Manifestations of the Religious-Secular Divide: Self, State, and the Public Sphere

Abstract

My aim in this chapter is to present a succinct mental mapping of the changes, shifts, and displacements that are currently taking place in our ways of approaching the secular-religious divide. I propose an analysis and selective reassessment of the changes that have occurred during the last three decades in our approaches to secularism. Due to our ongoing conversations across cultures and disciplines, there is an increasing awareness in the social sciences that there is not one ideal-model of secularism, whether it is defined by the Anglo-Saxon liberal model or by French political “laïcité.” Rather there exists a plurality of secularisms in different national, cultural, and religious contexts, including non-Western secularisms, as, for example, in India and Turkey. The point of departure of this book is the necessity of decoupling secularism and Western experience and acknowledging the plurality of secularisms. It aims to foster a comparative gaze between different genealogies, historical trajectories, cultural habitations, and political formations of the secular. Not only the plurality of secularisms that supposes distinct national formations but also the cultural crossings and the interconnected histories of secularism need to be highlighted to understand today’s religious-secular formations and their confrontations.