The Role of Religion in Politics: The Analytical Category of the Social Public Sphere

Authors : Ravza CAKİR

Pages : 143-161

Doi:10.35343/kosbed.923837

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Publication Date : 2021-12-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Within the realm of political theory, the existing republican and liberal theories of the public sphere have not been normatively and practically sufficient for Muslim-majority contexts. Few prominent scholars such as Jürgen Habermas have provided a revitalised approach to the discussions of religion in the public sphere, enabling an expansion of the artificial and controversial boundaries between the private and the public as well as the religious and the political. In his publications since the mid-2000s, Habermas has proposed the notions of ‘post-secularism,’ ‘religious tolerance,’ and the ‘modernization of religious consciousness’ and he significantly articulated new divisions for an ‘informal public sphere’ and an ‘institutional public sphere.’ In this article, I re-appropriate some of Habermas’ ideas to theorise about the analytically differentiated categories of social public sphere—a distinct form of a political public sphere where religious communal life is organised by civil society associations—and state public sphere—where the secular state controls the common institutional framework. The paper offers a more nuanced view of the relationship between religion and the public sphere as a way of reconciling political secularism and public religious presence that would help democratic consolidation in the Muslim world.
Keywords : Kamusal alan, din, laiklik, siyaset teorisi, Jürgen Habermas