Secularism

The term secularism was coined at the time of the European Enlightenment to demarcate aspects of society that are separate from religion. Currently, it is used in several different senses. It is a word that refers to (a) secular humanism and atheism, occasionally to (b) the social process of secularization, and finally to (c) a political state-driven project seeking the separation of state and religion. This entry is concerned solely with the third sense, with political secularism.

Broadly speaking, political secularism, anywhere in the world, means a separation of organized religion from organized political power inspired by a specific set of values. In this general sense, secularism is a universal normative doctrine. It does not follow, however, that it comes in one form for all conditions; its constitutive elements can be differently interpreted, thus giving rise to multiple secularisms.

In the mid-20th century, most political observers regarded European-style secularism to be normative for human societies around the world and assumed that it would become the prevailing global ideology of the century. By the end of the 20th century, however, secular states and their underlying ideology, secularism, appeared to be under siege everywhere. They were severely jolted with the establishment of the first modern theocracy in 1979 in Iran. By the late 1980s, Islamic political movements had emerged in Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Chad, Senegal, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Such challenge was hardly restricted to Muslim societies. Protestant movements decrying secularism emerged in Kenya, Guatemala, and the Philippines. Antisecular, Protestant fundamentalism became a force in U.S. politics. Singhalese Buddhist nationalists in Sri Lanka, Hindu nationalists in India, religious ultra-orthodoxy in Israel, and Sikh nationalists in the state of Punjab in India, as well as among diasporic communities in Canada and Britain, began to seriously question secularism.

Even the largely secular-humanist ethos of western Europe did not remain untouched by this public challenge. The migration from former colonies and an intensified globalization has thrown together on Western public spaces pre-Christian faiths, Christianity, and Islam. The cumulative result is unprecedented religious diversity; the weakening of public monopoly of single religions; the generation of mutual suspicion, distrust, hostility, and conflict; and much rethinking on secularism. This is evident in Germany, Italy, and Britain but was dramatically highlighted by the hijab (headscarf) issue in France and Belgium, the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands shortly after the release of his controversial film about Islamic culture, and the controversy over minarets in Switzerland.