The 9/11 attacks in the United States sparked a series of challenges pertaining to ethnicity and religion and brought to light the need for human rights protection. Secularism can play a critical role in responding to these challenges, provided this principle balances the institutional separation of religion and the state while ensuring a positive public role for religion.

Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, a renowned scholar of Islam and human rights, discussed these propositions in relation to Muslims and Islamic societies and he emphasised that the same approach must be applied to all religious traditions. His view is that an Islamic state to enforce Shari'ah principles as positive law or public policy was neither possible nor desirable, though those principles should remain a source of law and policy, subject to constitutional human rights safeguards.