{"id":4903,"date":"2026-08-27T22:45:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T19:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/?p=4903"},"modified":"2026-08-27T23:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T20:27:13","slug":"secularism-vs-the-tribal-state-by-zakaria-nimer-translated-from-arabic-by-ibrahim-ebeid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/?p=4903","title":{"rendered":"Secularism vs. the tribal state.  By Zakaria Nimer  Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid."},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>Secularism vs. the tribal state.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>By Zakaria Nimer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Secularism is not the ghost that lurks in faith as some of us imagine it, nor is it the magic recipe for building a just state as some enthusiasts promote. Between this exaggerated fear and this blind enthusiasm, serious debate is lost, and the concept becomes an arena of symbolic conflict rather than a subject of understanding and analysis. In the Western experience, secularism was not born out of a vacuum. It emerged from a long historical process of conflict between the religious establishment and political power, and from profound intellectual transformations that once again raised questions of freedom, conscience, and the right to disagree. There, the question was simple in its formulation, deep in its significance: how do we protect the individual&#8217;s faith from the domination of the state, and protect the state from the monopoly of truth in the name of religion? Therefore, secularism was associated with citizenship, the rule of law, and the guarantee of rights, and it was not originally a war on religion so much as an attempt to regulate the relationship between religion and power.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>In many of our countries, secularism has entered as an imported term, burdened with political and colonial baggage, and often excluded from elites isolated from the general social mood. It did not stem from a natural internal development in the state&#8217;s structure, but rather surfaced as a ready-made slogan. So it was natural to be greeted with suspicion, not because people reject justice, but because they fear losing their identity or being excluded from the public sphere. Some advocates of secularism present it with a discourse that is no less exclusionary than the discourse they criticize. They reduce religion to a rigid form, and hold it solely responsible for backwardness and tyranny, as if the political history of our world has not known secular tyranny either. On the other hand, the opponents of secularism reduce the idea to absolute hostility to religion, without trying to understand the diversity of its various models and experiences. A state that is still a prisoner of a tribe or sect will not be saved by a secular phrase written in its constitution. A society that has not yet been trained to manage pluralism and difference will not solve its crises by simply separating religion from politics.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What baffles me in most discussions about secularism is its rhetorical nature. To be for or against, without asking what secularism do we want? And in what reality? And to serve any community project? Are we looking to protect freedom of belief? Or about limiting the influence of the religious establishment? Or about the redistribution of power within the state? These fundamental questions are often absent, replaced by sharp identity battles that only produce more polarization. I do not see secularism as an opponent of religion, nor do I see it as absolute salvation. I see it as one of the many frameworks that can regulate the relationship between power and society; its success or failure depends on the sincerity of intentions and the nature of the historical and cultural context. What we really need is not to import or demonize concepts, but to dismantle and re-read them to suit our reality. When we build a state of law that respects the human being as a citizen before any other affiliation, the debate over secularism will become calm and rational, not an existential battle over faith and identity. Only then can the idea take on its natural size, neither bigger nor smaller.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Secularism vs. the tribal state. By Zakaria Nimer Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid. Secularism is not the ghost that lurks in faith as some of us imagine it, nor is it the magic recipe for building a just state as some enthusiasts promote. Between this exaggerated fear and this blind enthusiasm, serious debate is &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4904,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4903\/revisions\/4904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}