The Transformation of the Discourse on Secularism/the Civil State in Arab Academic Writings Post Arab Spring

Sari Hanafi

doi:10.2298/FID2403625H

Authors

Sari Hanafi American University of Beirut

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2298/FID2403625H

Keywords:

Arab Spring, secularism, Arab world, French style secularism, Islamism

Abstract

Since the start of the Arab Spring, no topic has been more polarizing to elites than secularism, the civil state, and political Islam. In this article, I will analyze the academic literature written by researchers and sometimes political activists in journals published in the Arab world on this topic. I will conduct a quantitative (bibliometric) and qualitative analysis of this literature (149 articles), in order to try to answer the following questions: To which extent is there interest in these topics in academic journals? How did these writers address the topic of secularism or the civil state? How do leftist/secular/liberal trends on the one hand and Islamic trends on the other interact with the issue of secularism? What type of journals are these?

References

Abdel Latif, Kamal. 2013. “After the Arab Revolutions: Religious Reform and Secularism.” Journal Tabayyun 1 (3): 209–228.

Abdul-Qawi, Hassan and Ahmed bin Ahmed Al-Hajj. 2015. “Differentiated Secularism: An Approach to Resolving the Clash between Religion and the State.” The Arab Future 38 (439): 9–24.

Al Abri, Badr bin Salem bin Hamdan. 2014. “The Religious State and the Civil State in Arabic Writings with the Qur’anic Vision.” Journal Al-Tafahum 56: 1–16.

Al Amiri, Saeed Abdul Razzaq. 2011. “The Civil State: Between the Western Concept and the Islamic Origin.” Yemeni Contemporary Affairs 16 (43): 140–162.

Al-Ansari, Ahmed Bouachrine. 2014. “The Concept of the Civil State in Western and Islamic Thought, A Comparative Study of Some of the Foundational Texts.” URL: https://www.dohainstitute.org/ar/ResearchAndStudies/Pages/art357. aspx (last accessed: August 24, 2024).

al-Haj, Saleh Rasheed. 2023. “Reflections on Contemporary Arab Moral Thought: An Investigation of the Relationship Between Ethics and Politics.” Tabayyun (46): 7–47.

Al-Hamd, Manaf. 2019. “On the necessity of dialogue and its tools: Islamic-secular dialogue as a model.” Qalamoun: The Syrian Journal of Human Sciences 2019 (9): 23–33.

Al-Khazali, Amal Hindi Kati’ and Iyad Khalaf Hussein Al-Anbar. 2016. “The Dialectic of the Relationship Between the Civil State and the Application of Sharia in Contemporary Islamic Political Thought.” Political Sciences 2016 (51): 107–129.

Al-Saif, Khalid bin Abdulaziz bin Muhammad. 2021. “The position of the secular trend on religious renewal: presentation and criticism.” Journal of Doctrinal Studies 13 (27): 337–392.

Al-Shafi’i, Muhammad Fawzi Mahmoud and Imad Al-Din Abdullah Taha Al-Shanti. 2022. “The Doctrinal Consequences of the Terms of the Civil State.” Journal of the Islamic University for Islamic Studies 30 (1): 80–114.

Al-Shalash, Muhammad Muhammad. 2015. “The Civil State in Islamic Legislation: the Problem of the Relationship and the Dialectic of Terms.” Al-Balqa Research and Studies 18 (1): 59–104.

al-Tijani, Muhammad Al-Amin Zayed Ahmed. 2015. “Secularism in the Context of Arab-Islamic culture: A Proposed Syllabus for the “Secularism” Lesson for Students in Arab Universities.” Journal of Islamic Sciences and Research 16 (2): 1–17.

Al-Zawawi, Baghoura. 2017. “On the Concept of the Civil State.” Al Arabi Magazine 708.

Ali, Zahraa. 2018. “Feminism in Iraq Between the Imposition of the NGO Approach, Sectarian Violence, and the Struggle for a Civil State.” Journal Omran 7 (25): 7–27.

Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

Balhaj, Faraj. 2014. “The Secular-Islamic Debate in Tunisia: The Horizon and Variables.” Turkish Vision 3 (1): 39 59.

Barakat, Salim. 2018. “Towards a Secular, National Civil state.” Political Thought 19 (68): 61–74.

Bayat, Asef. 2010. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

Berger, Peter. 2014. The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age. Boston: de Gruyter.

Bhargava, Rajeev. 2019. “Reimagining Secularism: Respect, Domination, and Principled Distance.” In: Nehal Bhuta, ed. Freedom of Religion, Secularism, and Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bishara, Azmi. 2015. Religion and Secularism in Historical Context, Vol. 2. Beirut: Arab Network for Research and Publishing (in Arabic).

Cipriani, Roberto. 2017. Diffused Religion: Beyond Secularization. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Connolly, William. 1995. Ethos of Pluralization, First Edition. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Darwish, Hossam El-Din. 2021. On Thick Normative Concepts: Secularism, (Political) Islam, and the Renewal of Religious Discourse. Beirut: Arab Network for Research and Publishing.

Duara, Prasenjit. 2014. The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future, First Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gauthier, François. 2020. Religion, Modernity, Globalization: Nation-State to Market. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hanafi, Sari, and Rigas Arvanitis. 2016. Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise. London: Routledge.

Hanafi, Sari. 2020. “Normalization in Morocco: The Fall of Clichés.” The New Arab (Arabic), December 26.

. 2023. “Toward a Dialogical Sociology: Presidential Address – XX ISA World Congress of Sociology 2023.” International Sociology 39 (1): online first.

. 2024. Studying Islam in the Arab World: The Rupture Between Religion and the Social Sciences. 1st edition. New York, NY: Routledge.

. Forthcoming. “Introduction.” In: Zaid Eyadat, ed. Religion in Public Life in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Tunisia. London: Palgrave.

Hermassi, Abdel Latif. 2012. On the Islamic Religious Heritage: A Sociological- Historical Reading. Cairo: Dar al-Tanwir (in Arabic).

Ibn Azouz, Abdul Rahman. 2021 “Islamic Movements and the Dilemma of the Civil State: a Reading of the Experience of the Moroccan Unification and Reform Movement.” Algerian Journal of Security and Development 10 (3): 660–671.

Kazemipur, Abdolmohammad. 2022. Sacred as Secular: Secularization under Theocracy in Iran. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Kchaou, Mounir. 2016. “The Secularization of Morality and the Emergence of Conscience: A Comparison between the Western and Arab Contexts.” Tabayyun (18): 7–21.

Khabbach, Hicham. 2015. “Moroccan Islamists on the Civilian State: Case of the Justice and Charity Movement and the Justice and Development Party.” Umran (10): 25–51.

Laborde, Cécile. 2017. Liberalism’s Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony (First Edition). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Nasli-Bakir, Dalila and Muhammad Ibn Jadiya. 2020. “The Problem of Secularism in the Thought of Abu Ya’arub Al-marzouqi and the Role of Philosophy in Conceptualizing It.” Journal of Researcher in Humanities and Social Sciences 11 (2): 63–72.

Saghir, Nabil Mohamad. 2013. “Dialogue Strategies in Religious and Secular Discourse: The Television Dialogue between Ibrahim Al-Khouli and Wafaa Sultan as an Example.” Journal the Discourse 8 (1): 135–152.

Scott-Baumann, Alison, Mathew Guest, Shuruq Naguib, Sariya Cheruvallil- Contractor, and Aisha Phoenix. 2020. Islam on Campus: Contested Identities and the Cultures of Higher Education in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ziyad, Tariq nad Abu Hazim. 2017. “Civil Society and Building a Democratic Civil State: A Political Approach.” Al-Manara Research and Studies 23 (1): 181–220.

Zuber, Valentine. 2019. “La laïcité française, une exception historique, des principes partagés.” Revue du droit des religions (7): 193–205.