Talal Asad, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 269 pages.

Concomitantly, he questions the secular’s self-evident character even when admitting the reality of its “presence” (p. 16). His main premise is that “the secular” is conceptually prior to the political doctrine of secularism, the secular being that formation caused by a variety of concepts, practices, and sensibilities that have come together over time (p. 16). He concludes that the “secular” cannot be viewed as the “rational” successor to “religion,” but rather as a multilayered historical category related to the major premises of modernity, democracy, and human rights.

Within the above introductory framework, the book’s seven chapters are divided into three parts. The first part, comprising three chapters, explores the epistemic category of the secular. The following three chapters of part 2 examine the doctrinal aspects of secularism. Finally, chapter 7 investigates the legal and ethical secularization process during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Egypt. Chapter 1, which attempts to clarify what is involved in the anthropology of secularism, explores the secular’s epistemological assumptions, focusing on the notion of a Christian and liberal “redemptive” myth that is so central to the modern idea of enchantment (pp. 16 and 25). His purpose here is to counter the impression that secular political practices simulate religious ones by arguing that the sacred and the secular depend upon each other, rather than one coming after the other (p. 26).

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