Seval Yildirim

The relationship between religiosity and secularity is anything but simple and the boundaries between the religious and the secular are anything but clear. From the difficulties in defining what constitutes public good to balancing the potentially conflicting demands of various factions of society, the liberal democratic state continues to grapple with the myriad issues secularism raises. This short comment identifies some of these problems and critiques certain points in current discourse on religion in the secular state.  Turkey, where the meaning of secularism is evolving, provides a case study.

This paper argues that international human rights law is inadequate in understanding the complexities of Muslim women’s headcoverings and that it has failed to protect Muslim women from prohibitive and punitive measures of the liberal State. Through a review of the relevant cases from the European Court of Human Rights as well as a review of prohibitive laws from Muslim-majority Turkey, the paper argues that international human rights law is prejudiced to say the least, and, heeding Janet Halley’s advice, needs to take a break from feminism in order to fully protect Muslim women’s dignity as defined by Muslim women themselves.

Laiklik,Turkish secularism, as it has been constructed, upheld and sustained by the Turkish state, and especially the Court, has become the mechanism through which all those who would like to see a shift in its definition and boundaries have been rendered the unacceptable and integrity-threatening other of Turkish society. I am interested in how the subjects of the law, as well as the interpreters and the sustainers of the law, perceive the Turkish concept of secularism, laiklik, and how these perceptions inform the cases before the Court.

In this paper, I challenge the conventional wisdom that secular laws of the Turkish Republic have constituted a clear and absolute break from the Islamic laws of the country’s predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. Specifically, I discuss in detail the adoption of and amendments to the Turkish Civil Codes of 1926 and 2002, which govern various matters including family relations, marriage and divorce. A detailed analysis of family law provisions contained in both these Turkish Civil Codes demonstrates that although significant progress has been made toward gender equality, certain Islamic laws dealing with female sexuality survive in their entirety, and in contradiction to the general spirit of gender egalitarianism of the codes. I argue that this is not anomalous considering that revolutions are often built upon inherited politico-legal and social foundations, and thus often fail to completely eradicate the past.

This paper focuses on two cases from the United States, Freeman v. Department of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles and Webb v. City of Philadelphia (where the author represented Webb) to critique legal approaches to Muslim women’s head coverings in the post-9/11 context. By critically exploring concepts like accommodation and tolerance, as well as post-9/11 discourses surrounding Islam and Muslims, the paper argues that in each of the cases the State has failed its obligations under the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

In this paper I argue that unless Indian secularism breaks free of its definition as Western and inherently non-Indian, it faces increasingly difficult times. First, I explore various meanings of secularism and argue that in the Western European context secularism was born not as an anti-religion ideology, but rather from within Christian discourse, as a response to keep the growing centralized state out of the religious sphere. I propose that this idea was never allowed to evolve in the developing world context, where secularism was implemented by elites, most often removed from the realities of the masses. After a survey of Indian Constitutional provisions on religion, I argue that although the Constitution has provided India with a progressive concept of secularism, the politics of the nation, as well as recent Supreme Court decisions, have jeopardized the potential evolution envisioned by the Constitution.

This piece argues that a new epistemological terrain has emerged in the aftermath of the 9/11/2001 attacks. This new terrain is characterized by a silencing discourse of fear, terror and apology. It is established, fostered and supported by a misappropriation of human rights language, the Bush administration's domestic policies and foreign wars, mass media contributions and Muslim apologist literature. The author argues that new ways of thinking about the unthought and the unthinkable are necessary in order to deconstruct this recently emerged epistemological terrain.

This essay is a critique of discourses in international human rights which have failed to meaningfully ask why some individuals are driven to “fundamentalist” discourses and acts of violence. The essay problematizes the term “fundamentalist” and calls for a new lens through which to view the concept of human in international human rights discourse.