Islam and the Secular State

An-Naim’s book is an addition to the genre of studies that apply the toolsand mechanisms of secular liberal change and social engineering to Muslimsocieties behind a benign façade of Islamic concern. His opening wordsemphasize the necessity of a secular state for a Muslim to be a believer byconviction. He claims a different perspective of the term, which really is notthat distinct from common understandings of what constitutes a secularstate, namely, neutrality regarding religious doctrine (p. 1). According to thisorganizational principle Islam does not need to be separated from politics orpublic life, but rather from the state, so as not to allow for its manipulation.At first glance this sounds like a perfectly sensible premise, as manyMuslim countries do, in fact, suffer from such a predicament. The problem isthat in the process of suggesting the means and methods of how to do so, An-Naim contests Islamic values as relative, infusing them with ambiguity, as aprelude to essentializing western values and structures of state, constitutionalism,human rights, and citizenship as universal and deterministic. This way,he sets the hierarchy of privilege in favor of the latter. Consequently adaptation,if not clearly succumbing to instead of challenging, the “reality” of aEurocentric postcolonial world (pp. 31-32) should be accepted as a startingpoint. This is the contextual fact to which Islam and Muslims have to reconcilethemselves, and thus any notions of applying the Shari`ah should be forsakenand is, in fact, “impossible” (p. 18) ...