By now,i ti sn earlyacommonplaceo bservation to note that secularism -until quite recentlys implya ssumedt ob et he basis of modern nation statesa nd the public sphere -is ac ontested and even "beleaguered" cultural, social,a nd political formation.¹ Once regarded as the sine qua non of public democratic life and the requisite integument of international relations,t he secular wast aken to be unmarked ideologically, as the mere absenceo rn egation of obsolescing "religion." Linked to this regard for secularism as an unmarked, neutral category was the standard secularization thesis, accordingt owhich modernity itself was characterized by,i fn ot understood as predicatedu pon, the progressive decline of religion -its relegation to the privatesphere, its diminishing hold on individual belief, and its loss of authority in separate and increasinglyd ifferentiated spheres of discourse and activity.However,within the past two or three decades, both the statusofsecularism as ar elatively unproblematic feature of modernity and the secularization thesis as astanding explanation for its regnant status have been deeplyshaken. Acrisis of secularism is widelyr ecognized. Secularism is currentlyavexedt opic fraughtw ith complex and difficult global implications and consequences. While scholarship on secularism has seen adramatic upsurge,questions related to secularism have become increasinglyurgent and involveenormous real-world implications. These include the battleso ver "Sharīʿah law" in Europe and the Middle East,a nd the renewed importance of religion in the politics of India and Turkey.They also include the challenges posed for and by laicism in France. One might also point to the emergenceo ft he "new atheism" and its political meaningsinthe West,and the battles over the authority of science in the United States.Atstake alsoissecularism'ssupposed role for arbitratingarmed religious conflict,and its place in political and legal struggles over the shape of the public sphere in multiple contexts. The questions involving secularism provee ssential and significant.In recent years, secularism has been taken to task not onlyfor its differential treatment of various religions within the state but also, and more fundamentally, for its putative imposition of culturaln orms and values,p olitical prerogatives, Rajeev Bhargava, "Political Secularism," in TheOxford Handbook of PoliticalTheory,eds.John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig,a nd Anne Phillips (Oxford: OxfordU niversity Press, ), -.
Brought to you by | Stockholms UniversitetAuthenticated Download Date | 10/7/15 8:07 PM and hegemonic impulses within and across political landscapes and the public sphere. As the chapters in this volume make clear,secularism has been far from aneutral arbiter of religious practices and expressioninits various contexts. Includingother charges, secularism has been seen as deeplyimplicated in colonial and imperialist projects.M eanwhile, the standard secularization thesis, once a staple of social science theory,h as been called into question, if ...
