Is Prose Poetry a Conspiracy Against the Noble Qur'an? Poetics, Humans, and God in Contemporary Egypt
Abstract: There is a peculiar relationship between contemporary poetry and perspectives that are deemed to be heretical by conservative audiences. This relationship is not fully accounted for by current anthropological theories of the secular. The...
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Abstract: There is a peculiar relationship between contemporary poetry and perspectives that are deemed to be heretical by conservative audiences. This relationship is not fully accounted for by current anthropological theories of the secular. The field of literature has been successfully studied as a secular institution – both in the sense of the differentiation of institutions as well as in the sense of the subordination of the religious to the political. Such secularity appears as a rather safe, less controversial way to claim the power of some human entities in relation to God. Some poetry, by contrast, may be accused of heresy or unbelief even when written with pious intention. This suggests a dimension to being secular that is more offensive to conservative societal sensibilities, as it contrasts with deeply-held views on the proper form of the God-human relationship and the associated imaginaries, languages, and aesthetics. Based on a combination of ethnographic research in historical
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Secularism or democracy? Associational governance of religious diversity
Abstract: Established institutions and policies of dealing with religious diversity in liberal democratic states are increasingly under pressure. Practical politics and political theory is caught in a trap between a fully secularized state (strict...
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Abstract: Established institutions and policies of dealing with religious diversity in liberal democratic states are increasingly under pressure. Practical politics and political theory is caught in a trap between a fully secularized state (strict separation of state and politics from completely privatized religions based on an idealized version of American denominationalism or French republicanism) and neo-corporatist or 'pillarized' regimes of selective cooperation between states and organized religions. The book offers an original, comprehensive conceptual, theoretical and practical approach to problems of governance of religious diversity from a multi-disciplinary perspective combining moral and political philosophy, constitutional law, history, sociology and anthropology of religions and comparative institutionalism. Proposals of associative democracy - a moderately libertarian, flexible version of democratic institutional pluralism - are introduced and scrutinized whether they can serv
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