By Yasser Latif Hamdani
My earliest understanding of secularism was rooted in the first amendment to the US Constitution while studying in the US. It is the most impressive dictum - a wall of separation between religion and state. The US never had a state church. Its tradition of separation of church and state went back to the founding of Rhode Island which was based on this principle. The Turkish model - especially after Kemal Ataturk's famous 6 day speech - which abolished state religion in 1928 (though initially the Turkish Republic defined Islam as the state religion at Ataturk's behest) also seemed to follow the American and more closely the French models of secularism. The difference between American and French (and Turkish) models was that the latter was an ideology of the state whereby religion was pushed out and not left alone.
My earliest understanding of secularism was rooted in the first amendment to the US Constitution while studying in the US. It is the most impressive dictum - a wall of separation between religion and state. The US never had a state church. Its tradition of separation of church and state went back to the founding of Rhode Island which was based on this principle. The Turkish model - especially after Kemal Ataturk's famous 6 day speech - which abolished state religion in 1928 (though initially the Turkish Republic defined Islam as the state religion at Ataturk's behest) also seemed to follow the American and more closely the French models of secularism. The difference between American and French (and Turkish) models was that the latter was an ideology of the state whereby religion was pushed out and not left alone.
