Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment

414 Pages·2014·1.775 MB·English

by  Akeel Bilgrami

Convergences: Inventories of the Present
EDWARD W. SAID, General Editor

Secularism, Identity,
and Enchantment
AKEEL BILGRAMI
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2014
Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bilgrami, Akeel, 1950–
[Essays. Selections]
Secularism, identity, and enchantment / Akeel Bilgrami.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-05204-8
1. Secularism. 2. Identity (Philosophical concept)
3. Political science—Philosophy. I. Title.
BL2747.8.B53 2014
211'.6—dc23
2013034472
To
Noam Chomsky
and
Prabhat Patnaik

Contents
Preface ix
SECULARISM
1. Secularism: Its Content and Context 3
2. Secularism, Multiculturalism, and the Very Concept of Law 58
3. Liberalism and the Academy 75
SECULAR ENCHANTMENT
4. Gandhi, the Philosopher 101
5. Gandhi (and Marx) 122
6. The Political Possibilities of the Long Romantic Period 175
IDENTITY
7. What Is a Muslim? Fundamental Commitment
and Cultural Identity 217
8. Notes toward the Defi nition of Identity 241
9. After the Fatwah: Twenty Years of Controversy 260
viii Contents
REFLECTIONS ON EDWARD SAID
10. Occidentalism, the Very Idea: An Essay on the Enlightenment,
Enchantment, and the Mentality of Democracy 279
11. The Freedom of Beginnings 328
12. Edward Said: An Intellectual and Personal Tribute 339
Notes 347
Sources 385
Author Index 387
Subject Index 391
Preface
It is hard to give a descriptive label to the words on these pages. If asked
to, I can’t do better than to say that they are on “the moral psychology of
politics” and hope that there is not much further scrutiny on the rhetoric
I have ventured.
Though these essays are, to some measurable extent, various in topic
and even in disciplinary perspective, there is also a quite readily apparent
integrity discernible among them, enough at least not to require of me the
heart-sinking form of bureaucratic harness of them for which “Introduc-
tions” to books sometimes reach. Instead, I have left to cross-referencing
notes an extensive, frequent, and, I hope, conscientious stitching that
threads the relations between the ideas that run through all the essays.
All but the last two essays have been substantially supplemented
with additional writing since their initial appearance; and since each
essay declares its own background of assumptions and motivations
pretty much at the outset, I will eschew the redundancy of presenting
them in forewords here as well, except to say this: The thematic trio
of secularism, enchantment, and identity all speak to the issues of the
relation between religion and politics. Though there is a concern as well
as serious and detailed effort to place those issues in a framework that
is attentive to both history and intellectual history, the approach of the
ix