Debates over Islam and secularism are conceptual, not resolvable by evidence alone

Evidence

In contemporary polemics about the proper place of religion in Egypt several writers have claimed that secular life was always central in the past, and seen to be such, because religious law (that is, the shari¯‘a) always occupied a restricted space in the government of society. But the issue here is not an empirical one. It will not be resolved simply by more intensive archival research, just as understanding the place of the secular today requires more than mere ethnographic fieldwork, and more than a vigorous defense of its value for the political world we inhabit. A careful analysis is needed of culturally distinctive concepts and their articulation with one another. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 980

Categorization

• QUESTION: This methodological claim matters for the Cooper bridge: if ‘was Islam ever secular’ is a category mistake, then Cooper’s framing (religion vs. secular as stable categories) may inherit Asad’s critique.
• XREF: Asad’s insistence that the debate is not empirical resonates with the vaulted critique that secular/religious mapping is itself the contested artifact rather than a neutral frame.