Alexis Brizzi | 11:11, 15 March 2010

Part II – Why Islam is a religion of Europe

For the vast majority of the European people secularism is one of the pillars of the society they live in.

Medieval European societies were most of the time organized and ruled by the combined authority  stemming from the clergy (temporal and moral power) and the monarchs (sovereign authority). Local princes or kings would need to get recognition from the clergy in order to fully consolidate their authority upon the populace in a widely fragmented Europe. A few centuries and numerous religious wars later the idea of multi-confessional kingdoms worked its way through (for instance the Edit of Nantes signed by Henry the IV^th in France which granted religious freedom rights to Protestants to appease the country after the numerous massacres – XVI^th century). By the end of the XVIII^th century the first French Republic and its constitution encompassed the right to religious freedom along with the Human Rights. It was only slightly more than a century later that the law of 1905 in France officially set apart the church and the state: religion is an affair which must remain that of the private sphere. Religious freedom is a right and the state institutions must remain neutral to guarantee this right. Each European country has its own history and its own set of laws (and exceptions) to reflect secularism in daily life but the core of the ideal which is about “religious freedom” is a common ground to most Europeans.

It’s important to get familiar with the development of secularism in our societies and realize that what we take for granted nowadays was a lengthy, sometimes bloody and complex achievement across the continent as many wars, intellectual enlightenment and revolutions had to take place before the ideal could expand and soaks in the intricate mosaic of European peoples’ minds & and traditions.

Since the end of the XIX^th century the visible practice of religion in Europe (practice of liturgies, dressing codes, impact of the religious moral on daily life ethic etc…) has been consistently diminishing while the industrial revolutions were shaping up the modern societies of standardized production and mass-consumptions where the place of the religious would drastically dwindle. As a result, secular post modern European fellows of the XXI^th century are sometimes at shock when observing a more visible spirituality of its fellow Muslim citizens who only immigrated lately to European countries.

Opportunists far right parties across the continent, give their own revisited definition of secularism (most of the time to highlight their own ignorance) to use it as an argument to justify the impossibility to integrate the Muslim populations within the European frame. They usually dangle the threat of shocking visible Islam and present the argument ad nauseam that Muslims cannot integrate in Europe because their religion is too pervasive and because the Koran precepts prevail on our “traditions and culture”. They like to point out the Muslims dressing codes, the fervor of the prayers or whatsoever that might appear exotic and scary enough to appall their constituency (not to mention all the stereotypes and the confusion about the Jihad, the terrorists and the “backwardness” of certain Muslim countries). The recent referendum in Switzerland which called on people to vote for or against the construction of new minarets was an appalling reality check of how malleable the public opinion has become in such fearful context to the point where they end up voting against one of the very basic principles that made up their nation (isn’t Switzerland made of confederations of different people and linguistic entities?).

The discussions in France (home to the largest Muslim population in Europe) and some of the voices around it about whether or not the “Niqab” (the veil that entirely covers the head except for the eyes) and the “burqa” should be forbidden or if the pupils should be able to wear headscarf at schools reveal the divergences on the interpretation of secularism. Some also tend to mix these problems with issues such as the national identity. These are the marks of the profound failure to understand the true social problems of our societies when the religious becomes the scapegoat of the failed social policies of our leaders. When one turns secularism into an ideology against Islam (or any other religion) he is turning his back to the philosophical work of our forefathers and chooses to forget (or ignore) history. When politicians or even intellectuals find it peculiar that some ordinary fellow citizens beg for some considerations which could make it easier for them to live by their religious precepts in the private sphere this is sheer hypocrisy or intellectual dishonesty. Don’t we have private Catholic or Jewish schools? Haven’t we been running separate swimming pools for men and women before the Muslims ever asked for it? Irony is that before the infamous students’ riots in Paris in May 1968 men and women were usually separated in schools and the French society was still predominantly patriarchal.

No, secularism is not asking Muslims to become non Muslims or less visible. Secularism is not about alienating people and their religious belief on behalf of the new natural religion called secularism which screams: “be like me and follow my truth, the unique truth”. The state via its inherent social contract is effective and viable when it facilitates the “vivre ensemble” (living together) based on universal values as opposed to creating disparate communities which share nothing in common and therefore legitimately feel disconnected to the res publica. By discriminating and by relentlessly pushing the Muslims to the fringes of our society we certainly risk more of creating resentful people and nurture fundamentalists who will only feel at odds with our culture than if we were capable of properly applying the very same universal principles that we have been applying to the different confessions on our continent since a few centuries be it the Jews, the Christian Orthodox, the Catholics or the Protestants. Islam has its place in Europe’s religious mosaic and the spirituality has its place in the Europe of the XXI^th century.

Finally I would like to end this second part with a quote from Henri Pena-Ruiz (French Philosopher):

“Secularism is a core value which by essence conveys the ideas of freedom of consciousness and equality of all men may they be religious, atheist or agnostic. The secular ideal is not that of resentment against religion. Interpreting the ideal as any sort of hostility toward the principle of religion would be the greatest misunderstanding of secularism. It is a positive ideal stressing freedom of consciousness and putting the religious and atheist people on an equal foot with the idea that the Republican law must aim at the common good instead of the particular interests. This is called the principle of the public sphere neutrality.”

Translated from the French : “La laïcité est une valeur essentielle, avec ce souci de la liberté de conscience et de l’égalité de tous les hommes, qu’ils soient croyants, athées ou agnostiques. L’idéal laïc n’est pas un idéal négatif de ressentiment contre la religion. C’est le plus grand contresens que l’on puisse faire sur la laïcité que d’y voir une sorte d’hostilité de principe à la religion. Mais c’est un idéal positif d’affirmation de la liberté de conscience, de l’égalité des croyants et des athées et de l’idée que la loi républicaine doit viser le bien commun et non pas l’intérêt particulier. C’est ce qu’on appelle le principe de neutralité de la sphère publique.”