Hostname: page-component-599cfd5f84-wh4qq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T06:40:39.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Secularism, Sovereignty, Indeterminacy: Is Egypt a Secular or a Religious State?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2010

Hussein Ali Agrama
Hussein Ali Agrama*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, University of Chicago
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 495 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abd el-Tawwab, M‘aud. 2000. The Commentary on Law #1 for the Year 2000. El-Entesar Press.Google Scholar
Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Attel, Kevin, trans. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Agrama, Hussein Ali. 2005. Law Courts and Fatwa Councils in Modern Egypt: An Ethnography of Islamic Legal Practice. Ph.D. diss., Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Agrama, Hussein Ali. 2006. Asking the Right Question: Two Engagements with Islam and Modernity. Political Theory 35, 4: 647–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agrama, Hussein Ali. 2010. Ethics, Tradition, Authority: Toward an Anthropology of the Fatwa. American Ethnologist 37, 1: 2–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2006a. Trying to Understand French Secularism. In de Vries, Hent and Sullivan, Lawrence E., eds., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. Fordham University Press, 494–526.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2006b. Response to Casanova. In Scott, David and Hirschkind, Charles, eds., Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors. Stanford University Press, 207–10.Google Scholar
al-‘Awwa, Muhammad Salim. 1998. Al-haq fi al-ta‘bīr (The right to free speech). Dar al-Sharuq.Google Scholar
Azer, Adel and Zaalouk, Malak. 1972. “Tatliq” Divorce through Court Action. MS.Google Scholar
Balz, Killian. 1997. Submitting Faith to Judicial Scrutiny through the Family Trial: The “Abu Zayd Case.” Die Welt des Islams 37, 2: 135–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balz, Killian. 1999. The Secular Reconstruction of Islamic Law: The Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court and the “Battle over the Veil” in State-Run Schools. In Dupret, B. and Al-Zwaini, L., eds., Legal Pluralism in the Arab World. Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
Berger, Maurits. 1999. Is an Islamic Polygamous Marriage Allowed for a Christian Egyptian? (The Court of Cassation on Public Policy and the Status of Non-Muslims). MS.Google Scholar
Berger, Maurits. 2001. Public Policy and Islamic Law: The Modern Dhimmi in Contemporary Egyptian Islamic Law. Islamic Law and Society 8, 1: 88–136.Google Scholar
Berger, Maurits. 2003. Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt: An Evaluation of Recent Cases from Egypt's Highest Courts. Human Rights Quarterly 25: 720–40.Google Scholar
Berger, Maurits. 2004. Regulating Tolerance: Protecting Egypt's Minorities. In Dupret, Baudouin, ed., Standing Trial: Law and the Person in the Middle East. I. B. Taurus, 345–71.Google Scholar
Berger, Maurits. 2005. Secularizing Interreligious Law in Egypt. Islamic Law and Society 12, 3: 394–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernier, , Maitre, J. B. 1929. Droit Public and Ordre Public. Transactions of the Grotius Society: Problems of War and Peace: Papers Read before the Society in the Year 1929, 15: 83–91.Google Scholar
Bilgrami, Akeel, ed. 2006. The Crisis of Secularism in India. Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bowen, John R. 2001. Shariˋa, State and Social Norms in France and Indonesia. ISIM Leiden.Google Scholar
Brown, Nathan. 1997. The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Arab States of the Gulf. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cannon, Byron. 1988. Politics of Law and the Courts in Nineteenth-Century Egypt. University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 2006. Fasting for Ben Ladin. In Scott, David and Hirschkind, Charles, eds., Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors. Stanford University Press, 57–74.Google Scholar
Compendium of High Decrees and Ordinances Issued for the Year 1897. 1898. Bulaq.Google Scholar
Connolly, William E. 1999. Why I Am Not a Secularist. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Derek H. 2005. Is Atheism a Religion? Recent Judicial Perspectives on the Constitutional Meaning of “Religion.” Journal of Church and State 43, 4: 707–23.Google Scholar
Dupret, Baudouin and Ferrie, Jean-Noel. 2001. The Inner Self and Public Order. In Salvatore, Armando, ed., Muslim Traditions and Modern Techniques of Power. Munster: LIT, 141–62.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. 2007. The Religion Clause Divided against Itself. New York Times, 18 Mar.Google Scholar
Forde, M. 1980. The “Ordre Public” Exception and Adjudicative Jurisdiction Conventions. International and Comparative Law Quarterly 29: 259–73.Google Scholar
Glendon, Mary Ann. 1996. The Transformation of Family Law: State, Law and Family in the United States and Western Europe. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Glenn, Patrick. 1980. When Heavens Meet: The Compelling of Religious Divorces. American Journal of Comparative Law 28, 1: 1–38.Google Scholar
Gordon, Sarah B. 2001. The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America. University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Hibicht, Max. 1927. The Application of Soviet Laws and the Exception of Public Order. American Journal of International Law 21, 2: 238–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Husserl, Gerhart. 1938. Public Policy and Ordre Public. Virginia Law Review 25, 1: 37–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johansen, Baber. 2003. Apostasy as Objective and Depersonalized Fact: Two Recent Egyptian Court Judgments. Social Research 70, 3: 687–710.Google Scholar
Kholoussy, Hanan. 2003. Talking about a Revolution: Gender and the Politics of Marriage in Early Twentieth-Century Egypt. Journal for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology 1, 2: 25–34.Google Scholar
Kim, Keechang. 2000. Aliens in Medieval Law: The Origins of Modern Citizenship. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Dennis. 1953. Public Policy: A Comparative Study in English and French Law. The Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Meyler, Bernadette. 2007. The Limits of Group Rights: Religious Institutions and Religious Minorities in International Law. St. John's Journal of Legal Commentary 22, 2: 535–58.Google Scholar
Mills, Alex. 2007. The Private History of International Law. International and Comparative Law Quarterly 55, 1: 1–50.Google Scholar
Moustafa, Tamir. 2007. The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics and Economic Development in Egypt. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollard, Lisa. 2005. Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing, and Liberating Egypt. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rivers, Julian. 2000. From Toleration to Pluralism: Religious Liberty and Religious Establishment under the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act. In Ahdar, Rex J., ed., Law and Religion. Ashgate Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T., eds. 1995. States, Social Knowledge and the Origins of Modern Social Policies. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, David. 2004. Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Brian. 2008. Disciplines of Presence in Modern Turkey. Cultural Anthropology 23, 1: 118–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob. 1997. Defining Islam for the Egyptian State. Brill.Google Scholar
Stahnke, Tad. 1999. Proselytism and the Freedom to Change Religion in International Human Rights Law. Brigham Young University Law Review 1999, 1: 251–349.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers. 2005. The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Belknap Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vogel, Ursula. 2000. Private Contract and Public Institution: The Peculiar Institution of Marriage. In D'Entreves, Mario and Vogel, Ursula, eds., Public and Private: Legal, Political and Philosophical Perspectives. Routledge.Google Scholar