Secularism in the Arab World

Aziz Al-Azmeh is CEU University Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of History, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Prior to that, he had taught at the University of Exeter and at the American University of Beirut, and been visiting professor at Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, Georgetown, ISTAC, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris. He was a long-term Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Berlin, and a Fellow at the Swedish Institute for Advanced Studies, Uppsala, the Kollegium Budapest, the Kaete Hamburger Kolleg, Bochum, and a Senior Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, University of Bonn, as well as a Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Center for Scholars in Bellagio. Aziz Al-Azmeh held the Bourse Fernand Braudel over several terms as Directeur de Recherches Associé, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris. A professional translator, David is fluent in Arabic and French. His previous translations include Understanding the Qur’an Today by Mahmoud Hussein (Saqi Books, 2013) and Islam: Between Message and History by Abdelmadjid Charfi (EUP, 2009).

• Foreword by Gilbert AchcarPreface to the English Translation1. 1992-20182. Negative authority3. Keywords: vitalism, historism4. Secularism and the sociology of fate5. One postcolonialist standardPreface to the second editionIntroductionChapter One Religion and the world in historical perspective1.On the term "secularism"2.Religion and public life in Christian commonwealths3.Islam and the worldChapter Two The reformist state and the universalist orientation1. The state and its society: education and secular culture2. The secularisation of daily life3. The state: from the millet to the secular stateChapter Three Intellectual transformations and elusive reconciliation1. Evolutionism and Salafism2. Translation and equivocation3. Explicit secularism and accord with realityChapter Four Sites of secularism in the twentieth century1. Secular legislation and social dynamics2. Intellectual secularism and reformist retrogression3. Secularism and politicsChapter Five The nationalist era and the future besieged1. The flowering of secularism and its social dynamic2. State, religion and the beleaguered futureChapter Six Conclusion: Secularism today in the context of its adversaries1. The discourse of exceptionalism and its auxiliaries2. Islam, politics and society3. The context of secularismBibliographyIndex

Not only do I commend al-Azmeh for sifting through a complex historical process to demonstrate the ways in which “the subordination of liberal and Arab nationalist discourses to Islamic discourse” (420), but I also appreciate the arduous work of translation by David Bond. Mr. Bond smooths the long and often complex sentence structure of al-Azmeh's style, making it relatively easy to read this important contributor to the expanding Arab intellectual scene.