Over the past few centuries, proponents of secularisation have claimed that, as societies modernise, the role of religion in public and private life diminishes. For them, modern rationality, science, and the ideal of representative governments as sovereign replace religion as a source of authority, regulation and security.
But a new claim is that religion is necessary for us today, not despite modernity, but precisely because of it. Religion is required in the public space, it is argued, because only faith can amend the deficits and alleviate the pain caused by modern life.
But how closely can sacred teachings inform politics and governance? The prism of the Muslim Middle East shows how the public role of religion has varied over time. In the late 19th-century Middle East, several religious movements emerged in response to Islam's encounter with the European colonial conquest and modernity. Traditionalists such as the Wahhabis sought to preserve their culturally specific Islamic heritage. The modernist trend advocated an evolving Islam that would coexist and flourish within this emerging modernity. And some people demanded separating Islam from the state entirely.
The 1970s brought revived and aggressive religious engagement in society and politics. Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979 bolstered a new global era of religious politics in the Middle East and beyond by offering a tangible model of Islamic rule. That same year, Islamic militants seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca in a failed effort to dislodge the Saudi rulers. The shocking assault spurred radicalisation and accelerated the rivalry between Wahhabi and Salafi trends. By the mid-1990s, the public space in the Middle East was dominated by Islamic movements, institutions and sensibilities. More concretely, religious groups in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran ruled through Islamic states.
But the realisation of an Islamic state carries within it contradictory seeds of its own decline. History has shown that religious states of any faith inevitably lead to the secularisation of theology, for leaders, religious or not, must respond to day-to-day exigencies of governance. Sacred injunctions are bent, revised or cast aside to accommodate the requisites of governance or merely to justify power. Religion thus descends from the height of devotion and spirituality to be a pliable instrument to serve secular objectives.
Cynical secularisation of the sacred by the 'Islamic' states is alienating many Muslim citizens. Secular, faithful and even many members of the ulema (Muslim spiritual leaders) have pleaded for the separation of religion from the state, to restore both the sanctity of religion and the rationality of the state. Most are seeking a post-Islamist trajectory where faith is merged with freedom and Islam with democracy, in which a civil democratic state can work within a pious society.
