Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

For the Western thought and the social theory that emerged based on it, it can be argued that it was shaped on dichotomous structures such as nature-culture, action-structure, individual-society, and mind-body. These dichotomous structures and way of thinking established on a hierarchic system and directed towards the purpose of recognition and dominance over what it recognizes have been the foundation of the discourse that societies will become secular as they get modern in the light of the secularity-religion distinction. The distinction between the dichotomous concepts which we evaluate as the most ancient ontological and epistemological arguments (e.g. intelligence-revelation, material-meaning, earth-afterlife, subject-object, public-private), in other words, the intervention may be the characteristic of the Western thought but seems to have influenced the whole world including the Muslim communities. Based on our argument "Each dichotomization is a process of secularization", this study addresses the dichotomous structures established in the sociological thought. Furthermore, issues such as universal definition of religion, determination of its boundaries based on the Western history, and transformation of "religion" into a scientific object are scrutinized within the framework of the dichotomous thinking. This paper draws attention to the fact that the secularity-religion dichotomy, which makes marginalization inevitable, serves the justification of colonialism. Moreover, the paper handles the fact that interpretations such as the "return of the sacred" for the resurrection of religion since the second part of the 20th century are just another practice of marginalization. Because theorizing efforts for the increase in piety are discourses that can be put forth the secularity-religion distinction at the end of the day and cannot go beyond solidify the secular paradigm which is grounded on dichotomization.