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Post-secular dilemmas

It is difficult to speak about religious revival without running into conceptual difficulties, especially when we locate the issue in the context of "religious vs secular" debate. Philosophical dilemmas aside, it presents considerable problems as we try to grapple with the theme from the standpoint of an intensely spiritual outlook. It is easy, of course, to distinguish between the "religious" and the "spiritual" as many have done, and caution in the manner of Rumi, against loving religion more than loving God. But this represents yet another symptom of a dualistic paradigm, and an antagonistic one at that, which introduces hostility into what is originally a harmonious relationship. Religion was revealed precisely to secure man's ascent to the knowledge (however limited), and ultimately love, of God. By definition then deviation from this path is a step outside religion. How then can love of religion ever substitute the love of God when to not love God itself is irreligious? Contemporary religious resurgence in the context of "post-secular" religiosity that now sweeps over the Western world seems to rekindle this old debate. Some resiliently maintain that the public sphere ought to remain 'secular' and that the state's role is to maintain a balance between competing claims. Yet this is an affront to a consciousness that is pervaded by religio-spiritual vision, according to which nothing virtuous can ever fall outside the religious province. Nor does such a consciousness demand that one's words or deeds be articulated in overtly religious terms for they to be qualified as such for hardly anything is spared the Divine imprint: all that exists, after all, point to Him, signs (ayat) that perpetually remind man to turn to the One.

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