[1] In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states.
[2][3] Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites,[4] and is frequently understood to be equivalent to irreligion or anti-religion.
[5] Especially in the late 19th to mid-20th century, some Muslim thinkers advocated secularism as a way to strengthen the Islamic world in the face of Russian, British and French colonialism.
[10] A number of pre-modern polities in the Islamic world demonstrated some level of separation between religious and political authority, the loss of power of the caliphate being a major reason for that, even if they did not adhere to the modern concept of a state with no official religion or religion-based laws.
[1] Secularism has been categorized into two types, "hard" or "assertive" and "soft" or "passive"[13][14]—"hard" being irreligious, considering religion illegitimate and seeking to discourage and weaken religious faith as much as possible[13] (an example being found under Communist governments);[15] "soft" secularism emphasizes tolerance,[13] and neutrality and seeking to exclude "the state from any involvement in doctrine", and exclude "upholders of any doctrine from using the coercive powers of the state.
According to Mansoor Alam, the "common and prevalent" translation of secularism in the four main languages of Muslims—Arabic, Persian, Urdu —is ladeenia or ghair-mazhabee and mulhideen which means "without religion" or "non religious".
[1][4] (The latter term, first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century in the dictionary Muhit al-Muhit written by the Christian Lebanese scholar Butrus al-Bustani.
[4][24] According to Mansoor Alam (who dismisses "hard secularism" from consideration as a policy for Muslim governments), Quranic verses that "clearly and unambiguously" support freedom of religion by assigning to the Prophet the job of "conveying the message of Allah" to humanity rather than imposing Islam on them; and that give each person personal responsibility "for his/her own acts and deeds" are:[25] Jakir Al Faruki and Md.
[6] Ira M. Lapidus notes that religious and political power was united while the Prophet Muhammad was leading the ummah, resulting in a non-secular state.
[...] In the wide range of matters arising from the Shari'a - the Muslim law - the 'ulama' of the schools formed a local administrative and social elite whose authority was based upon religion.
[30] According to Jakir Al Faruki, secularism was found "for centuries" under the "tolerant and liberal" reign of most of the Mughal rulers[31] "in particular, Akbar's regime (1556-1605)"[32] Researcher Olivier Roy argues that "a defacto separation between political power" of sultans and emirs and religious power of the caliph was "created and institutionalized ... as early as the end of the first century of the hegira".
[35] The concept of secularism was imported along with many of the ideas of post-Enlightenment modernity from Europe into the Muslim world, namely the Middle East and North Africa.
[36] In the debate on the relationship between religion and state, (in)separability of religious and political authorities in the Islamic world or status of the Caliph, was one of the biggest issues.
He argued that nothing in Islam forbids Muslims from destroying their old political system and building a new one on the basis of the newest conceptions of the human spirit and the experience of nations.
Franz Rosenthal argued that in Abd al-Raziq "we meet for the first time a consistent, unequivocal theoretical assertion of the purely and exclusively religious character of Islam".
[48] Writing c. 2013, Mansoor Alam argues that the "plunge into bloodshed" between Shias, Sunnis and other sects in Pakistan since the mid-1980s have "made mosques, imambargahs and even cemeteries unsafe places to visit".
[...] The majority of Muslim states chose a middle ground in nation building, borrowing heavily from the West and relying on foreign advisers and Western-educated elites.
[53] Historian Bernard Lewis argues secularism developed in Europe as a reaction to bitter and devastating religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth century—a malady Islam did not suffer from.
The resurgence of Islam in politics in the most modernizing of Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Algeria and Turkey, betrayed expectations of those who believed religion should be at the margins not the center of public life.
[61][62] Mawlana Mawdudi, founder of Jamaat e-Islami, proclaimed in 1948 that those who participated in secular politics were raising the flag of revolt against God and his messenger.
"[75] Fred Halliday and others have pointed out that increasing authoritarianism has also left the mosque the only safe place in much of the Muslim world to voice political opposition.
In the 2002 elections the AKP came to power and (as of 2024) has held on to it with increasingly authoritarian methods;[102][103] eliminating the "old secularist guard" from positions of authority and replacing them with members/supporters of the AKP;[104] Islamizing education to "raise a devout generation" became government policy;[105][106] reversing the role of the governmental body established to control and limit religious affairs (Diyanet), to promote a conservative (Hanafi Sunni) version of Islam.
[107] Lebanon is a parliamentary democracy within the overall framework of Confessionalism, a form of consociationalism in which the highest offices are proportionately reserved for representatives from certain religious communities.
[108] Bourguiba modified laws regarding habous (religious endowments), secularized education and unified the legal system so that all Tunisians, regardless of religion, were subject to the state courts.
[109] Moreover, his best known legal innovations were the 'Code du Statut Personel' (CSP) the laws that govern issues related to the family: marriage, guardianship of children, inheritance and most importantly the abolishing of polygamy and making divorce subject to judicial review.
[115][116][117][118] On 1 March 2011, after the secularist dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali collapsed in the wake of the 2011 Tunisian revolution, Tunisia's interim government granted the group permission to form a political party.
In this environment, pro-secularist intellectuals like Yaqub Sarruf, Faris Nimr, Nicola Haddad who sought political asylum from Ottoman Rule were able to publish their work.
[61] The government of Gamel Abdel Nasser was secularist-nationalist in nature which at the time gathers a great deal of support both in Egypt and other Arab states.
[130] 1925–1941: Reza Shah began to make some dramatic changes to Iranian society with the specific intention of westernization and removing religion from the public sphere.
[131] 1951–1953: During the early 1950s, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was again forming a secular government with a socialist agenda with the specific aim of reducing the power held by the clergy.