The Islamic Secular. By Sherman A. Jackson

Secularism is often defined as the separation between religion and the state and/or politics, whereby state governance, the economy, and other elements closely related to the public sphere are detached from religious authority. Sherman A. Jackson seeks to challenge this, presenting a complex and compelling refutation of this assumption by deconstructing how secularism, religion, and their connection to Islam contribute to his notion of the “Islamic secular.” He writes that The Islamic Secular seeks to break out of this corner, throw off this zero-sum religious/secular opposition, and place the non-sharʿī “secular back into the circumference of Islam as a religion, where it properly belongs” (p. 173). One of the ways he does this is by delving into the linguistic roots of key, intertwined concepts, highlighting how juristic interpretations offer alternative understandings to those provided in other fields. He critically examines terms used to refer to “secular,” highlighting how they serve as translations for the Western secular and thus do not speak to the “essence” of the Islamic secular (p. 19).