16 - Spiritual Cultivation for a Secular Society

Summary

In order to be a Muslim by conviction and free choice, which is the only way one can be a Muslim, I need a secular state. By a secular state I mean one that is neutral regarding religious doctrine, one that doesn't claim or pretend to enforce Sharia – the religious law of islam – simply because compliance of Sharia cannot be coerced by a fear of state institutions or faked to appease the officials… a secular state that facilitates the possibility of religious piety out of honest conviction.

—Abdullahi An-Naim, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia (2008, 1)

Exiting from the palaces and mansions of the powerful, faith – joined by philosophical wisdom – is beginning to take shelter in inconspicuous smallness, in those recesses of ordinary life unavailable to co-optation.

—Fred Dallmayr, Small Wonder: Global Power and Its Discontents (2005, 4)

To undertake contemplative cultural critique is to engage in transcoding. for, notwithstanding the theological roots of Western rationality, the language and concepts of socio-cultural analysis are, for the most part, thoroughly secular. to bring the insights of spiritual and secular knowledge to bear on current phenomena thus requires one to translate between and across epistemes or ways of knowing. Many tend to see these two forms of knowledge as autonomous and incompatible, and choose to privilege one or the other. However, there is much that is common to the emancipatory streams within both knowledge traditions.

-Lata Mani (2009), SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique (2009, 2)