The history and politics of secularism and the public role of religion in France, India, Turkey, and the United States. It interprets the varieties of secularism as a series of evolving and contested processes of defining and remaking religion, rather than a static solution to the challenges posed by religious and political difference.

A new approach to the hotly contested relationship between political authority and religious tradition

PART I: INTERPRETING SECULARISMS Comparative Secularisms and the Politics of Modernity: An Introduction; L.E.Cady & E.Shakman Hurd Hermeneutics and the Politics of Secularism; A.Davison Manifestations of the Religious-Secular Divide: Self, State, and the Public Sphere; N.Göle PART II: HISTORY AND GLOBAL POLITICS OF SECULARISMS: FRANCE, UNITED STATES, TURKEY, AND INDIA The Evolution of Secularism in France: Between Two Civil Religions; J.Baubérot Secularism and Security: France, Islam, and Europe; Y.Jansen God and the Constitution: Towards a History of American Secularisms; T.Wenger Varieties of Legal Secularism; W.Fallers Sullivan Public Private Distinctions, the Alevi Question, and the Headscarf: Turkish Secularism Revisited; M.Dressler Assertive Secularism in Crisis: Modernity, Democracy and Islam in Turkey; E.Fuat Keyman The 'Secular Ideal' Before Secularism: A Preliminary Sketch; R.Bhargava Indian Secularism: A Religio-Secular Ideal; T.N.Madan Not Quite Secular Political Practice; Z.Hasan PART III: SECULARISMS REFRACTED THROUGH RELIGIONS Islam and Secularism; A.A.An-Na'im Secularism and Heterodoxy; G.Viswanathan Reading Secularism Through a Theological Lens; L.E.Cady