Religious Difference in a Secular Age – A Minority Report

"Saba Mahmood is a premier scholar of the constitutive powers of secular governance. This extraordinary work is at once a fascinating ethnography of two religious minorities in Egypt and a compelling formulation of how secularism generates strife it claims only to modulate."--Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley

"Mahmood delivers an expectedly insightful scholarly performance about the ways secularism, purported to be a solution to interreligious conflict, has in fact not only contributed to that conflict but also exacerbated it by producing new forms of religious polarization. This book is both an indispensable and intellectually delightful read."--Wael B. Hallaq, author of The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament

"In this stunning book, Mahmood calls into question a good deal of the received wisdom about secularism and the divisions between East and West. Religious Difference in a Secular Age is original, pathbreaking, and important."--Joan Wallach Scott, author of The Politics of the Veil

"Written by one of the most prominent anthropologists of her generation, Religious Difference in a Secular Age is a significant contribution to political theory and the study of religion in the contemporary world."--Webb Keane, author of Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter