The attempt of several European states to restrict the freedom of traditionally religious persons to order their lives in accordance with traditional religious beliefs that conflict with the secular, liberal vision of the good life was discussed in an earlier article. A notable case is that of France, which has more than a century of anticlerical government behind it. Historically French secularism has been directed against Roman Catholicism, but today the focus of secularist/religious conflict in France is on Islam, and the life of the small but significant Muslim minority that has appeared in recent decades due to immigration from non-Western countries.
This was discussed by a Religious Freedom Institute webinar on December 10. Participants included Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy, Lorenzo Vidino, Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and Osnan Softic, Senior Research Fellow with the Islamic Renaissance Front in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The discussion was moderated by Jeremy P. Barker, Senior Program Officer and Director of the Middle East Act Team for RFI, and Ismail Royer of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team at RFI.
Barker summarized the issue by saying the purpose of the panel was to use the current situation in France and Europe in which secularism is in conflict with traditional religious belief and practice to address the question of how modern societies should live with “deep differences” on religious matters.
Proposed French Law
The project of French President Emmanuel Macron to create a distinctively French Islam and combat what is called “separatism” echoes the German Constitutional Court’s opposition to religious homeschooling for fear of allowing a religious “parallel culture” to develop, as this writer cited in the preceding article. The French government’s proposed “Law for the Enforcement of Republican Values” would severely restrict homeschooling, essentially banning it for religious purposes, and “ban public sector employees from wearing religious clothing in the workplace.”
The panel indicated that it raises a religious freedom issue if the French government is trying to alter Islamic doctrines and practices, and prohibiting what is outside what the government allows. In particular, is the French government endeavoring to offer a secularism which is normative, which holds traditional religious belief and/or practice outside a secular norm to be not only illegal but immoral?
The previous linked article from RFI clearly indicates that this is the case. Indeed, religious organizations guilty of “an affront to personal dignity” or which disseminate “ideas hostile to the laws of the Republic” can be dissolved. Additionally, will the secularist push against militant Islam redound against traditional Christians, whose beliefs and practice fall outside the secular norm? This too appears to be a danger, not only with religious homeschooling, but with issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage and other LGBT issues. As was noted in an earlier article by this writer, pro-life websites or persuading a woman not to have an abortion are already illegal in France, and such standards as “dignity” or hostility to the laws of the Republic are sufficiently vague that they could be used to ban Christian groups – and at least theoretically – even the Roman Catholic Church.
Laicite vs. Religious Conservatism
Royer asked if European countries are dealing with “separatism” by “appropriate means.” Are these policies “contributing to the problem,” and “what are the collateral consequences?”
Vidino said that the debate is “not primarily about terrorism,” but is rather “about social cohesion, integration, what the French call separatism” and how these factors “impact on society.” Hamid added that much of the issue is “how we view questions of difference, and whether we prefer in modern societies to have a uniformity.” He said the France’s constitution gives “no official recognition of ethnic or religious difference.” He also observed that “the majority of French citizens support ‘laicite,’” France’s “aggressive form of secularism.” Since it has the support of the French people, he believes that the laicite policy is “legitimate.” But Hamid asked if the policy is “good.” As European societies become increasingly diverse, largely resulting from Muslim immigration, “should we learn to live with deep differences, or should we instead impose an artificial consensus?” Should people be drawn in, or even coerced to join a state mandated consensus?
Hamid thinks that claims that France is only attacking extremism, not conservative Islam in general are wrong, and that “we should not take those claims at face value.” He noted that people working in public schools and public service “are not allowed to wear ‘conspicuous religious symbols.’” This includes headscarves worn by Muslim women. Additionally, secularists complain about “halal” food aisles in grocery stores, and “female only” swimming pools. These things, Hamid said, have “nothing to do with [extremist] Islamism, they have only to do with individual religious practice.” He said that people may disagree with this kind of individual religious “conservatism” or “orthodoxy,” but this choice is an individual choice. Clearly he believes that it should be respected.
Targeting Extremism vs. Denying Religious Liberty
Hamid asked why religion shouldn’t appear in the public square. The Islamic practices he cited are not examples of extremism or the politicization of religion, but simply common Islamic practice shared by many Muslims. He said the real French policy on religion in the public square is that “the French state is saying that it doesn’t want French citizens … to express their own convictions, their own personal relationship with God in a conservative way.” This is despite the fact that “one of the most fundamental relationships in life is the relationship between an individual and his or her God.” He believes that, “from a moral standpoint” the current French regime is attempting to “intervene in that very personal relationship, and to in effect, change it.” Additionally, Islamic organizations in France are required not only to reject terrorism, but to accept “republican values” (as is true, Hamid pointed out, of other European countries).
Vidino responded that while the contentious religious issue in Europe is “not really about terrorism,” nevertheless these governments are genuinely concerned with terrorism, and that there has been shown to be a connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist groups on the one hand, and the radicalization of a particular area on the other. He also said that the French education system clashes with the worldview of Muslims. Many Muslim students strongly object to information on Voltaire or the annihilation of the Jews in World War II. He noted that the recent beheading of a French school teacher involved much support for the killer both “before and after the killing.”
Vidino believes the proposed law is fairly moderate in its impact on religious believers, but that there is “no pretense of neutrality” in the law (although both Macron and the laicite doctrine claim neutrality). But insofar as excluding religion from public life is a lack of neutrality, Vidino is clearly correct in claiming the law not neutral and an implementation of laicite. He maintains that the law is “creating tension” between traditional religious commitment and “Republican values.” The French government has formally aligned itself with the moderate French Council of Mosques, and opposes extremist groups. But this policy, however, has not been particularly effective in eliminating Islamic radicalism, which seems unaffected by a variety of government policies.
Hamid said that the target of the new law is “Muslims who are on the more religiously observant side.” This, he said, is also the target for “a lot of European officials and European commentators.” But, Hamid said, “difference is not a threat to democracy.” He believes that Americans more easily realize this than Europeans. Citing the liberal legal theorist John Rawls, he said that people with different comprehensive doctrines, and different conceptions of the good life, can live together in a free society. “For the state to tell me that my conception of the good life is anathema to the state is scary to me.” Hamid said that even he would be considered an Islamist in France because he disagrees with the laicite doctrine.
Vidino responded that what works well in America may not be best for France. Many French are comfortable with the secularist compartmentalization of religion to the private sphere. He said that the French see that public manifestations of religion are pressed by a small minority of extremists. Commonly it is Muslim Brotherhood or Salafist activists who press confrontations over public displays for the purpose of confronting the French state. In response to a question by Softic, Vidino said that Austria restricts what Muslim religious teachers can teach, since it pays their salaries. Those teachers, he said, are treated no differently than religious teachers in other religions.
Royer asked how the perceived threat to the state of Islamist groups seeking to gain influence can be dealt with without “stepping on the rights of conservative Muslims?” Vidino responded that “there is no denying that Europe could do better in being more tolerant of conservative Muslims.” He said that Americans do this much better. He also maintained that conservative Muslim practices are not a threat to European states and “there is an oversensitivity” in this area. Many European societies were until recently “extremely homogeneous.” However, there remains a problem of Islamists using religious expression to advance their extremist agendas. European governments, he said, must concern themselves with zeroing in on disruptive efforts of Islamist groups without denying Muslims in general the exercise of their religion.
Hamid said that European leaders need to clearly differentiate between Islamism and Islam. What “make it challenging” is that “private practice has public implications.” With the rapid secularization of western Europe, it is Muslims who present this challenge today. For several decades, there has been a consensus in western Europe that religion should be a “mostly private” matter. He said that “it’s not helpful to kind of paper over this.”
Importance of Public Faith for Christians
Barker pointed out that the public dimension of religion is also important to the small minority of people in many European countries who remain observant Christians. The major issue with religious freedom in western Europe is that public religious expressions are considered “a threat to the state” and a threat to the values of the state. Therefore, European states are denying or restricting the right of parents to homeschool their children because they are “concerned that parents may teach their children things that are against the values of the state.”
Barker asked whether European state values are able to accommodate “a sufficient level of difference” while also accommodating security concerns. Hamid replied that “at some level, European officials don’t recognize your starting premise, that difference is something that’s supposed to be accommodated, or that it’s good to allow people to live different sorts of lives on the things that they care about as individuals.” He said that in discussion with French friends, while agreeing about many things, on the topic of secularism, there was an irreconcilable difference between freedom for religious expression and activity on the one hand, and the French concept of laicite on the other. “What’s more fundamental than accommodating deep difference?” he asked. “If you don’t think difference should be accommodated, that’s the end of the discussion in some ways.” Barker responded that in pluralism “we have to find a way” to live with differences. The claim that “secularism has never killed anyone” is empirically untrue. “If difference exists, it has to be accommodated or eliminated.” Hamid responded that this is “the stark choice in front of us right now.”
This writer would add that Macron’s government, and secularists in general, are apparently trying to prescribe a righteous life, which must be accepted regardless of one’s religious or philosophical beliefs. But a merely human government is not competent to draw conclusions about ultimate reality and ultimate obligations for its citizens. Orthodox believers in many, if not most, pre-Enlightenment religions then necessarily disagree with the “values of the state,” since as orthodox believers, they must hold the duty their religions prescribe to be morally obligatory, and superior to any other obligations. Fulfilling these obligations must be the responsibility of individuals, who, unlike secularist governments, face the prospect of death and answering for the life that they have lived.
How the secularist prescription for life in France is developing regarding the effort to severely restrict homeschooling will be the topic of this series’ concluding article.
It can be viewed here.
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