Democracy, Islam, & Secularism in Turkey

Democracy, Islam, & Secularism in Turkey
Author: Ahmet Kuru
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-02-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0231159323

While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several policy choices have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing social, historical, and religious context for Turkey's singular behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state's position on religion and diversity to its involvement in the European Union. Written by experts in a range of disciplines, the chapters explore the Ottoman toleration of diversity during its classical period; the erosion of ethno-religious diversity in modern, pre-democratic times; Kemalism and its role in modernization and nation building; the changing political strategies of the military; and the effect of possible EU membership on domestic reforms. They also conduct a cross-Continental comparison of "multiple secularisms" as well as political parties, considering the Justice and Development Party in Turkey in relation to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. The contributors tackle central research questions, such as what is the legacy of the Ottoman Empire's ethno-religious plurality and how can Turkey's assertive secularism be softened to allow greater space for religious actors. They address the military's "guardian" role in Turkey's secularism, the implications of recent constitutional amendments for democratization, and the consequences and benefits of Islamic activism's presence within a democratic system. No other collection confronts Turkey's contemporary evolution so vividly and thoroughly or offers such expert analysis of its crucial social and political systems.

Muslim Secular Democracy

Muslim Secular Democracy
Author: Lily Zubaidah Rahim
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2013-03-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1137282053

The book offers a nuanced and innovative analyses of the emergence of an inclusive secular democratic state paradigm which incorporates the sacred within the framework of secular democracy in the Muslim World.

Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy

Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy
Author: Jean L. Cohen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2015-12-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231540736

Polarization between political religionists and militant secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise. Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It identifies which connections between religion and the state are compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism. They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy when it violates international human rights agreements or liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible.

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy
Author: David M. Elcott
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0268200599

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy highlights the use of religious identity to fuel the rise of illiberal, nationalist, and populist democracy. In Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy, David Elcott, C. Colt Anderson, Tobias Cremer, and Volker Haarmann present a pragmatic and modernist exploration of how religion engages in the public square. Elcott and his co-authors are concerned about the ways religious identity is being used to foster the exclusion of individuals and communities from citizenship, political representation, and a role in determining public policy. They examine the ways religious identity is weaponized to fuel populist revolts against a political, social, and economic order that values democracy in a global and strikingly diverse world. Included is a history and political analysis of religion, politics, and policies in Europe and the United States that foster this illiberal rebellion. The authors explore what constitutes a constructive religious voice in the political arena, even in nurturing patriotism and democracy, and what undermines and threatens liberal democracies. To lay the groundwork for a religious response, the book offers chapters showing how Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism can nourish liberal democracy. The authors encourage people of faith to promote foundational support for the institutions and values of the democratic enterprise from within their own religious traditions and to stand against the hostility and cruelty that historically have resulted when religious zealotry and state power combine. Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy is intended for readers who value democracy and are concerned about growing threats to it, and especially for people of faith and religious leaders, as well as for scholars of political science, religion, and democracy.

Theocratic Democracy

Theocratic Democracy
Author: Nachman Ben-Yehuda
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2010-11-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199734860

The state of Israel was established in 1948 as a Jewish democracy without a legal separation between religion and the state. An expert on the construction of social and moral problems, Nachman Ben-Yehuda examines more than 50 years of media-reported unconventional and deviant behaviour by the Haredi community.

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective
Author: Jocelyne Cesari
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 019878855X

This collection reframes the debate around Islam and women's rights within a broader comparative literature that examines the complex and contingent historical relationships between religion, secularism, democracy, law, and gender equality.

Secular Surge

Secular Surge
Author: David E. Campbell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2020-12-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108918344

American society is rapidly secularizing–a radical departure from its historically high level of religiosity–and politics is a big part of the reason. Just as, forty years ago, the Religious Right arose as a new political movement, today secularism is gaining traction as a distinct and politically energized identity. This book examines the political causes and political consequences of this secular surge, drawing on a wealth of original data. The authors show that secular identity is in part a reaction to the Religious Right. However, while the political impact of secularism is profound, there may not yet be a Secular Left to counterbalance the Religious Right. Secularism has introduced new tensions within the Democratic Party while adding oxygen to political polarization between Democrats and Republicans. Still there may be opportunities to reach common ground if politicians seek to forge coalitions that encompass both secular and religious Americans.

Secularism Or Democracy?

Secularism Or Democracy?
Author: Veit-Michael Bader
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2007
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9053569995

Policies dealing with religious diversity in liberal democratic states—as well as the established institutions that enforce those policies—are increasingly under pressure. Politics and political theory are caught in a trap between the fully secularized state and neo-corporate regimes of selective cooperation between states and organized religion. This volume proposes an original, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary approach to problems of governing religious diversity—combining moral and political philosophy, constitutional law, history, sociology, and religious anthropology. Drawing on such diverse scholarship, Secularism or Democracy? proposes an associational governance—a moderately libertarian, flexible variety of democratic institutional pluralism—as the plausible third way to overcome the inherent deficiencies of the predominant models.

This Life

This Life
Author: Martin Hägglund
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1101873736

Winner of the René Wellek Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Millions, and The Sydney Morning Herald This Life offers a profoundly inspiring basis for transforming our lives, demonstrating that our commitment to freedom and democracy should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism. Philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that we need to cultivate not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions: what matters is how we treat one another in this life and what we do with our time. Engaging with great philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hägglund points the way to an emancipated life.

Freedom of Religion and the Secular State

Freedom of Religion and the Secular State
Author: Russell Blackford
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2012-01-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 047065886X

Exploring the relationship between religion and the state Focusing on the intersection of religion, law, and politics in contemporary liberal democracies, Blackford considers the concept of the secular state, revising and updating enlightenment views for the present day. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State offers a comprehensive analysis, with a global focus, of the subject of religious freedom from a legal as well as historical and philosophical viewpoint. It makes an original contribution to current debates about freedom of religion, and addresses a whole range of hot-button issues that involve the relationship between religion and the state, including the teaching of evolution in schools, what to do about the burqa, and so on.