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MUSLIM SOCIETIES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SECULARIZATION pdf

MUSLIM SOCIETIES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SECULARIZATION
Book Title Muslim Societies And The Challenge Of Secularization
Book AuthorGabriele Marranci
Total Pages274
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Muslim Societies and The Challenge of Secularization

MUSLIM SOCIETIES AND THE CHALLENGE OF SECULARIZATION

Since the so-called ‘war on terror started with the dramatic events of 9/11, a previously scholarly debate has entered the public discussion in the form of a reductionist (Roy 2007) question:

 Is Islam compatible with secularism and hence democracy? The question, today, is widely considered and can be found in many spheres; from within academic work (Casanova 1994; Cesari and Mcloughlin 2005; Roy 2007) to Internet forums in various, yet often repetitive, variations.

Although from differ¬ ent perspectives, both the academic and the popular debates focus on Islam in an attempt to find a satisfactory answer to the riddle. In such an effort, Islam, sec¬ secularism, democracy, and the ‘West’ become pillars of a dangerously essentialist discourse.

As in the case of the concept of ‘fundamentalism’ (see Marranci 2009), Islam, secularism, laicite (see ‘Muslim Thinkers and the Debate on Secularism and Laicite’ by De Poli, this volume) are not, in the mass media as well as in certain academic discourses, discussed as processes but rather as ‘things’, or in anthropological jargon, ‘cultural objects’ (Geertz 1973).

 In Muslim Societies and the Challenge of Secularization, the authors, coming from different academic disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, history, legal studies, political sciences, Islamic studies, and religious studies, shall offer a debate that attempts to deconstruct the simplified, and often oxymoronic, discussion about the relationship between Islam and secularism and provide a new way to discuss the topic.

In Europe, and Turkey, the debate over the Muslim ‘veil’ (see Bowen 2007; Ozdalga 1998) has been politically used as casus belli to start an unprecedented debate about the role that Islam may play within the west and the challenge, if not the threat, that it may represent to the western democratic and secular system.

 Of course, the European debate on the position of Turkey within the European Union has also increased the general public sensitivity to a complex social-political debate that is too often popularised by the mass media and Machiavellian political needs.

As an anthropologist, I am not so surprised that at the center of this debate are not Muslims, but rather Islam. As I will try to explain in this introduction, the debate has

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