At openDemocracy, philosopher James R. Mensch probes the interrelations among religions of the Book and modern states:
Derrida, reflecting on these facts, saw religion as a victim of an ‘autoimmune reaction.’ In biology, this term refers to the body’s turning its immune reaction on itself. Systems designed to protect the body to immunize it from biological attacks from without turn inward attacking its own structures. As Derrida observes, religion can suffer this fate in its attempts to preserve itself. Doing so, it fails to grasp its own self-identity. Like the body suffering the autoimmune reaction, it takes as ‘other’ what is actually part of itself.
Read the full article here.