Muslims and Secularism between History and Glocal Systems of Governance

2017 Joint Area Centers Symposium
Badredine Arfi, Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida

At a time when democratic forms of governance have overwhelmingly been accepted as best suited to address the problems and challenges of world populations both within and beyond states, the legitimacy gap both domestically and globally of existing democratic procedures, norms and institutions requires us to take into account the conditions of what historically is emerging as a glocal “simultaneously global and local” system of world governance. Dr. Arfi argues that these conditions call for a new form of political legitimacy which, while acknowledging the many historical achievements of existing forms of democracy, must go beyond them to design new ways of achieving political legitimacy that befit the diversity existing in the world today. She will specifically examine how contemporary Muslims drawing on the historicity of Islam as a normative system and as practice can/might address the issue political secularism in a glocalized post-colonial world.