Defining Neighbors. Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter - Jonathan Marc Gribetz

RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 57

duties was no longer impossible.”^64 In this vein, Mendelssohn approv-
ingly cites Jesus’s “cautious advice,” which he repeats numerous times
in Jerusalem, that one must “render unto caesar that which is caesar’s
and unto God what is God’s.”^65 For Mendelssohn, following the New
Testament language, there were two realms: that of caesar (the state)
and that of God (religion).
Though the conceptual distinction between state and religion is ob-
viously not identical to that between nation and religion, it is nonethe-
less important for our assessment of al- Khalidi’s reading of Mendels-
sohn insofar as it demonstrates Mendelssohn’s insistence on a separate
sphere called “religion.” While Mendelssohn grants this sphere biblical
vintage, scholars and theorists in the field of secularization have ar-
gued that it is rather a modern construction and, according to some,
the hallmark of secularization. In his review of the various theories of
secularization, José casanova asserts that “secularization as differenti-
ation” is “the valid core of the theory of secularization.” As casanova
writes in Public­Religions­in­the­Modern­World:

The differentiation and emancipation of the secular spheres from

religious institutions and norms remains a general modern struc-

tural trend. . . . each of the two major modern societal systems,

the state and the economy, as well as other major cultural and

institutional spheres of society— science, education, law, art—

develops its own institutional autonomy, as well as its intrinsic

functional dynamics. Religion itself is constrained not only to ac-

cept the modern principle of structural differentiation of the sec-

ular spheres but also to follow the same dynamic and to develop

an autonomous differentiated sphere of its own.^66

Mendelssohn’s claim that religion, as such, may be differentiated
from other spheres of life— be they the state, the nation, or something
else— is in large part what makes Mendelssohn a useful figure for al-
Khalidi. even if al- Khalidi was not quite correct in attributing the sep-
aration of nation and religion to Mendelssohn, he was correct to note
Mendelssohn’s assumption of and insistence on “differentiation.” If, as
charles Taylor puts it, in ancient societies, “religion was ‘everywhere,’
was interwoven with everything else, and in no sense constituted a
separate ‘sphere’ of its own,”^67 al- Khalidi recognized that Mendelssohn
asserted both the conceptual distinction between religion and other

(^64) Mendelssohn, Jerusalem,­Or,­on­Religious­Power­and­Judaism, 132.
(^65) Ibid.
(^66) casanova, Public­Religions­in­the­Modern­World, 212.
(^67) Taylor, A­Secular­Age, 2.