European Fears: The End of Secularism

Transcription

1 University of Delaware From the SelectedWorks of Muqtedar Khan 2009 European Fears: The End of Secularism Muqtedar Khan, University of Delaware Available at:

2 EUROPEAN FEARS: The End of Secularism? 1 Dr. Muqtedar Khan University of Delaware European intellectuals do not like the post 9/11 world very much. They find their liberal dream of a green, peaceful and secular world jeopardized by the assertiveness of Islam and related militancy on one hand and the unveiling of the imperial fangs of US foreign policy driven by Christian motifs on the other. What seems most baffling and threatening to them is the realization that a vast number of people, both in America and in the Muslim World, are showing disenchantment with the secular order and are actively seeking to replace it with a more faith-friendly systems. Are we really witnessing a reversal of secularism, especially 1 This is the keynote address given to the German Association of American Studies on June 3 rd, 2007 in Bochum, Germany. It was subsequently published as book chapter in 2009 as European Fears: The End of Secularism in Religion in the United States. Heidelberg: Winter, Ed. Jeanne Cortiel, Christine Gerhardt, Kornelia Freitag, Michael Wala. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, in the West and has religion become a decisive force in politics worldwide? Are Muslims capable of accepting the idea of citizenship divorced from religious identity? To address these issues, I came to Bochum, Germany along with prominent American scholars, David Hall of Harvard University and Peter Boyer of University of Wisconsin. The forum titled, Secularism and its Discontents, was hosted by the German Association of American Studies; a body of over 600 German scholars who study American culture, literature and society, and remarkably do it all in English. European intellectuals have until now been quite content in the belief that their notion of a secular order is not only a virtuous enterprise but one that should be worthy of admiration and emulation. Until now they have been tolerant of the infrequent incursions by religion in to politics. But after the reelection of George W. Bush to the White House and the candor with which he talks about how God and faith inspire his policy choices, has triggered the fear among Europeans that perhaps American politics has crossed an irreversible threshold and the modern west is now led by a post-secular American empire. The growing size and political influence of evangelical Christians, their 1

3 practices and their policies, simply mesmerizes the secular imagination of Europe and raises understandable fears among their intellectual elite. As they watch the discourse of American Presidential hopefuls, specially the Republican candidates, who seem to tailor their policies to court the religious segment of American society, their apprehension that secularism is experiencing a slow death is strengthened. At home Europeans are increasingly confronted by a more visible and more assertive Muslim population. Increasingly they have become aware that they are unwilling to embrace Islam even though it has become Europe s second religion. European Union continues to drag its heels on Turkeys ascension into EU and Muslims find it increasingly hard to enjoy the same rights that other Europeans do. The double standards with regards to Islam and Muslims in Europe are becoming palpable and European intellectuals are forced to acknowledge that religion matters even to a society that believes it to be secular and more importantly believes in the secular order. Yes, religious consciousness and activism among Christians in America and among Muslims worldwide is without doubt heightened. Among some Muslims it has clearly reached fanatical levels. Europeans continue to maintain that Europe is a Christian union [it was obvious in the proposed EU constitution]. Europeans may not be religious and fuzzy about their spirituality, but they are very clear that their identity is strongly religious. Europe too has its own dirty little secrets that it chooses to ignore when projecting itself as a secular liberal society. The most theocratic of states in the World the Vatican whose head of state is also the head of the Catholic Church worldwide is in Europe. It is neatly tucked away hidden inside Italy allowing Europeans to have their cake and eat it too. Catholics get to keep their Caliphate or Vilyate-e-Faqih, the Vatican, at least in all its symbolic glory and Europeans also get to brag that they are secular. In case someone is tempted to claim that this is an unusual historical legacy, then just take a look at England, where again the head of state is also the head of the Church, There is no separation of church and state in England; they both exist simultaneously in the singular persona of the British monarch. European intellectuals shrug it and claim that these are merely titular and meaningless institutions. Surely if such is the case then why preserve them at such high costs and at the risk of appearing unfair to new religions Islam, 2

4 Buddhism and Hinduism now taking root in Europe. All across Europe, religion and state are intertwined. Clerics get paid from tax sources, Churches as renovated, maintained and supported, including their charity work by tax payer funds as are religious schools. Britain supports 7000 Christian schools and five Islamic schools. The French State owns and maintains all active Churches in France and thus Christian services occur every week on state property in France but yes no Hijabs in French schools please and in some states like Belgium clerics are civil servants. 2 Religion is not separate from European politics. One primary reason to the exclusion of Muslim Turkey from the European Union is the Christian nature of European Union masquerading as a secular entity. Europe is a joint venture of state and religion and in many ways religion is a public sector enterprise which will collapse without state funding. The mask of secularity that Europe wears is basically the mischaracterization of very low degree of religious observance in Europe as philosophical secularism. Yes, a European is not likely to obey the Ten Commandments, but he or she will vote to include or exclude someone based on their religious identity (Turkey in EU). Communalism without Ten Commandments is not secularism it is religious politics without religiosity. Political theory inspired and influenced by European enlightenment has taken secularism as a necessary and uncontested condition for good governance. Even though this may or may not be empirically true, most Western ideologues assert the secular nature of Western polities while simultaneously taking the virtues of secularism for granted. As a Muslim intellectual living in the West, researching and teaching political theory and political philosophy, I have always marveled at the durability of the idea of secularism. For a civilization that boasts considerable sophistication in most areas, to assume that politics and religion constitute two separate realms or that the two can be separated is uncharacteristically naïve. This belief, not in separation of church and state, but in the separability of church and State, in my opinion is one of the enduring myths of modernity. This myth rests on the false assumptions of pure politics and pure religion, neither exists in real life. 3 2 See Richard Alba and Nancy Foner, Could it Happen Here? The Nation, October 17, on the WWW at &s=alba. 3 I have discussed this phenomenon in greater detail in M. A. Muqtedar Khan, The Myth of Secularism, in E.J. Dionne Jr., Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Kayla M. Drogosz (Eds.), One Electorate under God? A 3

5 All core issues are not only normative in nature but also impinge on individual and collective identities. Neither the conception of the individual self nor the construction of the collective self is free from political or religious considerations. Christianity played a significant role in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and Islamists found a way to come to power in secular fundamentalist Turkey. The place of religious symbols in public sphere, whether it is Hijaab (Muslim headscarf) in French public schools or the Ten Commandments in American courts, remains contested primarily because there is no consensus on the exclusion of religion from public sphere anywhere. As I pen these reflections in December 2007, religion is playing a major role in Western politics. Tony Blair the former Prime Minister of Britain has converted to Catholicism, an event much delayed to prevent a constitutional crisis, because as PM he was responsible for determining who lead the Anglican Church, the established Church of England and it would do for the PM to belong to any other religion. The event is also highlighting that due to recent immigration, Anglican Church (853,000) now has fewer Dialogue on Religion and American Politics (Washington Dc: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp active followers than Catholics (862,000) and commentators wonder what will happen when an if the state religion became a minority in Britain. The Act of settlement (1701 AD) makes the British state a protestant monarchy and now it is open for redefinition as Britain becomes a Catholic majority state. 4 Not only does religion play a role in politics, but politicization of religion is also a common occurrence. The use of the gay marriage issue by Republicans in Presidential elections of 2004, and the repeated references to personal faith by candidates of both parties in the current (2007) election cycle underscores the continuing political salience of religion in the modern West. I have noticed that often, American politicians try to couch their religious motivations in secular terms while advocating specific policies. A very good example is the unyielding support for Israel and Israel s occupation of Palestinian territories among certain Republican politicians with Christian Evangelical connections. While they support it for Biblical reasons they justify it by arguing that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. I often wonder if their support for Israel will 4 See William Rees-Mogg, A Catholic Tremor through Westminster, The Times, December 24, On the www william_rees_mogg/article ece. 4

6 stop if Israel became less democratic, or it can be shown that millions of people within Israel s borders do not enjoy basic democratic rights. In the Muslim world on the contrary, legitimacy comes from Islam and therefore many politicians justify material motivations using Islamic cover 5. While religious politicians in the West often use secular discourse for legitimacy, Muslim politicians deliberately Islamize mundane issues for the same reason. Religion in the West lacks legitimacy in the public sphere and must therefore be concealed, in the Muslim World all legitimacy derives from Islam hence Islam is used as a justification for politics. There are two reasons why religion and politics are intertwined. 6 The first is the increasing use of complex discourses for the purpose of legitimization. Today all politicians seem to follow the Machiavellian dictum it is not important to be just, it is important to be seen to be just and therefore politicians and political parties and regimes produce discourses to legitimize their goals and 5 M. A. Muqtedar Khan, The Political Philosophy of Islamic Resurgence, Cultural Dynamics, 13 2, (Summer 2001), pp A similar argument is made by Dwitt B. Billings and Shaunna L. Scott, Religion and Political Legitimation, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 20 (1994), pp strategies. It is in the production of these discourses that religion either underpins political logic are camouflages politic motivations, depending upon the cultural context. The second reason and perhaps the most important reason why religion will always play a role in crucial issues is the important role that religion plays in identity formation. All political issues that are important eventually affect individual and collective identity and in the process trigger religious sentiments. As long as religion plays a role in the identities of people, it will play a role in politics. The contemporary European experience of and obsession with secularism is a tiny departure from the course of human history. Moreover European distaste for religion in politics does not derive from religion sui generis, but from its experience with a particular manifestation of religion the Catholic Church. On the contrary, Islam for Muslims and for many non-muslim chroniclers has contributed to the development of pluralism, religious tolerance and communal harmony. The golden age of Andalus and the period of the Mughal Empire in India are two widely cited examples of how Islam is potentially capable of providing the infrastructure for 5

7 society where pluralism and tolerance triumph. Even the discourse of the war on terror acknowledges that liberal Islam, with its emphasis on enlightenment, peace and tolerance, is the antidote to the rise of terrorism and sectarian violence in some Muslim societies today. 7 Islam is the sole source of moral philosophy in most Muslim societies and envisioning a polity without Islamic values would amount to politics without morality or ethics 8. Unlike the Europeans who can invoke the tradition of enlightenment, Muslims do not have an alternate claim to civilization other than Islam hence all that is good, both secular and sacred derives necessarily from Islam. In addition the two different ideas of Christianity and Christendom merge into one under the umbrella of Islam and conceptually the mundane and the moral become inseparable. In traditional Muslim societies, nationalism has become potent force and tribalism still retains its influence and therefore Muslims are able to imagine 7 M. A. Muqtedar Khan, Radical Islam, Liberal Islam, Current History, Vol. 102, No: 668 (December, 2003), pp M. A. Muqtedar Khan, Islam as an Ethical Tradition of International Relations, Islam and Christian- Muslim Relations, 8, 2, (Summer 1997), themselves as Pakistanis, Iraqis, Iranians etcetera and also think of themselves in tribal terms. These sources of identity provide some secular basis for the construction of the self in Muslim narratives. But when Muslims migrate to the West, where their ethnic and racial differences are highlighted through institutional forms of discrimination, Islam becomes the most important source of identity marker and the vehicle that connects their past (in the Muslim World) to their future (in the West). Muslims in Europe and America are still negotiating their place within the dominant political philosophical narratives of the West. The presence of a hostile narrative the clash of civilizations discourse that demonizes Islam and posits it as a threat and even an enemy contributes to the politicization of Islam and hence brings Islam into politics despite all claims to secularity that European intellectuals may invoke. 9 Assertive Muslim presence and rapid growth of Islam in Europe and the constant invocation of Islam in the political discourses has exposed the thinness of European institutional secularism. The limits of tolerance are being tested on a daily basis as 9 For a more detailed understanding of views on how Islam is influencing European polity and culture see M. A. Muqtedar Khan, Islam and the New Europe: The Remaking of a Civilization, in Global Dialogue, Spring

8 Muslims and Christians jockey for position; Muslims seeking a more equal status, Europeans resisting the need to restructure their own institutions and instead demanding a lesser assertive Muslim presence (assimilation). The current debates on the so called decline of secular order is essentially an effort to come to terms with the need to renegotiate the state-christianity alliance in the West as new religions become more visible. Author Bio M. A. Muqtedar Khan is Associate Professor and Director of Islamic Studies at University of Delaware. He is a Fellow of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He is the author of American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom (Amana, 2002), Jihad for Jerusalem: Identity and Strategy in International Relations (Praeger, 2004) and Islamic Democratic Discourse (Lexington Books, 2006). His most recent book is Debating Moderate Islam: the Geopolitics of Islam and the West (University of Utah Press, 2007). BIBLIOGRAPHY Alba, Richard and Nancy Foner, Could it Happen Here? The Nation, October 17, on the WWW at Khan, M. A. Muqtedar, The Myth of Secularism, in E.J. Dionne Jr., Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Kayla M. Drogosz (Eds.), One Electorate under God? A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics (Washington Dc: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp Reese-Mog, William, A Catholic Tremor through Westminster, The Times, December 24, Khan, M. A. Muqtedar, The Political Philosophy of Islamic Resurgence, Cultural Dynamics, 13 2, (Summer 2001), pp Billings, Dwight, and Shaunna L. Scott, Religion and Political Legitimation, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 20 (1994), pp

9 Khan, M. A. Muqtedar, Radical Islam, Liberal Islam, Current History, Vol. 102, No: 668 (December, 2003), pp Khan, M. A. Muqtedar, Islam as an Ethical Tradition of International Relations, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 8, 2, (Summer 1997), Khan, M. A. Muqtedar, Islam and the New Europe: The Remaking of a Civilization, in Global Dialogue, Spring