Reflections on secularism, democracy, and politics in Egypt

Abstract

I reassess dominant understandings of the relations between secularism, democracy, and politics by comparing the Egyptian protests that began on January 25, 2011, and lasted until the fall of Mubarak with some of the events that occurred in their aftermath. The events that occurred after these protests demonstrated the obliging power of what I call the “problem‐space of secularism,” anchored by the question of where to draw a line between religion and politics and the stakes of tolerance and religious freedom typically attached to it. By contrast, the protests themselves displayed a marked indifference to this question. Thus, they stood outside the problem‐space of secularism, representing what I call an “asecular” moment. I suggest that such moments of asecularity merit greater attention. [Egypt, Islam, secularism, sovereignty, asecularity]

Religion, Repression, and Human Rights in Eritrea and the Diaspora

“…Together, these illustrate the tensions of a transnational society undergoing postrevolutionary nation building amid the welter of cultural, political, and economic interventions and influences associated with contemporary globalization. The religion-politics nexus in Eritrea also reveals what Agrama (2012), Mahmood (2012), and others inspired by the work of Talal Asad (1993Asad ( ,2003 have critically explored with respect to the 'problemspace' (Agrama 2012,27) of secularism, in which modernist states exercise and consolidate sovereignty through the expansion of regulatory and disciplining power into intimate domains of social life, undermining tbe democratic ethos ostensibly central to the modernist, secular project itself (see also Hirschkind 2011;Scherer 2011). Hence my primary objective is to provide critical, interpretive clarity on policies and practices that defenders of religious freedom and human rights advocates-including antiregime Eritreans-have framed as a pathological, anomic hatred of the sacred by secular nationalists.…”

Contemporary Youth Research in Arab Mediterranean Countries: Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Research

“…In this sense, in the second decade of the 21st Century, Arab Mediterranean societies are no longer entirely pre-modern, modern or post-modern (Ambrust, 2000;Gole, 2006;Scheele, 2007;Haenni, 2009;Singerman and Amar, 2009;Peterson, 2011;Agrama, 2012). The trend in the social structures of the Arab countries seems to consolidate differences by economic criteria, occupations and authority similar to those established in Western societies.…”

“…Nevertheless, in European society individualization was a consequence of the modernization process and provoked a loss of class solidarity and the traditional support networks as kinship and community. On the other hand, in Arab Mediterranean countries the consequences of modernization process coexists with social groups in which individual interests were subordinated to group interests and the scope for independent decision-making is fewer for young populations (Bayat and Denis, 2000;Assad, 2003;Agrama, 2012;Floris, 2012).…”

Godless People, Doubt, and Atheism

“…Where uncertainty and doubt are incorporated into analysis, intrinsic instabilities of belief and the malleability of intellectual and ritual commitments to one's religious traditions are often seen as problematic only in the contexts of conversion and denominational switch (Kirsch 2004) and iconoclastic rejection of ancestral and popular practices in favor of authoritative global traditions such as Christianity and Islam. In sum, anthropologists have been far more interested in belief, whether as a socially significant phenomenon in its own right or a problematized field of relations within secular contexts (Agrama 2012;Cannell 2010;Starrett 2010).…”