Secularism is the principle of being indifferent to or skeptical and/or critical of religious belief.
The National Secular Society (NSS) is a British campaigning organisation that promotes secularism and the separation of church and state. It holds that no one should gain advantage or disadvantage because of their religion or lack of it. It was founded by Charles Bradlaugh in 1866.
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 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.
Farag Foda Arabic: فرج فودة ; 20 August 1945 – 8 June 1992) was a prominent Egyptian professor, writer, columnist, and human rights activist.
Liberalism in Egypt or Egyptian liberalism is a political ideology that traces its beginnings to the 19th century.
There exist a number of perspectives on the relationship of Islam and democracy among Islamic political theorists, the general Muslim public, and Western authors.
Nasserism is an Arab nationalist and Arab socialist political ideology based on the thinking of Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the two principal leaders of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and Egypt's second President. Spanning the domestic and international spheres, it combines elements of Arab socialism, republicanism, secularism, nationalism, anti-imperialism, developing world solidarity, Pan-Arabism, and international non-alignment. According to Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Nasserism symbolised "the direction of liberation, socialist transformation, the people’s control of their own resources, and the democracy of the peoples working forces."
The Liberal Egyptian Party, formerly Mother Egypt Party, was a liberal and secular political party in Egypt advocating democracy and patriotism. This liberal party was a political party in Egypt until the merger with another liberal party, the Egyptian Democratic Party, to become the Egyptian Social Democratic Party on 29 March 2011.
Ali Abdel Raziq (1888–1966) was an Egyptian scholar of Islam, judge and government minister. His writings, some controversial, debated the role of religion and Islamic history in 20th-century politics and government.
Secularism in Iran was established as state policy shortly after Rezā Shāh was crowned Shah in 1925. He made any public display or expression of religious faith, including the wearing of the headscarf (hijab) and chador by women and wearing of facial hair by men illegal. Public religious festivals and celebrations were banned, Shia clergy were forbidden to preach in extremist ideas.
Islamic revival refers to a revival of the Islamic religion, usually centered around enforcing sharia. A leader of a revival is known in Islam as a mujaddid.
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.
Religious liberalism is a conception of religion which emphasizes personal and group liberty and rationality. It is an attitude towards one's own religion which contrasts with a traditionalist or orthodox approach, and it is directly opposed by trends of religious fundamentalism. It is related to religious liberty, which is the tolerance of different religious beliefs and practices, but not all promoters of religious liberty are in favor of religious liberalism, and vice versa.
Egypt's first experience of secularism started with the British Occupation (1882–1922), the atmosphere which allowed the protection of debate. In this environment pro-secularist intellectuals like Yaqub Sarruf, Faris Nimr, Nicola Haddad who sought political asylum from Ottoman Rule were able to publish their work. This debate had then become a burning issue with the work of Egyptian Shaykh Ali Abdel Raziq (1888–1966), “The most momentous document in the crucial intellectual and religious debate of modern Islamic history”.
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.
The “Turkish model” refers to the focus on Republic of Turkey as "an example of a modern, moderate Muslim state that works." Turkey has been seen as combining a secular state and constitution, with a government run by a political party or political parties with "roots in political Islam". The AKP, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has ruled Turkey with a large majority in parliament since 2002. During this time Turkey has had good relations with the West, but also cordial ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran and a more pro-Palestinian policy. It has had vigorously contested, "substantially free and fair" elections, a vibrant culture, and has undergone an economic boom, developing a "large and growing middle class." However, as of summer 2013 and the crushing of the Taksim Gezi Park protests, some commentators complained that the model has come "unstuck".
Secularism in Tunisia is an ideological and political movement aiming at defining the relationship between religion and state and the place of religion in society during an ongoing modernization. The Tunisian Constitution of 2014 affirmed Tunisia as a civil state founded on citizenship. It also declared Islam as Tunisia's religion. The following religious festivals are recognized as national holidays: the Islamic New Year, the birth of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, Eid al-Fitr, and Eid al-Adha.
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
The Necessity of Secularism:Why God Can't Tell Us What to Do is a book by Center for Inquiry CEO Ronald A. Lindsay arguing that secularism in government is the best solution to the problems posed by a society with differing and incompatible perspectives on religion, and that for democratic discourse to be successful, religious doctrines need to be kept out of public policy discussions.
