Secularism’s contested meaning turns on its relation to ontology and epistemology.

Evidence

Sociologists, political theorists, and historians have written copiously on secularism. It is part of a vigorous public debate in many parts of the world—especially in the Middle East. Is “secularism” a colonial imposition, an entire worldview that gives precedence to the material over the spiritual, a modern culture of alienation and unrestrained pleasure? Or is it necessary to universal humanism, a rational principle that calls for the suppression—or at any rate, the restraint—of religious passion so that a dangerous source of intolerance and delusion can be controlled, and political unity, peace, and progress secured? The question of how secularism as a political doctrine is related to the secular as an ontology and an epistemology is evidently at stake here. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 80

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames secularism in two rival senses — colonial imposition vs necessary rational restraint — flagged by Asad as leaving open the doctrine/ontology-epistemology question.