123Harris So the fi rst challenge is to spread a commit-
ment to secularism in Muslim communities, East
and West. But many Muslims associate secularism
with oppression— Western and Muslim. As you
know, in many countries the alternative to Islamism
has been secular dictatorship. How do you get 1.6
billion Muslims to distinguish the promise of sec-
ularism from the tyrannies of Gaddafi , the Shah of
Iran, Saddam Hussein, Musharraf, and the rest?
Nawaz What you have raised is a real challenge. If I
argue that the solution to Islamism and Muslim
fundamentalism lies in encouraging pluralism,
which leads to secularism, which leads to liber-
alism, then how do we de- stigmatize secularism
when it has been so abused by Arab Ba’thist dicta-
tors? The stigma is so bad that there is not even an
accurate word for secularism in Urdu. The word
used is la- deeniyat, which is derived from the
Arabic, meaning “no- religionism.” I’ve often sug-
gested introducing ‘almaaniyyah into Urdu, which
is a more neutral Arabic equivalent for the word
secularism. The situation has deteriorated even
more since the Arab Uprisings because democracy
led to Islamists gaining a majority in Egypt, and
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