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الاختلاف الديني في عصر علماني: تقرير حول الأقليات
لماذا هذا الكتاب؟
ثمة إشكاليّة لطالما أرّقت الحقول المعرفيّة حول الشرق الأوسط ما بعد الكولونياليّ، ألا وهي علاقة السياسات الدينيّة والسياسات العلمانيّة بإنتاج مشكلة الطائفيّة في بلدان شرق أوسطيّة تزخرُ بأقليّات تعيش في ثناياها، وفي ظلّ أنظمة ما بعد استعماريّة.
كان حلّ مشكلة الطائفيّة دائمًا جاهزًا وواضحًا: نحو مزيدٍ من العلمنة، ونحو مزيد من خصخصة الدّين وإبعاده عن السياسة. هذا الحلّ، كما سنرى في هذا الكتاب، هو المشكلة ذاتها.
تأتي هذه الأطروحة، التي تصدر في نسختها العربية عن مركز نماء، تحاجج فيها صبا محمود أنّ السياسات العلمانيّة نفسها أنتجت بشكل كبير التفاوت الدينيّ في الدّول القوميّة الحديثة. وتأخذ مصر حالة لدراستها، مع اعتبار للسياق الجيوسياسيّ والعالميّ الذي تحلّل فيه. وتدرس حالتيْ الأقباط بصورة كبيرة والبهائيين بصورة أقلّ نظرًا لكونهم لا يتعدّون نسبة ١% من التعداد السّكانيّ. وتوضّح كيف أنّ مفاهيم مثل "حقوق الأقليّة" و"الحرية الدينيّة" كانت دائمًا محلّ نزاع وجدال في السياقات القوميّة والعالميّة على حدّ سواء. وتجادل بفهم طريف أنّ العلمانيّة السياسيّة ليست هي مبدأ حياديّة الدّولة، وإنّما هي إعادة تنظيم الدّولة للحياة الدينيّة على عكس ما يُشاع عنها. ومن ثمّ، تَنظر كيف تحوّل السياسات العلمانيّة الدينَ، وكيف يتواشج الدينيّ والعلمانيّ معًا بموجب الدّولة الحديثة، وهذا يتجلَّى في نقاشها حول قوانين الأسرة الإسلاميّة والقبطيّة وفي دراسة حالة البهائيين وقرارات المحاكم المصريّة بشأنهم ومقارنتها بقرارات المحكمة الأوروبيّة لحقوق الإنسان لتظهر أنّ ثمّة جينالوجيا عالميّة تتقاسمها السياسات العلمانيّة، وأيضًا في تبصّراتها حول النّقاش القبطيّ بشأن مكانتهم في الدّولة القوميّة الحديثة التي هي مصر.
وفي الأخير، تتطرّق إلى العلمانيّة وعلاقتها برؤية التاريخ والوحي، وذلك من خلال قراءة نقديّة لرواية عزازيل ليوسف زيدان والجدالات حولها، مموضعةً إيّاها في سياق القراءة الأنواريّة للدين منذ القرن الثامن عشر.
المؤلفة: صبا محمود
أستاذة الأنثروبولوجيا بجامعة كاليفورنيا بيركلي، تختصّ بدراسة العلاقة بين العلمانيّة والدّين في المجتمعات ما بعد الكولونياليّة، وتعتني بإشكاليّات الجنوسة والجنسانيّة، والعنف، والقانون والسيادة. حصلت على درجة الدكتوراه من جامعة ستانفورد، وصدرت لاحقًا بعنوان: سياسات التقوى: الإحياء الإسلاميّ والموضوع النّسويّ (٢٠٠٦)، ثمّ كتابها هذا الاختلاف الدينيّ في عصر علمانيّ: تقرير حول الأقليّات (٢٠١٥)، بالإضافة إلى كتبٍ شاركت في تأليفها، لا سيّما كتاب هل النّقد علمانيّ؟، وعديدٍ من الدراسات والمقالات).
المترجم: كريم محمد
باحث ومترجم مصري
هذا الكتاب هو الترجمة العربية لكتاب:
Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report
Author: Saba Mahmood
Publisher: Princeton University Press 2016
المصدر
https://www.facebook.com/namacenter/p...
ثمة إشكاليّة لطالما أرّقت الحقول المعرفيّة حول الشرق الأوسط ما بعد الكولونياليّ، ألا وهي علاقة السياسات الدينيّة والسياسات العلمانيّة بإنتاج مشكلة الطائفيّة في بلدان شرق أوسطيّة تزخرُ بأقليّات تعيش في ثناياها، وفي ظلّ أنظمة ما بعد استعماريّة.
كان حلّ مشكلة الطائفيّة دائمًا جاهزًا وواضحًا: نحو مزيدٍ من العلمنة، ونحو مزيد من خصخصة الدّين وإبعاده عن السياسة. هذا الحلّ، كما سنرى في هذا الكتاب، هو المشكلة ذاتها.
تأتي هذه الأطروحة، التي تصدر في نسختها العربية عن مركز نماء، تحاجج فيها صبا محمود أنّ السياسات العلمانيّة نفسها أنتجت بشكل كبير التفاوت الدينيّ في الدّول القوميّة الحديثة. وتأخذ مصر حالة لدراستها، مع اعتبار للسياق الجيوسياسيّ والعالميّ الذي تحلّل فيه. وتدرس حالتيْ الأقباط بصورة كبيرة والبهائيين بصورة أقلّ نظرًا لكونهم لا يتعدّون نسبة ١% من التعداد السّكانيّ. وتوضّح كيف أنّ مفاهيم مثل "حقوق الأقليّة" و"الحرية الدينيّة" كانت دائمًا محلّ نزاع وجدال في السياقات القوميّة والعالميّة على حدّ سواء. وتجادل بفهم طريف أنّ العلمانيّة السياسيّة ليست هي مبدأ حياديّة الدّولة، وإنّما هي إعادة تنظيم الدّولة للحياة الدينيّة على عكس ما يُشاع عنها. ومن ثمّ، تَنظر كيف تحوّل السياسات العلمانيّة الدينَ، وكيف يتواشج الدينيّ والعلمانيّ معًا بموجب الدّولة الحديثة، وهذا يتجلَّى في نقاشها حول قوانين الأسرة الإسلاميّة والقبطيّة وفي دراسة حالة البهائيين وقرارات المحاكم المصريّة بشأنهم ومقارنتها بقرارات المحكمة الأوروبيّة لحقوق الإنسان لتظهر أنّ ثمّة جينالوجيا عالميّة تتقاسمها السياسات العلمانيّة، وأيضًا في تبصّراتها حول النّقاش القبطيّ بشأن مكانتهم في الدّولة القوميّة الحديثة التي هي مصر.
وفي الأخير، تتطرّق إلى العلمانيّة وعلاقتها برؤية التاريخ والوحي، وذلك من خلال قراءة نقديّة لرواية عزازيل ليوسف زيدان والجدالات حولها، مموضعةً إيّاها في سياق القراءة الأنواريّة للدين منذ القرن الثامن عشر.
المؤلفة: صبا محمود
أستاذة الأنثروبولوجيا بجامعة كاليفورنيا بيركلي، تختصّ بدراسة العلاقة بين العلمانيّة والدّين في المجتمعات ما بعد الكولونياليّة، وتعتني بإشكاليّات الجنوسة والجنسانيّة، والعنف، والقانون والسيادة. حصلت على درجة الدكتوراه من جامعة ستانفورد، وصدرت لاحقًا بعنوان: سياسات التقوى: الإحياء الإسلاميّ والموضوع النّسويّ (٢٠٠٦)، ثمّ كتابها هذا الاختلاف الدينيّ في عصر علمانيّ: تقرير حول الأقليّات (٢٠١٥)، بالإضافة إلى كتبٍ شاركت في تأليفها، لا سيّما كتاب هل النّقد علمانيّ؟، وعديدٍ من الدراسات والمقالات).
المترجم: كريم محمد
باحث ومترجم مصري
هذا الكتاب هو الترجمة العربية لكتاب:
Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report
Author: Saba Mahmood
Publisher: Princeton University Press 2016
المصدر
https://www.facebook.com/namacenter/p...
344 pages
First published November 10, 2015
15 people are currently reading
616 people want to read
About the author
Saba Mahmood
17 books96 followersSaba Mahmood is an associate professor of social cultural anthropology at UC Berkeley.
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January 5, 2019
مستوى فائق من التدليس وعدم الأمانة والجهل المخجل بالسياق من أجل تمرير أطروحة نظرية.
الكاتبة، أستاذة الأنثروبولوجيا بجامعة كاليفورنيا، اضطرت لتمرير أطروحتها عن هيمنة العلمانية الليبرالية على الخيال السياسي والدولة في مصر وأن الدولة الحديثة تقصي الدين من المجال العام إلى المجال الخاص أن تتجاهل كليا وحرفيا ذكر الأزهر ودوره وأي اشتباك له في القضايا الدينية والسياسية، وذلك الخلل الفادح في السياق كاف لاعتبار الكتاب تهريج لا يليق مناقشته بجدية.
بالإضافة للتساهل المخجل مع شائعات وادعاءات لأنها تتوافق مع أطروحتها من قبيل "أن الحقائق تكشفت أن وزارة الداخلية في مصر هي التي فجرت كنيسة القديسين في يناير 2011 لكي تتهم الإسلاميين"!
وطبعا في غياب أي ذكر - حرفيا!- للأزهر في كتاب يناقش تداخل السياسة والدين في مصر، فإن تكرار الكاتبة أن الكنيسة الأرثوذكسية ساندت عبد الفتاح السيسي في الانقلاب على الإسلاميين، بدون ذكر لموقف الأزهر والطرق الصوفية، يشبه جعجعة الإسلاميين المتكررة بأن الانقلاب كان انقلابا على الإسلام، ولكن الكاتبة الرصينة تستخدم هذه الإشارات وغيرها بدون أدنى أمانة لكي تؤكد أطروحتها عن هيمنة "العلمنة" على الخيال السياسي وأداء الدولة.
شيء مؤسف.
أما الأطروحة نفسها عن أن الهيمنة الإسلامية السابقة على الحداثة هي فقط تحاول أن تجد لها مكانا في تناقضات العلمانية الليبرالية في مصر، فهي ببساطة أطروحة معكوسة، وتطلب تمريرها هذا المستوى من التدليس والانتقائية التي تنحدر إلى مستوى الصحافة الصفراء.
الكاتبة، أستاذة الأنثروبولوجيا بجامعة كاليفورنيا، اضطرت لتمرير أطروحتها عن هيمنة العلمانية الليبرالية على الخيال السياسي والدولة في مصر وأن الدولة الحديثة تقصي الدين من المجال العام إلى المجال الخاص أن تتجاهل كليا وحرفيا ذكر الأزهر ودوره وأي اشتباك له في القضايا الدينية والسياسية، وذلك الخلل الفادح في السياق كاف لاعتبار الكتاب تهريج لا يليق مناقشته بجدية.
بالإضافة للتساهل المخجل مع شائعات وادعاءات لأنها تتوافق مع أطروحتها من قبيل "أن الحقائق تكشفت أن وزارة الداخلية في مصر هي التي فجرت كنيسة القديسين في يناير 2011 لكي تتهم الإسلاميين"!
وطبعا في غياب أي ذكر - حرفيا!- للأزهر في كتاب يناقش تداخل السياسة والدين في مصر، فإن تكرار الكاتبة أن الكنيسة الأرثوذكسية ساندت عبد الفتاح السيسي في الانقلاب على الإسلاميين، بدون ذكر لموقف الأزهر والطرق الصوفية، يشبه جعجعة الإسلاميين المتكررة بأن الانقلاب كان انقلابا على الإسلام، ولكن الكاتبة الرصينة تستخدم هذه الإشارات وغيرها بدون أدنى أمانة لكي تؤكد أطروحتها عن هيمنة "العلمنة" على الخيال السياسي وأداء الدولة.
شيء مؤسف.
أما الأطروحة نفسها عن أن الهيمنة الإسلامية السابقة على الحداثة هي فقط تحاول أن تجد لها مكانا في تناقضات العلمانية الليبرالية في مصر، فهي ببساطة أطروحة معكوسة، وتطلب تمريرها هذا المستوى من التدليس والانتقائية التي تنحدر إلى مستوى الصحافة الصفراء.
May 27, 2019
أهم ما يطرحه هذا الكتاب هو أن السياسات العلمانية للدول ما بعد الكولونيالية هي التي أنتجت بشكل كبير " التفاوت الديني" في الدول القومية، هذا التفاوت التي تسمّيه المؤلفة " المكانة المتداعية" للأقليات ترى أنه ناتج من تدخل الدولة نفسها في تنظيم الشأن الديني والاجتماعي للشعوب، وتبحث ذلك من خلال التفريق بين " العلمانوية" و " العلمانية"، فبينما ترى في الأولى سمات الحكم السياسي الليبرالي ( الدولة وأيديولوجيتها)، ترى في الثانية الأرضية الإبستمولوجية والثقافية التي على أساسها يمكن السماح والمصادقة على أي من الادعاءات الدينية.
فهذا الكتاب يهتم برصد " العلمانوية"، وترى الباحثة أنها مُجسّدة في مؤسسة الدولة الليبرالية، وقانونها، واستراتيجيات حوكمتها، بمعنى أنها سمة ضرورية للعقلانية السياسية الحديثة التي أحد عناصرها " الحرية الدينية" والتي ترى أن الدولة القومية الحديثة فشلت بدرجة ما في حمايتها.
دعونا نوضح أن هذا الكتاب ليس ثورة على العلمانية ولا هو ناقد لها ولا هو معترض على أسسها رغم ما تقدمه صبا محمود من جينالوجيا نقدية، هي تأمل أن تكون الدولة أكثر علمانية، وتُصلح التفاوت الديني، حيث يصعب تصوّر - في تقديرها- مساواة دينية دون واسطة الدولة، وهذه نقطة مهمة في فهم الأساس الفكري الذي يقوم عليه الكتاب؛ لأنك في الحقيقة كقاريء " مسلم" لهذا الكتاب ستجد أحيانًا أن ما تأخذه " صبا محمود" على الدولة السلطوية من أشياء تراها تزيد من المسألة الطائفية هي في حقيقتها أشياء تتوافق مع قناعتك كمسلم، كالموقف المتشدد للدولة من البهائيين مثلًا، أو في عدم زواج المسلمة من الكتابي، هي أشياء تقوم بها الدولة المصرية قد تراها صبا محمود ضد الحرية الدينية .
في الحقيقة الكتاب لم يحاول تحرير مصطلحات مركزية فيه مثل " الحرية الدينية" و " المساواة" ، وهي مصطلحات تتكرر كثيرًا، وبعضها وصفتها المؤلفة بالغموض مثل مفهوم " المساواة" ، فكما رصدت المؤلفة أن مفهوم " الأقلية القومية" في مصر مفهوم متنازع عليه ومرفوض من النصارى في مصر، فالتفسير العلماني للحرية الدينية والمساواة هي تفسيرات مرفوضة إسلاميًا، صحيح أن الباحثة ترفض القول بأن الدولة العثمانية لم تكن متسامحة مع الأقليات، لكنها ترى أن هذا الأمر هو أفضل المتاح في هذا الوقت ، والحقيقة أن مقدار كوزموبوليتانية الدولة العثمانية لا يُقاس وفق المباديء العلمانية ولا وفق ما دشّنه صلح ويستفاليا، بل وفق الأيديولوجيا الإسلامية، وبشكل عام موقف الباحثة من الحرية الدينية عند العثمانيين موقف جيد.
ترى الباحثة أن الدولة الليبرالية لم تلغ الدين وإنما خصخصته وعمّقته اجتماعيًا، فالمفترض أن الدولة محايدة تجاهه، ولكنها تنظمه في الواقع مما يُحدث التفاوت للأقليات = بمعنى أن الدّولة ليست بمعزل عن الطائفيّة لأنّها هي التي تنظّم الدين بما يسمح والتوافق مع «حاكميّتها» ، وهي أفكار تشبه إن لم تكن أفكار ميشيل فوكو .
المشكلة الأساسية التي يدور حولها الكتاب هي كيف يمكن تدارك التفاوتُ الدينيّ في دولةٍ من المفترض فيها أن تكون قوانينها غير مكترثةٍ بالدّين؟ فكما تقول صبا محمود فمن ناحية تعني المساواة السياسيّة والمدنيّة أمام القانون أنّ الدولة عليها أن تكون غير مكترثةٍ بالانتماء الدينيّ لمواطنيها؛ ومن ناحيةٍ أخرى، بواقع أنّ الاختلافات والتراتبيّات الدينيّة قد بَنَت المجتمع، فقد طُلبَ من قانون الدّولة أن يدير ويعالج هذه الاختلافات والتراتبيّات. وكيفَ يمكن لدولةٍ سعت إلى إزالة التراتبيّة الدينيّة أن تقوم بذلك دون جعْل الاختلاف الدينيّ جزءًا من معجمها السياسيّ؟.
وهذه مشكلة الدول السلطوية القومية أنها تناقض ما قامت على أساسه لاسيما في الشرق الأوسط، وبتقديري أنه لن يوجد معيار مُتفق عليه عند مختلف الطوائف والملل لتحديد ما هي " الطائفية" وما هو " خطاب الكراهية" وأن أي معيار وضعي هو معيار منخرم، بل المباديء الإسلامية نفسها حول معاملة أهل الذمة لن ترضى عنها جميع الطوائف والنحل؛ ولذلك نقول إذا كان الإسلام يمثل هوية جمعية فيحب أن تكون معاييره حاكمة، ولكن مشكلة الأنظمة الأنقلابية في مصر كما رصدتها صبا محمود أنها تنصب نفسها حامية العلمانية في ظل إرث هوياتي إسلامي لا يمكنها الفكاك منه، فتقع في تفاوت ديني إما بمنح الأقليات أكثر مما حددته لهم الشريعة فلا يرضى عن ذلك الإسلاميون، وإما بالتشديد على الأقليات بما يوافق الإرث الهوياتي الإسلامي فلا يرضى عنهم العلمانيون قبل الأقليات.
فهذا الكتاب يهتم برصد " العلمانوية"، وترى الباحثة أنها مُجسّدة في مؤسسة الدولة الليبرالية، وقانونها، واستراتيجيات حوكمتها، بمعنى أنها سمة ضرورية للعقلانية السياسية الحديثة التي أحد عناصرها " الحرية الدينية" والتي ترى أن الدولة القومية الحديثة فشلت بدرجة ما في حمايتها.
دعونا نوضح أن هذا الكتاب ليس ثورة على العلمانية ولا هو ناقد لها ولا هو معترض على أسسها رغم ما تقدمه صبا محمود من جينالوجيا نقدية، هي تأمل أن تكون الدولة أكثر علمانية، وتُصلح التفاوت الديني، حيث يصعب تصوّر - في تقديرها- مساواة دينية دون واسطة الدولة، وهذه نقطة مهمة في فهم الأساس الفكري الذي يقوم عليه الكتاب؛ لأنك في الحقيقة كقاريء " مسلم" لهذا الكتاب ستجد أحيانًا أن ما تأخذه " صبا محمود" على الدولة السلطوية من أشياء تراها تزيد من المسألة الطائفية هي في حقيقتها أشياء تتوافق مع قناعتك كمسلم، كالموقف المتشدد للدولة من البهائيين مثلًا، أو في عدم زواج المسلمة من الكتابي، هي أشياء تقوم بها الدولة المصرية قد تراها صبا محمود ضد الحرية الدينية .
في الحقيقة الكتاب لم يحاول تحرير مصطلحات مركزية فيه مثل " الحرية الدينية" و " المساواة" ، وهي مصطلحات تتكرر كثيرًا، وبعضها وصفتها المؤلفة بالغموض مثل مفهوم " المساواة" ، فكما رصدت المؤلفة أن مفهوم " الأقلية القومية" في مصر مفهوم متنازع عليه ومرفوض من النصارى في مصر، فالتفسير العلماني للحرية الدينية والمساواة هي تفسيرات مرفوضة إسلاميًا، صحيح أن الباحثة ترفض القول بأن الدولة العثمانية لم تكن متسامحة مع الأقليات، لكنها ترى أن هذا الأمر هو أفضل المتاح في هذا الوقت ، والحقيقة أن مقدار كوزموبوليتانية الدولة العثمانية لا يُقاس وفق المباديء العلمانية ولا وفق ما دشّنه صلح ويستفاليا، بل وفق الأيديولوجيا الإسلامية، وبشكل عام موقف الباحثة من الحرية الدينية عند العثمانيين موقف جيد.
ترى الباحثة أن الدولة الليبرالية لم تلغ الدين وإنما خصخصته وعمّقته اجتماعيًا، فالمفترض أن الدولة محايدة تجاهه، ولكنها تنظمه في الواقع مما يُحدث التفاوت للأقليات = بمعنى أن الدّولة ليست بمعزل عن الطائفيّة لأنّها هي التي تنظّم الدين بما يسمح والتوافق مع «حاكميّتها» ، وهي أفكار تشبه إن لم تكن أفكار ميشيل فوكو .
المشكلة الأساسية التي يدور حولها الكتاب هي كيف يمكن تدارك التفاوتُ الدينيّ في دولةٍ من المفترض فيها أن تكون قوانينها غير مكترثةٍ بالدّين؟ فكما تقول صبا محمود فمن ناحية تعني المساواة السياسيّة والمدنيّة أمام القانون أنّ الدولة عليها أن تكون غير مكترثةٍ بالانتماء الدينيّ لمواطنيها؛ ومن ناحيةٍ أخرى، بواقع أنّ الاختلافات والتراتبيّات الدينيّة قد بَنَت المجتمع، فقد طُلبَ من قانون الدّولة أن يدير ويعالج هذه الاختلافات والتراتبيّات. وكيفَ يمكن لدولةٍ سعت إلى إزالة التراتبيّة الدينيّة أن تقوم بذلك دون جعْل الاختلاف الدينيّ جزءًا من معجمها السياسيّ؟.
وهذه مشكلة الدول السلطوية القومية أنها تناقض ما قامت على أساسه لاسيما في الشرق الأوسط، وبتقديري أنه لن يوجد معيار مُتفق عليه عند مختلف الطوائف والملل لتحديد ما هي " الطائفية" وما هو " خطاب الكراهية" وأن أي معيار وضعي هو معيار منخرم، بل المباديء الإسلامية نفسها حول معاملة أهل الذمة لن ترضى عنها جميع الطوائف والنحل؛ ولذلك نقول إذا كان الإسلام يمثل هوية جمعية فيحب أن تكون معاييره حاكمة، ولكن مشكلة الأنظمة الأنقلابية في مصر كما رصدتها صبا محمود أنها تنصب نفسها حامية العلمانية في ظل إرث هوياتي إسلامي لا يمكنها الفكاك منه، فتقع في تفاوت ديني إما بمنح الأقليات أكثر مما حددته لهم الشريعة فلا يرضى عن ذلك الإسلاميون، وإما بالتشديد على الأقليات بما يوافق الإرث الهوياتي الإسلامي فلا يرضى عنهم العلمانيون قبل الأقليات.
February 21, 2024
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION:
How has the modern secular liberal state exacerbated issues of religious liberty and minority rights?
THESIS or THESES:
As Mahmood directly states on the book’s first page: “This book argues that modern secular governance has contributed to the exacerbation of religious tensions in postcolonial Egypt, hardening interfaith boundaries and polarizing religious differences” (1). In addition to this core claim, Mahmood also argues that though secularism has a homogenous national-political structure, “its regulation of religious difference takes a modular form across geographical boundaries” (2). In other words, Egyptian religious tension, though particular, testify to how secular states worsen issues of religious inequality and oppression.
METHODS:
Whatever method this is called: an anthropological analysis that begins with an ethnographic encounter but moves beyond that encounter to understand how concepts internal to the group under ethnographic study are embedded and realized in social practices external to the group.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT(S):
At the beginning of her long introduction, Mahmood structures her argument that secularism in Egypt has exacerbated tensions between the state, religious minorities, and religious majorities. In doing so, Mahmood claims that political secularism is shot through with a ‘generative contradiction: the state claims to be separate from the church, but nonetheless regulates and forms many aspects of socioreligious life. Anticipating criticisms that differentiate the liberal secularisms of the global north with the authoritarian secularisms of the Egypt and the Middle East, Mahmood draws several parallels and continuities between liberal and authoritarian states. She additionally objects to the idea that Islam’s role in forming national Egyptian identity disbars Egypt from being secular and, in fact, Egypt and its secular counterparts in the global north both share a similar episteme that separates the public from the private and appraises empty homogenous time. Considering this, Mahmood does not support the concept of multiple secularities or secularisms. Through a reading of Marx’s “On the Jewish Question,” Mahmood emphasizes that liberal states, insofar as they politically free themselves form religion, are now the means in which religion is normatively differentiated. After stating the important ways language of and recourse to concepts of minority rights and religious liberty characterize Coptic efforts in Egypt, Mahmood insists that despite the pros of secularism, it nonetheless places unequal limitations on religious practice and identity.
Mahmood’s first chapter is a tracing of how the concepts of religious liberty and minority rights developed throughout Western Europe, the Middle East, and Egypt during the 19th and 20th centuries. Mahmood arranges this chapter around three historical shifts: 19th century Christian European states using religious liberty and minority rights to undermine Ottoman sovereignty of Eastern Christians, early 20th century fusion of civil rights with concepts of religious liberty and minority rights, and an interwar advent, ushered in by the League of Nations, of the concept ‘national minority.’ Crucially, in making this argument, Mahmood contends that religious liberty and minority rights need be theorized and historicized apart from the framework of rights. Regarding the first historical shift, the concepts of religious liberty and minority rights being used in western Europe are intertwined with questions of Ottoman state sovereignty, regional peace, and an intrastate way to handle what once were designated as religious dissenters but are now called religious minorities. As Mahmood follows the history of Coptic Christians in Egypt, she notes both the general global form of their oppression (and the global language and manners in which they struggle against that oppression) and how there are nonetheless fundamental peculiarities to the region. In doing so, she shows how 20th century Protestant missionaries brough with them a privatized view of faith that normatively bemoaned (unsuccessfully) Copts to dis-assimilate from Muslim customs. However, Protestant failures to convert Egyptian Copts and Muslims was augmented by political successes in construing religious freedom along Protestant lines, such as Article 18 of the UDHR. Mahmood then closes the chapter with a long discourse on how the early 20th century development of national minority, of which religion was one such national minority, was both a failure and a sublation beyond the language of minority rights, a language which no longer served Western military and economic interests. What interested me most about this chapter is how Mahmood argues that Jewish people in Europe occupied a similar position to Copts in Egypt.
This study’s second chapter continues examining religious liberty and minority rights, though now with a focus on modern Egypt. At the risk of too crudely summarizing, Mahmood’s argument throughout the chapter is to demonstrate how and why Copts are suspicious of the term minority and how the term minority has a fraught place within secular liberalism. Through engaging with liberal conceptions of the individual, multicultural theorists, Egyptian nationalists, and American evangelicals, Mahmood demonstrates how modern Egypt is in the crosshairs of secularism’s long durée. While the first portion of the chapter focuses on the late colonial period, in which Copts’ minority status was disputed, the latter portion analyses Christian-Muslim relations from mid-century and onward. I found it particularly fascinating how in the latter half of the chapter Mahmood displays that when Christian-Muslim equality became increasingly unrealistic, some Copts began to use the term minority to ameliorate their oppression; yet, as they did so, they remained tethered to Western powers and interests. Nonetheless, the broader scope of the argument concerns how secular liberalism is unable to eradicate religious oppression while being neutral on issues of religious difference; or, as Mahmood states: “even as the liberal/political state depoliticizes religion, it also allows religion to define civic life and serve as the basis of interpersonal differentiation” (80).
Moving into chapter three, Mahmood continues to focus on specific issues of minority right and religious liberty in Egypt. Studying the issue of interreligious conversion and marriage, Mahmood locates a site of Muslim and Christian contestation. Per her larger argument, Mahmood claims that interreligious conflicts that meet at the nexus religion, sexuality, and the family are, insofar as the secular state construes these spheres as private, exacerbated. Nonetheless, these gendered discourses, in which the woman is an object and the man a subject, testify to how the Egyptian state uses the autonomy of family law to permit and continue early patterns of religious and gender hierarchy. Equally important, the autonomy of family law, for Mahmood, is not the remnants of a premodern past in family law operated with an expanded notion of kinship, but a distinctly modern differentiation between the public and private. In addition to this, Mahmood examines how Islamic family is understood as the ‘general family’ law that permits Coptic women to marry Muslim men, but not Muslim women to marry Coptic men. At the core of this dilemma is the oppression of Copts, the exchange of women, the coercive forces behind Coptic to Muslim conversion, and the role of American evangelical media in making Coptic oppression an international concern.
Turning her focus to the small Bahai minority in Egypt, Mahmood studies in chapter four how religious liberty and minority rights are inflected when the group in consideration is not recognized by the state. The first portion of the chapter examines court ruling and the second half of the chapter analyses how the European Court of Human Rights relates to religious minorities; this breaking up of the chapter allows for Mahmood’s comparative analysis. Indeed, by showing how Bahais position as a religious minority in Egypt is distinct to the region, Mahmood also stresses that the position of Bahais displays global logics of secularism: “authorizing the state to pronounce on substantive religious content, and promoting majoritarian values and sensibilities at the expense of minority beliefs and practices” (150). Throughout the chapter Mahmood inspects the secular concept of public order as central to Egyptian court rulings; that is, the concept allows the state to intervene in whatever they take to be public. The issue for the Egyptian state, then is how to “square the religious inequality of the Bahais with their civil and political equality in the eyes of the law” (155). And the issue for secular states at large is how to not accord privileged status to any religion while also defining national norms in concert with the dominant religion, as the second half of the chapter elaborates.
In the book’s final chapter, Mahmood shifts her focus unto the controversies that ensued in Egypt after the publication of Azazeel. The novel painted a damming picture of the Coptic church and its suppression of early Church believers and beliefs. However, the point Mahmood insists upon is that throughout this controversy, all warring parties relied on a secular (read: positivist) understanding of history and temporality that takes ‘real events’ that occurred as the sole basis for verifying ones political and religious suasions. Doing so allows Mahmood to shift her focus from political secularism as a legal and statist discourse to secularity as an episteme, as a “shared set of background assumptions, attitudes, and dispositions that imbue secular society and subjectivity” (181). Brazenly put, the chapter contends that secularity has soaked Egyptian society that religious groups struggle to articulate a religious imaginary in a medium other than secularity. The point, then, is that secularity is the fuel, match, and lighter for the conflicts of religious liberty and minority rights, as the controversy of Azazeel displays.
SCHOLARS THE AUTHOR IS IN CONVERSATION WITH:
Joan Scott, Wendy Brown, Talal Asad, Hussein Agrama, Karl Marx, and Michel Foucault.
CRITICISM:
Though Mahmood states “secularism is not simply another term for modernity,” I take it that her understanding of secularism as indelibly intertwined with the advent of the secular state in many ways equates secularism with modernity (23). Unlike Mahmood, I do think that the secular episteme has a long history that predates modernity and that such an episteme produces social forms other than the secular state. Thus, her argument that secularism is not modernity is further complicated by her claim that secularism and secularity only exist in modernity. Do secularism and secularity contingently happen to always be indelibly intertwined with the secular state? I do not think Mahmood can adequately answer this question as one would have to say that either secularism is modernity or secularism and secularity predate modernity and in certain instances happened to be mapped unto the liberal state.
I do not think that a secular episteme is to blame for the controversy that ensued after the publication of Azazeel. I have not studied the controversy, but it does not seem to follow that because an empty and homogenous concept of history, with all its affective baggage, mediates discourses in Egypt (much to Habermas’ pride and Mahmood’s chagrin) that secularity is to blame for the controversy. Life in diverse spaces is incredibly messy and pointing the finger at secularity obscures more than it illuminates. Perhaps we could also address the issue of poor religious education, the persistent gutting of humanities programs in Egypt, etc, as these also contributed to the controversy. The issue at hand isn’t that the state and its actors espouse a sense-based epistemology and empirical verifiability, the issue is that modernity does not allow for a well-informed and time-consuming intellectual life.
PRAISE:
I’m not sure why Berlinerblau insisted on the inaccessibility of Asad and Mahmood’s work, as this book was incredibly pleasurable to read. Mahmood is a gifted stylist who, in avoiding boring prose, writes in a manner that is both clear and colourful.
I appreciate that Mahmood, though theoretical, is grounded in a textual archive of legal history. This grounding grants her claims a level of veracity that, say, Asad’s discourse on Paul de Man did not. This is not to harp and demand a strict empiricism, but it is to say that theory must have its objects and though I occasionally disagree with Mahmood’s reading of objects, at least she has them!
How has the modern secular liberal state exacerbated issues of religious liberty and minority rights?
THESIS or THESES:
As Mahmood directly states on the book’s first page: “This book argues that modern secular governance has contributed to the exacerbation of religious tensions in postcolonial Egypt, hardening interfaith boundaries and polarizing religious differences” (1). In addition to this core claim, Mahmood also argues that though secularism has a homogenous national-political structure, “its regulation of religious difference takes a modular form across geographical boundaries” (2). In other words, Egyptian religious tension, though particular, testify to how secular states worsen issues of religious inequality and oppression.
METHODS:
Whatever method this is called: an anthropological analysis that begins with an ethnographic encounter but moves beyond that encounter to understand how concepts internal to the group under ethnographic study are embedded and realized in social practices external to the group.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT(S):
At the beginning of her long introduction, Mahmood structures her argument that secularism in Egypt has exacerbated tensions between the state, religious minorities, and religious majorities. In doing so, Mahmood claims that political secularism is shot through with a ‘generative contradiction: the state claims to be separate from the church, but nonetheless regulates and forms many aspects of socioreligious life. Anticipating criticisms that differentiate the liberal secularisms of the global north with the authoritarian secularisms of the Egypt and the Middle East, Mahmood draws several parallels and continuities between liberal and authoritarian states. She additionally objects to the idea that Islam’s role in forming national Egyptian identity disbars Egypt from being secular and, in fact, Egypt and its secular counterparts in the global north both share a similar episteme that separates the public from the private and appraises empty homogenous time. Considering this, Mahmood does not support the concept of multiple secularities or secularisms. Through a reading of Marx’s “On the Jewish Question,” Mahmood emphasizes that liberal states, insofar as they politically free themselves form religion, are now the means in which religion is normatively differentiated. After stating the important ways language of and recourse to concepts of minority rights and religious liberty characterize Coptic efforts in Egypt, Mahmood insists that despite the pros of secularism, it nonetheless places unequal limitations on religious practice and identity.
Mahmood’s first chapter is a tracing of how the concepts of religious liberty and minority rights developed throughout Western Europe, the Middle East, and Egypt during the 19th and 20th centuries. Mahmood arranges this chapter around three historical shifts: 19th century Christian European states using religious liberty and minority rights to undermine Ottoman sovereignty of Eastern Christians, early 20th century fusion of civil rights with concepts of religious liberty and minority rights, and an interwar advent, ushered in by the League of Nations, of the concept ‘national minority.’ Crucially, in making this argument, Mahmood contends that religious liberty and minority rights need be theorized and historicized apart from the framework of rights. Regarding the first historical shift, the concepts of religious liberty and minority rights being used in western Europe are intertwined with questions of Ottoman state sovereignty, regional peace, and an intrastate way to handle what once were designated as religious dissenters but are now called religious minorities. As Mahmood follows the history of Coptic Christians in Egypt, she notes both the general global form of their oppression (and the global language and manners in which they struggle against that oppression) and how there are nonetheless fundamental peculiarities to the region. In doing so, she shows how 20th century Protestant missionaries brough with them a privatized view of faith that normatively bemoaned (unsuccessfully) Copts to dis-assimilate from Muslim customs. However, Protestant failures to convert Egyptian Copts and Muslims was augmented by political successes in construing religious freedom along Protestant lines, such as Article 18 of the UDHR. Mahmood then closes the chapter with a long discourse on how the early 20th century development of national minority, of which religion was one such national minority, was both a failure and a sublation beyond the language of minority rights, a language which no longer served Western military and economic interests. What interested me most about this chapter is how Mahmood argues that Jewish people in Europe occupied a similar position to Copts in Egypt.
This study’s second chapter continues examining religious liberty and minority rights, though now with a focus on modern Egypt. At the risk of too crudely summarizing, Mahmood’s argument throughout the chapter is to demonstrate how and why Copts are suspicious of the term minority and how the term minority has a fraught place within secular liberalism. Through engaging with liberal conceptions of the individual, multicultural theorists, Egyptian nationalists, and American evangelicals, Mahmood demonstrates how modern Egypt is in the crosshairs of secularism’s long durée. While the first portion of the chapter focuses on the late colonial period, in which Copts’ minority status was disputed, the latter portion analyses Christian-Muslim relations from mid-century and onward. I found it particularly fascinating how in the latter half of the chapter Mahmood displays that when Christian-Muslim equality became increasingly unrealistic, some Copts began to use the term minority to ameliorate their oppression; yet, as they did so, they remained tethered to Western powers and interests. Nonetheless, the broader scope of the argument concerns how secular liberalism is unable to eradicate religious oppression while being neutral on issues of religious difference; or, as Mahmood states: “even as the liberal/political state depoliticizes religion, it also allows religion to define civic life and serve as the basis of interpersonal differentiation” (80).
Moving into chapter three, Mahmood continues to focus on specific issues of minority right and religious liberty in Egypt. Studying the issue of interreligious conversion and marriage, Mahmood locates a site of Muslim and Christian contestation. Per her larger argument, Mahmood claims that interreligious conflicts that meet at the nexus religion, sexuality, and the family are, insofar as the secular state construes these spheres as private, exacerbated. Nonetheless, these gendered discourses, in which the woman is an object and the man a subject, testify to how the Egyptian state uses the autonomy of family law to permit and continue early patterns of religious and gender hierarchy. Equally important, the autonomy of family law, for Mahmood, is not the remnants of a premodern past in family law operated with an expanded notion of kinship, but a distinctly modern differentiation between the public and private. In addition to this, Mahmood examines how Islamic family is understood as the ‘general family’ law that permits Coptic women to marry Muslim men, but not Muslim women to marry Coptic men. At the core of this dilemma is the oppression of Copts, the exchange of women, the coercive forces behind Coptic to Muslim conversion, and the role of American evangelical media in making Coptic oppression an international concern.
Turning her focus to the small Bahai minority in Egypt, Mahmood studies in chapter four how religious liberty and minority rights are inflected when the group in consideration is not recognized by the state. The first portion of the chapter examines court ruling and the second half of the chapter analyses how the European Court of Human Rights relates to religious minorities; this breaking up of the chapter allows for Mahmood’s comparative analysis. Indeed, by showing how Bahais position as a religious minority in Egypt is distinct to the region, Mahmood also stresses that the position of Bahais displays global logics of secularism: “authorizing the state to pronounce on substantive religious content, and promoting majoritarian values and sensibilities at the expense of minority beliefs and practices” (150). Throughout the chapter Mahmood inspects the secular concept of public order as central to Egyptian court rulings; that is, the concept allows the state to intervene in whatever they take to be public. The issue for the Egyptian state, then is how to “square the religious inequality of the Bahais with their civil and political equality in the eyes of the law” (155). And the issue for secular states at large is how to not accord privileged status to any religion while also defining national norms in concert with the dominant religion, as the second half of the chapter elaborates.
In the book’s final chapter, Mahmood shifts her focus unto the controversies that ensued in Egypt after the publication of Azazeel. The novel painted a damming picture of the Coptic church and its suppression of early Church believers and beliefs. However, the point Mahmood insists upon is that throughout this controversy, all warring parties relied on a secular (read: positivist) understanding of history and temporality that takes ‘real events’ that occurred as the sole basis for verifying ones political and religious suasions. Doing so allows Mahmood to shift her focus from political secularism as a legal and statist discourse to secularity as an episteme, as a “shared set of background assumptions, attitudes, and dispositions that imbue secular society and subjectivity” (181). Brazenly put, the chapter contends that secularity has soaked Egyptian society that religious groups struggle to articulate a religious imaginary in a medium other than secularity. The point, then, is that secularity is the fuel, match, and lighter for the conflicts of religious liberty and minority rights, as the controversy of Azazeel displays.
SCHOLARS THE AUTHOR IS IN CONVERSATION WITH:
Joan Scott, Wendy Brown, Talal Asad, Hussein Agrama, Karl Marx, and Michel Foucault.
CRITICISM:
Though Mahmood states “secularism is not simply another term for modernity,” I take it that her understanding of secularism as indelibly intertwined with the advent of the secular state in many ways equates secularism with modernity (23). Unlike Mahmood, I do think that the secular episteme has a long history that predates modernity and that such an episteme produces social forms other than the secular state. Thus, her argument that secularism is not modernity is further complicated by her claim that secularism and secularity only exist in modernity. Do secularism and secularity contingently happen to always be indelibly intertwined with the secular state? I do not think Mahmood can adequately answer this question as one would have to say that either secularism is modernity or secularism and secularity predate modernity and in certain instances happened to be mapped unto the liberal state.
I do not think that a secular episteme is to blame for the controversy that ensued after the publication of Azazeel. I have not studied the controversy, but it does not seem to follow that because an empty and homogenous concept of history, with all its affective baggage, mediates discourses in Egypt (much to Habermas’ pride and Mahmood’s chagrin) that secularity is to blame for the controversy. Life in diverse spaces is incredibly messy and pointing the finger at secularity obscures more than it illuminates. Perhaps we could also address the issue of poor religious education, the persistent gutting of humanities programs in Egypt, etc, as these also contributed to the controversy. The issue at hand isn’t that the state and its actors espouse a sense-based epistemology and empirical verifiability, the issue is that modernity does not allow for a well-informed and time-consuming intellectual life.
PRAISE:
I’m not sure why Berlinerblau insisted on the inaccessibility of Asad and Mahmood’s work, as this book was incredibly pleasurable to read. Mahmood is a gifted stylist who, in avoiding boring prose, writes in a manner that is both clear and colourful.
I appreciate that Mahmood, though theoretical, is grounded in a textual archive of legal history. This grounding grants her claims a level of veracity that, say, Asad’s discourse on Paul de Man did not. This is not to harp and demand a strict empiricism, but it is to say that theory must have its objects and though I occasionally disagree with Mahmood’s reading of objects, at least she has them!
February 10, 2019
كتاب مدهش يطرح الحجة الشائعة في التنظير العلماني كحل ناجع ضد الصراعات الدينية والطائفية ويحاجج هذا المنطق من خلال دراسة انثروبولوجية وسوسوساسية لنموذج الأقباط في مصر حيث ترى الباحثة أن الصراع الدائر بين الطوائف الدينية هو أحد مظاهر العلمنة التي تقول أن استغلت الجانب الديني عبر تحييده في المجال الخصوصي واستثماره اجتماعيا في شرعنة سلطة الدولة العلمانية عكس ما تقول العلمانية من تحييد الدين وإبعاده عن المجال السياسي
عاب الكتب الترجمة الرديئة من المترجم حيث وجدت صعوبة بالغة في ترجمة كثير من المصطلحات ومحاولة فهم كثير من العبارات وهو ما أظنه سيتعب القاريء للأسف الشديد
عاب الكتب الترجمة الرديئة من المترجم حيث وجدت صعوبة بالغة في ترجمة كثير من المصطلحات ومحاولة فهم كثير من العبارات وهو ما أظنه سيتعب القاريء للأسف الشديد
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November 26, 2023Incredible dissection of secularism and secularity (yes they’re different and Mahmood differentiates them so well) but for the *extremely glaring omission* of “oh yeah the colonial beginnings of Egyptian law dealing with religious minorities were related to and at times coauthored by Egyptian Jews. I’m going to talk about how secularism deals with religious difference, and European Jews are a great comparative case study. Oh yeah and then Israel was founded and Egyptian Jews started getting harassed and they ALL left and I’m going to state that in one sentence and never bring it up again. In this book of mine about how secular geopolitical interests have religious consequences.” Reminds me of Mara Loveman’s National Colors in the great argument for the intermediate strata, and the inability/refusal to deal with the strata where the buck stops.
August 18, 2023
Did not finish this! Marking it as read in an act of acceptance that I will simply never read the whole thing I cannot keep trying to do this anymore LOL. This is an amazing work of scholarship and so well-researched and I learned a lot just from the 45% that I read. Def wanna revisit the last half later but it’s soooooo dense I can’t just like sit and read it. I think I took psychic damage every time I opened this book tbh. Would have loved to give it a closer read but it’s just not digestible. I was really skeptical ab the authors claims at first but the deconstruction of secularism at the beginning actually made me think a lot. This was overall very impressive and partially decolonized my brain I think.
December 18, 2020
Using Egypt as a case study, the author argues that "modern secular governance has contributed to the exacerbation of religious tensions in postcolonial Egypt". Religious tensions between the predominantly Muslim population of Egypt and its Coptic Christian minority and the the Bahai's are the subject of this study. Secularism is characterized by the "modern state's relationship to and regulation of religion". In its relation to the liberal state, two contradicting properties are internal to secularism - the simultaneous regulation of religious life on the one hand and the construction of religion as a space free from state intervention. Political secularism "entails the reordering and remaking of religious life and interconfessional relations in accord with specific norms, themselves foreign to the life of the religions and peoples it organizes".
The author does a good job of highlighting the contradictions and the paradoxical effects that the liberal state infused with political secularism has on the religious life of its citizens. In many ways it opens up new channels of contestation and challenges. And it's not just limited to Egypt or postcolonial states but also as the author shows in the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. The author states "It turns out, therefore, that neither the Egyptian rulings nor the European ones are free of normative prescriptions about what religion should be in the public sphere". To which I wonder if there is any way to govern, using a governance and political structure, that does not involve doing just this? The cogency of the author's argument it seems comes from the fact that "secularism" seems to be, in the collective imagination, considered to be free of religion, a separation of church and state, and so on; the author shows easily that religion can not be free of infringement from politics and the state. It is nice to know and correct our conceptions of what secularism is and what it isn't. However, if religion is going to be infringed upon by the state in any case, then comparing the liberal secular state to a different form of governance, say a theocracy, a normative judgment that the former is still better than the latter is not changed by this book. The "problem" emerges because liberal secular states purport to aim to ensure freedom of religion but at the same time undermine it using concepts such as public order which privileges the religious sentimentalities of the majoritarian sect, bifurcates religion into the beliefs and actions and circumscribes protection against discrimination and negative outcomes for the former while ignoring the latter, that is it sets the scope of what can be considered religious from a legal standpoint. Mahmood argues that demanding more or better implementation of secularism will not make this problem go away and could make it worse. This "problem" does not occur in lets say the aforementioned theocracy because it doesn't purport to ensure any such freedoms or erode the hierarchies naturalized into the corpus of the religion and in turn the society. I think postcolonial theorists (any one really) do themselves and their fields a disservice by simply limiting their analyses to "complicating" and "problematizing" things and not sketching a way forward for a new political imagination.
The author does a good job of highlighting the contradictions and the paradoxical effects that the liberal state infused with political secularism has on the religious life of its citizens. In many ways it opens up new channels of contestation and challenges. And it's not just limited to Egypt or postcolonial states but also as the author shows in the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. The author states "It turns out, therefore, that neither the Egyptian rulings nor the European ones are free of normative prescriptions about what religion should be in the public sphere". To which I wonder if there is any way to govern, using a governance and political structure, that does not involve doing just this? The cogency of the author's argument it seems comes from the fact that "secularism" seems to be, in the collective imagination, considered to be free of religion, a separation of church and state, and so on; the author shows easily that religion can not be free of infringement from politics and the state. It is nice to know and correct our conceptions of what secularism is and what it isn't. However, if religion is going to be infringed upon by the state in any case, then comparing the liberal secular state to a different form of governance, say a theocracy, a normative judgment that the former is still better than the latter is not changed by this book. The "problem" emerges because liberal secular states purport to aim to ensure freedom of religion but at the same time undermine it using concepts such as public order which privileges the religious sentimentalities of the majoritarian sect, bifurcates religion into the beliefs and actions and circumscribes protection against discrimination and negative outcomes for the former while ignoring the latter, that is it sets the scope of what can be considered religious from a legal standpoint. Mahmood argues that demanding more or better implementation of secularism will not make this problem go away and could make it worse. This "problem" does not occur in lets say the aforementioned theocracy because it doesn't purport to ensure any such freedoms or erode the hierarchies naturalized into the corpus of the religion and in turn the society. I think postcolonial theorists (any one really) do themselves and their fields a disservice by simply limiting their analyses to "complicating" and "problematizing" things and not sketching a way forward for a new political imagination.
March 15, 2016
awesome take on secularism and its fundamental paradox. read it!
January 25, 2019
طرح مغاير ومثير للاهتمام ، اظن أنني احتاج للوقت لاستيعاب هذه الأطروحة .
February 25, 2021
This was close to five stars for me. I think this is a great analysis of secularism not as the absence of religion, nor the separation of church and state, but "a historical product with specific epistemological, political, and moral entailments" (3).
I also appreciated the cross-disciplinary methods and her understanding of Anthropology as "a mode of analyzing distinct forms of life through a study of concepts internal to them, embedded and realized in social practice" (23-24).
The book looks at Egypt and the role of the secular state in embedding religion in a separate sphere and exasperating tensions. Mahmood looks at non-Muslim minorities, specifically the Coptic Christian community and to a lesser extent, the Bahais. What stood out to me was the correction that the 'secular project' hasn't failed in Egypt, but rather, does what would be expected of secularism to do.
I also appreciated the cross-disciplinary methods and her understanding of Anthropology as "a mode of analyzing distinct forms of life through a study of concepts internal to them, embedded and realized in social practice" (23-24).
The book looks at Egypt and the role of the secular state in embedding religion in a separate sphere and exasperating tensions. Mahmood looks at non-Muslim minorities, specifically the Coptic Christian community and to a lesser extent, the Bahais. What stood out to me was the correction that the 'secular project' hasn't failed in Egypt, but rather, does what would be expected of secularism to do.
Currently reading
August 7, 2021The opening of the book perhaps sets it up for a historical misunderstanding. Muslims are by default "arab conquerors," despite the histories written about the civilizing missions of Ismaili dais, who later founded the Fatimid dynasty. Simply put, Muslims were once civil minorities as well. The Fatimid state has a curious similarity with the current Egyptian state in terms of how it relates to minorities--make the elites among Copts and Jews part of their social legitimacy. (Jews-- not so much in today's Egypt.) If we keep this continuity theme in mind, then the idea of "religious minority" becomes a bit different than the "Jewish" in Europe problem, posed by Dr. Saba Mahmood in her book at the very beginning. Jewish people in Europe were never elevated to that status.
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Please read the rest of the review here: https://agitateorganize.blogspot.com/...
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Please read the rest of the review here: https://agitateorganize.blogspot.com/...
February 21, 2023
Lucid, original, and penetrating!
23-2-21. Wrote in 2016, struggles with the liberalist hope nonetheles...
23-2-21. Wrote in 2016, struggles with the liberalist hope nonetheles...
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