Toward a Democratic Theory for

Muslim Societies: Rethinking the

Relationship between Islam and
Secularism across the Islam-West
Divide

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1 Introduction

When Western liberals cast their gaze on Muslim societies today they see a pic-
ture that is deeply disconcerting. From their perspective there is simply too much
religion in the Arab-Islamic world today, which raises serious questions about the
future of political development in this part of the world. The visible presence of
religion in the public sphere, especially of a socially conservative nature, violates a
key principle of liberal democracy that requires a form of secularity to sustain the
liberal democratic project.
In Political Liberalism, John Rawls famously noted that a political conception of
justice requires that we “take the truths of religion off the political agenda” (Rawls
1993, p. 151). In Muslim societies today, however, religion is very much on the
political agenda, as we have seen recently during the Arab Spring. Recent elections
in Tunisia and Egypt have brought Islamist parties to power while simultaneously
revealing the weak electoral appeal of secular and liberal parties. Furthermore, an
ultraconservative Salafist movement has emerged as an important element in the
politics of the Arab-Islamic world. These trends raise serious questions about the
possibility of liberal democracy in the Muslim world, especially in the Arab world,
until the question of political secularism is resolved.

N. Hashemi ( )
University of Denver, 2201 S. Gaylord Street, Denver,
80208 CO, Germany
e-mail: nhashemi@du.edu
A. Cavuldak et al. (Hrsg.), Demokratie und Islam, Politik und Religion, 121
DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-19833-0_7, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2014
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2 A Caveat about Secularism

The concept of secularism is inherently ambiguous. This is partly due to the differ-
ent histories of secularism both within the Western world and in the non-Western
world. Recent scholarship on the topic by Charles Taylor, Jose Casanova and Nikki
Keddie has sought to define and conceptualize the topic utilizing a threefold break-
down of the term.1
In my own understanding and interpretation of secularism, I have stuck to this
three-tier conceptualization of the topic. In the interest of simplifying the debate,
my conceptualization of secularism is related to three core disciplines in the social
sciences: philosophy, sociology, and political science. Philosophically, secularism
refers to a rejection of the transcendental and the metaphysical with a focus on
the existential and the empirical. This is what Harvey Cox was referring to in The
Secular City (1966) when he discussed secularism as, “the liberation of man from
religious and metaphysical tutelage, the turning of his attention away from other
worlds and toward this one.” (Cox 1966, p. 17). Sociologically, secularism correlates
with modernization in terms of a gradual process that leads to the declining influ-
ence of religion in social institutions, communal life and human relationships. This
is arguably the most common understanding of secularism and is what Peter Berg-
er called in The Sacred Canopy (1967) a “process by which sectors of society and
culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.”
(Berger 1967, p. 107). Politically, secularism entails a separation of the public and
private spheres and, more broadly, a form of separation, which can vary, between
the institutions of the state and the forces of religion.2
In this paper I focus on the third aspect of secularism: its political dimension.
Specifically, I am interested in the history of religion-state relations in the Anglo-
American tradition, how it emerged and evolved, and the comparative lessons to
be learned for understanding this topic in the context of Muslim societies today.

3 Islam and Secularism: The Establishment View

It is now a standard cliché that Islam does not recognize the concept of secular-
ity. Normatively, we are told that among the world’s religious traditions, Islam is
uniquely anti-modern in that it (allegedly) contains within its religious and civiliza-

1
Taylor 2007; Casanova 2006; Keddie 2007.
2
I borrow this convenient way of thinking about secularism from Lutfhi Assyaukanie’s unpu-
blished paper “Islam and Secularism in Indonesia”.
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tional ethos an attitude that rejects the separation of religion and politics. The most
influential and widely cited proponent of this thesis in the social sciences has been
the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton
University, Bernard Lewis.3
Lewis’ thesis is based on a comparative treatment of Islam and Christianity and
is rooted in the claim that Islam’s problem with secularism is due “to certain pro-
found differences in belief and experience in the two religious cultures.” (Lewis
2003, p. 100). In this paper I seek to provide an alternative reading of the Lewis the-
sis on the question of Islam and secularism. Before doing so, however, a brief word
is required about the importance of this topic for international affairs.

4 Islam, Secularism and International Affairs

Why is the debate on Islam and secularism important today and why am I picking
on Bernard Lewis? The answer is deeply connected to several post-9/11 trends in
Western popular and intellectual culture.
In the ideological polemics following September 11, 2001 that sought to explain
the tension between Islam and the West, the theme of secularism featured quite
prominently. Beyond Bernard Lewis’ best-selling book, What Went Wrong? The
Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (2003), a series of other in-
fluential books advanced an argument that the alleged secular nature of the West
and its converse in Muslim societies was at the root of the crisis in Muslim-West
relations. In this context, Samuel Huntington’s controversial thesis on the “Clash
of Civilizations” was revived. Writing at the time, Robert Kaplan argued that the
“terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon highlight the tragic
relevance not just of Huntington’s ideas about a clash of civilizations but of his en-
tire life’s work.” (Kaplan 2001).
In a similar vein, a few years later, the New York Times gave prominent atten-
tion to Historian Anthony Pagden’s Worlds at War: The 2500 Year Struggle between
East and West (Chua 2008). Echoing Huntington, Pagden argued that the core of
our problem with the Islamic world can be traced back to fundamental theologi-
cal differences between Islam and Christianity. This has led to different and clash-
ing understandings on the relationship between religion and politics, secularism in
particular, and thus to global conflict.

3
In anthropology, Ernest Gellner, and in political science, Samuel Huntington, have advan-
ced similar arguments about Islam, Muslim societies and secularism. Good scholarship exists
on critiquing their arguments so I will not engage with them in this paper. On Gellner see
Zubaida 1995 and Eickelman 1998. On Huntington, see Stepan 2001, pp. 213–254.
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Furthermore, Benny Morris, a widely read and influential Israeli historian and
public intellectual in the West has entered this debate. In two recent books on the
Israel-Palestine conflict he advances a new thesis on the origins of this problem
by interpreting it in terms of a civilizational clash that focuses on Islam’s alleged
problem with modernity and secularism (Morris 2009, 2010a). He extends this ar-
gument further by attempting to interpret to the conflict in Sudan as the result of
a clash between the northern Islamic and southern Christian parts of the country
that can be traced back to the clash between Islam and modernity (Morris 2010b).
There is an emerging body of writing, therefore, from the pen of influential
scholars and intellectuals, that seeks to explain contemporary international conflict
involving Muslims as a function of tension between Islam and secularism. Alarm-
ist in nature, this group of writers has reinforced and given an academic stamp of
approval to Islamophobic narratives in Western societies that substantiate the fear
of Muslim immigration, the alleged spread of shariah (Islamic law), and the threat
of domestic terrorism.
Furthermore, the debate on Islam and secularism is important because of its
implications for understanding contemporary Middle East politics. With the rise
to power of Muslim-based political parties in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, this
subject demands greater scrutiny and study in the context of attempted transitions
to democracy. The key point of tension is the following: if Islamic political theory
is inherently and enduringly opposed to modernity and secularism, it follows that
the introduction of Muslim political values, ideas, and parties into the public sphere
poses a threat to human rights, democracy, and progress more generally.
Finally, there is the influence of Bernard Lewis. While his scholarly reputation
has suffered severely in recent decades within the field of Islamic and Middle East-
ern Studies—in large part due to the critique of Orientalism that Edward Said initi-
ated and Lewis’ close association with the Bush Administration—within the social
sciences and humanities, however, he is still regarded as an objective authority on
the history and politics of the Islamic world. A recent JSTOR search of journals in
the social sciences and humanities utilizing the search terms “Bernard Lewis” from
1950 to 2012, turned up over 47,924 hits.
While previous critics of Lewis have argued that he has misread Islamic history,
where evidence of a de facto secularity can be detected in early Muslim polities, I
argue that Lewis has significantly misread—not the political history of Islam—but
rather the political history of Christendom. Jettisoning an explanation that empha-
sizes the early religious experience of Islam/Christianity to explain the absence/rise
of political secularism, the emphasis here will be on the early modern period of Eu-
rope. It was during this time, where due to a set of political events that were unique
to Europe in the post-Reformation period, that the origins of political secularism
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in the Anglo-American tradition can be located. The central claim of this paper is
that historically, secularism did not develop in Muslim societies because unlike in
Christian Europe, Muslims never had the need to think about, much less institution-
alize, political secularism.4
In the final part of this paper I offer some brief comments on modern Muslim
history and political experience. This period is important to understand as it up-
dates and completes the story of secularism and its discontents in Muslim societies.
Specifically, this period of time, which coincides with the late colonial and postco-
lonial period, helps to explain why secularism is such a deeply divisive and contro-
versial political topic in the Islamic world today.

5 Bernard Lewis’ Thesis on Islam and Secularism

Lewis’ argument on the incompatibility between Islam and secularism is captured

by the following two observations from his widely read post 9–11 book, What Went
Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East.

The absence of a native secularism in Islam, and the widespread Muslim rejection of
an imported secularism inspired by Christian example, may be attributed to certain
profound differences of belief and experience in the two religious cultures. (Lewis 2003,
p. 100, emphasis added)
The reasons why Muslims developed no secularist movement of their own, and
reacted sharply against attempts to introduce one from abroad, will thus be clear from
the contrasts between Christian and Muslim history and experience. From the begin-
ning, Christians were taught both by precept and practice to distinguish between
God and Caesar and between the different duties owed to each of the two. Muslims
received no such instruction. (Lewis 2003, p. 103, emphasis added)

In short, according to Lewis, the reason why secularism did not emerge in Muslim
polities, while it did in the West is due to:

1. the different early religious histories and doctrinal beliefs between Islam and
Christianity
2. The early religious teachings, both in theory and in practice, between Christian-
ity and Islam

4
I want to emphasize that this is a historical argument and that today, contemporary Mus-
lims do have to think seriously about secularism given that modern democratic polities that
respect human rights must contain this political principle in their constitutions.
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Implied in Lewis’ argument is a firm belief that “history is destiny” and that there
has been a “prevailing dualism” in the political history of the West, between reli-
gion and state, which has made a critical difference as to why political secularism
emerged in the Christian tradition and not in the Islamic one. Most scholars have
tended to accept this argument on Islam and secularism and to date few have of-
fered a serious alternative reading. Prominent scholars in Middle East and Islamic
studies, such as Ira Lapidus, Dale Eickelman, James Piscatori and most recently
Abdullahi An-Na’im, have argued that in the pre-modern period most Muslim po-
litical regimes were de facto secular in that theologians and the ulema were not in
political power; instead, various clans, ethnic groups, and family dynasties con-
trolled the state and instrumentally used religion to legitimate their rule.5 Thus, a
de facto secularity can be detected in Muslim political history if one approaches the
topic from this perspective.
My argument is categorically different. I claim that Professor Lewis has misread
not the early political history of Islam, as it pertains to the debate on secularism,
but rather the political history of the Christian West in terms of the origins and rise
of political secularism. In other words, my primary disagreement with Lewis per-
tains to his interpretative historicism of this topic—specifically, where he chooses
to place his emphasis in the comparative treatment of religion-state relations in the
Islamic and the Western experiences.
With respect to the relationship between Islam and secularism, for example,
Lewis exaggerates the early histories of Islam and Christianity as being determin-
istically formative and normative at the expense of later historical periods. In do-
ing so, he categorically ignores several key developments in the history of Western
secularism and that of the modern Islamic world that are far more significant than
he acknowledges and have greatly shaped our understanding of this topic today.
Secondly, Lewis overemphasizes the famous verse from Matthew 22:21 where
Jesus told his disciples to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto
God the things that are Gods.” I question how central this statement was in terms of
giving shape to church-state relations both in early Christendom and in subsequent
years. Lewis strongly suggests that this statement was of paramount importance
and that it made all the difference to the exclusion of other intervening variables.
There is no consensus, however, among Biblical scholars on this topic; alternative
interpretations, of which there are many, argue that Jesus was referring to questions
of taxation and economic affairs, not to church-state relations (e.g. Witte 2006).
In this context, it is widely recognized that early Christian writing was funda-
mentally concerned with the second coming of Christ and the impending end of

5
Lapidus 1975; Piscatori and Eickelman 2004; An-Nai’im 2008.
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the world, not with political life. First Thessalonians, for example, an authentic
Pauline epistle written in 50 AD and addressed to the early Christian community,
confirms this point. Indeed it was not until the fourth century, after Constantine I
adopted Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, that Christian writ-
ing developed an interest in the temporal realm.
The debate on the meaning and intent of Matthew 22:21 is deeply connected
with the area of scriptural hermeneutics. Approaching the question of comparative
secular development from a hermeneutical perspective would therefore raise im-
portant questions about the relationship between this famous God/Caesar verse, its
precise meaning at the time it was first enunciated, and how it was later understood
and interpreted by successive Christian communities. Given that Lewis’ argument
on Islam and secularism seems to hang on the centrality of this verse, it deserves
greater scrutiny from those who are serious about pursuing this line of inquiry.
On a deeper level, Lewis’ claim that the roots of secularism in the West can be
traced back to Matthew 22:21 is contravened by the actual historical development
of church-state separation. An interesting way to think about this is to explore the
actual history of political secularism. Which modern author(s) first argued that
political secularism is a principle/social good to be valued and can lead to a more
just society? What was the enveloping sociopolitical context that that gave rise to
this argument and what are lessons to be learned in thinking about this history
comparatively?
The “founding fathers” of the United States of America are a good place to start,
specifically with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Mason. They all
played a seminal role in crafting and defending arguments favoring church-state
separation and enshrining them in the U.S. Constitution. Madison and Jefferson
were influenced, however, by the political thought of John Locke, who about 100
hundred years earlier in his famous A Letter Concerning Toleration advanced an
argument for a soft form of political secularism (Sheldon 2003; Feldman 2002).
Going back further, Martha Nussbaum argues that the first author in modern
history to favor church-state separation was Roger Williams. Writing in 1644, Wil-
liams, who established the State of Rhode Island, first coined the phrase, “wall of
separation”, in a famous written debate with John Cotton, the preeminent minister
and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Nussbaum 2010; cf. also Bamford
Parkes 1931). The broader point here is that in all of these early writings on political
secularism, one searches in vain for any reference or mention of the famous God/
Caesar verse as justification for religion-state separation. Nowhere in Williams,
Locke, Madison, or Mason is this Biblical passage invoked as justification for their
political claims.
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Furthermore, we must question Lewis’ selective choice and ahistorical interpre-

tation of scripture. There are other verses from the Bible that have historically been
used not to justify secularism, but rather its opposite: a firm union of religion and
state. Take, for example, the famous verse from Romans 13:1–2, utilized frequently
in early modern Europe to justify the “divine right of kings”:

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the
powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth
the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.6

It therefore follows to ask: why is this passage less significant to the history of
church-state relations than the “Render unto Caesar” verse that Lewis frequently
cites? How can Lewis justifiably base his core theological argument on Matthew
22:21 alone?

6 Islam and “Secular” Prophetic Statements:

When Professor Lewis writes that, “From the beginning, Christians were taught
both by precept and practice to distinguish between God and Caesar and between
the different duties owed to each of the two. Muslims received no such instruction”,
he ignores a similar incident in the early years of Islamic history than can be read as
the moral and political equivalent of Mathew 22:21.
As narrated in the Sahih of Muslim (an authoritative Sunni source of Prophetic
sayings), Muhammad once suggested that a group of his followers pollinate palm
trees. When the conditions of the trees deteriorated he was surprised the people in
question followed his advice blindly. He is reported to have said: “I am but a hu-
man being like you. If I ordered you in matters dealing with your religion—follow
the orders—but if I ordered you to do something based on my opinion, remember
that I am but a human being.” In the collection of prophetic statements (Hadith) of
Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said in the same
incident: “what is of your earthly matters is for you to [decide on] …what is of your
religion is for me to [decide on].” Another source records this event as the Prophet
Muhammad saying: “You are more knowledgeable in your earthly matters [than
me].” (Abu Khalil 1994, p. 685)
Thus, if Christians were taught from the beginning to separate the earthly realm
from the spiritual one, so were Muslims. Why did political secularism not develop
in the Muslim world? The question remains on the table.

6
Emphasis added.
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7 The Key Interpretive Point

In seeking out the roots of political secularism it is not a sufficient research strategy
to rely on selected quotations from the Bible that are 2000 years old to explain the
rise or subsequent absence of political secularism in one religious tradition or the
other. Nor it is sufficient to emphasize the early religious history of Christendom
and Islam, thus implying (1) that there is a deterministically linear social-intellec-
tual connection linking past to present and (2) that the dehistoricized exegeses of
early Christian theologians are somehow normative for the rest of human history to
explicate a very complex and multifaceted social phenomenon such as the origins
and rise of church-state separation in the West.
As an alternative approach, I argue that that one must look at state-society rela-
tions. In particular, state-society relations and the role of religion in this relation-
ship at key moments of political crises, where religion has become of a source of
turmoil and conflict, thus requiring its regulation. While Professor Lewis hints at
a “prevailing dualism” between Church and State in Western history—and its con-
verse in the case of Muslim history—the reality of political life in Christendom
was far more complex and complicated with respect to the breadth and depth of
religion-state relations. Yes, there were “two powers, God and Caesar, represented
in this world by sacerdotium and regnum, or in modern terms church and state”,
but often they were closely associated, deeply interconnected, and overlapped and
reinforced each other in multiple ways that Professors Lewis does not adequately
appreciate or discuss in his writing (Lewis 1988).

8 Religion and the Crisis of State in Early Modern History

In his widely acclaimed book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern
West, Mark Lilla observes that almost every civilization throughout history based
its original understanding of legitimate political authority on the divine nexus be-
tween God, humanity, and the world (Lilla 2007). Political theology, Lilla suggests,
is the original condition of all civilization as they try to make sense of the relation-
ship between religion and politics and the natural order of the world that surrounds
them. The question that is germane for this discussion is how did this divine nexus
between God, human beings, and society gradually erode in the case of Latin Chris-
tendom, thus leading to political secularism, and what are the comparative lessons
today for Muslim societies?
Nikki Keddie has noted that the assumption of very close religion-state relations
in Islam, in contrast to the Western experience, is deeply problematic. This is be-
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cause such an assumption ignores the case of one major branch of Christianity, the
Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, where religion and state were closely inter-
twined for long periods of time and where we find the phenomenon of Caesaropap-
ism (where the emperor was both the head of state and church). Moreover, Keddie
suggests that in pre-modern times Christianity and Islam had similar levels of rela-
tions between religion and politics, and that a careful and comprehensive schol-
arly investigation of this topic would likely reveal this. To date, such a comparative
scholarly examination of, for example, religion-state relations in King Henry VIII’s
England in the 1530s and Sultan Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire or Shah Ismail
I of the Iranian Safavid throne, (all of whom ruled at the same time) has not been
undertaken. Keddie’s prediction is that such a study would reveal some surprises
and challenge many of our unexamined assumptions. In a passing commentary, she
writes that the “differences are not all in the direction of greater political power for
Islam than for the Christian Church” and that “de facto, the medieval relationship
between religion and state was a standoff between the Muslim Middle East and the
Christian West, with Christian institutions stronger in some ways and more in oth-
ers than Islamic ones.” (Keddie 1994, p. 464)
Keddie’s observation reminds us that the history of secularism in the West is
long, complicated, and generally misunderstood in Western intellectual debates
(especially when making cross-comparisons with Islam). Charles Taylor’s A Secular
Age (2007) is a good place to start the discussion. In retrospect, four broad trends
are discernible which had secularizing consequences for the West: (1) the rise of
modern capitalism; (2) the rise of modern nation-states and nationalism; (3) the
Scientific Revolution; and, most importantly, (4) the Protestant Reformation and
the Wars of Religion during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Casanova
1994, Chap. 1). This latter development is central to the rise of political secularism,
especially in the Anglo-American tradition, and is particularly helpful in illuminat-
ing the question of religion-state relations in Muslim societies.
Post-Reformation Europe saw the emergence of new debates about religious tol-
eration not only between Catholics and Protestants, but, critically, among the vari-
ous Protestant sects. In an age of gross intolerance, most Christian denominations
were interested in enforcing religious uniformity on their societies, each claiming
exclusive knowledge of God’s will on earth and warning of the dangers of social
disorder and chaos if religious toleration were allowed to flourish. In brief, religious
toleration and political stability were thought to be negatively correlated. Unifor-
mity of religious practice in the public sphere and the need for an established state
religion was widely believed to be a prerequisite for peace, order, and prosperity.
This was the dominant view at the time, right up to the late seventeenth century,
supported by almost every major philosopher, politician, and political commenta-
tor (Zagorin 2003).
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It was left to John Locke to rethink the relationship between toleration and po-
litical order. In his famous A Letter Concerning Toleration (1685), Locke rejected his
earlier support for the firm union of church and state and posited a new solution
to the core political problem plaguing Europe. Religious pluralism in the public
sphere and political stability were indeed compatible, Locke argued, on the condi-
tion that people “distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of
religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other.” (Locke
1983, p. 26) In other words, a soft form of political secularism was required. The
key interpretive point here is that political secularism emerged in England as the
direct result of an existential crisis tearing the country apart. This conflict had been
raging for many years and without a solution, Locke affirmed, Europe would not
know peace, prosperity, or stability. The colossal size of this crisis cannot be over-
stated. Mark Lilla observes that without a resolution to the religious question, the
self-destruction of the West was a very real possibility. The future political stability
of the Western world hung in the balance. Political secularism thus emerged in the
Anglo-American tradition out of the need to negotiate and resolve an existential
threat. It was intimately and indelibly connected to these transformative events in
the early modern period of Europe or as Charles Taylor has noted: “the origin point
of modern Western secularism was the Wars of Religion; or rather, the search in
battle-fatigue and horror for a way out of them.” (Taylor 1998, p. 32) In short, the
idea of a separation between church and state originates as a political solution out
of this existential dilemma. A contrast between this picture and the case of the Mus-
lim world, with respect to the relationship between religious toleration and political
order, is most illustrative.

9 Muslim Toleration

Historians are in broad agreement that, comparatively speaking, in the pre-modern

period Muslim societies were generally more tolerant of religious pluralism than
in Christendom. The emphasis here is on the pre-modern era. The fact that until
the mid-twentieth century, for example, the city of Baghdad had a population that
was one third Jewish, speaks to this point. It is not suggested here that the Muslim
world was a bastion of liberal tolerance as we understand it today or that minorities
were never persecuted; far from it. Instead, the argument is simply that because
of greater religious toleration in the pre-modern era, Muslim societies and em-
pires did not historically face the same all-consuming wars of religion and debates
over religious toleration and political order that were so central to early modern
European political history. Comparatively speaking, Sunni-Shia relations and the
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treatment of religious minorities were far more tolerant in the Muslim world than
in Europe over the last millennium; a fact acknowledged by Bertrand Russell, in his
History of Western Philosophy and Arnold Toynbee in his A Study of History, just to
name a few prominent names from the Western canon (Russell 2004, pp. 390–397;
Toynbee 1978, p. 285).
The key political point that flows from this fact of relative Muslim tolerance
(in contrast to centuries of pre-modern Christian intolerance) is that no burning
political questions emerged between state and society where religion was the key,
all-consuming and overriding bone of political contention. As a result, no political
dynamic emerged within Muslim societies necessitating the development of intel-
lectual or moral arguments favoring religion-state separation as a way out of an
existentialist political dilemma in the same way these arguments developed and
were so critical to the rise of secularism in Europe during the seventeenth century.
The primary threats to the sociopolitical order in Muslim societies were the
corruption and nepotism of the royal court, natural famines and disasters, and
most importantly foreign invasion—first during the Crusades of the eleventh to
thierteenth centuries, followed by the Mongol invasion of 1258 (which ended the
Abbasid Caliphate), and the Castilian re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Such
external dangers only increased in the modern period with Russian, French, British
and later American penetration, colonialism and imperialism (to varying degrees
depending on the country, region and time frame in question). Due to this signifi-
cantly different historical experience with respect to religious toleration—and this
is key to understanding the relationship between Islam and secularism—Muslim
societies never had the need to think about secularism in the same way the West did,
for no pressing existential crisis resulting from debates on religion-state relations
existed where a concept like secularism might be posited as solution to a pressing
political dilemma.7
Moreover, as Noah Feldman has argued in The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State
(2008) religion-state relations in the Muslim world were far more stable and ami-
cable than they were in the West. For over a millennium, religion played a construc-
tive role as an agent of sociopolitical stability and predictability. In contrast to the
European experience, where disputes over religion in the post-Reformation period
became a source of deep conflict, in the Muslim world religion, and the scholars
who interpreted it, managed to place restrictions on the personal whims and ambi-
tions of the caliphs and sultans by forcing them to recognize religious limits to their
rule in exchange for conferring legitimacy on the state. In short, the rulers were

7
Muslims do have to think very seriously about political secularism today, especially in the
context of constructing a democratic political system and society.
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not above the law, as they later became during the twentieth century, but they were
often constrained by it, thus limiting autocracy and arbitrary rule. Religion-state
relations in the Muslim world have thus bequeathed different historical lessons and
memories, where believers view religion (properly understood and interpreted) not
as ally of political tyranny and a cause of conflict, but as a possible constraint on
political despotism, a source of social cohesion and stability, and a possible ally in
promoting social justice. According to Feldman, this partly explains why demands
for a greater role for religion in politics have a sympathetic audience in the Mus-
lim world today (where Islamists are not in power). This brings us to the modern
period.

10 Secularism and its Modern Discontents

In the past 200 years the Muslim world’s experience with secularism has been
largely negative. It is important to appreciate that in Europe secularism was an
indigenous and gradual process evolving in conjunction with socioeconomic and
political developments while supported by intellectual arguments—and critically
by religious groups—that eventually sunk deep roots within its political culture. By
contrast, the Muslim experience has been marked by the perception of secularism
as an alien ideology imposed from outside, first by colonial and imperial invaders,
then by local elites who came to power during the post-colonial period. In short,
secularism in Europe was largely a bottom-up process intimately connected to on-
going debates within civil society, while in Muslim societies secularism was largely
a top-down process driven first by the colonial state and then by the post-colonial
state (Nasr 2010, pp. 85–115). As a result, secularism in the Muslim world has suf-
fered from weak intellectual roots and, with a few exceptions, has never penetrated
the mainstream of Muslim societies.
Furthermore, most states in the Muslim world by the end of twentieth century
were developmental failures. A pattern of state-society relations unfolded in the
post-colonial era that further impugned the reputation of secularism. An autocratic
modernizing state—often backed by critical external support—suffocated civil so-
ciety, stymied public debate, and crushed political dissent, thereby forcing opposi-
tional activity into the mosque and inadvertently contributing to the rise of political
Islam. A set of top-down, forced modernization, secularization, and Westernization
policies by the state—within a short span of time—generated widespread social and
psychological alienation and dislocation. Rapid urbanization, changing cultural
and socio-economic relationships coupled with increasing corruption, economic
mismanagement, rising poverty, and income inequality undermined the legitimacy
134 /
)BTIFNJ

of the state. These developments reflected negatively on secularism because the

ruling ideologies of many post-colonial regimes in the Muslim world were openly
secular and nationalist.
Thus, for a generation of Muslims growing up in the post-colonial era, despo-
tism, dictatorship, and human rights abuses came to be associated with secularism.
Muslim political activists who experienced oppression at the hands of secular na-
tional governments logically concluded secularism to be an ideology of repression.
This observation applies not only to Iran (under the Shah) but also to Tunisia and
Ben Ali, Egypt and Mubarak, Iraq and Saddam Hussein, Syria under Assad and
many other Muslim majority countries in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Summarizing this trend Political Scientist Vali Nasr has noted:
Secularism in the Muslim world never overcame its colonial origins and never lost
its association with the postcolonial state’s continuous struggle to dominate society.
Its fortunes became tied to those of the state: the more the state’s ideology came into
question, and the more its actions alienated social forces, the more secularism was
rejected in favor of indigenous worldviews and social institutions—which were for
the most part tied to Islam. As such, the decline of secularism was a reflection of the
decline of the postcolonial state in the Muslim world. (Nasr 2003, p. 69)

11 Conclusion

The broader point here is that one needs to be sensitive to the different histories of
religion-state relations, especially when discussing the relationships between reli-
gion and state in the context of political secularism across the Islam-West divide.
History, both in the early modern and late modern eras, has bequeathed different
lessons to different peoples. In the case of the Muslim world, historically speaking,
state-society relations did not generate an inner dynamic whereby secularism/reli-
gion-state separation was posited as solution to a pressing and existential political
crisis, for no such crisis existed. Thus, rather than relying on an analytical approach
that emphasizes the inner theological doctrine of Islam/Christianity or the early
religious history of Christians and Muslims to address the question of comparative
secularism, as Bernard Lewis has done, it is the alternative framework outlined
herein that focuses on state-society relations and the problem of religion of mo-
ments of political crisis that provides a more objective account of this emotionally
charged and poorly understood topic.