Drawing of tomb mosque of Prophet Muhammad in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Text in Arabic. Serves as souvenir of pilgrimage to mosque of Muhammad in Medina, includes spaces for names of witnesses attesting to completion of pilgrimage – 3-6-2011 (Hoover Institution Archives Poster Collection/Fair use. All rights reserved to the author].This series of opinion articles on the relationship between secularism and authoritarianism is the outcome of a collaboration between SyriaUntold and openDemocracy’s NAWA].
When we speak today about a secular interpretation of the Prophet, the issue at hand isn’t Islam in its destined eventuality, but rather Islam in its genesis, at the moment of its inception and emergence on the historical scene. Interpretation is therefore not a search for novel meanings to be devised and attached to the old faith as a cosmetic accessory. It is rather an attempt to discover its original meanings, and to trace their transformations and destinies. That is, to discern what has come “first,” and to handle it as malleable and susceptible to interpretation.
The conception of secularism has developed in a prolonged and convoluted historical path, like a sprawling tree with far-reaching twigs. This conception has been so diversified that it often implies multidimensional, ambiguous and contradictory notions.
