How Did Syrian Political Thinkers Discover an Alliance between Secularism and Authoritarianism?

Abstract

  Since 1967, Syrian political writers have sought to identify the cause of “Arab defeat” through reference to their own religious traditions. In his Critique of Religious Thought (1969), Sadik Jalal al-Azm argued that religious thinking is not only contrary to scientific thinking, but also reinforces existing rules and orders, thus hindering all political and social liberation. In other words, according to Azm, a theological way of thinking is totally inconsistent with modernity, freedom and democracy.

  By contrast, Burhan Ghalioun was less critical of religion in his work Critique of Politics: State and Religion (1991). His analysis focuses on the distinct historical processes through which the state and religion developed, and whereby the former eventually came to overwhelm and dominate the latter, especially after the era of the Rightly Guided Caliphs. As Ghalioun notes, the reduction of all causes to “religious culture” runs the risk of essentialism, while overlooking the specific logic of politics, especially an alliance between secularism and authoritarianism in Arab countries.

  The purpose of this article is to examine how Syrian political thinkers have analyzed the different logics of politics and religion, thus identifying the relation between secularism and authoritarianism.