practices within traditions?

I feel a bit handcuffed wading into this question because while particularly liberal secular traditions outlined by Mahmood are by no means unproblematic, and can certainly be normative in terms of “religion, subject, language, and injury” (90), I’m leery of taking up the secular and legalistic questions about their normativity without constantly underscoring the practices operating upon, without, and without those traditions in any given situation

I realize Mahmood is taking up a specific instance and questioning the polarized debate termed between blasphemy and the freedom of speech, but I suppose I feel that our own discussion stemming from this should be wary of totalizing or reductive approaches to practice vs. law/state. In Canada, for instance, given the variety of relationships that Canadians have to varying elements of Christian faith, I wonder about the elements of Christianity within Canadian systems: for example, how much Christian iconography or practice is actually present in holidays like Easter or Christmas for Canadians, and how many Canadians appreciate the long weekend without a second thought to any kind of religious celebration at all? I guess I’m wondering about a kind of Fiskean popular practice of Canadian traditions, a repurposing of the religious into secular (or other non-secular traditions) and the resulting normativity of the “secular liberal principles of freedom or religion or speech”, non-neutral as they are (90).

Perhaps I’m coming at this issue backwards but I wonder about our own imperatives to rethink existing (Saussurean?) distinctions between abstract and materially constituted things/concepts/figures (72), not only in terms of a better understanding of, for example, a mimetic relationship to Mohammed, but also in terms of how practice can be constituted between the secular and the religious. I don’t think that the Christian traditions inherent within the Canadian system are any more problematic than every other white or European tradition upon which our country is based (and I believe these are problematic!!), and so I suppose I’m thinking of “practice” kind of along MacIntyre’s understanding, both for the majority or dominant communities as Mahmood defines them, and for the non-majority communities operating within given traditions.

Obviously, my observations are operating more in material practice than an ethical or moral inquiry, but if we are indeed attempting to suspend foreclosure between the analysis of the phenomena at hand and the defence of beliefs (91), then I’d like to consider also radical or non-normative practice operating within or alongside normative regulations as well.