Legal coercion underlies the secular state’s supposed persuasion and negotiation

Evidence

But given that there will be quarrels about what is to count as core political principles and as background justifications, how will they be resolved? Taylor answers: by persuasion and negotiation. There is certainly a generous impulse behind this answer, but the nation-state is not a generous agent and its law does not deal in persuasion. Consider what happens when the parties to a dispute are unwilling to compromise on what for them is a matter of principle (a principle that articulates action and being, not a principle that is justifiable by statements of belief ). If citizens are not reasoned around in a matter deemed nationally important by the government and the majority that supports it, the threat of legal action (and the violence this implies) may be used. In that situation negotiation simply amounts to the exchange of unequal concessions in situations where the weaker party has no choice. What happens, the citizen asks, to the principles of equality and liberty in the modern secular imaginary when they are subjected to the necessities of the law? It emerges then that although she can choose her happiness, she may not identify her harms. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 35

Categorization

• DEFINE: Asad distinguishes an action-and-being principle (embodied) from a belief-only principle (justifiable by statements) — the axis on which religious dress and practice become non-negotiable or secularly discardable.