What a community imagines itself to be determines how its members act

Evidence

But the members of every community imagine it to have a particular character, and relate to one another by virtue of it. The crucial point therefore is not that it is imagined but that what is imagined predicates distinctive modes of being and acting. The Islamic umma presupposes individuals who are selfgoverning but not autonomous. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 960

Categorization

• XREF: The self-governing-but-not-autonomous subject of the umma contrasts with liberalism’s autonomous individual — a key asymmetry in why Christianity/secularism and Islam get coded differently.