This project exposes the problems with the dominant conception of agency in secular liberal discourse. The main critique is that the dominant conception of agency tends to attribute value to certain aspects of action that are not necessarily the most telling or valuable in terms of what constitutes agency. I use Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety to aid in this critique. Her project uses the Muslim rituals performed by women of the mosque movement in Egypt to demonstrate the need for a more nuanced conception of agency in academics. I use CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary to support the approach offered by Mahmood and demonstrate the applicability of such an approach outside of typical considerations of “ritual”. In this case, the approach is applied to cricket.

This thesis uses a philosophical discussion to explore the tensions that result in the meeting between universal claims and particular contexts regarding human rights and how these tensions can be mediated by exploring the right to religious freedom. In order to do this, two approaches will be studied, one liberal and one postcolonial, represented by Martha Nussbaum and Saba Mahmood respectively. In comparing the approaches of Nussbaum and Mahmood, their arguments and positions become clearer, but also the nuances of the debate between universalism and contextualism. The right to religious freedom, with its many tensions between theory and practice, has been useful in exploring what values are at stake when we talk about human rights in general and how we can think about the apparent tension between universalism and contextual sensitivity. The thesis thus shows that there are more similarities between these two approaches than it may first seem and that they are not incompatible. This is argued to provide insight into possible ways of mediating human rights between theory and practice. / Denna uppsats utgår från en filosofisk diskussion kring spänningen mellan universella anspråk och specifika sammanhang när det kommer till mänskliga rättigheter och hur dessa spänningar kan medlas utifrån en undersökning av religionsfriheten. För att åstadkomma studeras två inriktningar, den ena liberal och den andra postkolonial. Dessa inriktningar representeras av Martha Nussbaum respektive Saba Mahmood. I och med en jämförande analys mellan dessa två inriktningar är förhoppningen att deras likheter och skillnader blir tydligare, samt att nyanserna inom debatten mellan universalism och kontextualism blir tydligare. Det finns många spänningar mellan teori och praktik när det kommer till rätten till religionsfrihet och just denna rättighet är på så sätt användbar för att utforska spänningen mellan universalism och kontextualism när det kommer till mänskliga rättigheter. Denna uppsats visar därmed att det finns flera likheter mellan dessa inriktningar och att de därför inte kan anses vara oförenliga med varandra. Detta för med sig en insikt i möjligheter till att medla mänskliga rättigheter mellan teori och praktik.

This essay studies the implicit and explicit perspectives of Bruce Lincoln, Jürgen Habermas, Talal Asad, Saba Mahmood, Charles Taylor, José Casanova and their approach to secularism as a phenomenon. This is done by categorizing them into three categories. The categories,enlightenment-centered theorists, critical theorists and implicit-theological theorists, all have explicit accounts and implicit forms of reasoning that shape and contextualize their respective approach. The Enlightenment-centered theorists tend to regard secularism as a neutral and peace-keeping statecraft. This approach implicitly contains the idea of a clear division between secular and religious. This implicit form of reasoning I argue is problematically non-reflexive to the theorist’s own standpoint and risks becoming a form of secular ideology. The theorists categorized as critical theorists view secularism more as a type of discourse where what is seen as religious and the secular is inherently fluid. This is then analyzed by them as a special strategy for Western sovereignty. The perspective of the implicit-theological theorists is similar both to the Enlightenment-centered and the criticaltheorists' perspective in that secularism is primarily peace-keeping and that the categories are often fluid. I show that their approach contains theological assumptions that religion responds to a realm which challenges the immanent world. In the last chapter of the essay, I give a normative evaluation of the three approaches to secularism where I argue that while the enlightenment-centered theorists have useful explanatory models, the critical and to a lesser extent implicit-theological approach to secularism are more fruitful for religious studies. They allow for more flexibility in studying the relationship between secular and religious groups as they do not determine the categories in advance. The essay also contains a concluding discussion on the type of problems for philosophy of science and religious studies that arise when secularism and what is seen as the secular is deconstructed.

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