ABSTRACT
Max Weber’s process of secularization is a unique Western development, its roots deep in ancient Judaism, and its trunk in Protestantism and in the growth of capitalism. British India, therefore, reveals a moderate structural secularization; Islam was to various degrees disentangled from the frameworks of law, of learning and of power. A continuing process of islamization, following Weber’s understanding of developmental history, seems as notable a feature of Islamic developments, as one of secularization, following Weber’s theory of secularization. The development of this “rationaliality” and rationalization within Christianity, according to Weber, brought the secular world into being. The chapter explores how far Weber’s theory of secularization, which is derived specifically from the experience of Western Europe, can help us both to make sense of this process in Islamic society and, perhaps, to reach some understanding of what the measure of secularization might be in an Islamic environment. Muslims gained separate electorates; they gained guaranteed numbers of seats; and ultimately some won an Islamic state of Pakistan.
