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Introduction. Religious Nationalism as a Consequence of Secularism
- University of Michigan Press
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Introduction Religious Nationalism as a Consequence of Secularism alev çinar, srirupa roy, and maha yahya Over the past two decades secular polities across the globe have witnessed an increasing turn to religion-based political movements, such as the rise of political Islam and Hindu nationalism, which have been fueling new and alternative notions of nationhood and national ideologies. The rise of such movements has initiated widespread debates over the meaning, ef‹cacy, and normative worth of secularism. This new debate forces us to reconsider prevailing notions of secularism and to investigate the unique ways in which it has been institutionalized in different political, historical, and cultural contexts such as those of India, Turkey, Lebanon, or Egypt. A closer analysis reveals that these variable features of secularism stem from the different ways in which religion has played a role in these societies. In other words, we start with the premise that secularism cannot be adequately understood without due regard to its relation to religion. Accordingly, the essays in this collection examine the constitutive role of religion in the formation of secular-national public spheres in the Middle East and South Asia. Since secularism has been interpreted and institutionalized in unique ways in diverse contexts, we ‹nd it necessary to investigate secularism not as an abstract concept but as an ideological principle that has acquired quite distinctive and sometimes contrary meanings in practice in various contexts. Such an approach demands a reconceptualization of secularism as an array of contextually speci‹c practices, ideologies, subjectivities, and “performances” rather than as simply an abstract legal bundle of rights and policies. For this reason the aim of this collection is to compare and examine the speci‹c ways in which secularism is negotiated and experienced in practice in different local contexts. Hence, rather than seeking to draw generalizations and abstract conceptualizations of secularism, we seek to highlight the unique and particular ways in which secularism has been institutionalized in relation to religion in disparate circumstances. This insistence on studying secularism as practice, not only in the political realm but also in the context of daily life, led us to divert our methodological focus on the public sphere understood as a visually constituted ‹eld of performances and negotiations. We address these issues through a collaborative and comparative analysis of the formation and transformation of the public spheres in these countries, understood in terms of material practices and visual ‹elds rather than as abstract and disembodied entities. Speci‹cally, we examine three such ‹elds—urban space and architecture, media, and public rituals such as parades, processions, and commemorative festivals—with a view to exploring how the relation between secularism, religion, and nationalism is displayed and performed. We also investigate how public enactments of the religious-secular relationship change over time as contending national projects with alternative visions of this relationship gain social and political prominence. Secularism and Religious Nationalism Secularism is a topic that is more typically studied and debated by political theorists rather than by comparativists.1 This is because it is treated as an idea rooted in the ideals of the Enlightenment and therefore understood most readily as a universal principle that goes along with other ideals such as democracy or liberalism. Even then, it is usually treated as one of the constituent elements of modernity and seldom studied as an idea in its own right. Only more recently, probably due to the same reasons that motivated this book, have there been increasing debates and publication focusing on secularism in its own right. For example, in a comprehensive study of the debate on secularism in India, Rajeev Bhargava has brought together some of the key ‹gures that take part in the discussion on secularism.2 Focusing on the debate “between those who defend secularism and those deeply critical of it,”3 this volume brings into debate political philosophers, who tend to be more interested in debating secularism as an epistemic category 2 ✦ visualizing secularism and religion [3.239.208.72] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 05:36 GMT) and/or a political doctrine, and social scientists, who are more inclined to investigate secularism as an ideological principle that constitutes the basis of political institutions and policies. Nevertheless, both groups share a common normative interest in the issue involving questions such as the extent to which the state needs to be, and can be, secular; how secularist policies can be implemented without compromising democracy; or the extent to which there should be parity between different religious...