Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report. By Saba Mahmood . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Pp. 248. $24.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0691153285.
Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report. By Saba Mahmood . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Pp. 248. $24.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0691153285.
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世俗时代的宗教差异：少数派报告。
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发表时间：
2016
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通讯作者：
Sarah Eltantawi
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作者：
Sarah Eltantawi
萨巴·马哈茂德的《世俗时代的宗教差异》巧妙地将身份政治中的两个主题的研究与先进的文学作品--世俗主义和少数人权利--结合在一起，创作了一本关于政治世俗主义的承诺和限制的原创而引人入胜的卷。这本书超越了最近将世俗主义多元化为不同“变种”的智力努力，而是揭示了世俗项目的共同特征如何塑造了多数人和少数人的宗教认同。通过历史分析和人种学研究的无缝结合，这本书追溯了埃及政治世俗主义的演变，重点关注其五个标志性思想：政治和公民权利、宗教自由、少数人权利、公共秩序以及公共和私人之间的法律区别。出现的是一个明智和优雅的评估如何“宗教差异在现代埃及扩散和转移，即使它的理由d‘etat世俗化”(第11页)。这本书的大部分致力于研究政治世俗主义，被描述为“现代国家与宗教的关系和对宗教的管制”(第3页)。前两章是历史性的。第一章巧妙地叙述了中东两个关键的世俗概念的谱系：宗教自由和少数人权利。在这里，马哈茂德令人信服地辩称，这些概念不仅仅是保护个人免受国家掠夺和/或社会不平等的中立和普遍适用的法律工具。这些概念在中东的意义和实践反映了旨在规范和管理差异的世俗自由治理战略，使宗教“接受新的可理解性网格”(第62页)。这个网格的特点是现代国家放弃宗教的政治考量(因此宗教自由)，同时依赖宗教类别来规范社会生活(因此少数人的权利)。因此，这两个概念充满了矛盾和不一致，将世俗国家声称要分开的私人领域和公共领域联系在一起。第二章通过一段引人入胜的历史使这一理论讨论更加突出
Saba Mahmood’s Religious Difference in a Secular Age masterfully combines the study of two topics in identity politics with advanced literatures—secularism and minority rights—to create an original and engaging volume about the promises and limits of political secularism. The volume moves beyond recent intellectual efforts to pluralize secularism into its different “varieties,” instead exposing how common features of the secular project have shaped the religious identities of majority and minority populations. Through a seamless blend of historical analysis and ethnographic research, the book traces the evolution of political secularism in Egypt with a focus on five of its signature ideas: political and civil rights, religious liberty, minority rights, public order, and the legal distinction between public and private. What emerges is an intelligent and graceful assessment of how “religious difference has proliferated and metastasized in modern Egypt even as its raison d’etat secularized” (p. 11). The bulk of the volume is dedicated to the study of political secularism, described as the “modern state’s relationship to and regulation of religion” (p. 3). The first two chapters are historical. Chapter one deftly narrates the genealogy of two key secular concepts in the Middle East: religious liberty and minority rights. Here Mahmood convincingly argues that these concepts are not simply neutral and universally applicable legal instruments to protect individuals from state predation and/or social inequality. The meaning and praxis of these concepts in the Middle East reflect strategies of secular liberal governance designed to regulate and manage difference, subjecting religion “to a new grid of intelligibility” (p. 62). This grid is characterized by the modern state’s renunciation of religion’s political calculus (hence religious liberty) and its simultaneous reliance on religious categories to regulate social life (hence minority rights). As such, the two concepts are riddled with paradoxes and inconsistencies, linking the private and public domains that the secular state purports to keep separate. Chapter two brings this theoretical discussion into sharper focus through a fascinating history of