Book Review: Formations of The Secular; Christianity, Islam, Modernity ( Talal Asad ) written by Kang Abdul Holik, MA at Sunday,

July 5, 2009
The world, nowadays, seems to have one ideology that is democracy. In any country, the spirit of democracy is now blown and regarded as highest accepted ideology. However, the world with its plurality, is now facing the challenge of having a peaceful world to live in. The challenge of religious truth claims lead most thinkers to provide the third language to facilitate alternatives on toleration among the truth claimers. The idea of secularism has emerged as an object of academic argument and of practical dispute. This is the growing interest in questions of modernity. However, most anthropologists continued to show little interest in question of secularity and secularization. Talal Asad noted that until today the main text book in the anthropology of religion make no reference to these issues (P. 22). Most thinkers believe the need of new model of religion and modernity. Talal Asad regarded as one of the leading professor (anthropology) who has been in front proposing the idea of secularism. His idea of pluralism, lead us to rethinking of religion and the modern. Starting with very sharp question: Is secularism a colonial imposition, an entire world views that gives precedence to the material over the spiritual, a modern culture of alienation and unrestrained pleasure? Or is it necessary to universal humanism, a rational principle that calls for suppression-or at any rate, the restraint-of religious passion so that a dangerous source of intolerance and delusion can be controlled, and political unity, peace and progress secured?(p. 21). Talal Asad suggested to use indirect way in approaching the idea of secularism (p.67). Secularism in the eye of anthropologist-like religion-is such a concept. The secular brings together certain behaviors, knowledge, and sensibilities in modern life What makes modern anthropology different is that its distinction in the comparison of embedded concept between societies located in time and space. The important thing in this comparative analysis is not their origin (Western or not Western), but the forms of life that articulate them; the powers they release or disable (p. 17). Talal Asad believes that macrosociology and epistemology undergirds modern society and modern system of knowledge. Asad tend to discuss secularism in general term rather than lifting concrete social particulars, and he emphasized that in this bok he is not concerned to attack liberalism whether as political system or as an ethical problem.(p. 26) Modernity Talal Asad emphasize that modernity, which has been reach by Western civilization, is centrally taking the role that influencing this new idea of secularism. Modernity with all tools altogether with its indicators such as technology, industry, and science take the most responsibility in influencing the global change all over world population jump hill to the culture, values of the society and the way civilian think in the third world civilization even the global warming. Modernity has successfully driven people to live in smaller world and within plurality that undoubtedly unavoidable. These situations encourage great thinkers, philosophers, scientists attempted to do such effort try to develop a bridge that could possibly give an alternative peace

way to be used in plurality nature relation. They try hard to build a path to avoid conflict among religious adherent, ethnicity, racial, tribes, nationhood and so forth. Some notable name arise such as John Rawls (public reason), Seyyed Hossein Nasr (the tradition :the Philosophia Perennis),Wilfred Cantwell Smith (Religion as human Creation), John Hick, Jurgen Habermas (Religion in The Public Sphere), John B. Cobb,Jr, Arvind Sharma, Diana L. Eck (Civic Language) and more others. Modernity, for Talal Asad, is a reality that cannot be ignored. This condition places primary emphasize on the role of the western domination in globalizing new system of knowledge and new social disciplines. As he noted: Assumptions about the integrated character of modernity are themselves are part of practical and political reality. They direct the way in which people committed to it, act in critical situations. Modernity is a project-or rather a series of interlinked projects that certain people in power seek to achieve. The project aims at institutionalizing a number of (sometimes conflicting, often evolving) principles: constitutionalism, moral autonomy, democracy, human right, civil equality, industry, consumerism, freedom of the market and secularism (p.13). In my opinion, bringing the idea of secular as a concept like religion will encounter another problem. As we know diversity of faiths is not a new phenomenon. But the problem emerges only in the last century because the contact between different religious communities intensified as the effect of the modernity itself. The different religions are different streams of religious experience, each having started at a different point within human history and each having formed its own conceptual self-consciousness within a different cultural milieu. Talal Asad himself aware of this issue and he even put this as the crucial hypothesis in societys matter that he said differently in space and time. Form of life that articulates the concept is the most important thing. Civilization which exist today is the result of the social evolution. Anthropologist regard this industrial era as the highest era of civilization. This civilization can be trace and learned in term of order. People used to use myth to explain the phenomena that they cannot answer. In line with science and technological advancement, the way people think have shifted from time to time especially in responding the phenomena happened. Cantwell-Smith assert that the notion of civilization its not all transcendent, but also historical. This notion implies that human being is the outcome of his or her history. Religious experience is one and the most influence thing that shape human personal identity. Most adherents takes their religion for granted. Something inherently in blood. It might because the values of religion itself such as faith and truth claim. The fact that there exist many faiths; Each religion makes truth claims, and truth claims made by a religion may contradict with others are questions that should be answered. Does secularism has the answer?

Secularism, Nation State and Religion Beginning with two question of how did Muslims think about secularism prior to modernity? What do Muslims today make of the idea of the secular? (P. 205). Talal Asad try to discuss his idea of secularism with some other Muslim thinkers (modern and classic) notions. In discussing Umma concept in islam he said: The Islamic umma in the classical theological view is thus not

an imagined community on a par with the Arab nation waiting to be politically unified but a theologically define space enabling Muslims to practice the disciplines of din in the world. Of course the world umma has the sense of a people and a community in the Quran,.The crucial point therefore is not that it is imagined but that what is imagined predicate distinctive mode of being and acting. The Islamic umma presupposes individuals who are self governing but not autonomous (P. 197). Furthermore he reminds all of us that Muslims are now inhabit different world from the one their medieval forebears lived in. Muslims today are the fastest growing community in America, Europe and almost all over the world, so it is clear that we must realize with this real circumstance. The world of global is now getting more plural unavoidably. He argue that even the most conservative Muslim draws an experiences in the contemporary world to give relevance and credibility to his or her theological interpretations (p. 198). Asad insists the need of a nation state to regulate people who are plural. The way social spaces are defined, ordered and regulated makes them all equally political. The deprivatization of the religion like those occured in Algeria 1992 and in Turkey 1997, are intolerable to secularist primarily because of the motives imputed to their opponents rather to than anything the latter have actually done. The motives signal the potential entry of religion into space already occupied by the secular. What Asad underline is that Islamisms preoccupation with state power which is occured in Arab nations is not of its commitment to nationalist ideas but the global world enforced claim to constitute legitimate social identities and arenas, so that Asad insist that Islamism cannot be reduced to nationalism (p. 200). The concept of the secular cannot do without the idea of the religion. Americas constitution does not recognize any phrase which mentioned separation of church and state, but it represents the supreme courts interpretation of the founders intention.(p. 201). People, of course, will never be able to release themselves from his or her own religious activities. It represented in objects, sites, practices, words, even the minds and bodies of worshippers. The historical elements, one thing that Asad says as unavoidable thing in human live, of what come to be conceptualized as religion has disparate trajectories. On the other hand nation state requires clearly demarcated space that it canclassify and regulate: religion, education, health, leisure, work, income, justice, and war. Asad keep insisting that the space that religion may properly occupy in society has to be continually redefined by the law because the reproduction of secular life within and beyond the nation state continually affect the discursive clarity of the space. By contradictory representation of modernity Talal Asad refer to what Weber wrote that sharia was primitive because it lack the criteria given to modern law by rationality. Anglo American Jurists had no hesitation in regarding English common law modern even though it did not embody the Weberian criteria of legal rationality. Secularism which is regarded as a modern concept is located in an argument about the importance of particularity. There is something that should be underlined here is that Weber derifed his understanding of Islamic law largely from the Dutch orientalist Snouck Horgronje, who was closely involved with projects of law reform in colonial Indonesia.

Talal Asad eventually define secular law for modern morality which involved the legal constitution of fundamental social spaces in which governance could be secured through ; (1) The political authority of the nation state, (2) The freedom of market exchange, (3) The moral authority of the family. Central to this schema is the distinction between law (which the state embodied, produced and administered) and morality (which is the concern ideally of the responsible person generated and sustained by the family), the two mediated by the freedom of public exchange (p. 236). The question raised will be who will guarantee or evaluate all those three things to be properly applied in social daily life. Interestingly Secularist and Islamist share some common especially in civilizing population. For secularist each citizen is equal to every other, an equal legal and political member of a state that itself claims a single personality. The state must stand in neutrality and never give any privileges to a certain group of religion. A state as political authority should guarantee that everybody has same access, same chances to have social welfare. The freedom of market should be managed in such a way in the favor of public welfare (almaslahatu al-amma), and the morality which developed responsible person lay on the family, finally will develop what Fukuyama mentioned as Social Capital. Society, which is populated by responsible and discipline occupants, will produce strong state. Fukuyama insisted that this is very crucial in running an integrated nation development. The essence of religion-as kant put it, and others modern agreed-was its ethics. This mean that the attempt to allocate religion or its surrogate to its own private sphere, defined and policed by the law, was als an attempt to clear a space within the state for modern ethics. A secular state is not one characterized by religious indifference, or rational ethics-or political toleration. It is a complex arrangement of legal reasoning, moral practice, and political authority. Talal Assad use the aspect of sharia reform as both the precondition and the consequence of secular process of power. It redefined the concept of the human and so to protect the right that belong essentially to the human and the damage that can be done to his or her essence. Proposing the question of how to balance citizen rights within pluralistic societies, this book is very valuable in giving an alternative on how to live together in peaceful way within this pluralistic global world.