Europe's Encounter with Islam

The Secular and the Postsecular

Luca Mavelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136448430
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the last few years, the Muslim presence in Europe has been increasingly perceived as 'problematic'. Events such as the French ban on headscarves in public schools, the publication of the so-called 'Danish cartoons', and the speech of Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg have hit the front pages of newspapers the world over, and prompted a number of scholarly debates on Muslims' capacity to comply with the seemingly neutral and pluralistic rules of European secularity.

Luca Mavelli argues that this perspective has prevented an in-depth reflection on the limits of Europe's secular tradition and its role in Europe's conflictual encounter with Islam. Through an original reading of Michel Foucault's spiritual notion of knowledge and an engagement with key thinkers, from Thomas Aquinas to Jurgën Habermas, Mavelli articulates a contending genealogy of European secularity. While not denying the latter's achievements in terms of pluralism and autonomy, he suggests that Europe's secular tradition has also contributed to forms of isolation, which translate into Europe's incapacity to perceive its encounter with Islam as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Drawing on this theoretical perspective, Mavelli offers a contending account of some of the most important recent controversies surrounding Islam in Europe and investigates the 'postsecular' as a normative model to engage with the tensions at the heart of European secularity. Finally, he advances the possibility of a Europe willing to reconsider its established secular narratives which may identify in the encounter with Islam an opportunity to flourish and cultivate its democratic qualities and postnational commitments.

This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion and international relations, social and political theory, and Islam in Europe.

1

Theorizing the secular

Modernity and the separation of reason and faith

Introduction

In two recent discussions, Talal Asad and José Casanova have pointed out the important conceptual differences between the notions of the secular, secularism and secularization. Although they are ‘obviously related’, Casanova has argued, it is essential to distinguish between ‘“the secular” as a central modern epistemic category, “secularization” as an analytical conceptualization of modern world-historical processes, and “secularism” as a world-view’ (2007b). Asad, similarly, differentiates between ‘“the secular” as an epistemic category … “secularism” as a political doctrine’ and secularization as a historical process (2003: 1, 192). Both perspectives thus converge on an understanding of the secular as an ‘epistemic category’ analytically distinct from and conceptually prior to the related notions of secularism and secularization. Yet, the meaning and implications that Asad and Casanova assign to the secular as an epistemic category are very different.

For Asad the secular is a key modern way of knowing and experiencing entities or, put differently, the very medium through which a number of dimensions of human experience (such as humanity, agency, pain, cruelty and religion) are constituted. In his conceptualization of the secular, Asad relies on an understanding of episteme that is very similar to Foucault’s. Indeed, for Foucault, an episteme ‘provides man’s everyday perception with theoretical powers, and defines the conditions in which he can sustain a discourse about things that is recognized to be true’ (1970: 158). Accordingly, it ‘delimits the (historically specific) conditions of possibility for being a thinking subject in our time, conditions that are necessary in the sense that they are binding upon us whether we want them to be or not’ (Allen, 2003: 188). Hence, according to Asad, to the extent that the secular shapes our understanding of what it means to be human, what accounts for proper justice, what is acceptable violence and, most of all, what is the appropriate place and function of religion within modernity, it also constrains the different non-secular ways in which these entities may be experienced.

Casanova converges on a perspective of the secular as a central dimension of modern subjectivity, but disagrees with the idea that this epistemic framework produces modes of religiosity (and of justice and humanity) as mere expressions of the secular. For Casanova, the secular marks a process of differentiation and rationalization which has contributed to reforming religion from within and, by doing so, has actually strengthened the relevance of religion’s moral claims. Hence, it can be suggested that both Asad and Casanova understand the secular as an a priori of modern subjectivity, but whereas Asad takes the secular as an epistemic formation that constrains the possible ways of being and knowing of the subject, Casanova takes the opposite view and deems the secular as the very condition of possibility of a new reflexive form of subjectivity and religiosity.

Using the Asad–Casanova debate as a springboard for the discussion, the aim of this chapter is to investigate the meanings and implications of the secular as a central a priori of modern subjectivity. Two main questions are asked. First, how is it possible to conceptualize the secular? Second, what does it mean for the modern subject to be the product of a secular episteme? The analysis will initially concentrate on the secular, but the focus will soon turn to ‘the religious’. This will be possible in consideration of a relationship of ‘co-dependency’ that exists between the secular and the religious (McCutcheon, 2007). This relation maintains that ‘the secular, as a concept, only makes sense in relation to its counterpart, the religious’ (Casanova, 1994: 20) or, more forcefully, that the secular is ‘the starting point in relation to which the “religious” is constructed’ (Shakman Hurd, 2004: 238). This means that each conceptualization of the secular, such as that of Casanova and Asad, presupposes a specific understanding of the religious.

The chapter is divided into four parts. Firstly, I will illustrate the main tensions between Casanova’s notion of the secular as a category of emancipation and Asad’s notion of the secular as a framework that constrains the possible ways of being and knowing of the subject. Secondly, I will show how Casanova’s understanding of the religious is grounded in a Kantian perspective which deems religion ‘possible’ within modernity only as a moral tool, and only as part of a secular separation between philosophy (expression of knowledge and grounded in reason) and spirituality (expression of faith and grounded in belief). Thirdly, through Asad’s critique, I will discuss how the Kantian perspective neglects the extent to which faith may be part of an idea of knowledge as a process of constitution and transfiguration of the self grounded in an ethics of the care of the self. Finally, I will consider the limits of Casanova’s formulation and the possibility of integrating Asad’s critique of the secular into Foucault’s critique of modernity. From this perspective, the tensions of modern subjectivity identified by Foucault will emerge as tensions at the heart of the secular episteme.

Contending conceptions of the secular: the Asad–Casanova debate

According to Asad, the secular ‘is a concept that brings together certain behaviors, knowledges, and sensibilities in modern life’, and thus shapes and privileges specific understandings of subjectivity, justice, violence, humanity, agency, pain, cruelty, embodiment and, most of all, religion (2003: 25). Through the modern doctrine of secularism, the secular brings fundamental changes to the grammar of concepts and, to that extent, it defines the space of acceptable sensibilities and desirable practices (ibid: 25, 191–2). In relation to the concept of pain, for instance, the secular episteme brings a condemnation of ‘suffering that can be attributed to religious violence because that is pain the modern imaginary conceives of as gratuitous’ (ibid: 11). However, it considers acceptable the infliction of pain on ‘those who are to be saved by being humanized’ as long as this is part of the liberal ‘project of universal emancipation’ (ibid: 62, 59).

Casanova converges on an understanding of the secular as a ‘central modern epistemic category’ which marks the opening of a new space of experience for subjectivity, but suggests a more mediated relation between ‘the secular’, ‘secularism’ and ‘religion’. For Casanova, the secular enables us to ‘construct, codify, grasp and experience a realm or reality differentiated from “the religious”’, and thus expands the space of possibility of subjectivity (2007b). Undoubtedly, Casanova concedes, the secular has forced religion to undertake a process of reflexive rationalization. Yet this transformation should not be mistaken with the idea of the secular imposing a form on the religious, because the secular has actually helped religion to recover its full ‘semantic potential’ without predetermining its content. Following Max Weber, Casanova defines modernity as ‘a process of functional differentiation and emancipation of the secular spheres – primarily the state, economy and science – from the religious sphere and the concomitant differentiation and specialization of religion within its own newly founded religious sphere’ (Casanova, 1994: 19). The emergence of a specialized religious sphere is not interpreted by Casanova as a sign of the marginalization or decline of religion in secular modernity. As I shall discuss in greater detail in the next section, it is an opportunity for religion to specialize into ‘its own religious function’, which for Casanova includes the defence of the sacred values of life, dignity and human rights against the often de-humanizing forces of modern instrumental rationalization (ibid: 21; see also Habermas, 2008a).

Hence, according to Casanova, the secular as an epistemic category should be distinguished from the political doctrine or ‘worldview’ of secularism. It is the latter that deems the privatization and decline of religious belief a necessary consequence of the emergence of secular subjectivity (Casanova, 2007b); that actively concurs to marginalize and constrain what are deemed as non-secular forms of sensibility, subjectivity and humanity (Casanova, 2006a: 66); and that makes it difficult, particularly for Europeans, to decouple modernity and secularity, and to accept that political manifestations of religion may not necessarily be a threat to modernity (Casanova, 1994: 5–6; 2006a). For Casanova, public religions can offer an important contribution to the process of modern democratization and pluralization, not just by ‘“enrich[ing] public debate” but [by] challeng[ing] the very claims of the secular sphere to differentiated autonomy exempt from extrinsic normative constraints’ (2006c: 14).

Asad has expressed scepticism about this argument. The public sphere of modern societies, in which religion may exercise an active role for the pursuit of the common good, is not an open and power-free forum in which each voice can ‘be heard’ (Asad, 2003: 184–5; see also Salvatore, 2006). As a historically contingent formation, the public sphere already privileges certain arguments, sensibilities and modes of reasoning over others. Hence, Asad objects, in Casanova’s account ‘the only option religious spokespersons have … is to act as secular politicians do in liberal democracy’ (2003: 187). This means that religion has the opportunity to play a role in the public sphere only if ‘the religious’ is conceived as subservient to the secular – that is, only if it is considered as a particular manifestation of the all-encompassing reality represented by the secular episteme. This understanding, however, annuls every possible attempt to mediate between the secular and secularism. The secular, thus conceived, becomes the inevitable threshold for ‘non-secular’ modes of subjectivity, which have to adjust to the secular a priori, and in which, to some extent, they are already embedded.

This point is somehow recognized by Casanova, who concedes that Asad is right to ‘call our attention to the fact that “the historical process of secularization effects a remarkable ideological inversion…. For at one time ‘the secular’ was a part of a theological discourse (saeculum),” while later “the religious” is constituted by secular political and scientific discourses, so that “religion” itself as a historical category and as a universal globalized concept emerges as a construction of Western secular modernity’ (Casanova, 2007a: 103). This means that if before it was the religious realm which appeared as the all-encompassing reality within which the secular realm found its proper place, now the secular is the all-encompassing reality to which the religious has to adjust. Casanova, however, believes that Asad pushes this argument too far, to the extent that Asad ‘seems to assign to the secular the power to constitute not only its own near-absolute modern hegemony, but also the very category of the religious and its circumscribed space within the secular regime’ (Casanova, 2006c: 21). This perspective, according to Casanova, misses a central element of the process of secularization – namely, that ‘the triumph of the secular came aided by religion rather than at its expense’ (ibid: 23). This argument builds on a tradition of sociological thought spanning from Weber to Löwith, via Feuerbach, Troeltsch, and Parsons which deems Protestant Christianity as ‘intrinsically implicated in the development of secular modernity’ (ibid: 23). Casanova observes that Catholicism (particularly from the Second Vatican Council onwards) and, more recently, Islam have undergone and are undergoing a process of internal transformation (‘aggiornamento’) whereby they are not just adapting to secular modernity, but are critically and creatively reinterpreting its sense and possibility, yet without questioning the underlying separation between secular and religious spheres (1994; 2005; 2006c: 25–9).

Hence, for Casanova, the secular is the epitome of a reflexive rationalization that has first contributed to reforming these traditions from within by tearing down their dogmatic accoutrements and can now challenge, using religion as its very medium, the dogmatic excesses of secularism, thus opening the space for the agonistic pluralism of a public sphere of contending religious and non-religious perspectives. Asad, however, disputes the idea that the secular may account for such a ‘critical’ form of subjectivity. He does not deny the complex connections between religion and rationalization, nor the role that the emergence of the secular has had in forcing religious traditions to confront their limits and dogmatic assumptions. However, Asad believes that the transformation ‘from within’ defended by Casanova significantly accounts for the redefinition of ‘the space that religion may properly occupy in society’ brought about by ‘the reproduction of secular life within and beyond the nation-state’, whose ‘unending struggle to extend individual self-creation, undermines the stability of established boundaries’ (Asad, 2003: 210). The secular for Asad, in sum, is a power/knowledge formation – a Foucauldian episteme – based on a notion of the individual as a self-sufficient rational being who is actively engaged in ‘redeeming’ all those ‘religious’ perspectives that do not share this idea.

At the heart of Asad’s and Casanova’s contending understandings of the secular lies a different appreciation of its offspring: the modern idea of self-sufficient and reflective reason – that is, the modern idea of subjectivity. Casanova associates secular subjectivity with a laborious process of liberation from dogmatism – albeit without triumphalism, as he is keenly aware of the dogmatic content that characterizes certain Western, and particularly European, manifestations of secularism. Asad offers a more sceptical view. He deems secular subjectivity as the expression of a power/knowledge formation – the secular episteme – which constrains non-secular modes of being and knowing of the subject and forces religion into a specific ‘secular’ understanding. In the next section we will explore the main characteristics of this secular understanding of religion by looking in greater detail at Casanova’s approach and how it is grounded in Kant’s idea of rational religion. This discussion will allow us, in the third section, to better appreciate, through Asad’s and Foucault’s complementary critiques, the price that such a secular understanding of religion exacts from the possible ways of being and knowing of the subject.

Religion within the boundaries of the secular: Casanova’s ‘modern public religions’ and Kant’s ‘rational faith’

As mentioned before, Casanova understands modernity as a process of functional differentiation, whereby religion has come to specialize into ‘“its own religious” function … dropping or losing many other “non-religious” functions it had accumulated’ (1994: 21). The process of secularization/differentiation/modernization is understood, in Weberian terms, as an ‘irresistible’ structural trend prompted by historical transformations such as the ‘undermining [of] the medieval religious system of classification; the Protestant reformation; the formations of modern states; the growth of modern capitalism; and the early modern scientific revolution’ (ibid: 213, 21). Yet, Casanova also understands this process in more Tocquevillian/normative terms as a ‘providential force’, which expands the scope for democracy and freedom – particularly freedom of conscience – and lays the ground for a notion of citizenship that does not discriminate on religious grounds (ibid: 213). The ‘providential’ dimension rests on the fact that this space of freedom flourished not just in the newly born secular spheres, but in the very religious sphere which was forced, by the process of functional differentiation, to internalize the modern principles of democratic engagement and communicative interaction. The process Casanova labels ‘deprivatization’ – whereby religion assumes an increasingly public role on questions concerning the common good – is a clear indication of the transformation undergone by some religions. Their increasingly active role in defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms, protection of life and its dignity – that is, in defence of ‘the sacred values of modernity’ (ibid: 233) – suggests that a crucial break has occurred: After having been modernized by the instrumental rationalization of the modern process of differentiation, religions (or at least some of them) have turned into ‘modern public religions’, hence into carriers of the modern process of emancipation.

Casanova provides a number of empirical examples, ranging from the rise of Solidarnosh in Poland to the spread of liberation theology in and beyond Latin America, with an increasing number of activists and churches ‘deeply involved in struggles for liberation, justice and democracy’ (ibid: 3). Another important case of religion turning into a central modern vehicle of universal emancipation is the profound transformation undertaken by the Catholic Church with the Second Vatican Council, specifically with its ‘Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae [which] recognized the inalienable right of every individual to freedom of conscience, based on the sacred dignity of the human person’ (Casanova, 2006b: 25). For Casanova, this declaration marks a fundamental shift for the Catholic Church that, particularly with John Paul II, becomes a truly transnational entity with a universalist vocation which places at its core the protection of humanity and its sacred values by taking an increasingly active role in ‘international conflicts and in issues dealing with world peace’ (Casanova, 1997: 125).¹

For Casanova the idea of modernity advanced by ‘modern public religions’ is not an instrumental–rational project but a moral–practical one. This approach respects the autonomy of different modern spheres such as the state or the markets, but contests that they may exercise their functions and powers devoid of any normative constraints (Casanova, 1994: 229). In this light the public interventions of modern public religions can be seen as ‘immanent critiques of particular forms of institutionalization of modernity from a modern normative perspective’ (ibid: 230). By intervening in the public sphere, modern public religions encourage ‘modern societies to reflect publicly and collectively upon their normative structure’ (ibid: 228), stimulate public discussions of the common good and remind us that ‘individual choices only attain a “moral” dimension when they are guided or informed by intersubjective, interpersonal norms’ (ibid: 229).

Casanova specifies that only those religions which have internalized the central aspects of the Enlightenment and successfully disestablished (i.e., renounced their institutional and compulsory character) can actively pursue the task of moral-practical rationalization (ibid: 233, 224). Disestablishment allows religion to shift its focus from the state to society (ibid: 225), thus contributing to the reinforcement of its universal humanist vocation. This is particularly important in the face of the often de-humanizing and instrumental–rational tendencies of globalization. This argument, Casanova remarks, does not suggest t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Theorizing the secular: Modernity and the separation of reason and faith
• 2. From autonomy to isolation: A genealogy of European secularity
• 3. The withdrawal from the Muslim other
• 4. Islam and the European search for co-immunity
• 5. Imagining the postsecular
• Conclusion
• A personal note
• Notes
• References
• Index