Islam and secularism

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.^[1] 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.^[2][3] Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites,^[4] and is frequently understood to be equivalent to irreligion or anti-religion.^[5]

Especially in the late 19th to mid-20th century, some Muslim thinkers advocated secularism as a way to strengthen the Islamic world in the face of Russian, British and French colonialism. Some have advocated secularism in the sense of political order that does not impose any single interpretation of sharia (Ali Abdel Raziq and Mahmoud Mohammed Taha);^[6] argued that such a political order would not/does not violate Islam (Abdullah Saeed);^[7] and that combined with constitutionalism and human rights, is more consistent with Islamic history than modern visions of an Islamic state (Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im).^[6] Orthodox Islamic scholars and proponents of Islamism (political Islam) strongly oppose limiting Islam to matters of personal belief, and also strongly advocate for an Islam that encompasses law, politics, economics, culture and every other aspect of the lives of its citizens.^[2][8] Islamist pioneer Abul A'la Maududi claimed that the goal of secularists was not to ameliorate tensions and divisions in multi-religious societies, but to avoid the "restraints of morality and divine guidance",^[9] and thus eliminate "all morality, ethics, or human decency from the controlling mechanisms of society."^[10]

A number of pre-modern polities in the Islamic world demonstrated some level of separation between religious and political authority, the loss of power of the caliphate being a major reason for that, even if they did not adhere to the modern concept of a state with no official religion or religion-based laws.^[11] Today, some Muslim-majority countries define themselves as or are regarded as secular. Many of them have a dual legal system in which Muslims can bring familial and financial disputes to sharia courts whose jurisdiction varies from country to country but usually includes marriage, divorce, inheritance, and guardianship.^[12]