Theocracy and Secularization

Abstract

Saudi is not a secular society, but it is partly capitalist. The spirit of modern capitalism is secular, and indeed secularization has gone hand-in-hand with capitalism. Secularization theory (A Conversation with Peter L. Berger “How My Views Have Changed” Gregor Thuswaldner. http://thecresset.org/2014/Lent/Thuswaldner_L14.html) is a term that was used in the 1950s and 1960s by a number of social scientists and historians to describe social and economic change, and diagnosed that modernity inevitably produces a decline of religion. If we take this point seriously, then we can perhaps understand the resistance from within Islam and Saudi toward aspects of modern capitalism. If the product is secularization, then the inevitability is social change, and for many believers the damaging of Islam and the Saudi way of life. As discussed in the previous chapter, Islam is not anti-economic or anti-capitalism as such, but there is much in the modern form of capitalism that is of concern and is also the basis of much anti-Americanism. When some Christians express fear that Islam is a threat to their faith, they might want to reflect on the argument that in some respects Christianity has been much more “damaged” by American capitalism and secularization than it has by Islam. In the secular west, capitalism has generated a consumer culture which holds up a mirror to society. The easy availability and disposability of goods has impacted values, while social media and communications have distracted society. There is a greater materialist culture, though no shortage of spiritual ideas and pursuits, many produced by the materialist state of affairs. It seems that the richer a society gets the more spiritually impoverished it is; but this need not be the case. It is hard to see how western society can reverse this trend, if indeed it should, but Saudi as an Islamic country has the potential to show how a society can evolve in a spiritual way and at the same time be economically successful. The question is one of whether economic development and success is necessarily secular and needs a secular spirit. To understand this, we need to look at what we mean by the term secular.