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Abstract
Since the events of September 11, 2001, the role of religion in modern political life, and its implication with "terrorism", has come under scrutiny. In particular, this discussion has relied on a distinction between Islam and a secular modern West. This article revisits an important debate between two eminent anthropologists of religion, Clifford Geertz and Talal Asad, in order to clarify the conceptual and political stakes involved in the contemporary conceptions of secularism as a distinct form which defines the modern political community. It questions the self-evident nature of this distinction by considering the historical genealogy of religion as a discrete domain of social life.
One of religion's most astute observers, Clifford Geertz, passed away in October 2006. Noting his contribution, the Society for the Anthropology of Religion annually awards a scholar the "Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion". Geertz had famously bequeathed to the social sciences such memorable concepts such as a "thick description", and was hugely influential in convincing anthropology, and those preoccupied in general with the study of social life, that the material forms of life needed to be interpreted and seen as signs with significatory powers that were socially constructed. Geertz died in the midst of a renewed interest in religion that has more than scholarly implications, sparked by the events of September 11, 2001. In particular, there was renewed interest in understanding Islam as a religion seen as being intimately present at the birth of contemporary "terror". Commemorating the significance of Geertz' s skeptical voice in the wilderness of current mainstream thinking about Islam, this paper revisits an important debate between Geertz and one of his most significant interlocutors, the Saudi'born anthropologist, Talal Asad. Through his recent writings on secularism and religion, Asad has attempted to question both the homogenous view that prevails of Islam, and at the same time, has asked critical questions about the cultural infusions of the supposed universalism of secular societies.
In an important article published in 2003 in the New York Review of Books, Geertz sanguinely noted the rush of publishing on "Islam" and terror: "the effort to 'understand Islam', to locate it, describe it, and reduce it to intelligible summary, is caught up in the excitements of the present...