Islam and Political-Cultural Europe

W. Cole Durham, Tore Lindholm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409452997
• eBook ISBN: 9781317112594
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamische Theologie

Islam and Political-Cultural Europe identifies the sometimes confusing and often contentious new challenges that arise in daily life and institutions as Islam settles deeper into Europe. Critiquing past and recent assimilation efforts in the fields of education, finance, and security, the contributors offer prospective solutions to diverse contemporary problems. Exploring the interactions of Muslim, Christian and secular cultures in the context of highly pluralized contemporary European societies, this book offers a valuable tool for those within and outside Europe seeking to understand the far-reaching implications of combining cultures, the struggles of the Muslim-Christian-secular transition, and the progress which the future promises.

PART I
Islam and Legal and Political Culture in European Society: An Overview

Chapter 1
Liberal Secularism and European Islam: A Challenge to Muslims and Non-Muslims

Heiner Bielefeldt

A Contentious Concept

Few political concepts have been subjected to more contentious interpretations than the term “secularism.” This is due not only to the long and complicated history of that concept,¹ but also to the fact that for a period of more than a century positive or negative attitudes towards secularism used to mark the watershed between conflicting political and ideological camps in Western European societies. Whereas some associated the process of political secularization with civilizational progress and liberation from religious authoritarianism, others feared a general loss of traditional religious values in society or even the advent of an era of nihilism. During the German “Kulturkampf,” which peaked in the 1870s, the concept of secularism functioned as the “Shibboleth” between the fighting movements of liberal nationalism and political Catholicism, as Hermann Lübbe has pointed out. Similar ideological battles occurred in other European countries as well, most notably in France, a country which during the nineteenth century was heavily torn between the Catholic tradition and the anti-clerical heritage of parts of the French enlightenment.²

In the course of the twentieth century, the situation changed considerably as political secularism became more and more commonly accepted as an inherent part of the self-description and self-understanding of European political culture. It is meanwhile largely supported by mainstream Christian churches as well. And yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the concept of secularism has altogether lost its function as a marker of a particular political identity. What has in fact changed is that, instead of serving to distinguish ideological and political camps within Western European societies, secularism is now often invoked to define Western political culture as a whole. At times, this leads to placing the “secularized West” in a more or less irreconcilable antagonism to “non-Western” political cultures based on religious values and norms. For instance, in Samuel Huntington’s global political map, the secular state is located as an exclusive characteristic of what he calls “the Western civilization,” which thereby supposedly differs essentially from other civilizations, most notably Islam.³ Naturally, such a point of view—which, incidentally, is shared by quite a number of Muslim authors as well—has disturbing consequences for European Muslims, because it seems to preclude them from the very possibility of integrating into the cultural and political framework of European constitutions.

The purpose of this chapter is to form a non-polemical, “liberal” understanding of political secularism based on freedom of religion or belief. I will point out that secularism is indeed a significant component of a European liberal democratic political order. To preserve its liberal nature, however, political secularism must be clearly distinguished, first, from various secular “doctrines” and, second, from cultural essentialist claims of secularism being an exclusively “Occidental” (or Christian) achievement. Subsequently, I will give examples of an appreciation of political secularism from religious perspectives, including Islamic perspectives.

The Liberal Concept of Political Secularism

The Secular Principle of Respectful Non-Identification

In modern liberal democracies secularism has the status of a second order principle. This is to say that, rather than constituting a purpose in itself, political secularism derives from a more important (first order) principle, namely freedom of religion or belief, which itself has received international recognition as a universal human right.⁴ Bearing this sequence in mind is important for preserving the liberal essence of political secularism against ideologies which take secularism as the paramount principle to which even freedom of religion or belief or other human rights are to be subjected.

Against a typical misunderstanding, it should further be noted that, as a human right, freedom of religion or belief is not confined to any particular domain of human life, say, the private sphere or the realm of inner conviction. Beyond the rights to choose, change and have a personal inner conviction, freedom of religion or belief includes everybody’s right to shape their lives in conformity with the requirements of their religious or non-religious belief systems, provided this does not infringe on the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.⁵ Living in accordance with one’s religion or belief, however, in most cases involves aspects of communitarian and public life, such as forming and joining religious communities or conducting public processions, that is, external manifestations of a conviction which also fall into the field of freedom of religion or belief.⁶

Moreover, since all human rights express respect for the equal dignity and rights of all human beings,⁷ freedom of religion or belief also includes a concern for equality. This implies, among other requirements, that states should ensure that people of different religious or non-religious backgrounds enjoy equal rights and have equal opportunities to participate in public debates or hold political positions. It is for this reason that the state should not use and favor any particular religion (or set of religions, for example, monotheistic religions in general) as the normative basis of its political order. In other words, the state is required not to identify with any religion, which means that its order should be secular.⁸ The secular principle of non-identification of state and religion thus derives from the more general human rights principle of non-discrimination, which itself follows from the equality in dignity and fundamental rights of all human beings.

Since it is out of respect for the religious or non-religious convictions of the citizens that the secular state refrains from taking a particular religion as the basis of the political order, political secularism has a substantial moral basis in freedom of religion or belief. Conservative critics, such as Carl Schmitt, are therefore wrong in describing the secular state in purely negative terms as the result of the modern “age of neutralization,”⁹ in which religious and moral values, as Schmitt argues, have ceased to play a role in public life. Rather than aiming at a neutralization or privatization of religious values, political secularism is a second order consequence of freedom of religion or belief which itself points to the due respect for every person’s equal dignity, a first order normative requirement on which the constitution of a secular democracy is ultimately based. The secular principle of non-identification should be appreciated as deriving from a genuinely moral concern. That is why it can be further qualified as a “principle of respectful non-identification” of state and religion.

Religion and Politics in Secular Democracy

Political secularism has often been misunderstood as implying a general privatization of religions. By taking freedom of religion or belief as the basis for an understanding of political secularism, it is possible to overcome that misconception, because freedom of religion or belief no doubt includes the right of persons and groups of individuals to publicly manifest their convictions and to participate in public debates. Thus, the possibility for religious communities to present themselves in the public sphere is not only in accordance with political secularism, it follows indeed from the very principle on which secularism, as a liberal concept, is based.¹⁰ In addition, assuming that in a modern democracy the public sphere is the place in which politics take place, it has been argued that religious communities, being part of a society’s public life, also enjoy the right to participate in politics.¹¹

Indeed, what political secularism requires is not an abstract separation of religion and politics, but a clear separation of church (or any religious community) and state. This clarification proves highly important. People who, in the name of secularism, call for a general separation of religion and politics or a privatization of religions or beliefs, possibly pave the way to a de facto marginalization of religion, which some want to be completely banned from the public sphere. Such a policy, however, would ultimately run counter to the liberal concept of political secularism and could amount to an undue restriction of freedom of religion or belief.

Separation of religion and state has a liberating effect for both sides: It gives religious communities their independence from unwanted state intervention, and it makes it possible for people across religious boundaries to enjoy their human rights without discrimination on religious grounds. Incidentally, such institutional separation does not preclude all forms of cooperation between state and religious communities, as long as the mutual independence of both sides remains uncompromised. Take the German example: Although in Germany an “established religion” does not exist,¹² a tradition of close cooperation between the state and some religious communities continues to be comparatively strong. Such cooperation is not per se a violation of the principle of respectful non-identification, provided it remains fair and inclusive, a provision which is not easy to fulfill.¹³

Anti-liberal Concepts of Secularism

Doctrinal Secularism

If we assume that political secularism is a second order principle based on respect for freedom of religion or belief, it follows that secularism cannot constitute a comprehensive belief system of its own.¹⁴ Indeed, political secularism, in its liberal understanding, clearly differs from various secular doctrines, most of which emerged in the nineteenth century when secularism was often propagated as a quasi-religious, post-religious or anti-religious weltanschauung, historically superior to traditional religions. For instance, the “Secular Society” founded in London in the mid-nineteenth century, and the “German Association for Ethical Culture” established a few decades later, devoted themselves to a secularist missionary work comparable in its purpose and structure to the missionary work of the Christian churches. The fact that the “Monistenbund,” a group of secularist-minded people headed by Darwin’s ardent disciple Ernst Haeckel, published their own “Monist Sunday Sermons,” reveals the quasi-religious claims of this comprehensive secularist weltanschauung. One of the most prominent examples of doctrinal secularism is Auguste Comte’s vision of a new positivistic “Religion of Humanity” (1851). Comte demands that scientifically trained sociologists work as “priests of humanity” and form a quasi-clerical secular hierarchy in order to propagate the post-Christian Trinitarian creed of “love, order and progress.”¹⁵ What is problematic from a human rights perspective is that Comte wants to actively involve the state apparatus for the purpose of implementing his world view. Indeed, his political goal of bringing about a “sociocratic” unity of the state and the new secular doctrine mirrors the “theocratic” ideal of the French Catholic counter-revolution, an ideal to which Comte extended respect and admiration, although he, at the same time, aspired to overcome Catholicism and traditional religion in general. Expressing a technocratic and authoritarian ideology, Comte’s doctrinal secularism is the opposite of the liberal concept of political secularism. For all his progressive rhetoric, Comte’s post-religious ideology is in fact anti-liberal. It is designed to replace supposedly “subversive” human rights with a codex of universally binding duties, and to submit the individual to the worship of the collective whole of humanity.

Relics of the nineteenth-century type of doctrinal secularism continue to play a role in contemporary political debates on religious issues. In Germany and other Western European countries, such tendencies most notably occur in current controversies about Islam. For instance, politicians opposing the spread of Islam and its visible symbols in European societies often invoke the secular nature of the state as an argument to reject demands for an active participation of Muslims in the public sphere. Some go even farther by demanding that the public sphere be generally free from religious symbols. In that context, the notion of secularism can take on a more or less obvious authoritarian flavor.

The existence, past and present, of different forms of doctrinal secularism constitutes a major source of confusion in the controversy about the secular nature of the modern liberal state. In the interest of clarity, it is all the more important to keep the two concepts of secularism strictly apart. Whereas some forms of doctrinal secularism, such as Comte’s positivism, aspire to overcome religion altogether by placing themselves at the same time in the stead of religious traditions, the liberal-secular principle of respectful non-identification of the state with any particular religion or belief aims at facilitating equal freedom and participation for all individuals in a religiously and philosophically pluralistic democratic society. It is a political fairness principle in dealing with modern diversity and pluralism. Far from purging the public space of religious manifestations, political secularism further opens up opportunities for religious or belief communities to present themselves in the public realm and participate in general political debates.

Cultural “Occidentalization” of Political Secularism

As far as we know, secular constitutions were historically first established in North America and Western Europe. Hence it is quite natural to assume that the history of secularism in the West has something to do with the dominant religious and cultural traditions of the West, including above all the tradition of Christianity. Elements within Christianity which, in one way or another, are often said to have fostered the development of secular political constitutions include the Protestant critique of political clericalism, the conceptual distinction between “spiritual” and “temporal” authorities as it was worked out in the aftermath of the medieval Investiture Contest. The most frequently cited quotation in this context, however, is the words of Jesus: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”¹⁶ This Biblical verse has often been invoked as the decisive “root” of what later developed into the separation of state and church.

However, without denying the significance of these and other elements of the Christian tradition within the historical development of political secularism, it would be problematic to turn them into indispensable cultural preconditions of modern secular constitutions. The history of political secularism cannot be appropriately described, in quasi-biological terms, as the process of a ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Islam and Legal and Political Culture in European Society: An Overview
• Part II Law and Politics: Country Case Studies
• Part III Education and Finance
• Part IV Extremism and Security
• Bibliography
• Index