US Religious History, the Culture Wars, and the Arts of Secularity

“If you're offended, please say so. I think it would be important to discuss that.” This is how Saba Mahmood opened the room to questions following a talk at Boston University in March of 2015. She had been invited to deliver our Fifth Annual Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Memorial Lecture. Mahmood’s talk, “Moral Injury and Muhammed’s Cartoons: Thinking Reparatively with Eve Sedgwick,” built on her earlier analysis (Mahmood 2009) of polarized public reaction to the publication of cartoons depicting Muhammed. Those responses, she notes, rehearsed the all-too-common script pitting religious against secular worldviews.