The financial markets in Turkey provide a laboratory to help resolve these competing views. Islamic law or Sharia contains a number of proscriptions that directly affect financial practices. The payment and receipt of interest is prohibited; so are most kinds of commercial insurance. These interpretations provided the impetus in the Islamic world for the creation of a class of banks that sought to offer Sharia compliant services. The first Islamic Banks in Turkey began operations in the 1980s. Their entry was initially tepid, in no small part because of secularist principles. Islamic financial institutions could not overtly advertise their religious orientation. The country had no "Islamic" banks, only finance houses. They were not Sharia compliant but "interest-free." Moreover, the government left them in an uncertain regulatory status and subjected them to restrictions on growth. In this environment, the Islamic banks remained a peripheral part of the financial system. With the election of the AKP in 2002, however, the environment for Islamic banks in Turkey changed. Limitations on branch networks and capital raising were lifted. The government removed restrictions on the issuance of Sharia compliant bonds. Officials from the Islamic banks were appointed to the highest levels of government. This Article does several things. First, it examines principles of Islam that affect banking practices, with a particular emphasis on deposit insurance and credit cards. Second, the Article discusses the emergence of secularism in Turkey and the introduction of Islamic banks into the Turkish financial markets. The Article then examine their evolution, with particular emphasis on the changes implemented by the AKP. Finally, the Article examines the impact of these reforms, and what that impact says about Islamic influence in Turkey.
The secular interpretation of Kant is widespread and Kant is viewed as the most prestigious founding father of liberal secularism. At the same time, however, commentators note that Kant's position on secularism is in fact much more complex, and some go as far as to talk about an ambiguous secularism in his work. This paper defends a refined version of the secular interpretation. According to this refined version, Kant can offer a limited, political secularism on the basis of a simple argument which focuses on the distinct epistemic statuses of political and religious claims; however, the paper argues, a more general secularism is unwarranted on the basis of the same argument. If my argument is correct, then it will account at least in part for the plurality of interpretations. Moreover, any further attempt to show that Kant's relation to secularism is ambiguous or dismissive should take into consideration the argument from epistemic grounds presented here
La laïcité est une condition nécessaire, sinon suffisante, à l'exercice des droitshumains fondamentaux des femmes. Elle est également une condition nécessaire à l'exercice de la démocratie, selon laquelle les lois sont votées par le peuple et amendables de part la volonté du peuple, et non figées pour toujours selon des décrets supposés divins interprétés par des humains le plussouvent réactionnaires. La politique communautariste d'une partie de l'Europe se fonde sur une re-definition de la laïcité (en tant que séparation des religions et du pouvoir politique), en la remplaçant par celle d'égale tolérance des gouvernements vis à vis de toutes les religions. Ce système qui privilégie les droits des communautés aux dépens de ceux des citoyens supposés y appartenir(et souvent enjoints de le faire) soutient de fait les fondamentalistes qui oeuvrent contre la démocracie, pour l'instauration de théocracies. Certes, la laïcité à elle seule ne peut garantir les droits des femmes, mais elle est essentielle pour que le fondamentalisme religieux cesse d'empiéter sur leurs droits en particulier et sur la démocratie en général.
This paper seeks to develop an analytical reflection on the normative basis for state-religion relations and the governance of religious diversity. It is also a sociological reflection on viable forms of religious diversity governance. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 770640.
Institutionally and culturally, Australia bridges Britain and the United States, the Old and New Worlds. Its federal parliamentary democracy borrowed aspects from both Westminster and Washington. Yet, Australia rejected both England's established church and the US's 'high wall of separation' between church and state. Australia is often compared with the US and Canada as one of the great immigrant democracies. Like Canada, it adopted multiculturalism as state policy in the 1970s. Yet, it more closely resembles many European countries and perhaps even Québec in the precedence it grants to the established (Anglo-Australian) majority culture. Australia thus combines Old and New World patterns and concerns, offering a unique vantage point on the governance of religious diversity in relation to secularism. We are accustomed to thinking that political secularism and multiculturalism – arguably, the two greatest liberal responses to religious and cultural diversity – press in opposite directions. Whereas secularism separates state and religion, multiculturalism involves the state affirmation of cultural identity. Australia presents a case where these two models genuinely complement and indeed begin to merge into each other. Indeed, I argue that Australian multiculturalism extended the approach to diversity already established by Australia's version of secularism. However, secularism and multiculturalism in Australia face a common challenge from attempts to reassert national identity. Perhaps unexpectedly for the twenty-first century, religion has become the favored vehicle for this reassertion. The paper begins with some remarks on the constitutional context and the operative political culture. The second section discusses the place of religion in multicultural Australia. The third section canvasses how religion has been reasserted in recent years as a trope for reinforcing Anglo-Australian institutions and culture as the core of Australian national identity. The paper concludes by identifying some of the key challenges these dynamics pose for Australians.
Mediterranean Programme Series Ninth Mediterranean Research Meeting: Workshop 10 ; For the last two decades the human rights' discourse has been increasingly used across the world - one could argue that there has even been a globalization of human rights. This discourse has also, been intrinsically linked to positivism, enlightenment and secularism. It is with this in mind that this paper looks at how religious Muslim individuals and groups in France and Turkey have been appropriating human rights discourse and its national, regional and international legal channels to challenge state secular policies and redefine the relationship between religion and the state. I argue that because groups are framing their demands through a rights based discourse their plea becomes more powerful and legitimate, as they are using and re-appropriating elements of a global secular framework to challenge boundaries of Turkish and French state secularism. Moreover, the EU variable over the last decade has strengthened even more the value of human rights claims. By looking into two specific case studies - the work of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France and the Merve Kavakci case v. Turkey presented at the Strasbourg court of Human Rights , I attempt to analyze if groups are using this "authorized narrative" simply because it is the most effective way for them to assert their religiosity, or if they have found a space where they can propose a new plural ethos that can better co-exist with their piety - in other words, a space where they can redefine, and propose perhaps a more plural and de-centralize vision of secularism. ; (Product of workshop No. 10 at the 9th MRM 2008)
Defence date: 20 October 2017 ; Examining Board: Prof. François Foret, Université Libre Bruxelles; Prof. Jan-Werner Mueller, Princeton University; Prof. Olivier Roy, European University Institute (supervisor); Prof. Joseph Weiler, European University Institute/New York University ; The objective of this dissertation is to shed further light on the nature of European integration by examining the relationship between religion and politics throughout the whole process. The thesis aims at answering the following research question: which forms of secularism have underpinned the process of European integration. Secularism is understood in the thesis as a public settlement between politics and religion (i.e. we can speak of secularism, if religious and political sphere are conceptually distinct). A historical perspective allows the author to identify and examine the following junctures with respect to the relationship between religion and politics in the process: the Christian-democratic foundation of European Communities, the question of Turkish accession, the search for the "Soul of Europe" during Jacques Delors' presidency at the European Commission, the debate on the Treaty establishing Constitution for Europe, and last but not least: the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty with its art. 17 obliging European institutions to maintain dialogue with religious organisations. Dissertation's findings indicate that three forms of secularism, rooted in the European intellectual and political history, might be identified in the discourse and practice of European integration: 1) Christian-democratic secularism – Christianity transformed by personalist thought is regarded as a cultural and symbolic basis of European integration; 2) Laicist secularism - religion seen as a challenge to the democratic political order; 3) Agnostic secularism – understood as an attempt to depoliticize religion, to delegate it to other bodies, e.g. Member States or international organizations. The author argues that the last concept, liberal in its nature, has been most successful throughout the whole process.
Recent decades have witnessed the dramatic growth of an organized secularist movement that serves the needs of and advocates for the nonreligious. This volume brings together the latest research on organized secularism in the US, including its history, institution building, activist and political strategies, and its social functions in the lives of secularist individuals and families.
In its preamble, The Western Australian Charter of Multiculturalism (WA) commits the state to becoming: "A society in which respect for mutual difference is accompanied by equality of opportunity within a framework of democratic citizenship". One of the principles of multiculturalism, as enunciated in the Charter, is "equality of opportunity for all members of society to achieve their full potential in a free and democratic society where every individual is equal before and under the law". An important element of this principle is the "equality of opportunity . to achieve . full potential". The implication here is that those who start from a position of disadvantage when it comes to achieving that potential deserve more than 'equal' treatment. Implicitly, equality can be achieved only through the recognition of and response to differential needs and according to the likelihood of achieving full potential. This is encapsulated in Kymlicka's argument that neutrality is "hopelessly inadequate once we look at the diversity of cultural membership which exists in contemporary liberal democracies" (903). Yet such a potential commitment to differential support might seem unequal to some, where equality is constructed as the same or equal treatment regardless of differing circumstances. Until the past half-century or more, this problematic has been a hotly-contested element of the struggle for Civil Rights for African-Americans in the United States, especially as these rights related to educational opportunity during the years of racial segregation. For some, providing resources to achieve equal outcomes (rather than be committed to equal inputs) may appear to undermine the very ethos of liberal democracy. In Australia, this perspective has been the central argument of Pauline Hanson and her supporters who denounce programs designed as measures to achieve equality for specific disadvantaged groups; including Indigenous Australians and humanitarian refugees. Nevertheless, equality for all on all grounds of legally-accepted difference: gender, race, age, family status, sexual orientation, political conviction, to name a few; is often held as the hallmark of progressive liberal societies such as Australia. In the matter of religious freedoms the situation seems much less complex. All that is required for religious equality, it seems, is to define religion as a private matter– carried out, as it were, between consenting parties away from the public sphere. This necessitates, effectively, the separation of state and religion. This separation of religious belief from the apparatus of the state is referred to as 'secularism' and it tends to be regarded as a cornerstone of a liberal democracy, given the general assumption that secularism is a necessary precursor to equal treatment of and respect for different religious beliefs, and the association of secularism with the Western project of the Enlightenment when liberty, equality and science replaced religion and superstition. By this token, western nations committed to equality are also committed to being liberal, democratic and secular in nature; and it is a matter of state indifference as to which religious faith a citizen embraces – Wiccan, Christian, Judaism, etc – if any. Historically, and arguably more so in the past decade, the terms 'democratic', 'secular', 'liberal' and 'equal' have all been used to inscribe characteristics of the collective 'West'. Individuals and states whom the West ascribe as 'other' are therefore either or all of: not democratic; not liberal; or not secular – and failing any one of these characteristics (for any country other than Britain, with its parliamentary-established Church of England, headed by the Queen as Supreme Governor) means that that country certainly does not espouse equality.
This research paper dissects the hypothetical connection between religion and the democratic system, explicitly and impliedly Islam's relationship with liberal popular government. This research paper aims to examine the connection between Islam, Muslim majority social orders, and liberal democracy such that will progress hypothesis and work on concerning their relations. Even though this relationship is the prompt focal point of this research, the finishes of this research have a lot more extensive pertinence in enlightening the hypothetical relationship between religion, secularism, and majority rule government all in all, and in adding to the improvement of a liberal-vote based hypothesis for Muslim social orders specifically. The main research issue of this paper is that liberal democracy requires the shape of political secularism, however within the Muslim world nowadays the essential mental, political, and social assets at the transfer of Muslim democrats are religious. Implanted in this issue is the relationship between political culture and democracy. In seeking after this kind of ponder, there's a threat of assuming that the variable of political culture is being hoisted as the foremost notable calculate in clarifying the nonattendance of democracy within the Muslim world.
This thesis relates to the problems of secularity and religion to Tunisia. The stake is to study these two concepts in a new ground : Tunisia. This study rises from independence until the revolution.In the first left, the thesis concentrates on the genesis of the concept of secularity, its originality and the specificity of the Tunisian policy. This part constitutes first cross between the political power and religious.In the second part, the thesis concentrates on the Tunisian society. It focuses hard tearing between the adhesion of the movement reformist forced by Bourguiba and the Islamism represented by the movement of the Islamic Tendency. This part will be an opportunity to explore new social space. A new social architecture will be drawn, between female warping and the blooming of the religiosity.In the last part, we are accentuated on the excitement of the contemporary Tunisian thought in front of the choice between appropriation and adaptation to the secularism. The initial question in this part is doubly ambiguous. how does the Islamic company lay out the questions which disturbs it? Religious freedom, apostasy, wine, testimony : concepts subjected to endless debates. How can we interpret the delay of the Muslim company? The studies of Charfi and Talbi give us some tracks of thought. A new feminine generation will be present in Tunisia. It will be time to discover how the female thought occupies it the cultural scene in Tunisia. This thesis tries to answer if secularity is the cause of the crisis of the Tunisian society or the solution. ; Cette thèse porte sur la problématique de la laïcité et religion en Tunisie. L'enjeu est d'étudier ces deux notions dans un terrain nouveau : la Tunisie. Cette étude découle de l'indépendance jusqu'à la révolution. Dans le première partie, la thèse se concentre sur la genèse du concept de la laïcité, son originalité et la spécificité de la politique tunisienne. Cette partie constitue une première croisée entre le pouvoir politique et religieux. Dans la deuxième ...
Established institutions and policies of dealing with religious diversity in liberal democratic states are increasingly under pressure. Practical politics and political theory is caught in a trap between a fully secularized state (strict separation of state and politics from completely privatized religions based on an idealized version of American denominationalism or French republicanism) and neo-corporatist or 'pillarized' regimes of selective cooperation between states and organized religions. The book offers an original, comprehensive conceptual, theoretical and practical approach to problems of governance of religious diversity from a multi-disciplinary perspective combining moral and political philosophy, constitutional law, history, sociology and anthropology of religions and comparative institutionalism. Proposals of associative democracy - a moderately libertarian, flexible version of democratic institutional pluralism - are introduced and scrutinized whether they can serve as as plausible third way overcoming the inherent deficiencies of the predominant models in theory and practice.
Since late 2000s, the political landscape in Bangladesh moved from democracy to an authoritarian kleptocracy, and experienced a new set of political and social narratives. This paper aims to contest some of these dominant/official narratives which have been discursively constructed and promoted by the secularist parties (including the ruling regime) and groups in Bangladesh over recent years. Examining the sociopolitical and historical facts and figures of the country, we have identified five major contested narratives related to (a) Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan, (b) foundational ideology of Bangladesh's war of liberation, (c) state-sponsored Islamization in Bangladesh, (d) pro-liberation and anti-liberation dichotomy, and (e) war crimes trial. Drawing on a robust content analysis of the credible secondary sources substantiated by qualitative interviews, we have examined these dominant narratives and found that they are not supported by historical evidence and popular mandate, yet have been constructed largely to support and legitimize the current authoritarian regime. The paper offers both counter-narratives and some pragmatic policy recommendations to elude increasing polarization and sociopolitical instability and foster a peaceful democratic society in Bangladesh. ; Published version
Since late 2000s, the political landscape in Bangladesh moved from democracy to an authoritarian kleptocracy, and experienced a new set of political and social narratives. This paper aims to contest some of these dominant/official narratives which have been discursively constructed and promoted by the secularist parties (including the ruling regime) and groups in Bangladesh over recent years. Examining the sociopolitical and historical facts and figures of the country, we have identified five major contested narratives related to (a) Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan, (b) foundational ideology of Bangladesh's war of liberation, (c) state-sponsored Islamization in Bangladesh, (d) pro-liberation and anti-liberation dichotomy, and (e) war crimes trial. Drawing on a robust content analysis of the credible secondary sources substantiated by qualitative interviews, we have examined these dominant narratives and found that they are not supported by historical evidence and popular mandate, yet have been constructed largely to support and legitimize the current authoritarian regime. The paper offers both counter-narratives and some pragmatic policy recommendations to elude increasing polarization and sociopolitical instability and foster a peaceful democratic society in Bangladesh. ; Published version
