Ahmet T. Kuru is Assistant Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at and Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion at SIPA of Columbia University. His dissertation, on which this book is based, received the Aaron Wildavsky Award for the best dissertation from the Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. He is the author of several articles that have appeared in journals such as World Politics, Comparative Politics, and Political Science Quarterly.

• 1. Analyzing secularism: history, ideology, and policy; Part I. The United States: 2. Passive secularism and the Christian right's challenge (1981–2008); 3. Religious diversity and the evolution of passive secularism (1776–1981); Part II. France: 4. Assertive secularism and the multiculturalist challenge (1989–2008); 5. The war of two Frances and the rise of assertive secularism (1789–1989); Part III. Turkey: 6. Assertive secularism and the Islamic challenge (1997–2008); 7. Westernization and the emergence of assertive secularism (1826–1997).

'Professor Kuru's authoritative study, written with remarkable precision, asks taboo-breaking questions and provides iconoclastic responses to them in strict accordance with the maxim facta non verba. First, it shatters the deeply internalized myth that Turkish laïcité is unquestionably sui generis and thus cannot be compared with any other case. Second, it rebuffs the widely accepted premise that Islam and secularism are inherently incompatible, and that assertive secularism would therefore be the only working model for Muslim societies. Third, it clearly shows that in its application of assertive secularism Turkey has gone far beyond its historical model, the French laïcité of the Third Republic. This exemplary piece of scholarship further offers invaluable insight into the present-day tug-of-war over secularism in Turkey.' M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University