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In June 2008, the Turkish Constitutional Court annulled amendments to the Constitution regarding the principle of equality and the right to education, which had been enacted by parliament in order to abolish the headscarf ban in universities. In an important and controversial decision, the Constitutional Court ruled that the amendments were unconstitutional because they infringed on the constitutional provision mandating a secular state. In this paper, the authors set forth the historical and legal background to the Turkish Constitutional Court headscarf case, review the facts and decision of the case, and analyze it. The authors accept the Constitutional Court's conclusion that parliament's amendment power is distinct from the original constituent power and therefore limited. However, the authors assert that the Constitutional Court's competence to review constitutional amendments is restricted to a procedural review. Lastly, the authors claim there was no justification for annulling the amendments because they did not infringe on the constitutionally enshrined principle of state's secularism.

This textbook is part of series on political science and focuses on political theory. Chapter titles include: Political Theory: An Introduction, Freedom, Equality, Social Justice, Rights, Citizenship, Nationalism, Secularism, Peace, and Development. Made available by the National Repository of Open Educational Resources of India.

Contemporary pluralism is best represented as a set of rival worldviews. Secularism and religion represent the dominant worldviews in our society. But moves to exclude religious views because they are based on faith are misguided since political philosophies also, and unavoidably, depend on "faith".

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's best known novelist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. I spoke with him in his beloved Istanbul just after his novel Snow—which explores the clashes and symmetries of secularism, nationalism and Islam in Turkish hearts and minds—was published in English in 2005.

This article addresses the question of women's agency in traditionalist religion, through a study of self-narratives by women in the Orthodox Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium. Women who study or work outside the boundaries of their community were interviewed about their experiences in negotiating gender ideologies by moving in and between the `secular' and `religious' spaces of higher education, work and home. Various subject positions emerged in terms of either rejecting, separating or reconciling dominant community norms regarding women's proper role with personal trajectories of self-realization and individual autonomy. On the one hand, the results confirm the possibility of women's agency within religious-traditionalist settings and in that sense subscribe to some recent feminist theoretical challenges to secularism. However, it is argued that the younger generation faces more restrictions in negotiating religious and secular gender-role expectations in the Antwerp context. Their prospects depend on the dynamic between global fundamentalist tendencies and local liberal state policies of multicultural accommodation.

Intro -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Why Secularism? -- 2. Atheists Are Not Un-American -- 3. Religion and Politics Now -- 4. Why Newt Gingrich's Abuse of Language Matters to the Defense of Secularism -- 5. History Is Not on the Side of the Angels -- 6. The Unchristian Roots of the Fourth of July -- 7. The Unchristian Nature of the US Constitution -- 8. From the Shores of Tripoli -- 9. Ten Commandments -- 10. Tolerance, Toleration, and Liberty -- 11. Secular Schooling: Public-School Policies and Curriculum Questions Affecting Religious Liberty -- 12. Holy Days and Holidays in a Secular Society -- 13. He Who Is Not with Me Is against Me -- 14. The Naked Public Square? -- 15. The Big Lie -- 16. God's Law -- 17. Blasphemy and Heresy -- 18. What in the Name of God? -- 19. Questions -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix -- Notes -- Glossary -- Selected Bibliography -- Index -- Back Cover.

Introduction. Utopia: A Political Ontology / Michael Marder and Patrícia Vieira -- PART I: Utopia Unbound 1. In Place of Utopia / Jean-Luc Nancy ; 2. Utopia, Counter-Utopia, Irony / Gianni Vattimo ; 3. From Modern Utopias to Contemporary Uchronia Alexandre Franco de Sá ; 4. Existential Utopia--Of the World, the Possible, the Finite / Michael Marder and Patrícia Vieira ; 5. Still, Encore / Márcia Cavalcante-Schuback ; 6. The Theater of Utopia: Deleuze On Acting and Politics / Cláudia Baracchi -- PART II: Putting Utopia to Work 7. Ernst Bloch, Utopia and Ideology Critique / Douglas Kellner ; 8. Secularism and Post-Secularism in Roberto Unger and Ernst Bloch: Towards a Utopian Ontology / Ruth Levitas ; 9. At the End of Utopia--Indifference / Josep Ramoneda ; 10. History, Politics, and Utopia: Towards a Synthesis of Social Theory and Practice / Laurence Davis ; 11. A Practical Utopia for the Twenty-First Century / Robert Albritton -- Notes -- Bibliography.

AbstractWhy do clergy talk with congregants about elections to a greater extent in Mozambique than Indonesia, or in the United States than Taiwan? Arguing that context shapes religious actors' micro-level incentives to discuss or avoid electoral politics, we seek to explain variation in religious politicking—religious leaders' and organizations' engagement in electoral campaigns. Our framework integrates individual-level and country-level approaches, as well as theories of modernization, secularism, and religious competition. Drawing on survey data from 24 elections in 18 democracies in the Comparative National Elections Project, we find that human development depresses religious politicking, while secularism and religious pluralism boost it. However, "civilizational" differences in levels of religious politicking are muted and inconsistent. Finally, at the individual level, across the globe, citizens with higher levels of education are consistently more likely to receive political messages. Our results suggest the insights obtained from an approach emphasizing individuals embedded in contexts.

In More Religious, Yet Still Secular? The Shifting Relationship Between the Secular and the Religious in Syria, Line Khatib takes us on a more recent journey than that of Aldoughli's narrative, and explores how secularism was in fact enriched by the very religious discourse assumed to be its antagonist. By focusing on the words and actions of various religious scholars active in recent Syrian history, Khatib documents the inclusiveness, moderation, and indeed 'secularism' of key religious scholars. She leaves us with a question, perhaps too early to be answered, on whether or not this type of religious sensibility is more representative of Syrians than that of the radical forces now fighting on the ground. In the current politicised and highly inflamed context, it is clearly too difficult to determine how deeply rooted this secular approach to Islam is amongst the majority of Muslims in Syria.

¿Es posible pensar en un léxico de los derechos a través de un imaginario jurídico que quiere alejarse de la herencia moderna? Este artículo se ocupa del tema de los conflictos jurídicos que proceden del pluralismo moral, en el ámbito del debate entre secularismo y postsecularismo. Partiendo de la revalorización del espacio de la política, la autora vuelve a interpretar algunas perspectivas elaboradas por la teoría general del derecho, que captan la raíz pluralista de las prácticas sociales. ; It is possible talk about rights in a legal imagination, that wants to separate itself from modern heritage? This paper discusses the legal conflicts that arise from moral pluralism in the debate on secularism and post-secularism. Moving from the revaluation of the space of politics, the author rethinks some perspectives of general theory of law, that capture the pluralistic root of social practices.

It is possible talk about rights in a legal imagination, that wants to separate itself from modern heritage? This paper discusses the legal conflicts that arise from moral pluralism in the debate on secularism and post-secularism. Moving from the revaluation of the space of politics, the author rethinks some perspectives of general theory of law, that capture the pluralistic root of social practices. ; ¿Es posible pensar en un léxico de los derechos a través de un imaginario jurídico que quiere alejarse de la herencia moderna? Este artículo se ocupa del tema de los conflictos jurídicos que proceden del pluralismo moral, en el ámbito del debate entre secularismo y postsecularismo. Partiendo de la revalorización del espacio de la política, la autora vuelve a interpretar algunas perspectivas elaboradas por la teoría general del derecho, que captan la raíz pluralista de las prácticas sociales.

Abstract
This article revisits the 'historical coincidence' of the process of 'depillarisation' and the institutionalisation of Islam in the Netherlands. It critically considers the established Dutch narrative of pillarisation, i.e. the organisation of the social body along confessional or sectarian lines, and the way in which this historical formation of Dutch secularism is mobilised within contemporary discussions about multiculturalism. This article further explores how depillarisation accounts figure within 'the Muslim question' in the Netherlands. While acknowledging that depillarisation is a multidimensional concept, it engages the argument that, on a structural level, Muslim claims of recognition and institutionalisation vis-à-vis the Dutch state were crucial for the process of depillarisation. The article thus reverses the suggestion that Muslims arrived 'too late' in an already depillarized society, and draws attention to the constitutive role of Muslims in the ongoing process of nation-building and secularism in the Netherlands.

ABSTRACT
Scholars have suggested the importance of integrating African democratization process with grassroots institutions for longterm consolidation. However, the major problem remained the inadequacy of secularism in disentangling the religious from the non-religious intertwined in indigenous African institutions. This essay reconsiders the Burckhardtian notion of secularism for a recalibrated definition that embraces a trajectory of transposed values. Debunking the Burckhardtian notion opens up an analytic terrain relegated to the "religious." Thus indigenous African religions are re-conceptualized as civic religions to shed light on their public aspects. The essay then identifies collective ceremonies and the attendant secular/civic rituals as the grassroots institutions "housed" in indigenous African religions. The analysis also locates the disjuncture between independent African states and the grassroots institutions at this level of collective ceremonies, perceived as "sacral" or "irrational." The objective is to harness them as African building blocks for democratic consolidation.