Said’s point about Christianity’s role is about carried-over myths, not Schmitt-style secularization genealogy.

Evidence

To the great modern system for the classification of cultures Said gave the name Orientalism and viewed the hierarchies of this system as marking the presence of a “reconstructed religious impulse, a naturalized supernaturalism.” The emergence of this modern classification of cultures does not represent for Said “a sudden access of objective knowledge” but rather “a set of structures inherited from the past, secularized, redisposed, and re-formed by such disciplines as philology, which in turn were naturalized, modernized, and laicized substitutes for (or versions of) Christian supernaturalism.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 393 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Thus, as Raz-Krakotzkin (Chapter 2) points out, for Zionism’s founding fathers, God does not exist; yet he promised Palestine to the Jewish people. Therefore, when Israel’s secular ambassador to the UN refers to the Bible as the Jewish people’s “deed to the land” (as described above), he is following a solid secular Zionist tradition that, like a thread, connects the secular founders through the current secular leadership – to all branches of Zionism. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 495 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Secular political movements can weaponize religious claims they do not believe. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 495; Modern Orientalist knowledge descends from secularized Christian supernaturalism, not objective discovery — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 393

Broader Connections

• Modern Orientalist knowledge descends from secularized Christian supernaturalism, not objective discovery #complicates (0.82) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 393
• Secular political movements can weaponize religious claims they do not believe. #complicates (0.75) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 495