Document Type
Essay
Publication Title
Oasis
Publication Date
2011
Volume
7:14
First Page
55
Abstract
(Excerpt)
The question of the implications of secularization for Christian communities in today’s Middle East is a difficult one, both because the extent of contemporary secularization in the region is contested, and because the term itself has so many different meanings. Nonetheless, a preliminary consideration imposes itself. Whatever else it means, secularization means legal equality for religious minorities, including Christians. Formal equality often exists in the Middle East today. Yet legal restrictions – apostasy prosecutions, limitations on clergy and churches, and so on – continue to pose real threats to Christians. Moreover, as Abdullahi An-Na‘im notes, ‘tension with the traditional notions of dhimma and its underlying values persists’. The question, then, is whether Middle East Christians can mediate the tension between the equality that secularization entails and the inequality that tradition requires.
Comments
Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2047072
Parts of this essay are drawn from Mark L. Movsesian, ‘Elusive Equality’, in U. St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy, 1, 2010, p. 1.