Investigation of the Two Concepts of Secularism and Laicism as well as Their Persian and Arabic Equivalents

French revolution was a starting point for the emergence of concepts such as secular and laic. Although most of the people in Iran and Arab countries consider them equivalent, purpose and lexical roots of these two should make a distinction between them. Abuse or overuse of these terms by Marxist, Socialist, Liberal, ond other movements has resulted in a misunderstanding of them and consequently they are considered the same. Laicism means seperation od religious from government, a government which is not limmited to the executive affairs. It includes all Catholic countries; while secularism is specially limitted to Protestant countries. Most of the Iranians and Arabs have a misconception of the terms, so they cosider them the same or they mix one of them with another concept such as democracy and infer something quite different. In what follows, a history of the terms, plus their Latin root as well as their Persian and Araabic equivalnts are presented.