https://orientblackswan.com/details?id=9789390122004

Authors:

Sudha Sitharaman is Professor, Department of Sociology, Pondicherry University, Puducherry.

Anindita Chakrabarti is Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

The resurgence of religion and its militant mixing with politics is now a ubiquitous feature of our times. Since 9/11, discussions on religion, particularly Islam, have been characterised by debates surrounding the rise of political Islam, war on terror and the ascent of religious politics globally. Islam, particularly, appears as the bearer of a frightening tradition, and stereotypes render it an anathema in the modern world. The notion of a unitary, timeless and unchanging religion has been reinforced not only by sections of academia and the media, but also through the Muslim communities’ interpretations and representations of their own religion.

Religion and Secularities challenges these quotidian ‘facts’ about Islam. It brings together a collection of essays focusing on the reconfiguration of Islam in the world’s largest democracy, India. Investigating the relationship between religion, civil society and the state, this volume explores the nation’s long history with Islam as well as the categorisation of Muslims as a minority community.

Based on ethnographic studies conducted in different regions of the country—from Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal to Karnataka and Kerala—this volume addresses the diverse issues of religious piety that include community activism and civic participation; disputes and debates around visitation to historic-religious sites; the changing contours of matrilineal practices in a Muslim community; and how Muslim women negotiate personal/Islamic law in a plural judicial landscape. The essays highlight the impossibility of understanding contemporary Islam outside the logic of modern, secular-liberal governance—a standpoint that helps take the secularism debate forward.

This volume will be valuable for students and scholars of sociology, social anthropology and religious studies.

Virtual book launch next week. The book is Civil Religion and the Enlightenment in England: 1707-1800 . This is by a colleague of mine here at Cardiff University, Ashley Walsh. He’s an historian and treats the subject historically, but with interest in the question of civil religion among sociologists of religion.

Along with Walsh, the event will feature Rachel Hammersley (Newcastle) and Stephen Taylor (Durham), and another Cardiff historian, Lloyd Bowen, will host the event. It’s 4pm on Tuesday 8 September, and this is the Zoom link. https://cardiff.zoom.us/j/97119035062?pwd=QjF0aGdJWkgvRDVBNDhrcmU3WXl2Zz09.

For more details on the book itself, here’s a link to the publisher’s site: https://boydellandbrewer.com/civil-religion-and-the-enlightenment-in-england-1707-1800.html