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Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on secular, naturalistic considerations.
Sharia is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its human scholarly interpretations. The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim fundamentalists and modernists.
Political aspects of Islam are derived from the Quran, ḥadīth literature, and sunnah, the history of Islam, and elements of political movements outside Islam. Traditional political concepts in Islam include leadership by elected or selected successors to Muhammad, known as Caliphs in Sunnī Islam and Imams in Shīʿa Islam; the importance of following the Islamic law (sharīʿa); the duty of rulers to seek consultation (shūrā) from their subjects; and the importance of rebuking unjust rulers.
Liberalism and progressivism within Islam involve professed Muslims who have created a considerable body of progressive thought about Islamic understanding and practice. Their work is sometimes characterized as "progressive Islam". Some scholars, such as Omid Safi, differentiate between "Progressive Muslims" and "Liberal advocates of Islam".
Laïcité is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as discouraging religious involvement in government affairs, especially religious influence in the determination of state policies. It also forbids government involvement in religious affairs, and especially prohibits government influence in the determination of religion. Secularism in France includes a right to the free exercise of religion.
There exist a number of perspectives on the relationship of Islam and democracy among Islamic political theorists, the general Muslim public, and Western authors.
Islam is the second-largest religion in Ethiopia behind Christianity, with 31.3 to 35.9 percent of the total population of around 113.5 million people professing the religion as of 2022.
Phyllis Marion Boyd was a Canadian politician in Ontario. She was a New Democratic member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 1999 who represented the riding of London Centre. She served as a member of cabinet in the government of Bob Rae.
With the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976, the Preamble to the Constitution asserted that India is a secular nation. However, the Supreme Court of India in the 1994 case S. R. Bommai v. Union of India established the fact that India was secular since the formation of the republic. The judgement established that there is separation of state and religion. It stated "In matters of State, religion has no place. And if the Constitution requires the State to be secular in thought and action, the same requirement attaches to political parties as well. The Constitution does not recognize, it does not permit, mixing religion and State power. That is the constitutional injunction. None can say otherwise so long as this Constitution governs this country. Politics and religion cannot be mixed. Any State government which pursues nonsecular on policies or nonsecular course of action acts contrary to the constitutional mandate and renders itself amenable to action under Article 356". Furthermore, constitutionally, state-owned educational institutions are prohibited from imparting religious instructions, and Article 27 of the constitution prohibits using tax-payers money for the promotion of any religion.
The Muslim Canadian Congress was organized to provide a voice to Muslims who support a "progressive, liberal, pluralistic, democratic, and secular society where everyone has the freedom of religion."
Tarek Fatah is a Pakistani-Canadian journalist and author. Fatah advocates LGBT rights, a separation of religion and state, opposition to sharia law, and advocacy for a liberal, progressive form of Islam. He calls himself "an Indian born in Pakistan" and "a Punjabi born into Islam" and is a vocal critic of the Pakistani religious and political establishment. To this end, Fatah has criticized the partition of India.
In France, there is an ongoing social, political, and legal debate concerning the wearing of the hijab and other forms of Islamic coverings in public. The cultural framework of the controversy can be traced to France's history of colonization in North Africa, but escalated into a significant public debate in 1989 when three girls were suspended from school for refusing to remove their headscarves. That incident, referred to in France as l'affaire du foulard or l'affaire du voile, initially focused the controversy on the wearing of the hijab in French public schools. Because of the wide-ranging social debates caused by the controversy, l'affaire du foulard has been compared to the Dreyfus affair in its impact on French culture.
Gender-neutral language or gender-inclusive language is language that avoids bias towards a particular sex or gender. In English, this includes use of nouns that are not gender-specific to refer to roles or professions, formation of phrases in a coequal manner, and discontinuing the blanket use of male or female terms. For example, the words policeman and stewardess are gender-specific job titles; the corresponding gender-neutral terms are police officer and flight attendant. Other gender-specific terms, such as actor and actress, may be replaced by the originally male term; for example, actor used regardless of gender. Some terms, such as chairman, that contain the component -man but have traditionally been used to refer to persons regardless of sex are now seen by some as gender-specific. An example of forming phrases in a coequal manner would be using husband and wife instead of man and wife. Examples of discontinuing the blanket use of male terms in English are referring to those with unknown or indeterminate gender as singular they, and using humans, people, or humankind, instead of man or mankind.
In Turkey, secularism or laicism was first introduced with the 1928 amendment of the Constitution of 1924, which removed the provision declaring that the "Religion of the State is Islam", and with the later reforms of Turkey's first president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which set the administrative and political requirements to create a modern, democratic, secular state, aligned with Kemalism.
Secularism—that is, the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state—has been a controversial concept in Islamic political thought, owing in part to historical factors and in part to the ambiguity of the concept itself. In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states. Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites, and is frequently understood to be equivalent to irreligion or anti-religion.
A ban on sharia law is legislation that prohibits the application or implementation of Islamic law (Sharia) in courts in any civil (non-religious) jurisdiction. In the United States, various states have "banned Sharia law," or passed some kind of ballot measure that "prohibits the state’s courts from considering foreign, international or religious law." As of 2014 these include Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee. In the Canadian province of Ontario, family law disputes are arbitrated only under Ontario law.
Sharia means islamic law based on age-old concepts. Since the early Islamic states of the eighth and ninth centuries, Sharia always existed alongside other normative systems.
Questioning French Secularism: Gender Politics and Islam in a Parisian Suburb is a 2012 book by Jennifer Selby, in which the author examines how contemporary secularism in France is positioned as a guarantor of women’s rights.
Debating Sharia: Islam, Gender Politics, and Family Law Arbitration is a 2012 book edited by Jennifer Selby and Anna C. Korteweg in which the authors focus on the legal ramifications of Sharia law in the context of Western liberal democracies and examine the issue from different methodological perspectives.
Anne Zelensky is a French feminist author and activist.
References
- ↑ Winter, Bronwyn (1 March 2014). "Questioning French Secularism: Gender Politics and Islam in a Parisian Suburb". Journal of Church and State . 56 (1): 174–176. doi:10.1093/jcs/cst114. ISSN 0021-969X.
- ↑ Johnson, Michelle C. (2013). "Questioning French Secularism: Gender Politics and Islam in a Parisian Suburb by Jennifer A. Selby". American Ethnologist. 40 (1): 234–236. doi:10.1111/amet.12015_17. ISSN 1548-1425.
- ↑ Rogozen-Soltar, Mikaela (1 May 2014). "Review of Jennifer Selby, Questioning French Secularism: Gender Politics and Islam in a Parisian Suburb". Contemporary Islam. 8 (2): 177–180. doi:10.1007/s11562-012-0233-8. ISSN 1872-0226. S2CID 141340153.
- ↑ Kolshus, Thorgeir; Bangstad, Sindre; Bielo, James S.; Gobin, Emma; Wesser, Grit; Macfarlane, Sibyl; Hewlett, Christopher; Kaell, Hillary; Weiss, Erica; Bialecki, Jon (1 September 2014). "Book Reviews". Religion and Society. 5 (1): 261–281. doi:10.3167/arrs.2014.050116. ISSN 2150-9298 . Retrieved 15 December 2018.
- ↑ Dean, Jason (May 2013). "Debating Sharia: Islam, Gender Politics, and Family Law Arbitration". Journal of Contemporary Religion . 28 (2): 335–336. doi:10.1080/13537903.2013.783328. S2CID 144596008.
- ↑ Baines, Beverley (23 October 2014). "Debating Sharia: Islam, Gender Politics, and Family Law Arbitration ed. by Anna C. Korteweg and Jennifer A. Selby (review)". University of Toronto Quarterly . 83 (2): 525–527. ISSN 1712-5278 . Retrieved 15 December 2018.
- ↑ "The Community Leadership Program". Fulbright Canada . Retrieved 15 December 2018.
