Abstract
In recent years, a number of incidents have pitted Islam against secularism and liberal democracy. This essay examines the Danish publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in order to examine the deployment of rationality as a litmus test for political membership. It argues that Western media and political analysis of the protests surrounding the cartoons constructed Muslims as anti-rational and thus unfit for democratic citizenship. Such a deployment of rationality inhibits the possibility of and demands for political pluralism. The essay then looks to two disparate theorists of affective reason, Abdulkarim Soroush and William Connolly, to offer an alternative model of reason that encourages pluralist political engagement.
Highlights
In recent years, a number of incidents have pitted Islam against secularism and liberal democracy
In most of the cartoons, Muhammad is depicted as bearded, turbaned, and dressed in nomadic clothing harkening an ancient, traditional, and barbaric time and culture. The publication of these cartoons in Denmark and around the world3 set off a critical debate about the relationship between Islam, free speech, and democratic freedom, as well as the role of religious tolerance in secular democratic polities
While many argued that the cartoons were insensitive and perhaps offensive, the running narrative was that this standoff between the press and Muslim protestors was emblematic of a larger clash of cultural and political beliefs; that between secular rationality/democratic freedom and conservative irrational Islamic religiosity
Summary
The publication of the cartoons was not a joke—a moment of satire for all to laugh about across the breakfast table. To even speak in the vernacular of religious offense marked them as incapable of both committing to liberal-secular principles and, more explicitly, to rationalist public debate, positing an unattainable standard of citizenship It marks the democratic secular order as demanding a univocal and impenetrable mode of being, casting Muslim political interventions and Muslim expressions of speech, especially if that speech is agonistic towards the dominant Christian-secular narrative, as somehow outside the confines of democratic practice. To be an offended Muslim reflected one’s irrationality and a specific kind of (ir)rationality, one that embraced the fear of Islam, was the prerequisite to be a secular public citizen This foundational juxtaposition is not endemic to the Danish cartoon controversy or to Islamophobia, in general. The section of this essay looks to the literature on rationality, religious affect, and secularism in order to move out from the specific context of the cartoon affair and illuminate the limits of contemporary views of rationality for the politics of pluralism
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