A most absurd event — or series of events — occurred in Europe last summer. It was surreal watching the French moral police — or should I call it the Thought Police — approach women on the beach and demand they strip — in the name of morality, you understand.
It isn’t the first time police in the West regulate what women wear, it’s just that most of us thought those days were behind us. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in southern France, the French government decided it would be Muslim women who would pay for the intransigence of the supposedly Muslim perpetrators.
These laws are, as always, worded so that “Islam” and “Muslims” don’t appear in the text but the parameters are such that only Muslims fit in there. And of course, this is done deliberately. Let’s get to the purpose of this article now which is the justification given for these (some short-lived) laws: laïcité.
Laïcité is the official French interpretation of secularism. All of these actions are taken in the name of protecting and upholding secular values. In order to discuss secularism, we’re going to need a definition.
According to some dictionaries, “secularism is a belief system which rejects religion, or the belief that religion should not be a part of state affairs.” Or that religion should be separate from civil affairs.
In other words, it is the separation of church and state. According to the New World Encyclopaedia, it is religious non-interference in government affairs and government non-interference in religious affairs.
It is worth pointing out the confound anti-clericalism. Anti-clericalism is the opposition to religious activities in public altogether, not only in the public sphere.
The idea of a public sphere free of religion sounds good. But does that really exist though? The answer, for many people, is no. Here are some basic questions to ask yourself.
Why is the weekend on Saturday and Sunday? Why is the 25th of December a public holiday? Why are, for that matter, Good Friday, All Saints Day, Ascension Day and so on, public holidays?
All these cosy street lights, giant decorated trees in public spaces, and carols all around. What is that about?
Europeans have a particular aversion to religion in the public sphere, or rather, are staunch supporters of secularism. People here are of the opinion that they have eradicated religion from their public culture and the same must be expected of adherents of other religions if they participate in society.
But that is not quite true.
A piece in Salon by Mireia Triguero Roura captures this quite nicely:
“We haven’t really succeeded in removing religion from the public sphere. Instead, we’ve been left with a sort of non-religious cultural Christianity that we call secularism. And we are so adamant about our belief in secularism that we don’t see it.”
Yeah, that’s it. People don’t really see just how religion based European society really is. I keep saying European because the Americans have a different, muted brand of secularism in place.
European secularism stems from anti-clericalism. It was the revolution against the suffocating power of the Catholic Church (foremost in France and Lutheranism in other countries) which had societies firmly in its grip. It is that power which is meant to be limited with laïcité and secularism, not the religious leanings of society.
Of course, at that time, Christianity was the main religion, Judaism a tiny minority and Islam not visible. The religion, Christianity, is already baked into the secular ideology as it is interpreted today, without it explicitly being labelled as Christian. However, attempts to incorporate Islamic identity into this are met with cries of there not being any place for religion in public.
As Triguero Roura continues to write,
“The truth is, most Europeans are culturally Christian, even when their families, like mine, have long abandoned the idea of God. This narrative of the secular “us” vs. the religious “other,” which is upheld by many who consider themselves liberal, progressive people, incites and allows for populist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric on the ultra-right.”
Let me work back to the hijab now. The argument is that a person professing any sort of religious adherence in public is violating the (non-existent) rule about not being religious. And that is why the hijab is the most hated religious symbol in Europe.
People feel like Muslims are flaunting their religion in their faces, not understanding that religion is as big a part of their culture as it is the Muslims’. This is the backlash the article talks about. And it’s rooted in this European failure to properly understand their own culture.
In the recent past, there have been reports about many young Muslims leaving European countries for war-zones, mostly in the Middle East. Their families however continue to live here in the West and show no signs of wanting to leave.
The youth believe the official narrative of a collective identity based around citizenship. And when they counter the countless contradictions between official narratives and practical life, they get disillusioned with life as they know it.
Muslims have been the public punching bag as of late and so it’s an especially acute problem within the Muslim community (although identity issues pervade society as a whole).
The difference between our parents/grandparents’ and our generation is that the older generations view themselves as strangers or guests in a foreign land, whereas our generation is of the view that the country belongs to us as much as it does to our ‘ethnically native’ peers.
This is one possible explanation for why issues of radicalisation are a concern among the youth and not the older people.
Secularism is supposed to be state abstention from religion, not a ban on religion altogether. Freedom of religion, a right most states claim to respect and protect, means the freedom to practise any religion.
A person’s choice of clothing is their decision and cannot be influenced by anything, not even the desire to keep the public sphere free from religion. There can be no justification for religious persecution in any manner or form.
Instead of thinking it is faced with a choice between incorporating religion into the public sphere and banning all religion, Europe should instead think hard about all these facts and work to improve its system so that all implicit discrimination is removed and a truly egalitarian society, at least in terms of religion, can be attained.
As is oft repeated, diversity should be celebrated, not suppressed.
I wrote this article years ago but with the recent decisions passed by European higher courts on this topic again, I figured it is a good time to publish this finally.
