Islam and the Secular State

Abstract

An-Naim’s book is an addition to the genre of studies that apply the tools and mechanisms of secular liberal change and social engineering to Muslim societies behind a benign façade of Islamic concern. His opening words emphasize the necessity of a secular state for a Muslim to be a believer by conviction. He claims a different perspective of the term, which really is not that distinct from common understandings of what constitutes a secular state, namely, neutrality regarding religious doctrine (p. 1). According to this organizational principle Islam does not need to be separated from politics or public life, but rather from the state, so as not to allow for its manipulation. At first glance this sounds like a perfectly sensible premise, as many Muslim countries do, in fact, suffer from such a predicament. The problem is that in the process of suggesting the means and methods of how to do so, An- Naim contests Islamic values as relative, infusing them with ambiguity, as a prelude to essentializing western values and structures of state, constitutionalism, human rights, and citizenship as universal and deterministic. This way, he sets the hierarchy of privilege in favor of the latter. Consequently adaptation, if not clearly succumbing to instead of challenging, the “reality” of a Eurocentric postcolonial world (pp. 31-32) should be accepted as a starting point. This is the contextual fact to which Islam and Muslims have to reconcile themselves, and thus any notions of applying the Shari`ah should be forsaken and is, in fact, “impossible” (p. 18) ...