chapter 17

Va r ieties of
Secu l a r it y

Florian Zemmin

In 1996, Ira Lapidus pointedly summarized—­and subsequently criticized—­a widely

asserted contrast between Islamic and Western societies:

Western societies, with their inherent separation of secular and sacred, church
and state, civil and religious law, are said to have promoted an autonomous
domain of secular culture and civil society which are the bases of modernity.
Conversely, Islamic societies, lacking a differentiation of secular and sacred, have
been tied to binding religious norms, inhibiting their potential for secularization
and development. (Lapidus 1996, 3–4)

Such a contrast-­centric view still lingers on. In a sense, “Islam today has in fact
replaced Catholicism as the other of Western secular modernity” (Casanova 2008, 108).
This view is extended to Middle Eastern societies, in cases in which Islam is said to be
constitutive for them. This argument is, indeed, shared by many Muslims. In its most
trivial version, some posit an essential incompatibility of Islam and secularization (e.g.,
Tamimi 2000). While such essentialist claims are easily dismissible, they mirror claims
of secular modernity being exclusively Western—­if not in essence, then at least in its
origins.
Beyond both assumptions of secularization as a uniform process of modernization
(and Westernization) and postulates of regional or cultural particularism, the task today
is to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the varieties of secularity in our global-
ized world and their historical formations. Without discounting the normative dimen-
sions of both “religion” and “the secular,” one should note in a sober tone that both
categories have become almost global (see, e.g., Casanova 2019, esp. 5; Cady and
Hurd 2010, 20). Globalization does not, of course, amount to homogenization.
Moreover, while colonial power and Western hegemony were crucial in the process of
globalizing secularity, one must also take local actors, conditions, and precursors into
338   Florian Zemmin

account. The most comprehensive attempt at doing so is the project “Multiple

Secularities: Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” (first: Wohlrab-­Sahr and Burchardt
2012; now: Kleine and Wohlrab-­Sahr 2020). This chapter pursues and advances this task
in regard to the Middle East—­the assumptions on which it is based will best be explained
via the central concepts at stake: secularization, secularism, and secularity.
The core of secularization is structural differentiation between religion and other
social spheres. As José Casanova (1994) has argued, this sense of “secularization” has to
be disentangled from the concept’s two other main meanings, namely the decline of reli-
gious belief and the privatization of religion. Despite objections against the very concept
of “secularization,” it remains useful precisely for integrating research on processes of
differentiation between religion and its others in different societies (Gorski and
Altınordu 2008). In its core sense of structural differentiation, secularization also played
out in Middle Eastern societies, though tending to occur without a corresponding
decline in belief or privatization of religion (Krämer 2015). Major factors for bringing
about this structural secularity include legal, administrative, and educational reforms of
the centralizing state; the expansion of the global capitalist system; and the emergence
of a transnational public. This chapter focuses on the role of the state and on the relation
of religion and politics.
“Secularism” shall here designate the aim of managing religion and reducing its
immediate relevance—­mainly in politics, but also in other social spheres. The establish-
ment of the nation-­state was crucial in this regard. Secularism tends to lead to greater
differentiation but can also take the form of greater political control of religion, espe-
cially as politics and religion hold unequal power over the shaping of their relation (see
Künkler and Shankar 2018, 29). Consequently, Talal Asad’s influential view (2003), pos-
iting secularism as a form of power that reconfigures religion, remains a fruitful lens
through which to understand relations between the state and religion in the Middle
East. Colonial power influenced the formation of the nation-­state, both through direct
control and through providing institutional and ideological patterns. However, saving
that some postcolonial scholarship in Asad’s vein does so, one ought not focus too nar-
rowly on the agency of the (post-)colonial state or overemphasize alleged cultural or
religious differences (see Enayat 2017). One should also not forget that secularism is not
necessarily directed against religious belief or religious claims to truth. Still, based on
historical experience, a dominant view in Middle Eastern publics associates secularism
with authoritarian politics and perceives it as being directed against religion.
Following the coinage of “Multiple Secularities,” the concept of “secularity” is used to
grasp basic differentiations and distinctions between religion and the secular, in­de­pend­
ently of any possible adherence to secularism. This is especially relevant since opponents
of secularism, too, operate with a distinction between religion and the secular. This
framework also applies to Islamic intellectuals in Middle Eastern public spheres: they,
too, interpret the world based on the distinction, if rarely separation, between religion
and society (Schulze 2013).
The first part of the chapter will attend to differentiations, focusing on religion and
the state, using the cases of Egypt and Turkey to add a historical and societal dimension.
 Varieties of Secularity   339

The second part, on distinctions, will focus on Islamic and, to a lesser extent, Christian
intellectuals in the Arab public sphere. Both parts will briefly extend the gaze beyond
the formative period of modernity to more recent developments and to earlier differen-
tiations and distinctions. The categorical distinction and differentiation of religion and
the secular are decidedly modern. Moreover, like modernity at large, formations of sec-
ularity are informed by European hegemony, both conceptually and historically. This
chapter’s highlighting of local actors and pointing to premodern configurations follow
two aims: first, to nullify an image of religious holism, and, second, to further shift atten-
tion to the global varieties of secularity and its plural, if entangled, historical genealogies.
Speaking of “varieties of secularity,” instead of “multiple secularities,” underlines unity
on the conceptual level, as opposed to historical differences, and might help to avoid a
misunderstanding. Aziz al-­Azmeh is right in that the multiplication of secularity yields
no theoretical surplus: like any analytical concept, “secularity” still grasps different
manifestations of secularity when used in the singular; however, to appreciate local vari-
eties of secularity does not mean to succumb to a culturalist paradigm of differences
(cf. al-­Azmeh 2020, xxxiv–xxxv). Rather, it means to acknowledge—­as is also the
intention of “Multiple Secularities”—that non-­hegemonic versions of secularity are not
inferior to its hegemonic manifestation and elaboration.
Using the concept of “secularity” to bring these varieties into view reflects a particular
academic perspective, which is thereby ascertained but also enriched, complexified, and
modified. As a heuristic concept, “secularity” encompasses distinctions and differentia-
tions that actors themselves would address with different concepts altogether—­for
example, with, indeed, “Islam” (Zemmin 2019a). Employing the particular concept of
“secularity” across times, regions, and traditions reflects a wider concern of academic
knowledge production in our late modern global world: we know of the historicity and
normativity of analytical concepts but still have to work with and through them in order
to arrive at less particular, more inclusive understandings. In the long run, this ambiva-
lent process of deconstruction and reconstruction could lead to either the enforcement
or the dissolution of “secularity.”

Differentiations: Nation-­S tates

and Religion

The building of nation-­states and the drafting of constitutions form a critical juncture
for the relation of religion and the state, even though the relation of religion and politics
cannot be solely discerned from it (Künkler and Madeley 2018, 367–368). As a basic con-
figuration, with effects that continue into the present day, Islam was central to the
nation-­building projects of Arab countries in the Middle East. This was adjacent to the
institutional, constitutional, and legal levels also present in the field of education
(Cesari 2014). With the exception of confessionally organized Lebanon, all constitutions
340   Florian Zemmin

came to define Islam as the religion of the state or the country. This included Iraq under
the rule of the supposedly secular socialist Ba‘th Party, which increasingly incorporated
Islamic references into political discourse and, moreover, styled Saddam Hussein as a
prophet-­like figure (Jordan 2022). Syria, which is still ruled by the Ba‘th, has seen an
increase in the government’s use of religion in its rhetoric, since the uprisings in 2011
(Aldoughli 2020). In Tunisia, which had, since independence, followed a rather secular
politics, the Islamic party of al-­Nahda agreed on the non-­inclusion of reference to the
shari‘a in the post-­revolutionary constitution (Marzouki 2015, 201ff.). While al-­Nahda
also advocates the separation of mosque and state (Cesari 2014, 158, 189–190), mosques
do not amount to church-­like institutions. In the Middle East, rather than state and
church, the institutional relation of religious and political authority has been primarily
negotiated in the field of legislation.
While the outcomes of these negotiations vary both between countries and over time
(see ibid., passim), it is crucial to distinguish between symbolic references to Islam and
shari‘a, on the one hand, and practical effects of shari‘a-based law, on the other.
Practically, in most Arab states the realm of shari‘a-based law has come to be confined to
personal status law, while all other areas of legislation are decidedly secular, often appro-
priating French as well as Belgian, German, English, Swiss, and Italian codes (Otto 2010).
This novel codification of shari‘a can be seen as a secularizing move in itself. Notably in
Saudi Arabia, Islamic law extends beyond personal status to other fields of law, includ-
ing criminal and, despite recent adjustments, commercial and contract law. Still, even in
Saudi Arabia, political and religious authority are differentiated, while sustaining each
other in a mutually supportive, if potentially conflictual, alliance between the ruling Al
Sa‘ud and Wahhabi ‘ulama’. Morocco forms the one example in which the king repre-
sents both political and religious authority. Tellingly, this double representation does
not necessarily ensure a greater implementation of Islamic norms and was, for example,
used to improve the legal status of women (Krämer 2015, 126).
While, and perhaps because, the practical effects of Islamic law were confined, the
generic reference to shari‘a as “ ‘a’ or ‘the’ source of laws” was retained in most states
(Cesari 2014, 62) and came to be a “meta-­norm” (Salvatore 2000) for framing public
debates. In its symbolic sense, both Islamists and secularist Muslims, and sometimes even
Christians (Cesari 2014, 34), may argue for retaining the shari‘a as source of legislation.
Public debates revolve around values common to modern political order, such as democ-
racy, equality, and human rights. These values are not specifically Islamic but can also be
expressed in Islamic terms (Krämer 1999). This is also true for feminist arguments
(Badran 2009). Whether framed Islamically or otherwise, such arguments are, however,
hampered by applied norms of Islamic family law. In many Arab countries these continue
to disadvantage women, especially in cases concerning inheritance. While the largely sym-
bolic enshrinement of Islam and shari‘a in national politics underpins a range of positions,
it tends to disfavor minority views and facilitate claims demanding greater scope for Islamic
regulations. By enshrining Islam in the project of nation-­building, political elites involun-
tarily furthered oppositional trends of political Islam beyond their control. As we shall see,
this last aspect also marks the case of constitutionally and legally secularist Turkey.
 Varieties of Secularity   341

Nation-­states marked by political use of Islam nonetheless both function and are
structured according to more general principles and mechanisms of modern politics.
This also holds true in the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran: while its formulation of
an Islamic government led to almost inevitable contradictions, it transformed Shi‘ite
legal tradition more fundamentally than the modern, constitutional, and bureaucratic
state whose structures and mechanisms it took over (Arjomand 2016). To what extent
the Jewish character of the state of Israel is religious or secular is contested (Yadgar 2020).
A state functioning solely according to Islamic principles, based on the shari‘a, can be
declared “impossible” (Hallaq 2013). In fact, the very idea of Islam as a political religion
is decidedly modern (Cesari 2018). And yet, once the ideology of a political Islam is
established, integrating secular and religious aspects, it can articulate modern statehood
equally as elaborately as non-­religious ideologies. Viewed this way, “there is no opposi-
tion between the state and Islam, since the nation-­state is the major structural element
that made political Islam possible in the first place” (ibid., 2–3). The categorical differen-
tiation of religion and the secular, which also informs political Islam, is decidedly mod-
ern; yet, differentiations between worldly rulers and religious authorities also figured in
premodern societies under Muslim rule.

Historical Traces of Secularity

Countering the mistaken contrast of Western and Islamic societies quoted at the begin-
ning of this chapter, Lapidus (1996) highlighted differentiations between religious and
political authority in Islamic history. He identified several models in this regard: since
the institution of the Abbasid Caliphate, differentiation had been the norm in the large
empires under Muslim rule, with urban centers of power. While boundaries remained
contested in all cases, the Ottomans, and later Safavids, arguably aimed at greater con-
trol over religious authority than the Saljuqs, who advanced a model of cooperation. It
was, Lapidus argues, particularly tribal dynasties such as the Alawites that aimed at
integrating political and religious authority, thereby referring to the model of the
Prophet. The Alawite Dynasty still rules Morocco and, as we saw, retains the claim to
religious authority. This points to historical continuities, which the critical juncture
presented by the formation of the nation-­state transformed fundamentally but did not
overwrite fully. Lapidus’s ideal-­typical models are suggestive for modeling various
types of differentiations.
On closer inspection, these differentiations also vary according to the sources used.
An established scholarly view holds that in Muslim societies political authority was sub-
servient to religion: religious scholars were arguably able to act rather autonomously
when elaborating doctrines and norms, and the rulers acknowledged this autonomy,
thereby sustaining religion. This view, Noah Feldman (2012) argues, is based on juristic
literature. Ethical literature, in turn, conceives of a mutual dependence: “Political
authority needs religion to provide it with legitimacy, and in turn religion needs politi-
cal authority so that it can continue to exist” (ibid., 97). This view is most succinctly
342   Florian Zemmin

expressed in the image that religion (din, islam) and political authority (mulk, sultan,
devlet) are two brothers or twins. This image was appropriated from pre-­Islamic Persian
writings, and thus is not particular to Islam. Underlining this point, Neguin Yavari
(2019) pointed to commonalities in the twinning of religion and political rule in 11th-­
century Iran and 15th-­century England. The premodern mutual dependence notably
indicates both differentiation and interdependence. As such, it does not reflect the mod-
ern configuration of a secular domain independent from religion, but rather shows that
this configuration drew on earlier differentiations. This is because, while our analysis
is primarily based on conceptual distinctions, these reflected upon and were tied to
historical differentiations.
A very practical example of differentiation is that between legislation based on the
ruler’s discretion and legislation based on jurists’ law. This first manifested itself institu-
tionally when the Abbasid caliphs introduced the so-­called mazalim courts. Initially,
these courts ruled on complaints brought by commoners against members of the ruling
elite but, gradually, additional fields of competence were added (Vikør 2005, 190–195).
After several reconfigurations, siyasa, which initially referred to a ruler’s discretion,
came in modernity to denote public law. In the 20th century it was categorically distin-
guished from shari‘a, which was then codified as religious law (Masud 2018, 16ff.).
Before its modern codification, shari‘a never formed a fixed body of law, but rather con-
noted good order in a more abstract sense and, as “a loose container” (al-­Azmeh 2020,
76), nominally united various practices of norm- and lawmaking. While the jurists
(fuqaha’) were largely independent in elaborating Islamic law and ethics (fiqh), their
various elaborations opened additional space for rulers to intervene. In view of these
complexities, James Baldwin (2017, esp. 10ff., 136) considers the binary of jurists’ law ver-
sus rulers’ law misleading and instead suggests a concept of legal pluralism. Precisely
because these premodern differentiations, which also occurred outside of the field of
law, were less categorically established than modern arrangements, they are understood
as “secularity” only in a heuristic sense.
The transition from these differentiations to the firm institutionalization of secularity
in nation-­states was more complex than a simple contrasting of an Islamic past against a
European-­induced modernity would suggest. Next to illustrating this point, the case of
Egypt will now show that secularization has, as elsewhere, initially been driven by prag-
matic interests of political rule, rather than an explicit ideology of secularism.

Egypt: Accidental Secularization in the Interest of

Central, Autonomous Rule
Rather than introducing modernity, as the obsolete paradigm of “modernization as
Westernization” would have it, the main impact of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt was the
ascent to power of Mehmet ‘Ali (r. 1805–1848). Mehmet ‘Ali was a Turkish-­speaking
Albanian officer in the Ottoman army, and Egypt remained officially an Ottoman
 Varieties of Secularity   343

province until 1914. His rule was marked by the securing of power of his household
against rivals within Egypt and the attaining of autonomy from the High Porte in
Istanbul. This he achieved through institutional reforms and social engineering, which
helped create a (proto-)national society, even though his current status, being seen as
the founder of the Egyptian nation, was shaped substantially after his death. His succes-
sors strengthened these centralizing tendencies and reforms, which became increas-
ingly marked by the influence and direct control of French and, especially, English
colonial powers. Mehmet ‘Ali’s selective appropriation of European practices and
technologies was driven not by an ideology of modernization, let alone secularization,
but rather by the aim of securing his rule. To this end, military strength was key, instru-
mental to which were, in addition, medical, administrative, and legal reforms.
While not following a program of secularization, Mehmet ‘Ali’s measures neverthe-
less had secularizing effects. Thus, secularity primarily arose from historical reality and
pragmatic needs (see also Krämer 2018, 298–299; al-­Azmeh 2020, esp. 2). It was, to give a
striking example, Mehmet ‘Ali’s pragmatic attempt to create a strong army, rather than
any abstract idea of individuality and equality, that was crucial to “the birth of the ‘secu-
lar’ individual” (Fahmy 2012). Faced with the problem of identifying deserted soldiers,
identity cards proved to be the most efficient solution. In addition, the requirement to
maintain sufficient numbers of healthy soldiers was the main impetus for managing and
controlling the population. The techniques introduced to this end also had “an individ-
uating logic” (ibid., 346) in the field of law, where people were now identified—­and
identified themselves—­as autonomous subjects. This method of identification was first
employed in the governmental siyasa councils. These councils were not novel as such
(ibid., 346–347). Continuities are also visible in the Hanafization and “étatization” of
fiqh. This process of étatization, or establishment of governmental authority, which was
crucial for the formation of the early modern state, played out more systematically in the
administrative center of the Ottoman Empire but did also occur in Egypt (Baldwin 2017,
esp. 139). The novelty lay in the new means of the centralizing state to supplant shari‘a
doctrines. This did not yet follow a logic of religious versus secular law (ibid., 141) but
yielded secularizing results. After a series of centralizing and standardizing reforms,
these fully took effect in the 20th century, with shari‘a courts fully abolished in 1955,
together with Christian and Jewish communal courts (Cesari 2014, 61).
From the moment that religion is categorically configured as an object of politics,
­secularism indeed becomes “a lasting problem space” (Agrama 2012, 27–28). Viewed
this way, the individual measures of Mehmet ‘Ali, such as confiscating the waqf properties
of al-­Azhar in 1815, did not yet follow a logic of secularism but contributed to its
establishment through their secularizing effect of making religion into a particular
object (cf. Asad 2003, 207). In turn, when Nasser placed the Azhar under governmental
administration in 1961, a politics of secularism was firmly in play; and once epistemically
and institutionally established, a secular logic can be undone only with difficulty, if at all.
In this sense, as argued by Agrama (2012), the reactivation of the Islamic doctrine of
hisba by an Egyptian court in 1995 occurred within the logic, and under the interest,
of the secular state.
344   Florian Zemmin

To speak in such an abstract sense of secularism as a form of power highlights a

f­ undamental feature of the modern state but might downplay the interests of individual
actors: yes, both the Islamic government of Muhammad Mursi and Egypt’s current
president al-­Sisi have used religion in the interests of political power, but this insight
blurs their conflicting political interests and ideological convictions. It is true that espe-
cially authoritarian governments wield the power to shape particular understandings of
religion not only through law, but also through education or public media (for a display
of “good religion” in Egyptian media, see Aishima 2016, 83–108). However, actors other
than the state have also shaped the understanding and role of religion. Despite these
qualifications, there remains the central role of the nation-­state in casting religion into a
permanent and categorical object of politics.

Turkey’s Laiklik: The Control and Promotion of Religion

by a Secularist State
The centrality of the nation-­state is even more evident in the case of Turkey, which insti-
tuted secularism (laiklik) as a principle of politics more comprehensively and explicitly
than any other country in the region, inviting reflection on what this “secularism”
implies. Despite similarities with the French model of laicité, from which the Turkish
term laiklik is derived (Azak 2010, 7–8), the Turkish state aims more comprehensively at
controlling, and promoting, religion. Indeed, in enshrining Islam in the national proj-
ect, the secularist Turkish Republic shows marked similarities with the Arab countries
of the region. To make this point, we shall focus on the Turkish Republic and bracket out
earlier processes of modern state-­building involving secularization. Despite continu-
ities with the Ottoman Empire, the early years of the Turkish Republic constituted a crit-
ical juncture, spanning the period from its foundation in 1923 until 1937, when the
principle of laiklik was added to the constitution (Kuru 2009, 216–226). Going far
beyond constitutional reforms, nationalizing—­and, indeed, westernizing—­measures
included the call for prayer being in Turkish instead of Arabic (Azak 2010, 45–60), the
switch from the Arabic to the Latin alphabet, and the replacement of the turban with the
hat in public spaces. This was an elitist project of nationalization, modernization, and
homogenization.
Laiklik denotes a guiding principle of this project, the lasting spirit and practical
effects of which may be illustrated by a decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court
from 1989. The previous year, the parliament had passed a law permitting students to
wear the veil on campus. The court invalidated this law, arguing that secularism
demanded the exclusion of religious symbols from the public sphere:

According to the Court, secularism: “sped up the [Turkish] march toward civiliza-
tion. In fact, secularism cannot be narrowed down to the separation of religion and
state affairs. It is a milieu of civilization, freedom and modernity, whose dimensions
are broader and whose scope is larger. It is Turkey’s philosophy of modernization, its
 Varieties of Secularity   345

method of living humanly. It is the ideal of humanity. . . . The dominant and effective
power in the state is reason and science, not religious rules and injunctions.”
(Bâli 2018, 250)

The court alluding to “the separation of religion and state affairs” might be under-
stood as referring to an “ideal meta-­state” (Dressler 2010, 124–125). In practice, the com-
prehensive principle of laiklik adduced by the court here, as in other decisions (see
Kuru 2009, 173–174), primarily serves the purpose of comprehensive control of religion
by the state.
The control of religion is so constitutive that it can be identified as Turkey’s own
model of secularism, complementing the American and French models, which exem-
plify freedom of religion and freedom from religion, respectively (Yavuz 2009, esp. 146).
Operating with the two ideal types of “assertive” and “passive secularism,” Kuru (2009)
has suggested that the Turkish and French cases both represent the assertive type,
whereas the United States epitomizes the ideal type of a passive secularism, held by Kuru
to be preferable, that allows for the public visibility and expression of religion. Indeed,
like the French Republic, the Turkish Republic disestablished religious institutions of
the ancien régime and aimed at secularizing the public sphere. In the Turkish case, how-
ever, the exclusion of “bad religion” from the public sphere went along with configuring
a “good” religion in the service of the nation-­state. Further rendering problematic a view
that contrasts Islam and secularity, the Kemalist secularists themselves promoted their
vision of a “pure,” reasonable, modern, secular Turkish Islam (Azak 2010, esp. 14).
The more common link between national and religious homogenization thus was
especially strong in the case of Turkey. “The production of a homogenous ethno-­
national identity to consolidate the loyalties of the population built into the concept of
‘Turkishness’ a secularized sunni (Hanafi) identity” (Bâli 2018, 239). Not only were
religious actors involved in the process of Hanafization, but the project of secularism
also was partially argued on grounds internal to the Islamic tradition (see also
Silverstein 2011). Insofar as the secularist state took up and redefined theological con-
cepts, one may even identify “a theological argument at the core of Turkish laicism”
(Dressler 2010, 128). Moreover, the metaphysical foundations of Kemalism align with
the stylization of Atatürk as a charismatic leader (Azak 2010, 17). Institutionally, the
Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), created in 1924, is central to promoting an
Islam serving the state. Itself favoring, and even partially resting on, a particular version
of religion, the homogenizing secularist state was thus not founded against religion as
such, but rather against public usages of (“bad”) religion outside the purview of state
control.
The attempt at homogenization has never been fully successful, of course, but repeat-
edly encounters both demands toward diversification and rival attempts to shape the
public sphere in another direction. While there have long been diverse understandings
of secularism, as well as different trends within Islamism, Islamists have, in general,
formed the most influential and visible opposition to the Kemalist project. This reflects
the fact that, as in Arab countries, the political construction of a “hegemonic Islam”
346   Florian Zemmin

(Cesari 2014, 8–12) furthered an Islamic opposition that equally operates in a nationalist
framework. In Turkey, this opposition goes back to the introduction of a multiparty
system in 1946 (ibid., 155). However, it has mainly been since the 1980s that Islamic
practices asserted themselves increasingly in the public sphere. The headscarf has been
the most pertinent symbol linking constitutional arrangements, ideological convictions,
and the shaping of the public sphere. In this sense, attitudes toward body and propriety
of dress perform a key function in different Kemalist and Islamist visions, differences
which could also be seen in their conceptions of space and time (Çinar 2006).
With the success of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) under Erdoǧan, power rela-
tions have shifted and “the erstwhile excluded periphery now controls the center”
(Bâli 2018, 260). Contrary to earlier signs and hopes of the AKP effectively combining
Islam, secularism, and democracy (Yavuz 2009; Çinar 2006, 12–13, 175–176), this has
instead produced an equally assertive and exclusive Islamizing version of authoritarian
politics. This politics is, however, evidently also being challenged. In a decidedly opti-
mistic scenario, the recurrent contestations of authoritarian rule and negotiations of the
meaning of laiklik, now under novel configurations of power, may yet produce a more
democratically inclusive arrangement after all (Bâli 2018, 257–260).

Authoritarian Politics, Public Islamic Morality,

and Individual Belief
In Turkey, as elsewhere in the region, authoritarianism comes in both overtly Islamic
and secular versions, as do calls for greater diversity and democratization. I stress
“overtly” to recall the factual primacy of the principles and mechanisms of modern poli-
tics, present in their Islamic variants too, as well as to restate the possible use of religious
references and arguments, including by secularist regimes. The shifting attraction of
overtly Islamic and secular politics seems to depend not least on the experiences of such
politics as impacting either positively or negatively upon material living conditions and
as either advancing or hampering one’s ideational expectations of a good, meaningful
life. Beyond that, when secular politics are continuously experienced as unjust and
oppressive, Islamic politics might seem to be not only a better alternative, but rather the
solution to an inherently false secular outlook. In turn, the corruption of, and oppres-
sion by, Islamic governments not only further a disillusionment with Islamic politics but
can even contribute to questioning religion as such. The latter phenomenon is most
strong in the Islamic Republic of Iran (see Hashemi 2018; Maleki and Arab 2020) but
seems in recent years to have also taken hold in Arab societies in which either political
Islam has failed or Islam has been instrumentalized by secular authoritarian rule (see
Arab Barometer, as a general source).
While it remains to be seen whether this will result in a longer-­term trend of decline
in religious belief, there certainly is a trend toward the individualization of religion in
Middle Eastern societies, too. In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor (2007) suggested religious
 Varieties of Secularity   347

belief ’s becoming optional to be the defining characteristic of Western secularity, not

least in supposed contrast to “the majority of Muslim societies” (ibid., 3). Indeed, reli-
gious identification is legally compulsory in most Middle Eastern societies, and public
morality is closely associated with a hegemonic version of Islam. Yet, while belief, too, is
hegemonic, whether, and especially how, to believe is, in an important sense, optional.
The legal obligation to identify as religious does not necessarily correlate with belief.
Nonetheless, combined with a hegemonic public Islamic morality, and in some cases
with the belonging to a religious community, this obligation makes it more difficult to
openly pronounce unbelief (cf. Cesari 2014, 116–117; Künkler and Madeley 2018, 351,
379). Clearly, there are various and diverse forms of belief, which are also perceived as
distinct (or, in some cases, even as not believing anymore). The spectrum is vast, and to
give a finite number of concrete examples would only suggest otherwise. Digitization
and social media, while obviously part of more general global trends, seem to play an
especially important role in societies with restricted means of public expression, in
enhancing trends toward individualization, including in regard to religious belief.
Moreover, as members of structurally differentiated societies, believers, too, operate
with secular codes and share in secular practices. Ultra-­orthodox Jews might come the
closest to being an exception to this, even though they, too, are situated within a secular
environment. With regard to Muslims, the literature has highlighted basic commonali-
ties of human life, refuting the image of Muslim exceptionalism and Islam as a compre-
hensive way of life. “Ordinary Muslims” and “everyday Islam” have even become a new
trend in research. While some effects of this trend can be viewed critically (Fadil and
Fernando 2015), its basic impetus and argument remain important: religious and secu-
lar, as well as religiously indifferent, aspects together constitute and partially intersect in
the practices, ideas, experiences, and expectations of believers. The practices of believ-
ing Muslims do not solely evolve from the Islamic discursive tradition, but rather stem
from references to Islam as a “grand scheme,” as well as to other grand schemes, includ-
ing capitalist consumption and romantic love (Schielke 2010). This complexity “in real
life” is worth keeping in mind as we now turn to intellectual conceptions of secularity.

Distinctions: Coming to Terms

with Secularity

An Islamic society might be formulated, by its proponents, via setting it in contrast to

secular societies. Yet, these proponents, too, operate with the basic, co-­constitutive cat-
egories of religion and society, even when arguing for their integration. This is due, first,
to reflecting upon structural conditions of secularity, and, second, to engaging with
hegemonic conceptions of secularity. Both aspects have led to the categorical distinction
between religion and society within the Arab public since the second half of the
19th century. The resultant varieties of secularity include arguments both for greater
348   Florian Zemmin

disconnection or separation of religion and the secular (i.e., secularist arguments) and
for greater connection or integration. Islamic varieties of secularity might complicate a
binary understanding of secularity more intuitively than other varieties. Yet, in doing so,
Islam yields a heuristic function for the broader reconsideration of secularity, as is
increasingly acknowledged by European sociologists, too (e.g., Witte 2021).

Christian Intellectuals, Early Secularist Ideas,

and Arab Nationalism
Butrus al-­Bustani (1819–1883), the Syro-­Lebanese Christian intellectual, became the first
to prominently argue for separating religious and political authority, writing in 1860, in
view of the sectarian civil war in Mount Lebanon (al-­Bustani 2019; Magout 2019, 5–6).
Al-­Bustani used the term watan to conceptualize and promote a supra-­confessional,
secular polity. This usage was similar to the employment of vatan in the Gülhane Reform
Edict from 1839 (Hanssen in al-­Bustani 2019, 55). The slogan that “love of the homeland
is an act of faith” was likewise popularized by both Arab and Turkish reformists in the
second half of the 19th century. Al-­Bustani probably appropriated it from the Egyptian
Muslim scholar Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-­Tahtawi (1801–1873), along with the programmatic title of
wataniyyat, to label his anti-­sectarian pamphlets (ibid., 56). The secular implications of
watan became ever clearer in the later, nationalist call that “religion belongs to God, the
nation (al-­watan) to all,” used prominently by the later short-­lived Syrian (r. 1920) and
then Iraqi (r. 1921–1933) King Faysal in 1919 (al-­Azmeh 2020, 372) and the Egyptian
nationalist Sa‘d Zaghlul in the same year (Salama and Friedman 2012, 108). While
­al-­Bustani’s promotion of watan thus contributed to nationalist ideas (Hanssen in
­al-­Bustani 2019, 53–54), he, like most other early secularists, did not demand separation
from the Ottoman Empire, but instead envisioned a supra-­confessional Greater Syria
within the empire (al-­Azmeh 2020, 415; Magout 2019, 4–5).
While the link between secularism and nationalism can be defended to some extent,
the supposition of a link between secularism and Christianity in the Arab world stands
on much weaker grounds. The need to stress this point comes as a result of works that
wrongly attribute Arab Christians’ secular views to an asserted inherent secularity of
Christianity, while maintaining that Arab Muslims could only be secular against Islam
(cf. Yared 2002). True, the first prominent Arab proponents of not only a secular polity
but also modern secular sciences were Christian by denomination: Butrus al-­Bustani
founded the first private non-­confessional school in 1863 (Magout 2019, 5n17; cf. al-­
Azmeh 2020, 103–104), Darwinian ideas were first openly promoted by graduates of the
Syrian Protestant College in Beirut in the 1880s, and the Syro-­Lebanese press, run
largely by Christians, indeed played a central role in the early articulation of secularity
and secularism in the wider Arab world (Magout 2019). However, rather than particular
Christian doctrines, the early promotion of non-­confessional secular political ideas can
instead more accurately be attributed to a power struggle between a new Christian mid-
dle class and the clergy (ibid., 4). The most vocal opposition to Darwinian thought, too,
 Varieties of Secularity   349

first came from within Christian circles, whereas most Muslim reformists viewed it
rather unproblematically (al-­Azmeh 2020, 233). While the embracing of secular thought
and practice did not primarily depend on religious background, the increasing identifi-
cation of the secular as Western (and non-­Islamic) made it harder to advocate in Arab
(and Islamic) publics.

Declared Secularists
The explicit advocation of secularism remained rare in Arab publics. As Paul Salem (this
volume) points out, “[s]ecularism was hardly ever able to raise its own banner but had to
travel under the banner of nationalism (pan-­Arab or local), socialism, or liberalism.”
Leaving aside the extent to which this is also true for European societies, what could
such a banner have stated? The concept of dahriyya was the first used to grasp a compre-
hensive secularist outlook, in the 19th century (al-­Azmeh 2020, 231ff.). Derived from the
Qur’anic term dahr, indicating a purely this-­worldly time, dahriyya was closely associated
with materialism and atheism and as such ill-­suited to serve as a self-­designation. To
openly declare oneself an atheist remained rare in the 20th century (ibid., 289–290).
The Arabic term directly rendering “secular” is ‘almani, which originally referred to
­laypeople living outside Christian monasteries. In the late 19th century, ‘almani was
popularized to designate worldly, secular affairs more broadly, probably first in refer-
ence to schools and education.
The perception of a link between science and “secularism” is evident in one of the lat-
ter term’s two Arabic renderings, which differ only in their vocalization of the first letter.
While the form ‘almaniyya, highlighting reference to this world (al-‘alam), is etymologi-
cally more plausible, the use of ‘ilmaniyya remains popular and directly indicates the
association of secularism with science (al-‘ilm). In both versions, secularism was pre-
dominantly perceived as being directed against religion. Countering this wholesale
rejection, al-­Messiri (2002) introduced a distinction between two types of ‘almaniyya,
rejecting an all-­inclusive, ideological type of secularism but commending a partial
type that grants autonomy to religion. Still more recently, the concept of al-­Muslim
­al-‘almani, secular Muslim, has entered public use, breaking up the supposed contrast
between being Muslim and being secular. Since to many, however, ‘almani retains its
negative connotations as “areligious” or “antireligious,” it is predominantly other terms
that continue to be used to conceptualize the secular. In the political sphere, the most
prominent of these is madani (literally, “civil”).
Though overt advocacy of secularism remained marginal, this did not, however,
mean the absence of secular positions and practices. To the contrary, secular culture
marked Arab publics from the 1920s to the 1970s, at least in the urban centers (Salem,
this volume; al-­Azmeh 2020, 353–384). The carriers of this culture were not necessarily
less religious and partially even did not see their practices as particularly secular. Often,
these practices were only marked as being so by proponents of a cultural and political
Islam, which publicly asserted itself from the 1980s on. For example, literature is an
350   Florian Zemmin

important, and seemingly uncontroversial, form for expressing the secular without nec-
essarily naming it as such. Yet, as a result of religious criticism, even certain poetic
meters can come to be marked as heretical (Schielke 2019).

Secularism and Secularity in Islamic Reformism

The Azhari scholar ‘Ali ‘Abd al-­Raziq (1887/8–1966) is conventionally credited with
having formulated the first Islamic argument for secularism in Arabic. In his book al-­
Islam wa-­Usul al-­Hukm (Islam and the Foundations of Rule) from 1925, the Azhari
scholar argued that the prophet Muhammad essentially brought a purely religious
message and that both the Qur’an and the Sunna remain silent on the question of gov-
ernance. Islam, he stressed, is a religion (din), not a state (dawla). Hence, Muslims are
free to deliberate on the form of government that best suits their interests. In this age,
‘Abd al-­Raziq implicitly suggests, this can only be a parliamentary democracy (see
Ali 2009). ‘Abd al-­Raziq’s argument was of practical political relevance, as it intervened
in debates on whether to resurrect the caliphate in some form, this having been abol-
ished in Turkey in 1924. Upon publication of this book, the Azhar dismissed ‘Abd al-­
Raziq from his position as a shari‘a judge.
Among the fiercest public critics of ‘Abd al-­Raziq was Rashid Rida (1865–1935), editor
of the journal al-­Manar, the influential mouthpiece of Islamic reformism. In his own
book al-­Khilafa aw al-­Imama al-‘Uzma (The Caliphate or the Great Imamate), Rida
(1923) demanded the continuation of the caliphate as the Islamic form of government,
albeit conceiving of a modernized version thereof. Beyond his conception of the caliph-
ate, Rida shared basic secular premises. The integration of a societal perspective on reli-
gion with a religious perspective on society is in fact constitutive of Islamic reformism:
its protagonists simultaneously demanded the reform of religion, from the perspective
of the requirements of modern society, and the reform of society, from the perspective
of religion. By doing so, they attempted to transform Islam into a modern, societal reli-
gion and, simultaneously, to transform society into an Islamic one. In this process, Islam
came to refer to both secular and religious aspects. Moreover, both a secular and a reli-
gious perspective were elaborated from within the Islamic discursive tradition. On this
basis, Islamic reformists were able to shift between a religious and a secular perspective
and to loosen or tighten the connection between religious and secular aspects within an
Islamic framework (Zemmin 2019a).
Rafiq al-‘Azm (1865–1925) exemplifies the basic possibility of loosening this connec-
tion. It was in Rida’s own journal in 1904 that al-‘Azm made the argument for separating
religion from politics, for which Rida attacked ‘Abd al-­Raziq 20 years later. Al-‘Azm
identified the mixing of politics with religion (mazj al-­siyasa bi-­l-­din) as the basic cause
of the perceived backwardness of Muslim countries. In arguing for the separation of
religion and secular politics and for a democratic government, al-‘Azm distinguished
between a religious and a worldly part of the shari‘a. Like other reformists, he moreover
made use of the conceptual distinction between din and dunya, religion and the
 Varieties of Secularity   351

world, and between ‘ibadat and mu‘amalat, religious practices and social matters,
to conceptualize secularity. These and other distinctions within the shari‘a continued
to be perpetuated in Islamic political thought after the Second World War (Krämer
1999, 54–65), while the exact drawing of boundaries and connections remains
­contested. Already in 1904, al-‘Azm’s argument was challenged in al-­Manar, on the basis
of his ­conceptual distinction within Islam; and al-‘Azm himself restated his argument
for a democratic government, in an article published posthumously, by validating it as
an “Islamic government” (Zemmin 2019b).
The reformists’ factual integration of secularity in an Islamic framework facilitated
the elaboration of a comprehensive vision of Islam, covering all spheres of life. Claims of
Islam being a self-­sufficient system mirrored claims of secular self-­sufficiency. Islamist
and secularist ideologies are even co-­constitutive, insofar as they push each other to
greater coherence and comprehensiveness, by denying that any aspect of modern soci-
ety falls outside their purview. The Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) rigidly
opposed both Islamic and non-­Islamic societies, on the basis that there was no need for
any secular aspect in Islam. Yet, he could only make this claim, and thus fully counter-
pose the secular with Islam (Salama and Friedman 2012), because the secular had previ-
ously been integrated into modern Islamic thought. On the basis of this integration,
arguments for distinctions are notably equally possible. Thus, while the famous modern
slogan of Islam being religion and state (al-­islam din wa-­dawla) refutes a secularist sepa-
ration of religion and politics, it sustains a distinction, rather than a fusion, of both
spheres. By the 1990s, there was almost a consensus among Sunni political thinkers
in locating the political order in the flexible, rather than the fixed, domain of Islamic
principles (Krämer 1999, 67–68).

The Islamic Secular and Religious Secularity

A more recent trend of Muslim scholars explicitly locates the secular in Islam. For
instance, Sherman Jackson (2018, 11) defines “the Islamic secular” as follows: “that for
concrete knowledge of which one can rely neither upon the scriptural sources of Sharia
nor their proper extension via the tools enshrined by Islamic legal methodology (usul
al-­fiqh)” (italicization and transliteration adjusted). Rather than responding to an exter-
nal secularist regime, the shari‘a arguably delimited itself by acknowledging a realm of
human conduct beyond its immediate purview. Jackson stresses that this realm of the
Islamic secular remains very much part of the Islamic religion. Leaving aside to what
extent this argument is theologically and historically convincing, two related points are
of interest to us here: first, this explicit conception of “the Islamic secular” underlines
the Islamic reformists’ implicit conceptualizations of secularity in the formative period
of modernity. After all, the latter also categorically distinguished between a realm of
fixed norms and a realm of flexible principles within Islam. Second, to explicitly formu-
late an Islamic variety of the secular speaks of the firm establishment of secularity, which
prompts variations from within different traditions.
352   Florian Zemmin

This is also evident in recent explicit Islamic conceptions of secularity as a political

principle. The Iranian context yields the most vivid and elaborate discussions in this
regard. The failures of the Islamic Republic produced resistance to religious rule among
the populace. On an intellectual level, the failures and contradictions of the Islamic
regime prompted the search for alternatives among clerics and religious scholars. A
dominant trend perceives religion as being corrupted when put in the service of the
state. Religion, they maintain, is an individualistic experience, only realizable under
conditions of secularity. Such propositions of a “religious secularity” go back to a series
of articles by Abdelkarim Soroush in 1989 and have since grown into a vivid discourse
among Iranian Shi‘ite scholars (Ghobadzadeh 2015). The Sudanese-­American scholar
‘Abdullah an-­Na‘im (2009) has made a similarly principled argument for a secular state
on religious grounds, emphatically stressing: “I need a secular state to be a Muslim”
(ibid., 282).

Secularity in Islamic Tradition

Viewed sociologically, it is primarily the structural developments and conditions of
modern society that produce secularity and make it an issue of eminent and even
unavoidable concern. The varieties of secularity elaborated under this concern, how-
ever, are elaborated through appropriation of premodern distinctions. Modern varieties
of secularity are thereby sustained from within various traditions. Whether the appro-
priation of premodern distinctions evolves into an elaborate narrative of secularization
hinges on whether secularity today is viewed as internal or external to a particular tradi-
tion. In this regard, Protestant narratives seem to have been primary and have been
joined rather recently by Catholic ones (e.g., Taylor 2007). The current explicit embrace
of secularity by Islamic intellectuals might yet further the establishment of such a narra-
tive from within Islamic traditions. For now, we are mainly left with potential building
blocks of such a narrative (i.e., traces of premodern distinctions).
Rushain Abbasi (2020) attended to the most pertinent conceptual pair in this regard,
the distinction between din and dunya, religion and the world. While the decidedly
modern vantage point from which he relates this distinction to modern secularity could
be made clearer, Abbasi drives home the point that premodern distinctions never
amount to a categorical separation of religion and the secular. Further, he nullifies any
image of a past religious holism. Comparison between modern and premodern contexts
may also focus on the function, rather than the contents, of guiding principles such as
secularity. In this manner, Mahmoud Bassiouni (2014) showed how the function of
human rights in preventing arbitrary rule was pursued and articulated in classical
Islamic legal and philosophical literature, via the concept of maqasid (aims of the
shari‘a). Avoiding the categorical primacy of modern secularity, while accounting for
its eventual establishment, Armando Salvatore (2019) intriguingly suggested the “soft
distinction” between adab and shari‘a being central in “the Islamic ecumene.” Under
the modern pressure for unambiguity and colonial claims to an autonomous secular
 Varieties of Secularity   353

civility, adab was arguably reworked into an autochthonous, soft expression of the secu-
lar, which grew out of “Islamicate civilization.”
To designate these earlier distinctions as “secularity” is not to project the particularly
modern binary backward into history, but rather to underline that the formation of this
binary intersected with earlier distinctions in complex and sometimes conflictual ways,
drawing upon, transforming, and eventually often overwriting them, but rarely fully
replacing them. These historical complexities, then, contributed to the varieties of con-
ceptions of secularity in global modernity.

Acknowledgments
For their most helpful comments on an earlier version of this text, I wish to thank Johannes
Duschka, Magnus Echtler, Christoph Kleine, Mohammad Magout, Monika Wohlrab-­Sahr,
Hubert Seiwert, Yasemin Ural and, especially, Wolfgang Höpken and Gudrun Krämer.

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