Prof. Dr. Gudrun Krämer

The concept of secularity is deeply relevant to Islamicate contexts. Here, it is not so much the separation of church, or clergy, and state that matters but rather the relationship between Islamic normativity (Shariʿa), state, and society or community. Contrary to widespread perceptions, religion, state, and other domains were functionally differentiated in the Islamicate Middle East even prior to the advent of colonialism and the modern territorial state in the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, the secularisation of law, education, and politics that occurred in the process of modernisation was, as a rule, not premised on principled secularity, or secularism, as an instrument to secure social and political cohesion in a period of political crisis and transition. It remained contested, especially under the auspices of identity politics in general, and Islamisation in particular. I hope to further develop and refine these assumptions through a study of modern Egypt with its complex, and occasionally perplexing, configuration of secularity: Egypt is often portrayed as a deeply religious society, a feature projected back into Pharaonic times, predating Christianity and Islam. Like any other imaginaire, this one is socially constructed. But it is also supported by empirical evidence showing that religion is indeed woven into the texture of everyday life and that most Egyptians not only consider themselves religious but also practise their religion. The modern Egyptian state has been secular in the sense of non-clerical, but it has not been neutral; it has not granted equal access, equal respect, and equal support to all religious communities within its territory. Rather, through privileging Sunni Muslim and, to a lesser extent, Coptic Christian practices and institutions, it has projected itself as the guardian of Egyptian identity. Still, it has not been the prime agent behind the Islamisation of public and private life, ranging from politics to business to the arts and media, which has marked the country since the 1990s, thereby multiplying the fields in which the struggle over secularity is fought out. To understand this phenomenon, identity politics, market forces, and transregional dynamics under colonial and post-colonial conditions have to be taken into account, taking the analysis well beyond the parameters established by leading authorities in secularisation studies.