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For example, Obama in his final State of the Union address phrased the sectarian violence in the Middle East as "rooted in conflicts that dated back millennia", but many pointed out that some sectarian tensions don't even date back a decade. [8] "Sectarianism" is also too ambiguous, which makes it a slogan whose meanings are up to the observers ...
State supremacy is a secular principle that supports obedience to the rule of law over religious diktat or canon law, while internal constraint is a secular principle that opposes governmental control over one's personal life. Under political secularism, the government can enforce how people act but not what they believe.
The Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox churches are paradigmatic cases of church-like organisations; outside Christianity, good examples of so-defined churches can be found, according to Weber, in Islam, in the Lamaist form of Buddhism and, in a more limited sense, in Mahdism, Judaism and probably in the late Ancient Egyptian hierocracy. [21]
Other sociologists, like Fred Kniss, suggest that sectarianism is best understood through the lens of what the sect opposes. Some religious groups may be in tension primarily with other co-religious groups of different ethnic backgrounds, while others may conflict with society at large rather than the church they originally separated from.
For example, the religious studies scholar and intercultural theologian Michael Bergunder criticizes the fact that the terms religion and esotericism are tainted by a Eurocentric origin thinking. This inaccurate use of the terms hinders a constructive discussion about secularization in a global context.
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin saeculum, ' worldly ' or ' of a generation '), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. The origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself. The concept was fleshed out through Christian history into the modern era. [1] In the Middle Ages, there were even ...
The term secular religion is often applied today to communal belief systems—as for example with the view of love as the postmodern secular religion. [11] Paul Vitz applied the term to modern psychology in as much as it fosters a cult of the self, explicitly calling "the self-theory ethic ... this secular religion". [12]
The main sectarian conflict in Iraq is between Shia and Sunni Muslims, and it has led to large amounts of discrimination, bloodshed and instability. [6] While the majority of Muslims in Iraq are Shia and the minority are Sunni, a number of scholars, including Hassan al’-Alawi, have consistently argued that sectarianism in Iraq privileges Sunni Arabs and discriminates against Shi’ites.