Tradition and the Critique of Modernity: Secularism, Fundamentalism and Religion from Middle Eastern Perspectives

Tradition and the Critique of Modernity: Secularism, Fundamentalism and Religion from Middle Eastern Perspectives


Director: Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva)

“Tradition and the Critique of Modernity: Secularism, Fundamentalism, and Religion from Middle Eastern Perspectives” is conceived as a special forum for intellectual and scholarly debate that will accompany the program and its research groups. It is dedicated most explicitly to the attempt to rethink key concepts of Modernity like secularity, tradition, and religion by confronting them with different interpretations of the political, religious and cultural origins, experiences, and consequences of secular Modernity.

Since there is neither a universally accepted definition of modernity, nor of secularism, religion, or tradition, it is necessary to dissociate the particular theory of European secular Modernity, which is based on the separation and privatization of religion, from general theories of modernization that impose universalized European and Western/Christian forms of secular differentiation as a measure for all societies worldwide. In this process of rethinking key concepts of Modernity, Jewish, Arab, and Muslim perspectives, both from the Christian West and the Middle East, but also from other non?European contexts, especially India, are of crucial importance.

You will find a complete description of the research field here.