Islam and secularism
Secularism—i.e. the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state—has been a controversial concept in Islamic political thought, owing in part to historical factors and in part to the ambiguity of the concept itself. In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states. Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites, and is frequently understood to be equivalent to irreligion or anti-religion.
Especially in the late 19th to mid-20th century, some Muslim thinkers advocated secularism as a way to strengthen the Islamic world in the face of Russian, British and French colonialism. Some have advocated secularism in the sense of political order that does not impose any single interpretation of sharia (Ali Abdel Raziq and Mahmoud Mohammed Taha); argued that such a political order would not/does not violate Islam (Abdullah Saeed); and that combined with constitutionalism and human rights, is more consistent with Islamic history than modern visions of an Islamic state (Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im). Strongly opposed to limiting Islam to matters of personal belief, and strongly advocating an Islam encompassing law, politics, economics, culture and every other aspect of the lives of its citizens, are orthodox Islamic scholars and proponents of Islamism (political Islam). Islamist pioneer Abul A'la Maududi claimed that the goal of secularists was not to ameliorate tensions and divisions in multi-religious societies, but to avoid the "restraints of morality and divine guidance", and thus eliminate "all morality, ethics, or human decency from the controlling mechanisms of society."
A number of pre-modern polities in the Islamic world demonstrated some level of separation between religious and political authority, even if they did not adhere to the modern concept of a state with no official religion or religion-based laws. Today, some Muslim-majority countries define themselves as or are regarded as secular. Many of them have a dual legal system in which Muslims can bring familial and financial disputes to sharia courts whose jurisdiction varies from country to country but usually includes marriage, divorce, inheritance, and guardianship.
.Writing around 2013, Mansoor Alam argues that the "plunge into bloodshed" between Shias, Sunnis and other sects in Pakistan since the mid-1980s have "made mosques, imambargahs and even cemeteries unsafe places to visit". The "only antidote" the polarization of sects is the one Christians learnt after "a few hundred years of internecine bloodshed", i.e. secularism.
Faisal Al Yafai, a columnist for The National, wrote in 2012 that secularism in the Arab World had declined and that "There is no major political party in the Arab world that would today be understood as secular."
Opinion polls indicate a majority of Muslims believe that Islam does not separate religion from the state, unlike Christianity, and many Muslims around the world welcome a significant role for Islam in their countries' political life. Historian Bernard Lewis argues secularism developed in Europe as a reaction to bitter and devastating religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth century—a malady Islam did not suffer from. Islam history has had "regional, tribal, and dynastic wars with ... a religious coloration", "great power rivalries" such as between Sunni Ottoman Empire and Shia Persian one, but not religious wars; religious discrimination but not persecution, prosecution of disloyal apostates but not campaigns against heresy and the burning of heretics; and no scripture such as Matthew 22:21 "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". (Lewis ends by noting that in the late 20th century the problem of religion and state interfering in each other's affairs may have spread to the Islamic world and that "Jews and Muslims may perhaps have caught a Christian disease and might therefore consider a Christian remedy."
Especially in the late 19th to mid-20th century, some Muslim thinkers advocated secularism as a way to strengthen the Islamic world in the face of Russian, British and French colonialism. Some have advocated secularism in the sense of political order that does not impose any single interpretation of sharia (Ali Abdel Raziq and Mahmoud Mohammed Taha); argued that such a political order would not/does not violate Islam (Abdullah Saeed); and that combined with constitutionalism and human rights, is more consistent with Islamic history than modern visions of an Islamic state (Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im). Strongly opposed to limiting Islam to matters of personal belief, and strongly advocating an Islam encompassing law, politics, economics, culture and every other aspect of the lives of its citizens, are orthodox Islamic scholars and proponents of Islamism (political Islam). Islamist pioneer Abul A'la Maududi claimed that the goal of secularists was not to ameliorate tensions and divisions in multi-religious societies, but to avoid the "restraints of morality and divine guidance", and thus eliminate "all morality, ethics, or human decency from the controlling mechanisms of society."
A number of pre-modern polities in the Islamic world demonstrated some level of separation between religious and political authority, even if they did not adhere to the modern concept of a state with no official religion or religion-based laws. Today, some Muslim-majority countries define themselves as or are regarded as secular. Many of them have a dual legal system in which Muslims can bring familial and financial disputes to sharia courts whose jurisdiction varies from country to country but usually includes marriage, divorce, inheritance, and guardianship.
.Writing around 2013, Mansoor Alam argues that the "plunge into bloodshed" between Shias, Sunnis and other sects in Pakistan since the mid-1980s have "made mosques, imambargahs and even cemeteries unsafe places to visit". The "only antidote" the polarization of sects is the one Christians learnt after "a few hundred years of internecine bloodshed", i.e. secularism.
Faisal Al Yafai, a columnist for The National, wrote in 2012 that secularism in the Arab World had declined and that "There is no major political party in the Arab world that would today be understood as secular."
Opinion polls indicate a majority of Muslims believe that Islam does not separate religion from the state, unlike Christianity, and many Muslims around the world welcome a significant role for Islam in their countries' political life. Historian Bernard Lewis argues secularism developed in Europe as a reaction to bitter and devastating religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth century—a malady Islam did not suffer from. Islam history has had "regional, tribal, and dynastic wars with ... a religious coloration", "great power rivalries" such as between Sunni Ottoman Empire and Shia Persian one, but not religious wars; religious discrimination but not persecution, prosecution of disloyal apostates but not campaigns against heresy and the burning of heretics; and no scripture such as Matthew 22:21 "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". (Lewis ends by noting that in the late 20th century the problem of religion and state interfering in each other's affairs may have spread to the Islamic world and that "Jews and Muslims may perhaps have caught a Christian disease and might therefore consider a Christian remedy."
