Download or read book Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion written by Ahmet T. Kuru and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparing policy in America, France, and Turkey, this book analyzes the impact of ideological struggles on public policies toward religion.
Download or read book State And Secularism Perspectives From Asia written by Chin Liew Ten and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010-02-03 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of a secular state is important in many parts of Asia and how this is resolved has important implications for the social, economic and political development of various Asian countries. Unfortunately, problems of the secular state have all along been studied based on the historical experience of state formation in Europe, with little (or no) input from the Asian perspective. This book will for the very first time, present mainly Asian perspectives, while drawing on Western experience as well. Conceptual issues are discussed together with detailed accounts on how different countries and traditions understand and seek to implement the ideas of a secular state.
Download or read book Church State and the Crisis in American Secularism written by Bruce Ledewitz and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1947, the Supreme Court has promised government neutrality toward religion, but in a nation whose motto is "In God We Trust" and which pledges allegiance to "One Nation under God," the public square is anything but neutral -- a paradox not lost on a rapidly secularizing America and a point of contention among those who identify all expressions of religion by government as threats to a free society. Yeshiva student turned secularist, Bruce Ledewitz seeks common ground for believers and nonbelievers regarding the law of church and state. He argues that allowing government to promote higher law values through the use of religious imagery would resolve the current impasse in the interpretation of the Establishment Clause. It would offer secularism an escape from its current tendency toward relativism in its dismissal of all that religion represents and encourage a deepening of the expression of meaning in the public square without compromising secular conceptions of government.
Download or read book Freedom of Religion and the Secular State written by Russell Blackford and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the relationship between religion and the state Focusing on the intersection of religion, law, and politics in contemporary liberal democracies, Blackford considers the concept of the secular state, revising and updating enlightenment views for the present day. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State offers a comprehensive analysis, with a global focus, of the subject of religious freedom from a legal as well as historical and philosophical viewpoint. It makes an original contribution to current debates about freedom of religion, and addresses a whole range of hot-button issues that involve the relationship between religion and the state, including the teaching of evolution in schools, what to do about the burqa, and so on.
Download or read book Political Secularism Religion and the State written by Jonathan Fox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how the competition between religious and secular forces influenced state religion policy between 1990 and 2008. While both sides were active, the religious side had considerably more success. The book examines how states supported religion as well as how they restricted it.
Download or read book Secularism written by Andrew Copson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is secularism? -- Secularism in Western societies -- Secularism diversifies -- The case for Secularism -- The case against Secularism -- Conceptions of Secularism -- Hard questions and new conflicts -- Afterword: the future of Secularism
Download or read book Islam and the Secular State written by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coercive enforcement of Shari‘a by the state betrays the Qur’an’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, Shari‘a should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Na‘im maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce Shari‘a. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not Shari‘a or the Islamic tradition. Bold, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in Islamic history and theology, Islam and the Secular State offers a workable future for the place of Shari‘a in Muslim societies.
Download or read book Secular States Religious Politics written by Sumantra Bose and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a comparative study of two major attempts to build secular states - India and Turkey - in the non-Western world
Download or read book Religion Secularism and Constitutional Democracy written by Jean L. Cohen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polarization between political religionists and militant secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise. Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It identifies which connections between religion and the state are compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism. They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy when it violates international human rights agreements or liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible.
Download or read book Religious Politics and Secular States written by Scott W. Hibbard and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2010-10-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2011 Winner of the Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize of the International Political Science Association This comparative analysis probes why conservative renderings of religious tradition in the United States, India, and Egypt remain so influential in the politics of these three ostensibly secular societies. The United States, Egypt, and India were quintessential models of secular modernity in the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1980s and 1990s, conservative Islamists challenged the Egyptian government, India witnessed a surge in Hindu nationalism, and the Christian right in the United States rose to dominate the Republican Party and large swaths of the public discourse. Using a nuanced theoretical framework that emphasizes the interaction of religion and politics, Scott W. Hibbard argues that three interrelated issues led to this state of affairs. First, as an essential part of the construction of collective identities, religion serves as a basis for social solidarity and political mobilization. Second, in providing a moral framework, religion's traditional elements make it relevant to modern political life. Third, and most significant, in manipulating religion for political gain, political elites undermined the secular consensus of the modern state that had been in place since the end of World War II. Together, these factors sparked a new era of right-wing religious populism in the three nations. Although much has been written about the resurgence of religious politics, scholars have paid less attention to the role of state actors in promoting new visions of religion and society. Religious Politics and Secular States fills this gap by situating this trend within long-standing debates over the proper role of religion in public life.
Download or read book Religious Difference in a Secular Age written by Saba Mahmood and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How secular governance in the Middle East is making life worse—not better—for religious minorities The plight of religious minorities in the Middle East is often attributed to the failure of secularism to take root in the region. Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges this assessment by examining four cornerstones of secularism—political and civil equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Egypt with Coptic Orthodox Christians and Bahais—religious minorities in a predominantly Muslim country—Saba Mahmood shows how modern secular governance has exacerbated religious tensions and inequalities rather than reduced them. Tracing the historical career of secular legal concepts in the colonial and postcolonial Middle East, she explores how contradictions at the very heart of political secularism have aggravated and amplified existing forms of Islamic hierarchy, bringing minority relations in Egypt to a new historical impasse. Through a close examination of Egyptian court cases and constitutional debates about minority rights, conflicts around family law, and controversies over freedom of expression, Mahmood invites us to reflect on the entwined histories of secularism in the Middle East and Europe. A provocative work of scholarship, Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges us to rethink the promise and limits of the secular ideal of religious equality.
Download or read book Secular States and Religious Diversity written by Bruce J. Berman and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation-states have seen the rise of religious pluralism within their borders, brought about by global migration and the challenge of radical religious movements. This book explores the meaning of secularism and religious freedom in these new contexts. The contributors chart the impact of globalization, the varying forms of secularism in Western states, and the different kinds of relations between states and religious institutions in the historical traditions and contemporary politics of Islamic, Indic, and Chinese societies. They also examine the limitations and dilemmas of governmental responses to unprecedented diversity, and grapple with the question of how secular states deal (and should deal) with such pluralism.
Download or read book Faces of the State written by Yael Navaro-Yashin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faces of the State is a penetrating study of the production of a state-revering political culture in the public life of 1990s Turkey. In this new contribution to the anthropology of the state, Yael Navaro-Yashin brings recent poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory to bear on the study of the political. Delving deeper than studies of nationalist discourse that would focus on consciously articulated narratives of political identity, the author explores sites of "fantasy" in the public-political domain of Istanbul. The book focuses on the conflict over secularism in the aftermath of an Islamist victory in the city's municipalities. In contrast with studies that would problematize and objectify religious movements, the author examines the agency of secularists under a state widely known for its "secularist" policies. The complexity and dynamism of the context studied moves well beyond scholarly distinctions between "secularity" and "religion," as well as "state" and "society." Here, secularism and Islamism emerge as different guises for a culture of statism where people from "society" compete to claim "Turkish culture" for themselves and their life practices. With this work that stretches the boundaries of regionalism, the author situates her anthropological study of Turkey not only in scholarship on the Middle East, but also in the broader problem of thinking "Europe" anew.
Download or read book India as a Secular State written by Donald Eugene Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout India's history, religion has been the most powerful single factor in the development of her civilization. Today, despite her religious tradition, India is emerging as a secular state. In this book, Donald E. Smith explores the origin of the concept of secularization as it is found both in Indian culture and in the example of the western nations. He emphasizes the important role of secularization in India’s total democratic experiment and points out that the degree of its realization will undoubtedly affect the eventual character of democracy in India. In addition, the success or failure of the secular state in India cannot fail to influence the attitudes of her neighbors. Professor Smith considers the many aspects and implications of India’s attempt to secularize her government. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Politics of Secularism in International Relations written by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflicts involving religion have returned to the forefront of international relations. And yet political scientists and policymakers have continued to assume that religion has long been privatized in the West. This secularist assumption ignores the contestation surrounding the category of the "secular" in international politics. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations shows why this thinking is flawed, and provides a powerful alternative. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd argues that secularist divisions between religion and politics are not fixed, as commonly assumed, but socially and historically constructed. Examining the philosophical and historical legacy of the secularist traditions that shape European and American approaches to global politics, she shows why this matters for contemporary international relations, and in particular for two critical relationships: the United States and Iran, and the European Union and Turkey. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations develops a new approach to religion and international relations that challenges realist, liberal, and constructivist assumptions that religion has been excluded from politics in the West. The first book to consider secularism as a form of political authority in its own right, it describes two forms of secularism and their far-reaching global consequences.
Download or read book Secularism A Very Short Introduction written by Andrew Copson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the modern period the integration of church (or other religion) and state (or political life) had been taken for granted. The political order was always tied to an official religion in Christian Europe, pre-Christian Europe, and in the Arabic world. But from the eighteenth century onwards, some European states began to set up their political order on a different basis. Not religion, but the rule of law through non-religious values embedded in constitutions became the foundation of some states - a movement we now call secularism. In others, a de facto secularism emerged as political values and civil and criminal law altered their professed foundation from a shared religion to a non-religious basis. Today secularism is an increasingly hot topic in public, political, and religious debate across the globe. It is embodied in the conflict between secular republics - from the US to India - and the challenges they face from resurgent religious identity politics; in the challenges faced by religious states like those of the Arab world from insurgent secularists; and in states like China where calls for freedom of belief are challenging a state imposed non-religious worldview. In this Very Short Introduction Andrew Copson tells the story of secularism, taking in momentous episodes in world history, such as the great transition of Europe from religious orthodoxy to pluralism, the global struggle for human rights and democracy, and the origins of modernity. He also considers the role of secularism when engaging with some of the most contentious political and legal issues of our time: 'blasphemy', 'apostasy', religious persecution, religious discrimination, religious schools, and freedom of belief and freedom of thought in a divided world. Previously published in hardback as Secularism: Politics, Religion, and Freedom ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Politics of Secularism written by Murat Akan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discussions of modernity—or alternative and multiple modernities—often hinge on the question of secularism, especially how it travels outside its original European context. Too often, attempts to answer this question either imagine a universal model derived from the history of Western Europe, which neglects the experience of much of the world, or emphasize a local, non-European context that limits the potential for comparison. In The Politics of Secularism, Murat Akan reframes the question of secularism, exploring its presence both outside and inside Europe and offering a rich empirical account of how it moves across borders and through time. Akan uses France and Turkey to analyze political actors' comparative discussions of secularism, struggles for power, and historical contextual constraints at potential moments of institutional change. France and Turkey are critical sites of secularism: France exemplifies European political modernity, and Turkey has long been the model of secularism in a Muslim-majority country. Akan analyzes prominent debates in both countries on topics such as the visibility of the headscarf and other religious symbols, religion courses in the public school curriculum, and state salaries for clerics and imams. Akan lays out the institutional struggles between three distinct political currents—anti-clericalism, liberalism, and what he terms state-civil religionism—detailing the nuances of how political movements articulate the boundary between the secular and the religious. Disputing the prevalent idea that diversity is a new challenge to secularism and focusing on comparison itself as part of the politics of secularism, this book makes a major contribution to understanding secular politics and its limits.
