Talk:Islam and secularism

Misuse of Ibn Rushd
How is the Ibn Rushd's discussion on the role of the mind during the Abassid Caliphate anything to do with political secularism? This appears an extreme POV imposed on this writer and should be taken out. Jk54 (talk) 14:17, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Secularism and dictatorship
At the 'Secularism and dictatorship' section, it says "Many people also associate secularism with military regimes, such as those in Turkey and Algeria." Does that hove a source? I don't think that it is encyclopaedic. Andi as someone who lives in Turkey, I can say this observation is wrong. In Turkey, military regimes are associated with forbidding secularism or laïcité that cancels many rights on freedom of religion for Muslims in the name of defending secularism.--Cfsenel (talk) 19:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Azerbaijan Map
Nakhchivan which is part of Azerbaijan isnt highlighted like the rest of Azerbaijan is in the map, could somebody perhaps correct this in the map. Neftchi (talk) 12:07, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

What is secularism?
The defnition given in Turkey is fundamentally different from the definition given in Europe and North-America. It appears highly confusing not to describe those differences. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.247.161.228 (talk) 08:23, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Iraq requires update
Under the Iraq section:

"Although members of the ruling Baath Party generally are ideologically committed to secularism, about 95 percent of Iraqis are Muslim and Islam is the officially recognized state religion."

Isn't this a few years out of date? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.11.186.10 (talk) 10:22, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Map needs sources and definitions
I think before we use the map it needs some sources and definitions. It doesn't make clear what "Islamic State" means since it isn't exactly a state run by Islamic law (Iran says it is (mostly), Pakistan doesn't).

Egypt Section Requires Update
- Mubarak is stated as being the current President of Egypt in the article pertaining to Egypt. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.179.8.249 (talk) 04:18, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Definition of "secular" and "secularism"
Though this page is not about secular or secularism itself, I think it is important to emphasize that the definition of secular and secularism vary among Muslim countries, as in Western countries. Therefore it might be better to point out its' ambiguity clearly in the sections of preface and overview. Moreover, it would be helpful if we could make more references to Muslim intellectuals who argue the relationship between Islam and Secularism. --Eisaku ikegami (talk) 14:58, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Turkey POV
The "extreme" and "anti-religious" secularist were challenged by the "democrats" of AKP to a "softly" and "liberal" (!!) islamic state. Yeah right. Next time add the "officially written from the AK party office" banner.

I will put the POV-banner until a neutral description of turkish secularism is written. -- 213.240.94.88 (talk) 12:33, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Took care of it. Removed POV sentences. kazekagetr 12:47, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Kyrgyzstan missing.
Kyrgyzstan is missing on the map. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.250.9.218 (talk) 04:08, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

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Obvious POV in the "Opposition and critique" section
Some sentences that are obviously POV, and at least need heavy sourcing and explanations if it is to stay:


 * "There is a direct relationship between secularism and oppression in the Middle East." – it's elabtorated on to some degree in the article, which makes it less obviously biased, but the tone should be changed.
 * "Secularism is also associated with military regimes, such as those in Turkey and Algeria." – again, this is not necessarily wrong, but it's still based mostly on assumptions, and has a clear anti-secular undertone.
 * "When American diplomats asked Hosni Mubarak to give more rights to the press and stop arresting the intellectuals, Mubarak rejected it and said, 'If I do what you ask, the "fundamentalists" will take over the government in Egypt. Do you want that?'" – this is by far one of the worst examples; this is of course a quote by Mubarak, but the person who added it to the article also made sure to add sarcastic quotation marks around "fundamentalists", clearly to indicate that Mubarak was wrong – which is a subjective POV. In other words, the author is taking sides.
 * "Most of the Middle Eastern secularist autocrats drew upon the risk of Islamism in order to justify their autocratic rule of government in the international arena." – as with some of the previous examples, it's not necessarily wrong, but it gives the impression that secularism in the Middle East is mostly promoted by authoritarian groups and leaders. The sentence is mostly a rant filled with anti-secular name-calling, composed by an obvious Islamist.

Μαρκος Δ (talk) 03:11, 6 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Nearly a year later, the section, as well as the "Influences" section, remains totally atrocious. Here is a quick breakdown of some of the major issues currently facing the page:
 * 1) Uncited and vastly POV statements starting sections like "There is a direct relationship between secularism and oppression in the Middle East." That sort of POV-pushing doesn't ever belong on Wiki.
 * 2) Arab-centrism and/or Middle East centrism.
 * 3) The previous violation leads to an effect of cardstacking where secularism is tied to authoritarian regimes because every case where it isn't (possibly a majority) is simply omitted.
 * 4) Many of the "authoritarian secular" regimes are in fact still Islamic in character and still do have some degree of influence from Islamic law (the infamous Syrian regime, for example). Omission of this fact could be seen as cherrypicking and cardstacking.
 * 5) Having convinced the reader that secularism is somehow "authoritarian" it goes and blames it on outsiders ("When colonial rule was established, the process of secularization began to expand into Muslim lands.[citation needed] Secularism thus came as the European colonialists dominated the region and supplanted rule with their own processes and procedures."). While in some cases it was imposed from outside, there are many other places which have Muslim majorities were secularism arose as an indigenous political reform movement. Examples: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Tatarstan, Albania, Kosovo, large swathes of Central Asia... Portraying secularism as foreign influence also neglects cases where although it may have been imposed by foreigners, it came to be embraced and even defended by many natives (example: Tunisia).
 * 5) Whitewashing and/or omission of the status of secularists and/or atheists (or religious minorities that aren't lucky enough to be "People of the Book", for that matter) in non-secular Muslim states. Yeah, the ones that get thrown in jail for life and/or killed for apostasy. Not a single mention as the page rails on and on about murderous authoritarian secularists. I'm not saying we should have some coatrack section that goes on its own POV about "OHHH LOOK AT THE POOR DYING SECULARISTS". However, it is an important factor for understanding secularism in the Middle East and elsewhere that just as Islamists die for their beliefs, many secularists have died and are still dying for their beliefs and this increases the hostility between the rival ideologies.
 * 6) Giving a face so friendly it looks like an advertisement to certain Islamist groups. Example: "Muslim Brotherhood of Syria is Sunni Islamist force in Syria and very loosely affiliated to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It has also been called the "dominant group" or "dominant force" in the Arab Spring uprising in Syria.[93] The group's stated political positions are moderate and in its most recent April 2012 manifesto it "pledges to respect individual rights", to promote pluralism and democracy.[94][95]" ... I don't know if this hasn't been updated, but certainly that manifesto does not represent much of the Sunni Islamist forces on the ground in Syria, which happen to include ISIS, al-Nusra and a host of "moderate" Sunni Islamist groups that nevertheless have had a field day massacring Alevis, Shiites and Christians.
 * 7) As a side note, I am almost certain that Taha Hussein did not say that Egypt was part of geographic Europe, but rather part of Western civilization. Not specifying that makes him sound ridiculous, which to be fair could very well have been what the page was trying to do.
 * 8) Under a list of "secular" states with Muslim populations, entries include Lebanon (flagrantly non-secular), Iran (an "Islamic Republic"), Pakistan (need I say more?), as well as Egypt and Syria which despite claiming to be secular violate it in their laws and constitutions. Their inclusion is just false. --Yalens (talk) 19:30, 8 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Someone should go over the article and make a NPOV cleanup in language and presentation. -- 2A1ZA (talk) 01:52, 9 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Some poorly sourced text needs to be cleaned up for sure, but NPOV problems posed by properly sourced text should be addressed by reflecting sources which present alternative views rather than removing or rewriting sourced content. This is explained in WP:NPOV. Perhaps this is what you meant too, but we don't want to inadvertently encourage violation of WP policies. Eperoton (talk) 02:24, 9 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit busy at the moment, but in a lot of cases the problem is not the sources but rather the synthesis with statements like "secularism is directly linked to authoritarianism". In any case, a source that claims as a central point that secularism is "directly linked" to authoritarianism should not have its claims presented as objective facts, but placed in quotations and presented as subjective viewpoints in a criticism section. --Yalens (talk) 02:36, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Update: I think I've gotten rid of the most egregious POV violations. All that's left is issues of omission (which to be fair characterizes a lot of otherwise okay Wiki articles).--Yalens (talk) 03:02, 9 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't have a problem with trimming that Esposito quote (it was about secularization, not secularism, and even then tangentially so). However, though Esposito may present Islam in a more sympathetic form than most scholars of his caliber, he's a very prominent academic author by all standard measures. Let's stick to proper NPOV rationales for source evaluation please. Eperoton (talk) 03:45, 9 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Turns out I missed him up with another guy. His foundation gets Saudi funding but that doesn't actually necessarily compromise him as a source. There's no problem with sources presenting Islam in a "sympathetic form" at all. There would be a problem if a source was used to state factually that "secularism is directly linked to oppression" (as the page did until very recently). That has nothing to do with how Islam is presented, it is flagrantly anti-secularist and in another context, it could sound like something that came out of Fox News, Breitbart and their buddies. NPOV dictates balanced representations of the viewpoints present in sources. --Yalens (talk) 03:54, 9 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Ok, glad we're on the same page about use of funding information to judge relative weight. That edit summary had me worried for a moment. I think you did a nice job here. Eperoton (talk) 04:00, 9 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Revive discussion : looking back at the pages history, I came across a series of pretty tendentious edits here []. A lot of information was, without reason, removed from the page (and replaced with editorializing about how secularists are evil authoritarians, including by effect changing what information is attributed to the sources on the page, probably some sort of OR/SYN). While perhaps not all of this should go back on, I think a lot of it would be useful to restore. --Yalens (talk) 22:12, 14 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Those edits do look problematic, but I would check the sources before restoring the earlier version. For example, I checked the citations on secular women, and it looks like there was some OR (over-generalization) going on. Some of the changed text doesn't look neutral either: "During this time a number of changes were made to put Iran on the path to become a successful secularist capitalist country". Here the cited source isn't available, and it's also not a strong one. Eperoton (talk) 00:18, 15 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Yeah I mean in some cases the original version had its own POV present (like its impossible to assert Iran was on whatever path cause it's all "what if", and a "successful secularist capitalist country" is incredibly hard to define as what is "success"). Let me know when I'm done here if you have any concerns with the new version (I'll probably do it in a few days, or otherwise I'll forget). Also-- what specifically was overgeneralized in an OR way in the secular women section? Did the source only pertain to one country? --Yalens (talk) 05:09, 15 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, the material on secular women was over-generalized from a discussion of Egypt. Eperoton (talk) 23:05, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

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Translation, Please!
in his book "Al-Idtihad fi Al-Nasraniyya wa Al-Islam".

This isn't ar.wikipedia.org -- English translation is required for those of us who are hard of Arabic.

Nuttyskin (talk) 00:52, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * fixed--Louis P. Boog (talk) 00:44, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Syria
See the last stable version here. Syria was not in the list. Why you are including it without gaining consensus? In 8 July 2022, you said it yourself that "Syria does not have a state religion but in its laws the president must be a Muslim and the law also prohibits Muslim to convert to Non-Muslim (Apostasy laws). Hence it could not be regarded as a secular state either." The secular status of Syria is not only disputed among reliable sources, but our article on Secular state (see map) does not call Syria a secular state either. --Yoonadue (talk) 10:07, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Commons have reported “ Apostasy is not directly forbidden, however, the authorities restrict proselytizing and prohibit conversion of Muslims from Islam.' In practice, many converts, especially from Islam to Christianity, have been forced to flee the country due to social pressure” Does this means that Apostasy is prohibited or just the Proselytization is prohibited?

It is fine, I will let you remove Syria and I will put Nigeria as an addition to the list of Secular Countries with a Muslim-majority population.

Eustatius Strijder (talk) 10:38, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
 * You guys are engaging in WP:OR here. The constitution and laws of Syria are WP:PRIMARY sources and you can't interpret them to show that Syria is a secular country. Find secondary, reliable sources that say (or dispute) that Syria is a secular country, and ideally find multiple such sources.VR talk 00:08, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Tunisia
tunisia has to be added since the 2022 change of the constitution. I am not a wikipedian, so I dont have editing skills to change this. 2A02:1406:61:8044:6045:3282:69C7:C067 (talk) 17:51, 24 May 2023 (UTC)