Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity

by Talal Asad

Opening with the provocative query “what might an anthropology of the secular look like?” this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the “strangeness of the non-European world” and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity.

Genres: Religion, Islam, Philosophy, Anthropology, History, Nonfiction, Politics

285 pages, Paperback

First published February 3, 2003

About the author

Talal Asad (born 1932) is an anthropologist at the City University of New York.

Asad has made important theoretical contributions to Post-Colonialism, Christianity, Islam, and Ritual studies and has recently called for, and initiated, an anthropology of Secularism. Using a genealogical method developed by Friedrich Nietzsche and made prominent by Michel Foucault, Asad "complicates terms of comparison that many anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, and political scientists receive as the unexamined background of thinking, judgment, and action as such. By doing so, he creates clearings, opening new possibilities for communication, connection, and creative invention where opposition or studied indifference prevailed."

Reviews

[Gaber Mohamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

أسلوب الكتاب صعب جدا، ولذا ضروري أن يتزامن مع قراءة هذا الكتاب النظر في الروابط التالية: الأول عن قراءة المترجم لكتاب طلال أسد؛ حيث يوضح فيها العديد من النقاط التي يصعب على الباحث غير المتخصص فهمها، أو على الأقل يضع القاريء في السياق الزمني لكتابة فصول الكتاب. والرابط الثاني، قراءة أحد الأكاديميين المتخصصين للكتاب من على موقع نهوض. والرابط الثالث حوار نصي مع طلال أسد، والرابط الأخير حوار فيديو مع طلال أسد عن الدين والعلمانية والسياسة.
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بعيدًا عن الموضوع الأساسي للكتاب عن تفكيك العلمانية، فالفصل الأخير يمكن قراءته بعيدًا عن الهدف الأساسي من الكتاب؛ وذلك لمن يشعر بالملل أو التعب من اسلوب الكتاب.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like academic, deconstuctionist, esoteric texts then Talal Asad is for you. If you don't, I'd go somewhere else for a critique of secularism. Since I had to read this book, I didn't have much of a choice. His proposal is intriguing - that secularism is rooted in Christianity and an oppositional conception of Europe. This is especially interesting and timely when thinking about Muslim countries and individuals in Europe (which Asad devotes a chapter to).

The major problem, beyond the ivory-towerishness of it, was that I couldn't help shaking the feeling that Asad was sort of winging it. Often he relied of only one or two non-related texts to bridge major gaps in his argument. However, given that "secular" versus "religious" is a major theme of this era, it is a unique contribution. I was disappointed that a solution was not proposed. Secularism was problematized, but what are we to do with that knowledge?

[Michal Lipták · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is kind of interesting for the questions it poses and for topics it identifies as interesting for the thinking about the subject of secularism, but aside from that it’s frustratingly meandering and unfocused. I agree with treating secularism as ideology, as a mode of living which develops its own narratives, ethical frameworks, myths and so on. Asad is surely correct to emphasize, too, that reading secularism as yet another recasting of mythologies, or yet another recasting of religious frameworks, would have been grossly reductive. At the same time, and there he’s correct as well, he is skeptical to trust the optimistic, teleological stories secularists tell of themselves – stories of continuous emancipation, modernization, finality, and so on. The position that he holds is that despite secularism trying to achieve a total break with the religion, it fails to do so and secularism stems from religion (and secular stems from religious) and uses it as a ground – however, this happens in more contingent ways and it is not simply a grand general inversion.

The particular issues through which Asad chooses to pursue secularism and secular “in the shadows”, such as the notions of sacred and profane, agency, pain, cruelty, human rights, nationalism, family, and so on, are well chosen. They obviously aren’t intended to provide a comprehensive, total overview, so no point for criticizing for lack of that, but the investigations are, nonetheless, quite underwhelming in themselves.

For example, when investigating the framing of pain in secular and religious, Asad make some interesting points: he shows pain as meaningful in religious framework, even as a form of agency, rooted in the particular religious habitus which involves bodily involvement in the religious rites, which therefore can’t be understood as metaphorical or symbolic, but sacred in themselves. When secular eschews this framework, pain appears as disturbance and as something meaningless, and it’s thus to be spurned as absolutely undesirable. Confronted with the fact of pain, and with the necessity to use state violence against threats (such violence being perfectly legitimate for a liberal democracy to use, too), secularism draws certain distinctions along utilitarian (gratuitous vs. necessary) and ideological (human vs. inhuman treatment – begging the question how we define this “human” as adjective here) lines. Interesting generalizations are suggested here. View of secularism as – as opposed to irrational religion – having feet on the ground may be subverted: it’s the blatant insufficiency and thus the necessary collapse of crude absolutes that secular deals in (absolute repudiation of pain as meaningless, in this case) which makes it confront the world in its unordered, confusing facticity (the painfulness of existence). Working backwards it the prides itself as rational for letting these crude absolutes collapse and it condemns the religion for protecting itself with a veil of ignorance, which the secularism got rid of, and which doesn’t allow religion to see the world for what it is. What it overlooks in the process is that religion provides a much more organic, complex view of the reality without simply subsuming the factual to the absolute, without seeing a simple binary of disordered world ordered by transcendent God who’s not of this world (in Christianity the intermingling of godlike and worldly is obviously central, with God being embodied and with his body literally suffering). Secularism thus doesn’t primarily confront religion by stripping it of its mythologies – it primarily confronts it by whipping up the absolutes, which is different story than the secularism tells of itself. In a way, if we take all the things transcendent and absolute as irrational – which is sometimes the part of story secularism tells – then secular kind of inaugurates itself through whipping up the irrationality to highest level and letting it blow up. At the same time, it’s clear that the thinking of absolute is rooted in the religious and even if we want to consider modern secularism as a break with the religious, there surely must have been some radical transformation of the religious at some point which made it possible.

However, Asad doesn’t really pursue his investigations in this way. More often, he throws in yet another quote, yet another anecdote, or seems content to point out to secularism’s hypocrisy (such as: yes, we do repudiate cruelty as inhuman, so that, for example, torture is illegal – but what about drone-killing the civilians in impersonal and distant matter and categorizing it as “collateral damage”?), all the time reminding you that his interests are descriptive and he’s not moralizing – although, of course, he always is. It’s frustrating and disappointing.

I’d prefer his arguments were clearer and that it’d be clearer where he’s heading with all that. 50 pages about reform of sharia in colonial Egypt are informative but it’s been unclear what the significance of this is supposed to be, and how it’s a conclusion of the book’s argument in any way. Yes, some reformers have drawn on tradition more than others, some have referred to tradition only for utilitarian purposes, the secular and modern reform involves clearer separation of law and ethics while the two are intermingled in the original sharia and fiqh, procedures become depersonalized in modern times (in Weberian fashion) while traditionally judges and scholars were supposed not to be ruling according to law, but living it and embodying it. But what is to be made of a mere description of these contrasts? I’d actually prefer Asad to be more speculative, and to make a bolder assessment of the secularist claims to universality and to being the final destiny of history (the latter is which I enjoyed, and therefore found more thought-provoking, in Carl Schmitt, especially Roman Catholicism and Political Form). Asad doesn’t seem to think that secularism is destined to endure forever, and at the same time he doesn’t seem to believe that return of the old religious framework is likely. But if he had made his assessments more obvious, the particular investigations, such as the one into the pain, would have been placed within larger argument and thus their significance would have been bolstered beyond being food for thought and interesting topics for discussion. Asad probably didn’t want such sweeping theses to overshadow the focus on minutae and gradual mapping of the terrain, but really, the result is that there’s a proper book on this topic waiting to be written, and the existing book at hand is mostly just an intellectual stimulator, a starter to be used for kicking oneself to write that book.

[Neal Spadafora · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5

CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION:

In Asad’s own words: “What is the connection between ‘the secular’ as an epistemic category and ‘secularism’ as a political doctrine? Can they be objects of anthropological inquiry? What might an anthropology of secularism look like?”

THESIS or THESES:

The political doctrine of secularism cannot be understood without studying how the secular, as an epistemic category and way of thinking the human, precedes and informs the development of political secularism. The present certainties on political secularism and religion must be traced back to their previous contingencies.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT(S):

[This very long summary is demonstrative of my hope to finally understand, in all of its intricacies and foibles, this book.]

In conversation with Charles Taylor, Asad’s introduction in Formations immediately addresses a core concern of his study: against Taylor’s idea of a secular democracy as a space in which persuasion and negotiation are encouraged and incubated, Asad is quick to argue that modern liberal governance does not deal in persuasion and that secularism is intertwined with eruptions of violence and intolerance in the capitalist West. In other words, Asad echoes Walter Benjamin’s argument that a secular state and its laws never seek “to eliminate violence since [their] object is always to regulate violence” (8). Whereas as apologists of liberal democracies and political secularism regard the religious and its actions as encroachments, at times violent, on the sphere of secularism, Asad demonstrates that secular and religious state-actors alike often do not need a textual or scriptural motive for their violence (9-12). Prior to concluding his introductory chapter, Asad demonstrates that his anthropology of secularism, insofar as it more than a pseudoscientific method of fieldwork, is curious about how the doctrines and practices of secularism impacted human “sensibilities, attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors” (17).

Differentiating his approach to the secular from a Frankfurt school styled inquiry which sought to locate a violent myth at the core of the secular, Asad traces the practical consequences of the use of the word myth and how the word develops into modern oppositions of “belief and knowledge, reason and imagination, history and fiction, symbol and allegory, natural and supernatural, sacred and profane” (23). In doing so, Asad contends that these binaries do not come with an essence that then are translated into the essences of the secular and the religious, but that such terms in the pre-modern world were instable and multiple in their use and thus in their meanings. Of course, Asad does insist on the interdependence of political secularism (which is explicit in its genesis and form) and the more ambiguated word and concept of the secular. Otherwise put, Asad illustrates how new discourse practices and grammars replaced previous ones, such as Greek mythos losing its heroic connotations and in the early modern era becoming the object of bourgeois aesthetic appreciation, synonymous with false, and understood to shape certain possibilities and actions (26-30). However, unlike the term myth, which enjoyed a near univocity of meaning in the early modern and modern world, the terms and concepts of sacred and profane were multiple in their pre-modern and early modern usage, it was only upon European colonialism (that is, the development of secularism) in which they took an essentialized moral, political, legal, and ethical function (32-37). After Asad provides a brief note on “old themes of historical theology and of the sacralization of history to focus on the project of historical authenticity” (41), he demonstrates how a presumed linearity of secular history and de-mything is the canon of all time.

Asad shifts gears into a complex discussion on myth, poetry, and secular sensibility. Throughout this discussion, Asad argues that romantic poets and novelists, to the likes of Elliot, Joyce, and Browning, participated in and formed a mythic method that aimed to impose a unity on the stratified individual of modernity, aimed to express sincerity of intention and ground secular experience. Such structural and grounding European Romantic use of myth serves a different function than it does in the work of Adonis, in which myth is plural, anarchic, and figural (52-56). Concluding the chapter, Asad engages with the liberal political theorist Margaret Canovan, who argues that liberalism will benefit from acknowledging that its public virtues are dependent on political myth. Canovan argumes that liberals of the bourgeois revolutions appealed to a mythological notion of nature as sociologized, of nature as that which does not really exists but nonetheless grants inalienable rights to humans. Canovan claims that contemporary liberals should also appeal to this myth of nature and reason, as abstract pro-liberal arguments (e.g., Rawls) are ineffective. In other words, according to Canovan “the essence of the myth of liberalism—its imaginary construction—is to assert human rights precisely because they are not built into the structure of the universe” (59). Against Canovan, Asad argues that such appeal to myth, to have the light of liberalism overtake the darkness of the world, is already a justification and explanation of the violence sparked in the name of universalizing reason (60-61). This secular redemption of humanity and history is not, perhaps counterintuitively, to be understood as essentially Christian; as secular redemption and Christian redemption have different politics, morals, and understandings of suffering. Alas, to demonstrate how secular views of the secular differ from one another, Asad turns to Paul de Man’s “The Rhetoric of Temporality” and Walter Benjamin’s The Origin of the German Tragic Drama (62-66). Whereas De Man maintains the secular as the real, Benjamin does not. That is, De Man’s secular invites a certainty, an unmasking of the apparent that reveals the real, that Benjamin’s uncertainty disavows.

The second chapter constitutes Asad’s aim “to consider how, by whom, and in what context the concept of agency is defined and used if one is to get a better understanding of the ways ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ are continuously made and remade. Shifts in that concept, and in its connection with ideas of responsibility and consciousness, are crucial to revisions in our understanding of the religious-and therefore of the secular” (99). Asad also figures questions of agency in relation to pain. He does so to demonstrate how religious practices of pain are imagined to hinder history-making and self-empowerment, to be progressively replaced by the achievement of pleasure, and thus enable and justify certain secular notions of reason and agency. In tracing how categories such as resistance presume a natural and transhistorical human subject who rationally pursues their self-interest, Asad asserts that not every human action is undertaken by a competent agent with clear intentions (72). Such a point allows Asad to think of moral agency and action as propelled by habits and the environment one occupies. Rather than redefining and reinscribing agency, Asad, per usual, looks at how usages of the term change throughout historical contexts such as acting and religious history (73-79). Asad then goes on to make a similar point about pain: often times people who suffer are thought to be objects robbed of agency; however, Asad contends that this opinion is wrong. The experience of pain is physical and cultural, those who experience pain do so relation with others: “The ability to live such relationships over time transforms pain from a passive: experience into an active one, and thus defines one of the ways of living sanely in the world” (84). Using this social theory of pain, Asad turns to showing how martyrdom, childbirth, and Islamic rituals of devotion each testify to the experience of pain within a tradition, a social context (85-92). Less concerned with how people attribute meaning to pain, Asad develops the importance behind pain as communicable, active (rather than passive and objectifying), and social. Such an understanding of pain antagonizes secular progress narratives that hold non-religious ways of life as an agential and collective pursuit of pleasure. Additionally, it shows how pain serves moral, communal, and epistemological potentials. This point is solidified by Asad reading Oedipus as paradigmatic of secular notions of responsibility for one’s actions (and thus punishment for those actions which harm).

The themes of pain and agency are carried on, via a study on cruelty and torture, in the third chapter. In this chapter, Asad argues that the history of torture is part of a secular story of how one becomes truly human, that the sufferer becomes referential to the nonhuman, and that the prohibition of torture conflicts with other secular values such as the rights of individuals to choose and the duty of the state to maintain security (101). In his discussion of two books, GR Scott’s The History of Torture and D. Rejali’s Torture and Modernity, Asad analogizes two perspectives on cruelty: the state is best equipped to eliminate cruelty and that torture is integral to the functioning of the state (102-107). This leads Asad to analyzing a paradox: why are modern liberal states both participants in torture and resolutely against justifying torture? Such a paradox is addressed through Asad’s discussion on colonial law and practice. Through European colonial law, new human subjects are being made, subjects who are civilized. However, in this process, pain and the infliction of suffering was to be both useful and merited, it was to achieve the ends of civilization. That is, civilization has its victims, cruelty must have its utilities, it must be measured and not gratuitous (109-113). Thus, as Asad states, Israel, which Asad categorizes as a ‘humanizing society,’ engages in acts of applying ‘physical and psychological pressure,’ but does not overindulge in doing so. Relatedly, Asad highlights how cruel and vicious modern weapons contradict the measured and analytic idea of pain that liberal democracies espouse. In other words: “So how can the calculated cruelties of modern battle be reconciled with the modern sensibility regarding pain? Precisely by treating pain as a quantifiable essence. As in state torture, an attempt can be made to measure the physical suffering inflicted in modern warfare in accordance with the proportionality of means to ends” (117). This contradiction, perhaps unsurprisingly, opens a conversation on sadomasochism. Throughout this conversation, Asad asserts that pain is only permissible when it is in accord with a particular concept of being human, one that is private, in consent, and autonomous (118-124).

Continuing with his idea of ‘humanizing’ and ‘redeeming’ history and its subjects, Asad’s fourth chapter, which is arguable the most theoretically and historically dense chapter, maintains that subjects can be violated in some ways as citizens of a given state (e.g., military causalities and capitalism), but cannot be violated in other ways insofar as they are conceived as having inalienable natural rights (e.g., torture and slavery). I take it that Asad makes this differentiation to demonstrate that inalienable human rights (a language which developed during the transatlantic slave trade in Portugal and the Netherlands) are only applicable insofar as they interact with how liberal democratic states regard them as being a citizen or not. That is, the discourse of human rights proffers a certain idea of what is involved in becoming human in a secular state (139-140). Through a juxtaposition of Malcolm X’s use of human rights language and Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of religious and prophetic language, Asad presents how supposedly universal or particular languages are both dependent on certain cultural milieus and political moments (140-148). After a commentary on and critique of Martha Nassbaum’s Aristotelian notion of the human (one highly detached from history) and the relation between the human and the nonhuman, Asad concludes his chapter by maintaining that the idea of the human as a self-owning subject is inevitability going to be complicated by forces of the market, class struggle, technological development, and legal proceedings (150-158). In this way, human rights become floating signifiers that can be whimsically attached to various subjects for disparate reasons.

Readers of Asad’s work are likely familiar with his general comments on Muslims in Europe and his particular comments on Muslims in France. Asad’s fifth chapter is paradigmatic of his work on this topic. This understanding of Muslims as a minority presence (and, paradoxically, absence) in Europe owes its genesis not to supposed Muslim absolutism, but European conceptions of state, civilization, and culture. Muslims, Asad powerfully argues, are excluded from the idea and identity of Europe (160-170). This idea and identity of Europe both represses the violence internal to it (e.g., Nazis) and views itself as a non-porous, self-contained entity whose influences have not been external (i.e., from the Turks and others from the Middle East). Europe, as a civilization and culture, at once immune from the influence of the Arab and the Jew, has reconstructed the world “in its own Faustian image” (170). Of course, such an image is historical false, as Europe’s influences—intellectual, technological, cultural—have often come from the outside. As the borders of Europe shift, Asad’s question, “can Muslims be represented in Europe,” leads him to his subsequent argument (172). That is, Asad argues that if Muslims continue to be represented as minorities within Europe, then they will have minimal political success and representation. Or, in his own words, “The ideology of political representation in liberal democracies makes it difficult if not impossible to represent Muslims as Muslims” (173). In lieu of taking up a tradition of liberal political theory that regards Muslims in Europe as a minority, Asad, using William Connolly’s concept of decentralized pluralism, a concept that both embodies a “continuous readiness to deconstruct historical narratives” and calls for multiple, overlapping, and non-oppositional social and religious identities, demarcates a way forward (177). In other words, there are only minorities and Muslims, as one of many minorities, should be able to find institutional representation and power. Asad then ends the chapter by showing how John Milbank’s idea of complex gothic space and heterogenous time reduce nationalist practices and identities and permit a decentralized pluralism (178-180).

Turning to the secularization thesis that has attracted much attention over the past several decades, Asad’s sixth chapter is a consideration of how this thesis interact with issues of nationalism. Beginning with a thoughtful disagreement with Jose Casanova (if religion is not privatized in the modern world, then how it is the case that religious people do not participate in politics proper?), Asad then argues that “only religions that have accepted the assumptions of liberal dis- course ate being commended, in which tolerance is sought on the basis of a distinctive relation between law and morality” (183). Muslims, in their refusal to disconnect law from morality, are thought to not be fit participants for a Habermasian public sphere. That is, Muslims, like most people, don’t engage in public debate for the hell of it, but because they have vest moral and ethical interests and hopes they’d like to see politically and socially realized. As such, “from the point of view of secularism, religion has the option either of confining itself to private belief and worship or of engaging in public talk that makes no demands on life” (199). Asad then asks, as many since have, if nationalism can be understood as a secularized religion. His answer is no. Reason being that he does not think symbolic functions within national life are enough to constitute it as a secularized religion (189). Asad demands that we look at differences, rather than correspondences, between religion and nationalism. Such a look at the differences allows the scholar and layperson alike to not think of the secular as progressively new content of a previous religious form (191). Ending his chapter, Asad asks the converse question if Islamism should be regarded as nationalism. His answer is no. Reason being that Islam has historically differentiated, quite significantly, between community and nation.

In a long final chapter, which I only briefly summarize, Asad looks at secularization in Egypt and its recent relegation of shari’a law to the sphere of ‘personal status law.’ Rather than looking at this as a secularizing trend in which religion is simply demarcated into a smaller sphere than it once was, Asad demonstrates how such relegation of shari’a is a reconceptualization and replacement of ethics and politics. This replacement and reconceptualization of shari’a, indeed this formation of the secular in Egypt, is a specific understanding of shari’a as distinct and not related to the embodied sunna, the way of the Prophet. As Asad says, the Egyptian government “presupposes a very different conception of ethics from the one embedded in the classical shari’a” (209). Secularization is not just a limiting of religious power and presence, but a particular way of understanding religious practice and belief.

CRITICISM:

This is a massive question: is Asad too genealogy-pilled? At the end of the day, is there really no essence to religion? I, as much as anyone else, appreciate the impressive genealogical inquiry that Asad engages in, but is there no essence behind these words? Even a pragmatic essence, if you will? Similarly, does a secular episteme only produce secularism? That is, does atheism always become liberal, owing to their common genealogical origins?

Unrelatedly, I do think that Asad understates the role sadism plays in the development of modern politics. Gratuitous violence is the name and game of modernity and Asad’s insistence upon modern preference for calculated violence overlooks the presence and importance of gratuitous violence.

I read Asad as excusing Christianity in his critique of the secular. If the secular is neither neither continuous with nor a break from the religious, then is Christianity not impugned in his critique of the secular? This is a significant issue in the work that I haven’t resolved. It also, perhaps, contextualizes his appreciation for John Milbank and religious conservatives.

[Graeme · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

While, there were some interesting arguments buried within the text, I found this work fairly underwhelming because the arguments seem fairly obvious and hard to deny. I come to this work as more of a student of political science, philosophy, economics and history, than sociology and anthropology. So, I may have been looking for Asad to answer certain questions that he was clearly not interested in answering.

Asad's main project seems to be to look at the concept of secular and secularism, to try to determine what, if anything, is fundamental to it. His answer seems to be that the concept has shifted over time, and it has multiple valences and there is no singular understanding of the secular or secularism that transcends time. This seems to then inform a vaguely Foucauldian critique of modernization theory and more general whiggish histories. For what its worth, I don't think Asad is wrong at all here, I was just expecting a lot more, as any student of 20th century philosophy, particularly Wittgenstein, Rorty and Heidegger would find this to be a fairly obvious argument.

Also, the one area where I would quibble with Asad a bit is his focus on a very continental European as opposed to Anglophone concept of secularism. The notion of the abstract citizen is far more deeply tied to French republicanism than it is to American or English liberalism.

Overall, if you're interested in seeing different ways to problematize the secular and secularism there is some value here, but if you are looking for a broader argument about the role of "secularism" in public affairs looks elsewhere.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those academic books that has a lot of goof things to say but says them in an unnecessarily dense and impenetrable way. I've certainly read worse academic works – Asad is not a bad writer – but he seems allergic to explicitly drawing the lines he wants to draw, leading the reader to read, read again, and maybe read a third time various key paragraphs and pages to try to grasp what he means and how it's connected to the rest of the book.

Asad discusses “the secular” apart from the movement of “secularism,” the latter being the move toward privatization of religion and its separation from other elements of culture like economics, politics, etc. The secular, on the other hand, seems harder to define, not least because Asad says he can only access it indirectly, by talking about related subjects like pain and suffering, elements of the human condition that religion seeks explanations for, but which “the secular” seeks to eliminate.

Secularism is a project of modernity, and modernity is distinctly Western – except that the bifurcation of the world into “West” and “East”/non-West is itself a product of modernity, and Asad wants to know what happens if we ditch this dichotomy.

For Asad, “the secular” is a mixture of “certain, knowledges, behaviors, and sensibilities in modern life” (25). In reality, it was birthed by 18th century European anthropologists and sociologists confronting the reality of different religions for the first time, and the category grew to become a totalizing one. Sacred things became “profaned” but also universalized as secular (private property, right of conscience). The barriers simply moved; they were not newly erected.

Asad argues that history as a secular enterprise began with the rise of biblical criticism, which split “sacred” from “secular” readings of the past. Then with the rise of liberal rights, secularism created a myth in which these rights are built into the fabric of the universe even though the brute fact of their advocacy means they cannot be so self-evident at all. And liberalism contains two contradictory myths: the myth of persuasion contradicted by the myth of majoritarian rule. The “modern conscience” then becomes a secularized counterpart of religious morality. And pain is dethroned from pride of place in Christianity to something that should be eliminated in the modern secular world. The notions of equality and the elimination of pain that advanced with secularizing modernism also led to the replacement of corporal punishment with imprisonment because the latter was seen as more equitable than the former, which was less taxing to the strong and powerful.

By looking at pain and torture, as well as suffering, Asad sees the secular shift toward privatized belief as parallel with the (official, if not universal) modern shift away from torture and the infliction of suffering. After all, passion of all sorts – religious or painful – should be kept out of public life. “Beliefs should have no direct connection to the way one lives, or be held so lightly that they can easily be changed. Otherwise, secularism as a political arrangement cannot work very well” (115). One of these beliefs, arguably, is the sacredness of human life – everyone agrees with this notion until, of course, the state demands humans kill and be killed on its behalf. Thus it is not pain or suffering the secular state abhors so much as pain that is “in excess” of what the state perceives to be appropriate for human endurance. This suspicion/condemnation of excess reflects secularism’s emphasis on the rational individual “free of fanatical convictions” – who is also a source of social instability given the individual’s autonomy.

He also points out the double standard in which deadly capitalist interventions in developing nations are not considered human rights violations. Likewise, the very notion of “natural rights” cannot exist without the sanction of the arbitrarily created and defined nation-state. Further, the very discourse of natural rights began in the context of European colonialism and enslavement – defined in opposition to those humans who did not possess such rights. The commitment to natural rights led to democracy, and democracy – with its focus on the sovereignty of the individual being given over to the state through the election of representatives – led to secularism, which allowed the individual to maintain such sovereignty over their own religious beliefs in private. Given the dialogue over “natural rights,” each citizen is seen as sacred, worthy of these rights, but only in the abstract. In reality, they are subject to a state that can demand their lives in war. Further, the “universal human” with dignity and natural rights, at least as envisioned in America and France, was only seen as White, European, and Christian – not enslaved, not indigenous, not subject to a monarch.

For Asad (p. 147), the state allows for the privatization of religious belief, and defines such belief as “anything the state can afford to let go.” So yes, if the government construes various regulatory functions as part of religious belief, it can privatize them, thus shrinking the public sphere.

Asad argues that in the ongoing debates over the secularization thesis, the question of the secular itself is ignored. Because the secular is the result of various modern impulses, so too is the religious – and the insistence that secularization properly pushes religion into the private sphere, it raises questions about what happens when private religion inevitably impinges on public life, whether through the private shaping of public-facing individuals, or through the basic engagement of religious people with public issues. The moral is religious, after all, and the moral is also political. Therefore, the religious seems to be more political than private. The secularization thesis either ignores or denies this. The secularization thesis allows for a milquetoast religion that leaves aside its convictions in all except issues of private moral formation, but Asad questions whether this is possible. Can the “sincerely” religious truly agree to disagree? “No movement than aspires to more than mere belief or inconsequential talk in public can remain indifferent to state power in a secular world” (200). The secularization thesis “no longer carries the conviction it once did.”

[Harrison Helms · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding book. Asad's stated goal is to define an "anthropology of the secular." He critiques secularism, arguing that "the secular" is not simply the neutral opposite of "the religious," but rather part of the ideology of secularism that defines a "project of modernity." It's making me rethink everything I've ever known LOL.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly one of the best books on secularism and the anthropology of secularism. Asad tries to understand secularism through its geneaology. I reread chapters in this book constantly.

[Mahnoor Tanveer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a heavy read ! It’s one of those books that I would need to read again ( which I hope I can in the future). The author seemed very knowledgable and I loved how he brought out and cited intellectuals from the east and west in order to build concise and complete theory (more or less) of secularism. I enjoyed the ordering of the book which I did not get in the beginning but I appreciated at the end. The ordering and breakdown of the chapters shows how a trained anthropologist views the world which i found remarkably different.

The content of the book is itself brilliant, a little hard and dry to follow at times but that’s also understandable as the book is an academic text anyway. However I found it useful for the current age.

[Madhubrata · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dont really feel up to rating and reviewing academic works, but this dissettled me in a good way.

[Beni Beattie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read, super analytical and thought provoking stuff, that presents a deep understanding of secular transitions in the modern world.

[Roger Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent book takes an interdisciplinary look at the contradictions and logics informing secularization and early "post secular" critiques. From the development of human rights and liberalism to the debates about torture and Muslims in Europe...the so-called "clash of civilizations" this book, published almost 15 years ago does more to help us understand the current world than any ephemeral news story or facile gripings about the rise of the far right.

[Justin Michael James Dell · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a boring, abstrusely-written meander. Asad attempts to draw a sketch of what an "anthropology of secularism" might look like, but by examining the "shadows" of the secular and the policy of secularism. In other words, do not expect a straight-forward engagement of the subject, but a lot of bafflegab.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great chapter on Islam in Europe, the rest was interesting too but very very dense.

[sidnawi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very in depth read. Asad has a great command over various fields in the humanities. He doesn't give many straightforward conclusions, it is moreso an exploration of the inconsistencies of secularism. Will need to reread in a few years time.

Chapter 1-3 are very complex and abstract - the rest of the book is much easier. Following are key discussions that happen from Ch 4 onward.

- the whole idea of human rights. universal declaration talks about inalienable rights, then moves straight to state - i.e we give away our agency over our rights as individuals to the state, who decides on collective rights for us. state has monpoly on violence it can use however it pleases to enforce morals it deems worthy (good examples on fgm, mexican tribes). humanistic vs local redemption/prophecy narratives, their effectiveness.

- european identity: actually has a definition, was actively defined as "not muslim" (because fighting turks) and "not communist" (fighting russians). based on shared experience of living through roman empire, christendom, industrial rev, enlightenment - immigrants didnt live through this. whole idea of europe was born to forget wwii trauma and state complicity/collaboration. good examples of germany (genocidal, destroyed continent, but no question about their europeanness), bosnia, and russia.

- not possible for muslims to be genuinely representative of muslims in european political scene. you have to buy into a set of values/experiences to be european, and thats what these countries are by definition. not just a xenophobic thing when right doesnt want more ppl.

- state cant coerce religious belief like it can hard facts of life - economy, poolitics, education, etc. either its left out of public completely (where ppl will eventually grow to vote based on it), orit becomes a minority rights grab - thats why the extent of it is abortion, lgbt, etc debates. doesnt bring anything to reform morals/how we do things as a society anymore.

- egypt modernists, transformation of sharia, copy/pasting european legal codes, indigenous elite doing everything possible to catch up to europe. modernist/salafi obsession with ijtihad, removal of anything remotely resembling superstition because by doing so, we can reach their level.

- also, importance of citizen/subjectry building, islamic views on it, referece base points. is it viable in multicultural societies? discussions of examples.

[conor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible. Truly astounding scholarship here that is largely clear and easy to follow (though quite complex and thematically dense, so worth taking slowly to digest everything that's going on here). Asad's work here is a solid exploration of what the secular, secularization, and secularism really are. He begins to sketch out how these categories came to be and offers provocative insight into how we should all begin to rethink the ways we likely conceive of 'the secular' and 'religion'. Highly recommend for anyone interested in the academic study of religion and particularly those with interests about how religion and secularity intersect in politics and 'the public square'.

[Yakup Karabacak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oldukça parçalı okumak zorunda kaldığımı en başa not edeyim. Kendimce bazı soruların cevaplarını tartıştığım, bazı yeni soruların zihnime kazındığı bir okuma oldu.

Türkiye'de Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, cemaatler ve inanç özgürlüğü bağlamında bu denli hararetli tartışmalar devam ederken, kitabın yalnızca tek bir baskı yapmış olması üzücü.

Türkiye başlığı ve tartışmaları, belki editoryal bir müdahale ile güncellik ve derinlik kazanabilirmiş...

[Frank R. · Rating 1 out of 5]

A terrible read...The only decent anthropology derived from this text is that Secularism is a worldview. It stands as a doctrine comprised of various layers of post-Enlightenment and Modernist philosophical themes that can neither be characterized as a continuation of nor alternative to religion. It may act as a religion because of historical borrowing and the common human cognitive templates derived from collective social interactions in developing nation-states.

You. Are. Welcome. :)

[Harrison Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to take my time with this. An important read, which challenges my understanding of agency and self in the modern world, as much as it reaffirms my belief in the importance of historical and literary analysis.

The chapter on MLK and prophetic language was what drew me in initially, having read the excerpt for an Islamic history class years ago. I often think about that class, and that professor. I hope he is doing well.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 2 out of 5]

2-2.5/5. I have seen “Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, and Modernity” referenced to all over and there is certainly much to ruminate on in this recondite read, but I would have preferred a clearer and more accessible explanation (I found Talal Asad’s argument quite convoluted and challenging to follow).

[Nicholas Fellows · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how such an unfocused book made it past the publisher. Why is he hellbent on shoehorning every humanities cliché into a single book (genealogy (which in this case just means totally RNG selection of sources), the body, spatiality, temporality, etc)? Pick a lane, boomer! This reads like my bachelors thesis!

[Feryal Khawar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A painfully dense but throughly essential read

Can’t claim to have understood it all, but it did make me question the source of my assumptions about many everyday aspects of life, and the geopolitical relationships being played out. Thoroughly recommend this book, though it requires quite a bit of patience and determination to get through the incomprehensible writing style of the professor.

[محمّد التميمي · Rating 2 out of 5]

قرأت بعضه. لغة الكاتب أو الترجمة (غالبًا الكاتب لأن حتى المراجعات الإنجليزية ومترجم الكتاب يذكرون صعوبة الأسلوب) عسيرة وغامضة ومملوءة بالمصطلحات الأكاديمية (المترجم لا يشرح شيء).
*الكلام عن طبعة جداول.

[versarbre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Talal Asad is great. But after I read his paper introducing his father's works, I started to wonder why he couldn't write in the same straightforward style that he talks about his father's works...It could have made his works more powerful.

[Maxim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Especially the 3rd part which affected negatively 'Leseprozess' would be more interesting for readers who specialize on specific/regional topic.

[Robert Heckner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating

[laila* · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Saudi brethren🇸🇦🇸🇦🇸🇦🇸🇦

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although Asad has moments of brilliance, I found that the points he made were disconnected from one another and his language difficult to understand even from an academic and anthropological perspective. He could have benefited from an overall conclusion and more tie in to his theme. Like other reviewers, I felt like he was 'winging it'

[Neil White · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dense book and especially the discussion at the end of the book on secularism and its entry into the world of Islam using the case of Egypt I didn't have enough background to understand well. I really enjoyed Talal Asad's discussion of Agency and Pain, Cruelty and Torture and Human Rights as a way to look at the American Civil Rights movement.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the striving for modernity, and how it varies from place to place and person to person. Particularly, how religious systems produce incompatibilities between belief systems and thus political systems, making liberalism difficult.