Discussion in Theorizing Religion spiraled out of control today. We'd read Saba Mahmood's splendid "Secularism, Hermeneutics and Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation" (Public Culture 18/2, 2006), or were supposed to. Not very many students read it, or understood it, though.
[S]ecularism has sought not so much to banish religion from the public domain but to reshape the form it takes, the subjectivities it endorses, and the epistemological claims it can make. (326)
For this group of writers ["Islamic Reformation" theologians but also theorists of religious freedom as a prerogative for US foreign policy], a religion’s phenomenal forms – its liturgies, rituals, and scriptures — are understood to be inessential to it and are not to be confused with the universal truth for which they are made to stand in. It is precisely because the philosophically unsophisticated and ordinary adherent is so easily drawn to the phenomenal forms of religion that these forms constitute a certain danger: they can easily be turned into tools of manipulation by elites who want to exploit the religious passions of the masses toward their own ends. (341)
The notion of the transcendent, no longer locatable within the religious text, finds a place in the ineffable and privatized world of individual readers who turn not to traditional authority but to their own cultured sensibilities to experience the true meaning of the word. (340)
Great stuff, and of great moment. But the wished for discussion did not happen, so we talked (I talked) about the "domestication" of religion in liberal societies to make sure they understood it. And then I made a fateful mistake: Essentially, I said, the American liberal approach to religion is like our approach to pets. People can choose whether to have a pet or not, and - within limits - what pet to have. In the privacy of your home you can have any pet you want. But when you take the pet out into public spaces, you are responsible for making sure it harms noone, and if it does, the state may impound or destroy it. That way the most people can have the most kinds of pets.
Oddly, or perhaps predictably, the discussion veered off course as students started thinking about animals. Asked one student, What if your cheetah wants to eat my chihuahua? (Well, she can't; that's why I keep her locked up. Next question.) Even if my doberman can't attack people because I keep him locked up at home, asked another, won't I take on the character of the doberman, so it will spill into the public realm? (If you bite someone, you're in trouble.) The kicker, from cheetah-chihuahua girl (who's from California): What if my male panther wants to marry your male cheetah? (...) (...) (...!)
