A Critical Review of The Islamic Secular by Sherman A. Jackson (Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies)

Can the “secular” ever be “Islamic?” Sherman Jackson’s e Islamic Secular is a profound exploration of a deeply misunderstood concept: the relationship between Islam and the secular. In an intellectual landscape oſten dominated by binaries, such as secularism versus religion, and tradition versus modernity, Jackson masterfully demonstrates that these categories fail to account for Islam’s unique historical and intellectual heritage. Equally impressive is Jackson’s ability to contextualize his argument within broader debates on secularism and its relationship to religion and the state. He criticizes both Western triumphalist narratives that see secularism as the inevitable endpoint of human progress and Islamic apologetic responses that reject the secular as inherently anti-religious.