Religious Secularity: Shiite Repudiation of the Islamic State

Abstract

In the latter decades of the 20th century, secularism and Muslim politics appeared to be on a collision course. Although 9/11 arguably marked the peak of militant Islam, it also spurred many Muslims to speak up for moderate versions of political Islam. The new millennium has also witnessed the emergence of a more robust debate on secularism and its many approaches and practices. As a result, the Islamism/secularism dichotomy has come under rigorous scrutiny as Muslim thinkers reconceptualize state–religion relations. This book examines the ways by which Iranian Shiite scholars have re-articulated state–religion–society relations beyond the Islamic state paradigm. Despite its promises, the Islamic state has systematically prioritized political considerations over religious precepts, inadvertently generating a reformist religious discourse that questions the very foundations of the Islamic state. This book investigates this counter-discourse by developing the seemingly oxymoronic term “religious secularity” to highlight the paradoxes inherent in the Islamic state ideal.