It was long assumed that one of the main outcomes of a secular political order in plural societies was to encourage both emancipation and political equality. These assumptions are now strongly challenged by recent events in two neighboring regions. First, coinciding with, but not necessarily caused by the post-2010 “Arab Uprisings” and their aftermath, inter-religious and intra-religious turmoil has increased in many countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Some scholars have sought to explain this as either a continuation or re-emergence of deep-rooted primordial conflicts or to Islam's supposed “inherent intolerance.” Another view is that, in the MENA, political secularism was often imposed from outside via Western colonial rule. Over the last few decades of independence mainly unelected rulers in the region have found it possible to impose and perpetuate their rule via processes of political secularization whose continuing aim is to divide and rule the various religious groups in their polities. Second, recent and current events in Western Europe point to growing polarization in many countries between the non-Muslim majority and Muslim minorities; and, often, it seems, growing intolerance and declining ability to live together. The issue was seriously exacerbated by the post-2015 refugee crisis emanating from, but not restricted to, the Syrian civil war. Politicians and the media overly emphasized the religious identity of people fleeing, homogenizing a diverse community and promoting essentialized understandings of Islam as repressive and violent (Wilson and Mavelli Reference Wilson, Mavelli, Mavelli and Wilson2016). In Europe, the overall result is that while religious equality, including between Muslims and non-Muslims, is a cornerstone of the region's democratic foundations and constitutional arrangements, equality between religious groups in practice is rapidly being whittled away. Arguably, a hierarchy of religions is emerging in Europe, with some religions (notably Christianity) more equal than others (Beaman Reference Beaman2013; Wilson and Mavelli Reference Wilson, Mavelli, Mavelli and Wilson2016). A concurrent phenomenon that is entangled with these different dynamics is the resurgence of right-wing populism within Europe and to a lesser extent the Middle East, fuelled partially by fears about refugees and Islam, all of which has become bound up with discourses on terrorism and violent extremism.
The aim of this symposium is to compare the impact of “political secular” governing regimes in the countries of both the MENA and Western Europe. The overall objective is to assess the impact of political secularism in both regions, as a key component of inter-religious and cultural discord and contention with significant political ramifications. A key purpose of the symposium is to examine the concept of “political secularism,” a contentious term, often lacking in analytical clarity. That is, what does “political secularism” mean and what does it look like both within and across Europe and the MENA? Opinions differ from scholar to scholar. As there is no consensus regarding the meaning of the term “political secular,” a core contribution of this symposium is to examine what the term means analytically in the contexts of the MENA and Western Europe.
POLITICAL SECULARISM AND ITS POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS IN WESTERN EUROPE, THE MIDDLE EAST, AND NORTH AFRICA
The issue of societies’ secularization and associated political implications has long been an important focal point of political science. Indeed, for a large portion of the discipline's history, the influence of secularization theory was so pervasive that religion was a marginal topic for research. Western European countries are collectively notable in having high degrees of secularization (understood as increasing separation of religion and state and decline of public influence of religion), often with attendant ramifications for political competition and outcomes. However, in recent years, “even” the most secular of Western European countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, have experienced increasing involvement of various types of religious or cultural actors, including explicitly political statements from churches and expressions of desire for equality from Muslims and other immigrant groups. In a neighboring region, the MENA, the issue of the relationship between political actors, especially political elites, and religious actors has for long been different to that in Western Europe. Whereas the latter region has long shown strong signs of secularization, the MENA has exhibited a different, more complicated trajectory in the decades since the formal withdrawal of European colonial and quasi-control in the 1950s and 1960s. Recent events, however, focused on the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath, have raised anew the issue of the relationship between religion and state in the countries of the MENA. In many countries across the region, including, Egypt, Turkey, and Bahrain, religious and cultural minorities have in recent times borne the brunt of increasingly draconian government policies. In addition, in many MENA countries, close relationships developed between religious and secular elites that significantly shaped the political sphere. In others, however, various religious actors emerged as opponents of secular authoritarian regimes. Finally, different kinds of both secular and religious actors further complicated the political landscape of the region.
It is now widely agreed that secularization theory is significantly flawed because it predicted the demise of religion, when according to many scholars, the opposite is happening. Secularization theory anticipated that as countries developed economically and more generally became “modernized” they would as a result necessarily and irrevocably become more and more secular, leading eventually to the public “demise” of religion (Bruce Reference Bruce and Haynes2009). What happened, however, was different, defying secularization theory's prediction of the death of religion. “Even” in Western Europe, where countries exhibit continuing secularization, the issue is by no means as clear cut as once believed by many scholars (Leustean Reference Leustean2013; Kratochwil and Dolezal Reference Kratochwil and Dolezal2015). In the MENA, on the other hand, the formal political importance of religion, manifested, for example, in the power of associated political parties at the ballot box, is patchy and unclear, although profound in almost all regional countries (Cesari Reference Cesari2014; Hinnebusch Reference Hinnebusch2015). Further, the very ideas of “secular” and “religion” on which secularization theory is based have been increasingly questioned in recent research, highlighting the contested, fluid, and contextual nature of what both “secular” and “religious” are (Asad Reference Asad2003; Hurd Reference Hurd2008; Cavanaugh Reference Cavanaugh2009). In sum, recent research highlights the erroneousness of accepting secularization theory at face value.
At the same time, it would be wrong to assume that religion continues simply to “return from the dead”—that is, to exhibit more and more influence on political outcomes in Western Europe or the MENA, leading to a position where religion will again resume a position of authority in relation to secular power. Fox (Reference Fox2015) argues that what we are seeing in this regard is not simply the decline of secularization theory as a powerful explanatory tool for the relationship between religion and politics. Instead, what we are witnessing are novel forms of interaction, explicable in the context of what he calls the “secular-religious competition perspective.” This is a “middle way” between, on the one hand, what secularization theory predicts (that is, the eventual demise of religion as a public force) and the “return of religion” approach (that is, the claim that religion is “returning” as a powerful and persuasive political actor which is reassuming a highly significant role in political discourse and completion in many countries, even in those previously thought to be inexorably secularizing, including in Western Europe).
The focus of the symposium is to assess the theoretical and empirical power of the “secular religious competition perspective” in both Western Europe and the MENA, by reference primarily to case studies from several regional countries. The symposium provides the starting point for further conversations, comparing what appear to be two different and distinctive regions and seeing if the “secular-religious competition perspective” theory holds up under scrutiny. Our starting hypothesis is as follows: while secularization theory remains a useful starting point to understand religion's role in politics and society in both Western Europe and the MENA, it is difficult to accept all aspects of the theory, especially a core prediction: religion's universal public decline. Instead, we start with the premise that, as Fox (Reference Fox2015: 33) contends, “secularism competes with religion in the political realm” yet does not always come out on top. On the other hand, this assumes that “religion” is something that is always clear and distinct from the “secular.” Wilson (Reference Wilson2012) argues that it is not always so clear cut, because what “religion” is shifts and moves depending both on context and on who is doing the defining and identifying. This issue—that is, what religion is and to what extent we can assume that authors are referring to the same thing when they use the term “religion”—is focused upon in several of the papers that follow. This is because the issue of what “religion” is and where it begins and ends forms a key controversy in the context of the relationship between “religion” and state in both the MENA and Western Europe.
Overall, the contributions to this symposium share an interest in how “political secularism” is expressed and relates to “religion” in both Western Europe and the MENA. Like religion with its contested meanings, “secularism” too has various meanings in the social sciences: from government remaining neutral on the issue of religion to government restricting public expressions of religion, sometimes severely as in France (Barras Reference Barras2014), in favor of strongly pro-secular state ideological choices. Yet, as several recent contributions have pointed out, the choice in this regard made by a governing regime is a political and ideological choice. It is not an inevitable outcome of secularization's “invisible hand” (Hurd Reference Hurd2008; Mavelli Reference Mavelli2012; Wilson Reference Wilson2012). In addition, as Gill (Reference Gill2008) notes, a government's policies in relation to religion may also be linked to the interests and preferences of politicians, especially those in power. Given that those with power normally wish to hold on to it and those aspiring to replace them seek to acquire it, then the support of significant or powerful religious leaders is often a key asset which politicians aspire to receive whether in power or challenging it. The issue of religious leaders’ support for politicians in their bid to gain power via the ballot box is also a feature of several papers in the symposium.
In sum, this symposium examines the nature of ideological choices related to political secularism in both Western Europe and the MENA. Contributors identify and examine reasons why governments in these regions choose one form of political secularism and not others and what the political ramifications and outcomes are. All contributions, with the exception of the Conclusion, specially written for the special issue by Jonathan Fox, were originally presented at a workshop (“Political secularism and religious difference in Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa,” https://ecpr.eu/Events/PanelDetails.aspx?PanelID=4753&EventID=104) at the European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions of Workshops, University of Nottingham, UK, 25–30 April 2017. The contributions were then revised for the purpose of this symposium.
THE ARTICLES
The first article, by Matthias Kortmann, is “Secular-Religious Competition and the Exclusion of Islam from the Public Sphere: Islamic Welfare in Western Europe.” Kortmann tackles the core issue of Fox's theory's explanatory power. Via qualitative discourse analysis, Kortmann examines the role of Islamic organizations in welfare delivery in Germany and the Netherlands. The article seeks to shed light on a key question: how can the “secular-religious competition perspective” explain similar trends of exclusion of Islamic organizations in welfare delivery in these two countries despite their nationally divergent church-state regimes? The methodological basis of the paper is a content analysis of interviews conducted with politicians and representatives from both Christian and Islamic organizations in Germany and the Netherlands. Complementing the interviews, Kortmann also examines relevant documents that collectively reveal positions of the actors involved in the issues analyzed in the article. Overall, Kortmann's analysis reveals that in the respective national competitions between religious and secular ideologies different views on the public role of religion indeed are dominant (that is, the support for the Christian majority in Germany and equal treatment of all religions in the Netherlands) which can be traced back to the divergent regimes of religious governance in the two countries. However, when it comes to Islam in particular, in the Netherlands, the perspective of restricting all religions from the public sphere prevails which leads to the rather exclusivist view on Islamic welfare that dominates in Germany, too.
Luca Ozzano and Chiara Maritato's contribution, “Patterns of Political Secularism in Italy and Turkey: the Vatican and the Diyanet to the Test of Politics” compares two countries that have long been identified as important sites for the principle and practice of political secularism in the context of national cultures strongly influenced by religion. Ozzano and Maritato point out that Rome and Istanbul have been for centuries the seats of two of the main religious centers of the western hemisphere: the Papacy and the Caliphate, both with highly significant “amounts” of spiritual and temporal power both in their own countries and transnationally. However, during the 19th and 20th centuries, both institutions went through significant changes as the states within which they are located secularized. In the case of the Papacy in Italy, it was the loss of (nearly all) its temporal power and the subsequent significant “reduction” in its mainly moral authority in the late 19th century. In Turkey, on the other hand, the Caliphate was abolished in 1924, and its replacement by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a bureaucratic (secular) body under state control, served to underline a fundamental shift from religious to secular power. Despite these changes, however, religion continues to play a significant role in the public life and state policies of the Italian and Turkish republics. The Vatican, the central governing body of the Catholic Church, is still able to influence Italy's public sphere and public discourse through both its popular influence and often expert lobbying activities, exerting authority with at least some decision-makers. In Turkey, the Diyanet developed into the main tool of the state in reshaping Turkish society, a process which has continued for nearly a century, undertaken by both highly secular governments—for example, Kemalist governments over time—and, from 2002, successive Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) governments, led by Recep Tayip Erdoğan, first as prime minister and now as president. Overall, the article analyzes the two countries’ public policies in relation to religious pluralism by addressing both public policies explicitly related to religion's role in society and religious pluralism and their influence on interreligious controversies and debates. Specifically, there is a focus on “family-related” policies—such as the redefinition of genders and women's role in Turkey and the legalization of same-sex unions in Italy—which have served both to define and focus conflict between citizens with opposing religious and secular worldviews.
In her contribution, Hanna Pfeifer shifts attention to the post-Arab Uprisings events in Tunisia. Her paper, “The normative power of secularism. Tunisian Ennahda's discourse on religion, politics, and the state (2011–2016),” focuses on a ubiquitous issue in the post-Arab Spring context in the MENA. She explains that, in recent years, the “politics of secularism” (or “political secularism”) has been discussed as an alternative to the secularization paradigm throughout the countries of the region. Opposing both the view of a “natural process” secularization and the normative neutrality of secularism as a prerequisite for democratic governance, a body of recent literature has focused on the ideological dimensions of secularism in relation to state power. It has been argued that the “politics of secularism” was an important power mechanism of the authoritarian state in the pre-Arab Spring context in many Arab countries, notably in Egypt and Tunisia. In particular, regimes could use “secularism” as a legitimizing framework for their rule while marginalizing, repressing and partly co-opting the “Islamist” opposition.
In the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings, some of these “Islamist” actors came to power, at least for a short while. Paradoxically, some “Islamists” seem to have embraced “political secularism” after the revolution, as it has been argued for the Egyptian case. The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), having been subjected to the discourse and practice of the politics of secularism for decades, appeared to demonstrate during the brief presidency of Mohammed Morsi that it agreed with the principle of secular power. This is the state's right—and the employment of that right—authoritatively both to define and manage religion and determine its boundaries within political contexts. Pfeifer argues however that even though the literature usually treats them as the radical religious alternative to secularizing the state through the establishment of an Islamic form of governance, when in power “Islamists” do not necessarily demonstrate clear opposition to policies which typically characterize “secularism.”
Pfeifer's article traces the political development of a Tunisian “Islamist” party, Ennahda, following that country's 2011 revolution by focusing on the “politics of secularism.” The guiding question of her paper is whether Ennahda, similarly to the Egyptian MB, accepted a certain kind of secularism, that is, a form of statism whereby the state authoritatively determines the boundaries of both religion and politics and, as a result, functions as the commanding voice in matters relating to religion and politics. In other words, how did Ennahda discursively reproduce or reframe the secular/religious divide and how did its conceptualization of state-Islam relations evolve?
Teije Hidde Donker's article, “The Sacred as Secular. State Control and Mosques Neutrality in Post-revolutionary Tunisia” also examines the relationship between religion and politics in post-Arab Uprisings Tunisia. The key question he asks is: “Are political secularism and mobilized religion each other's direct competitors in shaping public life, or are they rather expressions of separate – but related – social phenomena?” His paper provides a critical response to the increasingly mainstream “competition perspective” in studies on secularization, secularism, and mobilized religion in society and politics, as argued by, for example, Fox (Reference Fox2015). Donker argues that analysis of the relation between public religion and contemporary state power should not focus on who is “winning the competition” but instead seek to examine what methods are used to combine, bridge, and ease tensions between the two. His argument is illustrated by an exploration of how in Tunisia—in a recent context of revolutionary, social, and political instability—a variety of positions have been articulated regarding the preferred position of “public Islam” in relation both to national identity and state authority. Donker's article builds on multiple fieldwork visits to Tunisia and specifically to the city of Sfax. Donker interviewed around 30 individuals for the article, while also engaging with hundreds of primary and secondary sources.
In the final article of the symposium, “Conclusion: The Secular-Religious Competition Perspective in Comparative Perspective,” Jonathan Fox contends that “political secularism” is “an ideology or set of beliefs advocating that religion ought to be separate from all or some aspects of politics or public life (or both)” (Fox Reference Fox2015, 2). Regarding the secular-religious competition perspective, he argues that in countries around the world, “political secularists” compete with “religious political actors” to influence government policy. This competition is not however clear cut but is in fact rather nuanced and complicated by many factors. Fox argues that the contributions to this symposium collectively demonstrate that this is the case. The case studies—focused on: the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Tunisia—show that, on the one hand, while government religion policy evolves over time and is deeply influenced by secular-religious competition, on the other hand, this competition is complex, differing from country to country and involves many factors and influences. Thus, while the secular-religious competition perspective is applicable and has explanatory power across the different contexts, exactly what “secular” and “religious” mean cannot be universalized. While the categories exist across both Western Europe and the MENA, their meaning differs both within and across the two regions. The extent to which the competition between “secular” and “religious” actors is a product of the ideology of political secularism and whether a decline or shift of political secularism's power and influence would then affect secular-religious competition are questions that still remain open for further exploration.
