LAI ̈CITE ́the members of majorities and ‘‘making’’ culture in the process? Moreover, by not dis-
tancing himself clearly from the neo-fundamentalist concept of Islam’s ‘‘deculturization’’
into a pure religion, indeed, even deploying it in his own conceptual scheme, Roy assumes
a problematic understanding of secularization. He (and the neo-fundamentalists) seem
to follow the modernist understanding of secularization as the radical individualization
of religion, leading to religion’s complete break with tradition and belonging. In short,
with the strong opposition between (ethnic) culture and (individualized) religion, we
seem to reencounter in Roy’s sociological notion of secularization the dichotomy between
belonging and freedom criticized in the discourse oflaı ̈cite ́.
The suggestion of a possible ‘‘deculturization of religion’’ is based on what we could
call a ‘‘strong theory of secularization,’’ inherited from Durkheimian sociology. Histori-
cally, this notion of secularization is linked to the interpretation of Protestantism as an
individualized ‘‘religion of the heart’’ that severs itself from theculte, from tradition, and
from institutions. We came across this notion of secularization when discussing Durk-
heim’s pedagogy, where he suggested the full autonomy of morality from thecultein
Protestantism.^35 Roy’s endorsement of a similarly strong version of secularization over-
looks the many criticisms of the modernist concept of secularization as privatization and
individualization, even within the context of Protestantism. Veit Bader, for example, dis-
tinguishes three versions of the secularization thesis: it can refer to the privatization of
religion, to its individualization (the two are often conflated), or to the separation of
religion from politics. Bader refutes them all. First, believers may recognize that their
beliefs and practices are contingent and, in Roy’s words, ‘‘minoritarian,’’ but this does
not mean that they will (or must) privatize their religion. Second, religious belief may
individualize to a certain extent, but never to the point of becoming purely subjective,
‘‘asocial,’’ or ‘‘deculturized’’—this point is directly relevant to a critique of Roy. Third,
organized religions may develop as public religions while at the same time being ‘‘mod-
ern’’ in the sense of open to democracy.^36 Yet another way to launch a systematic critique
of religion as a ‘‘pure’’ or invisible religion of the heart, or as a pure ‘‘belief ’’ without rule
or ritual, would be via Wittgenstein’s philosophy of meaning.^37 Wittgenstein rejects the
possibility of (Cartesian) subjectivities by refuting the possibility of a ‘‘private language’’
and by arguing that meaning-making is an inevitably social, cultural practice, a matter of
Gepflogenheit(‘‘custom’’).^38 This is also so in religious matters.
In conclusion, the return of the religious does not only designate a changed state of
affairs in society. In contemporary philosophies of religion, it also corrects earlier theories
of secularization, which Roy seems to endorse without question. Understanding global
Islam as a fully secularized, individualized religion presses it into a frame that is as old as
the frame oflaı ̈cite ́Roy criticizes. This frame, moreover, is based on the same modernist
divides between belonging and freedom, autonomy and heteronomy, private and public
inherited from the nineteenth century.
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