Over the past few decades, a great deal has been written on secularism both by Islamist thinkers and by Western academics studying the Muslim world. Little attention, however, has been paid to the significant differences that exist between how these two groups conceptualize secularism. The proposed presentation will address this issue by comparing and contrasting these two sets of views, as well as the assumptions which underlie them. In doing so, the presentation will seek to nuance and challenge regnant understandings of “the secular” as a conceptual and analytical category. With respect to Islamist thought, the presentation will focus on the writings of the influential religious scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In recent years, al-Qaradawi has devoted great effort to both theorizing and critiquing secularism, setting forth his views in texts such as “Islam and Secularism” (al-Islam wa-l-‘Ilmaniyya) and “Secular Extremism Confronting Islam” (al-Tatarruf al-‘Ilmani fi Muwajahat al-Islam). With respect to Western academic perspectives on secularism, the presentation will focus on two influential recent works inspired by the ideas of Talal Asad. The first of these is anthropologist Hussein Ali Agrama’s Questioning Secularism (2012). The second is legal historian Wael Hallaq’s The Impossible State (2012). Each of these texts – indebted to the pioneering work of Asad but otherwise quite different in important ways – can both be read as associating secularism with the nature and functioning of the modern state and argue for its deep incompatibility with any historically recognizable form of the Islamic tradition. Such a perspective appears to diverge in important respects from that put forth by Islamist thinkers like al-Qaradawi. While al-Qaradawi holds that secularism is repugnant to Islamic principles, he does not associate secularism with the nature and functioning of the modern state as such. Consequently, for al-Qaradawi the notion of a modern state that is “Islamic” (rather than “secular”) is not seen as fundamentally problematic or a contradiction in terms. All of this reflects the fact that al-Qaradawi conceptualizes “secularism,” and its relationship to modern techniques of governance, in a manner potentially different from scholars like Agrama and Hallaq. The proposed presentation will critically analyze these differences, assessing their implications for the broader study of secularism and for the ultimate viability of Islamist aspirations to build a modern Islamic state. In doing so, the presentation will provide insight into the future of Middle Eastern political life in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.