Secular State and Religious Society

BERNA TURAM Associate Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Northeastern University, USA.

• Introduction: Secular State and Pious Muslims: Neither Rivals nor Allies for Life; B.Turam   The Dynamic Nature of Educational Policies and Turkish Nation-Building: Where Does Religion Fit In?; Y.Bayar  Islam, Nation-State, and the Military: A Discussion of Secularism in Turkey; S.Gurbey   Secularists as the Saviors of Islam: Rearticulation of Secularism and the Freedom of Conscience in Turkey (1950); U.Azak   Does Secularism Face a Serious Threat in Turkey?; M.Heper   Christian and Turkish: Secularist Fears of a Converted Nation; E.Ozyurek Market Oriented Post-Islamism in Turkey; T.Keskin   Conflict, Democratic Reform and Big Business: Factors Shaping the Economic Elite's Position for Change; D.Yavuz   Toward Conceptual Integration of Religious Actors in Democracy and Civil Society; A.Rubin   Afterword; M.G.Tezcur

"How do we account for the relationship between the secular state and pious society? Rather than viewing the two as mutually exclusive, the studies in this volume, built on the Turkish experience, skillfully illustrate how a secular state can engage and accommodate the exigencies of a religious society. The lesson may be highly instructive to the emerging democracies in the Middle East today.'Asef Bayat, professor of Sociology and Middle East Studies, University of Illinois