DOCSLIB.ORG

Beyond the Secular West

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Beyond the Secular West BEYOND THE SECULAR WEST RELIGION, CULTURE, AND PUBLIC LIFE Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 RELIGION, CULTURE, AND PUBLIC LIFE Series Editor: Karen Barkey The resurgence of religion calls for careful analysis and constructive criticism of new forms of intolerance, as well as new approaches to tolerance, respect, mutual understanding, and accommodation. In order to promote serious scholarship and informed debate, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Pub- lic Life and Columbia University Press are sponsoring a book series devoted to the investigation of the role of religion in society and culture today. This se- ries includes works by scholars in religious studies, political science, history, cultural anthropology, economics, social psychology, and other allied fields whose work sustains multidisciplinary and comparative as well as transna- tional analyses of historical and contemporary issues. The series focuses on issues related to questions of difference, identity, and practice within local, national, and international contexts. Special attention is paid to the ways in which religious traditions encourage conflict, violence, and intolerance and also support human rights, ecumenical values, and mutual understanding. By mediating alternative methodologies and different religious, social, and cul- tural traditions, books published in this series will open channels of commu- nication that facilitate critical analysis. For a complete list of the books in this series, see page 279. Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 BEYOND THE SECULAR WEST edited by Akeel Bilgrami Columbia University Press New York Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2016 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beyond the secular West / Edited by Akeel Bilgrami. pages cm. — (Religion, culture, and public life) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-17080-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-54101-5 (ebook) 1. Secularism. 2. Religion and culture. 3. Taylor, Charles, 1931– Secular age. I. Bilgrami, Akeel, 1950– editor. BL2747.8.B49 2016 200.9'04—dc23 2015032306 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cover design: Lisa Hamm Cover image: Composite (top) © Raghu Rai/Magnum Photos, (bottom) © Kevin Grant/Shutterstock References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 CONTENTS Preface vii Akeel Bilgrami 1 CAN SECULARISM TRAVEL? • 1 Charles Taylor 2 THE SUFI AND THE STATE • 28 Souleymane Bachir Diagne 3 THE INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE SELF-LIBERATION MODEL OF USTADH MAHMOUD MOHAMED TAHA • 45 Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na‘im 4 CREATING DEMOCRATICALLY FRIENDLY TWIN TOLERATIONS OUTSIDE OF LATIN CHRISTENDOM: TUNISIA • 76 Alfred Stepan 5 SECULARISM AND THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION • 97 Claudio Lomnitz 6 IS CONFUCIANISM SECULAR? • 117 Peter van der Veer Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 7 DISENCHANTMENT DEFERRED • 135 Sudipta Kaviraj 8 AN ANCIENT INDIAN SECULAR AGE? • 188 Rajeev Bhargava 9 GANDHI’S RADICALISM: AN INTERPRETATION • 215 Akeel Bilgrami 10 A SECULAR AGE OUTSIDE LATIN CHRISTENDOM: CHARLES TAYLOR RESPONDS • 246 Charles Taylor List of Contributors 261 Index 265 vi • contents Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 PREFACE hese essays were conceived among a handful of scholars from T a range of disciplines (history, politics, philosophy, anthro- pology, law) and provoked by the intellectual claims of an impressive book by Charles Taylor published a few years ago, bearing the title A Secular Age. The provocation was simply this: Could a work that had analyzed in great historical and analytical detail the emer- gence of the secular in Latin Christendom carry lessons for other parts of the world? Though Taylor himself had avowedly restricted himself to a focus on the Latin West, given the intrinsic generality of the concept of the secular as well as the ideological mobilization that European imperial conquest of distant lands had made possible, a question about the reach of the concept was never far from the offing for Taylor himself and for anyone reading his book with an alertness to its widest implications. The authors of these essays, though they are by no means all restricted to Columbia University, got together several times over three years or more at Columbia University (and at periodic retreats in nearby Tarrytown, New York) to pursue this large question. The dis- cussions proved so fruitful and exciting that we decided to gather our thoughts and deliver them in essays, which Columbia University Press has helpfully agreed to publish as one among its cluster of publications on the themes of secularism and tolerance. Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 The essays were always intended by us as looking to the interest of the secular in many different parts of the world beyond Christendom, but no group of scholars could possibly aspire to comprehensiveness on this score. Still, when China, India, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East are all on offer in one or other essay, it is no small spread. Regional range apart, there are also diverse intellectual and method- ological angles provided by the different disciplinary locations of the authors, and there is an illuminating balance between observing the points of affinity and departure from the genealogical roots of the secu- lar in Europe, while also elaborating the local flowering of secularity in quite autonomous terms in these distant settings. India, unsurprisingly, gets somewhat more play in the volume than other settings, because secularism (the specificallypolitical doctrine that emerges from the ideal of the secular) has been a subject of such intense and prolonged discussion there just prior to and since decolonization, and it raises questions of its own as to why this should be so or comparatively more so than in other regions of the global South. In general, as one would expect, the essays raise as many questions of this sort and others as they answer. Many of these questions are very usefully and clearly introduced by Taylor himself in an opening chapter. It would be redundant of me, therefore, to do so in this short preface, as it would be for me to present summaries of the essays that follow, because Taylor himself provides them in an equally valuable set of replies in the concluding chapter. The volume, thus, owes greatly to Taylor’s most obliging willingness to participate in these proceedings and to Al Stepan’s inspiring enthu- siasm for the subject that infected each one of us. I would like to thank them both and all the other contributors to the book for their essays, a thoroughly fitting outcome of some of the most searching and lively discussions one could hope to have with one’s academic colleagues. My thanks too to the Institute of Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University for bringing many of us together frequently and for its various hospitalities over the years, and especially to Melissa Van for her vigilant eye on all matters of organization and her gently prompting presence during the editing of this volume. Akeel Bilgrami viii • preface Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 BEYOND THE SECULAR WEST Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 1 CAN SECULARISM TRAVEL? Charles Taylor 1 We live in a world in which ideas, institutions, art styles, and formulae for production and living, circulate among societies and civilizations that are very different in their historical roots and traditional forms. Parliamentary democracy spread outward from England, among other countries, to India. And the practice of nonviolent civil disobedience spread from its origins in Gandhi’s practice to many other places, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movements, to Manila in 1983, and eventually to the Velvet and Orange revolutions of our time. But these ideas and forms don’t just change place as solid blocks; they are also modified, reinterpreted, given a new spin and meaning in each transfer. This can lead to tremendous confusion when we try to follow these shifts and understand them. One possible course of con- fusion comes from taking the word too seriously: the name may be the same, but the reality will often be different. This is evident in the word “secular.” We think of “secularization” as a process that can occur anywhere (and for some people, is occurring everywhere). And we think of secularist régimes as options for any country, whether they are adopted or not. And certainly, these words crop up (almost)1 everywhere. But do they really mean the same thing? Are there not, rather, subtle differences that can bedevil cross-cultural discussions of these matters? Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 11.04.16 19:11 I think there are and that they do make problems for our under- standing.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 2013-14 Annual Report Mission Statement
    http://ircpl.org/wp-main/uploads/sezgin.jpg IRCPL institute for religion, culture, and public life at Columbia University in the City of New York 2013-14 Annual Report Mission Statement The revitalization of religion in the last four decades has taken many scholars and analysts by surprise. They believed that modernization, secularization, and the privatization of religion would have global impact, leading to overall patterns of religious decline. What has happened is quite different and more complex. While religion has declined in some societies and grown in others, it has also changed and evolved in different ways in a variety of contexts. This transformation of religion, long-standing or novel, impacts our world in key ways. From the rise of religious movements, to the role of religion in politics and to the much more spirited engagement of religion in the public sphere and the public lives of adherents we experience religion in many different ways. To address this unexpected and rapidly changing situation, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life brings together scholars and students in religion, cultural anthropology, history, political science, economics, sociology and social psychology, and other allied fields to support multi-disciplinary analysis, reflection, and response to historical and contemporary issues of great significance. Founded in 2008, the Institute also engages in its programs political and economic figures and policy practitioners, as well as religious and cultural leaders. The scope of the Institute encompasses a broad range of phenomena, and while seeking to understand the bases of conflict and unrest across and within religions, it also examines beliefs, practices, and historical examples that demonstrate the potential for understanding, tolerance, and ecumenical values within religious traditions, as well as patterns of social institutions that may facilitate coexistence and mutual support.
    [Show full text]
  • Alfred Stepan
    ALFRED STEPAN Alfred Charles Stepan 22 July 1936 – 27 September 2017 elected Fellow of the British Academy 1997 by ARCHIE BROWN Fellow of the Academy A fine boxer in his youth; an active duty officer in the US Marine Corps who spent the 1962 missile crisis at sea, twenty miles off the Cuban coast, in readiness to invade the island; a Marine officer in Vietnam; a special correspondent ofThe Economist who predicted the Brazilian military coup of March 1964; a Chicago native urged by the city’s machine politicians to take over the seat of a retiring Democratic Congressman (with hints of a Senate opening to come); a professor who had a six-hour meeting with Fidel Castro in Havana (and a box of Cuban cigars from the revolutionary leader); the holder of prestigious Chairs and Deanships at Yale, Columbia and Oxford; the first President and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest; Chairman of the Board of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation—this would sound like an implausible combination for a character in a novel. Alfred Stepan, best known for his contributions to the comparative study of politics, did all these things and more. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, XVIII, 411–447 Posted 30 October 2019. © British Academy 2019. ALFRED STEPAN One of the most influential political scientists of his generation, Alfred Charles Stepan was born into ‘a very Catholic family’ of seven in Chicago on 22 July 1936.1 He died of cancer, aged 81, on 27 September 2017. ‘Al’, as he was known to his family and friends, was the eldest of the sons.
    [Show full text]
  • Nathan Jude Brown Employment and Academic
    NATHAN JUDE BROWN Institute for Middle East Studies 202 994 2123 Elliott School of International Affairs [email protected] George Washington University 1957 E Street, NW Washington DC 20052 EMPLOYMENT AND ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS The George Washington University, Washington, DC • Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, 1999-present • Director, Institute for Middle East Studies, 2007-2009, 2015-2018 • Director, Middle East Studies Program, 1989-1994, 1996-1999, 2002-2004, 2007-2009, 2015-2017, 2018- present • Associate Dean, Elliott School of International Affairs, 1992 -1994, 1996-1999 • Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, 1992-1999 • Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, 1987-1992 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC • Nonresident Senior Fellow, 2007-present • Senior Associate, 2005-2007 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC • Fellow, 2009-2010 Middle East Institute, Washington, DC • Adjunct Scholar, 2002-2005 • Scholar in Residence, 2000-2001 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheva, Israel • Visiting Professor (Fulbright), 1999-2000 Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut • Visiting Instructor of Government, 1986-87 HONORS AND AWARDS • Best paper of 2016, International Journal of Constitutional Law (co-authored with Julian Waller) • Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Award for Scholarship, George Washington University, 2015 • Harry Harding teaching award, Elliott School of International Affairs, 2014 • Guggenheim
    [Show full text]
  • I PERSONAL CONNECTIONS to the POLITICAL WORLD: SOCIAL
    PERSONAL CONNECTIONS TO THE POLITICAL WORLD: SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON DEMOCRATIC COMPETENCE IN BRAZIL AND IN COMPARATIVE CONTEXT by Amy Erica Smith B.A., University of Texas at Austin, 1999 M.R.P., Cornell University, 2002 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2011 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Amy Erica Smith It was defended on October 6, 2011 and was approved by Jonathan M. Hurwitz, Professor, Department of Political Science James McCann, Professor, Department of Political Science, Purdue University Scott Morgenstern, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Dissertation Advisors: Barry Ames, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, Department of Political Science and Steven E. Finkel, Daniel Wallace Professor, Department of Political Science ii Copyright © by Amy Erica Smith 2011 iii PERSONAL CONNECTIONS TO THE POLITICAL WORLD: SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON DEMOCRATIC COMPETENCE IN BRAZIL AND IN COMPARATIVE CONTEXT Amy Erica Smith, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2011 Conversation is at democracy’s core. In this dissertation, I examine citizens’ political discussion networks and their effects on democratic competence, meaning what citizens know about and how they interact with their political systems. I investigate how patterns of discussion and discussion’s impacts vary across the world, paying particular attention to Brazil. Data come from panel studies spanning Brazil’s 2002, 2006, and 2010 presidential elections, as well as a case study of the 2008 local elections; and from an eleven country study in the 1990s.
    [Show full text]
  • Problems Confronting Contemporary Democracies : Essays in Honor of Alfred Stepan / Edited by Douglas Chalmers and Scott Mainwaring
    P r o b l e m s CONFRONTING Contemporary DEMOCRACIES Essays in Honor of Alfred Stepan Edited by Douglas Chalmers and Scott Mainwaring University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana © 2012 University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2012 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Problems confronting contemporary democracies : essays in honor of Alfred Stepan / edited by Douglas Chalmers and Scott Mainwaring. p. cm. — (From the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-268-02372-0 (cloth) — ISBN 978-0-268-08688-6 (e-book) 1. Democracy—History—20th century. 2. Stepan, Alfred C. I. Stepan, Alfred C. II. Chalmers, Douglas A. III. Mainwaring, Scott, 1954– JC421.P764 2012 321.8—dc23 2012024902 ∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. © 2012 University of Notre Dame Preface and Acknowledgments We celebrate Alfred Stepan’s career with these essays from among those presented at a conference in his honor at Columbia University in 2007. Many colleagues came from all parts of the world to discuss his work and demonstrate the fecundity of his contributions. These essays rep- resent a sample, a window on the manifold influences of his work. Yet this is not a fulsome treatment. We aim to advance scholarship on some of the debates that Stepan launched and advanced about major chal- lenges facing contemporary democracies.
    [Show full text]