Praise for Hussein Ali Agrama's “Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt”

“Questioning Secularism is a mind-widening book. It is not simply a contestation or reconstruction of the doctrines of secularism but an enquiry into the ways in which it continually generates questions—about necessary limitations to public expression, about the dangers of religious politics, about the place of the Shari‘a in a liberal state, and so forth. At the center of these questions, says Agrama, is the concern to determine the line between politics and religion. Agrama explores this theme brilliantly in the context of contemporary Egypt by drawing on a rich body of ethnographic and historical data, and presents the reader with valuable insights into the ways sovereignty, public order, and state of exception are implicated (often in contradictory ways) in the question of secularism in that country. The most innovative part of this impressive work is the comparison between the Egyptian family court and the Fatwa Council, both based on understandings of the Shari‘a but each very different in its conditions of existence and its orientation. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in secularism today.”

Questioning Secularism: 

Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt

Hussein Ali Agrama 

University of Chicago Press, 2012