Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Religious diversity has increased not only with respect to the scope and interaction among traditional religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, but has also expanded to include non-traditional or so-called secular religions such as humanism, capitalism, communism, and other forms of secularism. While legal scholars have tended to ignore the importance of religion and religious pluralism, I will argue that this new religious pluralism and its normative implications put into question the two dominant paradigms of law and religion—religionists and secularists—and support a new pluralistic, post-secular paradigm for law and religion. Religionists and secularists both propose a monistic legitimation of law based on a particular religion or a comprehensive form of secularism. Conversely, while maintaining that the text of the law must remain secularized, the post-secular paradigm contends that a legitimate plurality of religious convictions implicitly legitimate the law and thereby de-secularize the law.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study extends our understanding of religious participation in a cross-national perspective. By comparing the United States to Sweden and the Netherlands, I discuss whether the patterns of religious influence found in the American literature are applicable to contexts that have experienced higher levels of secularization. I explore the impact of church attendance on attitudes toward non-traditional sexuality and clergy influence in the political sphere using the 1998 religion modules of the General Social Survey (GSS) and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). I find that the effect of attendance is notably strong and consistent across countries. For the most part, higher levels of attendance lead to significantly more conservative attitudes toward sexuality and more support for clergy influence on the political sphere. Furthermore, compared to the magnitude of the effect of education across the full range of outcomes, religion has consistently higher explanatory power than education for three of the four attitudes studied.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In the recent years, the compatibility of Islam with liberal-democracy is widely debated in the scholarly, journalistic and policy-making circles. In fact in many analyses and arguments, in the societies with predominantly Muslim population, prospects for sustainable transition to democracy are thought in terms of whether Islamic way of living permits the emergence and sustainability of liberal-democratic regimes. In this context, the recent rise of Justice and Development Party (JDP; AKP) in Turkey to zenith of political governance can be interpreted as the first example of an Islamic democratic political model. Taking a different perspective, this paper that relies on extensive first hand ethnographic study of the party, argues that the triumph of AKP signifies the death of Islamism in Turkey and the consolidation of political and social secularism in Turkey. In the light of ample evidence, it shows how AKP quite deliberately dissevered itself from the Islamist ideology as a result of the dynamics of electoral competition and process of secular metamorphosis of ex-Islamist party elite. Consequently, the dominant cleavage in Turkish politics is not between secular authoritarianism and a kind of Islamic totalitarianism but between competing versions of secularism.

The paper is organized in four parts. The first part argues how politics of this-worldliness replaced politics of otherworldliness in AKP in contrast to Islamist parties. The conduct of politics for worldly ends also stripped the political authority within the party from its religious sources of legitimacy and its quest for unquestioned obedience. Next, party’s electoral campaigning in November 2003 elections, the values of its cadres and governmental policies are discussed. They exhibit a clear pattern of rupture with the politics of Islamism. AKP is increasingly becoming a mass party that aims to maximize its popular support by addressing to popular demands for prosperity. Third, a brief analysis of AKP’s voting support in the elections of November 2002 reveals how it managed to extend its support base in the provinces that historically refrained from voting for parties of Islamism. Still, AKP mainly failed to crosscut sociological cleavages of Turkish politics. In the last section, the factors that shape the AKP’s organizational composition, political stance and policies are specified: dynamics of electoral competition in 1990s and the transformation of the mindset of party leadership.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Ours is a time oddly marked both by a worldview resurgence of religion and philosophical postmodernism that abolishes all fundamentalisms. However, the pervasive return of religion in contemporary culture increasingly calls for an interpretation of the present that is no longer grounded in the Enlightenment prejudice against religion, and consequently in the theories of secularization, which maintained that religion would be wiped out by the modern process of rationalization. This paper will argue that postmetaphysical thinking misunderstands itself if it fails to include the religious traditions alongside metaphysics in its own genealogy. On these premises, it would be irrational to reject those strong "traditions" as "archaic" residua instead of elucidating their internal connection with modern forms of thought. By critically analyzing there rival accounts of post-secular imagination in Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor and Gianni Vattimo, I will argue that religion can still contain encoded semantic potentialities that could provide inspiration if only their massage were translated into rational-liberal discourse and their profane truth contents were set free.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: According to Thomas Friedman, when unilateralist United States, reeling from September 11, chose to unleash unopposable force against Afghanistan and Iraq, much of the world registered these decisions as earth-shaking proof the US had changed from a benign into a malignant—thus terrifying—hegemon. Friedman calls the consequent, near-global, opposition to the US invasion of Iraq sullen anger provoked when those whose lives are affected by the decisions of the hegemon have no say in those choices (Friedman, NYT 06/01/03, wk 13). While wrathful impotence may explain accusations George W. Bush is a worse perpetrator of crimes against humanity than Saddam Hussein, opposition fueled by anti-Americanism, it is not a good strategy for guiding the hegemon back to non-violent, multi-lateral leadership. Wounding Samson brings down the temple. Many people around the globe will suffer if intensifying hostility toward the United States exacerbates existing and future conflicts; breaches weak points in the international economy; further vitiates the functioning of the UN Security Council; or further strains NATO and/or the European Union. Granted, when the United States holds undisputed hegemony across political, economic, military cultural spheres, it is crucial that the international community find effective ways to challenge and direct that hegemon/ hegemony. Within some institutional structures, the office of admonitor is intended to caution, advise, encourage, guide, and/or gently reprove the leader; it is to remind the leader of duty and obligation. In the international system, what international institutions might have the capacity to serve as admonitor to the hegemon? This paper argues that two institutions may be said to have stepped into the vacuum to serve as de facto admonitors to the United States hegemon: The Catholic Church and the Nobel Peace Prize. It examines the limitations, range, and efficacy of these admonitory institutions. It concludes with speculation about ways to develop and institutionalize the admonitory function within the international system.