ABSTRACT
Revolution brought change to several countries of the Middle East in the spring of 2011, but one thing that did not change is the centrality of religion to politics. Four historical developments have had particularly heavy consequences for the relationship between religion and politics. As a new nation in the Middle East, one cut from the heart of a great empire, Turkey was the first to face the need to construct a new relationship between religion and politics. Modernization theory as it was articulated in the 1950s and 1960s identified political development with secularization of the polity. A fusion of religious and political systems was said to mark traditional society, the term used to characterize third-world cultures prior to European intervention. State schools all over the Middle East have helped make religion a matter of choice, as the Protestant Reformation made religion a matter of choice in Europe.
