Western secularisms: variation in a doctrine and its practice

In a co-authored chapter for a Routledge volume on opening up IR to non-Western approaches, DIIS researcher Mona K. Sheikh and Ole Wæver (director of the Centre for Advanced Security Theory) critically examine the secularism concept that in dominant western discourses is often perceived to be a quite simple principle about separation, through a comparative study of different secularisms.

The chapter shows that despite uniformly declaring their states ”secular,” this actually means something very different whether we are talking about France, USA, Germany, or Denmark. A line is drawn between religion and politics, but it is drawn in different places, according to different dominant ideas. By comparing the different cases of secularisms in selected countries the authors consolidate the argument that the concept of secularism is not at all as evident, simple, neutral, apolitical or unambiguous as it claims to be - even within the West. In the final sections the chapter briefly outlines what sort of implications the findings from the study of political practices have for IR practices on studying religion.