Paper's abstract

Sélim Jahel, Laïcité in Muslim countries
The issue of laïcité in Muslim countries cannot be asked in terms of separation between spiritual and temporal powers, for, at least in Sunni Islam, there never was any spiritual magisterium in church or clerical form trying to compete for power with civil authorities. The point is here that the State power exerted in all these countries is derived from rules and imperatives that take their source in revealed texts, seen as sacred and immutable. This influence of the religious over the State power led some of these countries, like Iran or Saudi Arabia, to curl up in a theocratic type of system. Consequently, the attempts of two Muslim countries, Turkey and Tunisia, to establish laïcité are unreliable and remain unfinished. It is in fact more by adopting without qualification to the principle of freedom and by extending it to all areas of public life that Muslim countries will be able to open to modernity more than through laïcité.


Key Words : Islam
t. 48, 2004 : p. 143-156

---