Religion in a Secular Age. The Case of Tunisia

By Amany Abdelrazik

Master's Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Cultural Studies - North African Studies, grade: 1,7, University of Potsdam (Institute for Amerkanstik und Anglistik), course: Anglophne Modernities in Literature and Culture, language: English, abstract: The debates over the relationship between a Western secular modernity associated with specific historical practices and secular modernity as a universal category have never lost their momentum as a controversial topic in the discourse of modernization and the nature of both the modern society and individual. While according to the prevailing discourse in the West a universal secularism is based on a universal reason valid to all cultures, other Western as well as non-Western thinkers and sociologists, in particular postcolonial scholars, refute the possibility of a singular secular paradigm valid for all times. They argue that such a universal paradigm with its Western ideals negates non-Western histories and philosophies and thus is a hegemonic model of modernity. This paper is a critique of the unveiled secular modern / veiled religious traditional divide in the modernist discourse in light of current debates of both postmodernists and neo-secularists. Following the secularization process in postcolonial Tunisia as part of the state s modernization movement, this paper sheds light on the suppression of the non-Western religious actor under the narrative of a universal rational modernity in the modern age.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3668285985
• ISBN13: 9783668285989
• Release Date: August 2016
• Publisher: Grin Verlag
• Length: 84 Pages
• Weight: 0.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.8" x 8.3"