On LBO-talk, it's been used by me (at <>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2001/2001-December/026927.html) and Jeffrey Fischer (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050606/011990.html>) and Kenneth MacKendrick (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-December/030887.html>). :->
Talal Asad said in an interview: "Secularism as a political doctrine I see as being very closely connected to the formation of religion itself, as the 'other' of a religious order. It is precisely in a secular state -- which is supposed to be totally separated from religion -- that it is essential for state law to define, again and again, what genuine religion is, and where its boundaries should properly be. In other words, the state is not that separate. Paradoxically, modern politics cannot really be separated from religion as the vulgar version of secularism argues it should be - with religion having its own sphere and politics its own. The state (a political entity/realm) has the function of defining the acceptable public face of 'religion'" (AsiaSource, December 16, 2002, <http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/asad.cfm>). That's an essential Foucauldian premise from which we need to start political discussion today, about the presence of Muslims (and those of other faiths) in Europe and America (to a greater extent in Europe, given far larger proportions of Muslims in many European countries due to their colonial histories) above all, in addition to Engels' approach to looking at actually existing organized religious movements, i.e. analyzing class contents of them (e.g., which class and class segments they represent, what social and economic visions they embody, etc.).
Secularism as discussed by Talal Asad is a fundamental concept of liberal democracy that has arisen out of capitalism and in turn shaped its development, beginning in Europe and the United States. As such, it does not brook not only religious worldviews but also historical materialist worldviews. Only if an individual limits her religion or politics to the private sphere as defined by each capital-state can she be recognized as a person with rights, liberties, and duties as defined by it (where the boundary between private and public is drawn differs from one state to another and changes across time). That is indeed tragic, in the sense that the exclusion of principles (such as principles of solidarity) and faith in them to abide by them is a precondition of participation in capitalist modernity.
A better foundation of modernity for leftists, whether they are religious or irreligious, is Machiavelli's thought on republican democracy (commented upon by J. G. A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner [cf. <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-March/006839.html>], Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, etc.), tempered by the necessary supplement of liberal democracy -- essentially Kantian insights -- on the question of criminal justice (given the experience of formerly and actually existing party-states). In today's world, the Bolivarian Revolution, with its insistence on republican democracy in which each individual is a protagonist, a history-maker, is the heir to that thought.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>