*A Footnote to Secularization

The "secular" has been discussed primarily within a Christian context and indeed its geneology is traced back to Christian discursive practices.  In this sense the "secular" has most often been implicitly referred to as non-christian or a de-christianization of society.

But if we can reappropriate the concept of the "secular" and "tolerance" to different contexts. For example, if we place the term "secular" within the Islamic context then "secular" comes to mean non-Muslim and the de-Islamization of a society. "Tolerance" then, stems from a Muslim point of view and it refers to religious traditions that are not Islam and in this sense Christianity (and other non-Muslim traditions) will be that which is tolerated and included in the "secular". The same goes for societies that are primarily "Hindu" and those that are primarily "Buddhist" or "Confucian" (which has its own history - most countries deemed "Confucian" have actually gone beyond into other forms of "Confucianism").

In this sense the terms 'secular' and 'tolerance' are lexicons of perspective. And so limits the applications of the term to be context-dependent or rather perspective-dependent on what the dominant heuristic and mode of being is in a given society.

It would also seem that there is a tendency to discuss the 'secular' in terms of not-religious but this in itself becomes problematic when cultures are so embedded with values that stem from their religious traditions. Much of the discourse on human rights is quite Kantian looking for absolute applicable morals for everyone. Now this doesn't demean or make the universal human rights that are sought after any less valuable but rather points out that the values emphasized come from a particular western context of what it means to have human rights. So talking about 'secular' in terms of non-religious doesn't quite work as it is extremely difficult to separate religion from culture in terms of a strict dichotomy. The discussion of that which is non-religious is rather a discussion in reaction to the right-wing Christian agenda that has pervaded much of U.S. politics with Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, etc. However, this only one form in which Christianity has been politicized. If we can remember Jim Jones, he held a very left-wing agenda associated with his brand of Christianity. His paranoia ultimately led to the biggest mass (coerced) "suicide" but his polticization of Christianity to a left-wing formula is the inverse of what Graham and Falwell did. So there are issues with delineating between religion and culture as well as religion and secular.