What is Religion?: Rethinking Religion and Secularism

Gresham College Lectures

Most of us would consider Islam to be a religion, while we would generally view secularism as requiring the limiting of religion to the private sphere. But many scholars (and ideologues) beg to differ. Social scientists are divided over the definitions of religion and secularism, while Islam’s indigenous portrayal of itself as a 'dīn' is not easily translatable into English. This lecture asks both whether Islam might be viewed as an ideology, and whether secularism could be considered a religion. A lecture by Dr Usaama al-Azami The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/islam-secularism Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website. Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege