Formations of the
Secular/Secularism
Saleh Khaled Ibrahim
Content
• Who is Asad?
• Education
• Who influenced Asad?
• Publications
• Formulation of the Secular
• Paper Question
• References
Who is Talal Asad?
• Born in April 1932 in Medina, Saudi Arabia.
• Parents: Muhammad Asad, an Austrian diplomat and writer who converted from Judaism
to Islam in his twenties, and Munira Hussein Al Shammari, a Saudi Arabian Muslim.
Education
• undergraduate degree in anthropology from the University of Edinburgh
• Bachelor of Letters and PhD from the University of Oxford
• After his doctoral studies, Asad completed fieldwork in Northern Sudan on the political
structures of the Kababish, a nomadic group that formed under British colonial rule.
• Teaching in different universities: Khartoum University in Sudan, Hull University in
United Kingdom, Johns Hopkins University United States.
Who influenced Asad?
• Muhammad Asad, Michel Foucalt, Friedrich Nietzsche and E. E. Evans-Pritchard
• «I went to England to do architecture, and I studied architecture for two years in London. This was
my father’s choice, really. He thought it would provide scope for my imagination and at the same
time give me the discipline he thought I needed.»
• Talal Asad acknowledges the genealogy of Nietzsche in his book “The Genealogy of Religion,”
and says in the introduction to the book “Formations of the Secular” that his genetic approach “is
derived from the methods that were published by Foucault and Nietzsche, although this does not
require following them religiously.
Writings and Publications
• Books:
• The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority, and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe (1970).
• Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (1993).
• Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (2003).
• On Suicide Bombing (2007).
• Is critique secular?: blasphemy, injury, and free speech (with Wendy Brown, Judith Butler and
Saba Mahmood) (2013).
• Secular Translations. Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason (2018).
• Tradition critique. Après la rencontre coloniale (2023).
Formations of the Secular
Formations of the Secular
• collection of seven essays published in 2003.
• three sections: Secular, Secularism, and secularization.
• central idea : creating anthropology of the secular and what that would entail. He did that
through defining and deconstructing secularism and some of its various parts.
• Asad’s definition posits “secular” as an epistemic category, whereas “secularism” refers
to a political doctrine.
Formations of the Secular
• Asad presents the central premise of his study that the concept of the secular emerges
from the convergence of various concepts, practices, and sensibilities, and it predates the
political doctrine of secularism.
• Asad argues that understanding the power of concepts lies in recognizing their
combinations and rich connections to ways of life as well as their susceptibility to change.
Formations of the Secular
• The first section, comprising three essays, explores how concepts of the religious and the secular
are constantly reshaped within discourses related to myth agency, pain, cruelty, and torture. Asad
sheds light on aspects of the secular that are often concealed or overlooked in the seemingly
straightforward notion of the secular.
• The second section consists of three essays that examine how secularism operates as a political
doctrine in discussions involving Muslims as a religious minority in Europe, debates on human rights
controversies, and conceptions of the modern nation state.
• The third section traces the process of the narrowing scope of Sharia, religious law in Egypt during
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period when European legal codes were being imported. Assat
argues that this process involved not only the restriction of religious law to the realm of the family, but
also a transformation of Sharia itself.
Paper Question
• How did the thinkers Asad and Al-Messiri address secularism as a historical phenomenon, and
what are the similarities and differences between their approach?
General features of their approach:
• Asad utilizes the tools of anthropology to study the • Al-Messiri utilizes philosophical terms to study the
stages of emergence and development of secularism stages of the emergence and development of secularism
• Asad distinguishes between three classifications of • He distinguishes between partial secularism and
secularism, secularism and secularization comprehensive secularism
• He refers to the intertwined relationship between • He focuses on the historical backgrounds and
secularism, religion, nationalism, and liberalism. economic and social contexts that have produced different
and constantly changing forms of secularism.
• Rather than relying on linear reasoning, Asad
proposes to approach secularism indirectly by
addressing its complex genealogies. Looks at myth,
pain and its role in religions.
References
• Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford University
Press.
• Watson, J. (2011). Modernizing Middle Eastern studies, historicizing religion, particularizing
human rights. the Minnesota Review, 2011(77), 87–100.
• Anjum, O. (2018). Interview with Talal Asad. American Journal of Islam and Society, 35(1),
55–90.
• Literature and Theory. (2023, June 26). Talal Asad’s “Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam,
Modernity” (Book note) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myg0Hu3wzOM
• Al-Mesiri, A. (2002). Partial Secularism and Comprehensive Secularism (I, p. 348). Egypt: Dar Al-
Shorouk.
