ABSTRACT
The separation between religion and politics may be made in two ways, speaking in terms of principles. On the one hand, there is the conception of the lay sector in society, guaranteed by the legal separation between Church and state, as well as by the neutrality of the state and the principle of religious freedom. On the other hand, there is the sociological separation between religion and politics in the form of growing secularisation, meaning the withdrawal of daily life and thinking from religious domination. The chapter discusses three major difficulties of such a separation within the Arab countries as they have been put forward in several comments. It describes how contemporary Islam has adopted a position towards the separation between secular and non-secular, which is in fact neither religious nor lay. Finally, the chapter argues not only that this ambivalent position is not without its flaws, but also that a separation is possible.
