Ahmed Al-Romoh
Executive Summary:
The ones who have harmed the reputation of secularism the most fall into three categories: Arab rulers, extreme secularist elites, and advocates of political Islam who seek power at any cost. Rulers presented themselves to the world as secular but failed to apply the simplest principles of secularism, such as neutrality. They were true autocrats, and in their systems, rewards were based on loyalty rather than competence. As for the extreme secularist elites before the Arab Spring, they exploited secularism during the leftist wave to present it as a “religion” opposed to the religion of their societies. Political Islam advocates, meanwhile, portrayed secularism to their followers as an enemy of religion and piety. Each of these three groups thus misrepresented the essence of secularism. This paper seeks to explain why secularism has a bad reputation in the Arab world through the following sections:
Sections:
- Introduction
- What is secularism? And how did it originate?
- Secularism from the West to the East
- The secular-Islamic conflict?!
- The war of slogans: Islamism vs. Secularism
- The slogan “Islam is the solution”
- The slogan “Secularism is the solution?”
- Conclusion
Introduction:
At the beginning of the 20th century, shortly after the fall of the Islamic Caliphate, two groups contributed to tarnishing the reputation of secularism:
The first group: Arab “leftists” who, through the spread of communism, sought to use secularism as a Trojan horse to enter our societies and promote Soviet atheism. They presented it as an alternative “religion” opposed to Islam.
The second group: Advocates of political Islam, who aimed to regain power by Islamizing society. Their preachers and writers distorted secularism and demonized the West. Dr. Muhammad Amara, a prominent figure in political Islam, even stated that secularism means severing the connection between heaven and earth. During the peak of the Islamic awakening, this propaganda poured its full wrath on secularism, accusing anyone who advocated it of disbelief and of opposing Islam. As a result, secularism acquired a negative reputation among religious communities and supporters of political Islam.
The extremism of both groups led to the injustice and distortion of secularism. Its misrepresentation was fueled both by misunderstanding of the concept and its poor implementation:
- The first group hid behind it to spread an ideology of atheism rejected in our societies.
- The second group realized that the spread of secular culture would prevent them from gaining power.
Therefore, it is essential to examine the term itself, its origins, and its intended meaning, to understand its goals—whether opposed by those who know secularism only from the mouths of secularists who harmed it or by fanatical Islamists who portray it as disbelief and atheism.
What is Secularism? And How Did It Originate?
One factor that harms secularism and distorts its reputation is the lack of agreement on a precise definition. Thus, we say:
Secularism is a culture and system that clearly delineates the boundaries between the roles of religion and the state. It organizes societal, worldly affairs without interfering in individuals’ religious matters. Consequently, this ensures the independence of politics, economics, scientific research, art, and legislation from religious authorities.
The separation of the three branches of power is essential to achieving secularism. These branches are separated from religious authority, which is not allowed to intervene in their work. Secularism does not adopt an official state religion, as that would compromise its neutrality, but it allows believers to practice their rituals and protects them.
Secularism was not recognized as an intellectual doctrine for state governance until the 17th century, when the philosopher Baruch Spinoza discussed it with the aim of rescuing the understanding of the Bible from clerical monopoly, making it accessible to the public, and freeing believers from the authority of the Church. However, Spinoza’s deconstructive approach to understanding religion and its role was not fully systematized.
British writer George Holyoake is considered the first to coin the term “Secularism” in 1851 in an article published in The Reasoner, defining it as a social system separate from religion but not opposed to it.
However, secular practices predated Holyoake’s definition. They were applied after the success of the French Revolution in 1789 and became the system of the modern French state with the 1905 law separating church and state in the Third French Republic. Republican governance in Spain also adopted a secular system during its rule between 1868 and 1876. In this way, secularism gradually became a state system, separating political authority from religious authority—a process likened to the separation of Siamese twins, culminating in a formal “divorce” between political and religious authorities, which had previously allied against the people.
Secularism from the West to the East!
Secularization of the state moved from the West to the East. Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to announce the implementation of a secular system under Kemal Atatürk. However, Atatürk’s secularism was a harsh form—it declared hostility to religion, and it did not only separate religion from politics and power but also fought its manifestations in all aspects of life. This Atatürk experiment, with its severity, became a major reason for secularism’s bad reputation.
The call for state secularization in Egypt, however, preceded Atatürk’s project. The first secular party, the Egyptian Secular Party, was established in 1913. It quickly changed its name to the Wafd Party, though state secularization in Egypt only became somewhat clear after the July 1953 Revolution, and even then it was a somewhat timid form of secularism. The secular-Islamic conflict in Egypt ebbed and flowed depending on the government’s proximity to or distance from the Islamic current.
In Syria, the call for a secular system gained strength during the French colonial period. When the Ba’ath Party seized power in 1963, it declared the state secular but did not implement genuine secularism. The longer the Ba’ath remained in power, the more it practiced a pseudo-secularism; its policies and practices harmed the essence of secularism and distorted its reputation.
Similarly, in Iraq, although the state declared its adoption of secularism after independence in 1932, it only practiced secularism in ways compatible with the interests of those in power. When the Ba’ath Party came to power in Iraq, it claimed to adopt secularism, but it was a one-party system that prohibited political pluralism—the most essential feature of secularism—and concentrated power in its own hands. Its pseudo-secularism further tarnished secularism’s reputation. The Ba’ath’s conflict with political Islam—represented by the Shiite Dawa Party and Sunni Muslim Brotherhood—and its tragic episodes played a major role in the misrepresentation of secularism by all parties. Later, Iraq fell under Shiite political Islam after the 2003 U.S. occupation, which declared Islam the state religion in 2005.
Thus, the Ba’athist experience in Iraq and Syria is one of the most significant reasons for secularism’s poor reputation in the Arab world, as it was characterized by authoritarianism, the imposition of a single ideology on society, and the suppression of political life. These outcomes also gave political Islam a pretext to reject secularism.
The Bourguiba experience in Tunisia, however, is considered the best Arab example of secularism, despite its coercive implementation. Habib Bourguiba, who led Tunisia’s independence from French colonialism, declared Tunisia a secular state. Bourguiba paid little attention to Islamist opposition and managed, to some extent, to present a secular model that remains one of the best in the region. Nevertheless, the coercive aspect of Bourguiba’s secularism remains its main criticism.
The Arab experience with secularism was largely a failure. It presented a pseudo-secularism that entrenched authoritarianism and deified rulers, stripping secularism of its purity and harming its reputation in the Arab world.
The Secular-Islamic Conflict?!
Our troubled region witnessed an Islamist-secularist conflict ranging from dialogue and debate to armed conflict and assassination, and in some countries, civil war, which claimed thousands of innocent lives. Examples include Syria during the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle against Assad in the late 1970s, and Iraq between the Ba’ath and political Islam.
Earlier, in Egypt, the struggle for power unfolded under the banner of the conflict between secularism and Islam, beginning with Nasser’s regime and the Muslim Brotherhood, including Organization 65 led by Sayyid Qutb, and continuing with the Takfir wal-Hijra group founded by Shukri Mustafa, and the Islamic Group established by Nagib Ibrahim and led intellectually by Omar Abdel Rahman, including the wave of assassinations in the 1990s.
We must also recall Algeria’s “Black Decade” in the early 1990s, which resulted in massive bloodshed, and Gaddafi’s conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood in 1996. These struggles between ruling regimes and political Islam further damaged secularism’s reputation in the Arab world.
These conflicts claimed to be about secularism versus Islam, but in reality, both secularism and Islam were innocent.
This is the state-level conflict. On the intellectual and media front, debates between prominent figures of both sides predated or accompanied these political struggles. The secular-Islamic conflict has, therefore, persisted since the initial calls for a secular state until today.
One of the most famous intellectual debates occurred in the early 20th century in Egyptian newspapers between Imam Muhammad Abduh and thinker Anton Farah, which ended inconclusively.
The two debates in Egypt in 1992 are the most famous. The first took place on the sidelines of the Cairo International Book Fair, featuring Farag Foda and Mohamed Khalaf Allah for the secular side, and Sheikh Mohamed Al-Ghazali, Muslim Brotherhood guide Mamoun Al-Hudaybi, and Dr. Muhammad Amara for the Islamic side.
The second debate occurred two weeks later at the Alexandria Engineers’ Syndicate Club, with Dr. Fouad Zakaria joining Foda, facing Dr. Amara and Dr. Mohamed Selim Al-Awa. One consequence of this debate was the assassination of Farag Foda.
In Syria, a notable debate occurred between Sheikh Al-Bouti and thinker Tayeb Tizini. The Arab street also witnessed widely viewed televised debates, such as on Al-Jazeera’s famous show “The Opposite Direction”, between Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi and thinker Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm.
We cannot forget the role of contemporary Salafism and its prominent clerics, who, through their massive media presence, insulted secularism, distorted its reputation, and declared secular advocates as infidels. This takfir (excommunication) was exploited by terrorist organizations arising from contemporary Salafism to justify killing and assassinating secularism advocates, especially in Syria and Iraq.
All these developments led to the emergence of two competing slogans, whose advocates are still divided to the point of violent hostility: “Islam is the solution” and “Secularism is the solution.” What is the story behind these slogans?
The War of Islamist/Secularist Slogans!
One of the striking paradoxes in the emergence of secularism in the Arab world is that some of its most prominent advocates were scholars and graduates of Al-Azhar. Perhaps the most notable is Sheikh Ali Abdel-Raziq, through his famous book Islam and the Foundations of Governance (1925), written amid growing calls for the restoration of the Caliphate, even in an Arab context. The book is considered the first scholarly study to establish the idea of secularism within the Islamic milieu. Its central idea interprets Islam in a manner compatible with the contemporary evolution of the state. He argued that the Prophet’s message was purely spiritual, serving only as guidance, not to establish a ruling authority. Therefore, the government formed by the companions after him was a worldly institution, not mandated by Islamic law.
The second advocate of secularism was Dr. Taha Hussein, also an Al-Azhar graduate, through his book On Pre-Islamic Poetry (1926). He called for ending the dominance of religious authorities over scientific research and literary creativity, laying the groundwork for a secular state. The Islamist current accused Taha Hussein of merely annotating the work of the Orientalist Marjolioth, who had published a study titled The Origins of Pre-Islamic Poetry shortly before Hussein’s book. Ninety-two years later, in 2010, Reuters published a report officially clearing Taha Hussein of this accusation.
The third Al-Azhar secularist advocate was Sheikh Khaled Mohammed Khaled, through his book From Here We Begin (1950), in which he called for the separation of religion and state. This caused a rupture between him and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Azhar banned circulation of the book. His second book, Democracy Forever (1953), discussed the democratic experience between 1924 and 1952, rejecting the religiously governed concepts of the state and advocating for a secular state with laws serving societal interests rather than religious authority.
These three scholars faced a religious media campaign. Sheikh Ali Abdel-Raziq was allegedly pressured to modify his ideas after being expelled from Al-Azhar and having his “Al-Azhar scholarly certificate” revoked, though no document confirms this retraction. Taha Hussein did visibly revise some ideas under Al-Azhar’s pressure and later wrote On the Margin of the Biography to appease the Islamic public. Khaled Mohammed Khaled faced attacks even from peers like Sheikh Mohamed Al-Ghazali, who opposed Khaled’s book From Here We Begin.
From these secularist/Islamist battles arose the enduring competing slogans: “Islam is the solution” and “Secularism is the solution”, which remain contested to this day.
The Slogan “Islam is the Solution”
This slogan emerged in the 1980s when Islamic researcher Khaled Al-Zaafrani wrote a book titled Islam is the Solution. When former President Hosni Mubarak allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in parliamentary elections, they formed an alliance with the Labor Party and the Free Party called the Islamic Alliance, which adopted “Islam is the Solution” as its electoral slogan. Initially, the Brotherhood objected, as it was not one of their traditional slogans, but later accepted it when it gained popular approval, according to its originator Khaled Al-Zaafrani. Later, Brotherhood thinker Mustafa Mashhour, who became the group’s guide between 1996–2002, wrote a book with the same title.
The alliance’s goal and slogan aimed to Islamize Egyptian society and implement Islamic Sharia law, as stated in its electoral program. Egyptian parties objected and took the matter to court, but the Administrative Court of Egypt ruled that the slogan was compatible with Article 2 of the Constitution at the time, reflected the identity of the state and nation, and did not conflict with the principle of citizenship. The slogan was intended as an electoral call to implement Sharia, one of the Constitution’s objectives.
The rise of Islamism from the Islamic awakening, at its peak then, helped spread the slogan and marginalize secular advocates populistly. One criticism of the slogan is that it is a populist, mobilizing message targeting the instincts of newly religious youth to energize supporters, allowing political Islam to regain power. Through this populist mobilization, political Islam captured the votes of a vulnerable majority while clashing with a small, resilient minority in media, economy, and politics.
To legitimize the slogan, the idea of Islamizing the economy arose, presenting Islamic economics as an alternative to interest-based finance. Islamist jurists advocated for Islamic banking, which ultimately failed due to widespread fraud, crushing the modest dreams of the poor, such as in Egypt with companies like Al-Rayan and others.
To further support the slogan’s credibility, the phenomenon of scientific miracles in the Quran and Sunnah was promoted by figures like Abdel-Majid Al-Zindani, Zaghloul Al-Najjar, and many others. Most of their theories were later debunked and lost influence with the spread of social media.
The Islamic awakening effectively ended after the September 2001 events, revealing it as one of the largest religious deceptions in history, benefiting only authoritarian regimes and political Islam, both Sunni and Shiite.
This Islamist propaganda, symbolized in slogans, prompted secularists to regroup and adopt the counter-slogan “Secularism is the solution”, a response that later benefited them during political Islam’s dramatic failures in the Arab Spring.
The Slogan “Secularism is the Solution”?
This slogan emerged at the beginning of this century and began to appear openly in newspaper articles after the failure of political Islam during the Arab Spring and its sad outcome due to Islamization. It acted as a challenge to the slogan “Islam is the solution”, after many people abandoned political Islam due to the Islamization and militarization of the Arab Spring.
One of the most notable works on this slogan is Dr. Farouk Al-Qadi’s book Secularism is the Solution (2010), which sparked significant debate between supporters and opponents. The book highlights the fallacy of political Islam, arguing that Islam is a belief system that organizes a person’s relationship with God, without prescribing any specific system of governance. It is not a creed that governs society politically. Therefore, the Brotherhood’s claim that Islam is both religion and state is invalid. The author emphasizes that he is not against religion; rather, every citizen has full civic rights regardless of their religious beliefs. The state and its laws are formed by citizens with diverse beliefs, and all are equal before the law in rights and duties. Regarding the separation of religion and state, he writes: there is no state in religion, nor religion in the state—but they coexist.
We can say that this book is essentially a modernized and expanded version of Sheikh Ali Abdel-Raziq’s Islam and the Foundations of Governance, presented in a more contemporary style.
Similarly, Bashir Hanidi wrote an important study under the same title, presenting his perspective on why secularism is a solution to confront the expansion of political Islam and a step toward the revival of the Arab nation from its backwardness and failures.
Conclusion
I believe the groups that have most harmed secularism are two: Arab rulers and extreme secularist elites. Rulers presented themselves as secular to the world but failed to apply the basic principle of neutrality. They were true autocrats, and their rewards were based on loyalty rather than competence. Extreme secularist elites before the Arab Spring exploited secularism during the leftist wave, presenting it as a “religion” opposed to the religion of their societies. Both misrepresented the essence of secularism.
Thus, it is essential to distinguish between two types of secularism: malicious secularism and benign secularism.
Malicious secularism is ideologically rigid, imposing a single model on society to make it mono-ideological. Historically, examples include the Soviet Union, China, and present-day North Korea. Most extreme secularist elites before the Arab Spring promoted malicious secularism, as they came from leftist backgrounds that rejected belief itself, using secularism as a “religion” against the religion practiced by their societies. This was a strategic mistake, especially given that Arab societies are naturally religious. Political Islam advocates exploited this error to portray secularism as ugly, alienating believers from it and its proponents.
Benign secularism, on the other hand, respects religion and piety, ensures followers of all religions can practice their rituals peacefully, and remains neutral toward everyone, adopting no religion at the expense of another.
Regarding the misconception that secularism promotes atheism: secularism does not mean atheism—it means neutrality. Some secularists may be atheists, but not all. Many secularists practice religion but believe that clearly delineating boundaries between religion and state is key to advancing a pluralistic society. It does not harm them as long as they respect freedom of thought and the beliefs of others. Freedom is a human principle endorsed by the Qur’an; God respects human choice, even if one rejects the Creator. Any action that coerces another violates human freedom. The Qur’an exemplifies this principle in the context of belief: “There is no compulsion in religion”.
It is also worth noting that Western secularism allows Muslims, even refugees, to build mosques to worship freely, whereas Islamic states often prohibit the construction of non-Islamic churches and temples. In a secular state, one can declare their religion, sect, or denomination without fear—something forbidden in some Islamic countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.
