Quotes from Talal Asad

Language has multiple uses, and is embedded in different forms of life. It is not necessary to have this grand concept of "humanity" in order to behave decently.

Modern sovereignty, whether expressed through killing in battle or the torture of suspects, brings together the desire to build up and the desire to destroy, to let Aid Agencies offer charity (in its original meaning of "love") while the military offers death. The two are intrinsically connected.

The concept of the secular cannot do without the idea of religion.

The secular" must not be thought of as the space in which real human life gradually emancipates itself from the controlling power of "religion" and thus achieves the latter's relocation. It is this assumption that allows us to think of religion as "infecting" the secular domain or as replicating within it the structure of theological concepts.

The state is not a cause but an articulation of secularization.

The secular" is conceptually prior to the political doctrine of "secularism", that over time a variety of concepts, practices and sensibilities have come together to form "the secular".