Exemplifying the way secularism turns nationalism to advantage
Exemplifying the way secularism turns nationalism to advantage.
Abdelhamid Zoubir
In my last book, East-West & Other Dualisms : Secularization, School Curricula & Market Economy (OPU, Algiers, 2009), I hinted at the way secularists define nationalism without going into many details because this aspect requires an extended analysis whose systematic treatment would surely have digressed the main thesis of East-West & Other Dualisms… To clarify the ambiguity that has recently been brought to my attention regarding this particular point, I suggest the following preliminary observations (1) in anticipation of the detailed research I am preparing for this purpose.
First of all, I have to admit that I believed that no ambiguity was possible concerning my quoting Beverley Blythe’s work on page 98 because I assumed that no one would ever attempt to argue sensibly that secularism and nationalism coincide universally, including Saudi Arabia, a country where the national emblem distinctly spells out the declaration of faith of all Muslims, and where Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) is not just the symbol of Saudi nationals but also of all Muslims. I chose to quote Beverley Blythe’s comments because they show clearly why establishing such abstractive correspondences of equivalence and equality between secularism and nationalism –as has so often unjustifiably been done since Renaissance times– cannot be true and that any necessary correlation of equivalence or equality between secularism and nationalism amounts just to a hasty generalization resulting from the dualistic system of logic that I discuss at length in East-West & Other Dualisms…