Islam and Western Secular Modernity

A Conversation with Nilüfer Göle

August 6, 2020
12:30 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. EDT
Location: Online Zoom Webinar

Nilüfer Göle, a prominent Turkish-French sociologist, has dedicated her lifework to the study of the transforming relationship between Islam and Western secular modernity. Throughout her work, Gole has used public controversies as a privileged methodological tool to examine the transformations of the democratic public sphere in Turkey and other Muslim societies, as well as the impact of Islam on the European public sphere.

This conversation, a part of the Global Religious and Secular Dynamics Discussion Series, examined the way in which Gole's work has served as a link between Muslim and secular discourses. Permeating all her major works are a series of recurring themes: rethinking the mutually constituted categories of religion and the secular; the public significance of gender and sexuality in Western secular discourses on Islam; the role of Islam in the very constitution of a European public sphere; and the importance of the ongoing processes of interaction, confrontation, and mutual transformation of immigrant Muslim communities and the receiving European societies. These themes were examined in conversation with Berkley Center Senior Fellow José Casanova. Gole and Casanova’s discussion included reflections on the rise of populism and the crisis of democracy in Turkey, Europe, and the United States; the dynamics of recognition of pluralism and difference; and the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting these dynamics.

This event was co-sponsored by Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Reset Dialogues on Civilizations.

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Participants

José Casanova Toggle

About José Casanova

José Casanova is one of the world's leading scholars in the sociology of religion and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center, where his work focuses on globalization, religions, and secularization. He is also professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he previously taught in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. During 2017 he was the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the U.S. Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, where he worked on a book manuscript on Early Modern Globalization through a Jesuit Prism. He has published works on a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into several languages, including Japanese, Arabic, and Turkish. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of his life-long achievement in the field of theology. Casanova is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

José Casanova's Profile

Nilüfer Göle Toggle

About Nilüfer Göle

Nilüfer Göle is a professor of sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris and a leading authority on contemporary Islam as it relates to issues of identity and gender in Europe. She is the author of Interpenetrations: L'Islam et l'Europe (2005) and The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (1997), among numerous other titles.

Nilüfer Göle's Profile