The Immanent Frame

What is interesting about An-Na`im’s arguments is that they ground the case for the secular state not in the Quran, not in claims about the presence of the imago Dei in the person or in some other source of the person’s intrinsic dignity, not in natural law, some closely similar type of practical reason, or universal moral precepts, but rather in what might be called “second order” observations about the phenomenology of belief, the character of government, the lessons of history, and the like. To be sure, good reasons for the secular state lie therein. But are these arguments sufficient to ground an Islamic case for constitutionalism, human rights, and the secular state? I doubt it.

The idea of modern liberalism depends decisively on a jettisoning of theology as a source for arguing about politics: If there is one claim to which Lilla returns again and again from different angles, this is it….But in fact, ample evidence exists that traditional political theology has contributed vitally to incubating, sustaining, and expanding liberal democracy, in thought and in practice, before, during, and after the early modern religious wars.

God is not retreating from public life: this has to be one of the most interesting claims to come out of Charles Taylor’s book and the conversation that it has begotten. For religion’s public resurgence is one of the most interesting global trends of our time. One of the most colorful and dramatic sites of this resurgence are the efforts of so many countries to address genocide, the atrocities of civil war, and the injustices of dictatorship – as a common phrase in Northern Ireland puts it, to “deal with their past.” [...]