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DECONSTRUCTION, SECULARISM, AND ISLAM
Since the early 1990s, Jacques Derrida’s
growing attention to politics and religion has
been abundantly noted. What has received far
less attention is Derrida’s explicit secular commitments
in his discussions of religion and politics.
Such commitments might be seen as arising
from a structural threat that religion, or at least religious
dogmatism, poses to political discourse.
Insofar as religion, for Derrida, is bound to appeals
to the sacred, understood as the unscathed,
the pure, and thus the unconditioned and absolute,
it threatens what he described in “Violence
and Metaphysics” as “the worst violence,” i.e.,
the denial and closure of discourse. 1 Given such a
threat, an appeal to secular principles to protect a
democratic public space of free and critical discourse
might seem to follow. In this essay I seek
to unsettle such a possible perception of the relation
between deconstruction and secularism, as
well as Derrida’s own commitments to secularism
for democracy, by critically contrasting
Derrida’s discussion of secularism and religion
with the work of two recent Muslim reformers. In
the work of Abdullahi An-Na‘im and Abdolkarim
Soroush we find an implicit, but far-reaching,
commitment to a certain logic of autoimmunity
that Derrida analyzes at length in
“Faith and Knowledge” and gives voice to in
“Above All, No Journalists”: for the sacred or divine
to “reach the light ...tophenomenalize itself,
to utter itself, to manifest itself, [it] must
cede to . . . ‘autoimmunity.’” 2 That is, for the sacred
or divine to manifest itself, it must appear in
the human space of the profane. Both of these
Muslim reformers draw strong democratic consequences
from the necessarily profane status of
religious interpretation and knowledge. Thus,
contrary to the prevailing secular conception of
the proper relation between democracy and
religion, as well as the predominant western view
of Muslim religious and political thought, they
defend democratic reforms from an avowedly
religious basis.
Joshua Andresen
Because Derrida’s commitment to secularism
follows from and mirrors his commitment to democracy,
I will begin by reviewing the general
nature of political commitment for Derrida and
the specific basis of his commitment to democracy.
I will then examine Derrida’s strategic advocacy
of secularism for democracy despite the
double-bind and autoimmunity inherent to both
democracy and religion. In the second half of the
essay, I move to examining how An-Na‘im and
Soroush present critical alternatives to Derrida’s
account of secularism and religion, ones that upset
the presumed necessary link between
secularism and democracy.
Deconstruction and Democracy
Derrida argues repeatedly and at great length
that ethical, political, and religious commitments
are all characterized by a leap beyond what can
be known or generated by rational deliberation.
That is, there is always an unbridgeable gap between
reason and deliberation on the one hand
and the decision to believe or act on the other. 3 No
rules or norms or even direct commands interpret
themselves in any given situation (e.g., God to
Abraham: “Kill Isaac!”—is it meant ironically?
Is that exactly what I should not do? Is this a test?
I must decide, always in a deficit of certainty).
Thus the very question, “what should I do?” generates
an infinite responsibility for whatever I do,
even if I do nothing at all, because I can never
fully justify whatever decision I make. 4
Derrida complements the arguments for infinite
responsibility with arguments that every
action I take is always open to the double bind
of chance and threat. 5 That is, the
unknowability and essential incalculability of
the future means that any decision I make and
action I take, regardless of how long I deliberate
on it beforehand and how much knowledge
I assemble on its behalf could end in regret.
The point again is not to generate fear or inac-
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tion. On the contrary, the double bind of
chance and threat and the necessary irresponsibility
characterizing every decision imply,
for Derrida, the urgency of deciding and doing
something, as well as grappling with our responsibility
for effects we can never completely
control. 6
As I have argued elsewhere, what these two
characteristics of decisions imply for political
commitments is that they are always inherently
strategic. 7 That is, political commitments must be
made in a specific context and for specific aims if
one is even to approach the demands of infinite
responsibility in the minimal sense of making
some attempt to understand and act in relation to
the local situation and the effects one’s commitments
might generate there. 8 Thus Derrida advocates
democracy, both as a political concept and
general type of political formation, for a variety
of specific desired ends, e.g., the greater inclusion
of women in politics and the extension and
protection of human rights. 9 Derrida explicitly
advocates democracy strategically even though
he is well aware that democracy can always backfire.
He reminds us both that nearly all nations today,
regardless of their actual political structure,
present themselves as democracies, and that the
fascist and Nazi regimes of the twentieth century
came to power through formally democratic processes.
10 Derrida thus attempts a strategic advocacy
of democracy while distancing himself
from the theocratic, tyrannical, military, and authoritarian
democracies he also calls to our attention.
11
In addition to being rather limiting in its critical
force, the basis of Derrida’s strategic advocacy
of democracy is itself very difficult to locate.
I have also argued elsewhere that Derrida’s
appeal to democracy depends on the historical
and linguistic resources the term affords for practical
appeals of the kind he is interested in. 12 Thus
Derrida suggests that appeal to the term “democracy,”
and its basic sense of rule by the people,
will be more effective for such ends as the greater
inclusion of women in politics than alternatives
such as “monarchy” or “theocracy.” We must recognize,
however, that the inclusion of women in
politics is not inherent—either in the concept of
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democracy or in formally democratic polities—
as the history of both the use of the concept and
self-proclaimed democratic polities makes apparent.
13 Moreover, while the inclusion of
women in politics is no more inherent in the ideas
of monarchy or theocracy, we might just happen
to find that the societies most inclusive of women
in the public and political domain are formally
monarchic or theocratic (e.g., Sweden). 14
Derrida is thus not appealing to the essence of democracy
or something essential to democracy for
the ends he seeks. On the contrary, he is specifically
playing on the malleability of the concept to
mobilize it for specific strategic interests. 15
At least one puzzling question naturally arises
here: if Derrida, or anyone else, is really interested
in a political order more inclusive of
women, or the protection and extension of human
rights, or the maintenance of public space
for the free expression of critique, why not advocate
those ends directly rather than taking the indirect
route of using the ambiguous and easily
corruptible term “democracy” as a means to
those ends? Derrida is, of course, not entirely
without resources, even on his own terms. While,
as we have just seen, he cannot eliminate the
threat that formally democratic societies may become
excluding, hierarchically ordered, or conjoined
to exploitative and destabilizing economic
systems, he can and does argue that the condition
of the corruptibility of democracy is also the condition
of its perfectibility—here not in the sense
of “capable of being made perfect,” but rather in
the sense of always being open to critical democratic
appeals regardless of where the line of inclusion
and exclusion is drawn. 16 The reciprocal
aspects of democracy’s corruptibility and perfectibility
are captured by the logic of “autoimmunity”
that Derrida adapts from biology and
initially develops in relation to religion. 17 In
Rogues, Derrida explicitly applies “autoimmunity”
to democracy by associating it with
“that expression of autoimmunity called the right
to self-critique and perfectibility.” 18 Here Derrida
emphasizes democracy’s autoimmune ability to
attack itself in its own name and for its own ultimate
protection. He goes on to argue that “democracy
is the only system ...inwhich, in prin-

ciple, one has or assumes the right to criticize
everything publically, including the idea of democracy,
its concept, its history, and its name.” 19
Democracy’s autoimmune relation to itself does
not and cannot guarantee recognizably more
democratic societies. The ability always to critique
a democracy in the name of democracy
does, however, assure the right, at least in principle,
to critical politics. Given the ends Derrida associates
with “democracy,” we can fairly
conclude that critical politics is what Derrida
would most like to preserve and that it is
“democracy,” at least as he theorizes it, that best
preserves that right.
“Democracy to Come . . . Assumes
Secularism”
What do we find when we turn to Derrida’s
commitment to secularism and secularization?
To begin, we must retrace the same formal structure
of Derrida’s relation to and advocacy of democracy
also with regard to secularism and secularization.
The commitment must be a kind of
strategic leap subject to the same double bind of
chance and threat. In what context then, to what
ends, and in virtue of what resources does
Derrida strategically advocate secularism?
In following Derrida’s discussions of secularism
and secularization it becomes clear that they
occur as strategic amendments to his commitment
to democracy. Derrida is well aware of the
religious history not only of European culture,
but also of the many concepts closely associated
with secular democratic movements, such as
equality, freedom, and human rights. 20 Moreover,
Derrida critically acknowledges the religious—
often Christian—motivations at work in the globalization
of the European democratic model. 21
We can thus say, as a first approximation, that
while acknowledging the role of religion in the
formation of modern European democracy,
Derrida nevertheless appeals to the secular in order
to “emancipate” democracy from the
influence of religion. Indeed, Derrida says as
much in “Faith and Knowledge”:
we . . . share, it seems to me . . .—let us designate it
cautiously—an unreserved taste, if not an unconditional
preference, for what, in politics, is called
republican democracy as a universalizable model,
binding philosophy to the public “cause,” to the res
publica, to “public-ness,” once again to the light of
day, once again to the “lights” of the Enlightenment
[aux Lumieres], once again to the enlightened
virtue of public space, emancipating it from
all external power (non-lay, non-secular), for example
from religious dogmatism, orthodoxy or authority
(that is, from a certain rule of the doxa or of
belief, which, however, does not mean from all
faith). 22
In this passage, Derrida contrasts the secular with
a religious power “external” to democracy, the
“public ‘cause,’” and a free public space of critique.
Moreover, Derrida construes democracy
and public space as threatened by religion, or at
least by religious dogmatism. As a remedy to the
perceived threat, he affirms a Kantian division of
space into the public and the private. 23 That is, the
public is the space of open and free discourse and
negotiation unfettered and undetermined by religious
doxa. By contrast, the private sphere is the
place to be religious.
There may seem to be good reason to be cautious
about attributing to Derrida the now standard
secular reconfiguration of religion as private
faith. 24 At the most general level, Derrida’s apparent
appeal to a hard distinction between the
public and the private in order to “emancipate”
public space from the religious ought to be completely
untenable by his own, deconstructive
lights. To take just one example amongst many
other deconstructive arguments, the basic argument
we have seen concerning the infinite or unending
responsibility conditioning every decision
depends for its (practical) cogency on the
idea that all decisions, including supposedly private
decisions of faith, are implicated in a public
order that generates responsibility in the first
place. 25 Thus the very attempt to relegate the religious
to the private sphere is immediately and irremediably
disrupted by the contamination of the
private by the public. Analogously, even if we
were to accept religion as a purely private matter,
that would not indemnify the public against contamination
by the private. Such contamination is
not merely a risk according to deconstructive
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logic, but a condition of the very attempt to
separate the public from the private.
If we focus on Derrida’s greater discussion in
“Faith and Knowledge,” the grounds for a strategic
secular stance vis-à-vis religious doxa become
even more difficult to discern. First, by
evoking the language of “emancipation” and the
implication that religion is a threat to democracy
and the public sphere, Derrida paradoxically
places the secular in the position of the religious,
which, in the same essay, he goes on to analyze as
that which seeks purity in the sense of being “unscathed,”
free from harm, injury, or violation.
Second, not only does Derrida go on to discuss
both the threat and chance of religious adherence,
he also radically problematizes the absolute
or unconditional status of religious truth and
purity by developing religion’s own autoimmune
relation to itself. The iterability of religious doxa
that is required for its communication necessarily
renders the divine in religion profane and conditional.
26 As Derrida argues, “It is this terrifying
but fatal logic of the auto-immunity of the unscathed
that will always associate Science and
Religion.” 27 That is, on behalf of its own survival,
religion must present itself in and through a public
rational discourse. 28 Thus, rather than giving
us clear reason to prefer secular politics in “Faith
and Knowledge,” Derrida more clearly
demonstrates religion’s reliance on public democratic
space for its own propagation and survival.
If we turn from the letter of Derrida’s analysis
to its greater historical context, I suggest we gain
some insight into his secular evocations and the
remarks on Islam and Islamism scattered
throughout the essay. 29 The symposium on Capri,
from which “Faith and Knowledge” derives, took
place in the midst of the Algerian Civil War, just
three weeks after the meeting of the International
Committee in Support of Algerian Intellectuals
and the League of Human Rights at which
Derrida presented the text, “Taking a Stand for
Algeria.” 30 The ongoing Algerian conflict was
waged among Algeria’s official military-backed
government and several Islamic guerrilla groups.
It is thus not surprising that Derrida reiterates and
returns to some of the secular democratic principles
in “Faith and Knowledge,” e.g., of “emancipating”
public space from religious dogmatism,
that he publicly advocated for his birth-place, Algeria,
just a few weeks earlier. 31 The then palpable
violence waged, in part, in the name of religion
explains, I suggest, Derrida’s strategic
secular stance even where the structural analysis
of the double bind, iterability, and autoimmunity
of the religious would leave a chance for a different
approach. 32
Despite the double bind, iterability, and
autoimmunity of the religious that Derrida analyzes
in “Faith and Knowledge,” his commitment
to secular principles becomes more explicit in his
later work, particularly in his brief discussions of
democracy and Islam. Derrida’s discussion of Islam
in Rogues is generated by the observation
that
the only and the very few regimes, in the supposed
modernity of this situation [today], that do not
present themselves as democratic are those with a
theocratic Muslim government. Not all of them, to
be sure [i.e., some governments with an Islamic
theocratic basis nevertheless present themselves as
democratic], but, let me underscore this, the only
regimes that do not fashion themselves to be democratic,
the only ones that do not present themselves
as democratic, unless I am mistaken, are statutorily
linked to the Muslim faith or creed. 33
Derrida goes on to call attention to the multitude
of nation-states fundamentally linked to religious
faith but which nevertheless present themselves
as democracies, including the state of Israel
and the essentially Christian democracies
that he acknowledges are “too numerous to cite.”
What is then interesting to Derrida is that “Islam,
or a certain Islam [he refers to Saudi Arabia],
would thus be the only religious or theocratic culture
that can still, in fact or in principle, inspire
and declare any resistance to democracy.” 34
Derrida goes on to suggest that Islamic resistance
to democracy may be “the greatest, if not
the only, political issue of the future, the most urgent
question of what remains to come for what is
still called the political.” 35 Although Derrida apparently
takes the issue very seriously and calls
for a theoretical and historical investigation into
the relation between Islam and democracy (tasks

which he claims he has neither the time nor the
expertise), 36 it is clear that Derrida aligns himself
with the value of secular democracy and against
resistance to it. Thus, rather than attempting to
analyze and think through such resistance or suspend
judgment until such analysis is undertaken,
Derrida responds to the urgent question of the
political by calling on
Whoever . . . considers him- or herself a friend of
democracy in the world and not only in his or her
own country . . . [to] do everything possible to join
forces with all those who, and first of all in the Islamic
world, fight not only for the secularization of
the political (however ambiguous this secularization
remains), for the emergence of a laic subjectivity,
but also for an interpretation of the Koranic
heritage that privileges, from the inside as it were,
the democratic virtualities that are probably no
more apparent and readable at first glance, and
readable under this name, than they were in the Old
and New Testaments. 37
Derrida’s address reinforces the separation of the
religious from the political that he aligned himself
with in “Faith and Knowledge,” while calling
for the strategic mobilization of the Quran on
behalf of secular democracy. Here, however, it is
not the Muslim heritage per se that is invited into
the political public space, but only Islamic principles
insofar as they can be shown to accord
with secular democratic principles. Although the
religious can serve the political, and even be a
source of the democratic, the religious must be
separated from the political—and “friends of democracy”
must “fight” for this separation—if
truly democratic politics are to emerge.
Derrida confirms this rather strict separation
of the political and the religious in one of his last
public appearances. In a public discussion with
Mustapha Chérif, Derrida affirms,
I believe that democracy to come . . . assumes secularism,
that is, both the detachment of the political
from the theocratic and the theological, thus entailing
a certain secularism of the political, while at
the same time, encompassing freedom of worship
in a completely consistent, coherent way, and absolute
religious freedom guaranteed by the State,
on the condition, obviously, that the secular space
of the political and the religious space are not confused.
...Ibelieve that the secular today must be
more rigorous with itself, more tolerant toward religious
cultures and toward the possibility for religious
practices to exist freely, unequivocally, and
without confusion. . . . The religious community
can very well organize itself as a religious community,
in a lay space, without invading the lay space
and while respecting the freedom of the individual.
38
Here even as Derrida calls for a more critically
aware secularism, he reinforces the sharp division
between the public and the private that we
have seen to be both conceptually and practically
suspect. Derrida’s increasingly explicit advocacy
of secularism paradoxically appeals to a
public political space unscathed by religious
contamination or invasion. Yet Derrida himself
reminds us that “secularization is always ambiguous
in that it frees itself from the religious, all
the while remaining marked in its very concept
by it, by the theological.” 39
Thus, although
Derrida clearly advocates a secular approach to
politics and a political space “not confused” with
religious space, nothing in his discussion directly
supports his secular preference. In fact, Derrida’s
structural analysis of religion and his strategic
advocacy of secularism lead us to the aporia that
there can be no secular without religious “violation,”
and no pure secularization without the secular
itself taking the form of the religious. 40
There is perhaps a productive way forward if
we focus more closely on what is at stake in secularism
and its purity for Derrida. On the one
hand, he is concerned with the closing or limiting
of public space, the elimination of the right to
criticism, the sacrifice of individual rights and
the attenuation of individual freedom. On the
other hand, he is concerned with the entrance of
“religious dogmatism, orthodoxy or authority”
into the public space. He thus construes religious
absolutism as a threat to freedom and critique.
When we now turn to contemporary discussions
about the relation of religion to the public sphere
amongst Muslim theologians, philosophers, and
legal theorists, we find an extraordinarily rich engagement
with these very issues. Perhaps most
interestingly, it is precisely an argument these
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thinkers share with Derrida, that the religious is
necessarily profaned in its manifestation and
propagation, that leads them to defend broadly
democratic values and freedom of religion not
from secular principles, but from an Islamic
perspective.
Autoimmunity and Shari‘a
In the remainder of this essay I want to look at
the work of Abdullahi An-Na‘im and Abdolkarim
Soroush as two examples of approaches to
Islam and politics that embrace democracy without
embracing secularism. Equally interesting,
these thinkers chart alternative paths to Islam and
politics that contrast both with Derrida’s approach
and with the fundamentalist approaches
that have captured so much media and public attention
in Europe and America. By seeking to reposition
their fellow Muslims’ own approach to
and understanding of Islam, An-Na‘im and
Soroush also displace the secular view of the
proper relation between religion and politics exemplified
by Derrida. They thus allow for a more
inclusive and pluralistic approach to politics and
democracy by rethinking the presumed secularreligious
opposition that undermines progressive
politics in so many contexts today.
The legal theorist Abdullahi An-Na‘im from
Sudan is motivated to theorize the reform of Islamic
law in response to the reality of roughly
thirty-five Muslim-majority countries that have
incorporated aspects of Islamic law, or shari‘a,
into their legal structure. 41 He is responding, in
other words, to the advent of the modern nationstate,
something that has taken place only over
the last two centuries in Europe and somewhat
more recently in the Arab and Muslim world,
with its emphasis on constitutionalism, the transparent
codification of law, and the universal application
and enforcement of law by the state itself.
The birth of the modern state makes the
interpretation, application, and enforcement of
Islamic law, or shari‘a, pressing in a way it had
never been before, leading shari‘a to become
standardized and enforced in an unprecedented
way.
An-Na‘im’s work is a provocative approach to
the desirable relation between religion and the
public sphere, as well as an interesting alternative
to both Derrida’s call for the “secularization of
the political” in the Muslim world, and to the
more publicized Muslim fundamentalist movements.
42 An-Na‘im does not seek to reform Islam
from a secular position. An-Na‘im explicitly
states that his aim “is to contribute to the process
of changing Muslim perceptions, attitudes, and
policies on Islamic, not secular, grounds.” 43 Nor
does he seek to insulate the public realm from
religion. On the contrary, he argues,
to seek secular answers is simply to abandon the
field to the fundamentalists, who will succeed in
carrying the vast majority of the population with
them by citing religious authority for their policies
and theories. Intelligent and enlightened Muslims
are therefore best advised to remain within the religious
framework and endeavor to achieve the reforms
that would make Islam a viable modern ideology.
44
An-Na‘im approaches the reform of shari‘a from
and within the context of the Muslim majority
countries where shari‘a, in various interpretations,
is being implemented in the laws and constitutions
of those countries. From within that
context and as a Muslim himself, he acknowledges
that he is “particularly sensitive to the religious
implications of attributing inadequacy and
injustice to Shari‘a, which is perceived by many
Muslims to be part of the Islamic faith.” 45 Knowing
that many Muslims will reject his project as
heresy, he nevertheless maintains that the questions
he raises “must be confronted and resolved
as a religious as well as a political and legal imperative
if the public law of Islam is to be implemented
today.” 46 His basic strategy is to distinguish
the divine elements of Islam from the
human and contextual. 47 He argues,
Shari‘a is not the whole of Islam but instead is an
interpretation of its fundamental sources as understood
in a particular historical context. Once it is
appreciated that Shari‘a was constructed by its
founding jurists, it should become possible to think
about reconstructing certain aspects of Shari‘a,
provided that such reconstruction is based on the
same fundamental sources of Islam and is fully
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consistent with its essential moral and religious
precepts. 48
An-Na‘im here implicitly mobilizes the autoimmunity
characterizing Islam’s relation to itself
by thematizing the extent to which Islam’s own
legal structure, which guards and guarantees
what is properly Muslim, is itself a human, rather
than divine, construction. By simultaneously
committing himself (as a Muslim) to the divine
nature of Islam’s religious sources and focusing
on the human construction of shari‘a, An-Na‘im
seeks to open a critical space for retheorizing
shari‘a and implementing a more practically
beneficial Islam.
An-Na‘im’s basic approach and argument is
well illustrated by his approach to the term “fundamentalist.”
He objects to the term because, “insofar
as it implies a commitment to the fundamentals
of Islam, it would apply to such a broad
spectrum of Muslims that it would cease to be
useful as a tool for identifying a specific group.” 49
He goes on to argue that the crucial question “is
not whether a Muslim is committed to the fundamentals
of Islam, because this is a sentiment
shared by the vast majority of Muslims, but
rather how to implement that commitment in
concrete policy and legal terms today.” 50 What
An-Na‘im’s observation makes clear is a fundamental
disconnect between a secularism that
would insulate the public sphere from religion
and billions of people around the world whose religious
practices cannot fit neatly into “private
faith.” The disconnect is made more apparent by
the fact that “early Muslim jurists ...ofShari‘a
knew no distinction between public and private
law.” 51 The distinctions between public, private,
commercial, and other forms of law in modern
European law have their roots in Roman law. An-
Na‘im argues that where such distinctions have
found their way into contemporary Muslim societies,
they have done so due to European influence
and/or colonization. The effect is that the
Muslim duty to uphold shari‘a crosses the secular
boundary of the public and the private. Contrary
to Derrida’s call for a clear separation of the public
and religious spheres, An-Na‘im maintains
that for many Muslims, the demand to limit their
practice of Islam to the private realm is tantamount
to a renunciation of their commitment to
shari‘a and hence to Islam.
An-Na‘im’s proposal is to break this impasse
by insisting on the right of Muslims to self-determination
as Muslims, while also insisting that
shari‘a can be reformed “to adapt and adjust to
the circumstances and needs of contemporary
life within the context of Islam as a whole, even if
this should involve discarding or modifying certain
aspects of historical Shari‘a.” 52 An-Na‘im
goes so far as to argue that there are manifest inadequacies
of some aspects of shari‘a, particularly
with respect to the equal rights of citizenship
to the entire population of contemporary
nation-states. 53 He nevertheless insists that the
“secular public law” that was “introduced into
the Muslim world with the establishment of the
modern nation-state . . . will have to be Islamized
in recognition of the Muslim right to selfdetermination.”
54
One of the most remarkable aspects of An-
Na‘im’s study is his forthrightness about the “inadequacies”
of some of the existing principles of
shari‘a vis-à-vis secular principles. He argues, “if
historical Shari‘a is applied today, the population
of Muslim countries would lose the most significant
benefits of secularization.” 55 He goes on to
outline five political and legal issues that arise
due to inconsistencies between historical shari‘a
and standards that have become prevalent in
Muslim majority countries through secularization:
(1) The status of non-Muslims in Muslim
majority countries: under shari‘a non-Muslim
subjects of an Islamic state are not afforded legal
equality with Muslim citizens. An-Na‘im suggests
neither the non-Muslim population nor a
significant number of the Muslim population
would accept the second class status of non-Muslims.
(2) The status of women: An-Na‘im suggests
that “the status and rights of Muslim
women under secular public law are already
clearly superior to their status and rights under
Shari‘a.” Thus “the restoration of the public law
of Shari‘a would ...haveanegativeeffect on
these women.” 56 (3) The freedom of belief, expression,
and association of Muslim men: the law
of apostasy and extensive powers of the ruler under
Shari‘a would eliminate true freedom of be-
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PHILOSOPHY TODAY
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lief and dissent. (4) Relations between Muslim
and non-Muslim states: shari‘a allows for the
“aggressive use of force to propagate Islam and
does not recognize the equal sovereignty of non-
Muslim states.” 57 And (5) the legality of slavery:
historical shari‘a allows for and regulates the
conditions of slavery.
What is perhaps most significant about An-
Na‘im’s approach is that he does not defend reforming
shari‘a with respect to these five issues
from secular principles. Although he acknowledges
the goodness of the rights brought to non-
Muslims, Muslim women, and Muslim men by
secular reforms, it is not secular principles themselves
to which An-Na‘im appeals, but rather the
practical positive effects those principles have
brought for people’s lives (i.e., it’s better for non-
Muslims in Islamic states to be treated as first
class, rather than second class, citizens; it’s better
for Muslim women to be accorded greater equality
and more civil rights; it’s better for Muslim
men, and indeed all Muslims, to be able to embrace
or reject Islam freely and without coercion).
Likewise, with respect to international relations,
An-Na‘im suggests that it is simply
better for Muslim countries if they recognize the
equal sovereignty of non-Muslim states. Moreover,
An-Na‘im’s recourse to the practical benefit
of these reforms is itself justified as Islamic
since the guiding principle of establishing and
applying shari‘a is that is must serve the good of
the people. An-Na‘im cites two historical examples
from one of Muhammad’s closest companions,
the second Caliph, Omar, who, for the good
of the community, contradicted clear passages
from the Quran and the practices of the Prophet. 58
With these examples, An-Na‘im seeks to underscore
the established precedent in Islam of responding
to the historical and practical context of
the time at hand rather than relentlessly reverting
to custom for its own sake.
Thus in contrast to the secular approach to reform,
An-Na‘im demands that the reforms be
justified by specific Islamic principles and historical
precedent. An-Na‘im argues that the only
way to reconcile the demands of self-determination
within an Islamic context “is to develop a
version of Islamic public law which is compatible
with modern standards of constitutionalism,
criminal justice, international law, and human
rights.” 59 An-Na‘im approaches what is for him
the necessary reform of shari‘a by further specifying
its contextual and specifically human components.
The main interpretive intervention he
makes is to distinguish the character of the first
revelations to the Prophet Muhammad while he
was in Mecca, from the character of the later revelations
that came after the prophet had traveled
to Medina. He observes first that the difference
between the Mecca and post-Hijra Medina revelations
show that the revelations themselves correspond
to the concrete social and political needs
of the community. 60 He goes on to note that the
traditional shari‘a known today was developed in
the second century of Islam, in part through the
principle of naskh, or supersession, by which the
legal efficacy of earlier Mecca verses were abrogated
in favor of later Medina verses in order to
maintain consistency. 61 Following his teacher,
Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, An-Na‘im argues
that the present context requires the reversal of
the process of abrogation in favor of the earlier
Mecca revelations because they are “in fact the
eternal and fundamental message of Islam, emphasizing
the inherent dignity of all human beings,
regardless of gender, religious belief, race,
and so forth.” 62 An-Na‘im maintains that only
when these ideals are properly emphasized will
we arrive at a reformed shari‘a adequate to the
present context and capable of resolving the five
issues outlined above.
Apart from the question of whether An-Na‘im
is ultimately able to give a convincing account of
the differences between and reasons behind the
Mecca and Medina revelations, I find An-
Na‘im’s approach admirable both for its forthrightness
about the shari‘a issues besetting Muslim-majority
countries, as well as his unapologetic
approach to reform. However, there
remains the more fundamental question of how
to understand his claim to have identified “the
eternal and fundamental message of Islam.” His
approach to reforming shari‘a was predicated on
the claim that while the Quran was the divine
word of God, shari‘a was a human and contextual
construct and thus subject to change. In other

words, whereas shari‘a was supposed to be open
to reform because the product of human interpretation
to meet certain contextual needs, the Quran
itself was not supposed to be open to interpretive
variation in the same way. If his approach to reforming
shari‘a and Islam is actually based on an
innovative interpretation of the Quran, then however
progressive his purposes and ends may be,
he leaves himself open to the objection that he is
simply manipulating the religious text to his own
ends, rather than actually establishing a religious
Islamic basis for his political reforms. He has
also left himself open to the objection that he is
simply dogmatically asserting the truth of Islam
and applying it in the public political and legal
spheres. Thus, far from instituting a culture of
free expression and debate on religious matters,
An-Na‘im could be seen as simply replacing one
tradition with another. In more Derridean terms, I
want to suggest that An-Na‘im does not go far
enough in cultivating the iterability and autoimmunity
of the sacred for the purpose of reforming
Islam and shari‘a. Thus, although he is able to
advocate democracy and human rights from an
Islamic perspective, his claim to have identified
“the eternal and fundamental message of Islam”
threatens the closure of future discourse rather
than encouraging a continued space of free and
democratic exchange.
I suggest that An-Na‘im’s goals would be
better served if he, like several other recent Muslim
authors, more precisely and radically engaged
the autoimmunity characterizing every
manifestation of the divine, including the texts,
such as the Quran, that are fundamental to every
religion. Doing so would preclude the fundamentalist
move of claiming to find or possess the truth
of religion. It would also, in its place, demand a
more public and democratic discussion of the religious
and its demands within specific historical
and cultural contexts, as well as in relation to the
more general demands of the good of society and
justice.
Autoimmunity and Religion
We find a more democratically pluralistic approach
to Islam in the work of the Iranian philosopher
Abdolkarim Soroush. Soroush’s approach
to religion is inspired by his work in philosophy
of science. He thus applies his understanding of
the “competitive nature of science and knowledge”
to his understanding of religiosity. 63 By
doing so he separates religious knowledge from
religion in a way analogous to how scientific
knowledge is distinguished from “nature.” This
move allows Soroush to cast religious knowledge
“as a kind of human knowledge subject to the collectivity
and competitiveness of the human
soul.” 64 What this implies is that while religion itself
in its divinity may not change, religious
knowledge and religiosity does and should be expected
to change, as well as admit of pluralism.
Thus, far from being an essentially dogmatic or
authoritarian source of discourse, Soroush argues
for an understanding of religiosity and religious
knowledge that conforms to basic democratic
principles insofar as it is open, critical,
public, and plural. Indeed, Soroush defends the
need for democratic politics through an analysis
of the nature of religion.
Soroush explains his distinction between religion
and religious knowledge 65 by arguing that
Religion is sacred and heavenly, but the understanding
of religion is human and earthly. That
which remains constant is religion [din]; that
which undergoes change is religious knowledge
and insight. . . . Religious knowledge and insight
that is human and incomplete ...isinconstant
need of reconstruction. . . . Religious knowledge is,
without a shadow of a doubt, subject to [the influences
of culture]. . . .Religious knowledge is born,
entirely human and subject to all the dictates of human
knowledge. 66
Soroush at once affirms the sacredness of religion
and the profane character of all religious
manifestations. He thus ensconces himself in the
aporetic and autoimmune structure of religion
that Derrida highlights in “Faith and Knowledge.”
Although religion might appear to vanish
altogether once it is assigned to the sacred and
heavenly, Soroush maintains that “religion”
plays a similar role to that of “nature” in the natural
sciences. That is, although both distinctions,
between religious knowledge and religion and
science and nature, are vexed, the vaguely defined
ideals of “religion” and “nature” neverthe-
DECONSTRUCTION, SECULARISM, AND ISLAM
383

less play important motivational roles in the pursuit
of each. The role of “religion” in the Muslim
context is perhaps more apparent when we recall
that the Arabic word typically rendered by “religion”
is din, which has the primary sense of
“path” or “way.” We can thus understand “religion”
in the Muslim context as the path toward
the good and the true, or the striving for these. In
this sense, what is pursued in religious practice
and study is thought not to change and thereby remains
the enduring point of orientation, albeit
without any specific content, in a similar way to
which nature, or nature in itself, remains the enduring
point of orientation of natural science.
Thus although “religion” stands for the divine
truth that believers seek, it can never appear as
such. It rather engenders religious knowledge
marked by endless interpretation and real interpretive
pluralism. Applying this idea to the
Quran itself would lead us to distinguish between
the divine truth it points toward and its manifestation
in human language, ordered and assembled
by human hands, and interpreted and explicated
by human auditors, readers, and scholars. 67
Indeed Soroush maintains that even the determination
of the embodiment of “religion” is “the
domain of ‘religious knowledge’ and, as such,
[it] follow[s] a particular interpretation of religion.”
68 As a consequence, both the content and
the meaning of the religious are perpetually open
to critical questioning and public debate.
Soroush develops the analogy between religion
and science further by comparing practices
of religious interpretation and knowledge to the
collective enterprise of scientific inquiry. Just as
scientific inquiry is a collective process of the
scientific community, Soroush argues that religious
knowledge is a collective process like any
other field of knowledge. As such, religious
knowledge is not the possession of single individuals,
nor can it authorize the absolute authority
of any person or group of people. Rather he
emphasizes,
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
384
religious knowledge is ...abranch of human
knowledge that has a collective and dynamic identity
and that remains viable through the constant
exchange, cooperation, and competition of scholars.
As such, religious knowledge is replete with
error, conjecture, and conviction. Error plays as
much role in religious knowledge as does insight....
It is in this sense that religious knowledge
changes, evolves, contracts, expands, waxes, and
wanes. It is temporal and in constant commerce
with other realms of human culture. 69
Two pivotal insights follow from this passage.
The first is that religious knowledge is fundamentally
plural, both in its possession and in its
manifestations. The second is that religious
knowledge is fundamentally fallible and never
absolute. Soroush maintains that “religious
knowledge is, potentially, as open to criticism as
scientific knowledge.” 70 The idea is that no matter
how great the source or theoretical composition
of a doctrine, human beings have to implement
it, thus making it always susceptible to
corruption and manipulation. 71
Here Soroush
again touches on an aspect of religion’s
autoimmunity. If religion is to be held sacred, all
human manifestations must be acknowledged as
profane and distinguished from the religiously
ideal. Any claim to divine authority would violate
the very conditions of the distinction between
the sacred and the profane. Thus if theologians
or religious adherents claim divine
knowledge or understanding, then they must either
claim to be divine themselves, thus violating
the oneness of the divine, or claim that the divine
is already contained in human interpretation,
thus negating the very distinction between the
human and the divine. It is precisely by maintaining
the distinction between the divine and the human
that Soroush is able to maintain the sanctity
and motivational force of the former while developing
the pluralist, fallibilist, and developmental
aspects of the latter. 72 Thus Soroush can argue,
without any hint of loss or disappointment, that
“it is the secular,” or non-sacred, “nature of the
implementation of any doctrine that renders the
doctrine so vulnerable.” 73 For on this view vulnerability
and error are not what is to be avoided
at all costs. Rather it is error that ensures the “life
and longevity” of religious knowledge. 74
In
Derridean terms we might say that Soroush embraces
the double bind and infinite perfectibility
of religious knowledge as impetuses toward
religious debate and renewal rather than viewing
them as obstacles to religion that must be
removed or defended against.
Soroush’s discussion of religion resonates

most clearly with Derrida’s in his discussions of
religious understanding and interpretation.
Soroush argues that “the appeal to religious conviction
cannot and should not arrest the renewal
of religious understanding or innovative adjudication
[ijtihad] in religion. Such renewal requires
extrareligious data.” 75 It is here, perhaps more
clearly than anywhere else, that Soroush’s approach
to religion evokes a logic of autoimmunity
whereby religion in its own defense,
development, and communication is never pure,
self-contained, or present in itself. Religion
needs what is foreign and potentially threatening
to it for its own vitality. Thus for Soroush an independent
principle of justice is essential to the development
of religious knowledge and practice.
He argues that “justice is at once a prerequisite
for and a requirement of religious rules. A rule
that is not just is not religious.” 76 This implies that
the Quran, as the basis of Islam, should never be
viewed as a closed text, that it actually requires
interaction with the world for any interpretation,
including general principles of justice and other
rational, scientific principles. 77 Thus Soroush argues,
“In a religious society, it is not religion per
se that arbitrates, but some understanding of religion
which is, in turn, changing, rational, and in
harmony with the consensual and accepted
extrareligious criteria.” 78 For Soroush (like
Kant), 79 a proper understanding of religion is
only possible on the basis of rational criteria:
disregard of rational criteria and of the necessity
for the harmony of religious understanding and rational
findings is a breach of religious responsibility.
It is reason that defines truth, justice, public interest,
and humanity, that attributes these
properties to a particular religion (or else it would
not become a rationally acceptable religion), and
that undertakes the task of understanding the
teachings of religion. 80
For Soroush it is reason and its fundamental concerns
with “truth, justice, and humanity” that
must direct our understanding of religion. 81 It is
this coupling of religion and reason that Soroush
takes to be essential to Islam and which, in turn,
requires democracy for religion. 82 As he argues,
“a religious society, based upon free faith, dynamic
understanding, and individual presence
before God, cannot be but democratic.” 83
Soroush develops the intimate relation between
democracy and religion through an examination
of the relation of law to religion. Following
a line of argument similar to what we have
seen in An-Na‘im’s work, Soroush argues that
“religious jurisprudence, however divine and
ahistorical its origins, inevitably becomes historical
and assumes a worldly application.” 84 That is
to say, granting the divinity of religion is no obstacle
to recognizing the contextual and conditional
status of religious law. In fact, that recognition
is driven by the distinction between the
(believed) divine source and the necessarily human
interpretation. Again, Soroush argues that
“independent moral standards (such as public interest
and justice)” are the necessary precondition
of interpreting religious law. 85 Thus, in contrast
to An-Na‘im and in a way more radical than
he is willing to acknowledge, Soroush acknowledges
not only the necessity of human interpretation,
but also the necessary use of independent
humanly derived principles in making those interpretations.
The complex process and set of resources
that must go into interpreting and constructing
religious law makes the process of
articulating religious law an always ongoing, and
thus infinitely perfectible, endeavor that will
never arrive at a final truth. In fact, Soroush presents
the perfectibility of religion and religious
law as analogous to the perfectibility he also
finds characteristic of democracy. As with religion
and religious law, Soroush maintains, “a democracy
is engaged in an interminable process of
choosing and examining.” 86
For Soroush there is not merely an analogy
between the structure of religious knowledge and
democracy. His analysis of the relation between
religion and religious knowledge culminates in a
defense of the basic democratic principles of
freedom of religion and religious pluralism
through open critical debate. Soroush argues,
To compel individuals to confess a faith falsely; to
paralyze minds by indoctrination, propaganda,
and intimidation; and to shut down the gates of
criticism, revision, and modification so that every-
DECONSTRUCTION, SECULARISM, AND ISLAM
385

PHILOSOPHY TODAY
386
one would succumb to a single ideology creates
not a religious society but a monolithic and terrified
mass of crippled, submissive, and hypocritical
subjects. 87
Again, on religious grounds, Soroush argues for
the uncoupling of religious adherence with absolutism.
He goes on to argue that “A religious
society becomes more religious as it grows more
free and freedom loving, as it trades diehard
dogma with examined faith, as it favors inner
plurality over outer mechanical and nominal
unity.” 88 Although Soroush does not pursue the
question of the position of those who are not religious,
or are even anti-religious, in the context of
majority religious societies, he does defend several
of the key reforms that we saw An-Na‘im
arguing for, but without making the potentially
paralyzing claim of identifying the true essence
of Islam, however attractive that essence might
be. 89 We thus find Soroush arguing from religious
principles for formally democratic principles
and human rights that are generally only
associated with secular societies. Most interestingly
for the present study, Soroush’s distinction
between religion and religious knowledge undermines
the usual association of religion with absolutism.
For Soroush religious faith and the very
idea of the sacred come to imply both a commitment
to critical public discourse and democratic
pluralism. 90
By examining the work of An-Na‘im and
Soroush, I have attempted to show both that
lively debates about the relation between religion
and politics are underway in the Muslim world
and that many of these debates involve defending
religious freedom, generally progressive policies,
and democratic political forms without embracing
secularism. I suggest that recognizing
these debates should lead us to evaluate them not
in relation to their religious appeals, but rather in
terms of the politics and human relations they defend.
I have also argued that Soroush goes beyond
An-Na‘im by developing a more radical
contextualization of the content of the Quran,
and its revelations, in order to develop readings
of them adequate to the present condition. At the
core of the contextualization of the Quran is an
explicit distinction between the divine, sacred,
and eternal on the one hand, and the worldly, historical,
and temporal on the other. Similar to
Derrida’s analysis in “Faith and Knowledge,”
“religion” for Soroush is, as object of faith,
caught in the double bind of chance and threat
and, as divine, capable of becoming manifest
only through a process of autoimmune profanation.
For Soroush, “religion” can never appear as
such. “Religion” can appear only in “religious
knowledge.” Thus Soroush mobilizes a certain
logic of autoimmunity for a progressive approach
to Quranic interpretation and reform of
shari‘a. Two important implications follow: first,
all religious law and institutions reflect human
understanding; and second, because the body of
religious thought reflects human understanding,
“a religious community will always profit from
the criticism of religious thought.” 91 The powerful
democratic conclusion thus follows that “criticism
ought to be supported and facilitated by an
open atmosphere.” 92 By developing his own version
of religious autoimmunity, Soroush is able
to directly advocate the core democratic values of
freedom, equality, and open criticism each as
fundamentally religious, rather than secular
goods.
Soroush goes further still by emphasizing the
mutual implication of religious faith and democratic
pluralism. 93 For Soroush, preserving the
goodness of a source, text, revelation, or tradition,
i.e., having faith in it (as we might say
Derrida has faith in democracy), paradoxically
implies a commitment not to the perfection (perfect
goodness) of that source, text, etc. but rather
to the possibility of inheriting it well, for the
good. This is a possibility that can, of course, always
falter. For Soroush, as for Derrida, it is precisely
the lack of assurance that we will decide
for the good and the ever present double bind of
chance and threat that demands a commitment to
critical engagement with the tradition of
interpreting whatever we place our faith in.
Quite apart from the ultimate acceptability of
An-Na‘im’s and Soroush’s approaches to religion
and the public sphere, for both believers and
non-believers, their work shows that absolutism
and unconditionality are not essential parts of religion,
nor are freedom, equality and the right to
open criticism the exclusive domain of the secu-

lar. Derrida would, of course, not have claimed
otherwise. Nevertheless, even if religious commitment
does not necessarily entail absolutism,
we might still see the threat of religious intolerance
as sufficient reason to prefer a generally secular
approach to politics, one that would attempt
to ensure, as Derrida says, that “the secular space
of the political and the religious space are not
confused.” In the course of this essay I have outlined
three reasons why we might pursue a different
approach to politics and religion. First,
Derrida’s own structural arguments undermine
the possibility of a political space purified of religion.
Second, the approach to religion found in
thinkers like Soroush show that religious commitment
can actually serve as the basis of a commitment
to free and open democratic discourse.
Finally, An-Na‘im’s appeal to the right to selfdetermination
highlights the secular exclusion of
the religiously minded. Simply excluding the religious
from the political space is not only structurally
impossible, but politically unjust and strategically
ill-fated. I suggest that if secularism and
religion are to be reformed, the intermingling of
both spaces must be recognized and the critical
democratic possibilities of each must be
rehabilitated.
1. Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay
on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” trans.
Alan Bass, in Writing and Difference (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1978), 117. Derrida associates
religion with the unscathed in “Faith and Knowledge:
The Two Sources of ‘Religion’at the Limits of
Reason Alone,” trans. Samuel Weber, in Acts of Religion,
ed. G. Anidjar (New York: Routledge, 2002). A
similar worry about the closure of legitimate discourse
is also central to Habermas’and Rawls’thinking.
For example, in embracing what he calls “postmetaphysical
thinking,” Habermas “insists on the
difference between the certainties of faith, on the one
hand, and validity claims that can be publically criticized,
on the other”; the latter comprise the “secular
justifications” required by a liberal democratic state
(see Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public
Sphere,” European Journal of Philosophy
14 [2006]: 17, 8). By contrast, Rawls is relatively
more open to the legitimate use of religious reasons
in public political discourse, as long as they meet his
“proviso” requirement and do not take the form of
“comprehensive doctrines” which claim to possess
the whole truth in politics that can be imposed on all.
Indeed, Rawls includes “secularism” as a possible
comprehensive doctrine incompatible with the demands
of “political liberalism.” See John Rawls,
“The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” The University
of Chicago Law Review 64 (Summer 1997): 771.
Cf. also John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New
York; Columbia University Press, 2005), 216–18.
NOTES
2. Jacques Derrida, “Above All, No Journalists!” trans.
Samuel Weber, in Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber,
eds., Religion and Media (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2002), 67. In Derrida’s discussion of
religion in “Faith and Knowledge” and “Above All,
No Journalists,” he pursues and develops the
autoimmunity of religion as it appears in the contrast
between the claim and concept of religion as sacred
and its manifestation as necessarily profane. He also
touches on, but does not develop at length, the more
radical logic of autoimmunity that would bear on the
concept, or the very idea, of religion as sacred, which
would link the purity and inviolability of the sacred
to inextricable contamination and violation, thus
calling into question the very idea of sacredness as
such (cf. “Faith and Knowledge,” 93, where Derrida
discusses the mutual dependence of the sacred and
faith, credit, or trust). In what follows it should be
borne in mind that while Derrida’s work would lead
us to press the autoimmunity of the sacred itself, neither
An-Na‘im nor Soroush, as thinkers concerned to
preserve a sacred ideal in Islam, would follow
Derrida in this regard. My thanks to Martin
Hägglund for pressing me on this point.
3. Cf. Derrida “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation
of Authority,’” trans. M. Quanitance, in Acts of
Religion, 251–55.
4. Cf. Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. D. Wills (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 67–68;
and Derrida, Politics of Friendship, trans. G. Collins
(New York: Verso, 1997), 26–27.
DECONSTRUCTION, SECULARISM, AND ISLAM
387

5. On the double bind of chance and threat, cf. Derrida,
Politics of Friendship, 173–74; “Faith and Knowledge,”
55–57, 82–83; Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays
on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael
Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005),
82–83.
6. Cf. Derrida, “Force of Law,” 255.
7. Joshua Andresen, “Deconstruction, Normativity,
and Democracy to Come,” Philosophy Today
54 (Summer 2010): 103–20.
8. Cf. Derrida’s remarks on the “test and ordeal of the
undecidable” and the need for “learning, reading, understanding,
interpreting the rule, and even calculating”
in order to attempt a just decision (“Force of
Law,” 252).
9. Derrida also advocates democracy for the maintenance
of access to public space and public criticism,
the protection of the rights of critique and critical
questioning of all kinds, and even the right to deconstruction
itself (understood as the practice of critique
and critical questioning). See, Politics of Friendship,
105–06, and Rogues, 91–92. For an extended discussion
of Derrida’s approach to the historical exclusion
of women from politics and friendship see Joshua
Andresen, “Politics Beyond Brotherhood: Experiencing
the Self as Other in Politics of Friendship,” in
G. Bertram, R. Celikates, C. Laudou, and D. Lauer,
eds., Expérience et réflexivité (Paris: Editions
L’Harmattan, 2011), 205–18. For an extended discussion
of the relationship between the conceptual
and the social-institutional aspects of democracy and
democracy to come for Derrida, see Andresen, “Deconstruction,
Normativity, and Democracy to
Come.”
10. Derrida, Rogues, 28–29 and 33. As I examine below,
the major exceptions to the democratic claim that
Derrida discusses are explicitly theocratic Islamic
states, such as Saudi Arabia.
11. Derrida, Rogues, 26–29.
12. Andresen, “Deconstruction, Normativity, and Democracy
to Come,” 109–11.
13. Such inclusion is also absent at the level of the
conceptuality of “democracy” itself. Derrida recalls
his earlier discussion of différance and applies it to
“democracy” in Rogues. There he argues that there is
a “semantic vacancy or indetermination at the very
center of the concept of democracy” (Rogues, 24). I
discuss the significance of Derrida’s conceptual
analysis of “democracy” for his strategic inheritance
of both the term and the political structure in
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
388
Andresen “Deconstruction, Normativity, and Democracy
to Come,” 107–08 and 113–14.
14. Interestingly, in the 2008 Economist “Index of Democracy,”
seven of the top ten “most democratic”
countries are officially constitutional monarchies. In
many of these countries, the monarch also serves as
the official head of the state religion or is required to
be a member of that religion or confession. See:
http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index
%202008.pdf
15. Derrida explicitly calls attention to the strategic nature
of his invocation of “democracy” in the following:
“Saying that to keep this Greek name, democracy,
is an affair of context, of rhetoric or of strategy,
even of polemics, reaffirming that this name will last
as long as it has to but not much longer, saying that
things are speeding up remarkably in these fast
times, is not necessarily giving in to the opportunism
or cynicism of the antidemocrat who is not showing
his cards. Completely to the contrary: one keeps this
indefinite right to the question, to criticism, to deconstruction
(guaranteed rights, in principle, in any
democracy: no deconstruction without democracy,
no democracy without deconstruction). One keeps
the right strategically” (Politics of Friendship, 105).
16. Cf. ibid., 22 and Rogues, 91.
17. Derrida first develops the idea of autoimmunity at
length in “Faith and Knowledge.” For Derrida’s reference
to biology see “Faith and Knowledge,”
80n27. For a detailed analysis of Derrida’s different
uses of “autoimmunity” in relation to religion and
democracy, see Samir Haddad, “Derrida and Democracy
at Risk,” Contretemps 4 (September 2004):
29–44. For an insightful and thorough analysis of the
logic of autoimmunity in relation to time, life, and
democracy see Martin Hägglund, Radical Atheism:
Derrida and the Time of Life (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2008), esp. chapters 1, 4, and 5.
18. Derrida, Rogues, 86–87.
19. Ibid., 87. Cf. Derrida, Politics of Friendship, 105.
Democracy’s autoimmunity names a principle of the
critical other within democracy itself, thus upsetting
all purity and final presence. Cf. Derrida, “Faith and
Knowledge”: “This self-contesting attestation keeps
the auto-immune community alive, which is to say,
open to something other and more than itself: the
other, the future, death, freedom, the coming or the
love of the other” (87).
20. Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge,” 63.
21. Ibid., 86; Rogues, 28.

22. Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge,” 47, emphasis
added.
23. Derrida alludes to Kant’s Religion within the Limits
of Mere Reason at the end of the passage and goes on
to discuss Kant’s moral theology. The public-private
distinction arises in Kant’s discussions and hierarchical
ordering of the moral-rational basis of religion
and the “pure religious faith” appropriate to it, in
contrast to the historical aspect of religion and the
“ecclesiastical faith” that accompanies it (Kant, Religion
within the Limits of Mere Reason, trans. and ed.
A. Wood and G. di Giovanni [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press], 112, 112–147). Kant explicitly
argues that “inasmuch as [religion] is based
on pure moral faith, religion is not a public condition”
(ibid., 129). On the necessary subservience of
ecclesiastical faith to pure religious faith, cf. Kant,
Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary Gregor (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 73. For an
insightful interpretation of the public-private distinction
in the religious context as essentially Kantian
see William Connolly, Why I am Not a Secularist,
(Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1999),
30–33.
24. See, for example, Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:
Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2003). Asad argues at length
that secularism “presupposes new concepts of ‘religion,’‘ethics,’and
‘politics,’and new imperatives associated
with them” (1–2). He also discusses the secular
location of religion outside the public sphere in
the domain of private space (181–87). Cf. also Saba
Mahmood, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire:
The Politics of Islamic Reformation,” Public Culture
18:2 (2006): 323–47, and “Religious Reason and
Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?” Critical
Inquiry 35 (Summer 2009): 836–62.
25. There is, of course, also a structural side to infinite responsibility
that flows simply from deciding one
thing—always one thing at a time—rather than
something else and never being able to justify that
decision, whatever it is. The structural argument
does not, at least not in principle, require any reference
to others, even if some others and some
heteronomy are implied by the very notion of decision
itself.
26. Derrida illustrates the iterability of religious doxa
most vividly in his discussion tele-technoscientific
transmission of religious teaching over the airways,
by satellite and internet. For Derrida’s remarks on the
relation between profanation and the sacred see
“Faith and Knowledge,” 61n16. For an excellent discussion
of Derrida’s analysis of the iterability and
autoimmunity of religion in “Faith and Knowledge”
see Haddad, “Derrida and Democracy at Risk.”
27. Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge,” 80.
28. The examples that Derrida uses to illustrate religion’s
autoimmunity call into question the purity of the sacred
on practical grounds, while appearing to leave a
place for a conceptual purity of the religious or sacred.
Of course, there is a further performative contradiction
in any human attempt to identify or isolate
the sacred insofar as any human designation is necessarily
marked by the human and therefore already
scathed and profaned. As a result, the religious cannot
be but also non-religious, thus making its
iterability a condition of its possibility and impossibility.
I will return to these issues in the second half of
my essay.
29. See, for example, his discussion of “wars of religion”:
“What is involved is always avowed vengeance,
often declared as sexual revenge: rapes, mutilated
genitals or severed hands, corpses exhibited,
heads paraded, as not too long ago in France, impaled
on the end of stakes (phallic processions of
‘natural religions’). This is the case, for example, but
it is only an example, in Algeria today, in the name of
Islam, invoked by both belligerent parties, each in its
own way” (Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge,” 88–89).
30. See “Taking a Stand for Algeria” in Acts of Religion,
301–08.
31. See ibid.
32. For Derrida’s discussion of the double bind of religious
faith see “Faith and Knowledge,” 56–57, 82–
83; cf. 87. I examine Derrida’s discussion of the
chance and threat of democracy in “Deconstruction,
Normativity, and Democracy to Come,” 108–10.
33. Derrida, Rogues, 28–29.
34. Ibid., 29.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 31.
37. Ibid., 33. For a critical analysis of such appeals, particularly
by U.S. foreign policy analysts, see Saba
Mahmood, “Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire.”
38. Mustafa Chérif, Islam and the West: A Conversation
with Jacques Derrida (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 2008), 50–51, emphasis added.
39. Derrida, Rogues, 28.
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40. There are, of course still other and perhaps more immediate
critical questions to raise with respect to
Derrida’s approach to secularization and Islam. E.g.,
why does he seem to approach Islam through its most
common and sensationalized western representation?
Why does he suggest one might have to dig to
find Islamic ideas related to those he favors (e.g., the
right to critique, critical questioning, and public
space for the expression of these) or Muslims committed
to either secular or democratic ideals? On
these questions and topics see, for example,
Abdullahi An-Na‘im, Islam and the Secular State:
Negotiating the Future of Shari’a (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2008); Mahmood, “Secularism,
Hermeneutics, and Empire,” and Talal Asad,
Formations of the Secular.
41. Abdullahi An-Na‘im, Toward an Islamic Reformation:
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International
Law (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1990), xiii.
42. For the purposes of this essay, I will limit my remarks
almost exclusively to An-Na‘im’s more explicitly religious
text of 1990, Toward an Islamic Reformation.
Although he claims to build off the 1990 text in his
more recent 2008 text, Islam and the Secular State,
the latter combines a religious with a more explicitly
secular stance.
43. An-Na‘im, Toward an Islamic Reformation, 10.
44. An-Na‘im, “Introduction” to Mahmoud Mohamed
Taha, The Second Message of Islam, trans. with an
Introduction by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na‘im (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1987), 28.
45. An-Na‘im, Toward an Islamic Reformation, xiii. An-
Na‘im notes that he uses “Shari‘a,” with a capital S,
to refer to historical shari‘a as it has been traditionally
understood and “shari‘a,” with a small s, to refer
to Islamic law more generally, with its possible historical
variants and reforms.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., 10, 48f.
48. Ibid., xiv.
49. Ibid., 3.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., 5.
52. Ibid., 7.
53. Ibid., 7. Interestingly, while An-Na‘im notes that the
introduction of the nation-state is a Western colonial
imposition on what is, from the Islamic perspective,
the supposed unity of all Muslims and the supposed
universal applicability of shari‘a throughout the
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Muslim world, he does not propose doing away with
or reforming the nation-state. His argument relies on
the acceptance of the practical necessity, if not also
the inherent goodness, of the contemporary nationstate
and the ideals of constitutionalism that typically
follow with it. Cf. ibid., 7–8 and passim.
54. Ibid., 8.
55. Ibid., 8, my emphasis.
56. Ibid., 9.
57. Ibid.
58. An-Na‘im discusses how Omar justified his actions
as consistent with Islam, despite contradicting the
Prophet’s practices and clear passages of the Quran,
by arguing that he was acting on behalf of the needs
of the community at that time in its specific context
(ibid., 28–29, 60).
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., 12.
61. Ibid., 21.
62. Ibid., 52.
63. Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam:
Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, ed.
and trans. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000), 13.
64. Ibid., 15.
65. Ibid., 30ff. Cf. also Soroush, “The Evolution and Devolution
of Religious Knowledge” in Liberal Islam:
A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 244–51. The Iranian
theologian Mohammad Shabestari employs an almost
identical distinction in his writing between religion
and religious thought and also develops several
analogous inferences for critical and democratic politics.
For an insightful discussion of Shabestari, see
Nasr Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought: A
Critical Historical Analysis (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2006), 68ff.
66. Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam,
31.
67. Both Nasr Abu Zayd and Muhammad Arkoun develop
the distinction between the divine elements of
the Quran and its manifestations as discourse and as
a “closed corpus” text, or Mushaf. Abu Zayd is particularly
concerned to stress shortcomings of understanding
the Quran as a text. See Abu Zayd, “The Dilemma
of the Literary Approach to the Qur’an,” Alif
23 (2003): 8–47, and Rethinking the Qur’an: Towards
a Humanistic Hermeneutics (Utrecht: Humanities
University Press, 2004), 9–18. Cf. Arkoun,
Islam: To Reform or Subvert? (London: Saqi Books,

2006), 69–92, and Rethinking Islam: Common Questions,
Uncommon Answers, trans. and ed. Robert Lee
(Oxford: Westview Press, 1994), 35–9.
68. Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam,
32.
69. Ibid., 34.
70. Ibid., 137.
71. Cf. Derrida’s argument that “one can always criticize,
reject or combat this or that form of sacredness
or of belief, even of religious authority, in the name
of the most originary possibility” of religion (“Faith
and Knowledge,” 93).
72. On the motivational force of belief in God and the divine
source of morality, cf. Kant, Religion, 33–35,
115–16. Cf. also the following remark from Kant’s
Conflict of the Faculties: “Religion does not differ in
any point from morality, for it is concerned with duties
as such. Its distinction from morality is a merely
formal one: That reason in its legislation uses the
Idea of God, which is derived from morality itself, to
give morality influence on man’s will to fulfill all his
duties” (61).
73. Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam,
80. Soroush argues for the non-sacred nature of
all human institutions, including political ones, because
they are human and fallible (61). As such, government
and political institutions cannot “command
passive witness and submission,” but should rather
be subject to public “rational supervision and scrutiny”
(60). Soroush thereby rules out the absolutist
approach to law and politics commonly associated
with religious societies. He goes further in arguing,
“religiosity or lack thereof do not enter the essence of
government” (61). Thus he commits government to
respect for religious pluralism and protection of minority
interests generally associated with secularism.
74. Cf. ibid., 90.
75. Ibid., 128.
76. Ibid., 132.
77. For a historical overview of the problems and limits
of specifically textual analysis of the Quran, see Abu
Zayd, “The Dilemma of the Literary Approach to the
Qur’an.” For Abu Zayd’s alternative approach to the
Quran as “discourse,” see his Rethinking the Qur’an.
78. Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam,
132.
79. For Kant’s arguments for the rational basis of religion
see Religion, 33–36 and passim; and Conflict of
the Faculties, 61–139.
80. Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam,
127.
81. Ibid.
82. Soroush goes on to argue that justice, distribution and
restriction of power, and human rights all have a rational
rather than a religious origin and that “religion
(in itself) and religious understanding (religion for
us) rely on these rational precepts” (ibid., 133). It is
on the basis of these rational elements that religion itself
becomes rational. Soroush argues, “once religion
is rationalized, then the way to epistemological
pluralism—the centerpiece of democratic action—
will be paved” (ibid., 133).
83. Ibid., 143.
84. Ibid., 150.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid., 135. Soroush’s conception of religion and religious
knowledge is formally analogous to Derrida’s
own analysis of democracy’s perfectibility and characterization
of it as always to come (Cf. Derrida, Politics
of Friendship, 22, 306, and Rogues, 91, 86–92).
In effect, Soroush shows that religion’s necessary reliance
on human interpretation and articulation
makes both religion and religious law always to
come.
87. Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam,
142. Cf. Soroush’s comment that “the practice
that truly violates democracy is not embracing faith,
but the imposition of a particular belief or punishment
of disbelief” (ibid., 135).
88. Ibid., 145.
89. Soroush seems, in fact, to assume a relatively homogenous
religious society in his discussions of the
necessarily democratic character of religious knowledge
and society. It is thus unclear what role non-believers
would have in debates concerning religious
knowledge and law. The potential problem is made
more difficult by Soroush’s refusal to give any kind
of transcendent or universal epistemic standard of
what should count as religious knowledge. To do so
would violate the core idea that such standards, as in
science more generally, are themselves contextual
and evolving. One fairly straightforward remedy for
the potential tyranny of the majority would be to argue,
as both Soroush and An-Na‘im do, that actual
religiosity cannot be coerced and thus the only way
to foster genuine religiosity is to make a- and
antireligiosity real options. As we have seen both
Soroush and An-Na‘im argue, such a position can be
readily defended from basic Islamic principles.
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90. Soroush explicitly argues that the “preconditions for
democratizing religious government is historicizing
and energizing the religious understanding by underscoring
the role of reason in it. By reason I do not
mean a form of isolated individual reason, but a collective
reason arising from the kind of public participation
and human experience that are available only
through democratic methods” (ibid., 127).
91. Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, 68. Although
Abu Zayd discusses these implications in relation
to Shabestari, they apply equally well to
Soroush’s work.
92. Ibid.
93. Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy
in Islam, 138.
American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon
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