On Secularism and Theories of Secularization: Reading Azmi Bishara (Volume II of Part One) [Arabic]

Abstract

In his book Religion and Secularism in Historical Context , Azmi Bishara deploys his vast arsenal of deductive reasoning and conceptualization to attempt a "theoretical model to understand the secularization of politics and the state". Bishara's approach refutes any direct and causal teleological relationship that ties the thinking of the enlightenment to modernity. In contrast, Bishara's approach is scholarly history of the ideas, chronicling periods of continuity punctuated by schisms of discontinuity. Bishara seeks also to highlight the distinctions which mark religion out from the other domains included within religious thinking, in addition to the distinctions he makes between religion, science and politics. Finally, Bishara also highlights the gradual withdrawal of religion from other spheres of knowledge production.