Jean Baubérot, École pratique des hautes études (Sorbonne):
Comparative studies on France and Turkey often emphasize the opposition between rigid anticlerical secularism and moderate liberal secularism. This brilliant and incisive work by Murat Akan demonstrates that a binary approach ignores the central problem of political constructions of secularism: the civil religion of the state. With the meticulous erudition of a historian and theoretical mastery of a sociologist, Akan shows how liberal secularism won under the Third French Republic and how Kemalism in Turkey set the path for the hegemony of the AKP. Akan's is the best book I have read on the subject and will significantly refresh global conceptions of secularism.

Peter van der Veer, author of The Value of Comparison:
Murat Akan has given us an incredibly thorough account of how ideas about secularism have traveled between France and Turkey and how to relate these ideas to broader understandings of the relation between religion and society. His sophisticated theoretical approach is deeply informed by his empirical research. This book will clarify many misunderstanding in the comparative study of secularism and multiple modernities. It is a must read for scholars from a wide range of social sciences as well as for an informed public.