What is interesting about An-Na`im's arguments is that they ground the case for the secular state not in the Quran,…
Arguing with An-Na`im
Book blog
Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
Does tolerance require struggle?
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im's erudite and thought-provoking book Islam and The Secular State provides a clear-sighted argument made from within the…
“Call it X”
I am grateful for the kind and thoughtful comments posted at The Immanent Frame about Islam and the Secular State.…
Psychoanalysis as spirituality
What are our moral and spiritual sources? In his magnificent and magnanimous recent book, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor investigates…
Preaching to the converted
Islam and The Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari`a is avowedly didactic, aiming to persuade Muslims in public debate…
The challenge of creating change
Abdullahi An-Na‘im's Islam and the Secular State has rightfully received a great deal of attention and commentary. A prominent Muslim…
Buffered and porous selves
Almost everyone can agree that one of the big differences between us and our ancestors of five hundred years ago…
The ruse of “secular humanism”
Discussions of the secular can often be peculiarly remote. Whenever secularism is imagined as unbelief, or political neutrality, or an…
Immanent spirituality
A worthy touchstone to arbitrate between worldviews immanent and transcendent is the désir d'éternité, the "desire to gather together the…
The “option” of unbelief
Charles Taylor suggests in A Secular Age that the "default option" in modernity is "unbelief" or "exclusivist humanism," both of…