Introduction

The (causal) relationship between culture and politics, and their mutual influence, is one of the most controversial topics in the philosophy of social sciences. Despite the problematic character of this relationship and the difficulty in understanding its complexities, dimensions and its many and varied historical manifestations, it is noticeable that people tend to have opinions or take positions on this topic, varying from implicit and indirect to explicit and direct, from epistemically justified and constructed argumentation to merely intuitive, without any solid or clear basis. Sometimes these opinions or stances take the form of deep wisdom and aphorism, showing alleged depth, for example, by stating that the fruit (politics or the system of government) cannot be improved, reformed or even altered without changing the soil (religion, culture or society) that nourishes it. Such sayings clearly point to a causal relationship between culture and politics. This relationship or mutual influence can be addressed from different perspectives, which we can categorise in two main directions: reductionist and dialectical.

The reductionist tendency seeks to reduce politics to culture or vice versa. Reduction in this context means that one concept can be almost completely explained by the other. Some believe that politics is the result of culture (culturalism), while others reduce culture to politics and believe that the former can be totally and exclusively understood through the latter (politicism).

In contrast, the dialectical view emphasises the mutual influence between politics and culture, and stresses the impossibility of reducing one to the other. Within this dialectical view, a distinction can be made between blurred or fluid dialectics and flexible dialectics. Blurred and fluid dialectics refers to the existence of mutual influence between culture and politics, without detailing the disparity and difference in the degree of influence, its conditions, dimensions and consequences, in different contexts in general, as well as in specific historical contexts. Flexible dialectics acknowledges the dialectical relationship between culture and politics, but underlines that mutual influence can vary, depending on the variables of historical context. According to flexible dialectics, the dialectical relationship between culture and politics in a democratic system differs greatly from that in a non-democratic system. Within a flexible dialectic framework, it can be said that culture's influence on politics tends to be much greater in a democratic system than in an undemocratic system.

Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, many scholars and researchers in the Arab and Western worlds have been involved in the controversy around whether (political) religion/Islam is compatible with (political) modernity, democracy, secularity, etc. While some suspect that this question is posed incorrectly or refuse to answer it (Bishara 1994, 57–8; 2013, 7–9), there are generally speaking two camps in this respect: (1) those who deem that the compatibility of Islam with modernity is possible to the extent that one can talk about modern, democratic and secular Islam (Hanafi and al-Jabri 1990, 38); and (2) others who completely disagree and say that Islam is hostile to modernity, because Islam is – in its core, and necessarily – incapable of separating religion from politics (Lewis 2002). Against this background, it could be argued that most of the basic concepts – including secularity, secularism, Islam and modernity – invoked in this debate have been objective sources of (mis)understanding when addressing this topic in the Arab and Islamicate world. For example, the concepts of secularity and secularism, as “thick normative concepts,” include description and evaluation (Kirchin 2017; 2013; Väyrynen 2013). This duality, between descriptive and evaluative, creates distinct theoretical and methodological problems, leading to misunderstandings or to a greater differentiation between understandings.

It is also important to note that the terms “secularity,” “secularism” and “secularization” refer to different concepts, as clarified in the third section (pp. 000–00, “Secularity/Secularism between al-ʿAzmeh and el-Messiri”).