Reflections on Authority, Suspicion and Secrecy in the Liberal Democratic State
In: Political theology, Band 23, Heft 6, S. 610-621
ISSN: 1743-1719
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In: Political theology, Band 23, Heft 6, S. 610-621
ISSN: 1743-1719
In: Comparative studies in society and history, Band 52, Heft 3, S. 495-523
ISSN: 1475-2999
In this essay I offer a thesis about secularism as a modern historical phenomenon, through a consideration of state politics, law, and religion in contemporary Egypt. Egypt seems hardly a place for theorizing about modern secularity. For it is a state where politics and religion seem to constantly blur together, giving rise to continual conflict, and it thus seems, at best, only precariously secular. These facts, however, go to the heart of my thesis: that secularism itself incessantly blurs together religion and politics, and that its power relies crucially upon the precariousness of the categories it establishes. Egypt's religious-political ambiguities, I argue, are expressions of deeper indeterminacies at the very foundation of secular power. In what follows, I elaborate my thesis, how it differs from other, similar sounding arguments, and the shift in perspective on secularism that it entails. I begin with a famous Egyptian apostasy case.