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Postsecular revolution: religion after the end of history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

MARIANO BARBATO
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Abstract

This article claims that the revolutions in the Arab world foster insight into more than the spread of liberalism. Fukuyama's end of history has not just reached the Muslim world faster than expected. These revolutions show that strong religion and liberal democracy are compatible: they are postsecular revolutions. As already the revolutions of 1989 proved in some respect, in contrast to the secular ideals of the French Revolution, revolution and religion can go hand in hand in a postsecular way. Praying and making revolution does not need to end in a religious autocracy as 1979 in Iran. Religious citizens stood up praying for democracy and the rule of law against secular regimes which legitimised themselves as a bulwark against sinister forces of religion. Analysing the revolutions of 1989, Jürgen Habermas speaks of ‘catching-up revolutions’ which brought nothing new to the course of history. Yet after 9/11 he started to develop his idea of a postsecular society in which secular and religious citizens are equally entitled to make their arguments in a public sphere. Criticising the early Habermas with the later, the article argues that the postsecular revolutions of 1989 and 2011 are preparing the ground for a postsecular democracy.

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Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 5: The Postsecular in International Relations , December 2012 , pp. 1079 - 1097
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2012

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References

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23 As far as I understand the translation, ‘rectifying’ shifts the notion from catching-up towards correcting which adds an interpretation that this revolution has corrected a false course of history whereas ‘catching up’ puts the emphasis more on the aspect that there is nothing new in it, besides reaching a point which someone else has already reached. It is more like a pupil who was ill and returns to school than a pupil who was there and made a lot of mistakes. The idea of a mere catching-up processes leaves not much room for additional findings whereas the one who has corrected a false course might have something to tell about how he managed to return from his ill-guided path and how he learnt to do it better. The translation could thus be understood as a development of the text in the direction I am arguing for.

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50 ‘[T]he politician of becoming thinks a generous ethos emerges when a number of constituencies engage actively and more generously those differences in themselves and others the regulation of which enables them to be what they are. This end, then, forms a regulative ideal for the politician of becoming, a complex, final act never entirely susceptible to completion because some of its components cannot be synchronized perfectly with the others at any particular time.’ Connolly, Why I am not a secularist, p. 71.

51 Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist, pp. 19–71, pp. 163–87.

52 Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’.

53 Ibid., p. 4 (‘in the long run’ is in italics in the original).

54 Ibid., p. 18.

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63 The case of John Paul II illustrates this discursive power most prominently.

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72 Unfortunately, Weigel himself falls prey to an idealism with boots in order to conquer the world or at least defending the American way of capitalist life. But this is another story.

73 Weigel, The Final Revolution, p. 192. For the whole argument see pp. 191–3.

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