Religion and Secularism - Comparative Perspectives on Islam and Christianity

Course Status: 
Elective
CEU credits: 
4
Academic year: 
2011/2012
Semester: 
Winter
Start and end dates: 
9 Jan 2012 - 30 Mar 2012
Host Unit: 
Department of History
Co-hosting Unit(s) [if applicable]: 
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology
Stream/Track/Specialization/Core Area: 
Culture, Religion and Intellectual History in a Comparative Perspective
CEU Instructor(s): 
Nadia Al-Bagdadi
CEU Instructor(s): 
Vlad Naumescu
Teaching assistants, administrators, etc: 
Mare Van den Eeden
Additional information: 
Current debates on the secular and the religious call for a rethinking of the historical, analytical and conceptual frames under which common concepts of these two were conceived. Secularization thesis arose from particular developments within (Western) Christianity, and it expanded into religions across the world predicated upon secularist ideas. Much of the academic and public discussions alike draw on contemporary developments in and with Christian and Muslim communities in secular and Muslim contexts. While Christianity at least in its Western versions seems to have reached a certain dynamic in relation to the secular, Islam and to some extent Eastern Christianity are still seen as normative categories, inherently not open to secularism and emblematically embodied in the question of church/state relation and thus dependent on endogenous, religious explanations for secularism. The course will compare new theoretical approaches and debates, and a number of case studies pertaining to Islam and Christianity. In this context, and in order to broaden the traditional Western Christian focus, a comparison will be drawn to similar issues pertaining to the Eastern Christian Churches. The course is organized in two parts: Part I introduces central ideas and concepts of religion and secularism, dealing mainly with theoretical questions and debates in European and Middle Eastern contexts. Part II works with case studies and opens up for in-depth discussion based on respective case studies. AIM OF THE COURSE The aim of the seminar is a) to reassess classical concepts of the secular, secularization and secularism and b) to examine critically new theoretical approaches (mainly from the fields of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Religious Studies, History, Islamic Studies and other related disciplines). As the problem of secularism in general and of secularism in Christianity and Islam in particular entangles the question of the place of European history and theory making in a global context, questions of center and de-centering, of comparability and contingency will determine the structure of the seminar. To this end, the seminar will draw in both its theoretical approaches (Part 1) and empirical material on studies from the Middle East, North America and Europe, East and West. (Part 2).
Learning Outcomes: 
The course is conceived in a manner as to achieve the following learning outcomes and goals. The students will: a) be introduced to major theories regarding secularism and religion in general and Christianity and Islam in particular; b) be offered an overview to recent debates about the so-called ‘post-secular’ age; c) be exposed to develop at once an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective on these questions; d) learn to evaluate critically theories and case studies deriving from the study of religion, history, sociology and social anthropology.
Assessment : 
The grade is composed of a) class presentations 40%, b) the Final Paper (50%) and c) participation in class discussion (10%). The final paper will be either an essay or a research paper and it will be assigned by mid-term between professor and student on one of the issues arising from the seminar.
Full description: 

COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS

 

1.Week:  Introduction 

Part I: Introductory lecture

  1. Introduction of the theme and of the seminar.
  2. Presentation and discussion of small film/documentary snippets of mass religious gatherings.
  3. Choosing the case studies.

Part II. The crisis of religion and modernity

  1. Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1764), edited and translated by Theodore Besterman, London: Penguin,    (entries “Religion”, “Theologian”, “Tolerance” and “Atheism”). [savepdf]
  2. Mill, John Stuart, “Utility of Religion”, in Mill, Nature, the Utility of Religion, Theism. Being three Essays on Religion. London (1874) [savepdf]
  3. Comte, Auguste, “The Progressive Course of the Human Mind”, in The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. (1896). [savepdf]

 

2. Week: The Secular, Secularization, and Secularism: Definitions
Part I. Historical developments

  1. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago, London 1994 (chapter 1 ‘Secularization, Enlightenment, and Modern Religion’). [savepdf];
  2. Charles Taylor, ‘Modes of Secularism’, in Secularism and its Critics, ed. by Rajeev Bhargava, Delhi et al, 1998, pp. 31-53. [savepdf]

Optional:

Charles Taylor, Western Secularity, in Rethinking Secularism. Ed. By C. Calhoun, M. Juergensmeyer, J. van Antwerpen. Oxford 2011. [savepdf]

Part II.  Case study. Science, evolution, and faith: The Dawkins - Eagleton debate

  1. Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution, Reflections on the God Debate, New Haven, Yale UP 2009. (selection) [savepdf]
  2. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. London et al, 2006, pp. 161-202 (ch. 5). [savepdf]

 

3.      Week: Magic, science and religion

Part I. Intellectual legacies

  1. Stanley Tambiah, Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality. The Lewis    Henry Morgan Weeks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990. (chapters 1 & 2 ‘Magic, Science and Religion in Western thought: anthropology’s intellectual legacy’, pp. 1-31). [savepdf]

Part II. Case Study. The quest for transcendence: on vampires, magic and modern witches 

 

4. Week: Current public debates on the salience of Religion and Secularism

Part I.  History and universalism: The Asad –Casanova debate

  1. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford UP. 2003. (chapter 6: Secularism, Nation-State, Religion, pp. 181-205). [savepdf]
  2. Jose Casanova, ‘Secularization Revisited: A Reply to Talal Asad’, in Powers of the Secular Modern – Talal Asad and his Interlocutors, ed. by David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, Stanford 2006, pp. 12-30. [savepdf]

Part. II. Case study. The Danish Cartoons

Background reading:

Klausen, Jytte, The Cartoons that shook the World. New Haven: Yale UP, 2009. pp 131-146. [savepdf]

Hervik, Peter. 2011. The Annoying Difference: The Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism, and Populism in the Post-1989 World. New York and Oxford: Berghahn (selection) /The library not yet received it./

Mahmood, S. 2009. Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide? Critical Inquiry 35:836-862. [savepdf]

 

5 .Week: Religion, the state and the secular: Europe, West

Part I. Theoretical and historical perspectives

  1. Jean Bauberot’s ‘The Two Thresholds of Laicization’, in Rajeev Bhargava (ed.), Secularism and its Critics, pp. 94-136. [savepdf]
  2. Daniele Hervieu-Léger, ‘Individualism, the Validation of Faith and the Social Nature of Religion in Modernity’, in The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, Oxford 2001, pp.161-64. [savepdf]

Part II. Case study: Islam in Europe (session run by TA)

  1. Talal Asad, ‘Muslims as a “Religious Minority” in Europe’, in T. Asad, Formations of the Secular in Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford  2003, pp. 159-180. [savepdf]

Ewing, K. P. (2000). Legislating religious freedom: Muslim challenges to the relationship between “Church” and “State” in Germany and France. In: Daedalus. 129 (4), pp. 31-54 [savepdf]

Ayotte, Kevin T. and Mary E. Husain (2005). Securing Afghan Women: Neocolonialism, Epistemic Violence, and the Rhetoric of the Veil. In: NWSA Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3, States of Insecurity and the Gendered Politics of Fear (Autumn 2005), pp. 112-133 [savepdf]

Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, (Chapter 3 'Secularism'), pp. 90-123 [savepdf]

 

6. Week: Religion, the state and the secular: Europe, East

Part I. Theoretical and historical perspectives – Eastern Europe

  1. Emma Loosley, ‘Peter, Paul, and James of Jerusalem : the doctrinal and political evolution of the Eastern and Oriental Churches’, in  Eastern Christianity in the modern Middle East, edited by Anthony O'Mahony and Emma Loosley, London: Routledge 2010, pp. [savepdf]
  2. Sonja Luehrman, Introduction: Atheism, Secularity, and Postsecular Religion in Secularism Soviet Style. Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic. Indiana University Press 2011, pp. [savepdf]

Part II. Case study: Orthodoxy, secularism and the nation‑state (Bulgaria)

Daniela Kalkandjieva's "The Bulgarian Orthodox Church" in Leustean, Lucian. 2010. Eastern Christianity and the Cold War, 1945‑91. London; New York: Routledge. [savepdf]

Ghodsee, Kristen. 2009. Symphonic Secularism: Eastern Orthodoxy, Ethnic Identity and Religious Freedoms in Contemporary Bulgaria," Anthropology of East Europe Review 27, no. 2 (2009):  227‑252 [savepdf]

background readings

Roudometof, V., A. Agadjanian, and J. G. Pankhurst. 2005. Eastern Orthodoxy in a global age : tradition faces the twenty‑first century. Walnut Creek, Calif. ; Oxford: AltaMira Press. (Introduction) [savepdf]

James Lindsay Hopkins. 2008. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: A Socio‑Historical Analysis of the Evolving Relationship between Church, Nation, and State in Bulgaria. Boulder: East European Monographs. (chapters 6 and 8). p.181- [savepdf]

  

7. Week: Religion, the state and the secular: Turkey and Middle East

Part I. Secularism in Muslim Societies

  1.  Aziz Al-Azmeh, ‘The Religious and the Secular in Contemporary Arab Life’, in, Islams and Modernities, 2nd edition, ed. Aziz Al-Azmeh, Verso Books, 1996, pp. 41-58. [savepdf]
  2. M. Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim democracy in Turkey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 14-43. [savepdf]

Part II. Case Study. The Arab Spring

This session will look at the tension between religious and secular Arab movements and at the rhetoric of revolution, religious and secular. Materials: on-line publications, films, and press.

1. Asef Bayat's article
http://www.ps.boell.org/downloads/Perspectives_02-07_Asef_Bayat2.pdf 

2. The Middle East in the Aftermath of Arab Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, Bassma Kodmani http://www.arab-reform.net/spip.php?article4163

3. "Every Tunisian has the right to express himself freely", from "a Tunisian girl" blog

http://emajmagazine.com/2011/04/26/every-tunisian-should-have-the-right-to-express-himself-freely/

4. Public Christianity in a Revolutionary Egypt Anthony Shenoda, Scripps College  http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/497 

5. Fatima el-Issawi, 'The Arab Spring and the challenge of minority rights: will the Arab revolutions overcome the legacy of the past?' in: European View, Vol. 10 (2011), pp. 249-258 [savepdf];    

6. Raymond Ibrahim, 'No 'Revolution' for Egypt's Christians,' in: FrontPageMagazine.com, March 22, 2011 [savepdf];  

7. Paul-Gordon Chandler, 'Muslims and Copts together,' in: Christian Century, March 22, 2011, pp. 10-11  [savepdf]

 

8. Week: Colonial legacy: religion and modernity

Part I. Theoretical perspective – the Indian case

  1. Peter van der Veer, The Moral State: Religion, Nation, and Empire in Victorian Britain and British India. In Nation and Religion: Perspective on Europe and Asia, ed. by Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 15-43. [savepdf]
  2. Mushirul Hasan, ‘Secularism: The Postcolonial Predicament’, ibid, Legacy of a Divided Nation. India’s Muslims since Independence. New Delhi 1997. pp. 134-165. [savepdf]

Part II. Case Study: The Secularism Debate in India

  1. Ashis Nandi, The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Toleration, in Secularism and its critics ed. Rajeev Bhargava , New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 321- 344. [savepdf]
  2. Stanely Tambiah, The Crisis of Secularism, in Secularism and its critics ed. Rajeev Bhargava , New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 418-453. [savepdf]

 

9. Week:  Public Sphere and Secular Ethics

Part. I. Theoretical approaches

  1. Jürgen Habermas, Religion in the Public Sphere, European Journal of Philosophy, 14, 1 (2007), pp. 1-25. [savepdf]
  2. Craig Calhoun, Secularism, Citizenship and the Public Sphere, in Rethinking Secularism ed. Calhoun, C. et all, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 75-91. [savepdf]

Part II. Case study. Bioethics (as disputed field), creationism vs. evolutionism,  (session will be run by TA)

  1. Background reading:

Baber Johansen, ‘Apostasy as Objective and Depersonalized Fact: Two recent Egyptian Court Judgments’, in Social Research 70, 3 (2003) 687-710 (Special issue: Islam, Public and Private Spheres) [savepdf]

Starrett, Gregory, 'Islam and the politics of enchantment.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2009, pp. 222-240 [savepdf]

Kauffman, Christina. The York Dispatch. 2005 [savepdf]

Hillman, Benjamin Siracusa, 'Is There a Place for Religious Charter Schools?' The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 118, No. 3 (Dec., 2008), pp. 554-599 [savepdf]

Harvard Law Review, Vol. 119, No. 7 (May, 2006), pp. 2268-2275 [savepdf]

10. Week: Globalization and transnational religions

Part I. Theoretical approaches and revisiting Eisenstadt’s Multiple Modernities approach

23. Shmuel Eisenstadt, ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Arenas in the Framework of “Multiple Modernities’’, in Islam: Critical Concepts in Sociology, ed. by Bryan Turner (vol. 4: Islam and Social Movements, London, NY, pp. 1-22. [savepdf]

24. Mark Juergensmeyer, ‘Thinking globally about religion’, in Global religions: an introduction , edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2003. [savepdf]

25. Thomas Csordas. Introduction: Modalities of Transnational Transcendence in Transnational transcendence: essays on religion and globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, pp. [savepdf]

Part II. Case study. New forms of religious expressions

26. Background reading:

Robert Hefner, Multiple Modernities: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in a Globalizing Age. Annual Review of Anthropology 1998, vol. 27: 83-104. [savepdf]

Hunt, Stephen, ''Winning Ways': Globablisation and the Impact of the Health and Wealth Gospel.' Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2000), pp. 331-347 [savepdf]

Meyer, Birgit, 'Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism's Sensational Forms.' South Atlantic Quarterly 109: 4 (Fall 2010), pp. 741-763 [savepdf]

Shannon, Jonathan H., 'Sultans of Spin: Syrian Sacred Music on the World Stage.' American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 105, No. 2 (Jun, 2003), pp. 266-277 [savepdf]

Ferguson, James R., 'Meeting on the Road: Cosmopolitan Islamic culture and the politics of Sufism.' (1996) CEWCES Research Papers, Paper 3,  http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cewces_papers/3 ; [savepdf]

Hirschkind, Charles. 'The Ethics of Listening: Cassette-Sermon Audition in Contemporary Egypt.' American Anthropologist, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Aug., 2001), pp. 623-649 [savepdf]

11. Week: Fundamentalisms

Part I. Theoretical approaches:

27. Charles Taylor, Religious mobilizations. Public Culture 2006, Vol. 18(2), pp. 281-300. [savepdf]

28. Nickie Keddie, ‘The New Religious Politics. Where, When and Why do Fundamentalisms appear?’ CSSH 40, 4 (1998) 696-723. [savepdf]

Part II. Case study: Islamic and Christian fundamentalism

Wilhelmsen, Julie. 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Islamisation of the Chechen Separatist Movement.' Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan, 2005), pp. 35-59 [savepdf]

Knysh Alexander. 'A Clear and Present Danger: "Wahhabism" as a Rhetorical Foil.' Die Welt des Islams, New Series, Vol.  44, Issue 1 (2004), pp. 3-26 [savepdf]

 

12. Week. Final Discussion

Part I. Final Discussion

Background reading:

29. Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech Talal Asad, Judith Butler, Saba Mahmood, Wendy Brown eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. (Introduction by Wendy Brown, pp. 7-19 [savepdf]

Part II. Continue case study: Islamic and Christian Fundamentalism