Secular Ideas Research Articles

The Mystery of Matter

The Mystery of Matter Erica Da Costa (bio) Vital Matters: Eighteenth-Century Views of Conception, Life, and Death. Ed. Helen Deutsch and Mary Terrall Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2012. 333 pages. $70.00. The larger question framing Helen Deutsch and Mary Terrall's Vital Matters: Eighteenth-Century Views of Conception, Life, and Death is this: is it possible to historicize matter itself? This problem is a stirring one in our own era marked by the upheaval of conceptions of the nature of matter and its correlate, space-time, including the puzzles of observer-influence, of dark matter, and of string theory. The history of physics, however, is to be distinguished from what this book is designed to consider: the history of matter, meaning the study of the quality of temporality found in the object itself rather than the history of the development of a discipline. In the introduction, Deutsch and Terrall position their primary inquiry in relation to the immaterialism of George Berkeley, whose radical claim was that matter did not fundamentally exist. Samuel Johnson's agitated response to Berkeley's claim—kicking a large stone and shouting, "I refute it thus"—incites a debate that Vital Matters deliberately seeks to revivify. But Deutsch and Terrall erode the strictly oppositional nature of the Johnson-Berkeley debate [End Page 103] by noting that at "the heart of eighteenth-century materialism in its myriad forms is the mystery of matter" (4). The study of matter was greatly complicated in the early modern period by the conundrum of living bodies, as one philosopher after another found previous assumptions about animate matter to be a shifting sand. Though Descartes has structured our notions of consciousness and its relation to the body, Cartesian mechanism did not successfully lay the foundation for the study of biological matter. Theories of generation proliferated. Georges Buffon, concerned with the tendency of matter to organize itself, theorized "internal molds" that directed development. But Diderot, as the editors point out, embraced the enigma that the "procreative power that operates perpetually . . . is for us . . . a mystery whose depths it seems we will not be allowed to sound" (6). This volume offers twelve often exhilarating essays that engage the history of materialism and consider, especially, "how material objects, the evidence of our senses, the body's insensible operations, the nature of life and movement, lend themselves to historical and textual analysis" (3). Jonathan Kramnick confronts what philosophers now call "the hard problem of consciousness" by first returning to Thomas Creech's 1682 translation of Lucretius's On The Nature of Things and beginning with the observation that Lucretius had turned the universe into matter, composed only of "atoms and void" (13). The problem of consciousness follows from the question, "how do material things like atoms produce ephemeral things like thoughts?" (14). Like so many other questions that have followed us into the twenty-first century, this one came to the fore at the moment when secular ideas about agency began to goad us. Kramnick elegantly applies twentieth-century perspectives on the hard problem to seventeenth-century perspectives, a feat he achieves in part because the most crucial puzzle remains unchanged: at no point has the bottomless chasm between mental and physical worlds ever been successfully spanned. Lucretius was happy to "explain and predict mental phenomenon according to the laws of atomic motion" (18), however, accepting his explanation would mean allowing that thoughts are not actually identified with persons, but merely with shape and order. The notion that a self could be separated from consciousness was not one that could be tolerated by John Locke or almost any of Lucretius's (Western) successors. Besides the hard problem, there is also the question of mental causation and free will. How did Lucretius address the seeming fact, Kramnick asks, that thoughts produce actions: "My wanting to type a sentence of this essay [End Page 104] must be able to cause my fingers to move across the keyboard" (23)? Lucretius's solution to this problem was to make the mental event almost indistinguishable from the physical event, a...

THE SINGULARITY AND THE RAPTURE: TRANSHUMANIST AND POPULAR CHRISTIAN VIEWS OF THE FUTURE

Abstract Religious views of the future often include detailed expectations of profound changes to nature and humanity. Popular American evangelical Christianity, especially writers like Hal Lindsey, Rick Warren, or Rob Bell, offer extended accounts that provide insight into the views of the future held by many people. In the case of Lindsey, detailed descriptions of future events are provided, along with the claim that forecasted events will occur within a generation. These views are summarized and compared to the secular idea of a coming “intelligence explosion” or technological singularity as advanced by Ray Kurzweil, which is described in terms of its history as an idea and in terms of its specific proposals for the coming transformation of the cosmos, which is also predicted to occur within a generation. While profoundly different in important ways, these two perspectives share many features with each other—for example, in their respective predictions of distinct stages in the unfolding of the future of the cosmos.

India's Foreign Policy Transformation

A ssessing India’s evolution since 1980 is a compelling idea that has been executed with much competence by Sumit Ganguly and Rahul Mukherji in India Since 1980. The volume is part of a broader series of studies on a number of countries since 1980, but any study of India since 1980 offers special rewards. Many features of contemporary India find their origins in that decade. The first considerations of economic reform, the rumbling of the two great tectonic plates of caste and religion, outreach to the United States and China, the perception of India as a regional power, and India’s launch of nuclear weapon and missile programs can all be traced back to the 1980s. In the three decades since then, India’s views of itself and the world, as well as the world’s image of India, have undergone profound changes. The core concepts that defined India’s political and economic development before this period—economic self-reliance, socialism, secularism, nonalignment, and third worldism—would be recast or come under great stress in the years that followed. Ganguly and Mukherji divide the story of India since 1980 into four different domains: the changing nature of its engagement with the world, the restructuring of India’s economy, the new patterns of domestic political mobilization, and the challenges to the idea of secularism amid the rise of Hindu nationalism. In a volume of fewer than 200 pages, Ganguly and Mukherji deftly guide us through the labyrinth of India’s dramatic transformation. On the revolutionary changes in India’s foreign policy, Ganguly and Mukherji rightly avoid the temptation to offer a comprehensive account. Their focus instead is on India’s relations with two major powers (the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia), India’s principal adversaries (Pakistan and China), and New Delhi’s successful engagement with Southeast Asia as part of its mid-1990s initiative on “Looking East.” The chapter on foreign policy also briefly touches on the nuclear question that consumed so much diplomatic and military energy during the last three decades. Ganguly and Mukherjee delineate with ease the main lines of New Delhi’s diplomatic activity in the three decades that followed 1980:

Questions of Competency and Performance in the Black Musical Diaspora: Toward a Stylistic Analysis of the Idea of a Black Atlantic

Fifty-some years ago, the foundational work Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives was edited by Norman Whitten and John Szwed, in the lee of a controversial symposium held in several sessions at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in 1967. The book included contributions from nonparticipants who had entered into the lively discussion, including a masterful overview of the papers by Sidney Mintz. As the editors indicated in their preface, they sought papers that would judge the impact of Melville Herskovits's The Myth of the Negro Past (1941) on subsequent scholarship. Herskovits was portrayed as a troublemaker who carried an assimilationist point of view into his fieldwork in many African and Afro-American communities. His insistence on not neglecting African cultural patterns in studies of black communities in the New World fostered a general feeling among those on the soft Left that honor should be paid, as often as possible, to the African ancestry of any New World practice that showed signs of some sort of cultural continuity. He sent a call out to the social sciences in general, and especially to those engaged in ethnographic fieldwork of some sort, working and living in Afro-American communities. He was a faithful student of Franz Boas, who had advocated fine-grained reporting of the lifeways of non-Europeans. Herskovits was also politically committed to encourage the secular cosmopolitan ideas that had been inherited from the Enlightenment, but he did not fall into the trap of the social Darwinists, who insisted on studying a version of the civilizing process that derogated anyone without good table manners and the ability to schmooze effectively. He did not respond with enthusiasm to anthropological approaches that privileged structure and systematic practices--especially kinship systems and other forms of organized power. As a musician he both heard and felt the power of performances of drumming, dancing, and storytelling. And, like Boas, he pursued the study of language and culture in diffusion. Implicitly, he furthered the philological and morphological manner of studying cultures not only in stabilized and bounded communities, but in comparison with contiguous studies. His political position, once its implications could be understood, stressed a pluralist and assimilatonist agenda. Groups should be, to use Greg Dening's wonderful term, ethnogged--that is, studied at ground level in terms of the systematic behaviors which could be observed in daily life (Dening 2004). Under such a regime, the systematics of a culture would emerge from the ways in which power and responsibility were put into practice. Herskovits, like Boas, wanted students with open minds who would accord sympathy, even dignity, to whatever peoples each ethnographer chose to study--with the supposition that all humans lived in groups with shared values and practices. Again, like Boas, he wanted something like social and political parity for all self-designated communities. Like Boas, once more, he urged the ethnogging of Hispanic, Francophonic, Native American, and Negro communities (the term in general use in their day). His comparativist approach underscored historical continuities where they could be teased out. And most pugnaciously, he insisted on the cultural parity of blacks. When he and his wife decided to study African and Afro-American communities, in effect he created tout court the idea of the black diaspora--though as the son of a rabbi, he would not have used that word. This was one of the primary concerns of the group of ethnographers that met in 1967 at the meetings of the AAA. With no little passion, the editors of the book that emerged from that conference, Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives, urged those ethnographers writing on black communities to remember that each had its own customary ways, which could be reported on in such a way that comparative analyses might be carried out. …

Publisher’s Note

In his writings, Rabbi Isaac Hutner integrated various insights from secular philosophy and particularly from existentialist thought. Concerns regarding temporality, authenticity, and death permeate his thought. This article deals with what we call “being-towards-eternity,” a modification of Martin Heidegger’s “being-towards-death,” through which Hutner seeks to reconcile genuine anxiety in the face of finitude with an unwavering belief in resurrection and life after death. Hutner’s appropriation and adaptation of this Heideggerian notion demonstrates how he adopted secular ideas while cautiously remaining within the boundaries of traditional Jewish concerns and vocabulary.

Secularism and the Politics of Risk

Little has been said in the international relations (IR) literature so far about the connections between secular ideas and identification of risk. However, there are striking parallels. ‘Western’, secular discourse(s) have framed Islamist terrorism as slippery, uncontainable, mysterious and strange. Similarly, risks are often described as ‘diverse, amorphous and qualitative’. Starting from this observation, this article explores connections between ongoing conversations about the politics of risk and insights from the emerging literature on secularism and international politics. Using the British ‘Prevent’ agenda of 2005−09 as a case study, it asks how it is that political secularism and cultural secularity have contributed to perceptions of danger emanating from the Muslim population. It explores the potential implications of these perceptions for state security policy. The article also explores Foucault’s account of pastoral governance as a potentially useful framework for scholars of risk, particularly for describing the ambivalence inherent in much risk-management practice.

O Laicismo e outros exageros sobre a Primeira República no Brasil

O presente artigo visa a questionar a ideia muito difundida, mas pouco discutida, de que o Brasil teria experimentado, sob a égide da Constituição de 1891, um período de forte laicização, com uma separação rígida entre Estado e religião nas mais diversas esferas, de modo que o modelo de aproximação entre esses dois domínios (em particular no âmbito da religião católica) adotado pela Constituição seguinte (de 1934) teria sido uma resposta a tal experiência. Assumir essa premissa, como tem feito a doutrina, implicaria reconhecer que um modelo de separação entre Estado e religião já foi efetivamente experimentado e rejeitado na história constitucional brasileira, o que de certa forma poderia legitimar o modelo de aproximação que teria sido adotado em 1934 e mantido, em linhas gerais, até os dias de hoje. Apontar os equívocos dessa leitura, por outro lado, permite compreender que no Brasil sempre houve uma forte aproximação entre Estado e religião, prática que teve como resultado a instituição de uma ideia frágil de laicidade que hoje tem sido duramente questionada.

Islamic Spectrum in Java

Timothy Daniels’ Islamic Spectrum in Java critically examines the myriadof ways in which Javanese Muslims draw on religious and secular ideas toproject desirable futures for their local societies, for the Indonesian nation,and for Indonesia’s place in the global economic, political, and culturalstructures of the twenty-first century. This book identifies a broad rangeof desirable futures projected by Javanese Muslims, as well as a range ofbeliefs and practices that comprise Javanese Islam (12). While this engagingwork is very likely to appeal to scholars in many fields, theoreticallyand methodologically it is foremost an anthropological study. Synthesizingsymbolic and cognitive anthropology in order to “provide ‘thick description’1 of polysemous symbols . . . and to ascertain the social distributionof knowledge and formation of mental representations in various contexts(4),” Daniels draws primarily on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in theYogyakarta area of south-central Java from 2003 to 2004.Daniels makes a complex argument, focusing on issues of globalization,localization, social change, identity formation, and the place of Islamin Javanese culture. He contends that in projecting a range of desirable futures,Javanese Muslims are able to negotiate globalization and directionsof social change on their own terms by drawing from local culture andtheir interpretations of Islam in different ways. In particular, he examinesto what extent particular ideological positions expressed by Javanese Muslimscontribute to or undermine processes of equalization—“processes ofweakening, undermining, and lessening hierarchical formations” (8). Insupporting his argument, he addresses other related issues as well, includingconcepts of spiritual power, gender, sexuality, and class ...

Religious protest and its impact on cultural policy

This paper explores the implications for public cultural policy of recent religious protests against cultural productions and of requests for cultural organisations to accommodate religious rulings. It examines this subject in the context of the idea and practice of secularism, and considers whether religious protests and pressures over culture have had an impact on the assumptions of public cultural policy. The paper questions whether some of the theoretical approaches which have been brought to bear on these questions – the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, models of multiculturalism, and freedom of expression arguments – can help to understand these tensions and their resolution. The paper examines the case of Arts Council England's ‘Faith and the Arts’ project, as an example of a significant policy initiative, in order to provide insight into the role of public cultural policy itself in resolving these tensions between culture and religion.

English

IntroductionThe biggest success of European society is reflected in the fact that it has largely managed to build a pluralistic society that accepts and respects differences among people. This achievement has opened the road to new success in the political and economic fields, so that today we have the European Union in front of which are great opportunities if it succeeds to maintain the direction towards pluralism and respect for diversity among its citizens. The principle of pluralism is consistent with the natural law of Allah Almighty because He has created people different and prescribed to them to meet and know each other: O mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another (Qur'an, Al-Hujurat 13). Whatever is natural, whatever is consistent with the natural law of God, has a chance of success, because it brings to human beings what is in harmony with their nature, what is good and useful for them.Although, as noted, European society is pluralistic, although it respects pluralism, some people within society, sometimes, reluctantly accept when something comes from the Islamic culture. There is prejudice, and even open opposition, at the first glance, just because it comes from Islamic culture. Given the objectives that European society proclaims, it would be fair to give participation banking fair treatment and a chance to participate and compete in the European market. Thus, the revival of the following universal values and principles on which European society is built is necessary:1. A universal attitude toward human beings: that all human beings are bloodbrothers and sisters with the same rights and obligations.1 People should be valued according to their actions-how beneficial or harmful their deeds and actions are to themselves, to other people and to the environment, but not based on their ethnic origin or religion.2. The freedom of expression of ideas should be fully implemented. Restriction should only be on the usage of insulting words and expressions. It will enable people to present their products and ideas freely.23. Equal rights and obligations in society and equal rights in front of the law: This principal requires European secular states to revive the original idea of secularism, according to which all citizens are equal in their rights and obligations and equal in front of the law.34. Equal opportunity for all human achievements: It can be achieved if the cultural and other achievements of all Europeans are equally treated and given equal opportunity to compete in the field of ideas and products.4Rational Behind Prohibition of InterestThe Qur'an and the Sunnah do not provide any detailed rational for the prohibition of interest (riba). However, the implicit meaning of Qur'anic verses and sayings of the Prophet, p.b.u.h., about interest may suggest that the charging of interest is an act of injustice. This is why Muslim scholars, when speaking about reasons why Islam has prohibited interest, say that the main reason behind the prohibition of interest is the prevention of injustice. The injustice in dealing on the basis of interest can be observed at different levels. For example, the fact is that the lender is guaranteed a positive return while the borrower takes all the risks. Therefore, taking interest represents akl amwal an-nas bi-l-batil because the lender and the borrower are in an unequal position. Such injustice may result based on significant price fluctuations, or any of a number of other considerations. Moreover, there is a very real danger of exploitation of poor debtors by creditors, which Islam strives to eliminate. (Zuhayli, 2001:1/337)Furthermore, it opens the way for the accumulation of wealth in a few hands. After explaining that as a whole, socio-economic and distributive justice, intergenerational equity, economic instability and ecological destruction are considered the basis of the prohibition of interest, Muhammad Ayub concludes: Keeping in mind all relevant texts and the principles of Islamic law, the only reason that appears convincing is that of distributive justice, because the prohibition of Riba is intended to prevent the accumulation of wealth in a few hands; that is, it is not to be allowed to circulate among the rich (Holy Qur'an, 59: 7). …

Arab Writings on Islamist Parties and Movements

The first wave of academic writings on Islamists emerged in the Arab world after the war of June 1967 and the subsequent resurfacing of religious ideologies and religiously inspired social and political movements. Examples in this first wave include works by the Syrian philosopher Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, the Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi, and the Moroccan historian ʿAbdullah al-ʿArawi. These writings advanced three insights. First, the rise of “religious movements,” “religious currents,” and “religious ideologies”—the term islāmī or Islamist was yet to be coined—was seen by some writers as a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the secular state and the secular idea of Pan-Arabism. Second, other writers accused Arab ruling establishments in modernizing countries—the reference was primarily to post-1967 Egypt—of using religious currents and ideologies to enhance the state's popularity and legitimacy in times of crisis. Third, Wahhabism and petrodollars were held responsible by some for the resurfacing of religious currents and their increased appeal in the contest with secular ideas. Most of the writings of the first wave were Egypt centered and were clearly inspired by an antireligious sentiment that saw religious movements and currents as representing an existential threat to secular modernization and progress.

Timothy Daniels, Islamic Spectrum in Java

Timothy Daniels’ Islamic Spectrum in Java critically examines the myriadof ways in which Javanese Muslims draw on religious and secular ideas toproject desirable futures for their local societies, for the Indonesian nation,and for Indonesia’s place in the global economic, political, and culturalstructures of the twenty-first century. This book identifies a broad rangeof desirable futures projected by Javanese Muslims, as well as a range ofbeliefs and practices that comprise Javanese Islam (12). While this engagingwork is very likely to appeal to scholars in many fields, theoreticallyand methodologically it is foremost an anthropological study. Synthesizingsymbolic and cognitive anthropology in order to “provide ‘thick description’1 symbols . . . and to ascertain the social distribution of knowledgeand formation of mental representations in various contexts (4).” Danielsdraws primarily on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Yogyakartaarea of south-central Java from 2003 to 2004 ...

Challenging Secularism: Considering Islam and State in Indonesia

This paper discussed the encounter of Indonesian Muslims toward the idea of secularism. Secularism since its rise in Europe in the 18th century has spread all over the world. Supporters of secularism have assumed that secularism is undeniable. People eventually will hold it and apply it in their life, including in the public space. However, in the context of the relationship between Islam and state in Indonesia, secularism thesis has been proven failed. During the Indonesian history, the relationship between Islam and state has been a hot discourse even until recently. Yet, this paper concluded that one thing is clear; Indonesian people, especially Indonesian Muslims, have rejected secularism. In the meantime, some have rejected theocratic state either. Muslims then have endlessly endeavored to reformulate a viable synthesis on the relationship between Islam and state in Indonesia. What Indonesia has now is among the efforts of Indonesian Muslims to have a better formulation on how Islam plays its role in the public space, including in the political sphere.

Constitutionalism as a Peaceful "Site" of Religious Struggles

The author analyzes the relationship between religion and constitutionalism. The time seems propitious for an examination of the relationships in the West between Church/es, the State, and the general principles of “constitutionalism," a definition which cannot be separated from the analysis of its historical and secular roots.It is not arbitrary to explain constitutionalism as a product of a “long process of secularization, however, the idea of secularism (laicïté, in French) has never been clearly defined. On the contrary, it has often been the source of tension, for example the debate on the common Judeo-Christian heritage in Europe, during the drafting of the EU's Constitutional Treaty.In the West this is an era of unprecedented religious diversity. In some States one religion still predominates; in others, religious representatives have a formal political role, for example, the bishops who sit in the House of Lords of the United Kingdom where, as in Greece, a national Church remains a reality. Nevertheless, the separation between Church and State is, generally, the prevailing principle in the institutions of the Western legal systems and their politics. In any case, the “religion issue" still remains an important aspect of liberal constitutionalism which is a legal model that contains institutionalized mechanisms of power control to prevent tyranny and to guarantee individual rights and liberties, including religious freedom.The author will try to demonstrate that the discourse of human rights – a pillar of modern-contemporary constitutionalism – offers, both at national and supranational level, space for re-defining (i.e. re-inventing) the meaning and boundaries of sovereign power because it is more compatible with some fundamental principles, such as human dignity, rule of law, liberty of religion and conscience; as well as a more “homogeneous definition" of a secularized constitutional legal system.

THE SOULS OF EUROPE

How should Europe deal politically with its legacy as a so‐called “Christian civilization"? Should this imply an overt reference to God or to the Christian or Judeo‐Christian tradition in European constitutional documents (as was debated when the so‐called “Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe” was tabled)? This debate raised the old “politico‐theological problem”: does a political order need some kind of metaphysical or religious grounding, a “soul”, or can it present itself as a purely rational order, the result of a utilitarian calculus? In this article it is argued that the secular idea of the state as an inherent element in the “Judeo‐Christian tradition”, for a “divine state” usurps a place that is only God's. So, this religious tradition itself calls for a secular state, and this inherent relationship between religion and secularity has become a key element for the interpretation of European civilization, most notably in the idea of a separation of the church and the state. But the very fact that this is a religious idea does imply that the European political order cannot be seen as a purely rational political order without a soul. The idea of a “plural soul” is proposed as a way out of the dilemma.

Dewey's Democracy as the Kingdom of God on Earth

John Dewey has been portrayed as a sort of villain in Rosenow's (1997) article which appeared in this journal, apparently because he was unfairly opposed to God and to religion, and also because he deliberately usurped religious language to ‘camouflage’ his secular ideas. By drawing mainly upon similar sources but with some important additions, I wish to challenge the four major concerns raised in Rosenow's article and in doing so aim to offer an alternative interpretation. It is understood here that Dewey's approach to religion was not so much religious as it was ‘spiritual’ and while developing and changing throughout his writings, his ideas on spirituality nevertheless were thoroughly entwined with his other views, especially those dealing with education, science and democracy.

Indian Secularism (review)

Reviewed by: Indian Secularism Manu Bhagavan Indian Secularism. By Shabnum Tejani. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Contemporary world events, from the rise of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, to the dominance of the religious right in U.S. politics, from the pogrom against Muslims in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 to the attacks on Shias in Pakistan, all seem to point out the need for a deep rooted intellectual re-engagement with the idea of secularism. In this light, Shabnum Tejani's book is a welcome and timely intervention, and the secularism she excavates emerging in the late colonial Indian context should give us pause. Tejani traces the evolution of the emergence of the secular principle in India in the mid-twentieth century, and finds that it is intricately inter-related with emerging notions of nationalism and communalism, the latter a distinctly South Asian term for divisive, communitarian politics. Indian Secularism is divided into three sections of two chapters each, respectively focusing on narratives of nationalism, communalism, and secularism. The chapters in the first section are geographically grounded in the western Indian state of Maharashtra in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and largely revolve around the famed "extremist" (Hindu) nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Tejani walks us through the well-worn terrain of the cow protection, Ganapati festivals, and swadeshi movements, yet tries to reveal new features of these familiar areas by casting them through the light of the non-Brahman movement. Where the anti-colonial cow and Ganapati causes are often understood in stark, binary Hindu-Muslim terms, Tejani shades them with the nuance of caste, arguing that peoples from varying backgrounds used high-caste idioms to create a shared Hindu public space, though "lower" caste groups did so for economic and migratory related reasons. Such solidarities raised tensions with other communities, notably Muslims, manifesting in issues related to "music before mosques" and the heretofore inter-religious celebration of Muharram. Tilak distilled the "pride" produced by these Hinduizing campaigns to articulate a "new patriotism" that equated "Hindu" with "Indian." In her second section, Tejani is concerned with over-arching constitutional reform from 1909 until 1932, and with the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements circa 1920. The book's third chapter zeroes in on the Morley-Minto reforms and locates the birth of the concept of "the minority," or rather the re-birth of this idea. Contrasting the 1909 product with debates beginning in 1906, Tejani concludes that the reforms' ultimate introduction of separate electorates represented a pivotal turn; whereas at the outset different interests were all seen as competing and legitimate, and therefore in parity with one another, 1909 equated minority Muslim interests with their numerical strength. Correspondingly, the idea of "communal" representation became associated with separateness, and thus was born the negative conception of the "communal Muslim." Tejani then turns our attention to Khilafat, with a focus on the province of Sind. Her primary claim is that Khilafat opened up prospects for an incorporationist politics in which the Muslim identity was deeply intertwined with Indian nationalism. But Khilafat proved to be a conglomeration of competing agendas that eventually fell apart. The result was to reinforce divisional, communal, identitarian politics, noticeably manifest in the debate over the 1928 Nehru Report, which considered a host of constitutional questions, including the possibility of doing away with separate electorates. The third and final section of the book again looks at a debate over separate electorates, this time in 1932 over the "Depressed Classes question" and its resolution in the Poona Pact and in the proto-constitution rendered by the 1935 Government of India Act. With this as backdrop, the book concludes by examining debates over secularism in post-Independence India's Constituent Assembly. Most of the discussion in this section centers around the problem of representation: should there be reservations for communities in a unified, general electorate, or should there by separate electorates for varying communities (208)? What were the distinctions, if any, in the needs of caste and religious groups, and in what ways, with what meanings, were majorities and minorities defined (244). Without question, there is much that is fascinating and new in Tejani's research...

2. NO ROOM FOR GOD? HISTORY, SCIENCE, METAPHYSICS, AND THE STUDY OF RELIGION

ABSTRACTDespite widespread beliefs to the contrary within the secular intellectual culture of the modern academy, scientific findings are not necessarily incompatible with religious truth claims. The latter include claims about the reality of God as understood in traditional Christianity and the possibility of divinely worked miracles. Intellectual history, philosophy, and science's own self‐understanding undermine the claim that science entails or need even tend toward atheism. By definition a radically transcendent creator‐God is inaccessible to empirical investigation. Denials of the possibility or actual occurrence of miracles depend not on science itself, but on naturalist assumptions that derive originally from a univocal metaphysics with its historical roots in medieval nominalism, which in turn have deeply influenced philosophy and science since the seventeenth century. The metaphysical postulate of naturalism and its correlative empiricist epistemology constitute methodological self‐limitations of science—only an unjustified move from postulate to assertion permits ideological scientism and atheism. It is entirely possible that religious claims consistent with the empirical findings of the natural and social sciences might be true. Therefore historians of religion not only need not assume that atheism is true in their research, but they should not do so if they want to understand religious people on their own terms rather than to impose on them an undemonstrated and indemonstrable ideology. Exhortations to critical thinking apply not only to religious views, but also to uncritically examined secular ideas and assumptions, however widespread or institutionally embedded.

Not in the Heavens: The Premodern Roots of Jewish Secularism

AbstractThe relationship between religion and secularism has become a central question in the study of religion. But secularism is just as diverse as religion. This article treats Jewish secularism as a phenomenon with its own unique characteristics derived in part from the religious tradition against which it revolted. Within premodern Judaism – the Bible, Talmud, and medieval philosophy – one finds precursors to modern secular ideas. The article demonstrates how the cardinal categories of Judaism invented by modern religious thinkers – God, Torah, and Israel – were adopted by secular Jews, such as Baruch Spinoza, emptied of traditional meaning and turned into a ‘secular theology’.

Aqa Najafi, Haj Aqa Nurullah, and the Emergence of Islamism in Isfahan 1889–1908

Alongside the burgeoning secular ideas on people and state during the Constitutional Revolution, a movement seeking a modern Islamic state, governed according to the shari'a, also emerged. This article studies the evolution of that movement in Isfahan, first by contrasting the experience of two brothers of very different ages, Aqa Najafi Isfahani and Haj Aqa Nurullah Isfahani, and examining the way the younger became receptive to the Pan-Islamic ideas then current in the Middle East. Second, the article considers in particular the political theory of Aqa Nurullah, which was influenced by his practical experience of institutional innovation in Isfahan. He argued that constitutionalism was implicit to Islam and saw it as generating wealth for Muslims. He also advocated many of the features of later Islamism, including the desire for a strong army.