A Secular Age beyond the West: Religion, Law and the State in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa

This book traces religion and secularity in eleven countries not shaped by Western Christianity (Japan, China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco), and how they parallel or diverge from Charles Taylor's grand narrative of the North Atlantic World as laid out in his 2007 book, A Secular Age. In all eleven cases, the state - enhanced by post-colonial and post-imperial legacies - highly determines religious experience, by variably regulating religious belief, practice, property, education and/or law. Taylor's core condition of secularity - namely, legal permissibility and social acceptance of open religious unbelief and switching (Secularity III) - is largely absent in these societies. The areas affected by state regulation, however, differ greatly. In India, Israel and most Muslim countries, questions of religious law are central to state regulation. But it is religious education and organization in China, and church property and public practice in Russia that bear the brunt. The book explains these differences with reference to the concept of 'differential burdening'.

• Draws from diverse case studies to answer whether, how and with what effect different patterns of secularization and different notions of secularity can be identified in cases of Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa
• Written by global experts drawing on primary material in the original languages
• Explores why religion plays such a major role in many societies through historical, legal, and social scientific analysis