Such state-religion connections have been a part of the prevalent moderate form of
secularism implemented in most of the Western European states for some time now.
Secularism is a doctrine that is not concerned with metaphysics.
Secularism offers Muslims religious freedom, religious authenticity, and religious meaning.
Western political narrative usually refers to political struggles in binary terms, as a struggle between tyranny and democracy, between
secularism and benighted religion, between the forces of light and darkness.
The US, in my view, has developed a more strategic sense of this whole business, accepting that democracy promotion, however messy it will be in implementation, is the best means to inoculate Muslim societies against extremism and eventually make them adopt some form of
secularism.
Equally, contributors debate the notion of "fullness": does the religious worldview permit a sort of fullness that
secularism cannot match?
Secularism is discerned "not simply as the doctrinal separation of the church and the state but the rearticulation of religion in a manner that is commensurate with modern sensibilities and modes of governance.
In order to assuage concerns about changing cultural values, argues Buruma, proponents of
secularism need to focus on the long-term cultivation of liberal-democratic principles.
Why don't the Lebanese agree on saving their poor Lebanon by taking it from the quagmire of sectarianism to the clinic of
secularism where the oxygen of liberation will enter its lungs, heart and mind?
He has also attacked what he sees as "aggressive
secularism" and the "marginalisation" of religion in society, and railed against the limitations of celebrity,
secularism and science.
DAMASCUS/BEIRUT - The Ba'thist regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is re-projecting its
secularism, saying sectarian currents in the Arab world are beginning to retreat as Muslim religious leaders are forced to preach moderation in the face of dangerous fanaticism.
Pakistan, July 10 -- We have scholars and intellectuals decrying
secularism as the root of atheism, moral decadence and spiritual crisis, while on the other hand we have thinkers and intellectuals rooting for
secularism.
