Secularism is not essentially religious toleration or rational ethics

Evidence

The interesting thing about this view is that although religion is regarded as alien to the secular, the latter is also seen to have generated religion. Historians of progress relate that in the premodern past secular life created superstitious and oppressive religion, and in the modern present secularism has produced enlightened and tolerant religion. Thus the insistence on a sharp separation between the religious and the secular goes with the paradoxical claim that the latter continually produces the former. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 942 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: South Asian secularism means equal respect for all religions rather than state neutrality. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 136; Secularism is an enactment of transcendent identity, not an intellectual doctrine; Secularism’s essence is not protecting freedoms from religious tyranny (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Secularism claims to have generated tolerant modern religion #complicates (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 942