The Transformative Impact of Authoritarian Secularism:

The literature concurs that secularism rests on the configuration of the religious realm by the state. In moderate secularism, religion and politics turn into two structurally different realms. Nevertheless, the state tolerates the expression of religious values in the public sphere. In sharp contrast to moderate secularism, authoritarian secularism does not only depoliticize religion, but prevents its public visibility. In authoritarian secularism, state and religious authority are not clearly differentiated, religion is excluded from the public sphere through state intervention. Mainstream scholarship gives centrality to “regulatory function” of secularism with respect to political and/or public spheres. Apart from Assad and Mahmood stressed that secularism not only separates religion from politics, but also aims to transform religious subjectivity by privileging rational reasoning, transformatory impact of authoritarian secularism has received little scholarly attention. This article brings a novel insight into the literature by showing transformatory characteristics of authoritarian secularism through Foucault’s governmentality approach. Turkey and Tunisia are examined as illustrative cases.