Forms of Secularism

In this eye-opening book, Talal Asad makes secularism, a concept that creates harsh public debates in many parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, the object of research of anthropology, which generally focuses on religions. Adopting a perspective inspired by Wittgenstein, Asad traces the development process of this concept in the history of Christianity and Islam: He analytically reveals how changes in the "grammar" of concepts around religion and secularism express practical changes within this history. According to him, concepts such as religious and secular are not essentially fixed categories, but dynamic categories full of intertwining and ruptures.

Showing that the concepts of agency and pain, and ideas about man's responsibility to eliminate pain, have a very important place in the formation of modern secular understandings, Asad moves on to the subject of torture, cruelty and war and examines how these can be legitimized in secular states ("Human life is sacred, but only certain in contexts”). Then, touching on the development of the understanding of human rights, it examines the colonial past underlying the prejudices and discrimination against Muslims, the relationship between nationalism and secularism, and the secularization efforts associated with them, starting from the point of view of who is considered human and who is not.

We hope that Asad's analytical, cool-headed approach in this book, known for his competent research on the place of religion in Western and Islamic thought, will receive the attention it deserves and create productive discussions in our intellectual and political environment, where there is complete confusion about concepts such as secularism, secularism and religion.



Number of Pages: 320

Year of Printing: 2016


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Metis Publishing

First Print Year: 2007

Number of Pages: 320

Language Turkish