This is a post from my friend Akmal Hussain who lives in Pakistan. He is very learned man and I am proud of his friendship. Read now pl.
SECULARISM IN MUSLIM SOCIETIES.
"Islam has long been viewed as a religious tradition that is uniquely anti-secular. Influential scholars in the social sciences have argued that Islam’s early formative historical experience and its unique reaction to modernity have prevented secularism from developing. In one famous argument Bernard Lewis has written that the “reasons why Muslims developed no secularist movement of their own, and reacted sharply against attempts to introduce one from abroad, will thus be clear from the contrasts between Christian and Muslim history and experience. From the beginning, Christians were taught both by precept and practice to distinguish between God and Caesar and between the different duties owed to each of the two. Muslims received no such instruction. Similarly, Ernest Gellner put forward a sophisticated thesis on Muslim politics that sought to draw a distinction between the “high culture” of the urban clergy, which was characterized as scriptural and puritanical and which Gellner claimed is normative for the urban life of the entire Islamic world versus the “low culture” of the tribe and village life where folk Islam was practiced. Under modern conditions, Gellner argued, the puritanical Islam of the urban clergy is appropriated at the mass level due to political centralization, urbanization and mass education. Islamic fundamentalism is thus “the demand for the realization of this norm, and the popular support it enjoys stems from the aspiration to the High Culture by the newly urbanized masses.” This explanation of Muslim politics, argued Gellner, is compatible with the requirements of political modernity where contrary to the previously dominant assumptions of social theory modernity required secularization. Thus, Islam’s relationship to modernity is unique in that modernity strengthens religion’s hold over society and this explains why secularism has not flourished in Muslim societies"..............................................................................................................................
SECULARISM IN MUSLIM SOCIETIES.
"Islam has long been viewed as a religious tradition that is uniquely anti-secular. Influential scholars in the social sciences have argued that Islam’s early formative historical experience and its unique reaction to modernity have prevented secularism from developing. In one famous argument Bernard Lewis has written that the “reasons why Muslims developed no secularist movement of their own, and reacted sharply against attempts to introduce one from abroad, will thus be clear from the contrasts between Christian and Muslim history and experience. From the beginning, Christians were taught both by precept and practice to distinguish between God and Caesar and between the different duties owed to each of the two. Muslims received no such instruction. Similarly, Ernest Gellner put forward a sophisticated thesis on Muslim politics that sought to draw a distinction between the “high culture” of the urban clergy, which was characterized as scriptural and puritanical and which Gellner claimed is normative for the urban life of the entire Islamic world versus the “low culture” of the tribe and village life where folk Islam was practiced. Under modern conditions, Gellner argued, the puritanical Islam of the urban clergy is appropriated at the mass level due to political centralization, urbanization and mass education. Islamic fundamentalism is thus “the demand for the realization of this norm, and the popular support it enjoys stems from the aspiration to the High Culture by the newly urbanized masses.” This explanation of Muslim politics, argued Gellner, is compatible with the requirements of political modernity where contrary to the previously dominant assumptions of social theory modernity required secularization. Thus, Islam’s relationship to modernity is unique in that modernity strengthens religion’s hold over society and this explains why secularism has not flourished in Muslim societies"..............................................................................................................................
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