Anglo-liberal and continental traditions frame state power over persons differently.

Evidence

The requirement that all citizens of European Union member states carry identity cards is not itself considered a violation of human rights but a general good. Identity cards have been integral to the way populations have been governed and cared for in modern European states. Britain, although a member of the European Union, has never had them (except during the Second World War) and is resisting their introduction on the grounds that they infringe the citizen’s civil rights as understood historically in that country. Thus in Britain identity cards are thought of as a threat to the liberty of individual subjects (that is, citizens), and in the European Union states they are seen as a guarantee that a collective object (that is, the population) will be provided efficiently with equal welfare. The former focuses on liberty as an active right, the latter on welfare as a passive one. Each gives a different perspective on what is involved in being human in a secular state. And each contributes differentially to political discourses of justice. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 680

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes two senses of citizenship — active liberty (British) versus passive welfare-recipient (EU) — each implying a different secular subject.
• XREF: Useful comparative scaffolding for the reader’s bridge: the British/EU split over identity cards illustrates that secularism has no single institutional form, complicating any monolithic ‘secular modernity’ claim.