Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion.
The separation of church and state is a philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular state and to disestablishment, the changing of an existing, formal relationship between the church and the state. The concept originated among early Baptists in America. In 1644, Roger Williams, a puritan minister and founder of the state of Rhode Island and The First Baptist Church in America, was the first public official to call for "a wall or hedge of separation" between "the wilderness of the world" and "the garden of the church." Although the concept is older, the exact phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from "wall of separation between Church & State," a term coined by Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to members of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut. The concept was promoted by Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke.
The Uniform Civil Code is a proposal in India to formulate and implement personal laws of citizens which apply on all citizens equally regardless of their religion. Currently, personal laws of various communities are governed by their religious scriptures. Implementation of a uniform civil code across the nation is pursued by India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party. Personal laws cover marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption and maintenance. While articles 25-28 of the Indian Constitution guarantee religious freedom to Indian citizens and allow religious groups to maintain their own affairs, article 44 expects the Indian state to apply directive principles and common law for all Indian citizens while formulating national policies.
The term pseudo-secularism is used to describe individuals who claim to be secular but may display biases towards a particular religion, whether consciously or unconsciously. This term has gained popularity in recent Indian politics, where it is often used to criticize individuals who identify as secular and advocate for minority rights while remaining silent or opposing concerns faced by the majority religion. Some Hindu nationalist parties, who are accused of promoting communalism, employ this term as a counter-accusation against their critics, alleging that the secularism followed by the Indian National Congress and other self-declared secular parties are flawed or distorted.
Laïcité is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as the separation of civil society and religious society. It discourages religious involvement in government affairs, especially in the determination of state policies as well as the recognition of a state religion. It also forbids government involvement in religious affairs, and especially prohibits government influence in the determination of religion, such that it includes a right to the free exercise of religion.
The French Catholic Church, or Catholic Church in France is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Pope in Rome. Established in the 2nd century in unbroken communion with the bishop of Rome, it was sometimes called the "eldest daughter of the church".
State atheism or atheist state is the incorporation of hard atheism or non-theism into political regimes. It is considered the opposite of theocracy and may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments. To some extent, it is a religion-state relationship that is usually ideologically linked to irreligion and the promotion of irreligion or atheism. State atheism may refer to a government's promotion of anti-clericalism, which opposes religious institutional power and influence in all aspects of public and political life, including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen. In some instances, religious symbols and public practices that were once held by religions were replaced with secularized versions of them. State atheism in these cases is considered as not being politically neutral toward religion, and therefore it is often considered non-secular.
Islam is the largest and the state religion of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. According to the 2022 census, Bangladesh had a population of about 150 million Muslims, or 91.04% of its total population of 165 million. Muslims of Bangladesh are predominant native Bengali Muslims. The majority of Bangladeshis are Sunni, and follow the Hanafi school of fiqh. Bangladesh is a de facto Islamic country.
A secular state is an idea pertaining to secularity, whereby a state is or purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion, supporting neither religion nor irreligion. A secular state claims to treat all its citizens equally regardless of religion, and claims to avoid preferential treatment for a citizen based on their religious beliefs, affiliation or lack of either over those with other profiles.
India since its independence in 1947 has been a secular state. The secular values were enshrined in the constitution of India. India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru is credited with the formation of the secular republic in the modern history of the country. 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. 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.
Haj Committee of India (also known as Central Haj Committee (CHC)) is a statutory body of the Indian government which organises Islamic pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia. It was established under Haj Committee Act in 2002. The committee acts as a nodal agency for state haj committees and has 23 members, of which six are elected by state haj committees, four are ex-official, three are MPs, seven are nominated by the central government and the rest come from the state which sends largest number of pilgrims. India was provided with 1,36,200 pilgrims quota in 2016, out of which, 1,00,200 travels were said to be arranged by the haj committee. The committee distributes the allotted quota state-wise based on Muslim population density according to 2011 census.
The Haj subsidy was a subsidy based on religion that was given to Hajj pilgrims by the Government of India in the form of discounted air fare so that a pilgrim can fly to Mecca for Hajj. The policy had always been controversial until it was abolished under the ruling of the Indian judicial organs.
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.
Austin Dacey is an American philosopher, writer, and human rights activist whose work concerns secularism, religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of conscience. He is the author of The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights, and a 2006 New York Times op-ed entitled "Believing in Doubt," which criticized the ethical views of Pope Benedict. He is a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the creator and director of The Impossible Music Sessions.
Rajeev Bhargava is a noted Indian political theorist, who was professor of political theory at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. His works on political theory, multiculturalism, identity politics and secularism have evoked sharp debates.
Secularism in Bangladesh is known as "neutrality of religion" under Bangladeshi law. In the Constitution of Bangladesh, secularism is mentioned in the preamble as one of the fundamental principles of Bangladeshi law. Article 8 enshrines secularism as one of the fundamental principles of state policy. Article 12 elaborates further on secularism and freedom of religion.
Sharia means Islamic law based on Islamic concepts based from Quran and Hadith. Since the early Islamic states of the eighth and ninth centuries, Sharia always existed alongside other normative systems.
Mohsin Raza is an Indian politician from the state of Uttar Pradesh. He is the Minister of State for Minority Welfare Muslim Waqf and Hajj of the state in the Yogi Adityanath ministry.
Triple talaq and talaq-e-mughallazah are now-banned means of Islamic divorce previously available to Muslims in India, especially adherents of Hanafi Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. A Muslim man could legally divorce his wife by proclaiming three times consecutively the word talaq.
Secularism in the Philippines concerns the relationship of the Philippine government with religion. Officially the Philippines is a secular state, but religious institutions and religion play a significant role in the country's political affairs. Legal pluralism also persist with the application of Islamic personal laws for the country's Muslim population.
