Christians and Jews in the West live in secularised societies in which most people have a stronger allegiance to their countries than to their religion. However, in many parts of the world where the nation state is of more recent origin, people continue to derive their sense of identity less from nationality than from their religion. While most Muslim majority counties are headed by modern secular governments today, in some of them a strong sense of national allegiance has yet to take firm hold. Not surprisingly efforts to secularise society that go against people’s loyalties often create résistance
More relevant perhaps to many Muslims suspicions of secularisation is a history of governments ruthlessly imposing secularisation on an unwilling public. Despite episodes in Western history where religion was brutally repressed, secularisation in the West is often perceived as a relatively benign process that evolved over time and reflected the popular will. It has been seen as guaranteeing religious freedom and enabling religion to concentrate on its spiritual ideas.
In many Muslim countries the process has been far more traumatic and coercive. In the 1020s the Turkish leader Attaturk, determined to build a modern state in Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, suppressed the madrasa, abolished sufi orders, mandated a latin alphabet instead of Arabic, imposed western surnames in place of old Islamic names and titles, and forced Turks to wear Western dress.
Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran who rules from 1921 to 1941, stripped the ulama, the religious scholars, of their endowment, replaced the sharia with civil law code, prohibited citizens from going on hajj, suppressed shi religious rites commemorating the death of Husayn, and forbade Islamic dress. His soldiers tore of women’s veils in the street, and unarmed protesters who demonstrated against the regimes dress laws in 1935 were shot. Hundred died. His son Muhammed Reza Shah was just as anyto religious. He closed madrasas, restricted public displays of religion, and imprisoned, exiled and killed many members of the ulama
Because of these experiences secularism is perceived by many Muslims as anti-religious and intolerant and a threat to the foundations of their society.
