Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity
Genealogy of the secular, of secularism and of secularisation: the secular is not what remains when religion is removed but a formation of its own, bound up with the modern state, its law and its idea of the human; chapters treat agency and pain, human rights and the reform of law in colonial Egypt.
Introduction
Talal Asad’s “Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity” appeared in 2003 and collects essays written over the previous decade. Its starting point is that the secular is not the neutral ground left when religion withdraws, but a concept and a set of sensibilities with their own history. The first part examines myth and the secular imagination, agency and pain, cruelty and torture, and the language of human rights, showing how assumptions about the self and the body underlie the modern distinction between the religious and the secular. The second part turns to secularism as a political doctrine, the nation-state as the guarantor of rights, and Muslims as a minority in Europe. The last part studies the reform of law in colonial Egypt, where the separation of family law from other law created a domain of “religion”. The book became a standard reference in the study of secularism and in the debate on Islam and modernity.
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