Saba Mahmood

Saba Mahmood is associate professor of social cultural anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press, 2005) won the American Political Science Association Victoria Schuck Award in 2005. Her 2006 article for Public Culture, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation,” was one of four articles discussed at an SSRC colloquium on the varieties of secularism.

Posts by Saba Mahmood:

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Secular imperatives?

Calls for the embrace (or for that matter rejection) of secularism are premised on a putative opposition between secular and religious worldviews wherein each is defined as a necessary and stable essence that is superior to the other. It is argued that there is an essential kernel to secularism that must be preserved and defended from religious extremism and backwardness. For some this is secularism’s scientific rationality, for others it is secularism’s incipient objectivity, and for yet others it is secularism’s strict separation between state and religion. The idea that the “good” elements in secularism can be distinguished from its “bad” sides, the latter discarded and the former refined, only serves to further reinforce the blackmail that one is either for or against secularism.

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Posted in Is critique secular? | 2 Comments » |

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Is critique secular?

One of the most cherished definitions of critique is the incessant subjection of all norms to unyielding critique. Or is it?

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Posted in Is critique secular?, Rethinking secularism | 4 Comments » |