contrast to dini (religious).

Overview

Many Muslims argue that, unlike Christianity, Islam does not separate religion from state and majority of Muslims around the world welcome a significant role for Islam in their countries' political life. It is apolitical Islam, not political Islam, that requires explanation and that is an historical fluke of the "shortlived heyday of secular Arab nationalism between 1945 and 1970."

In contrast, scholar Olivier Roy argues that "a defacto separation between political power" of sultans and emirs and religious power of the caliph was "created and institutionalized ... as early as the end of the first century of the hegira," what has been lacking in the Muslim world is "political thought regarding the autonomy of this space." No positive law was developed outside of sharia. The sovereign's religious function was to defend the Islamic community against its enemies, institute the sharia

Sharia

Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...

, ensure the public good (maslaha). The state was an instrument to enable Muslims to live as good Muslims and Muslims were to obey the sultan

Sultan

Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...

if he did so. The legitimacy of the ruler was "symbolized by the right to coin money and to have the Friday prayer (Jumu'ah
Jumu'ah
Jumu'ah is a congregational prayer that Muslims hold every Friday, just after noon in lieu of dhuhr...

khutba
Khutba
Khutbah serves as the primary formal occasion for public preaching in the Islamic tradition.Such sermons occur regularly, as prescribed by the teachings of all legal schools. The Islamic tradition can be formally at the dhuhr congregation prayer on Friday...

) said in his name."

The concept of Secularism in Islam has been claimed to have religious sanction too. The Sahih of Imam Muslim, the second most authentic book on Hadith, dating from the 2nd century Hijrah, contains a chapter headed as follows: “Whatever the Prophet has said in matters of religion must be followed, but this does not apply to worldly affairs.”

The Hadith is as follows: Once Prophet Muhammad came across some people doing artificial pollination of palm trees. Due to some reason he disliked the idea and commented that it would be better not to do any pollination at all. However for the following year the harvest was poor. When he came to know about this Prophet Muhammad admitted his limitation of knowledge regarding secular affairs and said: “If a question relates to your worldly matters you would know better about it, but if it relates to your religion then to me it belongs.”

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, the prominent Indian Muslim scholar, comments on this Hadith: “Islam separated religious knowledge from physical knowledge. The source of religious knowledge which came into general acceptance was divine revelation (the authentic version of which is preserved in the form of the Quran), while full freedom was given to enquiry into physical phenomena, so that individuals could arrive at their own conclusions independently”.

He further says: “According to this hadith, Islam separates religious matters from scientific research. In religious affairs, there has to be strict adherence to divine guidance. But in scientific research, the work must proceed according to human experience.” For this reason definition of secularism in the Islamic perspective has been suggested as a separation of Religion and Science rather than Religion and State and the political view of Islam is even claimed to be secular, rather than Islamism

Early history

Secular governments had existed in the Muslim world

Muslim world

since the 10th century. According to the scholar Ira M. Lapidus:
In early Islamic philosophy

Early Islamic philosophy

Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH...

, Averroes

Averroes

' , better known just as Ibn Rushd , and in European literature as Averroes , was a Muslim polymath; a master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy,...

presented an argument in The Decisive Treatise providing a justification for the emancipation of science and philosophy from official Ash'ari

Ash'ari

The Ashʿari theology is a school of early Muslim speculative theology founded by the theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari...

theology, thus Averroism

Averroism

Averroism is the term applied to either of two philosophical trends among scholastics in the late 13th century: the Arab philosopher Averroës or Ibn Rushd's interpretations of Aristotle and his reconciliation of Aristotelianism with Islamic faith; and the application of these ideas in the Latin...

has been considered a precursor to modern secularism

Secularism

Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...

Modern history

Many of the early supporters of Secularist principles in Middle Eastern countries were Baathist

Baath Party

The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party was a political party mixing Arab nationalist and Arab socialist interests, opposed to Western imperialism, and calling for the renaissance or resurrection and unification of the Arab world into a single state. Ba'ath is also spelled Ba'th or Baath and means...

and non-Muslim Arabs, seeking a solution to a multi-confessional population and an ongoing drive to modernism.

The most controversial work is that of Ali abd al-Raziq

Ali abd al-Raziq

Ali Abdel Raziq was an Egyptian Islamic scholar and sharia judge. He can be regarded as the intellectual father of Islamic laicism or secularism . His main work is called "Islam and the Foundations of Governance" and was first published in 1925...

, an Islamic Scholar and Shari’a judge who caused a sensation with his work "Islam and the Foundations of Governance" (Al-Islam Wa Usul Al-Hukm) in 1925. For the first time in Muslim history, he argued there was nothing in the texts that made it obligatory that Muslims had to have the Caliphate

Caliphate

The term caliphate, "dominion of a caliph " , refers to the first system of government established in Islam and represented the political unity of the Muslim Ummah...

form of religious government and that they can choose a system that suits them. This publication caused a fierce debate especially as he recommended that religion can be separated from government and politics. He was later removed from his position. Rosenthall commented on him saying:

"we meet for the first time a consistent, unequivocal theoretical assertion of the purely and exclusively religious character of Islam".

The term ‘almaniyya acquired a bad connotation and was associated with irreligion in the Muslim world after the establishment of an anti-religious political system, but portrayed as secular, in Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

in 1924 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was an Ottoman and Turkish army officer, revolutionary statesman, writer, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey....

Secular women

It was suggested that secular oriented women do not support sharia

Sharia

as the main source of legislation, rather they refer to civil law

Civil law (legal system)

Civil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law and whose primary feature is that laws are codified into collections, as compared to common law systems that gives great precedential weight to common law on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different...

and the resolution of human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

conventions, as adopted by the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

, as frames for reference for their struggle. Azza Karam (1998:13), for example, describes secular feminists as follows: "Secular feminists firmly believe in grounding their discourse outside the realm of any religion, whether Muslim or Christian, and placing it, instead within the international human rights discourse. They do not ‘waste their time’ attempting to harmonize religious discourses with the concept and declarations pertinent to human rights. To them religion is respected as a private matter for each individual, but it is totally rejected as a basis from which to formulate any agenda on women’s emancipation. By so doing, they avoid being caught up in interminable debates on the position of women with religion."

However variations exist concerning the interpretation and manifestation of secularism in women’s politics and lifestyles many of them are united in their opposition to the establishment of an Islamic state (for example that is compulsory to wear veiling) and they share the sense that religion should not be mixed with politics.” Siham K., a member of Rabat Al-Mar’a Al`arabiyya (the Alliance for Arab Women) p141 said: "I am one of the people who believe that Islam has to be separated from civil, political and economic rights and duties. It is an option that Egypt is a Muslim country. This should remain personal. The freedom of belief is integral. It should not interfere with women’s rights. It cannot be part of the view of politics and the future. This is another story altogether. I want religion to be detached away from actual politics."

Generally, secular women activists call for total equality between the sexes, attempt to ground their ideas on women’s rights outside religious frameworks, perceive Islamism as an obstacle to their equality and a linkage to patriarchal values. (Karam, 1998: 2345).And they argue that secularism was important for protecting civil rights.

Colonial influence

When colonial rule was established, the process of secularization

Secularization

Secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions...

began to expand into Muslim lands. Secularism thus came as the European colonialists dominated the region and supplanted rule with their own processes and procedures.

“Modernisation was seen as a legacy of European colonialism perpetuated by western-oriented elites who imposed and fostered the twin processes of westernization and secularization.”

Colonial powers in many cases replaced indigenous political, social, economic, legal, and educational institutions. For instance, in many former colonised Middle East countries, the Kuttab or the madrassas (the Quranic schools) were moved to the western format. The French colonial government in the protectorates of the Maghreb

Maghreb

The Maghreb is the region of Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. It includes five countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara...

changed the education system into a secular model closely modeled on their own. The colonialists firmly believed that their secular system was more modern, efficient, and progressive than the incumbent practices. Naturally, these changes had far-reaching social consequences, especially for women, and laid the foundation of Arab Secularism by separating the clergy

Clergy

Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....

from government affairs, education, and justice.

In consequence, "perception of the public, political, and social domain through the prism of religion became marginal and was replaced by a new perception, a perception that was modern, temporal, ideological, ethical, evolutionary, and political." This provided a challenge to some governments, which had no choice but to change in the face of overwhelming force. It is from this experience that secularism gained also its perceived foreign identity.

Communist influence

In 1918 the Soviet Union opened the Commissariat

Commissariat

A commissariat is the department of an army charged with the provision of supplies, both food and forage, for the troops. The supply of military stores such as ammunition is not included in the duties of a commissariat. In almost every army the duties of transport and supply are performed by the...

for Muslim Affairs, which actively opposed the colonial powers in the Middle East and their system of Mandates.

In the 1920s the formation of the first communist parties in the Middle East started playing a key role in the anti-colonial struggle and promoting their ethos regarding workers rights. During the Second World War they also played a role fighting against fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

and participating in the international peace movement.

A key element of the Communism movement was the well organized network of parties in different countries that provided support to each other and enabled communist organizations to become an effective outlet against oppression.

Communism went on to become one of the key components of Arab Nationalism

Arab nationalism

Arab nationalism is a nationalist ideology celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world...

and was particularly prominent during the rule of Gamel Abdel Nasser in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

in which Egyptian communists stood aside. And even though communism was often a prominent supporter of Arab nationalism, the international relationships which allowed it to be such a potent force were also used by opposition regimes, and to some extent third parties during the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

. A good example of this is the Communist Party of Iraq which was oppressed by Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

, Islamists for their secular policies and by the US during the Cold War period.

Secular states with majority Muslim populations

Asia

Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
Kyrgystan
Malaysia
Tajikstan
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

Turkey

Secularism in Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

was both dramatic and far reaching as it filled the vacuum of the fall of the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. With the country getting down Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was an Ottoman and Turkish army officer, revolutionary statesman, writer, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey....

led a political and cultural revolution.
"Official Turkish modernity took shape basically through a negation of the Islamic Ottoman system and the adoption of a west-oriented mode of modernization, but a la turca."

In 1924 Atatürk’s Revolution brought Islamic authority under the full and absolute control of the secular state. The institutionalization of secularism involved bringing all religious activity under the direct control of the secular state.

The abolition of the Caliphate.
Religious lodges and Sufi orders were banned.
A secular civil code was adopted to replace the previous codes based on Islamic law (shari’a) outlawing all forms of polygamy, annulled religious marriages, granted equal rights to men and women, in matters of inheritance, marriage and divorce.
The religious court system and institutions of religious education were abolished.
The use of religion for political purposes was banned.
The article that defined the Turkish state as Islamic was removed from the constitution.
The alphabet was changed from Arabic to Roman.
A portion of religious activity was moved to the Turkish language, including the Adhan (call to prayer) which lasted till 1950.

Throughout the 20th century the secular Turkish nationalism

Turkish nationalism

Turkish nationalism is a political ideology that promotes and glorifies the Turkish people, as either a national, ethnic or linguistic group and puts the interests of the state over other influences, including religious ones.-Pan-Turkism:...

was continually challenged by Islamists, Kurdish people

Kurdish people

The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...

and Marxist movements. And, although most Turkish citizens still are in favor of secularism, political Islamists and neo-fundamentalists are gaining ground since the mid eighties, such as the Refah Party and AK Party. These groups oppose laws that limit religious teachings and forbid the external display of religious symbols, including the headscarf in public spheres.

Despite military coups in the last thirty years (1960, 1971, 1980), the existence of a Turkish secular democracy (Turkey is one of the rare Muslim-majority countries with free elections involving multiple parties and freedom of speech) is supported by discussion of Turkey joining the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

Iran

Following the military coup of 21 February 1921, Reza Khan had established himself as the dominant political personality in the country. Fearing that their influence might be diminished, the clergy of Iran proposed their support and persuaded him to assume the role of the Shah.

1925-1941: The Reza Shah

Reza Shah

Rezā Shāh, also known as Rezā Shāh Pahlavi and Rezā Shāh Kabir , , was the Shah of the Imperial State of Iran from December 15, 1925, until he was forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran on September 16, 1941.In 1925, Reza Shah overthrew Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last Shah of the Qajar...

began to make some dramatic changes to Iranian society with the specific intention of modernization and removing power from the clergy. He changed religious schools to public education, built Iran’s first university and banned the hijab in public. Nevertheless, the regime was somewhat undemocratic with the removal of Majles power (the first parliament in 1906) and the clampdown on free speech.

1951-1953: During the early 1950s the Prime Minister Dr Mossadeq was again forming a pro secularization government with a socialist agenda with the specific aim of reducing the power held by the clergy. However his plans for nationalization the oil industry were a step too far for Britain. So with the help of the CIA they supported a coup which replaced the government with Mohammad Reza Shah.

1962-1963: Using the mandate of modernization, the Shah introduced dramatic changes what was called the White Revolution

White Revolution

The White Revolution was a far-reaching series of reforms in Iran launched in 1963 by the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Mohammad Reza Shah’s reform program was built especially to strengthen those classes that supported the traditional system...

. During this time a number of changes were made to put Iran on the path to become a successful secularist capitalist country:

Workers rights
Land reform based on international standards
Women’s suffrage
Further actions to reduce the power of the clergy.

1963-1973: the changes seemed to be paying off with Iran experiencing rapid economic growth however the sheer pace of change alienated many political opponents of the Shah and any dissent was crushed by the secret police. Despite the new infrastructural and economic improvements the opposition rallied untied behind Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and by the end of the 1970s the Shah was overthrown in an Islamic Revolution (1979).

Tunisia

Under the leadership of Habib Bourguiba

Habib Bourguiba

Habib Bourguiba was a Tunisian statesman, the Founder and the first President of the Republic of Tunisia from July 25, 1957 until 7 November 1987...

(1956–1987), Tunisia’s post independence government pursued a program of secularization and modernization.

Bourguiba, who has Been one of the most avowedly secularist political strategies in the Arab world, modified laws regarding habous (religious endowments), reformed education, and unified the legal system so that all Tunisians, regardless of religion, were subject to the state courts. He restricted the influence of the religious University of Ez-Zitouna

University of Ez-Zitouna

Ez-Zitouna University is located in Tunis. It is claimed to be the oldest teaching establishment in the Arab World, since the Ez-Zitouna madrassa was founded in 737 C.E...

and replaced it with a faculty of theology integrated into the University of Tunis, banned the headscarf for women, made members of the religious hierarchy state employees and ordered that the expenses for the upkeep of mosques and the salaries of preachers to be regulated.

Moreover, his best known legal innovations was the ‘Code du Statut Personel’ (CSP) the laws governs issues related to the family: marriage, guardianship of children, inheritance and most importantly the abolishing of polygamy and making divorce subject to judicial review.

Bourguiba clearly wanted to undercut the religious establishment’s ability to prevent his developmental program, and although he was careful to locate these changes within the framework of a modernist reading of Islam and presented them as the product of ijtihad (independent interpretation) and not a break with Islam, he became well known for his secularism. John Esposito

John Esposito

John Louis Esposito is a professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University...

notes that “For Bourguiba, Islam represented the past; the west was Tunisia’s only hope for a modern future”

Following increasing economic problems, Islamist movements came about in 1970 with the revival of religious teaching in Ez-Zitouna University and the influence which came from Arab religious leaders like Syrian and Egyptian brotherhoods. There is also influence by Hizb ut-Tahrir

Hizb ut-Tahrir

Hizb ut-Tahrir is an international Sunni. pan-Islamic political organisation but keeps it open for all including shias,some of its beliefs are against sunni school of thought, whose goal is for all Muslim countries to unify as an Islamic state or caliphate ruled by Islamic law and with a caliph...

, whose members issue a magazine in Tunis named Azeytouna. ” In the aftermath, the struggle between Bourguiba and Islamists became uncontrolled and in order to repress the opposition the Islamist leaderships were exiled, arrested and interrogated.

Egypt

Secularism in Egypt has had a very important role to play in both the history of Egypt and that of the Middle East. Egypt’s first experience of Secularism started with the British Occupation (1882–1952), the atmosphere which allowed the protection of debate. In this environment pro-secularist intellectuals like Ya'qub Sarruf, Faris Nimr, Nicola Haddad whom sought political asylum from Ottoman Rule were able to publish their work. This debate had then became a burning issue with the work of Egyptian Shaykh Ali abd al-Raziq

Ali abd al-Raziq

(1888–1966), “The most momentous document in the crucial intellectual and religious debate of modern Islamic history”

By 1919 Egypt had its first political secular entity called the Hizb 'Almani (Secular Party) this name was later changed to the Wafd party

Wafd Party

The Wafd Party was a nationalist liberal political party in Egypt. It was said to be Egypt's most popular and influential political party for a period in the 1920s and 30s...

. It combined secular policies with a nationalist agenda and had the majority support in the following years against both the rule of the king and the British influence. The Wafd party supported the allies during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

and then proceeded to win the 1952 parliamentary elections, following these elections the prime minister was overthrown by the King leading to riots. These riots precipitated a military coup after which all political parties were banned including the Wafd

WAFD

WAFD is a Hot Adult Contemporary formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Webster Springs, West Virginia, serving East Central West Virginia. WAFD is owned and operated by Summit Media Broadcasting, LLC.-External links:*...

and the Muslim Brotherhood

Muslim Brotherhood

The Society of the Muslim Brothers is the world's oldest and one of the largest Islamist parties, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna and by the late 1940s had an...

.

The government of Gamel Abdel Nasser was secularist-nationalist in nature which at the time gathers a great deal of support both in Egypt and other Arab states.

Key elements of Nasserism

Nasserism

Nasserism is an Arab nationalist political ideology based on the thinking of the former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. It was a major influence on pan-Arab politics in the 1950s and 1960s, and continues to have significant resonance throughout the Arab World to this day. It also...

Secularist/Nationalist dictatorship: No religious or other political movements allowed to impact government.
Modernization.
Industrialization.
Concentration on Arab values rather than Muslim values.

Following the death of Nasser, President Sadat

Sadat

- See also :* Anwar Sadat, former President of Egypt* Sadat * Saadat* Sadat. Term also used for the descendents of Holy Prophet Muhammad through Imam Ali and Bibi Fatima progeny....

(1970–1981) continued economic liberalization and maintained the government’s secularist policy, even going as far as signing peace agreements with Israel which was a first for any Middle Eastern country. However, following further intensive clampdowns on political opposition, Sadat was assassinated and replaced by Hosni Mubarak

Hosni Mubarak

Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is a former Egyptian politician and military commander. He served as the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011....

who again faces the issue of keeping the Islamist support at bay whilst keeping his power base during increased pressure to be democratic.

Nowadays, most proponents of secularism emphasize the link between secularism and ‘national unity’ between Coptic Christians and Muslims.

Syria

The process of secularization in Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

began under the French mandate

French Mandate of Syria

Officially the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was a League of Nations mandate founded after the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire...

in the 1920s and went on continuously under different governments since the independence. Syria has been governed by the Arab nationalist Baath Party

Baath Party

since 1963. The Baath regime combined Arab Socialism

Arab socialism

Arab socialism is a political ideology based on an amalgamation of Pan-Arabism and socialism. Arab socialism is distinct from the much broader tradition of socialist thought in the Arab world, which predates Arab socialism by as much as fifty years...

with secular ideology and an authoritarian political system. The constitution guarantees religious freedom for every recognized religious communities, including many Christian denominations. All schools are government-run and non-sectarian, although there is mandatory religious instruction, provided in Islam and/or Christianity. Extremist forms of Islam are not tolerated by the government. The Syrian legal system is primarily based on civil law

Civil law (legal system)

, and was heavily influenced by the period of French rule. It is also drawn in part from Egyptian law of Abdel Nasser, quite from the Ottoman Millet

Millet (Ottoman Empire)

Millet is a term for the confessional communities in the Ottoman Empire. It refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to "personal law" under which communities were allowed to rule themselves under their own system...

system and very little from Sharia

Sharia

. Syria has separate secular and religious courts. Civil and criminal cases are heard in secular courts, while the Sharia courts handle personal, family, and religious matters in cases between Muslims or between Muslims and non-Muslims. Non-Muslim communities have their own religious courts using their own religious law.

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

is a parliamentary democracy within the overall framework of Confessionalism

Confessionalism (politics)

Confessionalism is a system of government that refers to de jure mix of religion and politics. It can mean distributing political and institutional power proportionally among religious communities.-Debate:...

, a form of consociationalism

Consociationalism

Consociationalism is a form of government involving guaranteed group representation, and is often suggested for managing conflict in deeply divided societies...

in which the highest offices are proportionately reserved for representatives from certain religious communities.

A growing number of Lebanese, however, have organized against the confessionalist system, advocating for an installation of laïcité

Laïcité

French secularism, in French, laïcité is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of...

in the national government. The most recent expression of this secularist advocacy was the Laïque Pride march held in Beirut on April 26, 2010, as a response to Hizb ut-Tahrir

Hizb ut-Tahrir

's growing appeal in Beirut and its call to re-establish the Islamic caliphate.

Iraq

About 95 percent of Iraqis are Muslim and Islam is the officially recognized state religion.

Secularism and Islam

Islamists believe Islam fuses religion and politics, with normative political values determined by the divine texts. It is argued that this has historically been the case and the secularist/modernist efforts at secularizing politics are little more than jahiliyyah
Jahiliyyah
Jahiliyyah is an Islamic concept of "ignorance of divine guidance" or "the state of ignorance of the guidance from God" or "Days of Ignorance" referring to the condition in which Arabs found themselves in pre-Islamic Arabia, i.e. prior to the revelation of the Qur'an to Muhammad...

(ignorance), kafir
Kafir
Kafir is an Arabic term used in a Islamic doctrinal sense, usually translated as "unbeliever" or "disbeliever"...

(unbelief), irtidad (apostasy) and atheism

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

. "Those who participated in secular politics were raising the flag of revolt against Allah and his messenger."

Saudi scholars denounce secularism as strictly prohibited in Islamic tradition. The Saudi Arabian Directorate of Ifta', Preaching and Guidance, has issued a directive decreeing that whoever believes that there is a guidance (huda) more perfect than that of the Prophet, or that someone else's rule is better than his is a kafir.

It lists a number of specific tenets which would be regarded as a serious departure from the precepts of Islam, punishable according to Islamic law. For example:

The belief that human made laws and constitutions are superior to the Shari'a.
The opinion that Islam is limited to one's relation with God, and has nothing to do with the daily affairs of life.
To disapprove of the application of the hudud
Hudud
Hudud is the word often used in Islamic literature for the bounds of acceptable behaviour and the punishments for serious crimes...

(legal punishments decreed by God) that they are incompatible in the modern age.
And whoever allows what God has prohibited is a kafir.

In the words of Tariq al-Bishri, "secularism and Islam cannot agree except by means of talfiq [combining the doctrines of more than one school, i.e., falsification], or by each turning away from its true meaning."

Secularists have been vilified, threatened, beaten and even murdered by militant Muslims. The case of Faraj Foda, who was accused by Islamists of being an apostate from Islam, and agent of Western powers and culture which resulted in his assassination. "The killing of Faraj Foda was in fact the implementation of the punishment against an apostate, which the State has failed to implement."

Islamic modernizers

Modernists argue that secular rule is necessary with a role for faith in civil society. So, unlike authors such as Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...

who have argued that Arab-Muslim is incompatible with democracy because concepts associated with democracy like the separation of religion from state, representative government and freedom are unknown within Islam and the Arab political tradition. others, like Dr. Muhammad Imara, suggest that secularism may not be incompatible with Islam "We do not reject secularism because it has been imported from the West. We need only examine our circumstances in light of our Islamic religion and its nature, to find out whether secularism would mean progress for us in the same way it did for Europe, or whether it would prove to be inappropriate and harmful."

Main points of discussion:

There is nothing un-Islamic about separating religion from state affairs.
The Sharia was a flexible system which could adapt and use reason.
Only Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

could rule by divine right and even he consulted with others whilst making decisions thus providing a precedent for consultative process and change.
The concept of a divinely empowered caliph
Caliph
The Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transcribed version of the Arabic word which means "successor" or "representative"...

or religious leader is as much of an innovation as secularism
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...

and a notion imported from Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

.
That the pinnacle or Middle Eastern and Islamic civilization was based on Islam being the religion of progress, intellect and scientific endeavor.

Secularism and authoritarianism

There is an opposite relationship between secularism and oppression in the Middle East. In the second half of the 20th century this has been distorted due to the feared repercussions of (amongst others) the anti-social and anti-progression elements of Islam. Spread of Islamist Fundamentalism makes secular leaders more repressive and authoritarian in order to protect secularism. At the same time the more repression from the government makes society opponent to secularism and this opposition makes Islamist Fundamentalism more popular in the Middle East. Some argue that this can be attributed to a desire by such dictators to cement their power and the need to progress social reforms. This has left in many countries the mosque as the only place to voice political opposition. Scholars like Vali Nasr however argue that the secular elites in the Muslim world were imposed by colonial powers to maintain hegemony.

Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) succeeded in December 1991 elections in Algeria and Welfare Party succeeded in 1995 elections in Turkey. Both of these parties are example of Islamic parties. However, both of these parties were faced with military coups in order to protect secularism. While Welfare Party government in Turkey was forced to resign from the office by Turkish military in February 1997 with a military intervention which is called as "post modern coup", FIS in Algeria lived an austere military coup which carried the country in to a civil war in 1992. Military forces in those countries could use their power in undemocratic ways in order to ‘protect secularism’.

In some countries, the fear of Islamist takeover via democratic processes has led to authoritarian measures against Islamist political parties.
"The Syrian regime was able to capitalize on the fear of Islamist coming to power to justify the massive clampdown on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood." When American diplomats asked Hosni Mubarak to give more rights to the press and stop arresting the intellectuals, Mubarak rejected it and said, "If I do what you ask, the fundamentalists will take over the government in Egypt. Do you want that?" Or when President Bill Clinton asked Yasser Arafat to establish democracy in Palestine in 2001, Yasser Arafat also replied similarly. "He said that in a democratic system Hamas will take control the government in Palestine". Most of the Middle Eastern autocrats drew upon the risk of Islamist fundamentalism in order to justify their autocratic rule of government in the international arena. In Freedom House’s 2008 Freedom in the World Report, the connection between authoritarianism and the risk of Islamist fundamentalism in the Middle East is reduplicated. "The presence of movements committed to violent jihad poses a threat to the security of ordinary people and provides an excuse for the enactment of authoritarian emergency measures by rulers bent on suppressing all sources of political opposition."