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The Importance of State Neutrality for a Comprehensive Syrian National Identity (3 - 3)
**Dr. Abdullah Turkmani**
**3 - Addressing Fears of Some Islamists**
Many do not understand the essence of secularism and its significance in building a modern democratic Syrian state capable of facing contemporary challenges. Perhaps the reason for their rejection of secularism is their fear that it may equate to a hostility towards religion. This misconception is baseless; in fact, secularism "has the potential to liberate religion from being exploited by power. Therefore, secularism can strengthen the individual's free belief in their faith by dissociating religion from authority. At its core, secularism is nothing more than a true interpretation and correct understanding of religion, at least in terms of social transactions and the general values it embodies (22)."
George Tarabichi has addressed those who deny the necessity of secularism in Islamic societies or restrict its demand to non-Islamic minorities. He firmly asserts that secularism is primarily an "Islamic-Islamic issue." Opponents of secularism in the contemporary cultural arena, whether advocates of modernity or traditionalism, agree that it is a model of an imported issue. In their view, secularism was born in the West, specifically in the Christian West. This Western issue was forcibly implanted into modern Arab culture without any real need for it, and did not satisfy an actual request—whether real or imagined—except for the minority group that chose to import it: the Eastern Christians (23).
If secularism, in one of its aspects, is a "philosophy and mechanism for reconciling relations, not only between different religions but also between different sects within the same religion," this makes it more than essential in our Arab and Islamic societies, which are based on sectarian and confessional pluralities. Thus, it becomes an Islamic-Islamic issue before it is a Christian-Islamic one. The current sectarian conflicts, which lead to civil wars among Islamic sects, serve as a significant motivation to consider secularism as a means to reduce these wars (24).
Reflecting on the trajectory of secularism in Christianity, Tarabichi notes that "it will not be much harder for Islam than for Christianity to enter into secularization. In Christianity, it was not the seeds of secularism that developed into a tree and forest; rather, the opposite occurred: when the cognitive rupture achieved by the West with itself and its secularization was complete, Christianity reverted to its history to discover and justify this secularization. I believe that Islam will enter this phase, returning to its past to discover those seeds and give them a new name. This is necessary for Islam itself and will help it transition from political Islam to spiritual Islam, just as was the case with Christianity. Islam is the religion most in need today of separating the temporal from the spiritual... While politicized and ideologically driven Islam wages a fierce war against secularism, it does so not only because it rejects the principle of separating religion from the state, but also because secularism, by virtue of its resultant separation between the spiritual and the temporal—even in purely religious terms—can help Islam liberate itself from the shackles of "politicization" and "ideologization" and restore its natural status as a quasi-instinctive collective sentiment (25)."
If we delve into actual Islamic history, we will find "the rich and argumentative discussions that took place in the courts of Muslim sultans, where they urged the sultan to accept that religion is a moral and social motivator, where the capacity for control and coercion is absent." Even Al-Mawardi, the judge and jurist known for his work "The Sultan's Regulations," distinguished between religion as a motivator and general ethics and political authority. He "understood the difference between rational justification and religious faith as the foundation for ethics," which is "a concept similar to what Kant reached regarding the distinction between elite religiosity and that of the general population" (26).
Separation and differentiation, considered a process of secularization, simplify the past by imposing a secular model upon it, while "becoming is a differentiation that emerges historically, and this differentiation may culminate in an awareness of separation between religion and politics, or between the state and religious institutions. This may lead to a kind of contractual agreement or collusion with mutual benefits. Often, this phase, of subjecting religion to the state, historically precedes a stage of neutralizing the state concerning religious affairs" (27).
Thus, secularization presupposes a historical process leading to a gradual withdrawal of religion from broad societal sectors, with the most significant aspect of civic secularism being "the emergence of a state logic that overcomes religious considerations, where political judgment on matters arises from the interests of people in this world. What can be legislated in laws, before the secularization of consciousness and its enforcement by the state, is to prevent the state—or any political power—from imposing religion through the state, or from
