Browsing by Subject "Secularization"
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Item Liberal multiculturalism and the challenge of religious diversity(2010-12) De Luca, Roberto Joseph; Hooker, Juliet; Pangle, Thomas L.; Tulis, Jeffrey K.; Stauffer, Devin; Forbes, Hugh DonaldThis dissertation evaluates the recent academic consensus on liberal multiculturalism. I argue that this apparent consensus, by subsuming religious experience under the general category of culture, has rested upon undefended and contestable conceptions of modern religious life. In the liberal multicultural literature, cultures are primarily identified as sharing certain ethnic, linguistic, or geographic attributes, which is to say morally arbitrary particulars that can be defended without raising the possibility of conflict over metaphysical beliefs. In such theories, the possibility of conflict due to diverse religious principles or claims to the transcendent is either steadfastly ignored or, more typically, explained away as the expression of perverted religious faith. I argue that this conception of the relation between culture and religion fails to provide an account of liberal multiculturalism that is persuasive to religious believers on their own terms. To illustrate this failing, I begin with an examination of the Canadian policy of official multiculturalism and the constitutional design of Pierre Trudeau. I argue that the resistance of Québécois nationalists to liberal multiculturalism, as well as the conflict between the Québécois and minority religious groups within Quebec, has been animated by religious and quasi-religious claims to the transcendent. I maintain that to truly confront this basic problem of religious difference, one must articulate and defend the substantive visions of religious life that are implicit in liberal multicultural theory. To this end, I contrast the portrait of religious life and secularization that is implicit in Will Kymlicka’s liberal theory of minority rights with the recent account of modern religious life presented by Charles Taylor. I conclude by suggesting that Kymlicka’s and Taylor’s contrasting conceptions of religious difference—which are fundamentally at odds regarding the relation of the right to the good, and the diversity and nature of genuine religious belief—underline the extent to which liberal multicultural theory has reached an academic consensus only by ignoring the reality of religious diversity.Item The ʻulema of al-Azhar University responses to structural secularization and the re-"Islamization" in 20th century Egypt(2007-12) Lamm, Jennifer Elizabeth; Henry, Clement M., 1937-The paper explores the social, political, and economic condition of the Islamic studies graduates of Egyptian universities, referred to collectively as the ulema. It explains why Egyptian political elites targeted religious institutions, such as Al-Azhar University, for modernization., and how the ulema responded to reforms that challenged their privileged status. The author compares two historical periods- modernization in the 1920s/1930s and globalization in the 1980s/1990s- and examines how macro-forces fragmented Islamic authority. The first chapter discusses the effect of secular structuralization, i.e. the adoption of Western legal codes and educational institutions, on the ulemas social status. The second half uses the case study of Islamic banking in the 1980s/1990s. An analysis of the Shariah Supervisory Boards of Egyptian banks suggests that the favorable response among some ulema to Islamic finance represents an attempt to reclaim legal, social, and political authority. The paper concludes that the effects of two historical trends- secularization and re-Islamizationcan be observed, and correspond to, the tightening and loosening of what the Official ulema consider the bounds of Azhari standards of behavior and thought.