Liberalism and Religion's Dark Sides. Beyond Protestant Definitions.

Political theorists have only recently started to reflect on their use of the concept ‘religion’. They do so in response to critiques pointing out liberal theory’s unsatisfactory and partial construal of this concept. Many of these critiques draw attention to the specifically Western European historical trajectory in which a modern notion of religion took shape. Reflecting on the concept of religion has thus led to an interest in the genealogy of that concept and in that of related liberal ideals such as ‘freedom of religion’ and ‘separation of church and state’ (See for example the works of Asad 1993, 2003; Mahmood 2015; Sullivan 2005, Shakman Hurd 2015; Danchin 2008). I will argue that reflection on the concept of religion often focusses on one aspect of the concept’s construal, namely its Christian – or more specifically Protestant – foundations. The liberal secular approach to religion, it is argued, is strongly influenced by its use of a specific definition of religion as something that is private, individual, textual, and belief centered. Bringing to light these Protestant inheritances is a worthwhile project. However, the historical trajectory under scrutiny did not solely produce a particular definition of religion and the religious, but, also gave shape to contested ideas about which aspects of religion pose a problem or danger – ideas often projected on specific religions and groups of ‘believers’, namely Judaism and Islam, but also Catholicism. In this paper I will argue that political theorists reflecting on the ‘historical embeddedness’ of liberal thought on religion should look beyond ‘Protestant definitions’ and take liberal theory’s historical entanglement in ethnoreligious hierarchies more closely into account. I will put forward this point by discussing Cécile Laborde’s recent answer to critiques pointing out liberal theory’s inadequate and biased construal of religion. In Liberalism’s Religion (2017) Laborde carefully rethinks religion’s place within liberal theory. Even so, her book presents a rather narrow account of the critical religion challenge and therefore does not always provide tools to analyze and critique political practices, discourses, and institutions that are steeped in ethno-religious hierarchy, rely on contested notions of dangerous religiosity or prejudicial views of particular religions. In the second part of this paper I will introduce two areas of policy and political discourse in which ethno-religious hierarchies and the specific constructs of ‘dangerous religion’ can and do play a role. Both are related to what has come to be designated as the ‘securitization of Islam’.