STATE AND SECULARISM: SOME ASIAN PERSPECTIVES
Home State and Secularism: Some Asian Perspectives
editors
Michael Heng Siam-Heng Ten Chin Liew
National University of Singapore, Singapore
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STATE AND SECULARISM: PERSPECTIVES FROM ASIA
Copyright © 2010 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
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December 16, 2009
Preface
About 15 months ago, several of us got together to discuss the prospects of a cultural and intellectual rejuvenation of Asia. It is an idea that has been circulating around for some time, known popularly as Asian Renaissance. It has attracted new interest lately with the emergence of China and India, following that of Japan, as new economic powers. Such a rise is affecting the global balance of economic and political powers — a point made all the more evident by the ongoing financial crisis. However, the rise of Asia is likely to exert an even more enduring influence if it is accompanied by a cultural and intellectual rejuvenation. We formed a small study group and chose Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian as a starting text. In the midst of this, we were drawn to the complex nature of the issue of state and secularism. It is an issue that holds great relevance for a number of Asian countries. We decided to widen the scope of discussion to include scholars from other Asian countries and preferably one or two from outside Asia. We were fortunate enough to be able to bring together a group of contributors from Bangladesh, China, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Singapore to share their thoughts in a two-day workshop on 25–26 November 2008. They are scholars and social activists with diverse backgrounds — sociology, political science, philosophy, religion, law, and history — and their diverse backgrounds are reflected in the chapters of this volume. This has its pluses and minuses, and we believe different readers will form their own lists of the strengths and weaknesses inherent in such diversity. The diversity presented some difficulties in finding an overarching framework to the book and has therefore played a part in influencing our presentation of the chapters. We have departed from the normal practice of
writing an introductory chapter which contains a summary of the various papers. Instead, each chapter has a brief abstract, and we hope the reader will take the trouble to thumb through the book to pick and choose what catches his or her attention. We would like to thank the Lee Foundation and the Asia-Europe Foundation for sponsoring the workshop. We are also indebted to Professor Wang Gungwu, Mr. Chew Kheng Chuan, Mr. Bertrand Ford, Professor Zheng Yongnian and Professor Yang Dali for their encouragement, support and guidance. No workshop can be held without the authors, and we would like to record our gratitude to all the contributors. In bringing out this volume, we are fortunate to have the cooperation of our publisher, World Scientific. We would like to record here our appreciation for the patience and professional assistance of Ms. Yvonne Tan. Michael Heng Siam-Heng and Ten Chin Liew April 2009
December 16, 2009
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Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .v
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Chapter 1: An East Asian Perspective on Religion and Secularism . Prasenjit Duara
Chapter 2: Secularism and Its Limits . . .Ten Chin Liew
Chapter 3: The Secular State and Its Challenges . . Michael Heng Siam-Heng
Chapter 4: Rawlsian Liberalism, Secularism, and the Call for Cosmopolitanism . . .. . . . Saranindranath Tagore
Chapter 5: The Machiavellian Problem and Liberal Secularism . . . Benjamin Wong Chapter 6: Secularism, Critical Conviction and the 21st Century Project of the European Union: Some Thoughts from Asia .. . . . . . . . . Barnard Turner
Chapter 7: Secular Religiosity in Chinese Politics: A Confucian Perspective. . Tan Sor Hoon
Chapter 8: State and Secularism, the French Laïcité System . . . . . . Anne-Cécile Robert and Henri Peña-Ruiz
Chapter 9: Secularism and the Constitution: Striking the Right Balance . . Kevin Y. L. Tan
Chapter 10: Secularism and Vaidic Worldview . . . . . . .. . Swami Agnivesh
Chapter 11: Secularism in India — A Minority Perspective . Asghar Ali Engineer
Chapter 12: The Pakistan Islamic State Project: A Secular Critique . Ishtiaq Ahmed
Chapter 13: State and Secularism in Bangladesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Habibul
Chapter 14: The State, Egyptian Intellectuals, Intolerance and Religious Discourse . . Mona Abaza
Chapter 15: Perda, Fatwa and the Challenge to Secular Citizenship in Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robertus Robet
Chapter 16: Malaysia: Multicultural Society, Islamic State, or What? . . . Johan Saravanamuttu
Chapter 17: Religious Revival and the Emerging Secularism in China . . Zhao Litao
Chapter 18: State and Religion in Turkey: Which Secularism? . . . Recep S¸ entürk
Chapter 19: Pragmatic Secularism, Civil Religion, and Political Legitimacy in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kenneth Paul Tan
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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List of Contributors
Mona ABAZA, Associate Professor and Chair of Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Egyptology and Psychology at the American University, Cairo, Egypt Swami AGNIVESH, Founder and Chairman, Bonded Labour Liberation Front (Bandhua Mukti Morcha); and Chairperson of the UN Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery from 1994 to 2004 Ishtiaq AHMED, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, and Visiting Research Professor, South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore Prasenjit DUARA, Raffles Professor of Humanities, and Director of Research, Humanities and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore Asghar Ali ENGINEER, Chairman, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, India; and author of over 40 books Michael HENG Siam-Heng, Senior Research Fellow, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore Habibul Haque KHONDKER, Professor, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE Henri PEÑA-RUIZ, Professor, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, France
Anne-Cécile ROBERT, Deputy Chief Editor, Le Monde Diplomatique; and Professor, The European Institute of Paris 8 University, France Robertus ROBET, Director of Association for Democratic Education; and lecturer of sociology at Jakarta National University, Indonesia Johan SARAVANAMUTTU, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore Recep SENTÜRK, ¸ Professor of Sociology, Fatih University, Turkey; and Research Fellow, Center for Islamic Studies, Istanbul, Turkey Saranindranath TAGORE, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, National University of Singapore Kenneth Paul TAN, Associate Professor and Assistant Dean (Academic Affairs), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore Kevin Y. L. TAN, Professor (Adjunct), Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore TAN Sor Hoon, Associate Professor and Head, Department of Philosophy, National University of Singapore TEN Chin Liew, Professor, Department of Philosophy, National University of Singapore Barnard TURNER, Senior Fellow, EU Centre, Singapore; and Visiting Senior Fellow, Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore Benjamin WONG, Associate Professor, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore ZHAO Litao, Research Fellow, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore
December 16, 2009
PRASENJIT DUARA
A project on state and secularism in Singapore must, it seems, inescapably create a canvas upon a palimpsest. In these opening remarks, I am going to talk less about the state in the title than about the very division of the secular from the religious. Our first task is to see religion and secularism not as a given division but dynamically co-constitutive, constantly shaping and re-shaping the other. Second, this co-constitution or what I call “traffic” of the shaping and reshaping will have to consider the original division in the West as one very important source. But the conceptual sociology of this traffic will have to come largely from the empirical evidence of Asian societies. In other words, the framework will require: (1) the historical impact of the global — heretofore, largely Western — history of secularization and Protestantization of Asian societies; (2) the historical relations of the cosmological transcendent and the everyday in our societies; and (3) contemporary imperatives — often from the state — to drive something as religious versus secular. 1
This historical-sociological framework also enables us to grasp the roles and relationships between the religious and the secular in the 20th century within a comparative framework. It is particularly useful to grasp Asian and non-Western societies which responded to the emergent notions of “religion”, “secularism” and “nation”, but were often dominated by nonmonotheistic religions or cosmologies. I am a specialist of East Asia, but another part of the world with which I am somewhat familiar is the Indian sub-continent. The South Asian re-organization of the religious and the secular from the late 19th century seems, at first blush, to be radically different from the East Asian case. Yet, when we explore the underlying “traffic” between religious and secular ideas — particularly in the area of modern religious and national subjectivity — the situation becomes much more comparable. Here, I want to focus on some conceptual issues deriving from the case of China to see if we can come up with some comparabilities. My point of departure is the work of Talal Asad. Asad has defied a universal definition of religion. He has argued that the very idea of religion itself is a modern Western invention in delineating and reifying a separate sphere. In a recent study of secularism, he develops the obverse side of this argument. He tries to show how secularism has occupied many different meanings within Western society itself and thus underscores the instability of this division (Asad 1993). It is obviously meaningless to talk about whether or not religion existed in history; it has everything to do with how one defines the term. Martin Riesebrodt has suggested that it is possible to consider religion as a category throughout most of history and he explores this recognition through a process that he calls “referential legitimation.” Thus, when the Moghul emperor Akbar assembled the different leaders and thinkers from different traditions in his Din Ilahi, he was recognizing the common referents (Riesebrodt 2003). Confucianism is, of course, notoriously difficult to define as a religion if we use metaphysical criteria since Confucius was a selfdeclared agnostic. But Riesebrodt’s method of referential legitimation works well here to show that Confucians did recognize a class of activities and ideas from Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, etc., that indicated that they were working at least partially with an idea of religion. Thus, when Yongzheng disputed the Jesuits, he recognized the common ground and argued that
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Jesus was an effort to embody tian in a human incarnation. This much is true and we have to consider the limits of Asad’s assertion. However, we see a breakdown of referential legitimation during the modern period with the rise of science as the principle of cosmological legitimation. Take again the case of China. Even until the late 19th century, Western scientific knowledge, first brought in by the Jesuits, was seen to have its origins in classical China. In Chinese historiography, this tendency is known as the “Chinese origins of Western science.” Recently, Hu Minghui has shown how Jesuit scientific cosmography was absorbed by neo-Confucians by framing it within Chinese cosmology. This was not simply a way of nationalizing science, but bringing it within the Chinese moral and religious purview and utilizing it often for ritual purposes (e.g., modern astronomical knowledge to understand the will of heaven). While many Confucians were engaged in this way of appropriating science, others such as the anti-reformist Wo Ren warned that the spread of mathematical knowledge among Chinese literati youth in the later part of the 19th century would drive them into the arms of Christianity! In retrospect, Wo Ren’s mistake was to regard science as part of the Christian cosmology or somehow regard them as integral to each other. But while we may think of this as a historical mistake — which was to be more than cleared up during the May 4th movement — he was to some extent led into thinking so by the missionaries who not only made such claims, but occupied powerful positions in the translation and education agencies that brought modern scientific knowledge into China. Indeed, we can see the missionary effort itself as a means of affiliating Christianity with the emergent legitimacy of science. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Confucian thinkers came to believe that unless China had a national religion and science (like Japan and the West), it would not be able to build a modern nation-state. The larger point I am trying to make here is that historical figures “mis-referencing” science as religion were not necessarily stupid. We could make the argument that the assumptions of science do occupy the same realm of categories as religion; that science does indeed make cosmological claims. Science as cosmology differentiates itself categorically from other cosmologies by its claims to demonstrable proof. Historically, however, the categorical separation of science from religion was tremendously
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consequential. The older cosmologies were replaced by science in most spheres as the locus of cosmological authority and were hived off as religions that were sought to be contained in their own domains. To be sure, this re-definition of the referential logic of religion had to be learnt — with mixed results — all over the world, but as José Casanova has persuasively argued, it did have an objective grounding in the institutional differentiation of religion — what he means by secularization — from political and economic domains all over the world. What Casanova denies is that this differentiation necessarily led to either the decline of religious belief or the privatization of religion, which happened to accompany institutional differentiation only in Western Europe. What he calls “de-privatization” and Bruce Lincoln (2003) calls the “maximizing” urge among some religions — on two sides of the de-secularizing spectrum — refer more or less to the effort of religious advocates to expand or transgress their assigned domains (Casanova 1994). The history of the religious-secular division in the world outlined above is one that I agree with, but it is not sufficient. I do not only mean that we have to take account of historical circumstances in different parts of the world, including the historical relations between states and religions, but the narrative itself represents largely the more visible part of the transformations, particularly the separation and de-separation of religion and the secular at the level of constitutions, laws and institutions. I want to draw attention here to a less visible, pre-reflexive traffic of practices and ideas between what we call the secular and the religious. The message I take from Asad is not that there was no “religious” phenomena in pre-modern societies, but that there was what we might call a “cosmological fusion” of these phenomena with politics, society, knowledge and perhaps even technology. The separate institutionalization of “religion” together with allied concepts such as “differentiation”, “secularization”, “disenchantment”, “privatization” and a host of different modes of unraveling may, in an initial moment, be usefully likened to the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory holds that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition (cosmic egg) and continues to expand to this day. What is useful about this model is that it sees the unraveling as a process of expansion and production that is based o
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those initial conditions. Similarly, I argue that religious elements from the cosmological fusion — as embodied yearnings, ideas and imperatives — scatter and combine dynamically with other institutions and ideas even as religion is constituted as a separate domain of life. For instance, we have not fully grasped the significance of the fact that both Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek were Christians (Thomson 1969). The notions of religious subjectivity and citizenship were deeply interconnected especially in the way Chiang conducted the New Life movement. But let me give an example from a less famous leader in Republican China. I was reading passages from the autobiography of Feng Yuxiang, the Christian general who would baptize the troops by using a hose. Most striking here was not any deepfelt sense of religiosity or conversion experience. Nor was it instrumental. Rather, Christianity suggested to Feng ways to be a good person according to the social circumstances of the day; indeed, one might say, how to be a good citizen. Not only were the Christian people he knew non-opium smokers and ethical do-gooders, they also had an upright sense of their self — not subservient especially to imperialist authorities. He provides an example of a foreign pastor who arrived to deliver a sermon at Feng’s cantonment. Accustomed to his extraterritorial rights in China, the pastor was mightily offended by Feng’s Christian soldier guards’ efforts to inspect his bags. However, Feng notes that the guards were neither enraged (read “Boxers”) nor subservient (to imperialists), but were principled about national sovereignty. He was very proud of that (Feng 2002). The program of inquiry that we might launch includes several questions that we can apply to this pre-reflexive traffic which constantly re-constitutes the meaning of a religious subject and a modern citizen. This traffic itself is fed by globally circulating models such as the Red Cross, global Buddhism, new religions, etc. (1) How do globally circulating conceptions of religious citizenship articulate with historical traditions in Asia of religious autonomy and domination? (2) How can we think about the relationship between the new model of citizen subjectivity that intersects with old and new models of religious subjectivity?
(3) To what extent do religion and the religious subject become subordinated to the national project and subsumed by national and nationalist goals? How does the new globalization affect the nation-state’s power over religious globalization and strengthening alternative bases of authority?
REFERENCES
Asad, Talal (1993). Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Casanova, Jose (1994). Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Feng, Yuxiang (2002). Feng Yuxiang Zizhuan (Autobiography of Feng Yuxiang). Beijing: Jie fang jun wen yi chu ban she. Lincoln, Bruce (2003). Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Riesebrodt, Martin (2003). Religion: Just Another Modern Western Construction? http:// martycenter.uchicago.edu/webforum/122003/riesebrodtessay.pdf. Thomson, James C. (1969). While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928–1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Chapter 2 Secularism and Its Limits
TEN CHIN LIEW
It is often thought, not just by religious people, that secularism is opposed to religion. This view is based on a failure to distinguish between different versions of secularism. Perspectival secularism is indeed hostile to religion. It provides a comprehensive outlook, a way of looking at the world, which is an alternative to religious perspectives in that it finds no place for the God of traditional religions or the afterlife. The secular perspective regards itself as superior to all religious outlooks, which will eventually disappear. It is this claim of perspectival secularism that religious believers strongly resist. But state secularism is a different view that defines the proper functions and limits of the state. It does not seek to eliminate religion, but to confine its scope and application in various ways and for various reasons. Some of the advocates of state secularism are themselves religious. Historically and conceptually, religion and state secularism have been, or can be, allies. Both religious and secular perspectives can provide support for state secularism, while continuing to compete within the limits set by the demands of state secularism.
In trying to understand the relationship between religion and secularism, we would need to distinguish between state secularism, which is a doctrine about the proper functions and limits of the state, and secularism as a perspective for looking at the world and human relationships. State secularism prohibits the state from enforcing purely religious rights and duties. All citizens are treated equally, and allowed to practice their respective religions without harm to others, or to lead lives free from religious obligations they have not voluntarily accepted. Perspectival secularism, as I shall call it, is opposed to religion, at least to those religions based on belief in God and the afterlife. It seeks to provide an alternative outlook to the religious. In so doing, it 7
is comprehensive in its coverage, and sees itself as replacing the traditional religions in human life. In the 19th century, August Comte (1798–1857) provided one vivid example of the secularist perspective, which included his Religion of Humanity. This influenced the great liberal philosopher, John Stuart Mill (1806– 1873), who elaborated on the virtues of the Religion in his posthumously published essay, Utility of Religion (Mill, CW, x, pp. 403–438). The Religion of Humanity has no place for the supernatural, focusing entirely on the human condition in this life. Mill acknowledged that the traditional religions were like poetry in offering human beings something “grander and more beautiful” than what they can find in “the prose of human life”. But he argued that, although an individual human life is short, our “elevated feelings” and higher aspirations can attach themselves to the indefinitely long life of the human species. By cultivating a concern for the unity of humanity, we find something that can serve the important function of traditional religions, and which therefore may be called by the name of religion, even though it does not postulate any existence beyond this world. Indeed, Mill argued that the Religion of Humanity was superior to the supernatural religions in that it does not extend the selfish element of human nature to cover our own posthumous interests. On the other hand, the absence of the afterlife is not a disadvantage. As the conditions of human life and the sources of human happiness improve, our interest in the afterlife will diminish. If we have lived a happy life, we are less likely to be afraid of death. Those who have led happy lives might find immortality, rather than annihilation, burdensome. But in another essay, Mill demurred with the hope, even though he suggests that this cannot be based on any rational expectation, that there would be an afterlife. It has been suggested that this hope was the product of his deep-seated longing to be reunited with his beloved and much-lamented wife who departed prematurely through illness. Comte’s secular perspective is not confined to the Religion of Humanity, but extends to a theory about the stages of intellectual development and an account of social reorganization. For him, religious belief has a role in the earlier stage of intellectual development that will be replaced by a more enlightened stage. There are three successive stages of intellectual development. In the first theological stage, observable phenomena are regarded as the effects of supernatural agents. Then at the second
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metaphysical stage, abstract forces replace supernatural agents as the causes of phenomena. At the final positive stage, phenomena are explained in terms of general laws which connect them with a single general fact. According to Comte, social reconstruction is to proceed by cultivating benevolent emotions and eliminating those self-interested desires which are not directed at the good of others. In the reconstructed society, there will be an intellectual priesthood in charge of social and educational arrangements. Various other groups in the hierarchical social structure will have different roles, which Comte spelt out in detail. Mill’s general enthusiasm for Comte’s secular perspective and for his Religion of Humanity did not extend to Comte’s moral and political system and its institutional structures (Mill, CW, x, pp. 263–368). In a letter, he complained to his wife Harriet Taylor that Comte’s project of social reform would result in liberticide (Mill, CW, xiv, p. 294). It was in part this fear of Comte’s system that led him to write his famous essay, On Liberty. In that passionate and sustained defence of individual liberty against the tyranny of the majority (and indeed also of the minority), Mill slated Comte’s social system as establishing “a despotism of society over the individual”. The kind of “spiritual domination” that Comte advocated was, for Mill, no different from that imposed by “churches and sects”. In other words, Comte’s system was in the end just another unacceptable sectarian system, inimical to the cause of individual freedom and toleration of diversity (Mill, CW, xviii, p. 227). A brief examination of Mill’s anti-Comtian case for individual liberty will help to understand how a secular perspective, such as Mill’s which is non-comprehensive, can find room for a whole range of different views and lifestyles, including religious ones. Comte believed that once you acquire the truth about religious matters, then this truth is to be established socially, if not politically with the power of the state. But Mill recognized that the social tyranny of organized public opinion can be even more oppressive than political suppression by coercive laws, as it penetrates deeper into people’s convictions. For Mill, social and political conditions have to be made conducive for individuals to freely pursue their own conceptions of worthwhile human lives. So while, like Comte, he himself accepted the Religion of Humanity as against supernatural religions, unlike Comte, he wanted to keep the channels of communication and discussion free and
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open to a variety of opinions. The human mind must be capable of seeking out the truth. Ideas and ways of life have to compete with one another in an atmosphere of freedom. Without freedom of thought and discussion, the wrong ideas might go unchallenged. Even when correct ideas prevail, they would be accepted dogmatically, and without a proper understanding of their implications, rationale, or the considerations which count for or against them. Having correct ideas but without such understanding is bad, unworthy of beings who can rise to the dignity of thinking creatures, and also bad in the long run because they are sources of errors and impediments to new truths. As circumstances change, old ideas have to be reapplied to new contexts. Without understanding, they will be misapplied, and will block the entry of new and more relevant truths. The atmosphere of freedom provides the resources for people to make meaningful and authentic choices. It also gives them the opportunity and capacity to act on their choices, and to shape their lives accordingly. Intellectual progress is not seen, as it is by Comte, simply as the replacement of obscurantist ideas and prejudice-driven ways of life by more enlightened substitutes. Free choice is itself a crucial element of a desirable form of life. This opens the possibility for there to be, in certain areas, a plurality of conceptions of the good life, each suited to certain people under certain circumstances, but none applicable to all under all circumstances. Choice is, at most, a necessary condition for the good life. It is not sufficient. Nor need the choice be continuous, as it has to be compatible with the free adoption of commitments which bind us. Although Mill’s essay is not specifically directed to a defence of religious toleration, Mill explicitly builds his defence of individual freedom generally on the more widely recognized foundations of religious toleration. He believes that it is only in the religious sphere that we have acknowledged some sort of principled defence of freely chosen variety and difference, and the toleration, if not endorsement, of what we dislike or disapprove of. He sought to extend the principle of toleration and liberty to cover other areas of conduct. People should be left free to lead their lives in accordance with their own fundamental values so long as they do not cause harm to others or engage in conduct that is a public offensive nuisance. They should be free in the same way as they should be free to practise their respective religions, even when these religions are incompatible with the prevailing religious views.
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In Mill, therefore, we have an example of how someone from a secular perspective can defend individual liberty in the sphere of religion and elsewhere. Indeed, as it happened, that defence was invoked partly against a fellow secularist hostile to the claims of traditional religions and eager to see them fade away. Perhaps, at one time, Mill himself thought that a supernatural religious outlook would disappear in the world in which it freely confronts alternative, and more rationally plausible, outlooks. But whether the secular or the religious perspective triumphs, or whether both remain as permanent alternatives and competitors, should be left to the combined effects of a series of independent choices made by different individuals in an atmosphere of freedom. Certainly, neither the state nor society is justified in using coercive laws or “spiritual domination” in order to ensure that a favored religion wins, and is imposed on all. Left on their own, free from the oppressive powers of the state, and sometimes perhaps even in the face of the brutal exercise of such powers, religions have survived. Their imminent demise, as predicted by so many secular perspectives, remains resolutely premature. We shall now examine how conclusions similar to Mill’s were reached by some who adopted a religious perspective. A good example is John Locke (1632–1704), another classical liberal, but also a deeply committed Christian. (Recently, Martha Nussbaum has argued that another good Christian, Locke’s contemporary, Roger Williams, who migrated to the United States, also presented a sophisticated and persuasive case for liberty of conscience (Nussbaum, pp. 34–71).) Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration pleaded for toleration between different Christian groups. But the nature of his case for religious toleration, if accepted, would extend toleration to various nonChristian religions, as well as to atheists and agnostics. Locke himself did not always see it this way, and much has sometimes been made of his explicit exclusion of Roman Catholics and atheists from toleration. However, these exclusions are based on dubious empirical claims, extraneous to his general arguments for religious toleration. Those who reject his empirical claims, while accepting his general arguments, can consistently and more convincingly include both Catholics and atheists among the groups to be tolerated. Thus, Locke’s reason for excluding Catholics is that they owe their allegiance to a foreign power, the Pope in Rome. And the basis for excluding atheists is that they cannot be trusted to keep their promise to
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obey the laws of the state. Not believing in the afterlife, where they can be punished for misdeeds undetected in this life, they have no motivation to obey laws which they think they can break with impunity. But today we have no good evidence that Catholics and atheists are less likely to be good citizens of a secular state than those belonging to other churches and sects. We, therefore, have no good reason to accept Locke’s speculations about their general unreliability. Locke’s arguments for religious toleration are of various types, and of different strengths. Some of the arguments rest on the nature of religion or religious beliefs, as he sees them. Others depend on more general moral and political considerations. Thus, Locke maintains that Christianity is a peaceful and loving religion, and the use of force and persecution to promote it is incompatible with its true character. But more generally, Locke argues that coercion is ineffective in changing religious beliefs. Belief can only be changed by argument, evidence, and revelation. Coercion can only change people’s external conduct, but not their inner convictions, and without true belief, there can be no salvation. Locke’s argument here is not particularly persuasive, as coercion can be used to limit the sources of arguments and evidence available to citizens, and thereby influence, skew, or manipulate the formation of beliefs. But his argument, even if successful, is limited in scope as it does not apply to those forms of religious intolerance which are not directed at beliefs, but instead seek to suppress practices and conduct that reflect or embody unacceptable values. Another type of argument invokes Locke’s conception of the state. First, he maintains that the agents of the state are fallible, and if the state were allowed to enforce a religion, it might well enforce the wrong religion. Statecraft does not make people more knowledgeable about religious matters than others. The comparison Locke makes is between political rulers and the private individuals over whom they rule. But the argument is inconclusive if the only issue is the likelihood of discovering the religious truth, rather than Mill’s idea of understanding the rationale, implications, and proper application of a contentious view. Individuals are also fallible, and, in the absence of appropriate institutional arrangements, their fallibility can be more disabling than the fallibility of the state, which can rely on corrective resources denied to individuals. In a theocratic state, there is the significant resource of true believers and scholars who can extract the religious truth
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from the relevant holy book. The word of God is not fallible. So the argument from the fallibility of the state is likely to appeal only to members of minority religions, who do not accept the infallible authority of the majority’s holy book. The minority would want its conscience to be protected against the erroneous demands of the majority. Are there reasons internal to a religious outlook, whether it is that of the minority or the majority, for not allowing the state to control religious life? Locke provides a basis for the separation of the church and the state, in his view that the church, unlike the state, is a free and voluntary association. It should therefore be regulated by rules laid down and accepted by its own members, and not those imposed by outsiders. People who violate the rules of their voluntary association may be expelled, but they may not be punished by physical force, material deprivation, or loss of liberty. The power of such punishment falls solely within the province of the state. Nor should any religious body, or any private individual, have the power to punish or dictate the lives of non-members: “… no private person has any right in any manner to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church or religion” (Locke, p. 24). Although the state has the monopoly of the use of force, the scope of the application of force is limited to civil matters, and does not extend to the punishment of sins, or offences against religious rules. God has not given authority to the state, or to any person, “to compel anyone to his religion” (Locke, p. 18). Thus, “the care of souls” lies outside the jurisdiction of the state. An illuminating way in which Locke characterizes the separate spheres of church and state is in terms of different types of reasons for interference with the conduct of individuals, rather than in terms of a strict demarcation between different areas of conduct, described specifically or generally. State interference in one and the same area can be justified when done in order to promote certain interests, but unjustified when the rationale is different. Locke famously used the example of the killing of a calf to illustrate the point. The sacrifice of a calf for religious purposes should not be prohibited by the state when it does not adversely affect the interests of others any more than the killing of the calf for non-religious purposes, such as the consumption of meat. Whether or not God disapproves of the sacrifice is not the concern of the state: “…what may be spent on a feast may be spent on a sacrifice” (Locke, pp. 39-40). However, if the stock of cattle has been
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severely depleted, and it is in the society’s interests to build up the stock, then the state would be justified in prohibiting the killing of calves for any purpose. He points out: “… in this case, the law is not made about a religious but a political matter, nor is the sacrifice, but the slaughter of calves, thereby prohibited” (Locke, p. 40). Here, he is in fact describing how a secular state would approach the matter. This state secularism is underlined further by his argument that the state should tolerate sins which “are not prejudicial to other men’s rights, nor do they break the public peace of societies” (Locke, p. 42). In the case of “the sins of lying and perjury”, they are punishable only when they cause injury to “men’s neighbors and to the commonwealth”, and not because they are “offence(s) against God” (Locke, p. 42). It is the “public good” which is “the rule and measure of all lawmaking” (Locke, p. 36). Locke also provided two other arguments for religious toleration, one mainly prudential, and the other more fundamentally moral. The largely prudential argument points to the desirable consequences of toleration compared with the destructive effects of religious intolerance. A state which seeks to enforce one religion on all will generate harmful conflicts. But Locke’s argument here is limited in scope, and would not apply to the toleration of those religions which are weak and have few supporters. They can be successfully suppressed without risking social harm. But surely the weak and vulnerable should not be excluded from the scope of toleration. There are in fact in Locke’s argument considerations of fairness and equality of treatment for all which make his toleration more inclusive. He introduces the fundamental moral case for religious toleration by suggesting that an idolatrous church should be tolerated because its suppression would “in time and place” lead to a similar suppression of an orthodox church. Although at first the argument sounds like an appeal to the likely consequences of suppression, it is clear that Locke has in mind the unacceptable principle or rule which is embedded in the practice of religious suppression, and which informs and directs it. As he elaborates: “If, therefore, such a power be granted unto the civil magistrate in spirituals, as that in Geneva, for example, he may extirpate, by violence and blood, the religion which is there reputed idolatrous; by the same rule another magistrate, in some neighboring country, may oppress the reformed religion, and, in India, the Christian” (Locke, p. 40). He reverts to this point when he argues against the punishment of acts simply on the grounds that they are
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offensive to God. In accepting this rule, we would be committed to allowing the persecution of Christians in a different country: “And what if in another country, to a Mahometan or a pagan prince, the Christian religion seems false and offensive to God; may not the Christians for the same reason, and after the same manner, be extirpated there?” (Locke, p. 42). So Locke in effect appeals to the Golden Rule argument in both its positive and negative versions: Do unto others what you want them to do to you; and do not do unto them what you do not want them to do to you. The animating value of the Golden Rule is not that of mere consistency, but that of fairness. Christians who are in the majority can consistently justify intolerance to non-Christians while rejecting the principle that in similar circumstances, when non-Christians are in the majority, they too are equally justified in being intolerant to Christians. The requirement of formal consistency is satisfied with the claim that only one religion is true and the other is false, and intolerance may only be directed at the false religion. But Locke requires us to go beyond formal consistency by placing ourselves in the shoes of others, and seeing how they would reasonably interpret the basis of our conduct directed at them. Since there is no agreement on which religion is true, they would see us as acting on the principle that whoever is in the majority, or in power, is justified in imposing their beliefs and practices on others. The believers of each religion have, from their own perspectives, good reasons to regard themselves as the true believers, thereby distinguishing their own intolerant conduct from those of others. But once they acknowledge that others can adopt a similar perspective when the roles are reversed, there is no generally acceptable perspective which grants exceptional treatment to one group. Just as I, with one religious belief, value my religion, think it true and want to lead my life in accordance with it, I also recognize that you, with a different religion, value your religion, think it true and want to lead your life in accordance with it. I might also want you to be governed by my religion. But I do not want to be subjected to your religion, and I understand that you have a similar repugnance to be forced to accept my religion. Each of us can thereby come to understand and acknowledge the commitments we all have to our respective religions. It is therefore unfair for the state to give the members of one religion the privileged position of true believers, while not only rejecting the unrefuted claims of others, but also denying them the freedom to regulate their
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own lives in accordance with their own beliefs. A fair resolution of the disagreement, as Locke sees it, is to adopt a principle of toleration which allows each group to practice their own religion, but not to impose it on unwilling others. So Protestantism for Protestants, Catholicism for Catholics, and atheism for atheists. This recognizes a principle of religious toleration that is central to the secular state. It acknowledges that the values and beliefs shaping the life of a religious person are not the same as the values and beliefs, including the importance of toleration, which should regulate the lives of different religious people living in the same community. Similarly, there is also a gap between what God prohibits, as revealed in a holy book or in other ways, and what God wants the state to enforce. The fact that religious people want their own and others’ lives to be in accordance with God’s will does not mean that they are entitled to use the power of the state to achieve this aim, or even that a just God wants state power to be used in this way to conform to His will. The circumstances of religious pluralism and disagreement led Locke to defend religious toleration as a fair basis for resolving and managing such differences. A similar approach was adopted by the leading political philosopher of the 20th century, John Rawls (1921–2002). Rawls explains how reasonable people, operating under what he calls “the burdens of judgment”, will disagree on important issues, including religious questions (Rawls, pp. 54–58). The burdens of judgment refer to a number of factors which produce disagreement among reasonable people: the difficulty of assessing complex and conflicting facts relevant to an issue, the weight to be attached to admittedly relevant considerations, the interpretation of vague concepts, the differences in our total experiences which affect the way in which we assess evidence and weigh values, and the difficulty of making overall assessments of different kinds of conflicting normative considerations. Given the burdens under which reasonable people make their judgments about religious matters, the state should not impose one religious view on all. A secular state can be seen as the recognition of religious pluralism, diversity, and disagreement as permanent features of the world in which we live. Far from such a state being hostile to religion, it seeks a political arrangement in which people of different religious views and values can lead their own lives in accordance with their own religious views and values. Unlike a comprehensive perspectival secularism, which seeks to dump religion
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in the dustbin of history, state secularism is concerned with establishing fair terms for religious people of different faiths, and non-religious people of different views, to live peacefully and on equal terms in a just community. Each can live in accordance with his wish, but he cannot insist that others too be subjected to his wish. It has sometimes been claimed that a secular state’s separation of church and state seeks to confine religion to the private sphere and to banish it from the public realm. This is misleading if it is treated as an issue of freedom of expression, which is entrenched in the liberal, secular state. Religious accounts of the good life, of what people should aim for in their lives, and the motivations which should direct their private and public pursuits, may be expressed openly for all to know, as may rival views, including those from purely secular perspectives. If religious perspectives, or particular versions of them, prove to be attractive, then they would be embraced by more and more people. However, accounts of what are good or bad, desirable or undesirable, should not be enforced by the power of the state, unless they can be shown to advance some generally acknowledged common interest, rather than the mere dictates of any religion. The fact that a form of conduct is clearly required by a religion, and supported by an uncontroversial reading of a particular holy text, or by a tradition of religious revelation or practice, is irrelevant as far as legal enforcement is concerned. Religious toleration allows religious people to direct their own lives in accordance with their own religious beliefs and values, but not the lives of others. When religious toleration is properly understood and accepted as a principle regulating the relationship between different groups in society, people with a diversity of conceptions of how human beings should live will each acknowledge the right of all to bring to the table these various conceptions in order to enlighten and persuade one another. But at the same time, each group would accept a principle or practice which restrains it from using the law to impose its favored view on others who do not freely accept it. Religious toleration involves the freedom to express one’s own religious views and to practice one’s religion, but not the freedom to impose them on unwilling others. It has also been claimed that state secularism cannot be considered as a just response to the fact of religious pluralism and diversity. Rather, it takes a particular view about the nature of religions, namely that they make competing truth claims about which the state should be neutral. But this
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is not fair to a different view that religions do not make truth claims, but are instead sets of ancestral practices which define or bind a community together. In a recent interesting paper, “The Secular State and Religious Conflict: Liberal Neutrality and the Indian Case of Pluralism”, S.N. Balagangadhara and Jakob De Roover maintain that the Semitic religions, Christianity and Islam, are different from Hinduism in that, unlike them, Hinduism is not creedal, and has no particular doctrine or dogma (Balagangadhara and De Roover, pp. 67–92). So, whereas Christianity and Islam make competing claims, Hinduism does not regard Muslims and Christians as religious rivals since it accepts different roads to salvation. Hinduism is not committed to the truth of a set of doctrines and the falsity of an alternative set. Hindu communities are differentiated from other religious communities by different traditions. But traditions are neither true nor false, any more than the Western practice for men of wearing trousers is true or false. Hinduism is an expression of what the authors call the pagan, as opposed to the Semitic, view. According to the pagan view, a religion is identified with a tradition or a set of ancestral practices. Traditions and practices are upheld, not because they are regarded as true, but because they hold a community together. Hindus regard external interference with a community’s traditions and practices as illegitimate. On the other hand, the Semitic religions claim to embody universal truths for the whole of humanity. Proselytism and conversion are central to Islam and Christianity, but are ruled out by the pagan view. The authors claim that the state cannot be neutral between the pagan view and the Semitic view, as they make mutually exclusive claims, i.e., that no religion could be false, and that some religion(s) could be false, respectively. The Western liberal states, claiming to be neutral, have in fact decided that religion is a matter of truth. They do not endorse the truth of any particular religion, and can indeed be neutral between the competing truth claims of different religions. But they endorse the Semitic view of religion against the pagan view, and cannot be neutral with respect to the view that religion is a matter of truth. In allowing conversion, the Indian state in fact endorses the belief that religion revolves round doctrinal truth. The Indian secular state prohibits coercive conversions, and permits religious conversion by persuasion. But the authors argue that the view that conversion from one religion to another
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is a matter of persuasion presupposes that religion involves the question of doctrinal truth: “One can be persuaded to convert only in so far as one accepts the truth of one religion as opposed to the falsity of another” (Balagangadhara and De Roover, p. 80). The authors maintain that if the state is really neutral and does not take a stand on whether religion is a matter of truth, then it should leave this for religious communities to decide. The state cannot then interfere with religious violence, or try to reduce religious conflict. In taking over the western theory of the liberal state, the Indian constitution creates and promotes religious rivalry. The secular Indian state forces the framework of the Semitic religions onto the Hindu traditions. This generates the so-called Hindu fundamentalism which systematically persecutes other religions on the basis of religious truth. By granting freedom to convert as part of religious toleration, the secular Indian state forced Hindus to defend their value of non-interference by reacting to those who interfere with it. The authors conclude by denying that they are advocating a “faithbased” or “theocratic” political structure and processes. Nor do they wish to ban religious conversions. Instead, they suggest that the state could act to neutralize the effects of its secular policy on local cultural traditions which do not see themselves as making truth claims. The current Indian state secular policy, if left unchecked, will result in the continued decline of these traditions. In order to prevent this, the state should stimulate “explorations into the histories and theories of the Indian cultural traditions” (Balagangadhara and De Roover, p. 89). As intelligent minds take up such explorations, there is the possibility of “cultural rejuvenation”. In assessing the authors’ objections to the secular state as being partial to a particular conception of religion, let us assume that they are right in their respective characterizations of the Hindu or pagan traditions as non-truth-based, and the Semitic religions of Islam and Christianity as truth-based. The authors also claim that the Hindu traditions value noninterference, whereas the Semitic religions regard conversions as central. Is it the case that a truly neutral secular state would have to leave the issue of non-interference vs. conversion to be decided by the relevant communities, and cannot confine conversion to persuasion? As Locke has noted, religious communities are voluntary associations, and violent and
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coercive conversions are incompatible with voluntary membership. On the other hand, by allowing voluntary conversions, the state does not have to side with either the Semitic or the pagan view of religion. Each person can make that judgment for himself, and choose to remain with his current religion, or voluntarily join another religion, for whatever reason. It is not just ideas or beliefs, but also ways of life and practices which compete with one another. Some people, confronted with new and, for them, more congenial ways of life, might choose to abandon their traditional practices. For example, some of those who convert from Hinduism to Christianity are lower-caste Hindus who seek to abandon their erstwhile social status. The authors seem to think that conversion involves the acceptance or rejection of truth claims. But traditions and practices have been changed for a whole variety of reasons, including convenience and changes of preference. The authors blame the secular Indian state for forcing fundamentalist Hindus to defend their value of non-interference by systematically persecuting the members of other interfering religions. But the members of any religion should have the right to leave that religion in the exercise of their religious freedom. They are not locked in the religion of their birth. Religions which are confronted with diminishing membership should look more closely at some of their internal practices before they blame external intervention. The authors treat conversion of Hindus as interference from the Semitic religions. But conversion is better seen as the exercise of freedom to live in accordance with a religion of one’s own choice. This means the freedom to leave the religion of one’s birth and upbringing. The freedom to propagate different religions provides the basis for people to make informed religious choices. Sometimes such choices are to convert to other religions. It is religious tyranny to prevent people from acquiring knowledge about other religions, or to force them to remain in the religion of their birth. So long as such religious freedoms are protected, some restrictions may be placed on aggressive proselytism which constitutes a form of unwelcome harassment and can be socially disruptive. Although the notion and desirability of a secular state are reasonably clear, there could still be considerable difficulties in implementing the requirements for such a state in certain social and political circumstances. For example, a religious group might be dominant in a particular geographical area, able to impose its will on all, and unwilling to tolerate others. The
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creation of a secular state would then involve some external intervention, and would lead to prolonged and damaging conflict. The result might not be any stable state, but an anarchic situation of constant battles, or some failed state in which the official state has no authority and little or no control over various groups. The only stable state, for the current and foreseeable situations, is a continuation of an illiberal, theocratic state. Thus, there might be circumstances in which anarchy, with all its arbitrary brutalities and uncertainties, is worse than a stable but systematically intolerant theocratic state. If the destruction of such a theocratic state leads to anarchy, without any real prospect of the emergence of a stable secular state in good time, then even advocates of the secular state might demur until more propitious social and political conditions emerge.
REFERENCES
Balagangadhara, S. N. and De Roover, J. (2007). The Secular State and Religious Conflict: Liberal Neutrality and the Indian Case of Pluralism. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 15(1), 67–92. Locke, J. (1950). A Letter Concerning Toleration. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Mill, J. S. (1963–1991). Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, abbreviated as CW. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Mill, J. S. (1969). Utility of Religion, and August Comte and Positivism. In CW, Vol. X, Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society. Mill, J. S. (1972). CW, Vol. XIV, Later Letters, 1848–1873. Mill, J. S. (1977). On Liberty. In CW, Vol. XVIII, Essays on Politics and Society. Nussbaum, M. C. (2008). Liberty of Conscience. New York: Basic Books. Rawls, J. (1993). Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Chapter 3 The Secular State and Its Challenges
MICHAEL HENG SIAM-HENG
As Asia modernizes, it is evolving new values, cultures and institutions to meet the demands of a new social order. The process entails tapping into its own cultural and intellectual heritage which includes the universal values of its religions. At the same time, it must not close its mind to the experiences of other societies. On the issue of dealing with religious matters in a plural society, there is much to learn from the European experiences. It is a process of cultural cross-fertilization.
INTRODUCTION It is beyond the scope of this chapter to speculate what the origin of religion is. But we do know that by the time writing appeared, religion had become a vastly complex phenomenon. In our time, it encompasses faith, morality, values, beliefs, rituals, social practices, group allegiance, authority, hierarchy, power, money, organization, etc. It has also exerted influence on literature, arts, architecture, music and philosophy. To put it simply, it permeates all aspects of the life of a pious believer. In ancient Asian societies and elsewhere, religion was closely intertwined with political power structure.1 And in many Asian societies, it has continued to do so, up till today. But as Asia struggles to modernize itself, the issue of secularism has come to the fore. As the Indian sociologist T. N. Madan commented in 1997: “Of all the public debates that engage intellectuals in India today, the most significant, I 1 Some would argue that ancient China was different in that the concept of God did not feature in
Confucianism. But the concept of the divine was contained in the word tian or heaven. Together with rituals and its subsequent evolution, Confucianism acquired features which bear similarities with other religions. It has thus been seen as a secular religion.
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think, and also the most contentious, is the debate about secularism” (Madan 1997, p. 266). Though made 12 years ago, the comment is still valid today. It is reflected in the lively and heated discussions presented by supporters and detractors of Indian secularism in the volume edited by Needham and Rajan (2007). Within Asia, India has produced the most literature on the challenges of governing a multi-ethnic country of sub-continental size, and this is not surprising. “For a country that is home to ancient religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, and one that is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in any single country, secularism is a very special phenomenon” (Wang 2004a, pp. 124-5). In simple terms, the issue can be framed in terms of two positions. The first position holds that modernity is built on the basis of being secular. This point has been borne out by Europe’s historical experience and it is being reaffirmed by some other non-European countries. Because of its success in the West, it is also applicable to non-Western countries undergoing modernization. The second position holds that this European experience is unique. It has very little, if any at all, relevance for other countries. This chapter explores a third position, which lies somewhere in between. In the course of their own modernization, Asian countries will tap into their own cultural and intellectual heritage and develop new ideas, morality, culture and institutions based on it. At the same time, they should not close their minds to the experiences of other societies. Indeed, it would be rewarding for them to borrow from the Western experiences. Below, we shall briefly go through the two opposing positions concerning secularism and devote more space to discussing the third position.
SECULARISM AND WESTERN HISTORY Secularism as a political ideology is the product of bitter and bloody conflicts in Europe. Between the Reformation and the middle of the 17th century, Europe experienced a series of religious wars. The most well-known was the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). By any measure, the war was extremely destructive. Male population in some regions was reduced by half. There were disease and famine. Many of the combatant powers went bankrupt. The horror of the wars shocked the best minds of Europe, the ruling elites and the
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new Protestant Christian order. Hence was born the idea of separating the state and religion, the severance of the cord between political powers and the church. However, the end of the war did not usher in religious tolerance, as evidenced by the reign of Louis XIV of France, a cruel persecutor of religious minorities (Madan 1997). It took decades for European states, one after another, to come to accept the ideology of secularism. Today, the Western countries are essentially secular states, though there are minor variations in the practical application of this principle (Robert and Peña-Ruiz 2009). Even the concept of secularism does not admit a unified interpretation. In other words, it is essentially contested, with no agreement on what it entails, the values it seeks to promote, or how best to pursue it (Bhargava 1998). For sure, there are occasional problems caused by religious extremism in Europe, but European countries have managed to avoid the matters of the state being influenced by private religious faith. Secularism refers to the separation of the religious orders from the state, neutrality of the state in religious matters, equal treatment by the state of different religions, and religion being a matter of the private sphere which is strictly separated from the public sphere. Based very much on rational thinking, it is thus a product of the broader movement of the European Enlightenment. Secular state, science and technology, industrialization, democratization, and the idea of progress form the core of the Enlightenment project (Wang 2002). As a result of such historical experiences, many scholars in the West believe that secularism is an essential part of modernity and that non-secular states cannot be considered modern (Gelvin 2005; Lewis 2002). The American Constitution is the product of the first concerted and conscious effort to incorporate secularism into the basic legal document governing the political life of a state (Tan 2009). Inspired by its success, other states soon followed. In Asia, the American Constitution was the main source of inspiration for the state constitutions of the newly independent nation-states after the Second World War. India was the most prominent example, with the Nehru-Gandhi consensus seen as a political achievement. Elsewhere in Asia, there were a range of variations in handling the separation of state and religion. Turkey and China adopted a narrow interpretation of secularism: the state assumed the power to regulate religious matters, though this position has softened over the years.
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SUPPORTERS AND CRITICS OF SECULARISM Looking at secularism from a broad and rational perspective, it could be argued that secularism is indispensable in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society. Diversity is an inherent attribute of all societies, and diversity tends to be deep in multi-ethnic societies. Difficulties in all spheres of social life abound. They have to be handled in a non-antagonistic fashion, and secularism provides the best approach to resolve them. “In a society where numerical supremacy of one religious group may predispose it to disfavor smaller religious groups, secularism was to deter the persecution of religious minorities” (Bhargava 1998, p. 1). To follow Bhargava, secularism, more than anything else, is meant to impose limits on the political expression of cultural or religious conflicts between different communities in a multireligious country. Many in these ex-colonies are attracted by the rationality of secularism and see in it the relevance for multi-religious, multi-cultural plural societies. In a similar vein, Ahmed (2009) sees the degeneration of the social order and the increasing sectarian violence and chaos in Pakistan as a result, at least in part, of the departure from the theory and practice of secularism. In the early years after achieving political independence, Asian countries with secular constitutions and legal setups thrived pretty well. Secularism did have some concrete achievements to show. This is all the more remarkable given the colonial legacy of divide-and-rule policy pursued by the colonial masters. Even critics of Indian secularism concede its positive contribution in the early years of its nationhood (Nandy 2004). But this period proved to be short-lived. As one of the biggest countries in Asia, India is a showcase in many ways. Some of them are positive, e.g., its leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement. Some of them are negative, and a disturbing example here is the outbreak of conflicts involving different religious communities. Worse still, such outbreaks are occurring with more violence. Elsewhere in multi-cultural and multi-religious countries, secularism seems to be losing ground to religious intolerance and to the greater role of religion or display of religiosity in state activities. Such decline in the practical consequence of secularism has attracted critical commentaries on the relevance of secularism for non-Western countries. India has produced many articulate criticisms and a list of them can be found in Sen (2005).
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Among the critical comments, the most articulate and also most relevant for us here are those by the Indian sociologists Madan (1997) and Nandy (2004). Madan (1997) refers to the origin and rootedness of secularism in the dialectic of Protestant Christianity and the European Enlightenment, and suggests that it is therefore incompatible with India’s major religious traditions. Observing that secularism does not seem to work, Nandy (2004) looks to the Indian traditional past for inspiration: “The opposite of religious and ethnic intolerance is not secularism, but religious and ethnic tolerance” (ibid., p. 124). The answer to religious conflicts must not be found in imported secularism, but in the traditional code of tolerance. In other words, India has the cultural resources to manage the question of religious pluralism (Balagangadhara and De Roover 2007). Nandy also alerts us to the fact that in South Asia as well as in Nazi Germany, those who resist violence against their neighbors in riots derive their courage from their religious faith. Like other ideologies, secularism has various streams and tendencies. Critics have found an easy target in the more dogmatic strain which was adopted in the Soviet Union and in other socialist states. At the height of the Cultural Revolution in China, it even took the form of blatant antireligion activities, with the Red Guards tearing down places of worship. Inspired by Karl Marx, this stream sees religion as a tool used by the ruling class to sedate the oppressed people from rising up. Religion is seen as the ideological opium of the people. The noble values of religion are ignored, while the negative aspects of religious practices are highlighted. This kind of secularism is anti-religion and it is against the spirit of the Nehru-Gandhi conception of secularism. Another stream of secularism is akin to “scientific temper”, emphasizing the role of scientific rationality in the constitution of society. The secularization of society is seen as a form of social progress. With economic development and education, science and reason will reduce dramatically the role of religion. According to Madan (1997), Jawaharlal Nehru belonged to this category of secularists. They are not religious, neither are they anti-religion. In 1981, a group of prominent intellectuals in India, concerned with the slow pace of secularization and recurrence of religious intolerance, signed a joint statement calling for secularism to play a
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greater role in preventing and resolving such conflicts. In response, Nandy issued an anti-secular manifesto, calling into question the viability and suitability of ideas and institutions of secularism. The manifesto subsequently received support from Madan and like-minded anti-secularist Indian intellectuals. Madan and Nandy are vocal representatives of a bigger group (see, for example, the volumes edited by Needham and Rajan (2007) and Bhargava (1998)). They see secularism as an intellectual stream of western modernity,2 with its worship of science and knowledge at the expense of spirituality and religious faith. It is a kind of divinized human rationality and worship of critical rationality, and therefore a devaluation of religion. By restricting the role of religion in regulating societal activities, secularism has unnecessarily provoked a reaction. Given such tendencies, it has contributed to the worsening of religious-communal problems.
THE THIRD WAY — INDIGENOUS SEARCH FOR AN INCLUSIVE NATION In India, religion is the foundation of social life (Madan 1997; Nandy 2004). In other words, religion provides the values, norms and morality to guide human conduct, social behaviors and social relations. Before the advent of British colonialism, religion provided the ideas for political governance. With religion so deeply embedded in all aspects of life, it is difficult to disentangle the link between religion and politics. This is a phenomenon that is still occurring in the Middle East. If we see Confucianism as a secular religion, a similar point can be made for pre-revolutionary China. One major political figure who saw the central role of religion in social and political life was Gandhi (Madan 1997). This great Indian leader was a profoundly religious man. His vision was holistic, with religion as the source of value for judging the worth of all worldly goals and actions. Religion means, above all, altruism, self-assurance arising from inner conviction, and the putting of one’s faith in the saving grace of God. Gandhi saw the humanistic morality and values contained in religion as the ideological basis of developing a fair and just polity. Inspired by such spirituality, he advocated 2 Nandy is taking a narrow interpretation of modernity, highlighting its flaws. He follows the critique
of modernity used by postmodernists.
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strongly for the Indian state to be accommodating of all religions and to maintain an even-handed neutrality (Tambiah 1998). Bearing Gandhi’s view of religion, one can perhaps appreciate why he thought that politics divorced from religion becomes debasing (Madan 1997). Yet, in the context of a multi-religious society, he was a strong advocate of the separation of religion and the state in order to build a united nation (Tambiah 1998). Gandhi also famously said: “A society or group which depends partly or wholly on state aid for the existence of religion, does not deserve or, better still, does not have any religion worth the name” (cited in Madan 1997, p. 237). Unfortunately, social and political reality is likely to disappoint such an idealistic position. In fact, what happened in India and elsewhere in Asia has indeed disappointed Gandhians. In the real world, religion has been used as an instrument for parochial power struggle. The lofty ideals of the spiritual tradition so dear to Gandhi are overtaken by ugly features of human weaknesses and follies, and we find ourselves in a situation that would wrench the heart of Gandhi. In his own lifetime, he witnessed how religion was used as a political tool to dismember British India into two separate political entities. However, Gandhi’s views and those of broad-minded traditionalists are interesting and productive when seen from a different perspective. They have alerted us to the enduring values of the spiritual tradition, namely: respect for others, honesty, sincerity, integrity, modesty and compassion. One often comes across the remark that in all religions and cultures, there is a set of common values and ideals. This forms the philosophical and intellectual basis for amiable relationships among spiritual leaders and advocates of inter-civilizational dialogues. This set of common values may thus be seen as the fundamental principles to deal with all kinds of issues. We find such a mode of reasoning in operation when the leaders of a community or religion sanction their fellow members who have carried out harmful acts in the name of religion. In the same way, broad-minded secularism is based on humanistic values. For example, Bhargava (2000) names the following four values: prevention of society from regressing into barbarism, religious freedom, equality of citizenship, and equal rights in political participation. These are also humanistic values of the European Enlightenment. Based on
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these values, there should be no fundamental differences between broadminded traditionalists and broad-minded secularists. This explains why the traditionalist Gandhi and the Enlightenment-inspired Nehru could reach an accord on the status of India as a secular state. The values can, and should, form the basis for evolving a new set of practices to meet the challenges of a modernizing Asia, including how to deal with the issue of harmony in multi-cultural and multi-religious societies. Using this as a starting point, I propose to explore the following two questions in the context of state and secularism in Asia: (1) How should we look at our tradition and cultural heritage? (2) How can we borrow from the experiences of others?
THE QUESTION OF TRADITION AND CULTURAL HERITAGE The past provides us with psychological comfort and anchorage, cultural and intellectual reassurance and a sense of identity. That is why people find it so hard to come to terms with those aspects of their history which are so blatantly evil; why nation-building projects draw on the glorious chapters of their own history; why debaters like to draw on historical instances to illustrate and buttress a point; and why novelists and poets like to rework real or imagined historical events. There is therefore a lot of sense in what the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamar says: that the real force of morals is based on tradition (quoted in Nandy 2004, p. 122). But at the same time, we must not forget that tradition encompasses many (and sometimes incompatible) ideas and beliefs, rituals and practices. A given school would possess within itself a diversity of views. Moreover, they have changed over time, albeit slowly. Just as they evolve to meet the demands of their times, they are also gradually dropped when they fail to meet the demands of the new circumstances. Such a process can be observed in the evolution of clothes, languages, technologies, institutions and social systems. In the case of religion, one can also find evolution of practices if we take a long-term view. It is obvious that the Old Testament is different from the New Testament. This example, however, needs to be qualified as other religions may have different historical experiences. In Islam, the Quran remains the same throughout the ages, but there have been reforms
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and modernizing developments seeking not to establish the “new” Quran, but a return to the true teachings of the Quran which are open and plural but which have been made complicated by the orthodox clerics. Armstrong (1994) discusses the concept of living religion in her book, A History of God. Religious practices have their social and historical contexts, and they need to remain relevant to the lives of the believers.
LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS Detractors of secularism often argue that secularism is European in origin. Given that Asia has a different historical experience, it is not going to take root here. This point may be true in some very specific cases. But it is certainly not universally so. In fact, history is full of examples of foreign ideas taking root well beyond their land of origin. In terms of geography, the Christian faith is Asian in origin, yet the religion is now seen very much as a European religion. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity have spread to Southeast Asia and they have become major religions in this part of the world. Therefore, an anti-secularist position based on the foreign origin of secularism should not be taken seriously. In fact, the western experience can help us in many ways. First, it can warn us of the difficulties, intricacies and complexities of multi-ethnic societies. Second, the experiences of the West with secularism also suggest that such challenges are not going to wither away with industrialization and the progress of science. Third, as we briefly referred to earlier, there are varieties of secularism in practice. Madan is right in pointing out that secularism has universal applicability, but it also has culturally specific expressions: “That is how many intellectuals consider it permissible to speak of Indian secularism” (Madan 1997, p. 233). Likewise, we can speak of British secularism, French secularism, Chinese secularism, Turkish secularism, and American secularism. Fourth, it may be a false premise to see secularism and religion as antagonistic. At least, history does not show this to be so. As is well-known, secularism is an intellectual product of Protestantism. The same could be said of secularism in China. “A survey of the history of secular values shows that spiritual needs of many different kinds have to be met, and that secularism
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has been enriched by at least two religions, Christianity and Buddhism” (Wang 2004b, p. 118). Indeed, there is much to be learned from studying how public-spirited organizations and broad-minded people (both religious and otherwise) handle the inter-religious conflicts in Asia. The author knows of groups from Europe who have come to Southeast Asia to learn from its experiences in dealing with inter-ethnic tensions and conflicts. One should not be too surprised that the Asian experiences would give them a better understanding of how secularism works in a non-European context.
TRADITION AND SECULARISM: TOWARDS CULTURAL FERTILIZATION As a society modernizes its economic life, it is bound to cause dislocation in its cultural, social and political life. Such dislocation can be in the form of tension between religious communities in multi-ethnic countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Pakistan. If all these problems have their origins in the economy, then they may gradually become minor issues, or may even disappear with economic development. People will become less susceptible to narrow religious sentiments. This is similar to the view cherished by Jawaharlal Nehru (Madan 1997). He believed that with modern education, economic development, science and technology, people would become non-religious. Factories, airports and dams would become the new temples of modernity. And with that, problems arising from religious differences would fade away. However, the problem cannot be simply reduced to a problem of economic development. To complicate the picture, economic modernization also takes place at a time when these countries are also deeply involved in the process of nationbuilding. Is a person a Hindu (or Muslim) first and an Indian second? The imperative of nation-building would require that the person sees his identity as an Indian first and then his religious affiliation second. It illustrates the nature of the issue facing young nations where the process of nation-building is of utmost significance. In other words, modernization is at the same time a process of evolving a new national identity, a process of constituting a shared culture (Castells 1998). This process of forging a socially cohesive nation encounters extra difficulties in a plural society with its multi-cultural,
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multi-racial and multi-religious background. One difficulty comes in the form of religious parochialism, racial discrimination and other forms of communalism. Another difficulty is opportunism of unscrupulous politicians in fighting for power in the electoral process. They fan up racial hatred and religious bigotry. It has been documented in many studies that some of these politicians are not religious at all (Needham and Rajan 2007). These two difficulties would not have led to actual flare-ups of sectarian violence if the state had been strong and neutral. It is again well-documented that in the various riots involving religious groups in India, the police did not intervene to stop the violence and killings. The situations in South Asia and the Middle East present those who reject secularism with a real dilemma. The dilemma may be best articulated in the words of Raimundo Panikkar: “The separation between religion and politics is lethal and their identification is suicidal” (cited in Nandy 2004, p. 109). But all is not lost. As argued above, the dichotomy between the spiritual tradition and the European Enlightenment can be both true and false. It is true if we adopt a parochial view of religion and a narrow interpretation of the Enlightenment. It is false if we go back to the fundamental values of the spiritual tradition and the basic values of secularism. If all of us are children of God, where then is the basis for the caste system, for racial discrimination and for gender inequality? And there are the two famous golden rules — do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you; and do unto others what you want others to do unto you. The two golden rules will render illegitimate all forms of bigotry, prejudices, hatred and fanaticism. Similarly, those inspired by the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment may not be religious, but they share those values cherished by the children of God. Again, a good example of this is shown by Gandhi and Nehru. Their ideas show us a way for the emergence of a cohesive society with a strong cultural and national identity. The society must be founded on social justice, equality, integrity (especially on the part of political leadership), inclusiveness, mutual respect, and other forms of human rights. And it is also in the struggle for such goals that such a society slowly takes shape. On the journey to a multi-cultural and multi-religious plural society in Asia, the social activists, intellectuals, community leaders and political
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leaders are challenged to dig deep into their cultural and intellectual heritage for ideas. These ideas are interpreted and reinterpreted, very much in the tradition of poetry, to provide inspiration. At the same time, they will have to contend with the essential ideas and experiences of secularism, both at the level of theory and practice. Secularism cannot be dismissed on the grounds that it is foreign in origin. It is salutary to appreciate that there is a tendency amongst various religious traditions to absorb or adopt elements from each other: “Certain saints, festivals and artistic traditions were shared by Hindus, Muslims and Christians” (Balagangadhara and De Roover 2007, p. 88). This kind of mutual and positive interaction still lives on in many parts of India today (Das et al. 1999; Burman 2002). The process of cultural fertilization is a drawn-out process and will require far-sighted leadership displaying courage and integrity. If history is a reliable guide, then we believe that the results of such cultural fertilization is creative synthesis, leading to a high level of culture — richer in content and form. Such experiences will be very useful to other culturally plural societies.
CONCLUSIONS The search for an inclusive state with diverse religious communities is a key item in the agenda to build a modern state in the historical context of globalization. The experiences gained in the process can provide interesting insights for other items of the same agenda, namely: democracy, rule of law, human rights and gender equality. These are concepts expressed in terms coined by the West; these are values that have gained wide acceptance in Asia. The point is not so much to criticize and reject them because of their foreign origins, but to find ways to realize them in ways that have affinity with the local cultural and intellectual heritage. In the case of introducing democracy, this has proved to be no simple endeavor. Rather than seeing the difficulties in terms of a clash of civilizations, a more rewarding way is to see them as a conversation of civilizations. Seen in this way, it is a project of peace, an ideal of the founders of religions. Asia must not just aspire to attain the level of material development already attained by the West. At least in some urban areas, Asia has done
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that. What is even more important is for Asia to address big issues in the field of culture and ideas. Suffice it to name three here: nationalism, moral crisis and hubris. Just like the sectarianism in inter-religious conflicts, there is the sad persistent problem of covert and overt conflicts instigated by narrow nationalism. At a deep level, religious intolerance and narrow nationalism are similar in nature, and they hurt the interests of the vast majority. The most visible forms of moral crisis in Asia are corruption, consumerism and crass materialism. These are totally alien to the spiritual tradition, and even those Asian countries with long spiritual traditions seem helpless to cope with them. Hubris may also be seen as a kind of crass materialism, and takes the form of mega-projects and grandiose architecture projects. Several big cities in Asia boast some of the tallest buildings in the world. Their loud visibility in the presence of abject poverty speaks volumes about the vision and wisdom of the political leadership. The project of modernity must include an agenda to deal with the three big issues just mentioned as well as religious conflicts. They are all interrelated parts of the historical task of building an inclusive nation based on humanistic values.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Ishtiaq Ahmed and Rahman Embong for their insightful comments on an earlier draft. The usual disclaimer applies.
REFERENCES Ahmed, Ishtiaq (2009). The Pakistan Islamic state project: A secular critique. In this volume. Armstrong, Karen (1994). A History of God. London: Ballantine Books. Balagangadhara, S. N. and De Roover, Jakob (2007). The secular state and religious conflicts: Liberal neutrality and the Indian case of pluralism. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 15(1), 67–92. Bhargava, Rajeev (2000). Is secularism a value in itself? In Ahmad, Imtiaz, Partha S. Ghosh, and Helmut Reifeld (eds.), Pluralism and Equality — Values in Indian Society and Politics. New Delhi: Sage. Bhargava, Rajeev (ed.) (1998). Secularism and Its Critics. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Burman, J. J. Roy (2002). Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities. New Delhi: Mittal Publications.
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Castells, Manuel (1998). The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Das, Veena, Gupta, Dipankar, and Uberoi, Patricia (eds.) (1999). Tradition, Pluralism and Identity: In Honour of T.N. Madan. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Gelvin, James L. (2005). The Modern Middle East, a History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, Bernard (2002). What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Responses. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Madan, T. N. (1997). Modern Myths, Locked Minds. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nandy, Aishi (2004). Bonfire of Creeds. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney and Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder (eds.) (2007). The Crisis of Secularism in India. Durham: Duke University Press. Robert, Anne-Cecile and Peña-Ruiz, Henri (2009). State and secularism, the French laïcité system. In this volume. Sen, Amartya (2005). Argumentative India. London: Allen Lane. Tambiah, Stanley J. (1998). The crisis of secularism in India. In Bhargava, Rajeev (ed.), Secularism and Its Critics. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 418–453. Tan, Kevin (2009). Secularism and the constitution: Striking the right balance. In this volume. Wang, Gungwu (2002). Bind Us in Time: Nation and Civilization in Asia. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Wang, Gungwu (2004a). State and faith — Secular values in Asia and the West. In Benton, Gregor and Hong, Liu (eds.), Diasporic Chinese Ventures: The Life and Work of Wang Gungwu. London: Routledge Curzon, pp. 103–123. Wang, Gungwu (2004b). Secular China. In Benton, Gregor and Hong, Liu (eds.), Diasporic Chinese Ventures: The Life and Work of Wang Gungwu. London: Routledge Curzon, pp. 124–139.
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4
Rawlsian Liberalism, Secularism, and the Call for Cosmopolitanism SARANINDRANATH TAGORE
In this paper, working within the Rawlsian conception of liberalism, I accomplish the following. First, I propose a definition of the secular in terms of the principle of state neutrality towards comprehensive accounts of the good, of which religion is a token. Second, I argue that the norm of toleration within the constraints of political liberalism must be produced by the state if we are to make sense of reasonable pluralism that contributes to the making of the overlapping consensus that legitimates the state. This act of production, I proceed to claim, is to be understood in terms of a call for reasonableness that is drawn out in cosmopolitan terms. In other words, the production of cosmopolitan citizens, in this view, becomes a necessary ingredient of political liberalism. I end my remarks by indicating the relationship between cosmopolitanism and secularism within the dynamics of political liberalism.
I The notion of secularism exhibits a diverse set of meanings in different sociopolitical settings. For instance, in the United States, the term “secular” is used to designate the constitutionally invoked divide between the church and the state. In India, another domicile of a liberal state, the term “secular” takes up a broader extra-constitutional meaning when it is used in conceptual opposition to the communalists marking out the ideological schism separating the largely pluralist politics of the Congress Party from the Hindu-based arguments that provide succor for the BJP and its allied parties. This is the context in which Amartya Sen’s essay on secularism and its discontents is to be understood.1 Again, in Islamic states, the secular may 1 Amartya Sen (2005). Secularism and Its Discontents. In The Argumentative Indian. London: Alan Lane,
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become problematic because the distinction between the religious and the political cannot be sharply drawn in the context of Islam. Making this very point, Charles Taylor admits that the historical articulation of the secular in its modern manifestations necessarily traces back to Christendom in the idea of the saeculum, which refers to historical time in contradistinction to a transcendent account of temporality that clocks the movement of the heavens.2 Further varieties of the secular can be described but need not distract us here. I raise this issue primarily to drive home the point that any discussion of secularism, more so perhaps than many other conceptual items, should begin with a summation of the sense in which the term is being used. I will understand the term as an expression of statist-institutional neutrality as it emerges in the discourse of political liberalism. It is a commonplace description of the liberal state that it is neutral toward any comprehensive conception of the good. John Rawls, in his classic account of political liberalism, provides a highly nuanced analysis of the concept of neutrality. It is best that we briefly echo Rawls’ discussion to develop a fairly sharp understanding of the issues involved in a liberal conception of neutrality. First, Rawls draws a distinction between a procedural and a political conception of neutrality. The former meaning of neutrality summons a sense of rules, not aiming at the fostering of any moral values, though they may be founded on values such as impartiality or consistency, generated purely to adjudicate between competing claims. The application of a judicial precedent in a court of law may be taken as an example of an act of procedural neutrality. Rawls claims that the idea of institutional neutrality as an item of political liberalism is normatively substantive in that it is situated in a publicly construed discursive space, drawing upon extant comprehensive conceptions of the good (religious, moral or otherwise), from what he calls “the formations of overlapping consensus.” The neutrality of aim as opposed to the neutrality of procedure concerns institutional neutrality towards those elements of any comprehensive account of the good that cannot be a constituent of a public sphere derivative of an overlapping consensus. Accordingly, Rawls arrives at two formulations of liberal neutrality: (1) the state is to ensure for all citizens equal opportunity 2 Charles Taylor (1998). Modes of Secularism. In Secularism and Its Critics, Rajeev Bhargava (ed.). New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 31–32.
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to advance any (permissible) conception of the good they freely affirm; and (2) the state is not to do anything intended to favor or promote any particular comprehensive doctrine over another, or to give greater assistance to those who pursue it.3 In my current formulation of the secular in the context of political liberalism, I take religion to be a specific class of doctrines profiling what Rawls calls “comprehensive conceptions of the good.” Indeed, for Rawls, the whole point of political liberalism is directed towards theorizing a way in which a pluralist social order reflecting competing (and irreconcilable) conceptions of the good can preserve the conditions of justice. In his words: “the problem of political liberalism is: How is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines? This is the problem of political justice, not a problem of the highest good.”4 Religion has an answer to the question of the highest good; the problem of political liberalism engages the religious dimension of human experience once it is recognized that there is a plurality of religious responses to the question of the good. Thus, religions in multi-religious societies such as India, France, or the United States mark out an agonistic space that has to be managed by the state subjected to the conditions of justice as fairness or otherwise. Political liberalism deploys the condition of institutional neutrality as a condition of just governance. I am using secularism as a marker for the specific domain of state neutrality as it refers to the religious dimension of human experience.
II It is important to ask: what, if anything, on the grounds of political liberalism, justifies state neutrality towards comprehensive conceptions of the good, constituting a reasonable pluralism? In other words, what is the political justification of neutrality? Rawls attempts a response in the form of a reply to an objection that draws on the particularly divisive 3 For Rawls’ discussion of the distinction between procedural neutrality and neutrality of aims, see Rawls
(1993). Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 191–192. Hereafter, this text will be referred to as simply PL. 4 PL, p. xxv.
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example of religion. The objection states that political liberalism would have to endorse “indifference or scepticism” towards the substantive values inscribed in comprehensive agendas, otherwise liberal neutrality is not achievable. However, this scepticism concerning the truth of the matter about substantive values is deeply unwarranted, the objection continues, because certain truths are deemed to be so important that their settlement may even resort to civil war.5 Rawls replies that the conception of political justice that structures the liberal state distinguishes between “those questions that can be reasonably removed from the political agenda and those that cannot.” The basis of a stable overlapping consensus can be found when one bypasses religion and philosophy’s “profoundest controversies” in the constellation of comprehensive doctrines. Thus, “faced with the fact of reasonable pluralism, a liberal view removes from the political agenda the most divisive issues, serious contention about which must undermine the bases of social cooperation.”6 Within the contours of political liberalism, the notion of fit emerges as a problem. The justification of the state must be able to show a fit, however loose, between the neutrality that is normatively shaped by an overlapping consensus which motivates the political agenda on the one hand, and the various truth-centered values of the citizens who are committed to comprehensive doctrines of the good, religious or otherwise. The question can be reconstituted within the discourse of secularism by asking: what sorts of symmetries can be located between the secular state and the religious commitments that populate the space of reasonable pluralism? The points of fit between the overlapping consensus and a particular comprehensive doctrine are precisely those points that render degrees of commensurability between the comprehensive doctrines. Thus, to take a simple example, the prohibition of murder is to be endorsed by the state precisely because it is an act that is prohibited by all comprehensive doctrines, religious or philosophical. Thus, the political conception of justice is, in Rawls’ language, a “free-standing” view without being a claimant to any markers of comprehensiveness such as a metaphysic or an epistemology; its neutrality is founded on the nodes of commensurability flowing from the citizenry. Thus, there is the liberal (political) hope that “citizens themselves, within 5 PL, p. 151. 6 PL, p. 157.
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the exercise of their liberty of thought and conscience, and looking to their comprehensive doctrines, view the political conception as derived from, or congruent with, or at least not in conflict with, their other values.”7 This liberal hope can be challenged. I offer these considerations not as final critiques of political liberalism, but rather to motivate my contention that political liberalism needs cosmopolitanism to kill off these concerns. The exact nature of this claim will be made clear in due course. Let me offer four directions from which this challenge can be mounted: (1) Rawls is clear that the overlapping consensus is derived from reasonable comprehensive conceptions of the good (reasonable pluralism), where the accent is on the reasonableness of conceptions. For a conception to be reasonable, it must display the virtue of tolerance by allowing other conceptions to co-exist in civil society alongside one’s own. Rawls maintains that a political conception of justice by advocating equal liberty of conscience would remove religion, and the endorsing of equal and civil liberties would remove serfdom and slavery, from the political agenda. But to invoke the idea of fit, the political conception of justice can flag these values precisely because they are conceptual items in a reasonable pluralism. Equal liberty of conscience, for instance, itemized within a religiously inscribed comprehensive conception of the good, would crystallize into an attitude of religious toleration and will be on display within particular religious traditions. In this sense, a reasonable religious pluralism will indeed fit well with state neutrality towards religion. In other words, a node of commensurability between the overlapping consensus and reasonable pluralism would have been described: a successful translation from the vocabulary of the good to that of the right will be achieved. My question here centers on the unreasonable features of comprehensive conceptions. It appears that in the Rawlsian program, a strict divide is drawn between different programs, some of which are reasonable and others which are not. This allows Rawls to focus on the reasonable conceptions to ferret out the nodes of commensurability to develop the overlapping consensus. The matter seems to me to be more complex because the reasonable and the unreasonable are often packed together in the constitution of any single comprehensive conception. Thus, it would violate the internal integrity of 7 PL, p. 137.
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a comprehensive conception to consider the elements atomically without considering the whole account. Suppose there is a religious conception of the good that endorses liberty of conscience, but also believes in a rigid caste system that severely restricts the equality principle. The former (being reasonable) can be picked up by an overlapping consensus, whereas the latter (deemed unreasonable) will be left out. Thus, a tension develops between these two principles as it pertains to the state’s relation to a single conception of the good: the liberty of conscience principle would endorse neutrality and thus non-interference, but the restriction of the equality principle would run contrary to a political conception of justice. It is not clear to me that citizens endorsing such a conception of the good, upon the exercising of their liberty of thought and conscience, and looking to their comprehensive doctrines, would view the political conception as derived from, or congruent with (or at least not in conflict with) their other values. More generally, what is the defence of the liberal hope that if not all, at least a majority, of the citizens will be able to endorse the political conception in a way that would not conflict with the internal integrity of the network of values embedded in the comprehensive conception of their choice? (2) The second sceptical pointer concerning what I am calling “the liberal hope” issues from a politics of difference that is described by Charles Taylor as a politics where we are asked to recognize the unique identity of an individual or a group, “their distinctness from everyone else. The idea is that it is precisely this distinctness that has been ignored, glossed over, assimilated to a dominant or majority identity. And this assimilation is the cardinal sin against the ideal of authenticity.”8 This line of reasoning that is championed by much of postmodern theory, especially in the writings of Lyotard, when transcribed to the Rawlsian vocabulary, would support the idea that the location of nodes of commensurability is a hegemonic act because it attempts to subvert the fundamental incommensurability of little narratives.9 From the Lyotardian perspective, the rejection of totalizing grand narratives as the stabilizing force of the social architecture complements the Rawlsian neutralization of comprehensive accounts of the good at the political level; 8 Charles Taylor (1992). Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 9 For a vivid discussion of the contrast between little narratives and grand narratives, see J.-F. Lyotard (1984). The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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but for Lyotard, the absolute valorization of difference between differing conceptions of the good would rule out the possibility of any overlapping consensus that can render extant conceptions of the good into a political language of rights. It is not at all clear how Richard Rorty manages to be a postmodern and a liberal at the same time, but it appears to me that, at least from a Rawlsian point of view, Lyotard’s uncompromising defence of the incommensurable fragment is at odds with the idea of the overlapping consensus on which much of the state agenda of political liberalism rests. This is not the time to discuss the feasibility of the postmodern state; it will suffice to point out that the politics of difference challenges the liberal hope by claiming that any consensus is a construction that suppresses the final truth of difference. No consensus can be overlapping across comprehensive conceptions. (3) The third line of thinking on the problem of liberal hope issues from the general direction of the politics of difference, in the form of a radical version of multiculturalism, where the accent is not on the impossibility of the overlapping consensus, but on the cultural insularity of liberalism. This challenge states that liberalism itself, with its valorization of the neutrality principle, is the reflection of a cultural more and its adoption as the overarching organizing lever of the state — in the characterization of this view offered by Taylor, a particular masquerading as the universal — may not be sufficient in convincing the majority of the citizens to endorse the political conception. This challenge would also thwart any universalizing tendency that liberalism may harbor because once the issue is internationalized, voices such as those of the proponents of Asian values would emerge as versions of the politics of difference found within liberal democracies. (4) Though secularism is not discussed in the last three points, religion is implicated in the formulations as I take secularism to be a form of the neutrality principle. The fourth line of reasoning, however, concerns the idea of secularism directly. Quite simply, there will be religious voices within pluralist societies that would counter the liberal hope on the grounds that a particular religious view should, at the political level, trump the value of state neutrality. These arguments can either take a historical form or they can be founded on a view that refuses to endorse a divide between the religious and the political horizons of human experience. The whole point of neutrality is difficult to phrase in the face of these positions because neutrality cannot
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be neutral toward non-neutrality. It is furthermore not at all clear that the liberal is best served by ignoring these challenges to liberal hope by terming them non-rational, because significant portions of multicultural populations hold such views without seeming intolerant. The question is whether the recognition of such easily located postures within liberal democracies sits well with the liberal hope that citizens themselves, within the exercise of their liberty of thought and conscience, and looking to their comprehensive doctrines, view the political conception as derived from, or congruent with (or at least not in conflict with) their other values. It is not evident that they do. At this point, I need to say a bit more about what I am calling the liberal hope. At a certain level of analysis, the entire edifice of Rawlsian thought centers on the possibility of setting the political agenda without the oppressive use of power. As Rawls says: “political power is always coercive power backed by the government’s use of sanctions, for government alone has the authority to use force in upholding laws.”10 On the other hand, for political liberalism, “our exercise of power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution, the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason.”11 In other words, the political agenda must include the entire citizenry without the state imposing its hegemonic will. For Rawls, this can be achieved within the frames of an overlapping consensus that emerges in a plural citizenry through deliberation, where the parties to the deliberation are “reasonable”. Thus, the liberal hope that is directed toward the result of citizens freely agreeing to the political agenda is causally linked to the degree of reasonableness available in a given domain of plurality. Rawls, on his part, has an eminently reasonable account of reasonableness: “Persons are reasonable in one basic aspect when, among equals say, they are ready to propose principles and standards as fair terms of cooperation and to abide by them willingly, given the assurance that others will likewise do so. Those norms they view as reasonable for everyone to accept and therefore as justifiable to them; and they are ready to discuss the fair terms that others 10 PL, p. 136. 11 PL, p. 137.
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propose.”12 I have just listed some concerns over how the liberal hope may be challenged, pivoting on the general idea that there are conditions innate in a plural citizenry that may severely restrict the adequate realization of the construction of the political agenda without the oppressive use of state power. It is not sufficient to label as unreasonable those voices that resist the assimilative force of a liberal consensus because a transition between the ideality of theory to the extant condition of the plural citizenry (reasonable and unreasonable) has to be forged. It is better to be able to expand the reach of reason than risk the visitation of violence as a consequence of disenchantment on the part of those citizens who have been proclaimed unreasonable by the liberal state, which brings me to the central point of this paper: liberal neutrality hinges upon the ability of the state to expand the reach of reason. Within the contours of political liberalism, as I understand the program, the liberal hope engenders the need to develop an overlapping consensus within the widest possible arc because the larger the consensus, the greater the stability of the political order, and the less the possibility of violence. Thus, reasonableness cannot be merely found in the articulation of formal principles of toleration and cooperation, but must be actively engaged in excavating nodes of commensuration across comprehensive conceptions of the good inhabiting the terrain of pluralism’s cultural space. In my view, this conception of cosmopolitan reason, existentially exploring the interstices of the cultural mosaic, is inadequately grasped by Rawls, but is an essential ingredient for political liberalism.
III By overlapping consensus, Rawls means quite simply that “we look for a consensus of reasonable (as opposed to unreasonable or irrational) comprehensive doctrines.”13 Furthermore, Rawls crucially adds that the political conception of justice based on an overlapping consensus does not bend to existing “unreason”, but “to the fact of reasonable pluralism, itself the outcome of the free exercise of free human reason under conditions of liberty.”14 If political liberalism seeks social stability through the articulations 12 PL, p. 49. 13 PL, p. 144. 14 PL, p. 144.
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of an overlapping consensus that provides the scaffolding for what I have called the liberal hope, then this dismissal of unreason through an appeal to reasonableness nurtured by a tradition of political liberty is too abstract and quick. The specter of “unreason” is all too ubiquitous in pluralist societies to deserve such indifference on the part of political liberalism. Indeed, the very stability that is sought by making the overlapping consensus a free-standing structure independent of any one comprehensive doctrine risks unravelling if the problem of “unreason” is not addressed by political liberalism. We may enunciate the following motto for political liberalism: the thicker the reasonableness of pluralism, the wider the consensus that overlaps, and the higher the stability of the political order. In other words, reasonableness should not solely capture the political norm of toleration that will not widen the consensus across comprehensive doctrines, but on liberal grounds also service a cosmopolitan norm that commissions the widening of the consensus. Importantly, the idea of widening of the consensus through the deployment of the cosmopolitan norm includes two claims: (1) The political conception harbors substantive moral values that are universally applicable to all citizens. All human beings (in political instance, all citizens) must be equal in the eyes of the state and citizens should regard each other as equal. Rawls is clear on this point. In his reply to the modus vivendi objection to the idea of the overlapping consensus, he makes explicit that unlike an international treaty that may be aborted when conditions change, the political conception includes substantial moral values “as the overlapping consensus is not … merely a consensus on accepting certain authorities, or on complying with certain institutional arrangements, founded on a convergence of group-interests.”15 For all citizens to freely acknowledge this political norm (the liberal hope), they must have resources within their comprehensive conception to mirror the liberal state’s view. My claim is that the cosmopolitan norm motivates citizens to bring other comprehensive conceptions in dialogue with one’s own. Thus, equality is not presented in the abstract as a value of comprehensive liberalism, but each citizen, through his or her openness to the cultural accomplishments of other cultures, comes to existentially realize the equality of human beings. Ultimate salvific concerns may still differ. (2) In this way, the reasonableness is expanded 15 PL, p. 147.
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within comprehensive conceptions and more citizens can be claimants to the political consensus. Crucially, this norm has to be produced by the state through education because it is responsible for socio-political stability. Moreover, it is not at all clear that the grammar of toleration can be phrased in a way that is independent of comprehensive conceptions. Where, one might ask, does toleration as a norm emerge from if not from a comprehensive conception? Some such conceptions are tolerant, while others are not. Thus, it is not at all clear that toleration can enter into the constellation of norms that inhabit a free-standing structure because it may not describe a node of commensurability across comprehensive structures. Here, Rawls may respond by claiming that intolerant traditions are not reasonable and are thus excluded from reasonable pluralism. However, this is exclusion through moral stipulation and accordingly must be founded on some substantive view of morality that is a comprehensive conception. In my reckoning, the state neutrality of political liberalism brilliantly conceived by Rawls in terms of a free-standing structure independent of any one comprehensive conception of the good must be minimally committed to the view that reasonableness must be drawn on cosmopolitan lines open to pedagogical interventions on the part of the state, otherwise toleration as a political norm cannot appear as a part of the overlapping consensus comprising the political conception of the right. Unlike some libertarians who maintain that the state should play a minimal, if any, role in the educational system, Rawls maintains that the state has a robust part to play in the education of the citizenry — though it must be mentioned that, oddly, he says very little about education in Political Liberalism. Nonetheless, what little he says is instructive for the cause of political liberalism, and I quote the section in full. Responding to the charge that some religious people oppose the culture of the modern world and the requirements the state can impose, Rawls summons the issue of education and tables the normative compass that liberal pedagogy requires: It will ask children’s education to include such things as knowledge of their constitutional and civic rights so that, for example, they know that liberty of conscience exists in their society and that apostasy is not a legal crime, all this to insure that their continued membership when they come of age is not based simply on ignorance of their basic rights or fear of punishment for offenses that do not exist. Moreover, their education
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For Rawls, education, through the teaching of norms necessary for political liberalism, is one important area where the state actively intervenes in directing the normative composition of the citizenry. Indeed, knowledge of citizens’ basic rights or the norms required to be cooperating members of society are requirements for sustained political stability, which is an end that the state desires. However, Rawls is quick to point out that these pedagogical constraints do not call to presence the teaching of any one privileged comprehensive account of the good, including the norms of comprehensive liberalisms of Kant and Mill that champion the virtues of autonomy and individuality. Thus, within the narrower frames of noncomprehensive (political) liberalism, norms that may be taught are purely political in nature so that Rawls can claim that political liberalism wishes to honor as much as possible the decision made by a religious mendicant who wishes to retire from the world17 — a decision that may not be supported by the values of comprehensive liberalism. Martha Nussbaum, in many ways a disciple of Rawls, elaborates well what I mean by a conception of education that attempts to produce reason drawn on cosmopolitan lines. The gloss appears in her recent book on India in the context of a comment on Rabindranath Tagore’s thinking on education that epically celebrated the cosmopolitan requirements of education. Nussbaum writes: Tagore called his university Visva-Bharati, “All the World,” for a reason. Citizens who cultivate their capacity for effective democratic citizenship need an ability to see themselves not simply as citizens of some local region or group but also, and above all, as human beings bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern. They have to understand both the differences that make understanding difficult between groups and nations, and the shared human needs and interests that make understanding essential, if common problems are to be solved. Doing this means learning quite a lot about nations other than one’s own
16 PL, p. 199. 17 PL, p. 200.
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and about the different regions and other groups that are part of one’s own nation.18
Such a philosophy of education draws out a conception of reasonableness that would service the program of political liberalism. However, just rotelearning about cultures other than one’s own is not sufficient in generating the conditions among the citizens required for political liberalism to sustain what I have called the liberal hope, which is not to say that curricular implications can be ignored. A cosmopolitan educational system ought to satisfy two requirements. First, such a conception of educational practice ought to generate an attitude of openness to other cultures and other modes of being that subverts the idea that one’s identity is fixed within a rigidly demarcated closure. Second, a philosophy of education should be directed towards the formation of an ethos.19 The first point may be illustrated by Tagore’s reflection on the matter in his famous essay on education that I offer in my translation: If from childhood one is educated along with language instruction about attitude formation (Bh¯abshikkha), and if one’s entire life is balanced with this attitude, then only harmony can be established in life; we can then live naturally and can apprehend the true measure of things.20
For Tagore, the attitude to be formed through pedagogical practice is precisely the cosmopolitan attitude exemplified in the following lines: Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly become ours, wherever they might have their origin. I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own.21
Of course, Tagore’s thinking on cosmopolitanism ranges across different national cultures, but nothing of importance is lost when we apply the same idea to different comprehensive conceptions of the good that inform 18 Martha Nussbaum (2007). The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 293. 19 For a philosophical discussion of these points, see S. Tagore (2008). Tagore’s Conception of
Cosmopolitanism: A Reconstruction. University of Toronto Quarterly, 77(4), 111–125. 20 Rabindranath Tagore (1992). Shikkhar Herpher. In Shikkha. Kolkata: Viswa Bharati Press, pp. 13–14. The translation of the passage is mine. Sensibility may be suggested as an alternative translation of the key word bhãb. However, the word attitude, I believe, captures better the overall philosophical sense of the passage. 21 Rabindranath Tagore (2002). Letters to a Friend. New Delhi: Rupa, p. 111. Emphasis added.
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different cultures within a particular nation. The idea of ethos as it relates to attitudes is wonderfully captured in a summary by Michel Foucault in his meditation on Kant’s essay, “Was ist Aufklärung?”: Thinking back on Kant’s text, I wonder whether we may not envisage modernity rather as an attitude than as a period in history. And by “attitude” I mean a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what the Greeks called an ethos.22
I am claiming that a cosmopolitan ethos is a requirement for political liberalism and it is the task of education to produce it. Here is the argument. First, let us recall the sense in which the notion of liberal hope was used: “citizens themselves, within the exercise of their liberty of thought and conscience, and looking to their comprehensive doctrines, view the political conception as derived from, or congruent with, or at least not in conflict with, their other values.” This idea of legitimating the state without convening any account of the good from the outside that would translate into the political deployment of oppressive power is founded on the possibility of achieving a broadly based overlapping consensus. Furthermore, the width of the arc of the consensus is directly proportional to the depth of the stability of the social order. Now, the larger the number of commensurable points between the comprehensive accounts of the good, the wider the arc of the consensus. Suppose that there is a social order where all citizens share exactly the same comprehensive account of the good. The political norms of the state in that social order on Rawlsian grounds would be exactly the norms advocated by the singularity of the given comprehensive account. The good would be identical to the right in this instance. Cosmopolitan norms do not reduce plurality to singularity, but attempt to expand the reach of reasonableness by making possible the expansion of the degree of commensurability between comprehensive accounts. It accounts for what Rawls calls the depth of the
22 Michel Foucault (1984). What is Enlightenment? In The Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow (ed.).
Pantheon, p. 39.
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overlapping consensus: As for depth, once a constitutional consensus is in place, political groups must enter the public forum of political discussion and appeal to other groups who do not share their comprehensive doctrine. This fact makes it rational for them to move out of the narrower circle of their own views and to develop political conceptions in terms of which they can explain and justify their preferred policies to a wider public so as to put together a majority.23
Political deliberation of this sort requires an ethos of acting and behaving that, at one and the same time, marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task (in the language of Foucault), that encourages intelligent and imaginative ways of relating to comprehensive conceptions or broad cultural frameworks, religious or otherwise, that are not one’s own. Substantive moral concerns of citizens emerge through the expressive horizon of cultures, through religion, art, music, poetry and so on. We need to know a good deal about other cultures and generate an attitude of openness to alterity if the goal of public reason is to be realized: As reasonable and rational, and knowing that they affirm a diversity of reasonable religious and philosophical doctrines, citizens should be ready to explain to one another in terms each could reasonably expect that others might endorse as consistent with their freedom and equality.24
In other words, political theory must be able to give an account of unreasonableness and it is never sufficient to focus just on the reasonable dimensions of pluralism. The production of cosmopolitan norms as a requirement for political liberalism would be able to generate just such an account because the ethos of cosmopolitanism educates the unreasonable. The cosmopolitan norm celebrates openness to the other — a way of being, a collective ethos — that does not allow identity to close in on itself within the orbit of a closure, but nurtures an attitude that keeps it open to the touch of alterity. Indeed, the construction of such a sensibility would require, as Nussbaum correctly points out, “learning quite a lot about nations other than one’s own and about the different regions and other groups that are part of one’s own nation.” Enjoyment and celebration — and I use these words carefully — of the sameness and differences ranging across the 23 PL, p. 165. 24 PL, p. 218.
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voices of cultures generates a citizen who does not merely tolerate; she can only, as a cosmopolitan citizen, see the political conception as a reflection of an overlapping consensus as congruent with her own comprehensive conception. It gives us the philosophical work that toleration does, namely non-interference, but also gives us more: it generates an attitude that seeks to plot unities across different conceptions of the good that can help realize the liberal hope that calls for the free acknowledgment of the political conception. Let me offer an example: Jack belongs to a culture that does not see women as being equal to men. Thankfully, he gets exposed to an alternative culture that believes in the equality of the sexes. Reading a novel produced in this alternative culture, he becomes convinced that a conception of the good should value gender equality. Jack returns to his own culture and decides to find resources that can argue for the equality of the sexes. Indeed, he discovers that such resources are available but were not wellprofiled within the conception. Jack lives in a society governed by a liberal state. Now, he can claim that the political conception is congruent with his own conception of the good. Jack did not merely tolerate the difference to remain a pariah to the liberal conception of reasonableness, but through the intercourse with alterity, adjusted without jettisoning his own conception of the good. The cosmopolitan norm encourages, through its insistence that the home should be open to the world, the enrichment of the reach of reasonableness. It makes no sense to say that comprehensive structures are unreasonable or reasonable; rather, one should ask whether an individual situated within a comprehensive structure is reasonable or unreasonable. Our identities are textured by comprehensive structures, but the cosmopolitan norm resists the closure of identity in terms of a given structure. Rawls seems to agree with this point when he says that: “I have supposed that the comprehensive doctrines of most people are not fully comprehensive, and this allows scope for the development of an independent allegiance to the political conception that helps to bring about a consensus.”25 The fostering of the cosmopolitan norm leverages on this openness belying a totalized and closed comprehensiveness to aid the construction of the consensus. Here is the place where the difference between the norm of toleration and the 25 PL, p. 168.
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cosmopolitan norm can be profiled. Toleration assumes that identities are completely closed by a comprehensive conception, thus the only viable way of relating to alterity is by tolerating it. The norm of toleration subverts the alternative conception of being that assumes points of commensurability across comprehensive conceptions. The cosmopolitan norm, on the other hand, structures an attitude that seeks to locate points of commensurability across regions of cultural difference. I am of course assuming that all expressions of culture are moored in some comprehensive conception or the other. If it is argued that political liberalism minimally requires toleration, then it can be better argued that political liberalism minimally requires the cosmopolitan norm because it is in a better position to account for deep consensus than toleration. In my view, a possible objection to the cosmopolitan norm would be that it requires too much, where the too much is understood in terms of a cosmopolitan having to give up one’s own preferred comprehensive conception. There are two liberal responses to this objection. First, if the cosmopolitan attitude occasions the discovery of an alternative conception and one converts to the new conception freely, there should be no liberal objection to that. Second, the cosmopolitan attitude that is generated through openness to other ways of being does not require conversion; it only requires an attitude of openness to cultural alterity aiding in the development of a public reason that can allow adherents in one comprehensive conception to converse with members of other such structures. I am not claiming that the norm of toleration should be jettisoned; in the absence of the cosmopolitan norm, toleration is more expressive of reasonableness than non-toleration. But I am claiming that the cosmopolitan norm as expressive of reasonableness better satisfies the overall program of political liberalism than the mere norm of toleration. Thus, the pedagogical cultivation of cosmopolitan norms satisfies two purposes for the advancement of political liberalism. First, a cosmopolitan citizenry would be situated within a pluralized cultural space where the points of commensurability would be maximized, enabling the construction of a deep consensus through the expansion of the conversational space between different comprehensive conceptions of the good. Second, the engagement with otherness encouraged by the cosmopolitan norm would see difference not merely as the object of toleration; rather, difference would emerge as an object of respect forever
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motivating the possibility that friendships can be forged with ways of being that are radically different from one’s own. Democratic citizenship calls for the possibility of such friendships to satisfy the political aim of stability in the absence of the coercive power that seeks to unify through hegemonic means. The openness to this possibility is important for the cosmopolitan. The liberal hope, in my view, can best flourish in a reasonable pluralism where the reasonable is produced along cosmopolitan lines. To invoke Continental political philosophy, Rawls’ strategy of founding the state on the formations of an overlapping consensus cuts a middle-way between the hegemonic drive of modernity — where a grand narrative (through what Lyotard calls a legitimating strategy) subverts alternative narratives. Lyotard attempts to disarm this totalizing drive of modernity by conceiving the global cultural sphere in terms of fragmented little narratives defying the logic of unity and consensus. Thus, at best, in the absence of the trope of unity connecting little narratives, Lyotard can only opt for an ethics of toleration. The Rawlsian strategy rejects both these attitudes by invoking the overlapping consensus that depends on unity in the face of pluralism. The cosmopolitan attitude is necessary in widening the scope of unity given the fact of the many. A final point in this argument needs to be addressed. One can ask: is the cosmopolitan norm not rooted in a comprehensive conception, thus vitiating the Rawlsian distinction between comprehensive liberal doctrines and non-comprehensive political liberalism in the general terms of political liberalism and in the particular context of Rawls’ pronouncements on the philosophy of education? After giving a list of the norms and facts that should be taught to children, he asks: can it not be objected that “requiring children to understand the political conception in these ways is in effect, though not in intention, to educate them to a comprehensive liberal conception”?26 In effect, the point is this: is it possible to learn about the “social cooperation in their relations with the rest of society” without assuming the justification of autonomy, which is a comprehensive liberal value? Rawls’ response to this objection is inadequate. He merely says: “the only way this objection can be answered is to set out carefully the great differences in both scope and generality between political and comprehensive liberalism.”27 The careful 26 PL, p. 199. 27 PL, p. 200.
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delineation of the difference between the two is not in doubt; the issue here is whether the norms of political liberalism can be taught without simultaneously invoking comprehensive liberal values. A certain degree of circularity is embedded in Rawls’ argument. Political liberalism needs certain liberal norms in the citizenry already in place for the neutrality thesis to be spelt out in terms of an overlapping consensus. One cannot merely define these norms in terms of reasonableness. I think Rawls comes closest in these passages on education to grant my point that the normative requirements of the citizenry that would make possible the legitimation of the liberal state depend upon the state in helping create enabling conditions. It is not sufficient to vaguely suppose that these norms will already be in place in a society that has flourished under conditions of liberty. Thus, I am not sure it is possible not to suppose in advance some comprehensive liberal value — Millian, Kantian or cosmopolitan — in the overall argument for political liberalism. The cosmopolitan norm, though comprehensive, is different from other norms sedimented in comprehensive conceptions of the good, at least in a way that is salient for political liberalism. It is a norm that facilitates the construction of a deep consensus that is required for social stability, through the realization of what I have called the liberal hope. In this sense, the cosmopolitan norm operates as a meta-norm as it allows one to move between normative structures offered up by extant comprehensive conceptions of the good. Chantal Mouffe voices the bafflement of western democratic theory when confronted with contemporary pluralism: Western democrats view with astonishment the explosion of manifold ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts that they thought belonged to a bygone age. Instead of the heralded “New World Order”, the victory of universal values, and the generalization of “post-conventional” identities, we are witnessing an explosion of particularisms and an increasing challenge to Western universalism.28
While the challenge to Western universalism, being mounted from various quarters ranging from postcolonial historiography to some of Amartya Sen’s recent work, is welcome for various reasons and can be rendered consistent with the approach of political liberalism, the explosion of 28 Chantal Mouffe (2005). The Return of the Political. London: Verso, p. 1.
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particularisms (theorized as little narratives by Lyotard) deeply affects the Rawlsian program. The play of the cosmopolitan norm puts a check on the anarchic implications of particularism and, in so doing, renders possible an overlapping consensus productive of stability.
IV We started our reflections by defining secularism in terms of the refusal of political liberalism to map any single comprehensive account of the good available in pluralism onto the political realm. I will end these remarks by briefly articulating some implications of the use of the cosmopolitan norm within the program of political liberalism for the religious dimension of the human experience, which provides one of the most salient examples of what Rawls calls a comprehensive conception of the good. The first point to be noted is that secularism, in the context of political liberalism, does not entail a view of the state that is hostile to the religious dimensions of the human experience. Indeed, Rawls wants to give a noncoercive account of the state that allows for the flourishing of reasonable comprehensive conceptions of the good. The question is not whether the state is hostile towards religion; rather, the question pivots on how the state should relate to religion. In this regard, the state can assume one of two postures: complete non-intervention or symmetric treatment. The distinction is displayed well in Amartya Sen’s treatment of the relation between the secular state and anti-blasphemy laws: “symmetry regarding blasphemy laws can be achieved with different formulas — varying from applying to all religions, to applying it to none. While the latter option fits in immediately with a secularist withdrawal of the state from religious affairs, the former pursues symmetry between religions in a way that favors no religion in particular.”29 In this view, compulsory prayers in school cannot be sanctioned, but the state cannot have an issue with the setting aside of a room where people can pray whatever their religious background or choose not to pray at all if one were an atheist. Thus, neutrality seen in terms of symmetry blunts the argument that sees secularism as a political doctrine that wants to subvert the religious experience. 29 Amartya Sen, Secularism and Its Discontents, p. 303.
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With the flourishing of the religious life in place, the articulation of the cosmopolitan norm within the orbit of political liberalism generates certain implications that should be attended to. Religion is one sphere of belief that tends to profile comprehensive conceptions of the good within doctrinal closures. Each religion is dependent on a set of truth claims that militates against alternative truth claims supposed by other religion. Indeed, the psychology of religious violence can be partly explained by the singleminded pursuit of remaking the world in terms of truths advocated by a particular religion. Locke’s view of religious toleration is relevant here. He argued that the state ought not to use coercive power to propagate a particular religion in civil society because the religious goal of salvation lies outside the civil interests that the state is designed to protect; furthermore, religious organizations, given their voluntary nature, have no sanction to coerce individuals inside or outside the group in regard to religious beliefs. The second part of the Lockean claim is somewhat built into Rawls’ understanding of the “reasonableness” of reasonable pluralism. But I think that the matter is more complicated when the idea of toleration is run through the sieve of political liberalism. First, entire religions cannot be characterized as tolerant or intolerant. There are tolerant Christians and intolerant Christians, tolerant Hindus and intolerant Hindus, and so on. Thus, the target of the discourse of toleration should be the individual Christian or the individual Hindu, and so on. Indeed, the resources of toleration can be found within each religious account of the good, though a detailed defence of this position cannot be given here. Thus, in making toleration a pedagogical value, political liberalism need not violate the principle of symmetry defining neutrality. The suggestion then is to read reasonableness at the level of individuals and not at the general structure of comprehensive doctrines, though granted that individuals will subscribe to some comprehensive system or the other. I have of course argued for the primacy of the cosmopolitan norm that takes a step beyond the norm of toleration. Within that context, perhaps some suggestions can be made regarding how the cosmopolitan norm can be pedagogically nurtured in the religious context. The cosmopolitan attitude in regards to religion can be produced by the state through the study of the world’s religions. This militates against the belief in some quarters that the liberal state in advocating secularism is
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hostile toward religion. In such a course, taught in many universities under the title of “world religions,” the trope of symmetry is in place. No effort is made to trump one truth claim by another; rather, such a course operates at a descriptive level where the argumentative target is the disclosure and tightening of the cosmopolitan norm effected through the distillation of unities across the terrain of difference that constitutes the religions of the world. For instance, at one level, though there are fundamental doctrinal differences between Islam, Christianity and Hinduism, it is nonetheless important to note that there are remarkable convergences on reports of religious experiences by practitioners of these traditions. Meister Eckhart and Al-hallaj speak in a language that is not far removed from the vocabulary of Advaita Ved¯anta. Of course, as Locke points out in a different context, such reports have salvific but no political consequence, thus they cannot be directly used to service the cause of Rawlsian consensus; but nonetheless, the symmetrical study of religion can trigger the free assimilation of the cosmopolitan norm. The point is not to flatten out the differences but to realize that, perhaps at a deeper level, points of commensurability can be located across divergent structures. There is at least one instance in history that I am aware of where an attempt was made to derive political norms of governance from an articulation of an overlapping consensus purely through the consideration of religion, namely Akbar’s experimentation with a universal faith he called din-ilahi. The cosmopolitan requirement need not be that strong. The cosmopolitan dimensions of political liberalism have implications for secularism. Political liberalism, as I see it, wants to avoid two ways of conceiving the relationship between the state and religion viewed as comprehensive accounts of the good. The state should avoid the privileging of any one religious conception on the one hand, and on the other, the state should not be hostile towards religious expression on the part of the citizenry. Indeed, both these political arrangements can be the cause of violence. The great sustaining power of the political arrangement profiled by Rawls takes a middle position wherein these two possibilities are avoided. He allows for the flourishing of religious life whilst preserving pluralism. This in effect is Rawlsian secularism. If I am right in claiming that the cosmopolitan norm adds to the fertility of political liberalism, then opening oneself up to the religious experiences of others can only serve the cause of
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consensus. And many areas of this consensus have political resonance because many of the civic norms (as opposed to salvific norms) that people abide by have their origins in religious faith. Furthermore, I think it is a mistake to think of the religious traditions of the world purely in the context of items of doctrine that are taken to be true by the adherents. While there is no denying the truth-sensitive doctrinal dimensions of religion, the religious horizon overflows the doctrines and comes to include other civilizational regions such as music, art, literature and so on. The cosmopolitan attitude opens up all these dimensions of human experience for possible inclusion in one’s identity formation. If secularism is understood in terms of a political liberalism informed by the need to foster the cosmopolitan norm, religious education of the sort as described here becomes salutary. Indeed, because the liberal-secular state values the free practice of all religions (comprehensive conceptions of the good in general), the cosmopolitan check is necessary to block the hegemonic intent that closed particulars appear to display. I end with a poetic statement from Tagore that invokes the idea of cosmopolitanism through an appeal to universal hospitality toward global culture in an address delivered in Tokyo that bears the title “Ideals of Education”: We should have faith in ideals that have matured in the spiritual field through ages of human endeavor after perfection, the golden crops that have developed in different forms and in different soils but whose food value for man’s spirit has the same composition. These are not for the local markets but for universal hospitality, for sharing life’s treasures with each other and realizing that human civilization is a spiritual feast, the invitation to which is open to all; it is never for the ravenous orgies of carnage where the food and the feeders are being torn to pieces.30
Political liberalism should have no argument with such a claim concerning the cosmopolitan aims of education.
30 Rabindranath Tagore (1999). The Ideals of Education. In The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore,
Sisir Kumar Das (ed.). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, p. 613.
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Chapter
5
The Machiavellian Problem and Liberal Secularism BENJAMIN WONG
This chapter presents the outline of a political account of the early liberal conception of secularism or the separation of church and state. It aims to show that the liberal conception of the secular state should be seen as part of a comprehensive effort undertaken by thinkers associated with the Enlightenment to transform radically the traditional view of relations between state, society, and religion.
INTRODUCTION The Reformation, which challenged the authority and power of the Catholic Church in the early part of the 16th century, fragmented the Christian world. Subsequently, differences in religious doctrine “fueled political ambitions and vice versa, in a deadly vicious cycle that lasted a century and a half. Christians hunted and killed Christians with a maniacal fury once reserved for Jews, Muslims, and heretics.”1 During the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) that engulfed most of Europe, it was estimated that German cities lost a third, and the countryside a fifth, of their population.2 The Enlightenment project emerged as a response to the unprecedented violence and destruction caused by these religious wars in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. The end-product of the Enlightenment project was the liberal, commercial republic. In addition to the separation of church and state, the modern liberal state has features such as the separation of powers, and a system of checks and balances including a system of individual rights 1 Mark Lilla (2007). The Stillborn God. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 52. 2 John Merriman (1996). A History of Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present. New York: W.W. Norton
& Co., p. 176.
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and competing political parties. Alongside these political innovations, the modern liberal state also supports economic growth in a competitive free market as well as scientific and technological development. An appreciation of this complex array of social, moral, and political reforms is necessary for an adequate understanding of the strengths and limitations of liberal secularism. Liberal secularism, understood in terms of the separation of church and state, entails the subordination of the church to the state. To effect this fundamental change the Enlightenment thinkers had to provide arguments to reform traditional political and theological thought. The Bible had to be reinterpreted to accommodate the political changes envisaged by these thinkers. This chapter will only deal briefly with the theological arguments relating to the secularization of the modern state. The main aim of this chapter is to set out the main political arguments that set the stage for the evolution of the liberal secular state. The chapter will focus particularly on the contributions of the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as their political and theological ideas serve as the foundation for the emergence of the liberal secular state. The chapter will proceed on the basis that these thinkers approached the problem of religious conflict from a Machiavellian perspective. The wars of religion were often led or inspired by leaders who conformed in varying degrees to what Machiavelli teaches about the “new prince” or the “armed prophet.” The complex structure of the modern liberal state could be said to be designed to prevent a Machiavellian prince from monopolizing power or otherwise dominating the state. This paper will outline the strategies undertaken by Hobbes and Locke to deal with the Machiavellian problem and show how their arguments contributed to the liberal conception of the modern, secular state.
THE MACHIAVELLIAN PROBLEM The ostensible purpose of Machiavelli’s most well-known work, The Prince, was to educate an actual or potential prince with the knowledge and methods to rid Italy of invaders and to unify the country. Italy then was made up of more or less independent republics and principalities that competed with each other for power and influence. The political situation, moreover, was complicated by the role of the Catholic Church, which was then dominated by popes with extensive temporal ambitions. This last posed a particularly
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challenging problem since it meant that, in attempting to unify Italy, the prospective conqueror would have to confront the power of the church. Machiavelli indicates that as far as the conquest of Italy was concerned, there was no lack of ambition both internally and externally. But all the would-be conquerors, all of whom were fierce and ruthless men, nonetheless failed because they were unable to overcome their Christian conscience or their fear of God. The French King, Louis XII, for instance, failed in his attempt to take Italy because he could not get around his obligation to the pope for annulling his marriage and for appointing one of his ministers as a cardinal. And Cesare Borgia, who brutally disposed of his rivals and henchmen, committed a fundamental error in choosing as pope a person whom he had earlier offended in the belief that “among great personages, new benefits would make old injuries be forgotten.”3 He erred in retaining a belief in the Christian virtue of forgiveness. Through these examples, Machiavelli shows how strong men who could commit spectacular atrocities would somehow stumble in their confrontation with the church. The examples of Louis XII and Cesare Borgia show that the power of religion should never be underestimated; consequently, they illustrate the great difficulty of any attempt to overcome the power of religion. Nothing less than the introduction of “new modes and orders” is needed to overcome the power of religion, and in this connection Machiavelli says: “nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more difficult to manage than to put oneself at the head of introducing new orders.”4 To introduce a new order, the prince has to go against the church. But this means he must liberate himself from its dominance. To be at the head of a new order, the prince must ensure that his authority replaces the authority of the church or that he becomes the authority for the church. This would be possible if he were no longer afraid of the power of the established church and its agents; but this means ultimately that he must be free from the fear of God. Indeed, it could be said of the new prince that he has to aspire to be a god or a prophet. But to succeed, such a prince would have to be an armed prophet, for “all the armed prophets conquered and the unarmed
3 Niccolo Machiavelli (1985). The Prince, a new translation with an introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 33. 4 Ibid., p. 23.
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ones were ruined.”5 Although the prophet Moses is held to be a model of the armed prophet, Machiavelli is well aware that Christianity is based on the teachings of a person who could be characterized as unarmed. But then Machiavelli indicates in the chapter on arms (chapter 14) that being armed means being in possession of the knowledge of the art of warfare, and in this case he includes both psychological as well as spiritual warfare. To succeed in attacking religion, one has to attack it with the weapons of religion. For the new prince, Christian morality proves to be the major stumbling block. Accordingly, Machiavelli sets out to overcome its influence on the prince. He does this by arguing from the start that the desire to acquire is not a bad thing, contrary to conventional religious belief: “And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised and not blamed; but when they cannot, and want to do it anyway, here lie the error and the blame.”6 Those who wish to acquire and to sustain their acquisitions are often compelled by necessity to do what are otherwise bad or immoral deeds: “to kill one’s citizens, betray one’s friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion.”7 But those who manage to sustain themselves through such means may find some “remedy” even from God.8 God is not necessarily against the godless who succeed in their endeavors. Furthermore, if one “considers everything well, one will find something appears to be virtue, which if pursued would be one’s ruin, and something else appears to be vice, which if pursued results in one’s security and well-being.”9 Success in an enterprise is all that matters; and it is worth recalling that those who do succeed “will be praised and not blamed.” The end not only justifies the means, it serves to glorify and even to sanctify them.10
5 Ibid., p. 24. 6 Ibid., pp. 14–15. 7 Ibid., p. 35. 8 Ibid., p. 38. 9 Ibid., p. 62. 10 Consider the 15th century Bishop of Verden, Dietrich von Nieheim, in his response to the problem
of schism in the Catholic Church: “When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even cunning, treachery, violence, simony, prison, death. For all order is for the sake of the community, and the individual must be sacrificed to the common good.” Cited in Louis P. Pojman (2006). Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong. Thomson Wadsworth, p. 121.
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Virtue and vice, as marks of good and bad reputation, exist only on the plane of opinion. As such, they can be manipulated by a clever prince. In order to gain followers and to build an army, he needs to create a good impression of himself, often by unscrupulous means. In pursuing his desire for acquisition, the prince is “compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast.”11 He needs to use the ways of “the lion” and “the fox” which are metaphors for the use of force and fraud. The latter is especially important. Precisely because he has to act against faith, charity, and humanity, the prince has to “take great care that nothing escapes his mouth that is not full of the above-mentioned … qualities and that, to see him and hear him, he should appear all mercy, all faith, all honesty, all humanity, all religion. And nothing is more necessary to appear to have than this last quality … For the vulgar are taken in by the appearance and the outcome of a thing, and in the world there is no one but the vulgar.”12 In teaching the prince to submit to political necessity above all, Machiavelli liberates the prince from the fear of religion and religious sanctions. But in so doing, Machiavelli also paves the way for the prince to manipulate religious beliefs for political purposes. In effect, one cannot tell a Machiavellian prince from one who is a genuine religious zealot. The Machiavellian prince is “beyond good and evil,” so to speak. But the success of his projects depends on his subjects taking good and evil seriously. It is his ability to manipulate and exploit man’s moral and religious beliefs that allows him to succeed in his grand enterprise of introducing new modes and orders. The Machiavellian prince cannot succeed if his followers do not believe in justice, not least divine justice. Morality therefore works in favor of the Machiavellian prince. Morality, especially religiously based morality, thus becomes inherently problematic from a political point of view. This is, in a nutshell, the Machiavellian problem. And the problem is such that a solution to it requires concessions to Machiavelli’s teachings about politics and morality. The following sections will explore the attempts by Hobbes and Locke to deal with it.
11 Ibid., p. 69. 12 Ibid., p. 71.
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HOBBES’ RESPONSE TO THE MACHIAVELLIAN PROBLEM Evidence that Hobbes was responding to the Machiavellian problem may be gleaned from his refutation of the “Foole” in the discussion of justice in chapter 15 of the Leviathan: The Foole hath sayd in his heart, there is no such thing as Justice; and also sometimes with his tongue; seriously alleaging, that every mans conservation, and contentment, being committed to his own care, there could be no reason, why every man might not do what he thought conduceth thereunto; and therefore also to make, or not make; keep or not keep Covenants, was not against Reason, when it conduced to ones benefit. He does not therein deny, that there be Covenants; and that they are sometimes broken, sometimes kept … but he questioneth, whether Injustice, taking away the feare of God, (for the same Foole hath said in his heart there is no God,) may not sometimes stand with Reason, which dictateth to every man his own good; particularly then, when it conduceth to such a benefit, as shall put a man in a condition, to neglect not only the dispraise, and revilings, but also the power of other men. The Kingdom of God is gotten by violence: but what if it could be gotten by unjust violence? were it against Reason so to get it, when it is impossible to receive hurt by it? And if it be not against Reason, it is not against Justice; or else Justice is not to be approved for good. From such reasoning as this, Successful wickedness hath obtained the name of Vertue: and some that in all other things hath disallowed the violation of Faith; yet have allowed it, when it is for the getting of a Kingdome. And the heathen that believed, that Saturn was deposed his son Jupiter, believed nevertheless the same Jupiter to be the avenger of Injustice.13
The Fool could be conceived as a stand-in for Machiavelli. Following Machiavelli, the Fool takes the view that self-interest is not incompatible with injustice and that it is sometimes reasonable to break one’s promises, especially when it comes to the acquisition of political power. Hobbes, on the other hand, wishes to argue that justice consists in the performance of covenants and that this is demanded by reason. But it should be noted that for the most part the fool does not openly convey his teaching: he sometimes says that there is no justice, but he never openly says there is no God. Yet, in executing his design, he always appears as an avenger of injustice. And in 13 Thomas Hobbes (1991). Leviathan, Richard Tuck (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 101–102.
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pursuing his objectives, he would even appeal to “the attaining of an eternal felicity after death.”14 Hobbes introduces the fool only after he has laid out the main premise of his radical teaching about man and the state of nature, and (as will soon be clear) his teaching contains Machiavellian premises that are necessary to neutralize the challenge of the Machiavellian fool. Hobbes conceives of man as a machine, no different from any other animal that operates on mechanical principles. Hobbes does not regard man from a Christian perspective — that is, as a being created in the image of God, or as a being with a soul. Man as living machine is a being in constant motion; indeed, life is nothing but motion for Hobbes. And as with a machine, man is animated by two basic drives: Appetite and Aversion, or simply fear and desire.15 This motion is based on man’s interaction with the external world, which he does not have direct access to. He experiences the world only in his head, through the representations or sense impressions of objects that he encounters in his interaction with the external world. Human consciousness is locked within the subjective world of sensuous experiences. The mechanistic psychology is designed to meet related political and theological objectives. First, it shows that it is “a hard matter … to distinguish exactly between Sense and Dreaming.”16 The difficulty in distinguishing waking from dreaming is used to give a naturalistic account of how men come to believe in the existence of ghosts. Men, not realizing they were dreaming, sometimes believe they have encountered ghosts or spirits. And in the example Hobbes gives, he alludes to the Apostle Paul’s apparent encounter with the spirit of Jesus Christ. Apart from promoting skepticism towards the belief in supernatural entities, the psychology is used to cast doubt on certain central tenets of Christianity. This is a fundamental strategy in Hobbes’ attempt to rationalize and naturalize the interpretation of the Bible, a move later adapted and refined by other Enlightenment thinkers to argue for the secularization of the state. Hobbes’ psychology is also used to show that there is no such thing as universal, objective standards of truth or morality. Because a person’s body is always in motion and constantly changing, it is “impossible that all the 14 Ibid., p. 103. 15 Ibid., p. 38. 16 Ibid., p. 17.
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same things should alwayes cause in him the same Appetites and Aversion: much less can all men consent, in the Desire of almost any one and the same Object … But whatsoever is the object of mans Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good: And the object of his Hate, and Aversion, Evill … There being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good and Evill.”17 Given the way they are constituted, men cannot help but come into conflict with one another. This arises out of a natural necessity. By nature, men cannot help but seek to satisfy their desires. But in order to do so, they require the means or power to obtain the objects of their desire. Hobbes defines power as the “present means, to obtain some future apparent Good.”18 For Hobbes, the future exists only as a fiction of the mind; the good is only apparent because it is in effect an imagined good. What a person believes is desirable for now may change in the next minute. And since the future is unknown, a person can never be certain if his present means are adequate to secure his future good, so his happiness or felicity depends on his ability to satisfy all his desires. Consequently, human life is characterized by “a perpetuall and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death.”19 Man is power-hungry not because he “hopes for a more intense delight … but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.” Thus, in his quest for power, other human beings become potential competitors. Having established the natural condition of human beings, Hobbes next asks what would happen if humans were put in a state of nature, which is a state without government. As with the psychology, the introduction of the concept of the state of nature is intended to further Hobbes’ teachings in a number of related ways. First, the state of nature is used as a basis to argue for man’s natural freedom and equality. In the state of nature, all men are equal in their ability to kill, and each is free to do whatever he deems necessary for his survival, including using another person’s body. And given the natural drive for power amongst men, the state of nature is necessarily a state of war, of every man against every man. In such a war, Hobbes says, “nothing can be unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have 17 Ibid., p. 39. 18 Ibid., p. 62. 19 Ibid., p. 70.
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there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law, no Injustice. Force and Fraud, are in warre the two Cardinall vertues.”20 The concept of the state of nature is therefore used by Hobbes to show that all men are by nature power-hungry Machiavellians, capable of using force and fraud to achieve their personal ends. Thus, Hobbes reveals that the means to deal with the Machiavellian problem is to radicalize it by transforming all humans into Machiavellians. Hobbes’ political psychology shows that there are by nature no selfless or noble avengers of injustice. All human beings are by nature self-interested seekers of their own material advantage. The recognition that all men are self-interested reduces the scope for the Machiavellian to deceive. And since all are shrewd Machiavellians, humans in the state of nature quickly realize that it is ultimately self-defeating to continue in that perilous condition. As Hobbes shows, given the condition of the state of nature, reason “suggesteth convenient Articles of Peace.”21 The solution for all men then is to contract among themselves to transfer their rights to a person or assembly that would then set down laws to regulate their conduct towards one another. Since all are equal, there can be no quarrel as to who is more qualified to rule. The important thing is that once a decision is made, it is absolutely binding on all to obey the ruler or rulers. As the sovereign retains the full rights of nature that his subjects have given away, he is all-powerful. He has the right and authority to determine and to dictate all matters concerning religious belief.22 The sovereign has to be obeyed even if he is not a Christian, and, according to Hobbes, Christian salvation consists solely in obedience to the sovereign.23 The theological arguments needed to justify state power over religion are very complex, but they boil down to the strategy of equating the relevant laws of God with the laws of nature, which serve as the basis of civil law: “And because he is a Sovereign, he requireth Obedience to all his owne, that is to all the Civill Laws; in which also are contained all the Laws of Nature, that is, all the Laws of God: for besides the Laws of Nature, and the Laws of the Church, which are part of the Civill Law … there be no other Laws Divine.”24 As the laws 20 Ibid., p. 90. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., p. 124. 23 Ibid., chapter 43. 24 Ibid., p. 413.
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of nature are in effect the “dictates of reason,” Hobbes’ overall strategy is to use the tools of reason and science to interpret the Bible, with the aim of rationalizing and naturalizing the scriptures. This involves treating the Bible as a work of man and not the unvarnished word of God, a very controversial theological move that requires Hobbes to examine highly sensitive religious issues. For example, Hobbes has to cast doubt on the divine authority of the Bible in order to justify his right to interpret scriptures, and he does this by raising doubts about whether Moses was the writer of the foundational books of the Old Testament. But these interpretive innovations are necessary to ensure that the political prescriptions have theological support.
LOCKEAN REFINEMENTS TO HOBBES’ RESPONSE TO THE MACHIAVELLIAN PROBLEM In keeping with Machiavelli’s insights into the seemingly intractable problem of religion in the context of Italian politics, Hobbes recognizes that the political reforms cannot be fully implemented without corresponding changes in the traditional Biblical view of politics. Of the four books of the Leviathan, the last two are devoted to Hobbes’ attempt to reform the theological tradition through his rationalistic interpretation of the Bible. Hobbes’ aim, of course, was to advance his political teaching, which he claims is based on the secure foundations of a new science of politics, and to show the way for the state to exercise control over religion. Hobbes’ strategy did not succeed as well as he had hoped in part because it was so explicitly radical. Readers of his time found his teaching deeply shocking and offensive; an old Anglican acquaintance described the Leviathan as “a farrago of Christian Atheism.”25 Rousseau, who was aware of the divisive nature of Christian politics, had this to say of Hobbes: Of all Christian authors, the philosopher Hobbes is the only one who correctly saw the evil and the remedy, who dared to propose the reunification of the two heads of the eagle, and the complete return to political unity, without which no State or government will ever be well-constituted. But he ought to have seen that the dominating spirit of Christianity was incompatible with his system, and the interest of the 25 Ibid., p. ix. Hobbes’ Leviathan is said to contain “the most devastating attack on Christian theology ever undertaken and was the means by which later modern thinkers were able to escape from it.” In Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God, p. 75.
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priest would always be stronger than that of the State. It is not so much what is horrible and false in his political theory as what is correct and true that has made it odious.26
Hobbes’ strategy therefore had to be refined. Locke found a less provocative way to convey what was “correct and true” about Hobbes and added features that furthered the project of managing the role of religion in political affairs. Like Hobbes, Locke would often cite the scriptures to support his political and theological claims, but he would not always give reasons for all his arguments, especially if they were particularly controversial. So even though he follows Hobbes in asserting man’s freedom and equality, he offers no argument or reason to support that claim in the Second Treatise of Government, and instead cites a conventional theological source that does not vindicate those political claims.27 And although Locke’s solution to the religious problem of intolerance differs markedly from Hobbes’, his treatment and understanding of Christian scripture is “identical to that found in Hobbes’ Leviathan.”28 In terms of religion, one of the major problems with Hobbes was that he allowed for the imposition of a civil religion controlled by an all-powerful sovereign. Locke’s solution was to do away with the need for a civil religion and to argue instead for toleration and the disestablishment of state religion. A Letter Concerning Toleration, which sets out Locke’s arguments for a liberal approach to religion, proved to be the “most influential in the 18th century Enlightenment.”29 With Locke, there was a clear separation of church and state. For Locke, “every Church is orthodox to itself” and since different churches have different views of salvation, each should be free to pursue its beliefs without interference from the state or other religious groups.30 Thus, with Locke, religion was effectively privatized and Christian salvation became a private matter. 26 J. J. Rousseau (1978). On the Social Contract with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy, Roger D. Masters (ed.). New York: St. Martin’s Press, p. 127. 27 John Locke (2000). Second Treatise of Government, Peter Laslett (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 269–271. 28 Thomas Pangle (1988). The Spirit of Modern Republicanism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 305. 29 Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God, p. 97. 30 John Locke (1983). A Letter Concerning Toleration, James H. Tully (ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., p. 32.
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Locke’s political and theological writings responded to the problem of the potential abuse of power by Hobbes’ absolute sovereign by arguing for limited government. In this context, Locke also addresses a problem Hobbes did not fully resolve. Precisely because he invested the sovereign with absolute power, Hobbes did not fully overcome the Machiavellian temptation to seize power. For example, in his response to the fool, Hobbes does not convincingly make the case that it is irrational to engage in political deception or that it is impossible to succeed by deception. Locke resolves these problems by introducing the concept of property. Locke’s argument for the natural right to property is used to limit the power of government. For Locke, the “great and chief end … of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the Preservation of their Property” (emphasis in the original).31 The powerful effect of property rights is demonstrated in the chapter on conquest (chapter 16) in the Second Treatise of Government, where Locke shows how the conqueror in a just war is severely limited in his claims on the property of the defeated. Together with what he says about the need to institute a system of separation of powers, Locke’s arguments make the pursuit of political power much less attractive as a career option for ambitious Machiavellians. In so doing, he removes the Machiavellian motive to seek political power. On the other hand, the argument for the possibility of the unlimited acquisition of wealth opens a new channel for the aspiring Machiavellians to seek their fame and fortune in the economic realm. As with Machiavelli and Hobbes, Locke’s view of man is by nature an acquisitive being. His innovation is to transform the desire for power into the desire for the acquisition of wealth. Lockean man is fundamentally an economic being, and his account of man is used to moderate the character of man’s religiosity. The economic depiction of man is extended to Locke’s account of the reasonableness of Christianity, where Christian morality is shown to have a mercenary character. Man’s willingness to obey the law of nature, which is also the law of God, is based on a contract that those who obey would be rewarded with eternal life.32 Locke thus extends the principle of calculating self-interest into the realm of Christian morality and, in so 31 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, pp. 350–351. 32 For a discussion of this, see Michael S. Rabieh (1991). The Reasonableness of Locke, or the
Questionableness of Christianity. The Journal of Politics, 53(4), 933–957.
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doing, rationalizes it. Locke’s God proves to be friendly to the bourgeois way of life. In all, Locke’s political and theological reforms deal more adequately with the Machiavellian problem. The separation of church and state that leads in effect to the privatization of religion deprives the Machiavellian prince from using religion as a means to gain political power. In addition, the separation of powers renders political office less attractive to the ambitious Machiavellian. More importantly, the provisions for the right to acquire unlimited wealth in the economic realm offer an alternative, and much safer, channel for Machiavellians to pursue their ambitions.
CONCLUSION: SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE NATURE AND LIMITS OF LIBERAL SECULARISM The efforts of Hobbes and Locke to deal with the problem of religion and politics have contributed greatly to the success of the Enlightenment project. Western liberal societies, freed from the constraints of religious authority and censorship, have made remarkable progress both economically and technologically. But the success of the Enlightenment comes at a price. As the account of Hobbes and Locke has tried to show, part of the solution to the Machiavellian problem requires the acceptance of Machiavelli’s teaching about the acquisitive and competitive nature of man. With Locke, this aspect of human behavior is channeled into economics. But this means that the distinction between rich and poor, or economic inequality, would become a permanent feature of human life in societies based on the principles supplied by Hobbes and Locke. Adam Smith, the father of modern economic thought and a philosopher who followed Locke very closely in his economic arguments, has said that “where there is great wealth, there is great inequality.”33 He further remarked that “civil government, so far as it is constituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”34 And the Machiavellian nature of the rich is evident from the observation that 33 Adam Smith (1994). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Edwin Cannan (ed.). New York: The Modern Library, p. 766. 34 Ibid., p. 771.
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“people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”35 Smith’s view of economic life under conditions of the free market shows that Hobbes’ and Locke’s solution to the Machiavellian problem does not do away with the problem of injustice, understood as the exploitation of the weaker by the stronger; it merely mitigates the worst effects of that form of injustice. The solution replaces political exploitation with economic exploitation.36 The secular nature of the state is in one sense a boon to religious groups as they can practice their religion without fear of persecution. A liberal society also affords opportunity for the proliferation of religious sects, thus creating a situation where no one religion can exercise great influence in society.37 At the same time, the secular nature of the liberal state imposes limits on the state’s ability to regulate morality. As Locke says in A Letter Concerning Toleration, the “care of Souls does not belong to the magistrate.”38 This means that it is not the place of the state to regulate morality. People in liberal societies are free to indulge in certain private vices. This poses a real challenge to those who are religiously or socially conservative: “For it does not belong unto the Magistrate to make use of the Sword in punishing every thing, indifferently, that he takes to be a sin against God. Uncharitableness, Idleness, and many other things are sins, by the consent of all men, which yet no man ever said were to be punished by the Magistrate. The reason is, because they are not prejudicial to other mens Right, nor do they break the publick Peace of Societies.”39 But as Adam Smith has noted, the poorer, common people tend to adopt austere forms of morality typical of traditional religions because they realize that the “vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people.” For this reason, they tend to regard these vices with the “utmost abhorrence and detestation.”40 Thus, it seems that liberal societies expect their most unfortunate and probably least-educated citizens to be the most tolerant members of society. 35 Ibid., p. 148. 36 This solution is very much in keeping with Hobbes’ view that the worst thing in life is the prospect
of a violent death. 37 Ibid., pp. 851–853. 38 Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 35. 39 Ibid., p. 44. See also Steven Kautz (1995). Liberalism and Community. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, chapter 3. 40 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 853.
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The unprecedented progress of science and technology has radically transformed the conditions of material life for many people in the most developed liberal societies. But at the same time, the advances in science and technology have also brought about new challenges to those who are religious. People who are sick or dying seek medical remedies, the basis of which often challenge deeply held religious conceptions regarding the sanctity of human life. The ability of science to create artificial life forms also poses serious challenges to religious conceptions of what it means to be human. Such advances in science and technology also have the potential to increase the growing list of private vices. In a sense, the separation of church and state has led to a situation where more and more people focus on the needs of the body rather than the needs of the soul. The secular state contributes to the secularization of society. In such a society, people tend to become increasingly materialistic and hedonistic, and this again poses great challenges to those who are more religiously oriented. Lastly, the freedom of thought and expression in liberal societies has contributed to the vast development of knowledge in all areas of human endeavor. But this has also led to criticisms about the goodness and justice of liberalism. The rational foundation of liberalism has been called into question by critics from both the left and the right.41 The liberal secular state is accused not only of trivializing religion, but of being anti-Christian. Some conservative critics have argued that “liberalism’s myopic preoccupation with religious wars is outdated.”42 Others contend that it is self-defeating for liberal secularists to exclude religion from politics. While recognizing that there are “hateful preachers” in liberal society, scholars of religion like Jeffery Stout suggest that civic “coalitions of the right sort” with religious moderates would be more effective in dealing with religious bigotry in a way that would preserve democracy.43 In short, there are growing 41 For arguments from the conservative side, see Robert P. George (2001). The Clash of Orthodoxies.
Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books. For an account of major left-leaning critics of liberalism, see J. Judd Owen (2001). Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism. University of Chicago Press. 42 This appears to be the opinion of Nicholas Wolterstorff, a theologically conservative philosopher of religion. The statement quoted was cited in Richard Rorty (2003). Religion in the Public Square. Journal of Religious Ethics, 31(1), 145. 43 Stout counts himself among those who consider themselves “atheists, agnostics, or spiritual but not religious.” See Jeffery Stout (2008). 2007 Presidential Address: The Folly of Secularism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 76(3), 533–544.
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demands in liberal society for a re-evaluation of its fundamental principle of secularism. Clearly, the liberal secular state both leaves and creates problems it cannot fully resolve, but the question is whether attempts to challenge or criticize its secular foundations would help to re-introduce the Machiavellian problem.
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While the multiculturalism of the European Union often leads it to be considered a primarily secular enterprise, the precise nature of this secularization should be examined in sufficient detail. A historicist strategy, secularization articulates itself differently according to context, and while there are good grounds for believing (and, as with all statements about the future, we can only believe — or not) that increasing educational levels and multiculturalism itself will relativize religious absolutes, a secularism of a historical materialist sense is not yet observable. The essence of the European project, as it is evolving in the 21st century and whether it has yet reached the highest levels, is the necessity for critical conviction, for an open debate which holds fast to a certain idea of Europe — President of the European Commission Jacques Delors’ “soul for Europe” perhaps — but which continuously keeps it available for nuancing and critique. This should, of course, be clear from the trajectory of the European Union as an enterprise, southwards and eastwards (if occasionally, as a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis, to the northwest, to Iceland), to a once Ottoman, now partially Russian sphere of influence. As such, expansion leads to a self-questioning, a krisis, of European values; the nature of the Union’s approach to secularism will also be refined and new critical convictions will emerge. “Changes in discourse … that structure what we know and in what terms we can know, involving language, argument, images, and symbols … are just as important as changes in institutions and daily practices.” Mikael Hård and Thomas J. Misa (2008, p. 10)
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Secularization confronts with a turning point or krisis: a “crisis” in the sense of an impasse of contentious judgments, in which no party can have the definitive word. The hegemonic, restraining power of the secular national state is itself relativized when states, such as those in the European Union, pool sovereignty as they meet together only partially, imbricated in policy, economics and strategic planning, but leaving aside more existential (and, of course, existentialist) issues. As Stathis Gourgouris (2008) remarks — a viewpoint with application to both European and Asian contexts — secularization must always be seen as an ongoing, transient and temporizing process which ceases to be such when it becomes secularism, a fixed belief in a “set of definitions” and thus an abstraction from historical praxis: “The secular is not given once and for all and thus cannot be totalized and bounded; it has a differential history.” Even within Europe, closely knit by rivers, trade and conflict, differentiation between nation-states is not to be discounted.1 In his now largely neglected 1954 work, Die Zerstörung der Vernunft [The Destruction of Reason], Georg Lukács continues the classic distinction between Germany and Western Europe from a strategic ideological viewpoint: the latter’s democratic populations can see state politics as “their own work,” while this is not present in the former (p. 49).2 In a sense, and although the rhetoric of bringing Europe close to the people weighs against it,3 the prevalent view from European Union 1 In their influential joint statement “After the War, The Rebirth of Europe,” published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper (and subsequently in Constellations (2003) 10(3)), Jûrgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida ask whether there are “historical experiences, traditions and achievements” which have imprinted themselves on the European consciousness as a “commonly suffered political fate which can be formed in common.” They give but a schematic, systemic answer (Christianity, capitalism, Roman law, etc.), although they show more attention to that which has divided the continent. 2 If in this work, written around the time that the current European Union was originally envisaged, Lukács aimed to restore a — needless to say, secular — rationality after the “Lektion” [‘vocabulary,’ but in some sense also ‘Lecture’] “which Hitler [had given] to the world” (p. 72), the founders of the Union, themselves haunted by the specter of Fascism and conflict, began a limited partnership (the Coal and Steel Community) with a clear goal which, as this particular specter haunting Europe has gradually waned, has not been supplanted by any other prime motivation of such specificity. While a trading union can but be secular, once other objectives accrete to its limited aims, as has happened with the European Union in the course of the past half-century, and once therefore more nebulous categories like will and mindset come into play, the basic secular impulse is questioned. The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, proposing the Coal and Steel Community, talks of “concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity”; this immanent, inductive method, intricately bound with an historical dimension, is very far removed from all-or-nothing procedures. 3 For example, when French President Jacques Chirac addressed the Berlin Bundestag on 27 June 2000, he stressed that “we want Europe closer to its citizens … [part of their] everyday life … [even if] many
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leaders is that the initiative to change to a more holistic, even greater union, comes from them; the early 21st century impasse over the Constitution is perhaps a most famous point of contention here, and even its defenders (such as ex-German foreign minister Joschka Fischer in a 2000 speech at Berlin’s Humboldt Universität) make pains to highlight the core value of “a precise delimitation of the European and national-state levels.” To give the nuance of the end-result of European integration, Fischer uses here a Latinate noun, “Finalität,” which echoes an eschatological vision slightly at odds with the secular means of its accomplishment. We must therefore, as C.J. Sommerville (1998) points out, differentiate between various applications of the word “secularization,” and in this regard at least between applications at the state- or even the “super-state” level and those at the level of the population at large or the constituent regions. In its divergent global contexts, the secular as a category is historical (belated, defined as the end-term of a previous definition), and historicist (imbricated in the quest for diachronic laws by which, as a sociopolitical category, it, like the contrary yet dialectical movement of spiritualization, is motivated). The secular is, in Max Weber’s famous phrase, a “disenchantment of the world” [“Entzauberung der Welt”] (2004, p. 30) — but one which can itself enchant. Such a disenchantment is not, of course, one with the world. The secular is thus but a reified category hypostatized from its active movement, secularization, a process which can never be complete but which is to be articulated divergently for each generation or new social formation. Secularization as a process then is one of relativization, and can occur within a religious formation, articulating more its worldly attributes than the transcendent (as in the Reformation), applying a humanist logic to that which hitherto had been a matter of belief as a way of life. Indeed, it is a commonplace after Max Weber and Peter L. Berger, and one taken up in Indian critiques of secularism, that such a reformation is a peculiarly Protestant legacy. The homogeneity of the religious community, as it had appeared in the past, is the site of fractures (as with the British “state” religion, Anglicanism, over ecumenical issues, homosexuality, etc., at present) and a new community — even within the secularist itself — arises. In his 1844 Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right [Law] [Rechtsphilosophie], Europeans consider it abstract, too far from their true preoccupations.” In order to do this, the Union should become more democratic, not constructed so much by its own leaders and elites.
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Karl Marx claims that Germany has finished its critique of religion, but this is to conflate secularism with secularization. Based on a typical dialectical reversal (man makes religion, not vice versa) and an hypostatization, even in the same move that would deny it as such (a person [“Mensch”] is the “world of the person, state, society”), Marx takes as proven that which has only been forcefully asserted, places in the forefront of his uncompleted observations, on the threshold (dangerous, subliminal place for Hegel, as post-Hegelians have commented with regard to his Philosophy of History), that which his subsequent reasoning would be to prove, calls the “critique of religion” the “precondition [“Voraussetzung”] of all critique” and thus oversteps this stage of his argument which should support all the rest. While the multiculturalism of the European Union — as of other “federal” structures worldwide — often makes it appear a primarily secular enterprise, the precise nature of this secularization should be examined in sufficient detail. As a historicist strategy, secularization articulates itself differently according to context, and while there are good grounds for believing (and, as with all statements about the future, we can only believe — or not) that increasing educational levels and multiculturalism itself will relativize religious absolutes, a general or universal (statistically undeniable) secularism is not yet observable. At a 1992 ecumenical conference, Jacques Delors, then President of the European Commission, opined that “if, in ten years, we haven’t succeeded in giving a soul, a spirituality, a signification to Europe, we will have lost the game” (“A Global Ethic” 2002). Almost a decade later, he reflected that “a long time ago I acquired firm ideas (“convictions”) about the importance for the equilibrium of a society, and for the individuals which compose it, not to lose their roots, about the dynamism of local and regional initiatives and, finally, about the richness which the diversity of the European territory represents” (Delors 2000, p. 1). Between the general “soul for Europe” and the specificity of “the dynamism of local and regional initiatives” emerges the strategy of the European Union, and therefore the counter-attempts to displace the implications of its own secular strategy. The essence of the European project, as it is evolving in the 21st century and whether it has yet reached the highest levels, is the necessity for critical conviction, for an open debate which holds fast to a certain idea of Europe but which continuously keeps it available for nuancing and critique.
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While the European Union’s commitment to multiculturalism as a set of hypothetical norms appears a secular strategy, this is not enough to secure its unification project (the coalescence of identity). As in other parts of the world, secularism as a top-down policy does not entirely fit the living worldviews of the inhabitants, who therefore find it difficult to identify with (a problem at the beginning of the 21st century, when the Union wants its population to identify with it). The Eurobarometer 69 survey (June 2008) found that 44% of Europeans thought that “there are no common European values, only global western values” (that is, that there was little specific to Europe that might single out some European way or Weltanschauung). Only 54% thought that EU states were close to each other in terms of shared values (European Commission 2008, pp. 57–58). More than a century before the founding of what is now the European Union, and a year after the European “Year of Revolutions,” Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, in exile in Paris, hailed the French “spirit, which has become a people” (1979, p. 172).4 Such incarnate, fleshy, root and branch secularization as detranscendentalized reverse euhemerism, is still a future project of the European Union. This should of course be clear from the trajectory of the European Union as an enterprise, southwards and eastwards, to a once Ottoman, now partially Russian sphere of influence. As such expansion leads to a self-questioning, a krisis, of European values, the nature of the Union’s approach to secularization will also be refined and new critical convictions will emerge. The EU project establishes a complex or corpus of policies, the acquis communautaire, to which candidate states must ascribe before entry; among these is an implicit secularism which may not be acceptable to a population at large, and indeed, as in the French, Dutch and Irish votes on the Constitution/Lisbon Treaty, may evince a divergence in the thinking between this population and its leaders (the former being stable, the latter changing from time to time, since one of the points of the acquis is, of course, democracy). That a religious conversion at the head of a society does not immediately betoken a change among the general population is of course wellattested through European history. Roman Emperor Constantine (AD 312), the French King Clovis I (AD 496) and the Northumbrian King Edwin 4 Leading article to the first issue of La Tribune des peuples (Paris, 14 March 1849); author’s translation
from a German source.
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(AD 627) are examples of rulers who (at least, if the chroniclers are to be trusted) converted after testing the Deity to see if He could provide them with military victory. Better recorded is a more contentious conversion, that of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila in 1386. To create a greater union (with Poland), to stop a continuous war of attrition with the Christianizing Teutonic Order, to concentrate on conflict with Muscovy, and, last but not least, to allow the modernization of social hierarchy and structures through greater contact with Christian Europe, in 1382 he promised to become baptized, but broke this promise when it was no longer expedient. After he had made an advantageous marriage and had become King of Poland in 1386, he deemed the time right for Christianization, particularly since this gave him the upper hand over his rival, his uncle Ke stutis (Kiaupa 2004, pp. 59–61). Inverting Sommerville’s distinctions, high society was Christianized, but the population was not (1998, p. 250). Similarly, the mechanisms of a state (or, in the case of the European Union, an amalgam or “pooling of sovereignty”) can be secularized, but the population cannot be; in such circumstances, as argued elsewhere in this volume in Asian contexts, secularism becomes somewhat authoritarian. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000) downplays the significance of religion, playing up instead humanist values. The Charter’s first item concerns “human dignity,” a vague term in a modernist European context, and which can be provided not by diktat but at the most intimate, local level, intricately imbricated with the life of the individual. Following the European Union’s principle of subsidiarity, the highest level of its provision might be thought to be the state. While essential to the well-being and incorporation of certain minorities, for whom a freedom to practise religion in a supposedly secular European frame is paramount, the absence of human dignity may not be that which is so intensely felt by the European populace in general (as “liberté, égalité, fraternité” were before the French Revolution [and of course after, during the Reign of Terror and later]). Therefore, it is difficult to demonstrably provide this secular aim, and any legitimation to be derived from its provision is unstable. While respect for religious diversity is guaranteed, religion itself is often the second or later term in a collocation, as for example in the Charter’s Article 10: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience
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and religion. This right includes the freedom to change religion or belief.” Changing religion implies that it is a matter of a conscious choice by the individual, rather than an ingrained, even inexplicable and inextricable element of cultural belonging, a way of life. While the second paragraph of the preamble mentions spirituality as the first item of an adjectival collocation “spiritual and moral,” it goes on to talk about other humanist values: “human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity,” and — in a gesture perhaps to the new European renaissance to be ushered in by the Union — asserts that the “individual” is “at the heart of its activities,” annexing to this a post- or supra-national eschatological nuance in its reference to “citizenship of the Union.” The German translation of the second paragraph adds to the specific reference to the “religiös” the “geistig,” a term with an even less transcendent referent than the English/Romance “spiritual” (for example, in the academic term “Geisteswissenschaften” [essentially, if somewhat ironically, the humanities]). In Article 10, the word “belief” is given as “Weltanschauung”; the “original” French (for a Charter done in Nice) is “conviction.” The Dutch second paragraph has but “geestelijke”; the Danish Article 10 refers to the right to “skifte religion eller tro,” which adds both a brutism and an earthiness if the less Latinate words are translated into a rough and ready English (“shift … trewe”). There are therefore secular, worldly nuances, even to the terms used to designate the spiritual in these contexts. While — largely through Polish insistence — the Preamble of the Lisbon Treaty now includes a reference to the “inspiration” of religion, this is subsumed as part of a collocation, the first item of which is culture, and an adjectival sandwich, the last item of which is “humanist”: “Drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe.” “Inspiration,” in a Latin sense of course, is that which it is appropriate and just to derive from religion, a Christian sense which protend the Greek version (εµπνεoµενoι, with its roots in pneuma, breath) and the German (“schöpfend”: “drawing on” [as from a well] [the Creator in German — admittedly from a different, if related root, is “der Schöpfer”]). Yet, given that these three aspects of the legacy have often been contending forces, the singular (“inheritance”) is also notable; indeed, as if conscious of such contention, the French version places the phrase in the plural. As may be judged from the participle forms noted above, there are many such
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subtle changes of nuance in the various languages of the Treaty that lead one to consider a disunity at the heart of its pronouncement. While the usage of words with a religious or spiritual connotation may betoken a reverse euhemerism (the spiritual gives rise to the secular, the mythic to the historical) seemingly superseded since Nietzsche, the secular, euhemerist stance (the secular grounds the significance, and religion is but a corollary of culture) is that which the text itself would foreground. According to this, religion is but a historical legacy, equal to that of humanism, and since no side is taken on what is for many an ongoing debate, it fades into insignificance for the framers of the 21st century Union. Instead, there is the multicultural ethos, the view that “collective identities” are “multiple and diverse” (Smith and Wistrich 2007, p. 28). What is now on the books is the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; Rome, 1950 and later protocols), from which — a trend noticeable also in adopting the flag and anthem, and in the revised Lisbon Treaty in revising the Constitution draft — the above Article 10 is reproduced. The Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, in a 2006 essay “Council of Europe — European Union: A Sole Ambition for the European Continent,” argued that the EU should sign up to the ECHR and noted that the “EU Charter of Fundamental Rights … is largely inspired by Council of Europe instruments.” The Council of Europe (for which Juncker wrote this report), a grouping of now 47 countries, is not to be confused with the EU of course (27 members), and given the much wider geographical and cultural ambit of the former, a greater diversity has to be admitted for any proclamation. The Council also sees religion as a subset of culture, such that — in the phrasing of its official brochure The Council of Europe, 800 million Europeans — “inter-cultural” replaces “inter-religious” dialogue. The Council, for example, draws on academic discussion and practical fieldwork to establish a “forum for dialogue,” ensuring that Europe’s cultural AND religious communities in towns and cities or in outlying areas have equal access to cultural activities.5 The Council’s North-South Center, established in Lisbon in 1990 to foster dialogue across the Mediterranean, does mention “inter-cultural and inter-religious
5 Author’s italics and capitals.
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subjects.” Generally however, religion is associated with culture, a derivative but not its prime mover. Low religiosity does not mean no religiosity, and spiritual beliefs of some sort are still in evidence. Yet a secularizing trend is arguable, even if this is but a trend which can be superseded if other trends intersect with and counteract it. Conversely, just as that which is known (as a legacy) may not be observed in actual life practice, it remains latent for future emanation. John Laughlin, for example, notes that religion in Wales is at present of little significance for identity, even though the tradition of non-conformism is still known (2007, p. 60). One comparable trend is the raising of the schoolleaving age in Europe, although this may change in the face of demographic and other changes. A 2005 Eurobarometer special survey for the European Commission, Social Values, Science and Technology, found that the lower the school-leaving age, the higher the tendency to believe in God. While other factors (such as belief increasing with age, females more likely than males to believe) are relatively constant throughout time (for example, it is not logical to assume that if religious belief increases with age, religion itself is dying out with the specific generation), steadily increasing participation rates in European higher education would both increase secularization and be one of its ideological markers. The counter-example would of course be the United States, with much higher tertiary education participation rates than most European countries and yet with a much greater percentage of believers in creationism. Yet here we must note the divergent participation rates for lower income students across the states (with 43.7% of people in the age and qualifying income range attending college in Iowa, but only 13% in Louisiana), the greater percentage of colleges supported by or linked to religious foundations, etc., and the proportion, comparable to that in Europe, of people who believe in some force rather than a personal God. Yet the trend is not uniform across the continent. Since the Second World War (and, of more significance, since 1989), secularization has taken divergent courses. Main lines can be traced between the nonsocialist (“western”) Protestant, especially Calvinist-Lutheran countries and the Catholic countries. The former place lower importance on religion in the European Values Survey (for example, 17.6% of respondents in the Netherlands say that religion is very important, against 20.8% in neighboring Belgium, with a greater proportion of Catholics in both the Flemish and
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Wallonian communities). Similarly, contrasts are notable between the exsocialist Protestant and Catholic/Orthodox countries, particularly in the Baltics, where traditionally Lutheran Estonia places half the importance on religion as does Catholic Lithuania (which itself is not that high). The European Values Survey (1999–2000) found that religion was half as important as work, family, or friends and acquaintances, equal in importance to leisure time but about twice as important as politics. Such results appear to fulfill Max Weber’s view in 1918 that “precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations” (Weber 2004, p. 30). Thus, the religious mindset is waning, but the secular view (social organization through this-worldly politics) has not stepped in to replace it. In C.J. Sommerville’s terms, secularization as a “mentality” “shift[s] … attention” from “ultimate (religious) concerns” to “proximate” ones, from eschatology to the immediate and the imbricated, or from doxa to an independent, increasingly self-regulated praxis without a regard for which all ideology is hypostatized (1998, p. 250). In post-socialist Europe, political engagement on class lines has also waned, so this heavy anchor of a historical materialist secularism has been lifted, leaving such secularist rationalism drifting, unanchored but not without an anchor given the right combination of circumstances for a spiritual revival, a return to a true, even if to many a pagan religion, as in the revival of the Baltic religion (for example, “romuva”). As French President Nicolas Sarkozy remarked in a December 2007 speech at the Vatican, no statist or post-Enlightenment (secular) ideology — be it individualism, democracy, social progress or the “laicist world” — has been able to satisfy the deep need to reveal a sense in existence. An hypostatized secularism, as equally a neo-pagan revival, lacking a historical foundation, exists in name only, no longer a worldview but instead a hodge-podge of opinions, drives and fancies, not even worthy of the term “psychological” secularism; its logic merely that of doxa, dialectic in a common pre-Hegelian sense (common opinion), and of the marketplace of ideas, trends and commodities. The 2005 Eurobarometer Social Values survey found that only 18% of Europeans claimed to be agnostic or atheist. What is appearing is a type of what Yves Lambert (2003) has called a “diffused spirituality.” A plethora of religious identifications, including faith in the
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more traditional, orthodox currents, is noticeable among the young, and may arise from personal conviction abstracted from socio-political interaction (as among mid-teens), or as a reaction (sometimes unfortunately with a rightist coloring) to a perceived loss of cultural and religious homogeneity, in the face of the perception of a growth of other-minded migrants. Yet, what is being defended is not necessarily religion as such, but other even more amorphous concepts like “culture” or “way of life.” The Social Values survey found little correlation between frequency of thought about “the meaning and purpose of life” and belief in a God. While some countries, for example Cyprus, Greece and Malta, were high on both scales, others, like Sweden and the Czech Republic, were low on both. Austria was at the bottom of the “purpose of life” scale, but in the top half (11th out of 27) of the “belief in God” scale. Latvia was fifth on the former, but 20th on the latter; the Netherlands showed a comparable shift of position. A full 37% of Hungarians claim to think of the meaning of life rarely or never, but they are in the mid-table for the belief in a God. Thoughts about the meaning of life may therefore be couched in religious terms, but elsewhere this is not the case. Nor is there any intrinsic connection between secular values and political engagement. All are seemingly independent variables rather than proportional categories. While one can speak of certain European countries as “post-secular” societies, since religion is such an insignificant factor in most people’s lives that the opposition (secular/spiritual) which gives meaning to the term “secular” hardly exists, with regard to other countries it is overly simplistic and premature to talk of a secular Europe. As T.N. Madan says of the South Asian context, secularist ideology can often be that of a technicist, ratiocinative elite, which fails to account for the meaning of religion in people’s lives; which sees secularism as co-extensive with progress; and which therefore cannot be experientially and existentially meaningful (1987, pp. 748–749). If religion gives a secure anchor to the expression of belief, it is non-belief which is, in turn, an equally sustaining and potent force as it must continually confront the grounds of this belief, and therefore of belief itself. Even among the non-religious Estonians, Czechs and Latvians (16%, 19% and 37% religious believers respectively against an EU as a whole 52%), a high percentage believes in some form of life force (54%, 50% and 49% respectively as opposed to an EU-wide 27%). As noted above, parts of
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the Baltics are renowned as one of the last bastions of paganism in Europe; the growth of the Muslim population across Europe of course will make this religion slightly more prominent, even though its increase is unlikely to offset the effect of higher school-leaving ages. Two countries in which the religious/atheist-agnostic divide are most pronounced are France (34% religious and 33% atheist-agnostic) and the Netherlands (34% and 27%). Unless, however, these two countries can be said to be the vanguard of a trend (and there seems no reason for this), such a “diffuse spirituality” may become more widespread as higher education levels offset the articulation of religious sentiment but not its reason for being. Indeed, after “9/11,” there was an upsurge in such spirituality. Belief in may be superseded, but not belief itself, which is most evident, in fact, in the face of the lack of belief in. Jean-Paul Willaime suggests that “the relativization of the nation-state,” globalization (of the economy and the media) and European integration itself lead to the “secularization of politics” (2006, p. 81). Religion can, of course, be seen as a counterweight to globalization but here another muchreported trend comes into play in the process of relativization: the very real life experience of mobility across Europe, made possible as one of the cornerstones of European Union policy in the Schengen Agreement and extended at the end of 2007 to include many of the countries of central and eastern Europe. If, for Delors, a lack of rootedness was a problem, Schengen makes this possible for a new generation who associate the idea of the European Union with it. Eurobarometer 68 (December 2007) found that over half (52%) of Europeans rated the “freedom to travel, study and work” as the lead value of the Union, students being the second highest category with this view (62%) after managers (68%), the latter for obvious reasons of moving capital and labor. Yet, according to Alain Lamassoure, National Secretary of the French Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (President Sarkozy’s party), the EU’s mobility program, Erasmus, has benefitted only some 3% of European students. In the face of relativization at many levels and in many areas of life, mobility as a value is not then enough to replace rootedness, belonging and belief either absolute or contentious. The definition of European belonging is in part at least a traditional matter, and finds its corollaries (and, as often remarked, its differences) in Holy Roman, Habsburg or Anglo-French empires, the Papal empire of the spirit, or Polish-Lithuanian and Hanseatic alliances. Yet, the European
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Union, as also often remarked, aims to negotiate and, on occasion, sanction but not dominate. All past European unions have been set up in opposition to some “other” against whose ideology, separate and therefore transcendent to their own, they have formed their own holistic, hermetic worldview — even if in opposing another’s creed or ideology they open themselves to its articulation, and not just by “fifth columnists” (on the principle of nosce hostem). Yet, the inclusivity of the current Union co-opts such “others,” reaching out across nation, region, creed and ethnicity (all the markers of an “ethnic group” in Max Weber’s famous definition6 ) in search of a real immanent, functional and generally accepted unifying idea(l) to replace that near, known and cherished, which religion could give as a way of life and not a conscious, and thus rescindable, choice.7 Such co-option is the acquiescence to the (needless to say, secular) acquis communautaire, the corpus of laws and protocols to which candidate countries have to ascribe before membership, and which may lay them open to the policy-taker problem. The previous Empires, of course, have been transitional, unstable and fractious through long periods of their history, and the European Union may endure a similar ideological instability. What at the highest levels of the European Union may seem so self-evident then, at the regional and sub-levels conflicts with patterns of identification which are even more selfevident. The EU project relies on a homogeneity which is yet to come, and this is its transcendent Vorsprung or leap into an unspecifiable future. To identify with a strategy is not part of lived experience, especially since the strategy is at once both secular (implicated in those structures which will bring it into being, but not yet there) and transcendent, a prime mover which has yet to be created, to its own means of creation. The EU project at the “European” level offers up a simplified sense of belonging in a collective identity (“being European”) that transcends many of those markers of such collectivity at the national and regional level (language, culture, political memory, religion), or rather subsumes this heterogeneity into an institutional Europeanness as a culture in the 6 Including “shared political memories, or even more importantly in early times, persistent ties with the old cult, or the strengthening of kinship and other groups” (Weber 1997, p. 20). 7 One of the factors which the rightist parties and the European Charter agree upon is the liberty to change religion, which view would not arise in contexts — pre-globalization perhaps — where the religious is the uncontested way of life, uncontestable perhaps since others are unknown.
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widest (yet Eurocratic) sense. Yet, this belonging is dwarfed by and detached from that “sense of connectedness with an immense reality of which we form a tiny part,” which is what, as Joseph Tharamangalam contends in his critique of T.N. Madan and others on the Indian context, “creates the universal experience of what we call the religious” (1995, p. 461). The EU Project also, uncannily, contrasts with, but intersects, comparable simplified collectivist projects at lower social and institutional levels. According to Dirk Jacobs and Stefan Rummens on Flanders’ “new radical right” (“nieuw radicaal rechts”) parties, their appeal is to give “something secure to hold on to in that they reduce the complexity of communal problems to the simple and superficial difference between what is ‘one’s own’ — and therefore ‘good’ — and what is ‘foreign’ — and to be disposed of ” (“een zeker houvast omdat ze de complexiteit van de samenlevingsproblemen reduceren tot het eenvoudige en overzichtelijke onderscheid tussen was ‘eigen’ — en ‘goed’ — is en wat ‘vreemd’ — en ‘verwerpelijk’ is” [2003, p. 9]). In its 2005 manifesto, the Belgian rightist, anti-immigration Vlaams Belang (“Flemish Interest”) party calls attention to what it implies as a deficit of the European Union’s own principle of subsidiarity. At the European level, religion (or its absence) is not a sufficient marker of “estrangement” (hence the debate about Turkey’s accession is not at this level about religion but about social, cultural and economic markers, as if these could somehow be detached from the religious ambit); yet at the national[-ist] and regional level, religion is sometimes of acute importance, even if not signaled as such, especially in post-revolutionary European Francophone territories which subscribe to principles of “laïcité.” On the border of this francophonie, the Vlaams Belang in their Programmaboek 2004 mentions language and culture many more times than religion and its synonyms (which appear, as might be expected, mainly when Islam is discussed). As noted above, the European Union has attempted to erect a vast secular system of precendents and values, the acquis communautaire. However, as Georg Lukács notes in his 1909 essay on Kierkegaard, “it is not possible to live a system” (1974, p. 31). We are left, inextricably and ultimately undeniably, with the immanent, with the separate and individual regulations, but without that policing, even military emanation which would seal its efficacy, making this binding and incontrovertible. (Such a military force may be forthcoming, but the rhetorical strategy that would make
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it feasible and defensible to the population is not yet apparent.) Without such “Prussian” regulation, the secularizing strategy of the European Union moves through inextricable negotiation and contention, against which its constituent leaders, not to mention its population at large and, in particular, its sub-groupings, subcultures and individuals, often feel compelled or even summoned to contend. The Eurosceptic Czech President Václav Klaus made a state visit to Ireland in early November 2008 and had dinner with Declan Ganley, a leading figure in the successful campaign to persuade Irish voters to reject the Lisbon Treaty. Of course, other EU leaders have condemned the meeting and the egregious statements, but without any transcendent principles to proscribe such expressions, or any legal sanctions to police them, they — and not the sanctioned actions — become normative, and indeed are the only certain trace of engagement with the norms with which they contend. As Myrto Tsakatika notes, the Constitutional process has the best chance of succeeding once “popular participation and contestation and therefore greater popular ownership of the democratic process” (2007, p. 88) is assured. Thereby, European values would become internalized, imbricated in unquestioned life-processes and thus, in turn, more akin to the transcendent (that which is not locked into the historical even if of a relatively long durée8 ) than the secular. And it is this engagement, this countervalance to a transcendent even if secular dirigisme, rather than a taciturn acquiescence, that can betoken insouciance, that is the issue in the general, contended process of secularization, and is that which pervades its ongoing dialectic of krisis. Given this engagement and that some form of spirituality has not been abandoned in Europe, secularization may not remain normative in the medium-term. To paraphrase Marx, in the current European context, the critique of secularization is the beginning of all critique.
REFERENCES A Global Ethic (2002). In Revista envio. http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/1612. Delors, Jacques (2000). Le rôle et la place des regions dans une Europe renovée. Speech at the Annual Symposium of the Erasmus Prize Foundation, The Netherlands. http:// www. notre-europe. asso. fr/ IMG/ pdf/ DiscoursXI00.pdf [4 November 2000]. European Commission (2008). Standard Eurobarometer 69. 8 The Latin root which gives rise to the English “secular” relates of course to an “age” or “epoch,”
sometimes to the duration of a century.
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European Commission (2005). Special Eurobarometer 225: Social Values, Science and Technology. European Values Survey (1999–2000). http://www.europeanvalues.nl/. Fischer, Joschka (2000). Vom Staatenverbund zur Föderation — Gedanken über die Finalität der europäischen Integration. [From League of States to Federation — Thoughts on the Finality of European Integration.] http://hermes.zeit.de/pdf/archiv/reden/ europapolitik/200106_20000512_fischer.pdf. Gourgouris, Stathis (2008). De-transcendentalizing the secular. In The Immanent Flame. http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/01/31/de-transcendentalizingthe-secular/. Habermas, Ju ´´rgen and Jacques Derrida (2003). Nach dem Krieg: Die Wiedergeburt Europas. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (31 May 2003). Reprinted as February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe. Constellations, 10(3), 291–297. Hård, Mikael and Thomas J. Misa (2008). Modernizing European cities: technological uniformity and cultural distinction. In Urban Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities, Mikael Hård and Thomas J. Misa (eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT P, pp. 1–20. Jacobs, Dirk and Stefan Rummens (2003). “We zeggen wat ù denkt”: Extreem-rechts in Vlaanderen en nieuw radicaal rechts in Europa [“We say what you are thinking”: the extreme right in Flanders and the new radical right in Europe]. Krisis, tijdschrift voor empirische filosofie, 4(2), 41–59. http://users.belgacom.net/jacobs/JaRu.pdf. Juncker, Jean-Claude (2006). Council of Europe — European Union: A Sole Ambition for the European Continent. Report for the Council of Europe. http://assembly.coe.int/ Documents/WorkingDocs/doc06/EDOC10897.pdf. Kiaupa, Zigmantas (2004). The History of Lithuania. Vilnius: Baltos Lankos. Lamassoure, Alain (2008). Le citoyen et l’application du droit communautaire. June 2008 report to French President Sarkozy. http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/rapportspublics/084000379/. Lambert, Yves (2003). New Christianity: indifference and diffused spirituality. In The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 175–2000, Hugh McLeod and Werner Ustorf (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge UP, pp. 63–79. Laughlin, John (2007). The Welsh Case: Cultural Diversity of a Nation with Devolved Powers in a Unitary State. In Regional Identity and Diversity in Europe: Experience in Wales, Silesia and Flanders, David M. Smith and Enid Wistrich (eds.). London: Federal Trust, pp. 34–63. Lukács, Georg (1974). Soul and Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT P. Lukács, Georg (1954). Die Zerstörung der Vernunft. Berlin: Aufbau. Madan, T. N. (1987). Secularism in Its Place. The Journal of Asian Studies, 46(4), 747–759. Mickiewicz, Adam (1979). Lyrik/Prosa. Leipzig: Reclam. Pour une Constitution européenne: Jacques Chirac’s Speech at the German Bundestag. Le Monde (28 June 2000), 16–17. Sarkozy, Nicolas (2007). Allocution de M. le Président de la république dans la salle de la signature du palais du Latran. http://www.elysee.fr/documents/index.php?mode= cview&cat_id=7&press_id=819.
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Smith, David M. and Enid Wistrich (2007). Collective Identities in a Changing World. In Regional Identity and Diversity in Europe: Experience in Wales, Silesia and Flanders, David M. Smith and Enid Wistrich (eds.). London: Federal Trust, pp. 6–33. Sommerville, C. J. (1998). Secular Society/Religious Population: Our Tacit Rules for Using the Term Secularization. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37(2), 249–253. Tharamangalam, Joseph (1995). Indian Social Scientists and Critique of Secularism. Economic and Political Weekly, 30(9), 457–461. Tsakatika, Myrto (2007). Governance vs. politics: the European Union’s constitutive ‘democratic deficit.’ Journal of European Public Policy, 14(6), 867–885. Vlaams Belang [Flemish Interest]. Programmaboek 2004. http://www.vlaamsbelang.org/ files/20041212_programma.pdf. Weber, Max (2004). Science as Vocation. In The Vocation Lectures, David Owen and Tracy B. Strong (eds.). Indianapolis: Hackett, pp. 1–31. Weber, Max (1997). What is an ethnic group? In The Ethnicity Reader: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Migration, Montserrat Guibernau and John Rex (eds.). Cambridge: Polity, pp. 15–26. Willaime, Jean-Paul (2006). Religion in Ultramodernity. In Theorising Religion: Classical and Contemporary Debates, James A. Beckford and John Walliss (eds.). Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 77–89.
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Chapter
7
Secular Religiosity in Chinese Politics: A Confucian Perspective TAN SOR HOON
As with so many categories employed in Western intellectual discourses, applying antithetical concepts of secularism and religiosity to understand China causes all kinds of problems. Attitudes and ideas associated with religious faith are common in the politics of China from ancient times. Yet, we should not jump to the conclusion that this is another example of the pre-modern mixing of church and state to be remedied by modernization. For “religions” in China may be quite different from the monotheistic religions that came to dominate the West, and that have framed the discussions about secularism and the state in political philosophy. By those standards, Chinese religions — especially if Confucianism is included as is regularly done — are quite secular in outlook. This paper explores the anomalous relation between the concepts of the sacred and the secular that complicates the Chinese sense of religiosity, and how this in turn complicates the relationship between Chinese religion and politics, both past and present.
PROVENANCE AND SPREAD OF SECULARISM An English man, George Holyoake, invented the term “secularism” in 1846 to promote “the development of the physical, moral, and intellectual nature of man to the highest possible point, as the immediate duty of life,” a worthy common goal for “all who would regulate life by reason and ennoble it by service.”1 For this task, he maintained that we need only secular knowledge, “that kind of knowledge which is founded in this life, which relates to the conduct of this life, conduces to the welfare of this life, and is capable of being tested by the experiences of this life.”2 While Holyoake remained 1 Holyoake, George (1860). Principles of Secularism. London: Austin & Co., p. 17. 2 Dubray, C. (1912). Secularism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13676a.htm [27 October 2008].
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agnostic and did not see secularism as “an argument against Christianity,” another Secularist, his one-time collaborator, Charles Bradlaugh, argued that “the logical consequence of the acceptance of Secularism must be that the man gets to Atheism if he has brains enough to comprehend.”3 Atheism is the logical conclusion of what Barry Kosmin calls “hard secularism” in contrast to “soft secularism” in his typology of modern secularisms. Hard secularism, which often takes positivist science as the sole arbiter of knowledge, is hostile to religion: “The hard secularist considers religious propositions to be epistemologically illegitimate, warranted neither by reason nor experience. It follows from this view that these propositions are morally pernicious and politically dangerous.”4 In contrast, soft secularism, premised on the fallibility of human intellect, is tolerant of religion and religious differences, and favors political accommodation of religion while rejecting state interference that may undermine religious freedom. In contemporary discussions, “secularism contains a spectrum of views, from a benign tolerance of religion to what we call a vituperative atheism.”5 Secularism has been closely associated with modernity. Despite its Western provenance, those who believe that progress for all human beings means the same thing often also believe that secularism is applicable everywhere, either in the inevitable march of universal history or as a universal value. Once popular, this simplistic and often ideological view has been questioned with increasing force and frequency. Modernization is often viewed as a process of human beings having lost or sloughed off, or liberated themselves from certain earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge. What emerges from this process — modernity or secularity — is to be understood in terms of underlying features of human 3 Ibid. The “Criticism” section in the same Catholic Encyclopedia entry agrees that “Only the Atheist can
be a consistent Secularist.” 4 Kosmin, Barry (2006). Hard and Soft Secularists and Hard and Soft Secularism. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for Scientific Study of Religion. http://www.trincoll.edu/NR/ rdonlyres/9614BC42-9E4C-42BF-A7F4-0B5EE1009462/0/Kosmin_paper.pdf [27 October 2008]. See also Kosmin, Barry (2007). Contemporary Secularity and Secularism. In Secularism and Secularity: Contemporary International Perspectives, Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar (eds.). Hartford, CT: Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, pp. 1–13. 5 King, Mike (2007). Secularism: The Hidden Origins of Disbelief. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., pp. 11–12.
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nature which were there all along, but had been impeded by what is now set aside.6
Taylor objects to such “subtraction” accounts of modernity in general, and of secularity in particular; he spends several hundred pages of A Secular Age detailing how secularity in Western Europe and North America “is the fruit of new inventions, newly constructed self-understandings and related practices, and can’t be explained in terms of perennial features of human life.”7 One reviewer criticizes Taylor for ignoring the contributions of the rest of the world to any account of modern secular order.8 Others would applaud him for showing so clearly the historical and cultural specificity of a particular secularism which developed in a long complex history of church domination of all worldly domains in medieval Europe, internal pressures for reform to achieve higher standards of spirituality, the anthropocentric shifts of Providential Deism during the Age of Reason, and so on. This secularism presupposes a separation between the secular and sacred sanctioned by the New Testament — “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).9 This particular separation of secular and sacred, Bernard Lewis argues, is unique to Christianity and largely unknown in other religions.10 While its applicability beyond a specific historical context cannot be taken for granted and its value in different cultural contexts should be carefully scrutinized, the historical and cultural specificity of secularism does not necessarily render it inapplicable to other times and other cultures. If we focus on the primary meaning of secularism in political philosophy as a doctrine of separation between religion and the state in order to protect religious freedom, promote equality among religions and avoid conflict among religions and between religion and the state, then it makes sense to ask if such separation is possible or desirable in any society where both religion and state exist. In practice, the “separation” is never clear-cut 6 Taylor, Charles (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, p. 22. 7 Ibid. 8 Hurd, Elizabeth Shakman (2008). Book Review of A Secular Age. Political Theory, 36(3), 486–491. It
should be noted that Taylor’s account is of A Secular Age, not The Secular Age. 9 For a more detailed and richer discussion of “secularism in the Biblical tradition,” see Coles, Robert
(1999). The Secular Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 11–45. 10 Lewis, Bernard (2002). What Went Wrong? Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 96–97.
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and takes different forms.11 Outside Western Europe and North America, secularism has also gained currency in India since independence. Some argue for secularism as a central pillar of Indian democracy, while others disagree. There is talk of a “crisis” of secularism in India.12 T.N. Madan attributes the difficulties Indian secularism has encountered to the error of assuming “the historical inevitability and progressive nature of secularization everywhere.”13 This “secularism” as ideology fails to recognize that “neither India’s indigenous religious traditions nor Islam recognize the sacred-secular dichotomy in the manner Christianity does so.”14 Despite its frequent appearance in modern Indian political discourse, Madan argues that “from the point of view of the majority, ‘secularism’ is a vacuous word, a phantom concept, for such people do not know whether it is desirable to privatize religion, and if it is, how this may be done, unless they be Protestant Christians but not if they are Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs.”15 Secularism as “the ideology that argues the historical inevitability and progressive nature of secularization everywhere” is dangerously flawed.16 According to Madan, By subverting religion as generally understood, secularism sets off a reaction in the form of fundamentalism, which usually is a perversion of 11 Although liberal democracies are often associated with secularism, the relationship between politics and religion in democratic polities such as the United States and Britain is complex and often confusing if we are looking for straightforward “separation of church and state.” For an example, see Voas, David and Abby Day (2007). Secularity in Great Britain. In Kosmin and Keysar, op. cit., pp. 95–110. Also, see Woodhead, Linda (2008). Neither Religious nor Secular: The British Situation and Some Wider Implications. Paper delivered at the National University of Singapore, 15 September 2008. The other chapters in this volume also testify to the varied practices included under the vague label of “secularism.” 12 A recent publication on this topic is Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (2007). The Crisis of Secularism in India. Durham: Duke University Press. A few examples from the extensive literature discussing secularism in India are Bhargava, Rajeev (ed.) (1998). Secularism and Its Critics. Delhi: Oxford University Press; Larson, Gerald James (2001). Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call to Judgment. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Jacobsohn, Gary J. (2003). The Wheel of Law: India’s Secularism in Comparative Constitutional Context. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Srinivasan, T.N. (ed.) (2007). The Future of Secularism. Delhi: Oxford University Press; Sen, Ronojoy (2007). Legalizing Religion: The Indian Supreme Court and Secularism. Washington, D.C.: East-West Center Washington; Tejani, Shabnum (2008). Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890 to 1950. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 13 Madan, T.N. (1997). Modern Myths, Locked Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 6. 14 Ibid., p. 261. 15 Madan, T.N. (1987). Secularism in its Place. The Journal of Asian Studies, 46(4), p. 749. 16 Madan (1997), op. cit., p. 6.
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religion, and has less to do with the purity of faith and more with the acquisition of political power.17
The same worry is found in Wang Gungwu’s response to September 11. He identifies three distinct sources of what constitutes the secular in Asia: the separation of church and state from the Christian West; the experience of establishing modern states in post-colonial countries such as India; and “the rational and this-worldly attitudes towards religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and also the Chinese.”18 Wang’s summary of the history of ancient secular faiths, including Confucianism, shows that secular elites neglect the people’s spiritual needs at their own and society’s peril. If there are alternative conceptions of secularism more suited to Asia, including China, the most workable form would be some kind of “soft secularism” which is able to co-opt the spiritual for an integrated worldview.
RELIGION AND TODAY’S CHINESE STATE In contrast to India, China is conspicuous by its absence in the large volume of literature on secularism.19 While there is an increase in research on religion in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) itself, the relation between state and religion, if discussed at all, is very seldom discussed in terms of secularism.20 The reason might seem obvious: secularism has no place in the PRC. This does not mean absence of the problem to which secularism has been proposed as a solution. Conflict between religion and the state is, if anything, more intense and potentially dangerous in the PRC than in many secularist states, and surely people in China do not desire or deserve religious freedom any less than other people. Although its various constitutions since 1949 guarantee freedom of religious belief and disbelief, religion was one of the “four olds” targeted by the Cultural Revolution; many suffered severe persecutions for their religious convictions while countless religious buildings and artifacts were destroyed. 17 Madan (1997), op. cit., pp. 260–261. 18 Wang, Gungwu (2002). State and Faith: Secular Values in Asia and the West. In Critical Views of
September 11: Analyses from Around the World, Eric Hershberg and Kevin W. Moore (eds.). New York: New Press, p. 230. 19 A recent work on “contemporary international perspectives” on secularism only includes Iran, India, and Israel outside North America and Western Europe. Kosmin and Keysar, op. cit. 20 Among the few exceptions is Yang, Fenggang (2004). Between Secularist Ideology and Desecularizing Reality: The Birth and Growth of Religious Research in Communist China. Sociology of Religion, 65(2), 101–119. Zhao Litao in this volume disagrees with Yang’s analysis.
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The liberalization of the reform era saw rapid revivals of traditional religions, diverse growth of new religions, and effervescent mixing and transformation among them.21 However, the Communist state continues to interfere in religious activities, to control religious organizations through various means, and occasionally still resorts to repressive measures against religious organizations and individuals. The Catholic Patriotic Association and the orchestrated crackdown and campaign against the Falungong which the PRC has labeled an “evil cult” are prime examples of the disease which secularism is supposed to cure.22 In contrast to the frequent 21 This has received much attention among researchers, resulting in many publications both in English and Mandarin. One example is the special issue on “Religion in China Today” edited by Daniel Overmeyr, The China Quarterly, vol. 174 (Jul 2003). Earlier studies on the subject include Hunter, Alan and Don Rimmington (eds.) (1992). All Under Heaven: Chinese Tradition and Christian Life in the People’s Republic of China. Kampen: J.H. Kok; Tu, Wei-ming (1999). The Quest for Meaning: Religion in the People’s Republic of China. In The Secularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Peter L. Berger (ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, pp. 85– 101. Researchers in the PRC have produced an impressive volume of literature on religion in the last three decades. Some examples include several volumes in the Dangdai Zhongguo Zongjiao Yanjiu (Chinese Religions and Beliefs: a series of Contemporary Jingxuan Congshu Studies in China), general editors Lü Daji et al. (Beijing: Minzu Press); Tang Yijie (ed.) (1992), Zhongguo Zongjiao: guoqu yu xianzai : (Chinese Religions: Past and (1994), Zhongguo Minzhong Zongjiao Yishi Present) (Beijing: Beijing University Press); Hou Jie (Chinese Popular Religious Consciousness) (Tianjin: People’s Press); Zhuo Xinping (1999), Zongjiao Lijie (Religious Understanding) (Beijing: Social Science Press); (2000) (Collected Historical Texts of Chinese Zhongguo Zongjiao Lishi Wenxian Jicheng Religion), 120 volumes (Shanghai: Guji Press); He Guanghu and Xu Zhiwei (2001), : (Dialogue: Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism and Duihua: Ru Shu Dao yu Jidujiao Christianity) (Beijing: Social Science Press); Mou Zhongjian and Zhang Jian (2003), Zhongguo Zongjiao Tongshi · (A General History of Chinese Religions) (Beijing: Social Science Press); Mi and You Jia (2004), Zhongguo Yisilanjiao (Chinese Islam) (Beijing: Shoujiang Five Continents Broadcasting Press); Xu Dunkang et al. (2005), Zhongguo Zongjiao yu Zhongguo Wenhua (Chinese Religions and Chinese Culture), 4 volumes (Beijing: Chinese Social (2006), Xinyang, Geming yu Quanli Yanjiu: Zhongguo Zongjiao Science Press); Li Xiangping Shehuixue Yanjiu , : (Faith, Revolution and Power: Sociological and Liang Ling (2006), Zhongguo Study of Chinese Religions) (Shanghai: People’s Press); Ren Jie de Zongjiao Zhengce: cong gudai dao dangdai (Religion Policy in China: From Ancient Times to Contemporary Period) (Beijing: Minzu Press); Jin Yijiu and Wu Yungui (2008), Dangdai (Contemporary Religions and Extremism) (Beijing: Chinese Zongjiao yu Jiduan Zhuyi Social Science Press). Several scholarly journals on religion have also been established, such as Shijie Zongjiao Ziliao (World Religions Resources) (Beijing: Chinese Social Science Press) since (Religion) (Beijing: People’s University Publications Resource Center) since 1987; 1980; Zongjiao Shijie Zongjiao Wenhua (World Religious Cultures) (Beijing: Chinese Social Science Press) (Religion Studies) (Beijing: People’s University Press) since 2003. since 1995; Zongjiao Yanjiu 22 For a detailed discussion of the difficult balancing act involved in the PRC’s attempt to maintain “sufficient authority for political control while presenting a broad image tolerance,” see Potter, Pitman (2003). Belief in Control: Regulation of Religion in China. The China Quarterly, 174, 317–337. See
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recommendations, even haranguing, that the PRC has received from various quarters to adopt liberal democracy and respect human rights, it is surprising that not much has been said about its need to adopt secularism as part of the “modernity” package. Or perhaps it is not so surprising. Secularism might simply be subsumed under liberal democracy and human rights recommended by some of the PRC’s critics. On the other hand, the PRC in one sense is already committed to one of the most strident forms of secularism, and might be said to practice a form of authoritarian secularism.23 Given its ideology of scientific socialism, it is committed to an atheistic “hard secularism” which views religion as superstition, as “opium of the people” which will disappear just as the state will wither with the coming of Communism. What has changed since 1978 is a recognition that this is not going to happen any time soon and the lesson from history that too much repression by the state could backfire, increasing rather than reducing popular resistance.24 Persecution could strengthen the religious commitment of the persecuted as well as politicize them. Hence, a more subtle approach is needed in the current stage of Chinese socialism. In the words of one Chinese scholar, the “collective wisdom of three generations of CCP leadership” has arrived at the current policy of “guiding religion and socialism to mutually adapt to each other.”25 Some scholars argue that, throughout a significant part of Chinese history, the state’s interference with the people’s religious lives is because the state itself has had religious dimensions. The contemporary state structure and Communist Party domination of public life have inherited this tradition and have built upon it a pattern of ritual, vocabulary and public discourse which is similar to that of theocratic organizations.26 also Richard Madsen’s “Catholic Revival During the Reform Era” (pp. 468–487) and Nancy Chen’s “Healing Sects and Anti-Cult Campaigns” (pp. 505–520) in the same special issue. 23 See also Recep Sentürk’s discussion of authoritarian secularism in Turkey and Zhao Litao’s chapter on “Religious Revival and the Emerging Secularism in China” in this volume. 24 Religion was a significant source of resistance to imperial rule as early as the Later Han Dynasty (Wang 2002, p. 235); see also Yu, Anthony (2005). State and Religion in China. La Salle: Open Court, p. 55. For studies of the challenge religions have posed to the state’s power, see Ownby, David (1996). Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in mid-Qing China: The Formation of a Tradition. Stanford: Stanford University Press; Perry, Elizabeth (2001). Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Ren and Liang (2006) present a historical account of how the Chinese state has had to “manage” religion from ancient times in many different ways. 25 Ren and Liang, pp. 427–448. Author’s translation. 26 Bays, Daniel H. (2003). Chinese Protestant Christianity Today. The China Quarterly, 174 (Jul 2003), p. 492. See also Hunter, Alan and Don Rimmington (1992). Religion and Social Change in Contemporary China. In Hunter and Rimmington, op. cit., pp. 11–37. Wang Gungwu also finds
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In my view, “religious dimensions” aside, the most significant similarity with theocratic organizations lies in a certain understanding of authority which renders problematic not just religious freedom but any other freedom. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees its authority as supreme and indivisible. Individuals and organizations have authority in the PRC only by delegation from the Party. It is impossible for the CCP to accept that Chinese citizens should look to any other authority for anything in their lives, unless it is sanctioned by the Communist state. The CCP does realize that market reforms open up too many areas and it is impossible and undesirable for the state to supervise let alone control all areas. Some concessions have followed. For example, “Catholics are allowed to express their ‘spiritual allegiance’ to the Pope, although they were not supposed to allow the Vatican to interfere in Chinese Church affairs.”27 In other words, they can have as much freedom of belief as they wish, so long as this does not result in actions that threaten the CCP’s monopoly of power and authority. Such concessions notwithstanding, there can be no fundamental separation of political authority from religious authority with separate domains in which each is autonomous. Only the authority of the CCP is ultimately legitimate. Therefore, religion must at all times operate “within the sphere prescribed by law and adapt to social and cultural progress,” as defined by the Party.28 A speech by Jiang Zemin during a tour of Xinjiang in 1998 actually affirmed the “separation of religion and politics”29 — by that he meant that religion must keep out of politics, but not that the state should keep out of religion. The CCP reserves the right to decide what counts as religious. Any religious activities or beliefs that oppose the CCP leadership or the socialist system, undermine the PRC’s social stability or hinder its progress, or step out of the parameters officially approved by the state are deemed guilty of interfering in politics. While much that is “unofficial” may be tolerated by evidence of “secular religions” in modern China, such as the god-like worship of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. Wang, Gungwu (2003). Secular China. China Report (Delhi), 39(3), 305–321; Meisner, Maurice (1999). Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, 3rd Ed. New York: Free Press, pp. 291–350. 27 Madsen, p. 472. 28 “Freedom of Religious Belief in China” 1997 White paper. In White Papers of the Chinese Government, vol. 2 (1996–1999), compiled by Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (2000). Beijing: Foreign Language Press, p. 247. 29 Potter, p. 323.
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the state in the current market socialism, the tolerance lasts only as long as the unofficial organizations, individuals and activities do not rock the CCP boat. From the Party’s point of view, the actions it has taken against religious organizations, individuals or activities are not against religion or religious freedom but against illegitimate incursions into the political domain by organizations and individuals misusing the name of religion. They are no different from other “trouble-makers” the state must deal with. As one senior official put it in 1991, The basic principle is simple: If they are obedient, then we treat them well. If they are not, then we discipline them … Christians say they must obey God, journalists say they are serving the public, intellectuals say they are developing culture. But from our point of view these excuses are all irrelevant. We treat these people as an administrative problem.30
To recommend secularism to the PRC is to expect it to accept the mutual autonomy of the domains of politics and religion as the presupposition of existing interactions between the two. In Europe, we see first a struggle to establish the autonomy of the political from both the religious and the ethical — this was the stage of secularization to separate church and state especially after the religious wars, and the intellectual rise of political realism of which Machiavelli was the central figure — followed by a further struggle to establish the autonomy of the ethical from the religious in the 19th century Secularism movement of Holyoake and others who wished to see modern science replace religion. Central to secularization in the West was liberation from absolute religious authority that became too oppressive. To value individual freedom means recognizing no absolute authority other than one’s own reason and conscience. Is such thinking too alien to the Chinese? Would it be cultural imperialism to impose such secularism on them? Are there alternative approaches to the relationship between state and religion which are more in tune with China’s cultural roots?
RETURNING TO CONFUCIAN ROOTS Wang Gungwu points out that “unlike the West which had to deal with a powerful Church for centuries, the Chinese had begun with a secular 30 Hunter, Alan and Kim-Kwong Chan (1993). Protestantism in Contemporary China. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, p. 28.
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outlook that ensured that no Church could be established to challenge political authority.”31 With such beginnings, it is not surprising that the absolutist authority the Chinese have to struggle against today is political rather than religious. Many have alleged that this problem of absolutist political authority has Confucian roots. I shall argue that whereas secularism as political philosophy in the West attempts to segregate different domains of human existence and to ensure that no one domain dominates the others, Confucians have a more holistic outlook that keeps together the moral, the political, and the religious to yield what they consider a truly satisfying existence within the continuity of the personal, the familial-social, and the cosmic-infinite. Confucians would deny the autonomy of both the political and the religious. In Confucianism, the political is subordinated to the moral, and the religious is accessible only through a significant level of moral achievement.32 Human beings must focus their attention and effort on the moral, and the rest will fall in place. The authority that has primacy in Confucian life is therefore neither political nor religious, but moral. One could challenge the authoritarian interpretation of Confucianism that attributes to it a concept of authority which is absolute, but my task in this chapter is more limited. I shall try to show that, because the supreme authority in Confucianism is moral, there is a Confucian check on absolutism which offers a different view of the legitimate relationship between religion and state, and an alternative safeguard for religious freedom. There is no denying that Confucius resisted speculation about life after death and insisted on the importance of this life. In China, the Confucians were responsible for “the centrality of a secular political culture that had permeated public concerns to such an extent that no religion-based systems
31 Wang (2003), p. 309. Joseph Needham and his team also maintained that “the Chinese mood
was essentially secular.” Needham, Joseph et al. (1971). Science and Civilization in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. 4, part 3, p. 90, note a. 32 Cf. Zhang Jian (2007), “Lun Zhengzhi yu Zongjiao de Duoceng Guanxi ji qi Hudong” (“The Multi-level Relation between Politics and Religion and (Research in Religious Studies), no. 2, reprinted in their Interaction”), Congjiaoxue Yanjiu Lü Daji (ed.) (2008), Theoretical Studies of Religion, Dangdai Zhongguo Zongjiao Yanjiu Jingxuan (Chinese Religions and Beliefs: a series of Contemporary Studies in Congshu China), general editors Lü Daji (Beijing: Minzu Press), pp. 164–194. According to Zhang, the Confucians turn religion into an instrument of moral politics (p. 182).
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could replace that culture.”33 But not everyone agrees that religion was marginalized either culturally or politically in Chinese civilization, even for the early period. To David Keightley, “Shang religion was inextricably involved in the genesis and legitimation of the Shang state.”34 Furthermore, he argues that “the strength and endurance of the Confucian tradition, ostensibly secular though its manifestations frequently were, cannot be fully explained, or its true nature understood unless we take into account the religious commitment which assisted at that tradition’s birth and which continue to sustain it.”35 His study shows that even though political culture became increasingly secular in the Zhou dynasty, the form of political authority that prevailed as the dominant form of authority in China for more than two millennia (and some would argue exists even today) “continued to manifest a commitment to the hierarchical, authoritarian, quasi-magical, bureaucratic features whose presence may be discovered in the characteristic generationalism and contractual logic of Shang ancestor worship.”36 Following Keightley, Rodney Taylor argues that Confucianism should be interpreted by emphasizing its “religious core” — sagehood as a form of ultimate transformation that connects the individual to the absolute. Furthermore, the Confucian approach to political order makes more sense as an act of religious faith.37 Many others, often with less scholarly interest and expertise, simply lump Confucianism with other Chinese religions. After all there are temples dedicated to Confucius, and he and his disciples are often 33 Wang (2003), p. 314. The citation in this paragraph does not imply that Wang held Confucianism
responsible for the political absolutism in Communist China — he certainly did not suggest this simplistic view in his articles this paper refers to. 34 Keightley, David (1978). The Religious Commitment: Shang Theology and the Genesis of Chinese Political Culture. History of Religions, 17(3/4), p. 212. Anthony Yu (2005) also argues that Chinese politics has been inextricably bound up with religion from high antiquity. The unity of religion and politics is also discussed in works by Chinese scholars, for example, Lin Suying (1997), Gudai Jili zhong zhi Zhengjiao Guan (View of Politics and Religion in Ancient Sacrificial (1997), Yin Zhou Zhengzhi yu Zongjiao Rites) (Taipei: Wenjin), pp. 276–357; Zhang Rongming (Politics and Religion in Shang and Zhou Dynasties) (Taipei: Wunan), pp. 251–271. 35 Keightley, p. 224. 36 Keightley, p. 223. 37 Taylor, Rodney (1990). The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism. Albany: State University of New York Press, chap. 1. See also Taylor, Rodney (1986). The Way of Heaven: An Introduction to the Confucian Religious Life. Leiden: Brill. A more recent collection of works by scholars exploring the religious dimension of Confucianism and its contribution to spirituality is Tu, Wei-ming and Mary Evelyn Tucker (eds.) (2003/2004). Confucian Spirituality, 2 volumes, World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest. New York: Crossroad.
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among those worshipped in many Chinese temples. Another reason may be because historically, Confucian teachings have vied with Daoism and Buddhism for followers as well as political power, even though it is fallacious to infer from this that all three are religions.38 If one treats Confucianism as a religion, then its close association with the Chinese state from the Han dynasty onwards becomes evidence of the non-separation of religion and state in China. Even if Confucianism is a religion, it is important to emphasize that it would be highly misleading to compare its dominance in Chinese politics with the non-separation of church and state in medieval Europe which forms the background of Western secularism as political philosophy. Instead of Christianity’s distinction between secular and sacred, Confucian domination of the political scene was grounded philosophically in secular moral influence without repudiating the religious, while the source of authority of the medieval Church was sacred and transcendent, and moral authority and political authority were subordinate to it. Confucians perpetuated their power socially through a network of contending lineages that interacted and worked quite differently from the medieval Church’s hierarchy. The ability of the Confucians to adapt to the challenge of religious rivals by 38 For research of scholarly merit, see Weber, Max (1964). The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism
(first published 1922), trans. Hans Gerth. New York: Macmillan; see also Legge, James (2004). Religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism Described and Compared with Christianity (first published 1880). Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing. For examples of many recent works which include Confucianism among Chinese religions, see Jochim, Christian (1986). Chinese Religions: A Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; Ching, Julia (1993). Chinese Religions. London: Macmillan; Adler, Joseph (2002). Chinese Religions. New York: Routledge; Miller, James (ed.) (2006). Chinese Religions in Contemporary Society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio. Although Confucianism is not among the five major religions (Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism) recognized by the PRC state, many Chinese works on Chinese religions include Confucianism in their study. Ren Jiyu started a controversy by arguing that Confucianism became a religion during the Han and Tang dynasties, provoking strong protests from philosophers. Ren Jiyu (1980), “Lun Rujiao de Xingcheng” (“On the Formation of Confucian Religion”), Zhongguo Shehui Kexue (Chinese Social Science), no. 1; cf. Li Jinquan (1983), “Shi Xiqu Zongjiao de Zheli haishi Ruxue de Zongjiaohua” ? (“Incorporating Philosophical Tenets of (Chinese Social Religion or Religionization of Confucianism?”), Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Science), no. 3. Both articles were later included in a volume which collected works by several prominent Chinese scholars who participated in that debate over two decades. Ren Jiyu (ed.) (2000), (Collected Essays in the Debate on Confucian Religion) (Beijing: Rujiao Wenti Zhenglun Ji Religious Culture Press). For a recent work which examines Confucianism as a “state religion,” brought about by Emperor Wu of Han’s “Venerating only Confucian arts, dismissing and abolishing the hundred schools” ( , ), see Zhang Rongming (2001), Zhongguo de Guojiao (State Religion of China) (Beijing: Chinese Social Science Press).
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accommodating and incorporating their ideas and practices to meet the spiritual needs of the common people, while remaining committed to central Confucian secular socio-political ideals, also differed greatly from the way Christianity has dealt with internal doctrinal differences and the challenges of other religions during the historical periods that fostered secularization. Whether we characterize China as secular or religious, there can be no easy clear-cut division between the secular and the religious, either in ideas, beliefs, practices or institutions. This chapter attempts to uncover a small but hopefully significant part of the philosophical roots of what I call “secular religiosity” in Chinese civilization, a resistance to separating the religious and secular.39 A full study of this secular religiosity, even a comprehensive examination of it within the Confucian tradition, is beyond the scope of a chapter. The accusation of authoritarianism has much more purchase if one perceives the historical practice of Chinese politics under imperial rule as central to the Confucian tradition. My interpretation of Confucianism begins with what I take to be the core teachings of Confucius recorded in the Analects, and from there, I measure all other parts of the admittedly rich and complex tradition against those fundamental ideals. On that basis, most Chinese historical political practices fail to live up to the Master’s teachings. However, the discussion of Chinese secular religiosity in this chapter can be extended, refined and made complicated if there were space to take into account more texts, more schools of thought and a wider historical perspective.
CONFUCIUS’ SECULAR RELIGIOSITY: LIFE AS MORAL-RELIGIOUS COMMITMENT Did Confucius continue the “religious dynamic” of the Shang dynasty as Rodney Taylor claims? This may seem likely since Confucius insisted that he “transmitted but did not innovate.”40 A privileging of continuity has often 39 This “secular religiosity” is already found in many explorations of Confucian religiousness and selfcultivation by other scholars, especially in the central concept of “unity of heaven and man” (tianren heyi ). 40 Analects 7.1. Unless otherwise stated, citations from this text are from D.C. Lau’s translation (1979). Confucius — The Analects. Harmondsworth: Penguin. I make only slight modifications to Lau’s translations, usually only to fit the citation into the text grammatically; however, I do prefer the translation of junzi (chün-tzu) as “exemplary person” instead of Lau’s “gentleman.” For a justification of the former
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led Chinese thinkers to deny the radical innovativeness of their thinking, as I believe is true of Confucius’ teachings generally. I shall try to show how Confucius’ attitude to religion contrasts significantly with the general Chinese attitude to religion from earlier times through his own to later periods.41 Keightley highlighted that the political dominance of the Shang royal house drew psychological and ideological support from its worship of deceased ancestors who were believed to possess the power to influence events in the world of the living in favor of their royal descendents: “Shang religious practice rested upon the do ut des (‘I give, in order that thou shouldst give’) belief that correct ritual procedure by the Shang kings would result in favors conferred by Ti [the supreme deity of the Shang].”42 This attitude pervaded ancient Chinese religions, which one scholar characterizes as being “in search of personal welfare.”43 It is still very much present in the ordinary Chinese people’s religious practice, both in folk religions as well as the major world religions they have adopted, such as Buddhism and Christianity (even though this attitude may be inconsistent with the central teachings of these religions). According to Yuri Pines, “In the Chunqiu period, the do-ut-des mode of relations with the deities evidently remained prevalent at the personal level, but its validity in political life was seriously questioned.”44 While Confucius clearly participated in various religious activities of his time, he rejected this do ut des or “worship for favors” conception of which emphasizes the junzi’s role as an exemplar, see Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames (1987). Thinking Through Confucius. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 182–192. 41 That he was innovative does not mean that Confucius was alone in challenging and reconstructing religious thinking during that period; the Daoists and Legalists were also moving away from traditional religious beliefs. See Zhong Guofa (2003), Shensheng de Tupo: kan rufodao sanyuan yiti geju de ; (Sacred Breakthrough: the source of Three-in-One you lai Unity of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism) (Chengdu: Szechuan People’s Press), pp. 304–307; see also Pines, Yuri (2002). Foundations of Confucian Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 55–88. 42 This attitude is not unique to the Chinese; it has been identified as one of the elementary forms of religious life and found in other civilizations. See Durkheim, Emile (1976). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain, 2nd Ed., first published 1915. London: Allen & Unwin, p. 29, also more extensive discussion of ritual attitudes of “the positive cult” in book III, chapters ii to iv; Dodds, Eric Robertson (1951). The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 222 and p. 241. 43 Poo, Mu-chou (1998). In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press. See also Zhang Rongming (1997), Yin-Zhou-Zheng-Zhi-YuZong-Jiao (Politics and Religion in Shang and Zhou Dynasties) (Taipei: Wunan Press). 44 Pines, p. 71.
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religion. Several passages in the Analects mention Confucius’ participation in ji, religious acts of sacrifices to deities or ancestors (Analects 3.12; 10.9; 10.11; 10.18). He was well-known for his expertise in rituals (li ), including religious rituals. He was especially careful in his behavior when in temples (Analects 3.15; 10.1), and observed meticulously all the ritual aspects of sacrifice (10.9; 10.11; 10.18), including “bowing to the ground” when he received a gift of sacrificial meat, whereas “even when a gift from a friend was a carriage and horses — since it lacked the solemnity of sacrificial meat — he did not bow to the ground” (Analects 10.23). Confucius advocated ancestor worship as an important part of filial piety (xiao ). When explaining what he meant by explicating filial piety as “Never fail to comply” ), (buwei The Master said, “When your parents are alive, comply with the rites in serving them; when they die, comply with the rites in burying them; comply with the rites in sacrificing to them.” (Analects 2.5)
The “rites” (li ), such as sacrifices, funerals, marriages, and coming of age ceremonies, are central to the human-centered religiousness in Confucianism.45 The rites sustain various forms of social interactions and structure the most important human relations — from the family to the state — and thereby render the secular sacred in the Confucian way of life. Ancestor worship, for Confucius, is an ethical responsibility that continues from what is required in one’s relationship with one’s parents when they are alive. Sacrifices should not be performed in expectation of “favors” or assistance from the dead. Why did Confucius consider it “obsequious” “to offer sacrifice to the spirit of an ancestor not one’s own”? (Analects 2.24) The obsequious expects to win favors with his or her behavior. This is the mostly likely reason anyone would offer sacrifices to ancestors not one’s own — indeed, if sacrifices could “buy” favors from the dead, then what matters would be the potency of the dead receiving the sacrifice and not whether they are kin to oneself. What Confucius disapproved of is the morally inappropriate relationship implied in such form of worship. It would be as if children were to treat their parents well only to increase the chances 45 This view is not new, and has been well explored in works of various scholars. For an example, see Hall and Ames (1987), pp. 241–246. The importance of rituals in Confucian spirituality is also evident in several chapters in Tu and Tucker (2003/2004).
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that the latter would help them or leave them an inheritance — something that Confucius would condemn as highly unethical. It must be noted that although Confucius has been said to be “agnostic,” his implied rejection of the common “worship for favor” attitude was not based on skepticism about the existence of ghosts and spirits. Nor did he deny that there were greater powers and authority than the human. On one occasion he referred to the spirits as superior judges who would make good use of talent and virtue when human judgment fails: The Master said of Chung-kung [Zhonggong], “Should a bull born of plough cattle have a sorrel coat and well-formed horns, would the spirits of the mountains and rivers allow it to be passed over even if we felt it was not good enough to be used?” (Analects 6.6)
On other occasions, he alluded to the impossibility of fooling Heaven (tian) (Analects 9.12) and the futility of praying to various deities, never mind which was considered more powerful, if one “offended against Heaven” (Analects 3.13). In these passages, although it seems that supernatural forces reward good behavior, it is important to understand that the behavior would not be truly virtuous if done for the sake of being rewarded. According to Confucius, the appropriate religious attitude to adopt (which “can be called wisdom”) is “to keep one’s distance from the gods and spirits while showing them reverence” (Analects 6.22). To ask for or expect favors presumes too much familiarity and closeness. To think that we could “bribe” deities and ghosts, or even “serve” them would be equally presumptuous. If there was any religious skepticism on Confucius’ part, it had to do with human ability to know or to offer anything that could “bribe” or “serve” the supernatural beings. One might see Confucius’ own reticence about deities (Analects 7.21) as a deliberate acknowledgment of human ignorance. Nor is the nature of deities the only religious knowledge disclaimed by Confucius: Some asked about the theory of the Ti sacrifice. The Master said, “It is not something I understand, for whoever understands it will be able to manage the Empire as easily as if he had it here,” pointing to his palm. (Analects 3.11)
Rather than affirming the efficacy of the ritual in politics, given that he knew more about ancient rituals than any of his contemporaries, he was
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more likely discouraging the interlocutor from pursuing an unproductive and perhaps even illegitimate line of inquiry.46 While sacrificing to ancestors expresses reverence and continues the filial piety owed to living parents, we have no way of knowing how to “serve” the dead or the supernatural, and should therefore focus on the service we owe to those who are alive: Chi-lu [Jilu a.k.a. Zilu] asked how the spirits of the dead and the gods should be served. The Master said, “You are not able even to serve man. How can you serve the spirits?” “May I ask about death?” “You do not understand even life. How can you understand death?” (Analects 11.12)
This passage is often quoted to highlight the “this-worldly” emphasis of Confucianism. It is, however, a “this-worldliness” that does not deny the existence of other dimensions or their relevance to human existence. It does not imply an opposition of the sacred and the secular. On the contrary, if we must use those binary terms at all, then the sacred is very much to be found in the secular; the religious life, Confucian spirituality, begins very much with what is of “this world” in human daily living.47 Skepticism about the existence of gods and spirits was probably not unknown in Confucius’ time. Analects 3.12 explains that a common saying “‘Sacrifice as if present’ is taken to mean ‘sacrifice to the gods as if the gods were present.”’ This hints at a need to counter skepticism due to human inability to detect the presence of supernatural beings. Rather than adopting an agnostic, Pascalian, “play-safe” approach to the existence of supernatural beings, Confucius understood the saying “Sacrifice as if present” differently, in terms of personal involvement and commitment: “Unless I take part in 46 The Ti is a ritual only the Shang kings could legitimately perform since “it describe[s] the ceremony for worship of deceased Shang kings.” Hsu, Cho-Yun and Katheryn M. Linduff (1988). Western Chou Civilization. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 102. Therefore, Ti is not a ritual others could or should appropriate for the sake of its alleged political efficacy. See also Confucius’ disapproval of the three powerful families of Lu for their usurping of royal prerogatives in ritual matters, in Analects 3.1 and 3.2. 47 One of the most influential works written in English on Confucianism in the 20th century is Fingarette, Herbert (1972). The Secular as Sacred. New York: Harper. This is also supported by Mary Evelyn Tucker’s introduction to Confucian Spirituality: “The art of Confucian spirituality might be described as discovering one’s cosmological being amidst daily affairs…. This is not a tradition that seeks liberation outside the world, but rather one that affirms the spirituality of becoming more fully human within the world. The way of immanence is the Confucian Way” (Tu and Tucker, p. 1).
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a sacrifice, it is as if I did not sacrifice” (Analects 3.12). This parallels his approach to the moral life which begins with personal cultivation (Analects 12.1) and emphasizes the individual’s personal ethical responsibility to both self and community. Just as one should not allow material comforts or lack thereof to stand in the way of one’s practice of virtue, one’s commitment to the practice of sacrifice takes priority over those considerations. Both moral and religious commitments require overcoming selfish preoccupations: The Master said, “With Yü [Yu] I can find no fault. He ate and drank the meanest fare while making offerings to ancestral spirits and gods with the utmost devotion proper to a descendent. He wore coarse clothes while sparing no splendour in his robes and caps on spiritual occasions. He lived in lowly dwellings while devoting all his energy to the building of irrigation canals. With Yü [Yu] I can find no fault.” (Analects 8.21)
This passage resonates with Confucius’ recognition that it is difficult and therefore especially laudable to remain virtuous in adversity. He praised those who are “poor but delighting in the way; wealthy yet observant of the rites” (Analects 1.15) and he contrasted the exemplary person’s preoccupation with “what is moral” (yi ) with the petty person’s preoccupation with “what is profitable” (li ).48 Analects 8.21 turns from the legendary sageking’s religious devotion to his devotion to the community’s welfare. Indeed, his ability to fulfill both his religious and social commitments in adversity stemmed from his virtue, for “One who is not benevolent (ren ) cannot remain long in straitened circumstances” (Analects 4.2; see also 15.2). The religious and the social are once again brought together, as deserving similarly reverent attention and care, in Confucius’ explication of the virtue of ren to his disciple Chung-kung (Zhonggong): “When employing the services of the common people behave as though you were officiating at an important sacrifice” (Analects 12.2). The religious and the moral are therefore not mutually autonomous realms. In Analects 1.9, Confucius’ student, Master Tseng (Zeng), recommended “being circumspect in funerary services and continuing sacrifices to the distant ancestors” as a way to nurture “the common people’s virtue.” Religious practices were (and still often are) valued for their moral consequences in this world. In Confucianism, religious commitment is a continuation of moral commitment. 48 Analects 4.16; see also 14.12. This contrast between yi (the appropriate or right) and li (gain or profit)
subsequently became a central theme in the Confucian tradition.
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For Confucians, the only way to reach the spiritual is through moral cultivation and a life dedicated to realizing the ideal of a harmonious ) — as the Great Learning community of virtuous exemplars (junzi describes it, beginning with personal cultivation, ordering the family, expanding to governing the state well, and finally bringing peace to all under heaven.49 We see the process of spirituality emerging from the moral life in Confucius’ own synoptic account of the key stages of his life in Analects 2.4: The Master said, “At fifteen I set my heart on learning; At thirty I took my stand; At forty I came to be free from doubts; At fifty I understood the Decree of Heaven; At sixty my ear was attuned; At seventy I followed my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.”
The spiritual arises only when a high level of moral achievement has been attained — Confucius himself only reached it at the age of fifty (tianming is usually understood to have religious import). His achievement at seventy is the highest moral virtuosity; at the same time, the coincidence of happiness and virtue could be understood as a liberating spirituality. Religious life is therefore not a matter of occasionally carrying out rituals that are intended to achieve some specific limited purposes. Instead, it is a matter of striving to live the most moral life possible, all the time: The Master was seriously ill. Tzu-lu [Zilu] asked permission to offer a prayer. The Master said, “Was such a thing ever done?” Tzu-lu [Zilu] said, “Yes, it was. The prayer offered was as follows: pray thus to the gods above and below.” The Master said, “In that case, I have long been offering my prayers.” (Analects 7.35)
Confucius’ question did not arise from ignorance of the religious custom; he was questioning, and implicitly criticizing, Tzu-lu’s superstitious attempt to “cure” his illness through prayers — a typical “worship for favors” act that 49 For a translation of The Great Learning, see Chan, Wing-tsit (1963). A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy.
, is a chapter from Princeton: Princeton University Press, chap. 4, pp. 84–94. This text, the Daxue the Book of Rites (Li Ji ), which together with another Li Ji chapter, the Zhongyong , the Mencius and the Analects, was included by Song dynasty Confucian, Zhu Xi, in the Four Books, which became the core curriculum of Confucian education and Civil Service examinations in China from the Yuan dynasty onwards. (Legge translated the Zhongyong as “Doctrine of the Mean”; Tu Wei-ming translated it as “Centrality and Commonality”; more recently Roger Ames and David Hall translate it as “Focusing the Familiar”.) Rodney Taylor considered self-cultivation to be “the act of individual religiosity” in the Confucian context (1986, p. 22).
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Confucius himself rejected. If the prayer were not aimed specifically and futilely at attempting to change one’s worldly circumstances, but a show of reverence to “gods above and below,” then Confucius considered his whole life, in his striving for moral perfection and service to all under heaven, to be in itself such a religious act.
THE MORAL ROOTS OF POLITICAL LEGITIMACY Rather than ghosts and spirits, which point to what most would consider a more primitive “religiousness,” philosophers debating whether Confucianism is religious often focus on the concept of tian ( ) as an abstract absolute or transcendence. Often translated as “Heaven,” tian in one sense refers to the “round dome” that stretches over everything in early Chinese cosmology, and hence tianxia ( ), “all under heaven,” means “the world” for the early Chinese. It sometimes refers to the abode of deities, but is also ), “Son of Heaven”) that used in forms (e.g., the emperor as tianzi ( raise questions of whether it refers to some anthropomorphic supreme deity intended to replace the Shang people’s supreme deity Ti (which is already somewhat impersonal and abstract). The majority of scholars consider tian to be transcendent but not anthropomorphic. However, transcendence in Confucianism is often understood differently from transcendence in the Judeo-Christian tradition. For example, Confucian scholars have claimed that Confucian transcendence is “immanent transcendence” which undermines the commonly accepted opposition between immanence and transcendence. I agree with those who maintained that concepts of transcendence and the absolute are imported into the Analects.50 For this chapter, the transcendence debate is of interest in so far as a transcendent divinity is also the source of absolute power and authority, because such divine nature is the source of ultimate, eternal, objective and absolute principles since it cannot be limited by any earthly or human 50 For an argument against transcendence in Confucianism, see Hall and Ames (1987), pp. 204–208,
232–237; Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames (1998). Thinking From the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 189–252; see also Ames, Roger T. and Henry Rosemont Jr. (trans.) (1998). Introduction. In The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine, pp. 46–48. For differing views in this debate, see Tu, Wei-ming (1985). Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation. Albany: State University of New York Press, p. 137; Liu, Shu-hsien (1972). The Confucian Approach to the Problem of Transcendence and Immanence. Philosophy East and West, 22(1), 45–52.
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powers. Political absolutism may appropriate the religious absolute, as in a theocratic state, or it may result from the lack of a religious absolute imposing limits on earthly rulers. Rebutting the claims about tian being transcendent and absolute would undermine theocratic political absolutism. However, Hegel attributed China’s total subordination to the emperor to tian’s lack of transcendence, and therefore a lack of the independent realm of the Ideal, to rein him in.51 Denying tian transcendence leaves this second type of political absolutism unscathed. I wish to meet the challenge of absolutism by showing that, even if one reads tian as absolute and transcendent, and central to Confucian religiousness, the religious dimension of the Analects still does not support the interpretation of Confucianism as political absolutism, or an oppressive absolutist moralism. My chosen approach has the advantage of working on both kinds of political absolutism mentioned above. ), “Heaven’s mandate” or “Decree The concept of tian in tianming ( of Heaven,” as a theory of political legitimacy which developed in the transition from the Shang to Zhou dynasty is critical in understanding secular religiosity in Chinese politics.52 The support provided by religion to Shang political power depended upon the potency of royal ancestors, partly due to their achievement when alive, and further maintained by ritual sacrifices by their royal descendents. The Shang rulers’ ability to ensure continued “blessings” from royal ancestors interceding for them in the spirit world with an impact on the human world, that is their religious ritual efficacy, supported their political reign.53 From this perspective, political failures might be blamed on the religious inadequacies of rulers, but what transpired when the Shang dynasty fell was much more complex. The Zhou dynasty justified what might be seen as revolt of a vassal against its overlord in terms of a change of “Heaven’s mandate,” which was not due to any failure in religious responsibility in terms of ritual performance but instead due to moral failure on the part of the last Shang ruler. Rather than something 51 Speirs, E.B. and J. Burdon Sanderson (trans.) (1895). Hegel, G.W.F., Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. London: Kegan Paul, vol. 1, p. 337. 52 For more details on development of the understanding of tian and tianming during the Shang-Zhou transition, see the discussion in chapter 3, “The Conquest of Shang and the Mandate of Heaven,” in Hsu and Linduff, pp. 101–111. 53 For historical evidence and argument that the Shang king was also a shaman, see Chang, Kwang-Chih (1983). Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 44–55. See also discussion of kingship and sacrifice in Ching, Julia (1997). Mysticism and Kinship in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 22–29.
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that only began with them, the Zhou extended this concept of political legitimacy retrospectively to all preceding dynasties. Since then, the doctrine of tianming became the dominant understanding of moral political legitimacy in China: change of the mandate occurs to ensure that the most virtuous would rule the world. In theory, there was a moralizing of political legitimacy. In practice, the moralizing of political legitimacy was turned on its head almost from the beginning. Moral meritocracy was never practiced consistently in the hereditary monarchy that persisted in China for more than two millennia. The subsequent passing of the empire from one ruler to the next, from father to son, was presented as proof that the virtue of the royal house remained sufficient to retain the mandate. To persuade those for whom lineage was still of paramount importance, Zhou rulers began calling themselves tianzi, “Son of Heaven.” For others whose conception of Heaven was not anthropomorphic, this title which came with the mandate nevertheless elevated the ruler above ordinary human beings. It also signifies the appropriation of heaven’s (absolute) authority by de facto political power. The Zhou concept of political legitimacy therefore shifted the emphasis from the religious to the moral without repudiating the former — religious support for, and legitimation of, political power depend primarily on moral achievement. Therefore, Confucius may be said to be “following Zhou” in making the religious dependent on the moral, although I contend that he did not follow it all the way to condone the political appropriation ), of the moral in practice. Although he did not talk about tiandao ( “the Way of Heaven” (Analects 5.13), which later became the common Confucian term for the moral way, the “moralizing” of tian is certainly evident in the Analects. Tzu-kung (Zigong) said of the Master, “Heaven set him upon the path to sagehood” (Analects 9.6). Confucius himself claimed that “Heaven is the author of the virtue that is in [him]” (Analects 7.23). After an audience with Confucius, the border official of Yi informed Confucius’ followers, The empire has long been without the Way. Heaven is about to use your Master as the wooden tongue for a bell. (Analects 3.24)
The expectation that Confucius would rouse the empire to the moral life through his teachings was accompanied by Confucius’ own sense of this
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moral mission. Instead of the Zhou idea of the ruler’s political legitimacy, Confucius understood tianming in terms of the individual’s moral mission when he claimed to know tianming at fifty (Analects 2.3).54 It is heaven’s mandate as moral mission that the exemplary person stands in awe of, unlike the petty person who was ignorant of heaven’s mandate (Analects 16.8). Although one could argue that there is a political dimension to the Confucian moral mission, the moral is nevertheless of primary importance. Tian is the highest moral judge and authority, bearing witness to the moral behavior of humans. Hence, Confucius swore his innocence during his audience with the notorious Nan-tzu (Nanzi) by calling on tian “to curse him” if he had done anything improper (Analects 6.28). Immoral behavior probably offends tian; in contrast to other deities who might accept “bribes” in conventional belief, tian acts as an impartial, incorruptible, and omniscient judge from whom no one could hide their vice (Analects 3.13). In disapproving of Tzu-lu (Zilu) sending his disciples to serve as retainers for the seriously-ill Confucius when the latter, being no longer in office, was not entitled to them, Confucius asked, “Am I going to fool tian?” (9.12) Appearances may fool fellow human beings, but the judgment that really matters is that of tian, which cannot be deceived. Similarly, when the world fails to appreciate virtue, the virtuous can, perhaps, still count on being understood by tian: The Master said, “I do not complain against Heaven, nor do I blame Man. In my studies, I start from below and get through to what is up above. If I am understood at all, it is, perhaps, by Heaven.” (Analects 14.35)
Besides a belief that he had received some kind of moral mission from tian, Confucius also referred to tian as the model for the highest moral achievement: The Master said, “Great indeed was Yao as ruler! How lofty! It is heaven that is great and it was Yao who modeled himself upon it. He was so boundless that the common people were not able to put a name to his virtues. Lofty was he in his successes and brilliant was he in his accomplishments!” (Analects 8.19) 54 Although Confucians later gave Confucius the title of “uncrowned king” (suwang ), this is mostly metaphorical; there is certainly no indication in the Analects that Confucius’ political ambition ever went beyond being a virtuous official at some ruler’s court.
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On one occasion, Confucius himself expressed a desire to model himself on tian: The Master said, “I am thinking of giving up speech.” Tzu-kung [Zigong] said, “If you did not speak, what would there be for us, your disciples, to transmit?” The Master said, “What does Heaven ever say? Yet there are the four seasons going around and there are the hundred things coming into being. What does Heaven ever say?” (Analects 17.19)
The passage hints at tian having a special kind of efficacy. This would support other passages such as Analects 7.23 and 9.5 in which Confucius dismissed serious threats against his life on the basis of his heaven-nurtured virtue, and that it was up to tian whether “this culture” vested in him should survive or not. This might be read as expression of a faith in tian as a supernatural power that will secure the moral order eventually. There is little doubt that tian has both religious and moral connotations in the Analects. What is less certain is whether Confucius believed that tian had efficacy in the human world, particularly in politics, and would ensure the triumph of virtue.55 Analects 17.19 above is ambiguous. One might read this as “faith” in the eventual realizing of moral order as “natural,” or it might mean that Confucius, in his frustration at not making much of an impact with his teachings, wanted to let things take their “natural” course. Confucius might be rejecting the efficacy of “verbal” teaching and seeking to model himself on tian, which is efficacious without speaking. However, this efficacy is that of the natural realm, which might be distinct and separate from the moral. There is evidence of contradictory trends of thinking about tian in Confucius’ times. Some viewed it as a supreme religious entity and/or supreme moral authority; others came to view it as “nature” which is neither moral nor religious. Yuri Pines argued that during the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn) and Zhanguo (Warring States) period (722–222 BCE), “it was the thinkers’ reconsideration of the role of Heaven and deities in everyday life that made new departures in political and ethical thought possible.” In particular, “more and more Chunqiu statesmen gradually arrived at the conclusion that 55 Cf. Perkins, Franklin (2006). Reproaching Heaven: The Problem of Evil in Mengzi. Dao: A Journal
of Comparative Philosophy, 5(2), 293–312. Perkins explores this question within the larger context of the problem of evil. He argues that tian in the Mencius is not benevolent or just in ensuring that the virtuous always triumphs; tian is ethical only in the sense in that ethical imperatives derive from tian.
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human affairs should be settled here and now, without resort to divine authority.”56 The merging of supreme divine efficacy with supreme moral authority became increasingly difficult to maintain as the Chinese world moved towards political and moral chaos. While Confucius’ contemporaries commonly believed that “wealth and honor depend on Heaven” (Analects 12.5), there was no guarantee that these would go to the virtuous, and in reality it seldom did. If tian’s authority were moral, then when the vicious seemed to profit while the virtuous suffered, one would have cause to “complain against tian” — why did it not stop such atrocities if it were also supremely efficacious? Although Confucius claimed that he did not “complain against tian” (Analects 14.35), he clearly could not help doing so — exclaiming “Heaven has bereft me! Heaven has bereft me!” — when his favorite and most virtuous student, Yen Yüan (Yan Yuan a.k.a. Yanhui) died prematurely (Analects 11.9). Despite his almost fatalistic “leave it to tian” attitude in extreme circumstances when there was not much he could do, implying that his virtue would ensure his survival if not prosperity, it would be difficult to say that tian ensured the political efficacy of Confucius’ virtue, certainly not during his lifetime and arguably not even later. Confucianism gained political power during the dynasties when it served as the state orthodoxy, but in terms of putting Confucius’ philosophical ideals into practice, that had been at best a “mixed blessing” since whatever benefits it brought to the practice of government in imperial China, the ideals were also distorted by political power and became mired in the historical malpractices of imperial politics, and hence blamed for China’s failures in modern times. Religion enhanced political efficacy during the Shang dynasty. It legitimized political power on the basis of virtue in the Zhou dynasty. The tension between efficacy and legitimacy, already present in the Analects, became a central problem for Confucianism. Its central commitment to government by virtue means that, even when the cost is efficacy, Confucians cannot sacrifice the moral for political success, or even declare the political to be amoral, since the task of government is understood as part of a larger moral ideal: “To govern is to correct. If you set an example by being 56 Pines, p. 56.
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correct, who would dare to be incorrect” (Analects 12.17). Hence, religion cannot provide any separate sanction for politics apart from the moral. Instead, it serves to elevate moral authority above the merely human and conventional. Religious “faith” in politics, for Confucius and his followers, takes the form of belief against all odds that the virtuous will eventually triumph, not in being rewarded in the afterlife, in some timeless heaven or paradise, but in this human world, given time enough, in the judgment of history: Duke Ching [Jing] of Ch’i [Qi] had a thousand teams of four horses each, but on his death the common people were unable to find anything to praise him for, whereas Po Yi [Bo Yi] and Shu Ch’i [Shu Qi] starved under Mount Shou Yang and yet to this day the common people still sing their praises. (Analects 16.12)57
CONFUCIAN MORALISM: ABSOLUTE MORAL AUTHORITY WITHOUT ABSOLUTISM Acknowledging tian as an absolute having both religious and moral meaning in its teachings strengthens the view of Confucianism as a form of moralism, in which moral authority is absolute. It is considered absolute in being higher than any other authority, which must ultimately derive its legitimacy from that absolute source; it is considered absolute in encompassing all within its scope. Political absolutism in China has often worked by hijacking this moral absolutism, by presenting itself as the earthly recipient of that absolute authority. To resist this political appropriation of the moral, it should be emphasized that, from the Confucian perspective, while the virtuous should be in government, it does not mean that those who made it into government at any time are virtuous. According to my interpretation of the Analects, Confucianism should resist illegitimate appropriation of moral, and by extension spiritual or religious, authority by de facto political powers 57 In the Zuo’s Commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals (24th year of Duke Xiang), Shu Sunbao’s
explication of an ancient saying, “dying but not decaying” (si er buxiu ), which has come to be understood as the Chinese conception of immortality — establishing words (liyan ), establishing ), and establishing virtue (lide ) — lauded the last as highest. The conversation works (ligong was supposed to have taken place in 549 BCE, when Confucius was two years old. Yang Bojun (1981), Chunqiu Zuo Zhuan Zhu (Annotated Zuo Commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals) (Beijing: Zhonghua), vol. 3, pp. 1087–1088; Legge, James (1960). The Chinese Classics, 2nd Ed. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, vol. 5, p. 507.
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lacking in Confucian virtue. Those in politics are not to be the judges of people’s morality (or of religion); they are themselves to be judged for their virtue, understood mainly in terms of benefiting those they govern. If one manages to resist political absolutism passing itself off as Confucian, could one then be faced with the problem of oppression by moral absolutism? Absolute morality per se does not oppress, any more than absolute truth does — and not just because the absolute probably does not exist. Oppression is committed by individuals and human organizations claiming to possess such absolutes and seeking to force their “absolutes” on others. While there are clearly authoritative figures within Confucianism, from sages to scholars and teachers, recognized as being “authorities” on Confucian teachings, it is worth noting that Confucius himself never claimed to have any absolute authority. Confucians should emulate his humility by accepting fallibility in their teaching and attempts to put Confucian ideals into practice. No matter how convinced they might be about any moral matter, that fallibility should stop them from coercing others who are not persuaded by one’s view. The abhorrence of coercion is evident in Confucius’ resistance to use coercive means to govern, such as punitive legislations and the death penalty. Coercion, working through people’s fears, may be effective in social control by changing people’s immediate behavior, but it fails if the desired result is moral transformation: The Master said, “Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.” (Analects 2.3)
The ability of the virtuous to transform others should be natural, not coercive: Chi K’ang Tzu [Jikang Zi] asked Confucius about government, saying, “What would you think if, in order to move closer to those who possess the Way, I were to kill those who do not follow the Way?” Confucius answered, “In administrating your government, what need is there for you to kill? Just desire the good yourself and the common people will be good. The virtue of the gentleman is like wind; the virtue of the small man is like grass. Let the wind blow over and the grass is sure to bend.” (Analects 12.19)
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In Confucian eyes, the people with the highest moral authority, the sages, do not have to resort to coercion; therefore, those who do clearly lack such authority: The Master said, “If there was a ruler who achieved order without taking any action, it was, perhaps, Shun. There was nothing for him to do but to hold himself in a respectful posture and to face due south.” (Analects 15.5)
If Confucius subscribed to moral absolutism (which is itself debatable), then its very moral character precludes the absolutism from depriving people of their freedom. This non-oppressive moral absolutism has implications for the Confucian view of the relationship between religion and state, and religious freedom. There need not be vast differences between Confucians and liberals in the tradition of John Locke or J.S. Mill in terms of policies on religious freedom, although the underlying philosophical reasoning would be quite different. Confucians would not argue for separation of religion and the state, but would expect both to be governed by virtue. In the public arena, political and religious behavior would probably be expected to live up to a minimum of benevolence, or more appropriate, “humaneness” (ren), which would preclude actions that harm others physically, or deprive them of a basic livelihood. Those who transgressed these minimum standards could be stopped by force if necessary in the interest of protecting the people, but excessive force and penalties should not be imposed as those would in turn be inhumane. While Confucians would disapprove of activities (including religious activities) which they see as contrary to the Confucian way, and which thereby obstruct moral cultivation and spirituality, they would not coerce the participants, although they should try to persuade them to see the error of their ways. Confucius’ tolerance and participation in the customary religious practices of his times, despite his very different religious sensibilities, supports the case for accommodating religious diversity (and disagreement with Confucianism), and using pedagogical efforts and exemplary influence rather than coercion to persuade critics and gain followers for the Confucian way, both politically and spiritually, but first and foremost, morally.
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Chapter
8
State and Secularism, the French Laïcité System ANNE-CÉCILE ROBERT HENRI PEÑA-RUIZ∗
Secularism in Europe is a living concept defining itself according to principles that have to be re-affirmed regularly in a variety of ways and reflecting the special history of each country. The secular transformation of the state in Europe has led to four major systems defined by the political status they give to religions. But, in spite of the variety of systems of secularity in Europe, the same questions seem to appear everywhere. When looking closely at each legal system, one discovers that there is a community of aspirations and a basic corpus of rights. This chapter focuses on the French laïcité system. Laïcité is akin to universalism, which is the essence of the republic, and defines a larger goal than secularism itself. Secularism only means transferring the powers of political and social regulation to civil authorities. It does not necessarily imply an equal status for all philosophical options or beliefs. Recent years have shown a renewal of conflicts about the status of religions in Europe: tribunals have been asked to ban books or movies because people felt their religious beliefs were insulted. There are many reasons for that phenomenon. The end of communist regimes in eastern Europe and the policy of the Vatican under Pope John Paul II have led to a renewal of the Catholic Church there. At the same time, the growing influence of Islam has brought new questions about the separation of the public and the private spheres. Political and judicial answers to those questions lead to the questioning of the identity of Europe itself at a time of globalization.
In French, we have a special word for secularism: the word laïcité. Laïcité is derived from the Greek word laos meaning population, and therefore refers to a principle of union of the population grounded on values ensuring that
∗ Author of Histoires de toujours (Flammarion, Paris, 2008), Histoire de la laïcité (Gallimard, Paris, 2005),
Dieu et Marianne, philosophie de la laïcité (PUF, Paris, 2005).
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nobody will be discriminated because of his or her spiritual choices. The Greek language has two words for people: laos and demos. Laos refers to the people as an indivisible community represented by public institutions that protect their rights and freedom. Demos refers to the people as a political community of citizens; it has led to democracy as the political system expressing the sovereignty of the people.1 Regis Debray’s works establish a distinction between the people as an historical identity and the people as a political field of expression. In the first case, the people are an identity prior to the political debate; in the second case, the people can build a common identity through the political debate. In both cases, historical identities exist. In the first case, they limit the political field; in the second case, they are only one element of discussion.2 Laïcité has emerged slowly through history. In France, the 1905 Act of Separation of Churches and State is the result of a secular process starting with the religious wars of the 15th and 16th centuries. It has strengthened through the Enlightenment philosophy clarifying the opposition between the secular power of the Church and the will for an emancipated human character. In the early days of the French Revolution, separation was not even an idea, even if the political role of the Church in supporting the monarchy was obvious. The first measure taken by the revolutionaries in 1791 was to take control of the Church by paying the priests their salaries (Constitution civile du clergé). But that could not last because a lot of people did not trust the Catholic Church anymore and did not believe in God either. They believed in politics. The idea that there was a political field existing by itself, without dealing with the question of personal and cultural identities, started to grow. When the 1905 Act was adopted, the evolution was almost complete and France expressed itself as a political nation. Most of the authors of the 1905 Act believed in God, but they understood that the nation was something by itself. Laïcité refers to the idea of Res Publica (republic). The republic addresses everybody — believers, atheists and agnostics alike — and cannot therefore favor anybody. What pertains to some cannot be imposed on all. The unity 1 Henri Peña-Ruiz (1999). Dieu et Marianne. Philosophie de la laïcité. Paris: Presses universitaires de France (PUF). 2 Regis Debray (1981). Critique de la raison politique. Paris: Gallimard.
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of a population is based on the fundamental correlation between freedom of conscience and the equality of the rights of all men, whatever their spiritual choices. Laïcité is akin to universalism, which is the essence of the republic, and it defines a larger goal than secularism itself. It does not only mean to protect all religious identities; it aims to build a common field based on reason. Secularism only means transferring powers of political and social regulation to civil authorities. It does not necessarily imply equal status for all philosophical options or beliefs. In Sweden, for example, the state and the Lutheran church are separated, but the Lutheran church still has special rights that other religions do not have. The word laïcité exists only in French, but that does not mean that support for laïcité does not exist elsewhere in Europe. It does not mean that laïcité does not exist in countries other than France either. In fact, secularism in Europe is a living concept defining itself according to principles that have to be re-affirmed regularly in a variety of ways, reflecting the special history of each country. Recent years have shown a renewal of conflicts over the status of religions in Europe. Tribunals have been asked to ban books or movies because people felt their religious beliefs had been insulted. The end of communist regimes in eastern Europe and the policy of the Vatican under John Paul II have led to a renewal of the Catholic Church there. At the same time, the growing influence of Islam has brought new questions about the separation of the public and the private sphere. The secular recasting of the state in Europe has led to four major systems defined by the political status they give to religions.3 We will describe three of them and emphasize the laïcité system because it is the less known system and, in our opinion, the most interesting one.4 In the first system, one particular religion is the official religion of the state. It is the case, for example, in England, Greece and Denmark. In England, the Queen is also a religious authority. She is the head of the Anglican Church. The private life of Prince Charles is therefore a public matter and his divorce was announced by Prime Minister John Major in the House of Commons. Public events often have religious references. For 3 Since the end of the communist regimes, no country in Europe favors atheism over religion. 4 The fourth system is the socialist version of secularism. See Chapters 17 and 18 of this volume. (The
Editors)
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a long time, in Greece, identity papers mentioned the religious faith of the bearer. In those countries, the official religion enjoys a privileged status, which the other religions often criticize. At a time of growing religious diversity in Europe, equality of treatment of different religions becomes a frequent demand. Moreover, the idea of an official religion itself goes against the principle of equality of rights for all citizens, whether they have religious beliefs or not. In the second system, religions in general enjoy the benefit of a legal status in recognition of their spiritual and social role. Therefore, the state considers them of public interest and bestows upon them financial support. This system is sometimes called Concordat.5 In Germany, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, education and healthcare are partly in the hands of religious institutions, justifying a certain amount of taxes collected by the state being given to churches. However, some say that the state should not abandon its responsibilities in the fields of education and healthcare. And people with no religious beliefs feel discriminated. In Germany, for example, the Constitution of 1949 defines churches as partners of the state. One percent of the public taxes goes to churches and, every year, citizens have to pick the religion they want to support. Last year witnessed what was called the “quarrel over the crucifix.” In eastern Germany, some citizens had sued the state for installing the crucifix (a symbol of Christian religions) in public schools. The protestors based their case on the principle of freedom of conscience. The tribunal ruled in their favor and the crucifix had to be removed.
THE FRENCH SYSTEM OF LAICITÉ The secular recasting of the state, initiated in France with the Acts of 1881 and 1886, followed by the Act of Separation of Churches and State of 5 The Concordat is a treaty between the king and the Pope organizing religious activities in a country.
The French Emperor Napoleon signed a Concordat with the Catholic Church in 1813. The Concordat was abolished in France by the 1905 Act. Today, two French districts (Alsace and Moselle) still live under the Concordat because they had been conquered by Germany at the time of the 1905 Act. Now that Alsace and Moselle are French again, some ask that the Concordat should also be abolished in those districts.
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9 December 1905, expresses the very etymology of the word: the Res Publica addresses everybody. In that sense, secularity is akin to universalism, which is the essence of the republic. But it could not occur spontaneously. There had to be a movement to emancipate the current law from religious interferences. Hence, the republic is neither atheistic nor religious. It no longer arbitrates between beliefs but arbitrates between actions, and is devoted only to the general interest. Marianne, the feminine icon of such a republic, succeeds Caesar. The latter is the emblematic name for the traditional power of domination which had long performed the functions of the state and signed a contract of mutual service with religions. This transition puts an end to the confusion between the temporal and the spiritual, and in a way liberates them from the corruptions inflicted on both. At the same time, the ethical autonomy of the private sphere is guaranteed. No conception of the good life can dictate law or extend the normative function of the law beyond the interest of the citizens. Laws tend to evolve from prescription to proscription. Indeed, human ethical and spiritual autonomy implies that current laws cannot shape one’s private life and they merely prohibit what might encroach on others’ freedoms. There must be conditions to guarantee this autonomy. The secular emancipation of the law goes together with a strict demarcation of the scope of the law. Respect of the private sphere, which is independent from the public sphere, imposes limits on the role of the state in order to preserve the autonomy of each citizen. The effect is to protect man’s inner life from any intrusion of the state, which emancipates religious as well as atheist spirituality. Kant argues that the paternalist figure of the prince trying to dictate to his subjects how to be happy is the worst type of covert despotism. Being treated in this way, the people are neither free and autonomous, nor lucid. The republic is not made up of subjects — in the sense that they are not subjected to anyone or anything. As Rousseau points out, the republic is made up of citizens. They craft the laws which they must obey. The two meanings, both active and passive, of the word “subject” become reciprocal in a democratic sovereignty, which is the collective form of political autonomy. Such autonomy has a variety of forms for the individual as well as for society. The individual has the status of a subject of rights, while the people function as the sovereign authority.
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The type of union formed on that model cannot be interpreted in terms of communities, for it would mean that the people have a right over their members just as the king had a right over his subjects, i.e., according to a unilateral domination instead of a reciprocal sovereignty belonging to each and to all. Autonomy itself requires a culture or an activity of the enlightened mind, which is the product of a creative and thinking humanity. Mastering knowledge and skills paves the way for rational thinking to understand basic principles and their implications. This secularization in the cultural realm is the condition for an enlightened citizenship, and it involves schools and education. To make knowledge and rational judgment universal, their active transmission must happen regardless of the students’ economic situations and free from religious interference. The role of the republican state is henceforth to promote what would not spontaneously occur in civil society. The concept of public school as a vector for education for all can perform this role. Condorcet insists on that point in Les Mémoires sur l’instruction publiques (Memoirs on Public Education), and Jules Ferry acted on it by promoting the secularization of the French school system. Obviously, if the ideal of a secular emancipation is not to ring hollow, it must be concerned with social justice. According to Jean Jaurès, the initiator of the 1905 Act of Separation, the republic must be at once secular and social. The state must intervene in areas that are in accord with its duty. And secular liberalism must display a resolute political will when the common good is at stake. Any withdrawal of the state from the domains where its intervention is justified amounts to paving the way free for power struggles in the civil society. The realm of the media which tends to shape public opinion is one of the features of these power struggles, as is also the realm of economic and social powers. While the French republic abstains from arbitrating between beliefs which are free and individual, it actively promotes reflective knowledge and a taste for truth which is its duty to universalize as well as social justice. Those two instruments of emancipation are indeed decisive if secularity is not to become a mere injunction. The denominational neutrality of the republic cannot be a vague ethicopolitical relativism. On the contrary, it goes together with values which are essentially universal. Freed from any particular belief, these values are not hostile to any religious or atheist humanism. They are simply neutral. The
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republican triptych (liberty, equality, fraternity) encompasses all these values, which are acknowledged by the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The secular ideal takes it at its word: liberty, in particular the liberty of conscience based on the autonomy of judgment; equality, in particular equality amongst atheists, different believers and agnostics; and fraternity, the source of a common world for all. Beyond its neutrality in the domain of spiritual choices, secularity finds its expression in the non-religious nature of the public sphere. Preserving the latter from the influences of any religious denomination and the preference of any community, it ensures that a civic space of encounter and dialogue is really open to all. At the same time, it is seeking common grounds and general interest. This situation is a world away from communitarism which breeds tensions and conflicts between the supporters of different norms. Conflicts often arise at the frontiers of specific communities. By staying away from the religious differences which divide people, secularity can allow their expressions in a self-reflective mode, which is a source of peace. Because of its universalistic vocation, it is a principle of peace and concord. It does not require the eradication of “differences.” Secularity provides room for the differences to exist without negative impacts on the public sphere. The differences have the potential to generate conflicts when they take an aggressive and dominating turn. Understood in this way, secularity covers simultaneously three things. Firstly, a founding ideal links a certain idea of man and his freedom of action with a certain idea of the political community. The ideal advocates equal rights and the conditions for making it effective. Secondly, a legal system of institutional separation and strict independence of State and Church which guarantees freedom of conscience as well as equality. Finally, a measured conception of the role of the state and public institutions that differentiates between the different legitimate fields of intervention. The ethical and spiritual field is the realm of free personal choice. Such autonomy is in full accord with the principle of equality, where there is no room for domination and privilege. Taking the individual as a unique subject of rights does not imply indifference to the conditions needed by him or her to exercise the rights. The measured regulation of social relations and economic activity enhances individual rights. In this sense, secularity does not encourage withdrawal to oneself. It does not confuse freedom of the
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individual with selfish individualism, nor the rejection of communitarism with the negation of the essential character of social and collective life. Secularity sets the conditions for free debate and possible disagreement, but it cannot compromise itself. It is another matter if one challenges the essence of secularity, in particular the strict equality between believers and atheists. If its essence is compromised, then one cannot call this an “opening,” which is in fact a debasement. In France, laïcité entered the legal arena when laws were enacted to free schools, public institutions, and the state from religious supervision. It is essentially a separation of State and Churches, which rules out all Concordat regimes. The official recognition of a certain religion involves a double exclusion: that of other religions and that of non-religious forms of spirituality. It encroaches on the public sphere, subjecting it to the domination of religion. It makes no difference if several religions instead of one are recognized. The Gallican, Concordat, or Anglican logic remains closer to the traditional alliance between the throne and the altar than to the secular emancipation of public power. Secularity is not just the religious neutrality of the state. It is also its strictly non-religious character. The concern for a civic space common to all excludes therefore any association of the state and of public institutions with religion. Laïcité is not against religion. After the 1905 Act, public boarding schools accepted the presence of priests for the children who could not go back to their village on Sundays and go to church. Most of the French presidents have been Catholics, a prime minister was Jew, some ministers are Muslims. The thing is that they have to be discreet and remain strictly neutral on religious matters when in office. In this way, French laïcité is different from the Turkish laïcité: Kemal prohibited religious outfits in the streets. This has never been the case in France. Public institutions must not have a religious or spiritual identity. But people are free to choose their faith and express it through associations. Religious culture is not banned from school even if there is no religious course in public schools. Religions are presented amongst other cultural traditions such as the Greek or the Roman mythologies, no more, no less. The idea of laïcité is to promote freedom of choice and the ability for everyone to make up their minds over major issues. It is useful to remember that in spite of our cultural differences, we are all human beings. Laïcité emphasizes what links people, not what separates
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them. Truth is a social construction based on reasoning. Therefore, the spheres of faith and reason must be separated. Reason is the major means to build a common world. Ideas can be discussed; faith cannot be discussed. School is the place where a taste for culture and science can be developed. Faith can be taught in other places. This is the reason why, for example, “intelligent design” cannot be taught in laic schools; it belongs to the sphere of faith, not to the sphere of knowledge. Secular emancipation was not the outcome of negotiation with the dominant religious power which opposed it (Pope Pius X condemned it). It was adopted through a democratic debate, during which every religion had the opportunity to express its views. It is therefore an expression of the sovereignty of the people. Many of the representatives of the National Assembly who voted for the Act believed in God, but they also believed that the church should not interfere with the state and political institutions. Emile Combes, who was a minister, was a former priest. The present evolution of the religious landscape in Europe has not suggested any need to revise the secular principles. These principles were welcomed by the followers of various religions of the time, i.e., Protestants, Jews, and Muslims, as well as by agnostics and free-thinkers, and all the Catholics weary of the theological and political compromises of their church. This background helps us understand that the separation of the state from the churches is the condition for the Republic to fully deserve its name. The state is free from all religious domination while, at the same time, religions are free from all political interference. The essence of secular law is not bound to the dominant religions of the time, but to the demands which allow a republic to conform to its fundamental universality, i.e., to respect and embody the equality between believers and non-believers, as well as to display what unites men beyond their differences. The 9 December 1905 Act begins with two indivisible articles, grouped under the heading “Title 1. Principles”: Section 1: the Republic shall ensure freedom of conscience. It shall guarantee free participation in religious worship, subject only to the restrictions laid down hereinafter in the interest of public order. Section 2: the Republic may not recognize, pay stipends to or subsidize any religious denomination. Consequently, from 1 January in the year following promulgation of this Act, all expenditure relating to participation in worship shall be removed from State, region and municipality budgets.
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Hence grouped under the same heading, the first two articles of the law are obviously inseparable and are clearly referred to as principles. Religious freedom is but one form of the freedom of conscience (Article 1) and is viewed only as a particular illustration of the freedom. Having to coexist with the freedom of choosing to be an atheist or an agnostic, the freedom of opting for a religion obviously belongs to a more general category which is the only one mentioned by the law. Insisting on “religious freedom” is in fact preserving the privilege of a spiritual choice when the law henceforth rejects all privileges. This is why Section 1 is inseparable from Section 2, which stipulates that the Republic does not recognize any religious denomination. This strictly means that it has moved from recognizing certain denominations (before 1905, Catholicism, Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism and Judaism) to renouncing all recognition. It is not passing from recognition of some to recognition of all, as a multireligious or communitarist interpretation would have it, but from a selective recognition to a strict non-recognition. This principle of non-recognition is to be understood in its legal sense as it confirms the fact that the state may not pay stipend or direct subsidy to any church. It does not ignore, of course, the social existence of different denominations or the atheistic or agnostic forms of conviction. Equality for all is a key issue in such legal provisions as it reminds the people that the state is only concerned with the general good. The 1905 Act does not just stipulate that all churches are henceforth legally equal. It also extends this equality to all spiritual choices, whether religious or not, by denying the churches of any public status. Assigning religion to the private sphere entails a radical secularization of the state. It declares itself incompetent in matters of spiritual choice, and does not arbitrate between beliefs. Nor does the state let them encroach on the public sphere to shape common norms. Separation and abstention in precept, which Spinoza advocated in his A Theologicopolitical Treatise, is thus achieved. Most certainly, this abstention in precept, the condition for complete spiritual freedom and actual equality between atheists and believers, does not imply that the state does not acknowledge the existence of worships. The 1905 Act takes them into account by integrating their existence into the general case of the freedom of expression (whatever the philosophy which inspires them) and of association. Some religious buildings are owned by the state. Religious associations may use them, so that they have their familiar places of worship as stipulated
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in Section 4. Section 13 provides for the creation of private law liturgical associations to organize their use. These three articles obviously are no longer about the constituent principles of secularity, but about the modality of their enforcement and the smooth process of historical transition. They are not part of the principles and do not express the norm of law. As to the essential principle of respect of religious neutrality, Section 28 of the 1905 Act stipulates that: “It is henceforth forbidden to build or affix any religious sign or emblem on public monuments or on any place whatever, with the exception of religious buildings, burial places in cemeteries, funeral monuments as well as museums or exhibitions.” However, the Alsace-Moselle region is an exception. It has retained a Concordat status, as those two districts in eastern France were under German jurisdiction in 1905. In these districts, denominations are recognized and subsidized, and religious study is taught to all children in public schools except if their parents expressly ask for dispensation. The need for such a request suggests that the norm is to attend religious study classes. Here is a departure from the principle of the non-religious nature of public institutions and the equality of citizens whatever their spiritual choice. Could one imagine the opposite situation, i.e., a study of atheistic humanism for which religious families would have to ask for a dispensation? This is contrary to the principle that no one should be obliged to express one’s beliefs.
REMARKS AND PERSPECTIVES (1) Recent years have seen a growing debate in France over the definition of laïcité. French philosopher Jean Bauberot has criticized the lack of spirituality of laïcité. He wrote that the public sphere cannot stay away from religiosity.6 But spirituality is not the problem of laïcité, and laïcité cannot be held responsible for the emergence of nihilism in our societies. When President Nicolas Sarkozy made his speech in favor of an “open laïcité” or a “positive laïcité,” he seemed to side with Bauberot. Peña-Ruiz points out that Sarkozy was going too far, especially when he said that the priests knew more about morals than the teachers.7 People recognize that the French laïcité 6 Jean Bauberot (2007). Histoire de la laïcité en France, 4th Ed. Paris: PUF. 7 Jean Bauberot (2008). La laïcité expliquée à Nicolas Sarkozy et à ceux qui écrivent ses discours. Paris: Albin
Michel.
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system works. For example, France has the highest number of cross-culture weddings in Europe. Nobody wants to lose that. (2) In Europe, some countries have chosen what we could call “mixed systems.” Belgium, for example, has established as early as 1831 a system called “free churches in a free state.” Laïcité is officially recognized but it is treated as a religious movement, one of the “pillars” of civil society. This is odd because laïcité does not refer to any religious belief. It is the system that guarantees the equality of all spiritual choices, religious and non-religious. In Italy, the Constitution also recognizes the laïcité of the state; but at the same time, churches — and particularly the Catholic Church — play a special role in the public sphere of the society. After the downfall of communist rule in Slovenia and Poland, where church and state are separated, the Vatican is seeking to promote a greater role for the Catholic Church in public schools. (3) Three situations can result from religious differences. First, open conflicts like the religious wars in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. Some Europeans fear that the idea of a clash of civilizations suggested by some American politicians and philosophers may lead to a new war of religions. Second, a coexistence of communities that some would describe as a “democracy of identities” and others as a kind of apartheid, because priority is given to what separates and not to what unites people. Third, a laic republic that promotes a universal public sphere while guaranteeing freedom of religion. History shows that in the countries where Catholicism is the major religion, secularity has led to a separation between state and religion, while in countries where Protestantism is the major religion, secularity has led to a situation where churches play an official role. (4) In spite of the variety of systems of secularity in Europe, the same questions seem to appear everywhere. When looking closely at each legal system, one discovers that there is a community of aspirations and a basic corpus of rights. At the same time that churches ask for a new role in society, associations are created to promote laïcité. In Greece, identity papers do not mention the religious beliefs of the bearer anymore; in Italy, students and teachers have demonstrated in the streets to prevent the Pope from addressing students in a university; in Spain, the government of Jose Luis
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Zapatero has stopped compulsory religious courses in public schools; the British government plans to de-criminalize blasphemy; Sweden has adopted the French laïcité system. It is interesting to note that in spite of their different histories, European countries have adopted similar attitudes towards moral-ethical issues such as abortion, gay rights and capital punishment. The great majority of countries recognize the right to abortion. (5) The Europeans are said to be less religious compared to their American counterparts. In fact, people seem to believe less in the major religions. They seem to make up their own religious beliefs, taking elements from different religious movements. Spiritual philosophies like Buddhism seem to gain following too. Religion seems to be a private matter leading to a variety of expressions. People believe less in politics and try to find their own spiritual ways in the jungle of the globalized world. It appears that people think that religion is important and must find a place in the public debate. The question is what kind of place can it take? At the same time, people are afraid of religious extremism. (6) The European institutions seem to vacillate between different attitudes. In 1986, the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) authorized Austria to ban a movie (based on the book Le Concile d’amour by Oskar Panizza) because it insulted religious beliefs. But in 1976, the Court adopted the opposite decision based on freedom of speech. In the EU (European Union), there has been a big debate on what some call the “religious inheritance” of Europe. In 2000, a declaration of human rights was discussed. Poland wanted it to mention God or at least the religious inheritance of Europe. Most of the member states refused to mention God in the declaration, but some agreed to mention religion. France wanted to broaden it to refer to the spiritual and moral inheritance of Europe in the name of laïcité. But, in 2006, the Treaty of Lisbon (that is currently being ratified by member states8 ) mentioned the “religious inheritance of Europe.” President Sarkozy, who wants religion to play an official role in France and in Europe, has accepted this. The Treaty also stipulates that European institutions have 8 In June, the Irish people rejected the Lisbon Treaty. Officially, the Treaty should be abandoned because its ratification requires the acceptance of all the member states. But the European Union and a majority of member states are looking for a way to save the Treaty.
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regular meetings and discussions with the different religious movements. In 2005, another treaty (the European Constitutional Treaty) was rejected in referendums by the French and the Dutch partly because of such ideas. However, no referendum has been conducted this time in France and in the Netherlands to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Mentioning the “religious inheritance of Europe” means giving a special status to a particular way of seeing history and the way the world is organized. Referring to religions also means referring to something that bitterly divided Europeans in their history. Why not mention some other spiritual inheritance, for example, the Enlightenment philosophy that has certainly played an important role in the building of democracy? Moreover, the idea of inheritance in the field of spirituality is, in our opinion, questionable because when you inherit from one of your parents, you have the possibility to refuse it (particularly when the deceased leaves you his debt!). When talking about the “religious inheritance,” it seems that you can refuse it. We know that democracy and freedom of speech in Europe have partly played a role in defeating the churches that supported monarchies and official beliefs. In the end, why mention any kind of inheritance? Why not simply mention our actual common ideals and principles? The building of Europe as a political organization will require a deep reflection on these values and on our history. The EU consists of 27 countries. Those countries have a wide variety of religions and it will grow wider as Europe opens up more to the world. The ideals of laïcité can help us find a peaceful way of living together.
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Chapter
9
Secularism and the Constitution: Striking the Right Balance KEVIN Y. L. TAN
This paper looks at how various pluralistic states grapple with the relationship between law and religion. Between the two extremes of purely theocratic states, where a religion’s divine text forms the blueprint for the state’s constitution and general law, and the atheistic secular fundamentalism of communist states, lies a wide range of regimes that seek to accommodate religious diversity. After all, Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that every person “has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and most constitutions provide for the freedom of religious worship. Drawing from examples in the British Commonwealth and elsewhere, the paper examines the various models of accommodation and cooperation that have emerged and considers the reasons for their relative successes and failures.
INTRODUCTION On 17 August 2005, over 30 bombs went off simultaneously across 50 cities in the Islamic state of Bangladesh, killing at least two persons and injuring some 50 others.1 The outlawed Islamic group, Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (Party of Holy Warriors of Bangladesh) claimed responsibility. The organization, which was founded in 1998, is believed to have over 100,000 members. Its main aim is to replace the current political system of Bangladesh with an Islamic state based on the Shariah. The Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh rejects the current constitution as conflicting with Allah’s laws and eschews the “democratic or socialist system that is enacted
1 “Bombs Explode Across Bangladesh.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4158478.stm
[accessed 1 November 2008].
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by infidels and non-believers.”2 Three years later, in June 2008, a coalition group of religious minorities in Bangladesh calling itself the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, held a forum urging the restoration of Bangladesh’s secular constitution that was abolished in 1988.3 The contest for the Bangladeshi state mirrors other similar struggles occurring the world over, although the case of Bangladesh is especially interesting. Beginning its political existence as East Pakistan in 1947, it was originally established as an Islamic state.4 In 1971, after a brief civil war with the central government in West Pakistan, it seceded to become Bangladesh with a secular constitution.5 In 1982, a coup d’etat brought General Hussain Ershad to power and in his efforts to stem the tide of unpopularity, he declared Bangladesh an Islamic republic by promulgating the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution in mid-1988.6 Indeed, the South Asian sub-continent has been the site of much religious contestation over the last 50 years. The decolonization of British India resulted in two states, India and Pakistan; one predominantly Hindu and the other predominantly Muslim. India chose the route to secularism, while Pakistan defined itself as an Islamic state and has been one ever since. East Pakistan seceded in 1971 and as we have seen, vacillated between secularism and Islam. It is always easier to win an argument if you have the law on your side. Arguments about the proper place of religion in political society are thus often framed in legal terms and all legal arguments begin with the constitution. Whether a particular religion or religious group is privileged within any society largely depends on how the laws are drafted and whether or not the state in question professes an official religion. To complicate matters, few states today have a homogeneous population. Ethnically and religiously pluralistic states must thus arrive at a stable, equitable and workable system to manage religious rights and freedoms within the polity. 2 Ibid. 3 “Minorities Push for Secular Constitution in Muslim Bangladesh.” http://www.eni.ch/featured/
article.php?id=2064 [accessed 1 November 2008]. 4 G. W. Choudhury, “The Constitution of Pakistan” (1956) 29(3) Pacific Affairs 243–252. 5 Abdul Fazl Huq, “Constitution-Making in Bangladesh” (1973) 46(1) Pacific Affairs 59–76. 6 Ali Riaz, God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), at 37–38.
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Recognizing the need to strike a balance between competing religious rights and conceptions of the state is one thing; actually accomplishing it is another. This paper looks at the ways in which religious space is negotiated through the constitution and how various pluralistic states grapple with the relationship between law and religion. Between the two extremes of purely theocratic states, where a religion’s divine text forms the blueprint for the state’s constitution and general law, and the atheistic secular fundamentalism of communist states, lies a wide range of regimes that seek to accommodate religious diversity. After all, Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that every person “has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and most constitutions provide for the freedom of religious worship. Drawing from select examples, this paper examines the various models of accommodation and cooperation that have emerged and considers the reasons for their relative successes and failures.
LAW, RELIGION, AND THE MODERN CONSTITUTIONAL STATE Secularizing Moves: From Westphalia to the American Revolution After centuries of religious wars in Europe, the clear separation of church and state in political affairs was seen as a major breakthrough in the development of constitutional government. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) succeeded in establishing a secular political order in Europe by “taking sovereignty over religious affairs away from the discretion of territorial princes and by establishing a proto-liberal legal distinction between private and public affairs.”7 These treaties “changed the balance of power between territorial authority and confessional groups in favor of the state.”8 Hugo Grotius, the Dutch prodigy and the Father of International Law, advanced a legal system based on natural law that did not depend on the existence of God or of a
7 Benjamin Straumann, “The Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a Secular Constitution” IILJ Working Paper
2007/7, at 21. 8 Roland Axtmann, “The State of the State: The Model of the Modern State and Its Contemporary Transformation” (2004) 25(3) International Political Science Review 259, at 260.
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higher being and drove a further wedge between church and state.9 Herein lay the seeds of the modern secular state. Let us fast-forward some 140 years. The first conscious effort in drafting a secular constitution was in the framing of the American Constitution in 1787. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America specifically forbids the establishment of a state religion: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment was adopted on 15 December 1791 to provide greater guarantees for civil liberties. There are two operative aspects to the First Amendment. First, that Congress shall not establish a national religion, and second, that it shall not prefer one religion over another, or religion over non-religion. The impact of the American model was swift. The short-lived revolutionary constitution of France of 1791 clearly eschewed a sectarian legal model in favor of a secular one.10 While these developments were certainly dramatic, they were but snapshots of society’s pendulum-like swings between sectarianism and secularism. As political scientist Carl J. Friedrich observed: In their development, the concept of church and state go together, but of the two the church was the first offspring of the polis, the Roman Civitas. But whereas the civitas had been a clan, and even the Roman Empire had never succeeded in shaking off the fetters of this conception, the church was built on faith and dogma. It was as such profoundly different, and could truly claim for its faithful that it is the highest and most comprehensive community, and that it is instituted to realize the highest good, namely the salvation of the immortal soul. Thus the pagan polis became the bride of Christ. The Church challenged and eventually superceded the Roman emperors who had persecuted it with
9 Charles Edwards, “The Law of Nature in the Thought of Hugo Grotius” (1970) 32(4) The Journal of
Politics 784; Cornelius F. Murphy Jr., “The Grotian Vision of World Order” (1982) 76(3) The American Journal of International Law 477; and William P. George, “Grotius, Theology, and International Law: Overcoming Textbook Bias” (1999–2000) 14(2) Journal of Law & Religion 605. 10 The preamble of the French Constitution of 1791 proclaimed that “the law no longer recognizes religious vows or any other obligation contrary to natural rights or the Constitution.”
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such ferocity in the correct realization of the fact that the Christian faith in the equality and equal dignity of all men meant death to the pagan polis of which the Emperor was the divine head, a mortal God.11
The demise of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Catholic Church did not, of course, eliminate the need for secular government, but the Church was now so powerful that governments needed its blessings “to acquire the halo which would give its commands authority.”12 This led to a period of absolutism that eventually gave way to a new, secular form of constitutionalism epitomized by the American model that rested “upon the belief in reason and property.”13 Hitherto, the secular state, based on the strict separation between church and state, has long been seen as the hallmark of modernity. More constitutions were drafted in the 1950s and 1960s than in any period of history. The decolonization of former European empires led to the creation of numerous polities, each with its own political aspirations. For the most part, the former European empires did not seek to impose any religious element in these post-colonial constitutions. Most were quite happy to depart their former colonies in as dignified a manner as possible. However, a price had to be paid for the colonial powers’ divide-and-rule tactics that reinforced, exacerbated and exploited cleavages between the various ethnic, cultural and religious groups within the colony. For example, the Germans, and then the Belgians, favored the Tutsis over the majority Hutus in Rwanda on purely ethnic grounds, believing as they did that the Tutsis were “superior” and more proto-Aryan. In the Sudan, Britain’s Southern Policy encouraged the Islamization of the northern part of the state through financial aid for mosque-building and pilgrimage travels. At the same time, with the help of Christian missionaries, the British sought to prevent the spread of Islam to the south to preserve a purely African way of life. With the departure of the colonial powers, old ethnic, tribal and religious rivalries resurfaced and old grievances gave rise to new constitutional arrangements that sought to manage the emerging hostilities. A secular constitution that did not favor or privilege any particular ethnic, religious
11 C. J. Friedrich, “The Deification of the State” (1939) 1(1) The Review of Politics 18, at 23–24. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., at 24.
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or linguistic group seemed an obvious choice. After all, the Americans had pioneered a system of government that had stood the test of time and was sufficiently accommodative of a pluralistic society. Most constitutions that were drafted as a prelude to decolonization were thus secular, republican constitutions that provided guarantees against discrimination, equality of treatment, freedom of religion and protection of minorities.
The Religious Constitution While the American Constitution is one of the most admired and copied constitutions throughout the world, it was not the only model of constitutionalism. Notwithstanding the secularizing tendencies from the mid-17th century, various efforts have been made to impose a rule based on religious doctrine. Significant among these was the Constitution of Tunisia of 1861, the “first constitution in a Muslim country.”14 The Bey of Tunisia, an autonomous monarch under a loose Ottoman suzerainty, remained head of state and of Islam, and wielded executive powers. He was, nonetheless, responsible to a Grand Council of 60 members. Judicial power was exercised by an independent judiciary, and legislative power was shared between the council and the government.15 Even though this constitution lasted all of two years, the trend had been established. As their empire crumbled, the Ottoman Turks — rulers of a oncegreat empire that straddled much of Europe and the Middle East — tried to modernize their empire and laws. In 1876, a group of leading officials and members of the ulama16 drafted a new constitution for the empire. It was based on the Belgian Constitution of 183117 and also had parallels with
14 Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), at 113. 15 Bernard Lewis, The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), at 49;
see also Andrew Borowiec, Modern Tunisia: A Democratic Apprenticeship (Westport, CT: Praegar, 1998), at 15. 16 Community of religious scholars. 17 Of relevance to us is Article 14 of the 1831 Constitution which states: “Religious liberty and the freedom of public worship, as well as free expression of opinion in all matters, are guaranteed with the reservation of power to suppress offenses committed in the use of these liberties.” Article 15 further states: “No one shall be compelled to join in any manner whatever in the forms and ceremonies of any religious worship, nor to observe its days of rest.” See Amos J. Peaslee (ed.), Constitutions of Nations, Vol. 1 (Concord, New Hampshire: Rumford Press, 1950), at 128.
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the Prussian Constitution.18 The 1876 Constitution made Islam the official religion of the Ottoman Empire,19 but guaranteed the “free exercise of all religions recognized in the Empire.”20 In addition, the Sultan was given the title of “Supreme Caliph” with the role of protecting the Muslim religion.21 The Ottoman Constitution made a clear break from the old notions of absolutism and established a constitutional state much modelled along European lines. While it took significant steps to encourage greater legal equality between Muslims and non-Muslims, it stopped far short of establishing a secular state.22 The Sultan was, for example, charged with executing provisions of shariah and qunun law.23 This mandate to execute sacred Islamic law interweaved into the Constitution a host of complex issues on the role of Islam in politics and governance. To what extent, for example, will Islamic law be applied to non-Muslims? What does one do in the face of inconsistencies between secular law and religious law? Who is the final arbiter of the proper law to be applied — the courts or the ulamas? These issues would continue to plague virtually all the countries that adopted this model of constitutional development. Pakistan, the first post-war religious state, was established in 1947 when it broke away from British India. After nine years of delay and heated local debates, it adopted a constitution in 1956 that was more radical but still fairly similar to that of the Ottoman Constitution.24 The preamble proclaims the Constitution: “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful” and sets out some key tenets of the Islamic state. First, it espouses the principles of “democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice as enunciated by Islam” but that “adequate provision should be made for the minorities 18 Nathan J. Brown and Adel Omar Sherif, “Inscribing the Islamic Shari’a in Arab Constitutional Law” in Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Barbar Freyer Stowasser (eds.) (Walnut Creek: Rowman Altamira, 2004), 55–80, at 59. 19 See Article 11, “The Ottoman Constitution, Promulgated the 7th Zilbridje, 1293 (11/23 December, 1876)” (1908) 2(4) The American Journal of International Law, Supplement: Official Documents (October 1908), 367, at 368. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Nathan J. Brown and Adel Omar Sherif, “Inscribing the Islamic Shari’a in Arab Constitutional Law” in Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Barbar Freyer Stowasser (eds.) (Walnut Creek: Rowman Altamira, 2004), 55–80, at 59. 23 Ibid., at 60. 24 G. W. Choudhury, “The Constitution of Pakistan” (1956) 29(3) Pacific Affairs 243.
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freely to profess and practise their religion and develop their culture” and guarantees of fundamental freedoms including “equality of status and of opportunity, equality before law, freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship and association, and social, economic, and political justice, subject to law and public morality.”25 Broad principles are much easier to articulate than actuate, and particularly problematic was Article 198(1) that provided that: No law shall be enacted which is repugnant to the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah, hereinafter referred to as Injunctions of Islam, and existing law shall be brought into conformity with such Injunctions.26
The Theocratic Constitution The Iranian Revolution of 1979 brought about an even bigger challenge to secular constitutionalism.27 The overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi in January that year ushered in a revolutionary change; the 1906 Constitution was jettisoned in favor of a new one establishing Iran as an Islamic state. Originally, the draft constitution — which was based on parts of the old 1906 Constitution as well as the Constitution of the French Fifth Republic — were recognizably secular in nature. This did not meet the approval of the clerics who spent three months redrafting the constitution that institutionalized a theocratic state in which the faqih or supreme religious jurist (or leader) ranked above all elected officials and was commanderin-chief of the army. The very lengthy preamble of the Constitution — which came into force on 3 December 1979 — states that the “mission of the Constitution is to realize the ideological objectives of the movement and to create conditions conducive to the development of man in accordance with the noble and universal values of Islam.”28 Furthermore, it establishes
25 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan 1956. http://pakistanspace.tripod.com/archives/
56_00.htm [accessed 1 November 2008]. 26 Ibid. 27 Said Amir Arjomand, “Shi’ite Jurisprudence and Constitution Making in the Islamic Republic of Iran” in Fundamentalism and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies and Militance, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 88–109. 28 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/ir00000_.html [accessed 1 November 2008].
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leadership by a “Just Holy Person”29 to prevent “any deviation by the various organs of State from their essential Islamic duties.”30 Article 2 establishes the Islamic Republic by proclaiming a system of law based in the belief in Allah as the one and only God, and the fundamental role of “divine revelation” in “setting forth the laws.” The belief in imamah or continuous leadership and perpetual guidance of the clerics in “ensuring the uninterrupted process of the revolution of Islam”31 meant a rejection of the separation between church and state.32 Article 12 proclaims the official religion of Iran as Islam; but not just Islam in general, but specifically the Twelver Ja’fari school of Shiite Islam. It further goes to assure the other Islamic schools of “full respect” and freedom in the performance of religious rites. Other than Islam, only Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity are recognized as “religious minorities” who are “free to perform their religious rites and ceremonies, and to act according to their own canon in matters of personal affairs and religious education” so long as they act within the law.33 Article 14 requires Iranian Muslims to “treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and principles of Islamic justice and equality, and to respect their human rights” provided these non-Muslims are not “engaging in conspiracy or activity against Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The vexed questions resulting from the establishment of religious constitutions are found in an even more exaggerated form in a theocratic constitution, especially when an alternative non-elected powerbase is reposed in the “supreme religious jurist.” Indeed, the Iranian government ran into problems shortly after the 1979 Constitution came into force. In 1981, the Council of Guardians vetoed several pieces of legislation on land distribution, nationalization of foreign trade, labor, distribution, hoarding
29 Article 5 of the Constitution defines this as a “just and pious person, who is fully aware of the circumstances of his age, courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability.” Such a person is to be determined under Article 107 by a group of “experts” elected by the people. Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Article 2(5). 32 Said Amir Arjomand, “Shi’ite Jurisprudence and Constitution Making in the Islamic Republic of Iran” in Fundamentalism and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies and Militance, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 88–109, at 93. 33 Article 13, Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ibid.
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and other economic measures — duly passed by the Majlis (the Iranian parliament) — on the grounds that they were un-Islamic.34
THE SECULAR CONSTITUTION AS SUPREME LAW The secular constitution replaces spiritual authority as the ultimate source of legitimacy. No longer does one speak of the Mandate of Heaven or the Divine Right of Kings. The right to govern and to rule is no longer God-given but a function of representative government. There are several benefits to this. First, by running a state on secular lines, religious and other ethnic contests are relegated to the level of ordinary law. This is significant because no religious group within a polity may claim primacy or superiority over the others. In many ways, this device ensures the protection of minority groups within each state since each group — majority or minority — is treated equally in the eyes of the constitution. Even for states where a single religion is dominant, it is far wiser not to raise religion on a constitutional petard. Interestingly, Bhutan, which has traditionally regarded itself as a Buddhist country, consciously rejected making Buddhism its state religion,35 but instead referred to it as the “spiritual heritage” of Bhutan.36 It is noteworthy that the Bhutanese Constitution further guarantees the freedom of worship of all religions by making its “Dragon King,” the Druk Gyalpo, the “protector of all religions in Bhutan.”37 Second, by not explicitly highlighting any particular religion in the constitution, a higher value is created and placed on the notion of citizenship than on religion. This requires one to think of oneself as a citizen of one’s country first, and then as a religious being second. The creation of a citizen identity is especially crucial in a pluralistic setting or even in a state with 34 Said Amir Arjomand, “Shi’ite Jurisprudence and Constitution Making in the Islamic Republic of
Iran” in Fundamentalism and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies and Militance, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 88–109, at 96. 35 Richard W. Whitecross, “Separation of Religion and Law?: Buddhism, Secularism and the Constitution of Bhutan” (2007–2008) 55 Buffalo Law Review 707. 36 Article 3(1) of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan states: “Buddhism is the spiritual heritage of Bhutan, which promotes the principles and values of peace, non-violence, compassion and tolerance.” 37 Article 3(2) of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan.
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constant and sizeable immigration. Secular constitutions are not atheistic constitutions and thus provide built-in guarantees of religious freedom and worship. Third, the removal of religion from a country’s supreme legal instrument makes it much easier for accommodative politics to take place, making it more conducive for the negotiation of space between religious groups in a polity. A religious constitution will always necessarily privilege one religion and its adherents over another, and no matter how accommodative a government or judiciary might be, the dominant religion generally tends to be afforded primacy.
CONSTITUTIONALISM IN PLURALIST STATES If one religion trumps another, there is no room for accommodation. That is why even in the most theocratic of states, an effort is made to give some kind of guarantee to religious minorities and other minorities. The primacy given to one religion necessarily means the diminution of another. If adherents of one religion are allowed the unbridled freedom to practice their faith, this will almost certainly mean that adherents of another religion will have their freedom to practice theirs curtailed. It is a zero-sum equation that makes it imperative for some kind of accommodation between groups if religious strife is not to be an everyday occurrence. Religious accommodation is oftentimes the purview of state policy and sometimes the province of the courts, especially when claims are made on the right to practice and propagate one’s faith. Most of the time, claims on religious freedoms that are made in the courts are seldom made by one religious group against another, but by the religious group against the state. In such contests, the court plays a pivotal role in balancing and striking the balance between the imperatives of the state and those of the religious group. In many ways, such a contest is no different from a claim against the state to establish and operate some other entity, say, a political party. One such instance arose in Australia in The Australian Communist Party case,38 where the High Court of Australia rejected the Federal Parliament’s right to enact legislation to outlaw the Australian Communist Party. 38 Australian Communist Party v The Commonwealth (1951) 83 CLR 1 (High Court, Australia).
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Contests of this sort pit a religion, group or other entity against the secular state whose primary concerns tend to be couched in the language of public safety, public order and national security. Thus, in a number of cases involving Jehovah’s Witnesses in Singapore, the Court of Appeal held that even though the Singapore Constitution guaranteed the right of religious freedom, the state had the right to ban religious groups that were thought to be detrimental to public welfare and order since its conscientious objector members refused to perform military service, salute the state flag or swear oaths of allegiance to the state.39 The balance to be struck is thus between the imperatives of the state and the religious freedom of the group in question, rather than between religious groups inter se. This takes the contest into the realm of human rights in which claims are being made against a secular state rather than a contest for primacy between the various religions. To a large extent, this reduces the volatility of inter-religious conflict since the “enemy” is not another religious group but the secular state instead. This balancing act which courts engage in becomes much more difficult in countries that have an official religion. Do all religious groups enjoy equality or treatment in these instances or will the official religion triumph over the rest? Constitutional guarantees of equality do not outlaw every instance of discrimination. After all, we discriminate between adults and young persons for various purposes, such as in granting a licence to drive or to watch a particularly violent movie. The problem that courts will face is whether or not the object of the discrimination is allowable. If the constitution prescribes an official religion, it is not difficult to argue that policies can and should be discriminatory in favor of those professing that official religion.
THE LIMITS OF CONSTITUTIONAL ACCOMMODATION There is no quick or easy formula for the constitutional accommodation of religious freedom claims. However, there is a need for certain ingredients to be present if the law and the constitution can remain reasonable, credible and legitimate arbiters of religious conflict. The first requirement is a widespread belief and faith in a secular conception of the rule of law. I have intentionally located this faith in 39 Chan Hiang Leng Colin v Minister for Information & the Arts [1994] 3 SLR 662.
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secularism because any attempt to impose a religiously based conception of the rule of law is apt to immediately alienate some segment of a community. If people have no faith in the rule of law, then the constitution and the institutions it creates, especially the judiciary, will have little meaning for them. Any judgment, no matter how sophisticated or fair, will lack legitimacy. It is tempting at this point to consider the conditions necessary for a sustainable rule of law, but that would entail a separate paper altogether. Suffice to say, I do not believe that the rule of law can flourish in a polity where there is a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots and where social justice is absent. No matter how fair a prevailing law might be, how accessible the courts are, or how affordable legal services may be, there will be a lingering perception that the law is nothing more than an instrument of the rich and powerful used to tyrannize the poor and keep them disenfranchised. The rule of law needs support from a huge mass base if it is to be legitimate. Only then will the law be seen as an honest broker, arbitrating between the contesting parties in a fair and objective manner. There is a need for the people to see the law as an unqualified good and not as an instrument of oppression. Second, secular politics should take precedence over religious politics. Contests at a secular level are far easier for courts accustomed to rational secular logic to deal with, while arguments over religious doctrine and the applicability of religious or spiritual law will leave secular courts out in the cold.40 This requires a polity to identify itself first as political citizens with loyalty and affinity to their state, and to subjugate their religious beings to that identity. The whole idea of a secularist legal order is to dissipate and democratize religious sentiments. This is done by, on the one hand, privileging no particular religion; and on the other, ensuring that every person has an equal right to profess and practice his or her religion within a secular framework. More importantly, the institution of secularism also demands that individuals identify themselves first and foremost as citizens of the state, and then religious beings. To this end, attempts by states to forge a national identity around a canon of secular values are certainly helpful. The
40 On how the Indian Supreme Court dealt with religious cases, especially those involving Hinduism, see Marc Galanter, “Hinduism, Secularism, and the Indian Judiciary” (1971) 21(4) Philosophy East and West 467–487.
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Indonesian attempt to create a secular civil religion in its Pancasila is a case in point.41 Third, a political and social culture in which accommodation is seen as an important quality is necessary if religious conflict can be dealt with under a constitutional rubric. Some measure of civic education is necessary if this is to come to pass.
CHALLENGES TO SECULARIST CONSTITUTIONALISM In 1987, the eminent Indian sociologist T. N. Madan delivered a controversial and influential address to the Association of Asian Studies in Boston entitled “Secularism in Its Place,” which was eventually published in the Journal of Asian Studies.42 In his lecture, Madan argued that: … in the prevailing circumstances secularism in South Asia as a generally shared credo of life is impossible; as a basis for state action, impracticable; and as a blueprint for the foreseeable future, impotent. It is impossible as a credo of life because the great majority of the people of South Asia are in their own eyes active adherents of some religious faith. It is impracticable as a basis for state action either because Buddhism and Islam have been declared state or state-protected religions, or because the stance of religious neutrality or equidistance is difficult to maintain since religious minorities do not share the majority’s view of what this entails for the state. And it is impotent as a blueprint for the future because, by its very nature, it is incapable of countering religious fundamentalism and fanaticism.43
Without offering any concrete solutions or proposals, Madan highlights several reasons why secularism in India has failed “to bring under control 41 The word Pancasila is derived from two Sanskrit words meaning “five principles” and since 1945, has formed the official philosophical foundations of the Indonesian state. The five principles are: (a) belief in one and only God; (b) just and civilized humanity; (c) unity of Indonesia; (d) consultative democracy; and (e) social justice for the whole of the people of Indonesia. Indonesia’s neighbors, Malaysia and Singapore, have also attempted to forge such guiding principles of statehood. In 1970, Malaysia proclaimed its Rukunegara or National Principles as: (a) belief in God; (b) loyalty to King and Country; (c) upholding the Constitution; (d) the rule of law; and (e) good behavior and morality. Singapore’s Parliament adopted the Shared Values in 1991 as a national ideology. Like the Indonesian and Malaysian cases, it comprises five values: (a) nation before community and society above self; (b) family as the basic unit of society; (c) community support and respect for the individual; (d) consensus, not conflict; and (e) racial and religious harmony. 42 T. N. Madan, “Secularism in Its Place” (1987) 46(4) The Journal of Asian Studies 747. 43 Ibid., at 748.
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the divisive forces which resulted in the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.”44 One reason this is so, Madan suggests, is that the major religions of South Asia — Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism — are “totalizing in character, claiming all of a follower’s life.” As such, there is no true separation between the religious and the secular.45 The second reason, argues Madan, is that South Asia’s religious traditions never had, and had always resisted, an ideology of secularism. Third, the idea of secularism is built upon Western social scientists’ ideas of modernization, built “from the dialectic of modern science and Protestantism, not from a simple repudiation of religion and the rise of rationalism.”46 Madan’s arguments highlight what he regards as the missing ingredients to make secularism a tenable and desirable way of organizing society. This is made all the more problematic when the state takes a soft approach to forging secular consensus. There is no super identity to tame the unruly horse of religious chauvinism. There is nothing the law or the constitution can do about this. Courts, when faced with competing religious claims, have no way to encourage or foster the creation of a secular culture even if the result and reasoning in a legal contest are based solely on secularist logic instead of divine revelation. The situation is made worse by what Amartya Sen calls “communal fascism,” “sectarian nationalism,” and “militant obscurantism.”47 Communal fascism refers to “the use of violence and threat to achieve sectarian objectives, the victimizing of members of a particular community, mass mobilization based on frenzied and deeply divisive appeals, and the use of unconstitutional and strong-arm methods against particular groups.”48 Sectarian nationalism refers to the use and abuse of current incidents or historical events to advance sectarian interests. Sen’s third component in the anti-secular movement is militant obscurantism, which is “the political use of people’s credulity in unreasoned and archaic beliefs in order to generate fierce extremism.”49
44 Ibid., at 750. 45 Ibid., at 751. 46 Ibid., at 754. 47 Amartya Sen, “Threats to Secular India” (1993) 21(3/4) Social Scientist 5–23, at 11. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., at 19.
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For a constitution to deal swiftly and decisively with any of Sen’s triptych of anti-secular actions, religious and other freedoms will need to be compromised quite seriously. In Singapore, for example, the use of ordinary criminal law, coupled with prohibition orders under the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, as well as preventive detention under the Internal Security Act, combine to provide the state with a powerful arsenal of legal weapons to combat the kinds of anti-secular actions Sen discusses. That being said, Singapore has been heavily criticized for its use of such draconian measures to manage religious and ethnic conflict. Beyond the fact that secularism does not flow naturally from many religions, and given that religious zealots often use religion to mobilize the masses to advance their own agendas, secularism faces threats from several other quarters. Of these, three are noteworthy. First, the rise of human rights in international law has given religious freedom a superimposed legality on the national or municipal landscape. In other words, the right to profess and propagate one’s religion is no longer dependent on whether or not the constitution recognizes such a right. An international rule that has attained the status of customary international law is enforceable against any state regardless of the state’s own laws. If state practice has raised Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the status of customary international law, a further inroad against state sovereignty would have been made, and individuals can thus make claims against the state for violation of international law. Second, mass migration of people across borders brings to each host country numerous problems. Beyond issues like housing, food and language, migrants bring with them their religious beliefs and practices. States that have hitherto been fairly homogeneous must now learn to cope with their new citizens and accommodate alien religions. Finally, the populations of many states have violently rejected secularism which they see as being soulless and morally bankrupt. A state can exist and perpetuate itself on a pure diet of economic growth and development; human beings cannot. The human psyche aches for a connection with the cosmic and supernatural forces that help explain the human condition, and a purely secularist state provides no answers. This rejection becomes all the more serious when the secularist state fails as a state. Secularism will then be
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seen as nothing but a convenient excuse used by opportunists and oppressors to govern as they wish.
CONCLUSION In matters of law and religion, there are many difficult questions and no easy answers. The law and the constitution provide a good starting point for the negotiation of religious space. The inclusion of anti-establishment clauses coupled with guarantees of equality are good places to begin. But the constitution must be worth the paper it is written on and an entire infrastructure, beginning with an independent judiciary and a healthy respect for the rule of law over the rule of man or God, must be established. Notwithstanding the best of efforts and intentions, the law and the constitution are defenceless against mob rule. There is a limit to the number of people you can put in jail or prosecute. Mob rule respects no laws and weak states have no capacity to act decisively in such instances. There is nothing courts can do against religious extremists who fan hatred, stoke ethnic tensions and appropriate religious discourse for their own secular ends — except to wait for the state to prosecute. Scheming and unscrupulous politicians who use religion to win votes are even more problematic. The solution does not, alas, lie in constitutional deliberation or adjudication, but in the building of a strong civic culture and tradition where respect, tolerance and accommodation are second nature. It requires that people believe in the value of human life, liberty and human dignity. One wonders then, is it possible to have a workable secular state without having God somewhere in the background?
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Chapter
10
Secularism and Vaidic Worldview
SWAMI AGNIVESH
The Vedic faith — which should not be equated with the sum total of the popular versions of Hinduism we see today — is by nature a pluralistic vision that accommodates a variety of spiritual quests and manifestations. The emphasis here is on spiritual values rather than religious elaborations and prescriptions. The Vedas do not recognize the hegemony of the priestly class. The Vedas do not see truth and justice as the monopoly of any class, caste or race. It is quintessentially a universal vision that sees the whole of the human species as comprising one family. In that respect, it is also in harmony with the vision in the Bible that sees creation as originating from the divine source and all humankind, therefore, belonging together in the plan of God.
Secularism denotes the idea that the social affairs of society must be guided solely by the present life itself. It overlooks anything above or beyond the present life. Since the questions about God’s existence or immortality of souls cannot be answered adequately, they are best left to the domain of personal faith. The state has no business to embrace faith of any kind. Secularism was the popular reaction to the extreme interference of the Catholic Church in matters of state and governance. Knowledgeable people have not forgotten the stiff resistance to nascent science, be it modern cosmology or biology. The origin of secularism as an ideology is associated with Holyoake and Bradlaugh. George Jacob Holyoake, who was born in Birmingham in 1817, came under the influence of the political thinker Robert Owen in 1837, and started to write and circulate literatures advocating socialism. From 1841–1847, he published three magazines: The Oracle, The Movement and The Reasoner. In 1861, he merged the three into The Counsellor, which was later merged with Bradlaugh’s National Reformer. It was pretty palpable in 155
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his writings that he abhorred the role of the church in political decisions. He, therefore, took a leading part in economic and political agitations including the law prohibiting the use of unstamped paper for the publication of periodicals, abolition of all oaths required by the law, secularization of education in public schools, disestablishment of the church and the promotion of cooperative movement among the working class, etc. Charles Bradlaugh, on the other hand, who was a zealous Sunday School teacher in the Church of England, was very critical of Christianity in his writings and was denounced as an atheist by Rev. Packer. Bradlaugh and Holyoake presented a paper together in the USA at the American Secular Union and Free-thoughts Federation, presided over by Mr. E.P. Peackock, that became the cradle of secularism. The nine points in the charter are: (1) That churches and other ecclesiastical property shall be no longer exempt from taxation; (2) That the employment of chaplains in Congress, in state legislatures, in the army and navy, and in prisons, asylums, and all institutions supported by public money, shall be discontinued; and that all religious services maintained by national, state, or municipal governments shall be abolished; (3) That all public appropriations for educational and charitable institutions of a sectarian character shall cease; (4) That, while advocating the loftiest instruction in morals and the inculcation of the strictest uprightness of conduct, religious teaching and the use of the Bible for religious purposes in public schools shall be prohibited; (5) That the appointment by the President of the United States and the governors of the various states of religious festivals, fasts, and days of prayer and thanksgiving shall be discontinued; (6) That the theological oath in the courts and in other departments of government shall be abolished, and simple affirmation under the pains and penalties of perjury established in its stead; (7) That all laws directly or indirectly enforcing in any degree the religious and theological dogma of Sunday or Sabbath observance shall be repealed;
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(8) That all laws looking to the enforcement of Christian morality as such shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal rights and impartial justice; (9) That, in harmony with the Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the several states, no special privileges or advantages shall be conceded to Christianity or any other religion; that our entire political system shall be conducted and administered on a purely secular basis; and that whatever changes are necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and promptly made. Extremist religious believers have sometimes used the ugly mix of religion and politics for gaining power with grotesque consequences. For example, some member nations in the OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) are poles apart from secular ethos and values, and are scuba-diving in the dark depths of theocracy. Literature in these countries is bound by the barbed wire of orthodoxies, and any kind of deviation may be punishable by death. There is an acute divide between the sexes and women have to bear the brunt — monstrous practices like the burqa, honor killing, stoning to death for having an affair, etc., are rampant. Similarly, in Hinduism, one lobby of extremist Hindus has always advocated for Hindu Rashtra or a Hindu State. This Hindutva brigade has given its venomous dope in the form of alienation of other religions. The Babri Mosque Demolition, the Gujarat Carnage in 2002 and recently, the violence against Christians in Kandhamal (Orissa) and the blasts in Malegaon and Modasa in Gujarat, all tell tales of the murder of secularism in India. Casteism was another diabolic head of this hydra in Hinduism. The majority of the people who were socially outcast by the higher classes led a pitiful life under this scourge for centuries and continue to do so even till today in the 21st century. The practice of untouchability which came out from the perversion of the Vedas and the Manu Smriti has been the greatest form of terrorism in my opinion. The true philosophy of any religion has been global and is of love, compassion, non-violence and justice; it was the power-mongers who used these texts for their own evil plans from time to time in the name of Jehad, Untouchability, Hindutva, etc. Against this historical backdrop of religious extremism and the evolution of secularism as a counter-ideology, the Indian Constitution adopted
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secularism with a mild modification. Here it is taken as equal respect for all religions. In a democratic system as diverse a nation as India, it became a tool for the majoritarian faith, and politics has been reduced to a number game. Still, it is a lesser evil than a theological state. Now let us go back further into prehistory and the Vedas for a better insight into social issues and its spiritual management with amazing universal appeal. The very first verse of the first Veda sets the tone for Vaidic wisdom. It says in the Rig Veda, “Let noble thoughts come from all directions.” It anticipated Gerry Spence’s thoughts of “I will rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief ” many millennia back. The Vedas exhort us to doubt, debate and, if necessary, dissent. This liberal and rational perspective is without peer to date. The antiquity of the Vedas may be in doubt, but its message of universal brotherhood and the treatment of the whole world as one family are unique. The Vedas as the oldest surviving literature is stating the obvious. But what is not so obvious, especially for non-Indians and non-Hindus, is the fact that Hinduism, or Sanatan Dharma to be precise, does not reflect the spirit and wisdom of the Vedas. Hinduism, with its plethora of gods and goddesses and mind-boggling varieties of attendant rituals, is not even a pale shadow of Vaidic ideas and principles. Many reasons combined to rob India of Vaidic ideals, but that is beside the point. I would like to dwell on the richness of the Vaidic vision. The Vedas accept a single formless entity as the creator of the cosmos and of the life that pervades it. In other words, Ishwara, or God, is eternal and infinite. This grand concept of God precludes His reincarnation in any form or the choosing of a messenger to guide us. This concept is radically different from those of revealed religions or an incarnating god as in Hinduism. Moreover, the Vaidic god does not demand worship, rituals or middle-men to amuse Him. On the contrary, He is so benevolent and merciful that He has endowed the souls with the power to be born again and again till they realize that enough is enough. This series of births and deaths for each soul takes care of our sins and virtues, and appropriates rewards and punishments: we reap what we sow. Bad karmas have to be redeemed with good karmas. Nothing else works. The Vaidic god is just and aloof to the workings of natural and moral laws. In addition, this god is not at all partial to any race, place, language or history. Likewise, He does not indulge in discriminations on the basis of gender, man-made caste systems or biological species. Since
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He pervades the whole cosmos, He is not to be found in places of worship or rivers or mountains. After fixing the parameters of a benevolent, merciful and just god, the Vedas define Dharma as living a life of love, compassion, truth and justice and treating all life as similar to oneself. The implications touch every aspect of human life. For example, the eating of flesh is a clear no-no. And all superficial differences among races and species are done away with. It frowns upon all forms of discrimination and does not accept that we are sinners by birth because of a crime committed by our first ancestors — Adam and Eve of Semitic religions. The bane of Hinduism, which is its caste system based on birth, is anathema to Vaidic ideals. It sanctifies all lives and affirms its interdependence, establishing a definite integrity of creation. One of the greatest proponents of the Vedas, Swami Dayanand, exhorts for free, compulsory and equal education for the children of kings as well as those of paupers. He does not at all discriminate on the basis of gender, caste or status, and bestows the right of selecting life partners exclusively to marriageable girls. The Vaidic teachings are neither secular nor theocratic. They advocate forcefully for the spiritual vision in all spheres of human life, be it social, economical, political, educational or environmental. Because it believes in the interdependence of all lives, its approach is holistic and spiritual. In retrospect, it was far ahead of its time and, perhaps because of this, it failed to make a great impact. But the universality of its discourse makes it more relevant to our age and time. Had it been adopted on merit, there would not have been the development at the expense of ecology and at the cost of wars. Just imagine the Vaidic concern for the purity of air. It asks us to perform havan everyday to purify the air and compensate for the pollution caused by our breathing. We have witnessed the demise of socialism and the death throes of capitalism. Both happened because they were devoid of spiritual vision and concern. Spirituality liberates us from religious ghettoes. It dismantles barriers and enables inter-religious cooperation. This is basic to the liberation that spirituality affords. The need for religions to shift from a relationship of competition to one of cooperation is being increasingly realized the world over. This is in part due to the fact that religions have failed to impact the state of affairs in the world constructively, due to their mutual alienation and suspicion. While the custodians of religions busy themselves with their
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petty quarrels, the destiny of our species is being hijacked by the forces of economics and politics in the world. Our quarrels have served only to marginalize religions from the text of human welfare. When religions thus insulate themselves from the lived realities of the world, they tend to develop a purely other-worldly outlook that shuts its eyes on the burning issues of the times. Religious rituals and prescriptions are resorted to, in order to secure the maximum advantage for oneself, even to manipulate the will of God to one’s own benefit. It is this logic that leads in due course, under certain political and economic conditions, to communalism and sectarian violence. This concept can only seem rather strange from the perspective of conventional religiosity. All religions have developed, in one way or another, religious “or doctrinal legitimizations for disowning their responsibilities to the world around.” Some of the instruments in this respect are: • The idea of ritualistic pollution: In several religious traditions, whatever is “of the world” is treated as a source of spiritual pollution. Even contact with those outside of one’s religious fold is colored in this fashion. The idea of ritualistic pollution has been one of the most powerful instruments of inter-faith and inter-caste alienation. • Fatalism: The fatalistic worldview discourages any initiative for improvement. The idea of a breakthrough seems even impious. This forestalls the possibility of forming inter-faith partnerships to address social evils; the attitude to poverty and human suffering stems from a fatalistic standpoint. • The doctrine of sin and punishment: This doctrine allows a convincing escape route from social action. Avoidable suffering can be explained as the result of overt or covert sins for which it is just punishment. So long as religion continues to be used as a means for legitimizing human suffering and the organized exploitations in society, the idea of inter-faith dialogue remains suspect. • The doctrine of reward after death: Even when it is fully granted that there is a life after death, irrespective of the color or shape that it might assume, it should in no way become an excuse for diluting the right of every human being to enjoy a high quality of life and to find the full
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development of his or her potential as a person in the here and now. The extent to which the priestly class exploits our ignorance of, and anxiety about, life after death is wholly condemnable. Often it seems that the idea of life after death is used as the opium to dull the pains of life before death. • Exclusive emphasis on personal salvation: As long as religions continue to operate on the paradigm only of personal salvation, the scope for interfaith dialogue will remain slender. Corollary to the doctrine of personal salvation is the idea of exclusivity. All claims of religious exclusiveness hinge on the notion of personal salvation. This is the most formidable hurdle in the path of inter-faith cooperation and dialogue. The thrust in applied spirituality should be: • A spiritual idea of God: The insult of God immanent in a communal or sectarian idea of God needs to be fully exposed. Rather than see the truth of the Divine as the invitation for personal and collective liberation and universal harmony, religious traditions caricature God as a partisan player in the market of petty-minded religiosity. All sectarian religions bear false witness to God. Their god is too small to reflect the spiritual splendor of the Universal God of all-embracing love. If God is recognized as the source of the human family as a whole, the petty quarrels between religions will at once look insufferably irreligious. • The ecumenical vision: A shift from exclusion to inclusion (vasudhaiva kutumbakam). All spiritually directed reform movements have militated against the walls and barriers of religions. The ecumenical vision is a mandate to see the unity of our species underlying its diversity and variety. It is based on the truth that creation itself is a harmony of the one and the many, of unity in diversity. While religious orthodoxy tends to be allergic to the plurality of religions, spiritual robustness revels in it and seeks to unveil the unity that underlies this richness and variety. An incarnate spirituality, as distinct from disembodied piety that limits itself to the practice of rituals and traditions aimed only at personal salvation or moksha, is the sound alternative. The true nature of God, the authentic dynamic of spirituality as well as the depth of scriptures — all these become accessible to us, if at all, only in a state of dynamic engagement with the realities of the world. Religions are not an anthology of magic formula,
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but manuals on life itself. Life does not lend itself to a dichotomy between the internal and the external. The reconciliation between the two, and a dynamic exchange between the two, are basic to the logic of life. In its absence, spiritual death takes over, and religions that are de facto dead cannot enter into dialogues. A radical idea of worship is not just as a matter of going to have a date with God, but also as an experience of equipping oneself to make the will of God (or godly values, such as love, justice, truth and compassion) prevail in the world. The flow towards the temple or church must be complemented by the flow from the temple or church into the society to impact and transform societies. A thorough revision of our self-images and the images we entertain of each other is desirable — a shift from seeing only ill in other religions to claiming the freedom to see what is good and beautiful in them. Basic to spiritual experience is the fact that others can be known truthfully only in love. This means knowledge through engagement. So far, religions have chosen to know each other from a distance. Knowing from distance yields, at best, superficial knowledge. Distance distorts knowledge. To know in love is to know at close quarters, and without any prejudice. It is to know positively, rather than negatively. As long as the mindset of negativity is not removed from inter-faith perceptions, the cause of dialogue will remain crippled. Above all, a shift from profession and confession to a practice that abandons paying lip-service and embraces spiritual values must be adopted. The emphasis must be on realizing it in the given social, political, economic and cultural contexts. Spirituality is a paradigm of engagement; and engagement is the dynamic of transformation. Applied spirituality must be seen, essentially, as a means for liberating religions from the caves of exclusion to which they have consigned themselves. It is unlikely that each religion, cocooned in its chosen shell and refusing to move out, either develops applied spirituality or a culture of cooperation. It is by disowning spirituality that religions ghettoized themselves. It is by developing spirituality that they can liberate themselves. Throughout the history of religions, those who saw the light of the Spirit felt the urge to come out of their religious caves into the broad sunlight of shared spirituality. It is a pity, though, that most people still remain, in a religious sense, mere cavemen.
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The basic dynamic of applied spirituality is the integration of the sanctuary and the secular society. What connects the two is the river of love. We must go to our places of worship so that our hearts may be filled with God’s love for the world. If and when that happens, we shall return to the society and incarnate that love through concrete actions. Applied spirituality as a new theological concept will be yet another eye-wash. When we return to the society and begin to engage in its complex and demanding problems, we begin to see the limitations of the spurious religiosity that we have absolutized all the while. Till that happens, we shall go on mistaking the shell for the kernel of religion. It is our virtual imprisonment in the places of worship that has prevented us from developing our spiritual heritage or claiming our freedom to be effective spiritual agents in the given context. Why should religions meet? Their meeting as a mere religious fad or as a concession to this age of multiplying conferences is a luxury we must readily forego. Religions must meet, first of all, for their self-liberation. Second, there must be an emphasis on their revitalization as agents of social liberation and transformation. The focus here must be relentlessly on social justice. The competitive and isolationist models of religion have failed to bear witness to God’s passion for justice in this world. Third, religions must meet and help each other in fulfilling their historical destiny as instruments for peace and human welfare. The ultimate spiritual goal is not to dot the landscape with places of worship, but to turn the whole earth into one grand temple of God. It is when religions meet each other in a spirit of truth and mutual trust that the architecture of the true temple begins to be visible. So there is a dialogic relationship between applied spirituality and the meeting of religions. For religions to meet, there must be a preliminary shift from conventional religiosity to applied spirituality. But the more religions meet and understand each other and their shared destiny, the more they will themselves shift from religiosity to applied spirituality. Applied spirituality denotes a radical shift from doctrines and dogmas to the solidarity of a shared mission, centered on God and committed to the health and wholeness of the whole of creation. In the end, religions will meet each other only if there is a genuine and passionate desire to meet with the God of love who loves the whole
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of creation without any partiality. Applied spirituality is born out of the spiritual insight that the love for God must express itself through the love for our fellow human beings. The framework for the meeting of religions must be the celebration of God’s love for all, which is the quintessence of spirituality. In the days ahead, we may not have any use for a spirituality that leaves the oppressors untroubled. And peace should not be allowed to degenerate into the rhetoric of the Establishment. The spirituality for the emerging global order cannot afford to be a compendium of nice and toothless sentiments. The oppressed and miserable people of the world have no use for such pious ornaments. They are not looking for improved cages. They are crying out for freedom. They want to be out of their cages. They long to be airborne and belong to the heavens. The heart of our global spirituality must, therefore, be an uncompromising commitment to social justice. The cultures of the world must be graded no longer, as the West used to do, on the scale of their rationality, but on the basis of their commitment to social justice. A society that is unmindful of the claims of social justice must be branded primitive. And the global community must evolve effective instruments to enforce agreed norms of justice on the systems and governments of the world. The clichéd argument that social justice is an “internal affair” of nation-states should no longer be entertained. In a globalizing world, fundamental values and bottom-line justice should not be left to the charity of nation-states. But we do not have, as of now, an instrument with sufficient credibility and moral authority, free from the angularities of a global order based on power and inequality, to address this task. Spirituality is not an anthology of multi-faith dogmas or scriptures. It is, instead, the priorities and compulsions that emerge through an active engagement with the given context from a position of love for humankind and reverence towards God. Spirituality is the foremost resource for human empowerment. But empowerment itself can be, and has been, understood culturally, rather than spiritually. As has been understood in the West, and adopted by the rest of the global community, empowerment amounts mostly to negotiations of power-sharing. To empower is to equip a deprived individual or group to negotiate effectively with the systems and powers that be, so as to share the resources and opportunities in the given context. While this is important in the given scheme of things, this is not the final reach of
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empowerment in the spiritual paradigm. The goal of empowerment is not only to negotiate power-sharing, but also to transcend the power-paradigm itself in the macro-situation. Every human being needs to be empowered to attain the fullness of his/her hidden human scope. Also, conditions conducive to the full unfolding of the human potential in all people must be created. History bears witness to the fact that such a goal cannot be achieved within the current paradigm of power. The business of true spirituality, in the end, is to supersede power with love as the shaping paradigm for the human species. The essence of the spiritual light that all great religious seers have brought is the need for the human species to shift from the love of power to the power of love. Compassion, fellow-feeling, selfless commitment to an altruistic cause, the spirit of sacrificial service, social justice, respect for human worth and human equality are all the authentic expressions of the power of love; whereas the love of power sees them either as superfluous or as liabilities. If the emerging global order is not imbued with the imperatives of such a spiritual paradigm shift, there can be no guarantee that it will be different in spirit and scope from the old colonial mechanism that has invented a new strategy of large-scale exploitation. This nightmare looms large over the horizon of “the children of the lesser gods” who people two-thirds of the world. The Parliament of World Religions could prove historical, if it were to address this issue in a serious and sustained way in the coming years. On the contrary, it will be a momentary flash in the twilight of the dying civilization if it dodges this crucial and epoch-making task. The spirituality for the new millennium must celebrate a renewed global responsibility to protect the integrity of creation. But we must refuse to buy into the canard that nature can be saved by some cosmetic changes or technological fine-tuning. The harsh truth must now be faced. The integrity of creation hinges on our integrity as the caretakers of creation. The environmental crisis that torments us today is the product of predatory consumerism and unbridled covetousness. Scandalous global inequality and inflated lifestyles, rather than the poor of the world and their multiplication, are what endanger creation. Going by our experience so far, it is obvious that nothing short of a spiritual revolution in the global village can rescue the environment from its present endangered state.
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But compassion for creation has to be taken to its full logical conclusion. How can compassion for creation co-exist with cruelty to animals? How can a genuine culture of peace be nurtured when violence on the nonhuman world is countenanced? Human beings are meant to be keepers and defenders of life, and not the killers and consumers of life in the animal kingdom. The equal worth of all human beings, insofar as all embody the divine equally, is the foundation of spirituality. Spirituality is uncompromisingly egalitarian. It denounces every system and ideology, religious or secular, that belittles the worth of human beings. This is good news for the oppressed, but is bad news for the oppressors. The last thing that the oppressors want to do is to recognize the humanity or worth of their victims. This is as true of the high priests of the caste system in India as it was of the ring-leaders of apartheid in South Africa. Materialism, in contrast, is perforce an outlook to which inequality of human worth is endemic. The insult in materialism is that it values human beings not for who they are, but for what they have. There can never be any standardization of what human beings may own. And, therefore, human equality seems an unattainable, even undesirable, goal. Any overt or covert endorsement of “in-egalitarianism” favors the rich and the powerful, as has happened in all societies. The passion for justice that characterizes all spiritual traditions is based on the equal worth of all human beings. Systemic and endemic injustice has always been sustained and legitimized only by apportioning unequal worth to different sections of the society. Barring rhetoric, “in-egalitarianism” still remains the operative outlook of the global community. The dangers of this unspiritual outlook could aggravate many times because of globalization. If the worth of human beings is defined in terms of materialistic development, we have to subscribe to an ascending order of human worth calibrated on the scale of material affluence. The life of an American today, for example, is globally more precious than the life of an African or Asian. Within our own societies, the life of an ordinary citizen is nothing compared to the life of our Very Very Important People (VVIPs). This is an insult to the spiritual dignity and enlightenment of our species, and it is imperative that the global community in the new millennium is rid of this anathema.
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In the Sangathana Sukta (Unity hymn) of the Rig Veda, God exhorts the people belonging to every country, every religion, speaking different languages, living different cultures, to proceed in perfect unison after mutual discussions, and to share the material wealth and resources of the world. That is what I call spiritual socialism and that is what we desperately need today. In fact, this idea comes from a great philosophical doctrine — that is, social spirituality. When I talk of social spirituality, I am not talking about anything strange or new. I am talking of an old tradition. I am talking of Sanatan Dharma, which has been a living tradition right from the Vaidic times to the later period of the Upanishads, Geeta and Ramayana. In fact, what we have been calling “dharma” is another name for social spirituality. When that dharma became Hindu Dharma, Muslim Dharma, Christian Dharma or some other Dharma, it lost its original substance. It became somewhat adulterated. Rituals and Karmakandas got into these Dharmas and they began to appear different from each other. But dharma in its pristine form was social spirituality — perhaps spirituality by itself could have been sufficient. With a plethora of spiritual shops mushrooming all over the world, it is natural that you find a basic question inexorably tied with this: what is the form of God? This is a fundamental question, for different believers see their gods in different forms. Also, there are many religions which do not believe in the existence of God. The Buddha Dharma and Jainism declare that they do not believe in the existence of God, but in justice and love. God is not a man/woman sitting in the seventh sky or fourth sky, dispensing punishment to some people and rewards to others who please Him by their prayers. I believe there is no such God. God is made of attributes. God is all-powerful, omnipresent. God is just, kind, loving and compassionate. So first let us enthrone this God in our hearts and then go on to talk of social spirituality. Then we can easily comprehend social spirituality. If we perceive God as furious, always angry, striking those who are irreligious and rewarding those who are His sycophants, we shall get everything wrong. The false gods who have hands and feet, can walk, laugh and play, marry, eat, drink and sleep, who need to be fed several times a day, are bogus things, not God. Those who do not believe in such forms of God, but believe in compassion, justice and love, are closer to God than those who believe in false gods.
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For understanding the true nature of social spirituality, we should pose some questions to ourselves: What am I here for? And what is it that I need to achieve in my lifetime? What is the aim of my life? What shall I carry with me beyond my life? These basic questions are related to spirituality. These are connected with the relationship of God and human spirit. If we keep these questions before us, we will be fairly successful in understanding our duty, our human responsibility and our universal responsibility. We may not gather this understanding from books or charters or through the agencies of the United Nations. Every person who believes in such power, which is the personification of love, compassion, justice, and has respect for the same, can have spiritual understanding. For doing so, we must establish direct communion with God; for our true life, our every heartbeat, is derived from God. Therefore, we should first of all know the real form of God and also seek the answer to the question: “Who am I?”
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11
Secularism in India — A Minority Perspective ASGHAR ALI ENGINEER
India became a secular democratic republic for a number of reasons. First, the freedom fighters were mainly inspired by the ideals of freedom, democracy and secularism, and hence they saw to it that India remains a secular democracy where all its citizens enjoy basic rights. Second, the partition of India on a religious basis meant the leaders resolved not to allow religion to be associated in any manner with affairs of the state. Third, India is a bewilderingly diverse society, though Hindus constitute its majority. However, religious minorities are worried about their religions and cultures in the midst of an overwhelming Hindu majority. Thus, Nehru and other leaders provided constitutional guarantees for the religious and cultural rights of minorities. Though the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court often protects these rights, there are many problems in practice. The practical politics is dominated by majoritarianism, and minorities feel deprived of their security. Communal violence often breaks out, and the police and bureaucracy often ignore secular ideals and have been heavily influenced by the communal ideology of the Sangh family — a Hindu religious rights family. This chapter deals with these problems and discusses how Indian secularism can overcome them.
India became a secular democratic state in 1950 when its constitution was promulgated on 26 January of that year. It was, in a way, the fulfillment of a promise made by the Congress leaders during the freedom struggle. Thus, upon the promulgation of the constitution, all citizens of India irrespective of their caste, creed, color and sex received equal rights and became equal before the law. It was a great social revolution for the people of India in a caste-ridden hierarchical society where large numbers of people were treated as “untouchables.” 169
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India had met with great tragedy at the time of its independence as it was divided into two nations — India and Pakistan. M.A. Jinnah believed that Hindus and Muslims were two nations which could not live together, which also eminently suited the interests of British colonialists, and thus India was divided. From the colonial days, due both to the machinations of British colonialists as well as the interests of Hindu and Muslim elites, Hindu-Muslim conflicts came to the fore and communal problems became one of the main problems of modern India. The problem indeed was not religious but political. It was a result of the struggles for political power between the educated middle and upper classes of both communities. Had it been a religious problem, the religious leaders would have led it. But the two-nation theory was propounded by Jinnah, a law barrister who was almost a non-religious person and was, more or less, unaware of the teachings of Islam. However, profoundly religious scholars like Maulana Abulkalam Azad and the organization of Islamic theologians, Jami’at al-Ulama-i-Hind, vehemently opposed it and supported composite nationalism on religious grounds. Thus, India in its pre-independence days was confronted with communal problems which were, among other problems, a major obstacle for freedom from colonial rule. The Indian National Congress, however, was committed to a secular democratic state despite the communal problems and redeemed its promise on 26 January 1950 by promulgating the constitution. It was indeed a milestone for multi-religious India. However, promulgation of the constitution was also the beginning of new problems. To resolve to make a country secular is one thing; to manage successfully a multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-caste society is something else. Also, nation-building is a far more complex and challenging process than nationhood. It is easy to declare a country as a nation, but it is extremely challenging to carry out the task of making it a nation. The real test came while implementing the provisions of the constitution. The constitution gives equal fundamental rights to all castes and creeds, but the upper-caste Hindus who controlled all key political and bureaucratic positions, finance and industries did not show a readiness to share all resources equitably. A democratic society has to be an equitable, if not egalitarian, and a just society distributing jobs and economic resources equitably. And for this,
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politics has to be value-based so as to enact provisions of the constitution honestly and with a sense of integrity. Our politicians violate these values and principles with impunity. Immediately after independence, most were proud of being Indians. Today, Indian identity has vanished into thin air. We are today less Indian and more Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh at one level, and Brahmin or Rajput or OBC (Other Backward Castes) or Dalit at another level, and Maharashtrian or Kannad or Tamil, etc., on a third level. We fight for power on the basis of these parochial identities. We are proud of these parochial identities and our politicians appeal for votes on the basis of these identities. Those who often parade their patriotism are most guilty in this respect by appealing to Hindu caste identities. Today, BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) relies on Hindu and other caste identities within its fold most unabashedly. These identities are emphasized for the distribution of power and economic resources as well as for government jobs. There is no wonder that minorities suffer in the process and develop a strong sense of being discriminated against. Now, even the judicial system, at lower levels more than at higher levels, is tainted with these identities. Thus, in multi-religious and multi-cultural societies, it is much more challenging to have a smooth nation-building process. The real purpose of having a secular democratic constitution in India was to do justice to all sections of society and to not discriminate against anyone. The leaders of the freedom movement were inspired by these secular democratic values and had assured all sections of society that their being in the minority or the majority would not make any difference as all citizens would be treated equally. When the Indian National Congress came into existence in 1885, all sections of Indian society — Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis — supported it whole-heartedly. The slogan raised in the freedom movement was “Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Isai” (hain sab bhai bhai), i.e., people of all these religions are brothers united in their struggle against foreign rule. It is not widely known that Muslim theologians too supported the Indian National Congress enthusiastically. Maulana Rashid Ahmed Gangohi urged Indian Muslims to join the Indian National Congress and fight against British colonialists. These ulama of Deoband School also published a book entitled Nusrat al-Ahrar (to help
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freedom fighters) in which they collected more such fatwas. And a retired Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, Badruddin Tyebji, joined the Indian National Congress along with 300 Muslim delegates. Justice Tyebji also became the President of the Indian National Congress. By making him, Pherozshah Mehta (a Parsi) and W.C. Bonnerji (a Bengali Christian) presidents of the INC, it was clear that the INC was a secular and not a Hindu party. Gandhiji, though he used to describe himself as a Sanatani Hindu (an orthodox Hindu), was secular to the core and believed in equal respect for all religions. It should also be noted that in the Indian context, secularism never meant being religious or anti-religious, but treating all religions with equal respect. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India and himself an agnostic, defined Indian secularism in his speech at Oxford in the mid1950s as the state giving equal protection to all religions while keeping equal distance from all religions. Nehru had a strong conviction for secularism and never deviated from his commitment to secularism. He was also committed to protecting minorities and giving them a just share in political power as well as in economic resources. In fact, he was the spirit behind the secular nature of the constitution. The Congress had committed itself to secular democracy and fundamental rights for all its citizens in its Karachi session of 1931, and it tried to assure minorities that they would not be discriminated against. While Jinnah was not convinced, the ulama (theologians) accepted this assurance and fully cooperated with the Congress during the struggle for freedom. And these ulama have stood by their commitment till today. They have been allies of the secular, democratic Congress party. Nehru, as pointed out before, remained committed to secular values but was surrounded by those Congressmen who hardly held secular convictions and were in the Congress party not because of their secular democratic convictions but for power. In fact, they had communal attitudes. Thus, Nehru’s dream met great obstacles. He knew much depended on the educational system to cultivate modern secular and scientific values. Unfortunately, the education system in post-independence India never changed. This education system was devised by Macaulay to produce clerks rather than critical intellect or scientific temper of mind. The British, in their own interests, made the education system divisive so as to rule over India.
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Thus, in post-independence India there was a need for thorough changes in the education system. Zakir Husain, who later became President of India, had devised the basic education system in consultation with Mahatma Gandhi. But it remained on paper and was never implemented seriously. Nehru believed that communalism will die its own natural death when scientific and technological education is imparted and scientific temper is cultivated. But it was only a pipe dream of Nehru. The Congressmen surrounding him never wanted such a radical change in the education system. They were more interested in retaining the status quo in education as it served their interests better. They were not at all interested in social change and an attack on age-old customs and traditions, including the caste hierarchy. Though the Kothari Commission was appointed in the mid-1950s to make recommendations for changes in the education system, and Prof. Kothari made excellent suggestions, they were totally ignored. Thus, scientific temper and critical mind were not developed. Also, access to education itself was, and still is, quite limited. Even primary education has still not been made compulsory after 61 years of independence. Primary education in municipal and government schools is far from satisfactory. Its quality is poor. The middle and upper classes do not send their children to these schools but only to private schools beyond the reach of the poor. The concept of neighborhood schools was never accepted by the elite ruling class. The government and municipal schools perpetrate caste hierarchy as the poor mostly belong to lower castes and minorities. It is impossible in modern India to transcend these barriers. Thus, the education system imparts traditional values and perpetrates communal divisions. And in BJP-ruled states, the social science syllabus openly promotes hatred against minorities, especially Muslims and Christians. Worse are schools run by the RSS (Rashtriyaswayam Sevak Sangh). Their textbooks are full of hatred for Muslims and declare Islam and Christianity as outside religions, not part of Indian India. For them, Indian religions are Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Thus, Hindu children studying in these schools are made to feel that Muslims and Christians are outsiders. One Standard XII textbook in Rajasthan even praises fascism and says it is more desirable for India as it enables one leader to take right decisions at
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the right time. The RSS schools teach children that Islam spread in India by shedding rivers of blood, with the Qur’an in one hand and a sword in the other. What kind of mindset will this create among young children? They simply grow up with hatred for minorities. There is no emphasis on value education at all. Without value education, children will not acquire healthy minds and secular and democratic values. Also, political campaigns are heavily loaded in favor of religious and caste biases. The media too has been communalized, and the mainstream media both in English and vernacular is biased in favor of the majority community, though the English media is comparatively better and more subtle. But vernacular media in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, etc., is much more biased and at times openly partisan. The role of regional or vernacular media during communal riots is highly partisan and at times very crudely so. I have covered several major riots, from the Jabalpur riot of 1961 to the Gujarat riots of 2002, and have carefully analyzed the role of vernacular media and found it unabashedly partisan. Unfortunately, despite provisions in the law against provocative writings and speeches, the police just looks the other way. The Gujarati newspapers openly provoked riots especially during 1969, 1985 and 2002, yet no police action was taken against them. The role of the Marathi media during the post-Babri demolition riots of 1992–1993, especially of Samna which is the mouthpiece of Shiv Sena, was highly objectionable. Unfortunately, apart from the public, most of the policemen read Samna every morning and they are exposed to biased views about minorities. It is no surprise that the policemen were highly communalized during the 1992–1993 riots in Mumbai and other places. However, the role of English newspapers, especially that of Times of India, was very laudable. The whole editorial team at that time was highly committed to secularism. But the problem is that English papers are read by very few people — the educated elite. But those who indulge in riots and the constabulary who handle law and order situations read vernacular papers. The same thing happens in Gujarat. The Gujarat papers, which are highly communalized, are read by the constabulary and the mass of people who imbibe raw prejudices and misinformation through these vernacular papers. And now the electronic media has made things even worse. Newspapers are read mainly by educated people, but the electronic media is accessible even to the illiterate. Electronic media, even if not communalized (though
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vernacular channels very much are), thrive by the sensationalization of news and showing it repeatedly on 24-hour channels, thus becoming highly provocative. Also, on these channels minorities are stereotyped, further confirming the prejudices acquired through other sources as well. The political campaigns play an even worse role in this respect. As pointed out before, all appeals for votes are on the basis of caste and religion. There is hardly any exception to this. The caste-based parties like SP (Samajwadi Party), BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) or RJD (Rashtriya Janta Dal), though claiming to be secular, reinforce caste prejudices all the time. Then, of course, the BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) is a Hindu rightwing party and its politics depends on hate campaigns against Muslims and Christians. It targeted Muslims primarily throughout the 1980s but has now added Christians too from the 1990s onwards. Its political influence has grown on account of its communal agenda alone. Its mainspring of ideology is RSS (Rashtriyaswayam Sevak Sangh) which wants to establish Hindu Rashtra in India. It was founded in 1925 by Dr. Hedgewar to “counter Muslim communalism” in Nagpur. It was earlier based mainly in urban areas, but has now penetrated into villages throughout the country. The role of RSS is quite sinister and has grown gradually to great proportions. If there is any force in India today which impedes the growth of secularism and secular values, it is RSS. The BJP (known earlier as Jan Sangh) has also grown significantly thanks to the efforts of RSS. Its claim that RSS is a non-political cultural organization cannot be taken seriously. Now, the BJP does not even try to hide the fact (which it did earlier) that its connection with the RSS is that of an umbilical cord. The Jan Sangh in the early 1950s hardly wielded any influence. In the first election in 1952 after the promulgation of the constitution, it got no more than 3.1% of votes and won three seats in Parliament. There were many reasons for this. It was a newly formed party (though the Hindu Mahasabha of pre-independence days was its predecessor), and the Congress had tremendous prestige among the people as it had mainly led the freedom struggle and successfully liberated India from British colonial rule. Even in the next election in 1957, it won only 5.9% of votes, nearly doubling its percentage but winning only four seats. Then in 1962, it got 6.4% of votes but won 14 seats. In 1967, it got 9.4% of votes but won 35 seats. This was so because now the Congress was losing its popularity.
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Nehru was dead and the Congress was faction-ridden. Also, due to famine, prices had increased and opposition parties now formed alliances in states like Uttar Pradesh where Hindu rights had great influence. In 1971, Mrs. Indira Gandhi acquired great prestige as she succeeded in breaking up Pakistan and creating Bangladesh, and so she successfully trounced the opposition in the 1971 elections. The Jan Sangh got only 7.4% of votes and won two Lok Sabha seats. However, things changed again due to the imposition of emergency by Mrs. Indira Gandhi which was highly unpopular, and a new political formation, i.e., the Janta Party, came into existence under the leadership of Jaiprakash Narain, a socialist leader. The Jan Sangh merged with it and took the pledge of “Gandhian socialism” and “secularism.” This was a highly opportunistic step on the part of Jan Sangh as it knew it would be wiped out if it did not change its ideological stance. However, this was only a tactical move. It never renounced its communal ideology as it refused to sever its relation with the RSS, its ideological mainspring. In fact, the Janata Government fell mainly because it refused to sever its connection with the RSS. It is known as the “double membership controversy” (membership of the RSS along with that of the Janata Party). The Jan Sangh now took another birth under a new name, BJP, and again repeated — for tactical purposes of course — its pledge to accept Gandhian socialism and secularism. But soon it discovered that by accepting this ideological stance, it lost its very identity. It lost very badly in the 1984 elections, winning only two seats in Lok Sabha. While with the Janta Party it had won 80 seats in the 1977 elections (mainly due to alliances with other parties), it was now reduced to a political non-entity in the 1984 elections. It therefore returned to its communal politics with a vengeance to rediscover its original identity. In its new form, it had pretended to accept “secularism.” Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had cultivated his image as a “moderate,” was made president, but after the political disaster of 1984 there was a change of guard and L.K. Advani, known for his aggressive communal stance, was made president. Advani tried to revive the original ideology of communalism with a new strategy, i.e., questioning the very concept of Congress secularism.
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Firstly, he described the very concept of secularism as Western in origin (which is what the RSS had always maintained); and secondly, he called the Congress secularism “pseudo-secularism” based on “appeasement” of minorities. He alleged that the Congress appeases Muslims for their votes and discriminates against Hindus. He came up with a strange theory that the Hindus have been “besieged” in their own country due to the politics of appeasement pursued by the Congress. This appealed to Hindu middle classes who had developed a sense of insecurity for a number of reasons, e.g., the Khalistan movement in Punjab. The ASSU movement in Assam was based on the opposition to infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims in large numbers. Also, Muslim leadership played a very opportunistic role during the Shah Bano movement based on the Supreme Court judgment for maintenance after the iddah (three months after divorce) period. The opposition to the Shah Bano judgment made Hindu middle classes quite apprehensive about Muslims rejecting a secular judgment based on secular laws of the country, and that made Advani’s theory of “appeasement” of Muslims true for Hindu middle classes. The issue of reservation was also quite unpopular with the newly emerging professionals among upper-caste Hindus, and BJP shrewdly utilized this controversy in its own way.1 When the Mandal Commission was implemented by Mr. V.P. Singh, the then Prime Minister whom the BJP was supporting, all hell was let loose. The BJP faced a dilemma — the Mandal Commission was not acceptable to the upper-caste Hindus who constituted the main political base, yet the BJP could not oppose the Mandal Commission openly for fear of losing OBC (the Other Backward Castes) votes as BJP was trying to woo OBCs for their votes too. It resolved this dilemma by raising the issue of the Ramjanambhoomi temple, which was created by the Rajiv Gandhi government opening the doors of Babri Masjid for the worship of Ram Lalla and laying the foundation stone for Ramjanambhoomi Mandir. Thus, it can be seen that the Congress party showed no less opportunism for the sake of gaining votes and starting 1 In 1979, the Mandal Commission was asked by the Indian government to study the question of seat reservations and quotas to redress caste discrimination. In 1980, the Commission’s report endorsed the affirmative action practice under Indian law.
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a controversy which had great communalizing potential. It had done so to fight the Hindu wrath as the Rajiv Gandhi government had overturned the Supreme Court judgment on the Shah Bano issue. Thus, at this juncture, both Congress and BJP were competing with each other in destroying the secular values of Indian politics. It was this competitive communalism of the two major parties that made the last two decades of the 20th century the most communal in post-independence India. From 1980 to 1992–1993, several major communal riots took place, for example in Moradabad (1980), Biharsharif (1981), Baroda and Meerut (1982), Neili, Assam (1983), Mumbai, Delhi (1984), Ahmedabad (1985), Meerut (1987), Bhagalpur (1989) and Mumbai (1992–1993). It can be seen that most of these riots took place in North India, which has been a major center of communal politics as this area has been the center of Hindu communalism as well as of Muslim communalism before independence. Also, U.P. (Uttar Pradesh) and Bihar together have the largest population of Muslims in India compared to the southern and western states. Here I would like to point out that, basically, Congress is not a communal organization. Ideologically speaking, it is committed to secularism and secular values in politics, and even today its commitment stands out compared to BJP which is a Hindu communal party. But in practice, the Congress has not been able to redeem its image. Also, because it has to compete with the BJP for votes, its actions are often determined by consideration of Hindu votes. BJP is quite aggressive in its communal politics, but Congress is not in its secular politics. Gujarat is the best example of the soft communalism of the Congress. BJP is quite strong in Gujarat and plays its Hindu card quite aggressively. BJP has succeeded eminently in selling its communalism to the Hindu middle class, and Congress has lost all its political courage to win this middle class to secular values. It either becomes neutral to BJP politics or simply accepts it with slight murmurs. Fortunately, one factor goes against the BJP and that is India’s bewildering diversity. Had India not been diverse to the extent that it is, BJP would have come to power on its own. I would like to explain further as this is a most interesting phenomenon. The BJP started with a very narrow political base. It received only 3.1% of votes as the Congress enjoyed great
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prestige and the educated Hindu middle class base was very narrow to begin with. However, BJP expanded slowly as the Hindu middle class expanded and as competition for developmental resources and political power increased between Hindu middle classes and the middle classes of other communities, particularly that of Muslims. Similarly, the struggle for resources and power also increased between upper Hindu castes and scheduled castes and OBCs. In fact, Hindu communalism reached its nodal point at the end of the 1980s when reservation for OBCs was announced, showing that communalism is the result of competition for political and economic resources. Now coming back to diversity. The caste diversity, especially in North India, acts as a great deterrent to BJP’s communalism. The increased political awareness among Dalits and OBCs has effectively checkmated BJP both in U.P. as well as Bihar. During the Ramjanambhoomi campaign, North India, particularly U.P., was the main epicenter of Hindu communalism. The BJP won state legislative elections during the height of the Ramjanambhoomi campaign. But Dalit leaders like Kanshi Ram and Mayawati were working hard to bring political awareness with a strong message against upper-caste domination. This effectively weaned away Dalits from both Congress as well as BJP. Now, BSP (the Dalit party) became a force to be reckoned with. Congress had lost out to BJP at the height of the Ramjanambhoomi movement (also because Muslims were unhappy with the Congress for laying the foundation stone for Ramjanambhoomi temple), and now BJP began to lose to the BSP. Then, BSP and SP (the party of Yadavs and other OBCs) came together to defeat BJP in the post-Babri Masjid demolition phase. Thus, the BJP lost to the Dalit and OBC party in its own heartland, thanks to the caste diversity in India. Now, in both U.P. and Bihar, BJP has been completely marginalized and caste-based parties have come to power. Also, apart from religious diversity, the Hindu religion itself, as pointed out earlier, is far from being a homogenized entity through the length and breadth of India. Hinduism is as diverse as India. For this reason, BJP is unable to grow simultaneously in all parts of India among Hindus themselves. Thus, it finds it very difficult to gain entry into southern states. It recently succeeded in forming a government in Karnataka, a southern state, out of four southern states.
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In southern states, Dravidian castes are supreme, particularly in Tamil Nadu. No party can succeed without the support of one or the other Dravidian party. At times, these two Dravidian parties also enter into alliances with BJP, but BJP is not able to win more than a couple of seats. In Tamil Nadu, some backward castes like Thevar (which is a landlord party) have sharp contradictions with Dalits and therefore support the Sangh Parivar. In A.P. (Andhra Pradesh), apart from caste contradictions, linguistic factors play an important role. Thus, either Congress or the Telugu Desam (state language is Telugu) party competes for power. Though at one point Telugu Desam allied itself with BJP, BJP could not make much headway in A.P. politically. Also, after the alliance with BJP, Telugu Desam lost power in the 2004 elections as the Muslims of A.P. were angry with it for allying with BJP at the Center. The state of Kerala has remained beyond BJP’s reach for different reasons, though caste also plays a role. Kerala has large populations of Muslims and Christians, both at about 20% each, and Dalits are also at about 20%. Also, communist parties, particularly CPM (Communist Party Marxist), are quite strong and the Communists or Congress alternately form the government. Though RSS is trying very hard to penetrate, BJP does not have a respectable presence in the state. In Karnataka too, BJP only succeeded in forming the government thanks to the division of secular votes between two secular parties — the Congress and Janta Dal (Secular) — and also thanks to the opportunistic alliance of JD(Secular) with the BJP earlier. Thus, it can be seen that BJP manages to widen its political space due to the lust for power of some of the secular parties who enter into alliances with it. But for these opportunistic alliances by secular parties with BJP, it would not have been able to widen its political space to such an extent. BJP once used to shun secular parties to protect its ideological purity. However, it soon realized that it could not come to power on its own. Hence it entered into alliances with secular parties, compromising its ideological purity but gaining much politically. This also helped it strengthen its various front organizations like RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal. BJP is therefore facing a very complex situation in the country today. On one hand, it has been checkmated due to the diversity of castes and religions. On the other hand, it is trying to expand its political space through these
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alliances. The main advantage of coming to power through such alliances is the expansion of the RSS base, which is committed to Hindu Rashtra and anti-minorities. Once in power, RSS cadres have been able to infiltrate various government services like education, the police and bureaucracy. These are very crucial services. Today, there are many more RSS people in these services. In the states under its control, BJP permits government employees to attend RSS shakhas (branches where RSS indoctrination takes place). Another advantage of these political alliances has been that BJP’s front organizations like VHP and Bajrang Dal have become much stronger than they were before, and they have been emboldened to take very aggressive public postures. They are the storm troopers of BJP. In all communal riots, these organizations attack minorities. In the Gujarat riots, VHP and Bajrang Dal mainly attacked Muslims, and recently in Orissa these organizations were involved in attacking Christians. It can thus be seen that secular India has been considerably weakened in recent years and communal forces have grown. Also, the police, judiciary and the bureaucracy have been more and more communalized, which has considerably increased the woes of minorities. Whenever any terrorist attack takes place, innocent Muslims become suspects and all rules of law are thrown to the wind; indiscriminate arrests are made and suspects tortured to obtain confessions. Often the judiciary denies bail despite a lack of objective evidence because, thanks to Sangh Parivar propaganda, Muslims are seen as terrorists. The judiciary, especially at lower levels, often falls prey to such propaganda. It is again a result of increasing communalization that while SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India), a militant organization, has been banned, VHP and Bajrang Dal (equally militant Hindu organizations) have not been banned despite all the proof of their involvement in various terrorist and violent activities. Justice demands that they also be banned like SIMI so that terrorism and violent attacks can be more easily controlled. There is no doubt that today, minorities like Muslims and Christians feel much more insecure than during the earlier decades after independence. Nehru had hoped that with greater education in the country, there would be more and more secularization of society. Unfortunately, the opposite has happened. There is more and more communalization instead. Thus,
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there are contradictory forces working in the political processes today. Increasing democratization should have meant more secularization, but increased democratization is instead resulting in increased communalization. We have tried to explain this contradiction above.
SECULARISM AND ITS FUTURE Does this mean that there is no scope for the future of secularism in India? I think this will not be the correct conclusion. There is definite hope for a secular future. As pointed out above, political processes are extremely complex and finely balanced. There are different factors which determine the democratic polity of the country. These factors are regional, linguistic, cultural, religious and caste-based. The impact of these factors together does not favor the infinite growth of communalism in India. In other words, Hinduization of India is a remote possibility. Certain institutions of Indian democracy like the Supreme Court of India have proved to be a strong pillar for protecting democracy and democratic values including secularism. In one of the judgments on fundamental rights (the Golaknath case in 1967 and the Keshvanand Bharti case of Kerala State vs. Supreme Court in 1973), the Supreme Court observed that even a new Constituent Assembly cannot change the basic structure of the constitution (i.e., its secular and democratic values, fundamental rights, etc.). This judgment is of great value and it is because of this judgment that the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government led by the BJP could not change the basic structure of the constitution. It was otherwise on the agenda of the RSS and BJP to change the basic structure of the constitution. In other words, secularism will continue to be the basic feature of Indian democracy and no government will be able to change it. It is the real strength of Indian democracy. Also, when the NDA government appointed a commission headed by the retired chief justice of India, it met with strong protests and the NDA government had to modify the terms of reference of the commission. Thus, we see that the functioning of secular democracy in India for the last 61 years has generated a strong base which will be very difficult to temper with. All the marginalized sections of Indian society — tribals, Dalits,
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minorities and also some sections of the upper-caste majority community — will never allow Indian secularism to be weakened, let alone be replaced by Hindu Rashtra. It is secularism which guarantees the protection and security of these weaker sections of society. Apart from these weaker sections of Indian society, the peripheral ethnic minorities in the northeast and those in the south will never accept rule by Hindu Rashtra. It is because of ethnic, religious and caste-based minorities that the BJP could never get majority votes even in its heyday. The maximum percentage of votes BJP got was in 1998 when it won 25.6% votes. This was reduced to 22.2% in 2004. Thus, 75% of people do not support any such radical change in the constitution and instead opt for secularism. Even among those who vote for BJP, many vote for reasons other than the core ideology of Hinduism. They vote because of caste and other considerations. It is therefore difficult to say whether all support the ideology of Hindu Rashtra and oppose secularism. It is for this reason that BJP also has to maintain publicly that it accepts secularism. The future of secularism in India is safe and sound. Today, since most of the key posts in administration, teaching and the police are held by upper-caste Hindu officers, many of whom are under the influence of RSS ideology, the implementation of secular values and the secular spirit of the constitution appear to be wanting. That should not, however, make us feel that the future of secularism is despairing in any way.
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Chapter
12
The Pakistan Islamic State Project: A Secular Critique ISHTIAQ AHMED
When Pakistan came into being, Mohammad Ali Jinnah (the founder of Pakistan) presented a patently secular idea of nation-building without mentioning the word “secular.” The Islamists mounted a concerted campaign against secularism, declaring that it was the anti-thesis of Islamic faith. They wanted to make Pakistan an Islamic state in which the Shariah would be supreme: all laws would be consonant with the Shariah. They did not overrule democracy, pluralism or the idea of human rights, women’s rights and minority rights, but argued that Islam had its own approach to pluralism and the rights of women and non-Muslims. They were able to advance their project during the time of General Zia-ul-Haq. This study will analyze the implications of the anti-secular rhetoric in terms of its actual impact on democracy, pluralism, human rights, women’s rights and minority rights.
INTRODUCTION A debate on the ideological foundations of Pakistan has been going on since it was carved out of the Indian British Empire as a separate state for Indian Muslims on 14 August 1947. The All-India Muslim League, which led the struggle for Pakistan, had asserted that Indian Muslims were not simply a minority but a separate nation based on Islamic faith and culture. Once Pakistan had come into being, the central question that arose was this: would it be simply a Muslim-majority state or an Islamic state based on dogmatic Islamic law (the Shariah)? During the struggle for Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the supreme leader of the Muslim League, had deliberately evaded committing himself to any particular ideology that Pakistan would adhere to. This strategy was adopted to maximize support from all sections of people who had been included in the census records as Muslims. 185
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The more-than-1000-year-old Indian Muslim community was constituted by diverse linguistic and ethnic groups which were further subdivided by sectarian and class divisions. Consequently, any discussion on the relationship between Islam and the state was bound to open a Pandora’s Box of divergent and conflicting beliefs and interests. In some pronouncements, Jinnah assured the British, the Western world and the rival Indian National Congress that Pakistan would be a modern democracy. On the other hand, to the religious conservatives among the Muslims, he gave a pledge that suggested obliquely the establishment of an Islamic state. Thus, for example, in a letter to an influential spiritual leader, the Pir of Manki Sharif, he wrote in November 1945: It is needless to emphasize that the Constituent Assembly which would be predominantly Muslim in its composition would be able to enact laws for Muslims, not inconsistent with the Shariah laws, and the Muslims will no longer be obliged to abide by the Un-Islamic laws (Constituent Assembly Debates 1949, p. 6).
Not only were such commitments given, the Muslim League decided also to mobilize mass support in the Muslim-majority provinces — a task it realized could be carried out most effectively by the ulama. The problem was that the radical ulama of the Deobandi school (founded in 1867) had already entered into an understanding with the Indian National Congress to join forces so as to bring colonialism to an end. They justified it by arguing that from an Islamic point of view, it was permissible for Muslims to enter into an alliance with other religious communities in a struggle to liberate the homeland (watan) from colonial occupation (Faruqi 1980). Under the circumstances, the Muslim League decided to mobilize the rivals of the Deobandis, the Brelawis. While both the Deobandis and Brelawis were Sunnis, the Brelawis were not known for their political activism. They were connected to Sufi orders and were supported by the landowning conservative classes. However, they were the biggest group in terms of control of mosques and Sufi shrines, and once they entered the Muslim League’s election campaign, they began to describe the demand for Pakistan as a demand to establish an Islamic state (Gilmartin 1988). The British called provincial elections in 1946 to ascertain the mood of the people. It was clear that they were leaving India, but they were not
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sure if India should be left united or divided as the Muslim League wanted. The 1946 election was contested on diametrically opposite platforms by the Indian National Congress, a secular party dominated by Hindus that sought support for keeping India united; and the Muslim League which demanded Pakistan. The Muslims, who constituted roughly one-third of the total population of India, voted overwhelmingly in favor of Pakistan. The Muslim League won 440 seats of the total 495 reserved seats for Muslims. On the other hand, the Congress received a clear mandate from Hindus and others included in the general category of voters in favor of keeping India united. It received 905 seats out of a total of 1,585. Thereafter followed months of political uncertainty as the British tried unsuccessfully to broker a power-sharing deal between the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress. When the negotiations broke down, communal riots broke out in many parts of India. Finally, in mid-August 1947, the subcontinent was partitioned into two states. It is estimated that between one and two million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs lost their lives during the partition slaughters. Given the religious basis of Pakistani nationalism, the role of the Brelawi clerics in popularizing the demand for Pakistan in the name of Islam, and the bloody partition riots that followed, there could be no denying that the Islamic factor had to be adjusted in its national identity — the question was to what extent? Three distinct modes or clusters of thinking emerged in the discussions over national identity that ensued in the public sphere. A moderate version sought synthesis between modern democracy and Islamic values; an Islamist version stood for an all-encompassing and comprehensive remodelling of state and society on the basis of Shariah laws and principles; and a secular version suggested that Islam and secularism were not irreconcilable. The moderate and Islamist positions served as the basis for the constitution and law-making, while the secularist position remained the counterpoint position. The present study reviews the constitutional and legal undertakings during the moderate and Islamist periods, and advances an argument in favor of the secular state. It will be demonstrated that neither the moderate Muslim state nor the Islamist version can fulfil the normal, contemporary standards of legitimate government that treats individuals and groups that constitute its population as equal citizens. This is proved both through a critique of
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the reasoning put forth in favor of these two versions of state and through the empirical evidence that has accumulated over more than 60 years. Both the moderates and Islamists rely on rhetoric rather than sound reasoning to justify their versions of the state. Rhetoric here is understood as the art of using eloquent and persuasive language that appeals to emotions and sentiments rather than the rules of logic and consistent reasoning. One useful way to critique rhetorical language and writings is to test their outcomes in practice. Medieval thinkers and debaters among both Christians and Muslims could engage in ongoing debates over beliefs and doctrines for centuries without coming to any conclusion because the participants in such scholasticism were not willing to test their claims in the real world. The Pakistani moderates and Islamists argue in a similar vein. The secular critique of these two positions that is attempted below seeks to justify the adoption of secularism as the necessary precondition for democracy, internal amity and harmony, and regional peace. It should be mentioned that Pakistan has never officially abandoned the goal of establishing democracy. Rather, the moderates have tried to show that Islamic democracy is superior to secular democracy, while the Islamists have demeaned it as inferior to their “theo-democracy” (Maududi 1980, pp. 139–140). In order to put the discussion into perspective, a brief review of the Islamic political and cultural heritage is presented below as a necessary background to make sense of the controversy.
The Islamic Political and Cultural Heritage The five articles of Islamic faith are the following: belief in God, in His angels, in His revealed books of which the Quran is believed to be the last Book, in His prophets and in Muhammad as the last Prophet, and in life after death. Conventionally, five obligations have been derived from these cardinal beliefs that every Muslim is expected to render to God: prayers, fasting, paying the alms tax (zakat), going on pilgrimage to Mecca if one can afford it, and jihad when required (Maududi 1965, pp. 85–141). This view is generally associated with the Sunnis, while other sects emphasize some other minor points too. The concept of an Islamic state has its origins in the belief that the Prophet Muhammad established the most just and perfect state in Medina in the
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7th century. However, there was no general theory of state or government given in the Quran. Only a particular theory — referring to the role of a specific person, the Prophet Muhammad, establishing a system of authority and law including the collection of taxes — can be inferred from the sacred sources. Muhammad claimed to have received divine guidance through revelations over a period of 22 years (from 610–632 AD). Upon his death in 632 AD, conflicting claims to succeed him were put forward by different factions of Muslims. That was to serve as the basis of the Muslim community splitting subsequently into hostile sectarian groups. The Sunnis consider the period of 29 years after Muhammad’s death when his four successors, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, also known as the legendary pious caliphs (632–661 AD), were in power as a continuation of perfect government established by the Prophet. These four rulers were chosen in different ways. Abu Bakr was proposed by Umar and then an oath of allegiance was sought from notable Muslims. Umar was nominated by Abu Bakr and then the elders gave their consent. Uthman was elected by a restricted board of six elders from the Quraish tribe to which Muhammad and these four caliphs belonged. Ali was chosen by an assembly of people who wanted him to succeed Uthman. Sunni theory which evolved subsequently restricted the candidates for caliph only to the Quraish, but later, even that condition was waived when the Ottoman Turks became the leading Muslim power in the Middle East. The Shias restricted the period of the ideal Islamic state after Muhammad only to the time when Ali (656-661), the last and according to them his only legitimate successor, was in power. Their position was that the leader, the Imam, had to be a close relative of Muhammad and since Ali was his cousin and was married to his daughter, Fatima, only Ali and Fatima’s male descendants could be leaders of the Muslim community. Shia theory also claimed that the Imam was infallible and had to be obeyed without any objections (Ahmed 1987, pp. 46–62). In any event, the pristine Islamic state claimed its legitimacy on the basis of imposing what came to be known as Islamic law, the Shariah. The origins of the Shariah were supposed to be divine revelation and not human agency. The sources recognized by the scholars of Islam were primarily the Quran and the Sunna (the doings and sayings of the Prophet preserved in several authoritative collections known as books of hadith) of the Prophet
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(Faruki 1971; Qadri 1981). Other minor sources and procedures were also developed by the jurists to determine Shariah laws. The Shariah was developed and systematized during the pre-modern period: between the 7th and 16th centuries — a period during which Muslim societies evolved from tribal to agrarian economies with trade flourishing during periods of high culture and achievements. In that long period, women were, as a rule, absent from public life and non-Muslims were marginal to the political order. During that period, intellectual controversies and political conflicts between different schools took place. Among them, the most important were the literalists who demanded strict adherence to the wording of the Quran and hadith and rejected rationalism, and the followers of free thought. Although the literalists finally triumphed in the early 12th century and dogmatic theology became the dominant mode of thinking and theorizing, it is interesting to note that Muslim philosophers made some daring advances in free thought. Thus, Al-Kindi (801–866 AD) spoke his mind very clearly: We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign powers. For him who seeks the truth, there is nothing of higher value than truth itself (quoted in Hourani 1991, p. 76).
The general assumption upon which Muslim philosophers built their argument was that if reason was applied correctly it could furnish certain knowledge about the universe, but as Muslims it was necessary to believe that some knowledge essential to human life had come only through revelation (ibid., p. 77). Some extremist positions were also expressed. For example, a famous scholar of medicine, Abu Bakr Al-Razi, went so far as to suggest that human reason alone could give certain knowledge, and that the claims of revelation were false and religions were dangerous (ibid., p. 78). The SpanishArab philosopher, Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), emphasized the pre-eminence of human intelligence and philosophical reflection over the apparent meaning of Quranic verses. In case of a contradiction between the truth discovered by philosophy and what the Quran appeared to indicate, Ibn Rushd wanted the Quranic verses to be considered only metaphorically and not literally (ibid., pp. 174–175; Arnaldez 2000). However, in the tussle for intellectual hegemony that raged during the medieval period, the man whose ideas finally prevailed and established
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the reigning dogma that to this day continues to inform scholastic Islamic thinking was Imam Ghazali (died in 1111 AD). He argued that revealed truth ipso facto cannot be in error. On the other hand, the knowledge of the philosophers can be impaired even when the most brilliant minds are involved. Therefore, in the case of a clash between the two, the authority of revelation must prevail. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a leading Pakistani physicist, believes that the triumph of Ghazali’s thought over that of Ibn Rushd’s sealed the fate of subsequent Muslim intellectualism and poorly prepared the Muslims for adopting a scientific attitude towards material and social phenomena (Hoodbhoy 1992). In any case, most intellectual endeavors of Muslim intellectuals in the early and medieval periods were directed at elaborating the Shariah. The four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, known as Fiqh, reached a tacit agreement that all matters in law and theology had been tackled and that the principles and procedures for reaching decisions on particular matters had been elaborated. Consequently, ijtihad or independent reasoning in the interpretation of the Islamic sources was no longer needed in future. Instead, taqlid or compliance with the decisions of the earlier generations had to be adhered to. Known as the “closing-of-the-gates-of-ijtihad” doctrine, it represented a worldview which seemed to assume that the development of society had reached a stage of maturity which will remain unchanged until it degenerates towards the end of time, when life on earth ceases and the next stage of reward and punishment begins in another world. The Shias did not abandon ijtihad but used it only to justify dissenting opinions from the Sunnis within a worldview that assumed a social order of the medieval type with its tribal and agrarian configurations (Ahmed 1987). The medieval Muslim/Arab civilization received severe blows when the Mongols invaded Baghdad and wreaked havoc in 1258. Later, the center of Islamic power moved away from the Arab heartland to the peripheries. A caliphate in southern Spain thrived for some time until Muslims were expelled from Spain in 1492 by a revived Christian power under Ferdinand and Isabella. In 1299, the Ottoman Turks emerged as the strongest power, while the Mughals in India and the Safavids in Iran established their empires in the 16th century. These empires relied essentially on the legal developments of the earlier period and very few significant innovations were introduced during their existence.
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Beginning with the colonial encounters of the late 18th century, Muslim societies went into a negative mode. When Napoleon landed at Alexandria in 1798, Muslim polities went into decay and retreat for quite some time. Napoleon had come with a mission to spread the rational and emancipatory ideas and values of the Enlightenment. He brought with him many scientists and philosophers who sought to popularize rationalism and science. The dynamic Western civilization offered a new conception of time and space and particularly emphasized change in a futuristic direction. Indeed, the profundity of that encounter cannot be overstated (Tibi 1997, pp. 79–81). Among the Egyptian elite, some were converted to notions of rationality and progress on the lines of European modernity and the Enlightenment. However, among these Muslim modernists, the dominant view was that Islam and modernity were reconcilable. The roving champion of an Islamic revival, Jamaluddin Afghani (who was actually an Iranian), established the standpoint that Islam was a rational religion, but insisted that revealed truth was superior to rational truths and science. Therefore, the modernist sought primarily a synthesis between European and Islamic ideas and ideals. Some purely secular positions were also adopted, while the movement for an Islamic, authentic path to regeneration rejected European civilization and its rational and scientific methods. That group was supported by the traditional middle classes and peasant-proprietors (Hourani 1983, pp. 34–244).
Islam in the Indian Subcontinent The Muslim presence in South Asia dates from 711 AD. For the greater part of the period between the early 13th century AD and the Great Mutiny against British rule in 1857, Muslim dynasties dominated the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. Under Islamic law, a sharp line was drawn between Muslims and non-Muslims; the latter were referred to as dhimmi. Among them, Christians and Jews were recognized as legitimate minorities and accorded communal autonomy and other rights, while political and military power remained in Muslim hands. In return for this “protection,” these minorities were required to pay a special tax ( jizya). Some Muslim theologians and jurists in India interpreted Islamic law liberally, classing Hindus as monotheists and thus creating scope for a protopluralist society (Ikram 1965, pp. 125–126; Naqvi 1995, p. 46). This meant
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that as long as the Hindus paid the jizya, they could retain their religion and practise it more or less freely. However, there were movements in the other direction too that demanded that the state should apply strictures against polytheism and idol-worship. Despite a long period of Muslim rule in northern India, most of the inhabitants of the subcontinent remained Hindus. Two types of people converted to Islam. Those from the lower castes who suffered an extremely degraded status under the Hindu caste system, and those who found it expedient to change their religion in order to retain their property and other privileges. There were indeed also forced conversions from all sections of society, but on the whole, force was not the main reason for the change from Hinduism to Islam. Although the institution of slavery was present during Muslim rule, it seems to have been rather loosely organized. Generally, conversions to Islam won freedom for slaves, and several Muslim dynasties founded by former slaves ruled in India. Most Indian Muslims were Sunnis, but a Shia minority also existed among them. The Muslim rulers were, in principle, guardians of all their subjects. This was the established tradition in South Asia and the Muslims had adapted themselves to that model. As long as the rulers nominally adhered to the Shariah in public life, the Muslim theologians preached that obedience should be rendered to them. However, whenever the state was perceived to have deviated from its Islamic character, some form of censure sooner or later ensued from the orthodox establishment (Ahmed 2005, pp. 190–192). During the British period, rationalism and scientific methods also attracted some sections of the Muslim elite. Thus, for example, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan founded a rationalist mode of thinking which came to be called as the Nechari (naturalist) school of thought. It argued that there could be no conflict between the discoveries of science and the Islamic faith, because the latter was based on reason and God had urged believers to study and understand natural phenomena in the light of rational knowledge. Sir Syed was in principle arguing in favor of scientific methods and rational thinking. His school of thought proved too radical and most of Sir Syed’s followers later adopted a middle, or rather moderate, position that sought a synthesis between Islamic revealed truths and scientific truths. In political terms, it meant Islamic democracy and not secular democracy (Ahmad 1967).
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Among them was the poet Sir Muhammad Iqbal, who is generally regarded as the philosopher who thought of the idea of Pakistan, and who believed that each generation of Muslims was entitled to exercise reason to deal with contemporaneous problems. However, he subscribed to the traditional standpoint that religion and state were inseparable in Islam. He was convinced that an interpretation of the Shariah in the light of modern ideas could bring about egalitarian and progressive changes in Muslim society. Iqbal rejected secularism as untenable with Islam (Iqbal 1960, pp. 154–155). The main opposition to modernization and rationalism, however, came from the ulama (clerics) and fundamentalist ideologues.
THE THREE STANDPOINTS ON THE STATE IN PAKISTAN The Secular Standpoint The secularist position ironically was set forth by none other than Pakistan’s founder, Jinnah. In an address to the members of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947 — three days before Pakistan achieved independence as a separate state as the Muslim nation of India — the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, after being elected President of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, made a speech in which he portrayed a vision of a future Pakistan that corresponded completely with the democratic type of secular state. He observed: You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State … We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State... I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in due course, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State (Speeches of Mr. Jinnah 1976, pp. 403–404).
Jinnah’s speech has generated endless controversy as it negated the confessional basis on which the demand for Pakistan was made. The question then is: if Pakistan was going to be a secular state, then what
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was the justification for demanding a separate state for Muslims? Part of the reason must have been the fact that Pakistani Muslims were not a monolithic community comprising only Sunnis. Even among Sunnis there were different sub-sects. Moreover, Jinnah, a non-practising Shia himself, had been a liberal constitutionalist committed to keeping India united before he began to champion a separate state for Muslims in a predominantly Sunni environment. Once he took up the cause of separate Muslim nationhood, he increasingly employed religious criteria for justifying that. By the early 1940s, he had realized that Pakistan could be brought into being only if the ulama were mobilized to win broad sympathy of the Muslim masses. Accordingly, the Muslim League allied itself to the largest group among religious leaders, that of mainstream Sunnis belonging to the Brelawi school who controlled thousands of mosques and Sufi shrines. From around 1944 onwards, Islamic slogans and emotional appeals in favor of Pakistan became the standard practice of the Muslim League election campaign. Such a strategy paid rich dividends when elections were held in 1946. The Shia minority was wary of a Muslim state coming into being that might be based upon Sunni principles. Similarly, the Ahmadiyya sect, considered heretics by both Sunni and Shia ulama, was also reluctant to support the demand for a separate Muslim state because of fear of persecution. To all such doubters, Jinnah assured that Pakistan will not be a sectarian state. Consequently, besides various sections of the Sunni majority, the Shia minority and the Ahmadiyya also supported the Pakistan demand. Moreover, when Pakistan came into being, Hindus and Christian minorities were also residing in its territories. Given the diverse sectarian and religious composition of Pakistan, Jinnah was probably proposing in his 11 August 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly that Muslim nationalism, which had served as the basis for claiming separate statehood, should be supplanted by an inclusive concept of Pakistani nationalism. If one reads the text carefully, there can be no doubt that he was advocating the privatization of religion. Current definitions of secularism emphasize the following: the state must guarantee individual and corporate freedom of religion, deal with the individual as a citizen irrespective of his or her religion, and it must not constitutionally privilege a particular religion nor seek to either promote or interfere with religion (Ahmed 1987, p. 36).
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It should be quite clear that the versions of the state that existed among the Muslims during the pre-colonial period were by no means secular and democratic in the modern sense, though pluralism of a communal type did exist in that period. Therefore, Jinnah could not possibly have been alluding to some ideal from the past; rather, he tried to portray his vision of the state in secular terms but without mentioning secularism. This was clever politics but left many of his followers confused and bewildered. It can be wondered, however, how much his personal status and authority as the supreme leader of Pakistan, popularly acclaimed as the Quaid-e-Azam (“Great World Leader”), could suffice to alter the fact that the whole idea of a separate state was based on Muslim exclusiveness as a nation, and this fact could not be discounted once the state had come into being on such a basis. Examined in the background of the idea of and struggle for Pakistan, it is not surprising that the vision he portrayed for the state he had founded was bound to be highly controversial. It is to be admitted, however, that he did not use the word “secularism” in his speech. That fact itself has served as the basis of the apologist rhetoric that Jinnah was not speaking in favor of a secular democracy but an ideal Muslim/Islamic polity! After his death on 11 September 1948, the succeeding governments suppressed it. It was deleted from the government compilation of Jinnah’s speeches. In any event, Pakistani left-wing liberals and Marxists continue to invoke that speech in defence of a secular-democratic Pakistan, while right-wing conservatives and Islamists consider it a statement in favor of an ideal Islamic state which they believe practised religious tolerance during the precolonial era. In particular, the former Chief Justice of Pakistan, Muhammad Munir, argued in his book, From Jinnah to Zia (1980), that Jinnah wanted a secular Pakistan and that Islam did not forbid the establishment of a secular-democratic state. He showed that most of the ideas of the Islamists were outdated and outmoded and invariably resulted in an oppressive political order in which the state practised discrimination and persecution of dissenters and minorities in a routine manner.
The Moderate Viewpoint In any case, Jinnah’s successors, mostly professionals and bureaucrats, decided to experiment with “Islamic democracy” rather than a secular type of democracy. They were aware of the fact that Islam had been used profusely
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to popularize the demand for a separate state and therefore the Islamic identity had to be incorporated into their version of the state. However, since they were modernists who believed that Islam was a rational religion, they believed that Pakistan could legitimately incorporate many of the modern ideas of democracy, human rights and freedom. The moderate vision sought a synthesis between Islamic political values and English constitutional theory. Thus, for example, the Objectives Resolution presented in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly by Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan on 7 March 1949 proclaimed that sovereignty over the entire universe belonged to God, but that He had delegated His powers to the elected representatives of the people of Pakistan! Furthermore, the minorities were assured that they would enjoy civil liberties in consonance with Islamic values. Khan went on to say that a non-Muslim could be the prime minister in such a state (Constituent Assembly Debates 1949, pp. 1–2). Secular critics described it as a hoax as it was more decorative than substantive and was an example of rhetorical flourish rather than sound reasoning; further, that it was a significant deviation from the model Jinnah had enunciated. Meanwhile, the ulama were cautiously optimistic that sovereignty residing in God meant that the supremacy of the Shariah had been established (Binder 1961; Constituent Assembly Debates 1949). The first constitution of Pakistan, adopted in 1956, declared Pakistan an Islamic republic. The head of state was to be a Muslim. Further, it contained a commitment to bring all laws into conformity with Islam (Binder 1961). It could not be put into operation because the civilian government was overthrown in a military coup in October 1958. Nevertheless, the commitment to bring all laws into conformity with the Quran and Sunna was celebrated by the ulama as a firm and irreversible commitment to gradually convert Pakistan into a state consonant with their idea of an all-embracing Shariah. The second Pakistani constitution adopted in 1962 by the military strongman, General Mohammad Ayub Khan, initially declared Pakistan simply as a republic, but immediately protests from the ulama and other conservatives resulted in the first amendment which restored the epithet “Islamic,” and Pakistan was again called the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. In any case, the second constitution reiterated the commitment to bring all laws into conformity with Islam. More importantly, the Muslim Family
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Ordinance introduced by Ayub Khan reformed the traditional Shariah laws on marriage, divorce and inheritance. Most significantly, practising polygamy was made difficult (Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961). The third constitution of 1973 went even further in ascribing an Islamic character to Pakistan. This time it was adopted by a newly elected National Assembly dominated ironically by the Pakistan People’s Party, which was led by the Islamic socialist, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Thus, unlike the first two constitutions that only required the president of the republic to be a Muslim, the third required the prime minister to be a Muslim too. It further obliged both of them to take an oath testifying their belief in the finality of Prophet Muhammad’s mission (Gankovsky and Moskalenko 1978). Such a concession was a significant gain for the Islamists because it effectively excluded a potential candidate from the Ahmadiyya sect from qualifying as the Ahmadis did not conform to the finality of Muhammad’s prophethood. It was converted into a constitutional and legal provision when, in 1974, the National Assembly declared the Ahmadiyya sect non-Muslim (Ahmed 1999, pp. 227–228). Later, Bhutto was to concede to the demand of the ulama for a ban on horseracing and gambling and on alcoholic drinks. All the three constitutions upheld democracy, universal adult franchise and a bill of fundamental rights deriving from English constitutional theory. No specific laws were introduced about the rights of women, but they enjoyed the right to vote and to contest public office. Nevertheless, the incremental steps taken to somehow make Pakistan an Islamic democracy inadvertently weakened the moderates and strengthened the fundamental standpoint of the ulama that the Shariah was ipso facto the supreme law of a state established by Muslims. Thus, the formula that sovereignty belonged to God while the elected representatives had been given delegated powers meant that they could not make laws that contradicted the Shariah as understood by the ulama. Not surprisingly, the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance resulted in protracted agitation by the Islamists. Also, it put into doubt the scope of religious freedom that the three constitutions had prescribed. For example, it was not clear if a Muslim was entitled to change his faith. According to the dogmatic Islamic law, leaving Islam meant committing apostasy for which the classic Shariah prescribed the death penalty. The moderate idea of an Islamic democracy therefore proved to be in constitutional and legal terms
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“neither fish nor fowl” and failed to establish hegemony over state and society, notwithstanding the fact that modernist Muslims were in power during 1947–1977.
The Islamist View of the State The thought group that benefited most from the failure of the modern elite to establish a credible Islamic democracy was Islamism, also known as Islamic fundamentalism, militant radical Islam, political Islam and so on. They subscribed to the dogma that all Muslims should submit to the supremacy of the Islamic law, the Shariah, because it was based on divine revelation and therefore represented God’s will. The Islamists sought the revival of the ideal Islamic state established by the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. After Pakistan came into being, the Islamists became very active in propagating that constitution and law-making should conform to the Shariah in a substantive sense, and not just as piecemeal and ad hoc changes and commitments. The man who spearheaded that movement was the controversial Syed Abul Ala Maududi (1903–1979). He had opposed both the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress on the grounds that both stood for a secular state. However, once Pakistan came into being, Maududi began to clamor that since the Muslim League had won Pakistan in the name of Islam, it was potentially an Islamic state. As the ideologue and supreme leader of the main Islamist party, the Jama’at-e-Islami, Maududi prepared in 1951 a 22-point program which proposed that the constitution of Pakistan should be based on dogmatic Islamic law, i.e., the Shariah. Although the principle of elections was accepted and the 22 points ostensibly were accommodative of civil liberties, there could be no doubt that Maududi aimed at getting the Shariah recognized as the supreme source for regulating the constitutional, legal, political and other sectors of life (Maududi 1980, pp. 332–336). He declared such a state to be a “theo-democracy” and also developed the novel idea of “unoccupied areas.” By that he meant that God had not spoken on all matters affecting human beings. Therefore, in such unoccupied areas, new laws could be made by the elected representatives of the people provided they were consistent with the overall teachings and philosophy of the Shariah (Maududi 1980, p. 51). Thus, the elected representatives of
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the people could not make laws that conferred equal rights on women and non-Muslims. With regard to women, he observed: As regards the election of women to the legislative assemblies, it is absolutely against the spirit and precepts of Islam, and there is nothing more than blind imitation of the West. According to Islam, active politics and administration are not the field of activity for womenfolk. It [sic] falls under the men’s sphere of responsibilities (ibid., p. 262).
With regard to non-Muslims, Maududi candidly states that a nonMuslim cannot be permitted to be the head of state or a member of the advisory council, but he can be allowed to participate in the legislative assembly as long as it does not adversely affect the Islamic basis of the state. Therefore, it was important that separate electorates be introduced in which non-Muslims should only vote for non-Muslims. Nationhood is to be derived exclusively from a religious basis, he asserted (ibid., pp. 296–305). His overall writings on Islam, state, society and politics indicated a clear preference for totalitarianism. For example, he wrote: A state of this sort cannot evidently restrict the scope of its activities. Its approach is universal and all-embracing. Its scope of activities is coextensive with the whole of human life. It seeks to mould every aspect of life and activity in consonance with its moral norms and programme of social reform. In such a state, no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect, the Islamic State bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist States (ibid., p. 146).
In external matters, Maududi wanted the classical Islamic ideas of Darul-Islam (abode of peace where Islamic law applies) and Dar-ul-Harb (enemy territory) to be observed by the state. It meant that the Islamic state could establish peace with its neighbors through treaties, but in the ultimate sense no real peace could be consolidated between the world of Islam and non-Muslims, and Dar-ul-Islam was bound to prevail universally at some future point in time (Maududi 1981). As the supreme leader of the Jama’at-e-Islami, Maududi spearheaded the Islamist movement in Pakistan. His party and other Islamist parties representing different Sunni sub-sects embarked upon a concerted campaign for the so-called Islamization of Pakistan.
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Anti-Ahmadiyya Riots The first major outburst of Islamism in the political arena took place when the clerics started a campaign in 1953 to have the Ahmadiyya sect declared non-Muslim. The controversy stemmed from claims of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), born at Qadian in the Punjab, to be a prophet. Such a claim was irreconcilable with the belief of Sunnis and Shias that Muhammad was the last of the prophets. In addition, Mirza made statements that declared jihad (holy war) against the British obsolete. In any case, Jinnah had included the Ahmadiyya among Muslims and sought their support for Pakistan. He even made a leading Ahmadi, Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, Pakistan’s first foreign minister. It was widely believed that Ahmadi officers in the army and the civil service were using their influence to spread their beliefs in Pakistan. After Jinnah’s early death, there was no other charismatic leader who could ward off the Islamists’ offensive that since the Ahmadis had abandoned true Islam by denying the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad, they could not hold key positions in the state (Report of the Court of Inquiry 1954, pp. 200–214). In 1953, the Sunni and Shia ulama launched a campaign to have the Ahmadis declared as non-Muslims and thus removed from key posts in the state because, according to their ideology, only genuine Muslims could hold strategic positions in an Islamic state. Many Ahmadis were killed and looting of their property was widespread. The central government of that time imposed martial law and the agitation was crushed (Ahmed 1999, pp. 233–235). The Court of Inquiry headed by two judges of the Lahore High Court, Justice Muhammad Munir and Justice Rustum Kayani, which examined the responsibility for the riots, found that not only the clerics but also leading figures of the Muslim League provincial government in Punjab were involved in those riots. They further made the startling observation: Keeping in view the several definitions by the ulama, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulama, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim [scholar], but kafirs [infidels] according to the definition of everyone else (Report of the Court of Inquiry 1954, p. 214).
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General Zia-ul-Haq and Patronage of Islamism In any event, the Islamists had to wait until 1977 to find a proper patronage of their ideology. On 5 July 1977, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq captured power by overthrowing the elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. With the coming into power of General Zia, an unabashed champion of fundamentalism was now in power. He succinctly declared his political mission: “I consider the establishment of an Islamic order a prerequisite for the country” (Noman 1988, p. 118). This he elaborated to mean that all sectors of life including the administration, judiciary, banking, trade, education, agriculture, industry and foreign affairs were to be regulated in accordance with Islamist criteria. In 1979, the government announced the imposition of the Hudud Ordinance, i.e., punishments laid down in the Quran and Sunna for the offences of adultery (death by stoning), fornication (100 lashes), false accusation of adultery (80 lashes), drinking alcohol (80 lashes), theft (cutting off of the right hand), and highway robbery (when the offence is only robbery, cutting off of hands and feet; for robbery with murder, death either by the sword or crucifixion). In 1983-1984, further legal restrictions were imposed on the Ahmadis who were forbidden to use Islamic nomenclature for their worship, places of worship and so on. In 1984, a new Law of Evidence was adopted which reduced the worth of the evidence of a female witness to half the worth of a male witness in a court of law (Ahmed 1999, p. 231). In 1986, a Blasphemy Law was introduced under Section 295-C of the Penal Code: Use of derogatory remarks etc. in respect of the Holy Prophet: Whether by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations, or by any imputation, innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) shall be punishable with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall be liable to fines (Ahmed 2005, p. 203).
Oppression of Women The moderate governments that came to power in Pakistan before the Zia regime had gradually expanded educational facilities for women. Consequently, women had started working in increasing measure as doctors, nurses, and teachers and in various other capacities. Among legal
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measures purporting to improve the situation of married women was the promulgation of the Muslim Family Law Ordinance of 1961. Under General Zia, however, the overall policy was directed at arresting the egalitarian processes, although the ostensible objective was to protect the honor and dignity of women. Thus, the Law of Evidence clearly suggested that women were less intelligent and rational than men. Also, proving rape under the Hudud laws became extremely difficult, since it required four pious male witnesses to testify that the felony had been committed in their presence (Jahangir and Jilani 2003). Besides such legal provisions, a campaign to impose an Islamic code of behavior and dress was also introduced. In 1980, a circular was issued to all government offices that prescribed proper Muslim dress for female employees. Wearing of a chador (loose cloth covering head) was made obligatory. A campaign to eliminate obscenity and pornography was also announced. However, it took the form of hostile propaganda against the emancipation and equal rights of women. The ulama, notorious for their opposition to female equality and emancipation, were brought onto national television to justify their misogynist opinions (Mumtaz and Shaheed 1987, pp. 77–96). As the general situation of women’s rights deteriorated, some of the educated women of the larger cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad organized demonstrations demanding a stop to the anti-women campaign. In subsequent years, the general climate has worsened for women in Pakistan. Since 1997, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has been publishing annual reports that list violent crimes committed against women by religious fanatics (State of Human Rights 1997–2007). Among them are not only cases of rape in which the victims have been punished because they could not present four male witnesses to testify in their favor, but also a marked proliferation of so-called “honor killings” of females by relatives incensed by a narrow and rigid view of their womenfolk being virtually their chattels (Jahangir and Jilani 2003).
Oppression of Non-Muslims The notion of a separate homeland for Muslims in Muslim-majority areas of British India contained inherently the likelihood of non-Muslims being treated as second-rate citizens of the Pakistani state. As already
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mentioned, symbolic discrimination against non-Muslims began to creep into the constitutional system as the moderates battled with making the constitution both Islamic and democratic. However, until 1974, the usual type of liberal civil rights was formally assured to all citizens. The most dramatic move against that enlightened spirit was the declaration of the Ahmadiyya sect as non-Muslim in 1974 by the Pakistan National Assembly. Later, the Blasphemy Law introduced by General Zia served as an excuse for brutal murders of mainly Christians accused of having spoken abusively about Muhammad. Those who escaped the daggers of the killers were tried by the lower courts which often passed the death sentence on them. However, the superior courts often converted this into lighter sentences. Many such people later had to leave Pakistan. Also, forced conversion of Hindu and Christian girls and attacks on churches and temples increased rapidly after Zia’s Islamization was imposed on Pakistan (Ahmed 2002, pp. 57–89; State of Human Rights 1997–2007).
Impetus to Sectarian Violence Although sectarian tension and clashes between Sunnis and Shias have been a regular feature of South Asian society, it was not until General Zia came to power and introduced his Islamization policies that the Shias openly began to defy the government. This problem came to the fore when the state began to collect the alms tax, zakat, from all Muslims. The Shias refused to pay zakat claiming they would not pay it to a Sunni state. These difficulties were compounded further when, in the late 1980s, powerful external actors began to cultivate their lobbies in Pakistan. Thus, Saudi Arabia and Iran were believed to be sending large sums of money, books, leaflets, audio and video cassette-tapes and other means to propagate their views in Pakistan. Such propaganda offensives were backed by the inflow of firearms and other weapons. Sunni and Shia militias began to menace and terrorize society. Consequently, assassinations of several rival Sunni and Shia ulama and regular gun battles and bomb explosions have taken place in Pakistan in recent years (Ahmed 1999, pp. 232–233).
Terrorism in the Name of Jihad The increasing radicalization of the Islamists in Pakistan received a big boost after the Soviet Union marched into Afghanistan in 1979. An undeclared
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jihad (holy war) to liberate Afghanistan from occupation rendered Pakistan the main frontline state from where a US-Saudi sponsored jihad was launched. Muslim warriors were brought to bases in northern Pakistan where they were indoctrinated into a fiercely militant jihad ideology. After the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, the Pakistani militants began to promote jihad in Indian-administered Kashmir, and in Afghanistan the Pakistan military succeeded in getting the Taliban into power. The Taliban were committed to holy war (Rashid 2000). However, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 ordered by AlQaeda in the United States resulted in Pakistan being threatened with dire consequences by the Bush Administration. The Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, decided to join the “war on terror” rather than expose Pakistan to an American military assault. It meant providing intelligence about Al-Qaeda operatives and curbing the Taliban in Pakistan. This greatly angered the Pakistani Islamists. The more extreme sections among them, including a group called the Pakistani Taliban who had links with the Afghan Taliban, embarked upon terrorism directed against Pakistan. It included bomb blasts, suicide bombings as well as assassination attempts on Musharraf and other senior generals. This terrorism reached alarming proportions in 2007 when almost every week, sometimes several times in a week, suicide bombings wreaked havoc in Pakistan. The terrorists targeted mainly government, especially military, personnel and installations, but many civilians were also killed. The very existence of Pakistan seemed to be in jeopardy. The election of a civilian government in February 2008 did not bring the terrorist attacks to an end. Pakistan has been facing scathing criticism from the United States, the European Union and indeed neighboring states such as India and Afghanistan for not doing enough to crush terrorism (Ahmed 2008).
A SECULAR CRITIQUE The “Islamic versus secular state” controversy in Pakistan needs to be considered in the context of the central problem confronting contemporary Muslims: how to come to grips with modernity and the modern world. Modernity signifies the end of religious authority as the source of objective knowledge about the world, and instead relies on reason, science and scientific procedures for understanding and analyzing
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contemporary phenomena, both material and social. The Islamists (as well as fundamentalists of other religious persuasions) find modernity and its uncertainties disturbing and disorientating and seek certainty. Therefore, in essence, the problem is ontological and epistemological; between a worldview that is based on revealed certainty and one that is subject to constant correction and adjustment to our perception of material and social reality on the basis of experience and empirical evidence. In political terms, the Islamists seek to rectify the perceived uncertainty by establishing an Islamic state, which they believe has laid down clear and unalterable rules and procedures for realizing perfect order and justice. Therefore, they advocate and campaign for a utopia, representing from their point of view a higher truth. One need not labor the point that, notwithstanding the psychological needs for such certainty, in practice such a predisposition induces a backward-looking, reactionary mindset. From the Islamist point of view, humanity reached its pinnacle of moral and legal attainments in the 7th century when the Prophet Muhammad lived; since then it has been deviating or is in decline and, therefore, all effort should be made to restore the original pure Islamic society and state. No doubt pre-modern Islamic societies did practise justice and maintained law and order, including a communal peace that allowed nonMuslims to live in the Islamic state as protected minorities. In some ways, the medieval Islamic orders and later the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires practised greater tolerance than many European states. However, the pace of reform did not proceed beyond the consensus reached in the classic period over law and societal development. Meanwhile, the rest of the world did not stand still. In the long historical process, bitter religious controversies and persecution, ideological debates, wars, genocide, ethnic cleansing and other traumatic experiences visited great suffering on Western societies while, like the Muslims, even Hindus, Buddhists and other peoples suffered colonial domination and other indignities. However, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the adoption of the United Nations Charter (1945) and especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) by the world community set forth democracy as the norm for legitimate government. It entailed respect for freedom to practise religion and also inclusive secular citizenship in which all religious communities, ethnic groups, minorities, cultural groups and
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women enjoy freedom and equal rights, including group-based rights for the weak and historically disadvantaged, and which can serve as the basis of a fair and free society. In the increasingly globalized world that has come into being, there is a much greater need and urgency for applying universal standards of justice, freedom and equality so that minorities enjoy security and equal rights. There are Muslim minorities in almost all parts of the world, and in Muslimmajority states there are non-Muslim minorities. Some are indigenous, while others are the result of migration. Rationally and morally, it makes no sense that whereas Muslims in minority contexts should enjoy the rights that under the UN conventions are the entitlements of all human beings, the same should be denied to non-Muslims settled in Muslim-majority states. There is no word that evokes so much antipathy in mainstream Pakistani political parlance as does “secularism.” It is translated as anti-religious rather than a-religious or religiously neutral, as should be its correct connotations. Historically, some secular states and ideologies have been hostile to religion. These would include the Communist dictatorships as well as the racist ideology of Nazi Germany. However, democratic secularism does not mean hostility to religion, but rather its privatization in constitutional and legal terms. One can argue that whereas a secular state need not be a democracy, a democracy must be secular in order to have a consistent, substantive, coherent and egalitarian political formula. The evidence that the so-called Islamic state engages in systematic discrimination of its citizens on the basis of religion, sect and gender is both overwhelming and incontrovertible. It has been shown amply above with a review of both the discussion and practice of the Islamic state. Given that all contemporary attempts to establish the utopian Islamic state have ended up as dystopias — Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the current situation in Pakistan — there is enough empirical evidence to indict the Islamic state as an obsolescent and reactionary model of organizing society politically. The ruling elites impose their will on the people through intimidation and force, and it would be absurd to believe that their rule enjoys the consent of the people. Of course, given the fact that the Islamists consider the creation of an Islamic state as a matter of faith, it will not be easy to persuade them by reference to actual conditions to change their minds. However, the review
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of the classic Islamic period shows that the dogmatic version of Islam and the Islamic state was challenged by free thinkers of those times. Even in the modern and contemporary periods, some intellectuals and writers have questioned the dogmatic stance on the Shariah and the Quran. Thus, for example, an Indian scholar, Chiragh Ali, wrote in 1883: The Koran does not profess to teach a social and political law … The more important civil and political institutions of the Muhammadan law, Common Law based on the Koran, are mere inferences and deductions from a single word or an isolated sentence … In short the Koran does not interfere in political questions, nor does it lay down specific rules of conduct in the Civil law. What it teaches is a revelation or certain doctrines of religion and certain rules of morality (Ahmad and Von Grunebaum 1970, pp. 49–52).
The former Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court and who was one of the two judges who held the Court of Inquiry on the anti-Ahmadiyya riots of 1953 wrote, “The Quran is a revealed book, a great book but it is not a book of history, chemistry, physics or astronomy; not even a book of law” (Munir 1980, p. 143). He went on to justify secularism by referring to a hadith of the Prophet: “I am no more than a man but when I enjoin anything respecting religion receive it, and when I order anything about the affairs of the world, then I am nothing more than a man” (ibid., pp. 145–146). Given the rise of the jihad movement in Afghanistan and later its terroristic outbursts in Pakistan, the milieu in which to revive the rationalist approach to Islam and to justify secularism has greatly worsened, but there is nothing to suggest that it can never be revived. One can expect at some stage a growing resistance from within the Muslim communities to these repressive state forms. The present study does point out some cases of protest and agitation by women but, thus far, popular upsurge against Islamism remains muted. It should be quite clear that notions of Islamic democracy and especially of “theo-democracy” are exercises in rhetoric more than anything else. An Islamic state, moderate or Islamist, cannot be a democracy. At most, it can become a tyranny of the majority by passing discriminatory laws against minorities and women. Perhaps the more crucial question is: can Muslims legitimately establish a secular state without their faith in Islam being compromised? Those who
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argue in favor of an Islamic state do not base their standpoint on solid, uncontroversial religious grounds. As already shown above, the Prophet did not bequeath any general theory or model of state, government or constitution. There is neither in the Quran nor in the hadith literature anything resembling political theory proper. There are indeed verses in the Quran that suggest that government should be by consultation; force and violence should not be used arbitrarily; and peace is to be preferred to strife. Such exhortations can easily be accepted as universal political norms and incorporated into a modern Islamic political ethic. However, some of the verses in the Quran can be interpreted to imply that certain punishments have been mandated for particular offences. Indeed, contemporary Islamism relies on such an interpretation of the Islamic message. The question is therefore: on what basis can the so-called Islamic state be made an essential premise of Islamic faith? The honest answer would be: upon an interpretation of history rather than upon a strict interpretation of the core Islamic faith. While the stamp of history cannot be ignored in ascertaining how a particular faith looks upon different social and political phenomena, it need not be elevated to the status of faith itself. Islamism is only one interpretation of the very complex religious and cultural heritage of the Muslims; other interpretations are possible. Pakistani Muslims have to choose whether they want to adhere to the outdated ideology of the Islamists, or step into the future and establish a political system that respects Islam as a source of ethical and moral inspiration, but modernize this ideology in the light of current ideas of democracy, secularism, human rights, minority rights and women’s rights, and establish non-discriminatory universal citizenship and an inclusive nation. 60 years of experimenting with Islamism has led Pakistan nowhere except down into the abyss. It is time to change course.
REFERENCES Ahmad, Aziz (1967). Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan 1857–1964. London: Oxford University Press. Ahmad, Aziz and Von Grunebaum, G. E. (eds.) (1970). Muslim Self-Statement in India and Pakistan 1957–1968. Wiesbaden. Ahmed, Ishtiaq (1987). The Concept of an Islamic State: An Analysis of the Ideological Controversy in Pakistan. London: Frances Pinter.
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Ahmed, Ishtiaq (1999). South Asia. In David Westerlund and Ingvar Svanberg (eds.), Islam Outside the Arab World. Richmond: Curzon. Ahmed, Ishtiaq (2002). Globalisation and Human Rights in Pakistan. International Journal of Punjab Studies 9, No. 1 (January-June). Ahmed, Ishtiaq (2005). The Politics of Group Rights in India and Pakistan. In Ishtiaq Ahmed (ed.), The Politics of Group Rights: The State and Multiculturalism. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: University Press of America. Ahmed, Ishtiaq (2008). Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence: A Profile, ISAS Insights No. 35. Singapore: Institute of South Asian Studies. Arnaldez, Roger (2000). Averroes: A Rationalist in Islam. Indiana, USA: University of Notre Dame Press. Binder, Leonard (1961). Religion and Politics in Pakistan. California: University of California Press. Faruki, Kemal A. (1971). The Evolution of Islamic Constitutional Theory and Practice. Karachi: National Publishing House Limited. Faruqi, Ziya-ul-Hasan (1980). The Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan. Lahore: Progressive Books. Gankovsky, Y. V. and Moskalenko, V. N. (1978). The Three Constitutions of Pakistan. Lahore: People’s Publishing House. Gilmartin, D. (1988). Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hoodbhoy, Pervez (1992). Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. London: Zed Books. Hourani, Albert (1983). Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1935. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hourani, Albert (1991). A History of the Arab Peoples. New York: Warner Books. Ikram, Sheiykh Muhammad (1965). Aab-i-Kouthar. Lahore. Iqbal, Sir Muhammad (1960). The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf. Jahangir, A. and Jilani, H. (2003). The Hudood Ordinances: A Divine Sanction? Lahore: Sange-Meel Publications. Maududi, Abul Ala (1965). Towards Understanding Islam. Lahore: Islamic Publications Ltd. Maududi, Abul Ala (1980). The Islamic Law and Constitution. Lahore: Islamic Publications Ltd. Maududi, Abul Ala (1981). Al-Jihad Fi Al-Islam. Lahore: Idara Tarjuman-ul-Quran. Mumtaz, Khawar and Shaheed, Farida (1987). Women of Pakistan: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? Lahore: Vanguard. Munir, Muhammad (1980). From Jinnah to Zia. Lahore: Vanguard. Naqvi, Mushtaq (1995). Partition: The Real Story. Delhi: Renaissance. Noman, Omar (1988). The Political Economy of Pakistan. London and New York: KPI. Qadri, Anwar Ahmad (1981). Islamic Jurisprudence in the Modern World. Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf. Rashid, Ahmed (2000). Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah (1976). Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf. Tibi, Basam (1997). Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State. London and Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd.
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GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Debates, Vol. 5 (1949). Karachi: Government Printing Press. The Muslim Family Laws Ordinance (1961). Karachi: Government Printing Press. Report of the Court of Inquiry constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953 (also known as the Munir Report) (1954). Lahore: Government Printing Press.
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Chapter
13
State and Secularism in Bangladesh
HABIBUL HAQUE KHONDKER
With a Muslim population of 130 million, Bangladesh is the third largest Muslimmajority country and has the fourth largest Muslim population in the world; yet, it has retained a fairly tolerant and secular character for most of her history. Although there have been occasional drifts towards religious extremism, the secular character has never been threatened seriously. The newly independent Bangladesh in 1971 incorporated secularism as one of the four principles on which the constitution of Bangladesh was based. When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh, and his regime were removed in a military coup in 1975 (less than four years after the country’s independence), the new military government of General Zia which took control after months of instability removed both the principles of socialism and secularism from the constitution. The military government in Bangladesh sought to introduce not only a neo-liberal economic policy, but also introduced Islam into the body politic, thus shaping the political process. The military regime brought religion to the national politics to win the support of the religious right. Bangladesh politics continues to be embroiled over the secularism/religion divide. What role does the modern state play in resolving the apparent conflict between religious and secular ideologies, especially when the state itself has been de-secularized? Does broader socio-economic progress limit or enable the state’s role as an adjudicator? This chapter will explore both the complex processes of global and local/national politics in exploring this transformation and continued tension.
INTRODUCTION Bangladesh follows Indonesia, Pakistan and India as the fourth largest Muslim population and is the third largest Muslim-majority nation in the world (see Table 1). The large Muslim population in Bangladesh historically and culturally maintained a unique identity that separates it from the Muslims in the Middle East and has some resemblance with the Muslims in Indonesia. 213
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Country Indonesia Pakistan India Bangladesh
Population
% of Population who are Muslims
Muslim Population
239.9 million 172.8 million 1,149 million 153 million
86.1% 95% 13.4% 85%
206.5 million 163.4 million 153.9 million 130 million
Sources: Population data, Population Reference Bureau estimates for mid-2008 population; Percentage of Muslim population, CIA Fact Book (except for Bangladesh).
Like them, Muslims in Bangladesh have incorporated the local cultural idioms and practices that have an indigenous cosmopolitan and secular character. The geographical area that constitutes present-day Bangladesh has been resistant to radical or puritanical Islam. In that context, it is a worrying trend to see the occasional rise of religious extremism in Bangladesh which has sometimes been referred to as “de-secularization.” The tension between secularism and religion in Bangladesh is rooted in the history of national formation in the Indian subcontinent. In 1947, when the British rulers left the Indian subcontinent they left two squabbling nations: the so-called Hindu majority but secular India, and a semi-religious Pakistan made up of two outlying Muslim-majority regions known as West Pakistan and East Pakistan with the Indian state in-between. Not only was the geography of Pakistan bizarre, so was the justification for creating a separate “homeland” for the Muslims of India. The rationale became less convincing as India remains home to over 150 million Muslims. The rationale was further hollowed when Bangladesh, which was given the name “East Pakistan,” wanted provincial autonomy tantamount to independence. A military crackdown by the Pakistani rulers led to a liberation war in 1971 which culminated in the independence of Bangladesh with active support from India. In principle, the nationalist leaders of Bangladesh sought to build a secular democratic state which would ensure an end to semi-colonial exploitation. Pakistan was created on the promise of democracy, which soon degenerated into a combination of a military-bureaucratic oligarchy and tilted towards a so-called Islamic republic. The newly independent Bangladesh in 1971 made secularism one of the four principles on which the constitution of Bangladesh was based. The other three founding principles were nationalism, socialism, and democracy. When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of
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Bangladesh, and his regime were removed in a military coup in 1975 (less than four years after the independence of the country), the new military rulers were unable to bring a semblance of political stability. After months of political uncertainty and instability, General Ziaur Rahman, the army chief, emerged as the military ruler who, in a bid to drum up support and legitimacy for his regime, wooed the religious right both internally and externally. He removed both the principles of socialism and secularism from the constitution. The military government in Bangladesh, as in Pakistan under General Zia, sought to appease Western donors by introducing neo-liberal capitalism and also introduced Islam back into the fiber of political processes. His successor, General Ershad, used the religious card to purchase legitimacy for his illegal regime too. Religion-based politics, which was supposed to be defunct with the demise of Pakistan, was brought back by the military leaders as mainstream politics. Bangladesh politics continues to be embroiled over the secularism/religion divide. What role does the state play in retaining its secular character and in adjudicating the apparent conflict between religious and secular ideologies? Do political circumstances influence the state’s capacity as an adjudicator? In addressing these questions, this chapter will explore both the complex processes of global and national political dynamics. It will explore these transformations and tensions between the secularist and the Islamist forces in Bangladesh, where almost 85% of its 153 million people are Muslims. On 29 December 2008, after many doubts and trepidations, national parliamentary elections took place in Bangladesh which swept a secularist party and its alliance, which included a couple of small left parties, to power. The Awami League-led alliance won 262 seats in a 300-strong parliament against the rightist opposition alliance which managed to win 32 seats. What surprised many pundits was the scale of the victory. The electoral victory of the secularist Awami League and its alliance also rekindled a discussion on the role of religion, especially Islam, in Bangladesh politics. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) used the religious card, alleging that if the Awami League won the election, Islam would be endangered in Bangladesh, and their slogan “save the country, save the people” was a not-too-subtle hint at that. In the past, such propaganda (that with the return of the secularist Awami League, not only Indian hegemony will be established but Islam will be threatened in Bangladesh) worked to a certain extent as seen in the support for the rightist coalitions. The Jamaat-e-Islami party, a religious right
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and a coalition partner of the BNP, managed to win only two seats in the recent election compared to 17 seats in the last parliament (2001–2006). A marked decline of popular support for the pro-Islamic parties in Bangladesh has baffled many who predicted a close competition. As voters, of which 32% were first-time voters, turned out in huge numbers, they dealt a severe blow to the right-wing coalition. Does this mean that the Islam factor in Bangladesh politics has lost its grip or is it part of a pendular swing? In order to address the complex subject of the relationship between the state and religion in Bangladesh, it may be useful to begin with an analytical distinction between the state and society, arguing that although both secular and religious undercurrents characterize Bangladesh society, the state that was born through a violent and bloody war of independence in 1971 was a secular state. Over the years, as the founding leader and the Awami League government that led the independence war came to an end following the military coup in August 1975, the secular character of the state has been gradually eroded with the increasing influence of political Islamism. The state clearly wears a religious character, at least at the symbolic level. In the existing literature on the subject of the religious turn in Bangladesh, one can identify two schools of thought: one school suggests discontinuity or rupture; and the other school tends to see an ideological continuity. The discontinuity thesis argues that the fall of the Awami League government and the establishment of military rule since 1975 sharply dismantled the secular state and ushered in a brand of Islamism at the heart of the state. Others suggest a more continuous process, arguing that Islam has remained central and they question the secularity of the Bangladesh state to begin with. In this chapter, I argue that both these theses can be integrated into a single explanation. In order to reconcile these opposing schools of thought, we need to re-conceptualize the problematique. First, we need to introduce an analytical distinction between the state and society. Following that, I would argue that while the society of Bangladesh has remained and continues to remain a deeply religious society in the sense of spiritual and intellectual religion, the state of Bangladesh was established on a secular basis. There were two sources of the secularist ideology: at one level it was a reaction to the religion-based polity of Pakistan; at another it was the crystallization of the aspirations of the people of Bangladesh. The vast majority of people who supported the establishment of Bangladesh were composed of various classes of people.
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The urban intelligentsia who were the backbone of the Awami League had an ambivalent relationship with Islam. They were liberal and secular. The Islam in practice in rural Bengal has been viewed as “syncretistic” (Roy 1983) or what in the Indonesian context Clifford Geertz (1960) called abangan Muslims. Like the abangan Muslims who are adat-oriented, Bengali Muslims are deeply embedded in local traditions which are not viewed favorably by puritan Muslim leaders. The rural Muslims of Bangladesh, who constitute the majority, incorporated local cultural practices, Sufi ideas, and philosophical undercurrents of other religions. The secular state of Bangladesh was compatible with the spiritual/religious cultural framework of the society. However, the incorporation of the symbols of Islam at the state level by certain self-seeking politicians and political Islam at the societal level by certain groups with links to external sources has not only changed the character of the state, but has also sought to undermine the spiritual character of Bangladesh society by turning it to a more religiously extremist and intolerant direction. In this effort, the influx of external ideas, especially that of Salafism, and a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam are playing a more visible role than before. Such a change of direction, however, has apparently created a backlash as revealed in the electoral outcome of 2008. However, it would be premature to declare the victory of secularism over sacralism. The electoral outcome marked a landslide victory against the religion-based political parties who sponsored high-handed corruption and nepotism. So the backlash was not a wholesale repudiation of religion-based politics. The tension between the puritanical and the secularist tendencies was illustrated in the following incident. On 15 October 2008, the Civil Aviation authority, a government body, under pressure from 200 or so madrassa students, pulled down some sculptures from the traffic roundabout in front of Dhaka’s international airport, known as Baul chattar (or squire). The madrassa students protested that those “statues” were “un-Islamic,” i.e., contrary to the values of Islam. They demanded that anything that offends the religious sentiments of the Bangladeshis, the majority of whom are Muslims, should not be displayed in public. Here, they were upholding an image of a puritan Islam. The Civil Aviation authority used the excuse of design flaw to pull down the sculptures which were built at government cost. The liberal sections of Dhaka citizenry did not accept this excuse. Students and intellectuals
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outraged at the capitulation of the authority protested, organized rallies in the Dhaka University campus and demanded the reinstatement of the sculptures that represented the Baul singers. Ironically, Baul is a genre of folk music that is an ideal representation of the spiritually inspired, religiously syncretistic, inclusive traditions of Bengali culture. One of the Islamist parties, Islami Oikya Jote (United Islamic Front), and its leader Mr. Fazlul Haq Amini, who is also the head of an organization known as “Committee for the Implementation of Islamic Laws,” threatened that if they or other Islamist parties get elected in the national elections scheduled for 18 December 2008, they would tear down all such “statues” from the public spaces of Dhaka that were built by Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government (The Daily Star, 18 October 2008). Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was elected as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh and served between 1996 and 2000. During her rule, some new sculptures were built to beautify the city of Dhaka (but not too numerous so as to be targeted for demolishment), and attempts were made to revive and strengthen the secular, nationalist traditions which had been swamped by the Islamicists under various military and semi-military governments since 1975. One of the memorials that was built during her tenure was Shikha Onirban (eternal flame), which commemorates the sacrifice of the soldiers during the liberation war in 1971. Mr. Amini, in a press conference, singled out Shikha Onirban as “fire worship” and demanded its removal. The liberal section of the citizenry and the Dhaka intelligentsia saw such threats as attacks on Bengali culture and traditions. Some speakers in a public rally at Dhaka University’s Aparajeyo Bangla, a sculpture that memorializes the sacrifice of the freedom fighters in the liberation struggle, feared that this could be just the beginning of a systematic onslaught against symbols of secular Bengali traditions that informed Bengali nationalism. The October 2008 incident was but a more dramatic confrontation between the secular, liberal segments of Dhaka citizenry and their religious opponents. Contestation over the public spaces of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, illustrates the contemporary debates over secularism, Islamism, pluralism and democracy. These political and ideological debates inscribe the discourse of nation-building in Bangladesh in which the role of the intelligentsia is pivotal. Dhaka, as the provincial capital city of East Pakistan, was the fountainhead of the nationalist movement. Dhaka was historically
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the mediator of globalization and cosmopolitan values since it was the site of modern education, various reformist movements and assorted cultural drafts from outside since the colonial days; a recent entrant has been Islamism. As a center of political power, the public space of Dhaka is fiercely contested (Khondker 2009). Bangladesh presents an interesting model of a secular state for Muslimmajority countries in other parts of the world. Bangladesh’s founding constitution included secularism as one of the four state principles of the country. However, with the changing political situation at home and the changed ideological situation in the world where Islam became resurgent, the secular basis has become somewhat tenuous.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SECULARISM The term “secularism” was coined by George Jacob Holyoake (1817–1906) in the mid-19th century. The 16th century was the century of religious reformation in Europe, the 17th century was the age of reason, and the 18th century was the century of rational enlightenment. Secularism emerged as an heir to the Enlightenment in the 19th century and was represented in the writings of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud. However, even before the advent of the term “secularism” formally in Europe or the United States, in the Christian world, the Protestant Reformation had laid the foundations for both modernity and secularism. The idea of the individual taking responsibility for his or her own actions and the acceptance of the world seriously were important factors in the later development of secularism. Some writers such as Peter Berger suggest that secularism is a product of Christian tradition. Secularism in the West took at least two distinct forms: the AngloAmerican style of secularism and the French-continental model. In French, the term “secularism” is used in the phrase Laicisme. In Anglo-American secularism, the founding principle was the separation of the church from the state. Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar; and to Jesus what belongs to him. This separation was to protect the autonomy of the state, which wanted a free hand in governance unencumbered by religious injunctions. But that did not mean that religion was marginalized. In fact, many Christian values were undergirding the seemingly secular laws. Another way
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of the separation can be read as the autonomy of the religious sphere from the intrusion and interventions of the state. Religion too sought a space of its own. Secularism, in the broad sense, was not denial of religion or the death of God; rather, it was a truce that gave each domain its boundary markers. In the French model, however, Laicite is not just separation of the church from the state; it is a system where the state is in control of the religious domain. In reality, it meant the marginalization of religion. In the Anglo-American model, religion was firmly embedded in the social sphere and remained present in state functions only symbolically. In the French tradition, not only was the symbolic presence of religion in state affairs banished, its social presence was also questioned. In 1882, religious instruction in state schools was abolished. The French brand of secularism or Laicite “found its clearest expression in the 1905 law on the separation of church and state. At the time, the enemy was the Catholic Church (‘clericalism, that’s the enemy!’), and Islam has now taken the place of Catholicism” (Roy 2007, p. 2). Veiled women — Catholic nuns — were chased from public places in 1905 (Roy 2007, p. 13). Today, the caste has changed and public schools chase the veiled Muslim girls and women. Without overstating the case, it can be said that the secularism practiced by the newly independent Bangladesh state was more of an American rather than French version of secularism. More appropriately, Bangladesh drew its secularist idea from the deep roots of its own indigenous secular tradition. Amartya Sen (2006) argues that Ashoka’s code of tolerant public discussion that forbade disparagement of other sects and extolment of one’s own, and the Moghal Emperor Akbar’s sponsorship for dialogues between adherents of different faiths, predated by centuries the rise of Western secularism.
BACKGROUND OF THE SECULAR/RELIGIOUS DIVIDE: PAKISTAN PERIOD The independence of Bangladesh was significant in the context of the larger debate over the viability of a religion-based state in the 20th century. The demise of Pakistan less than 25 years after its independence made a simple point that religion as a basis of national unity was tenuous at best, and the idea of a religion-based state was incongruous in the latter part of the 20th century. In order to understand the dynamics of the religion/secularism
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debate, we need to recollect, albeit briefly, the history of Pakistan — a state ostensibly created as a homeland, an abode, for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. What is Bangladesh today was part of the province of Bengal during the pre-colonial (Moghal and British) period. Over the past 100 years, Bengal has experienced three partitions. These partitions should not be viewed as three episodes in the history of Bengal; rather, they may be seen as moments connected by a common theme of Bengali identity influenced by the interplay of religion, linguistic identity, class and politics of necessity. Bengal was first divided in 1905 by the British colonial rulers, apparently to placate the Bengali Muslims who were ostensibly lagging behind their Hindu compatriots in various indices of socio-economic development. It was assumed that under a protective geographical space they would do better; thus Dhaka was made the capital of East Bengal. The arrangement surely pleased many Muslims but angered the economically powerful and educated Hindus who saw in it a devious “divide-and-rule” motive. In the face of massive resistance, the partition was annulled in 1911. Then in 1947, the eastern part of Bengal, based on the numerical majority of the Muslims, became the eastern wing of Pakistan. The outgoing British rulers acceded to the demands of the section of the Pakistani leaders headed by Mr. Jinnah, who argued on the basis of what he called the “two-nations theory” that the Hindus and the Muslims were two separate nations, separated by religion, culture, traditions, food habits, etc., and they deserved two separate nations out of India. In this formula, Muslim-majority regions of the undivided India would be marked off as far as possible to form Pakistan, a homeland for the Muslims. The argument for creating Pakistan was advanced on the basis that the laggard Muslim community needed space for development. Once Pakistan became independent, perhaps to the pleasure of the majority of the Muslims, especially the poor working class and the aspiring middle classes, the founding leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah claimed that “Pakistan has come to stay.” There were, however, Muslims in India and Bengal in particular who were never persuaded by the arguments of Mr. Jinnah; some of them achieved some success in their careers and as individuals even in the face of so-called adversity from the Hindus. It may be added parenthetically now that some of the narratives of the socalled Hindu opposition to the Muslim’s socio-economic progress were
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perhaps overdrawn. Those sections of Muslims who were not convinced that Pakistan would bring great prosperity and change the fates of the poor and deprived Muslims, chose to remain in India or kept a low profile under Pakistan. As the euphoria and celebratory mood settled down, the hard facts of poverty and misery sank in. Mr. Jinnah himself was the most unlikely leader of a religion-based, if not a theocratic, state. According to reliable biographies, Mr. Jinnah was a very Westernized leader with a passion for Western dress, and a liberal attitude towards food and drink. Shortly before the independence of Pakistan on 14 August 1947, Jinnah in his Presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11 August issued a call for unity and accommodation and, in fact, envisaged a secular Pakistan. He stated: If you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his color, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make. I cannot emphasize it too much; we should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and Muslim community … will vanish. You are free: you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state. … We are starting with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State (quoted in Ahmed 1994, p. 81).
Had Jinnah championed such a progressive line of thought earlier, he could have saved the trouble of creating an artificial state of Pakistan with colossal human tragedy in its trails. He was probably stating his personal liberal vision rather than that of the Muslim League leadership who wanted a state that would nominally reflect the values and ideals of Islam. The Muslim League was able to mobilize the majority of the Muslims to rally behind the cause of
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Pakistan. Other secularized parties were unable to mobilize popular support despite their links with the grassroots: Before India’s partition in 1947, Bangladesh’s politics was divided roughly between two parties. The first was the small but influential Muslim League, founded in 1906 (in Dhaka) and comprised of old families that wanted to integrate Islam into political life … The second was a much larger secular movement led by Fazlul Huq, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, and Abul Hashem, who represented widely popular sentiments. The movement was influenced by European labor and communist movements and was spread in Bangladesh by young graduates of English colleges in Calcutta and Dhaka (Novak 1993, p. 90).
The urbanized and educated classes steeped in secular values were not able to stand up against the tide of religion-based politicians which created bipolarity between the Hindus and the Muslims. The Muslims in Bengal were mobilized not so much as soldiers for Islam, but as Muslims whose future would improve in a nation of their own. The cultivated anti-Hindu sentiment played a central role which was inadvertently helped by the rise of the Hindu right. The secular visions of Gandhi, Nehru and other secularists in Bengal failed to gain ground. The difference between the dominant Pakistani ideology and the incipient Bengali outlook was evident in the differential reactions to the news of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, who was gunned down by a Hindu fanatic on 30 January 1948. Mr. Jinnah, the undisputed leader of Pakistan, reacted by saying: “India lost a great Hindu.” The Bengali leader Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy’s reaction was: “Weep India weep, if you have the tears in your eyes, shed them now” (quoted in Kamal 2001, p. 44). The reaction of Mr. Tajuddin Ahmed, the first Prime Minister of Bangladesh and the main organizer of the liberation war in 1971, was found in his diaries. He wrote in his diary: “The Sun disappeared from the horizon and the beacon of humanity went down … but can you destroy the light, the light that shines from the North Star which will continue to guide us..?” (Ahmed 1999, p. 153). The reactions to the death of Gandhi was one small but significant example of the divide between the two regions that made up Pakistan: … By the early 1950s a secular party, the Awami League, rose phoenixlike from ashes, due to the dynamism of two leaders, Suhrawardy and Sheik Mujibur Rahman. This party absorbed the older secular parties founded by Fazlul Huq before the formation of Pakistan (Novak 1993, p. 90).
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SECULARISM IN BANGLADESH In 1971, Bengali Muslims and Hindus and others fought for the creation of a secular Bangladesh, a sovereign state. The western part of Bengal remained a province of the state of India. Bangladesh fought a liberation war to free herself from the domination of Pakistan, which turned out to be a military dictatorship with an Islamic leaning. In principle, the nationalist leaders of Bangladesh sought to create a democratic and secular state which would ensure an end to external domination. The newly independent nation in 1971 embraced secularism which was one of the four principles on which the constitution of Bangladesh was based. The four principles were: nationalism, socialism, democracy and secularism. The secularism of Bangladesh was often attacked by the leftist intellectuals as not being secular enough. They termed the Bangladeshi version of secularism as “poly-religious” as state radio and television would give equal time to all the major religions. In fact, Bangladesh adopted a more tolerant version of secularism based on the idea of freedom of religion. It never wanted to ban religious symbolism. In fact, in the most famous speech of Sheikh Mujib on 7 March 1971 which energized the whole nation to fight for the independence, he used the phrase “God willing (Insha-Allah), we will free Bangladesh.” Following the independence of Bangladesh, the major Islamic parties were banned as they had collaborated with the Pakistani authority in the fight against the majority of the people who wanted independence. Some of the leaders of these religious parties were active members in the anti-liberation activities and were suspected of committing war crimes. One author who highlights the banning of Islamic political parties in Bangladesh as an explanation for the backlash against the Awami League neglects to mention that these parties were banned for their role as collaborators with a marauding army (Ahmed 2008). When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh, and his regime were removed in a military coup in 1975 (less than four years after the independence of Bangladesh), the new military government of General Zia removed both the principles of socialism and secularism. The Proclamation (Amendment) Order 1977 declared on 23 April 1977: 1. In the beginning of the Constitution, above the Preamble, the following shall be inserted, namely:BISMILLAH-AR-RAHMAN-AR-RAHIM (In the name of Allah, the Beneficient, the Merciful).
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The second paragraph of the Preamble of the Constitution read: Pledging that the high ideals of absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah, nationalism, democracy and socialism meaning economic and social justice, which inspired our heroic people to dedicated [sic] themselves to, and our brave martyrs to sacrifice their lives in, the war for national independence, shall be the fundamental principles of the Constitution (The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, Appendix XVII, The Proclamation (Amendment) Order 1977, pp. 156–157).
The military government in Bangladesh, as in Pakistan under General Zia, brought not only neo-liberal capitalism back but also religion. The military leaders relied on religion as a ploy to earn popular support and much-needed legitimacy. Yet, the new regime could not completely reconfigure the secular aspects of Bangladeshi culture. In 1998, Lt. Gen. Ershad amended the constitution by adding the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution which proclaimed that “the state religion of the Republic is Islam.” According to one writer, “At the symbolic level these actions certainly offended Bangladesh’s large Hindu and Buddhist minorities, who were made to feel like second-class citizens” (Wilkinson 2000, p. 222). What is important to note is that these actions were only symbolic. Government officials have not persecuted minorities, and unelected Muslim clerics do not have any constitutional role in vetting laws passed by the government (Wilkinson 2000, p. 222). There is no official compulsion for implementing Shariahcompatible laws. Following the removal of the Mujib government, the military rulers found it expedient to use Islam as a mobilizing force. The new regimes sought to mobilize forces who were against the Awami League. They gradually allowed the religion-based parties to contest in the elections. The removal of the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami and other right-wing parties who had collaborated with the Pakistan regime during the war of independence strengthened the anti-secular forces. Neither Zia nor Ershad was personally very religious and their symbolic use of Islam earned them popularity with religious constituencies within the country, but also helped them improve relations with Saudi Arabia and the petrol-economies in the Gulf. After the removal of military-backed governments through mass movements, even the elected government of Khaleda Zia, the widow of Zia, benefitted from the support of the religious constituencies both at home and from abroad.
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Khaleda Zia, the chairperson of BNP (founded by her husband, General Ziaur Rahman), was elected into office in 1991 and again in 2001. On both occasions, she ruled with the support of the Jamaat-e-Islami and other proreligious parties. It was quite baffling as to why the radical Islamic groups would blast bombs — as they did in August 2005 — during her tenure. One interpretation is that although some of the radical groups were being used by the government to intimidate and terrorize the main opponents of the government, namely the Awami League and its left-leaning supporters, the government did not have full control over their covert activities. Others, however, maintain a conspiracy theory of close nexus between the BNP government and the right-wing, Islamic radical groups. Bangladesh politics has become highly polarized between the two major parties: the Awami League and its allies, mainly left-leaning small parties on the one hand; and the BNP and its right-wing, religion-based political parties on the other. The main religion party, Jamaat, is ostensibly a democratic party and seeks to pursue electoral politics. However, as there is a wide range of pro-Islamic parties who vary in their degree of radicalism, some of the splinter-radical groups probably wanted to go on their own and enjoy a higher degree of autonomy for their activities. After the events of 11 January 2007 when a military-backed interim government took over administration to officiate neutral elections, many of the radical groups lost their support base from the BNP government whom the interim government replaced. The major Islamic party, Jamaat, was not much affected by the arrests of the leaders and activists of the two major political parties. With the exception of a few leaders who had held cabinet positions in the BNP administration, the party as a whole remained unscathed. While the interim government was tolerant of religious parties like Jamaat-e-Islami, the government was not soft on the religious extremists and the death sentence was carried out against six Islamist militants who were involved in killing two judges in 2005. The members of the extremist group, known as Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen or JMB, sought to replace the secular penal code with the Shariah (The New York Times, 31 March 2007). Although Jamaat-e-Islami distanced itself from such extremism, it was still under scrutiny for its alleged role in the liberation war in 1971 as collaborators with the Pakistani occupation forces. In early November 2008,
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the Sector Commanders’ Association demanded the trial of the collaborators with the Pakistani occupation forces in Bangladesh, and they published a list of the top collaborators who they pleaded with the Election Commission for a ban from competing in the elections of 18 December. Earlier at the national convention on 21 March 2008, the Sector Commanders demanded the trials of the collaborators in public meetings and named names, many of whom were the top leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami Party. In response, the Secretary-General of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Mr. Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, termed the remarks derogatory: The speeches delivered by leaders of Sector Commanders’ Forum and the tirades launched against Jamaat-e-Islami leaders are nothing new to the party. For a long time, such a speech has often been delivered either by a section of reformist Awami League leaders or by a section of leftist leaders like Hasanul Haque Inu and Rashed Khan Menon. The sector commanders’ national convention on 21 March has unmasked their real faces. With their demand, banning Jamaat-e-Islami along with other pro-Islamist parties, the sector commanders have unveiled their plan and cleared their position. It has become evident that their main goal is to ban the parties working with Islamic ideals, particularly Jamaat as it is the biggest Islamic party. It is because if they succeed to weaken the most popular one (Jamaat), their mission will be very easy. It has also become clear that they have floated an organization after 37 years of independence of the country, aiming at implementing some agenda of some vested quarters.
In the parlance of Bangladesh politics, this often means the Awami League or alleged Indian interests. The Jamaat leader also said: We have been observing for a couple of years that some “activists” of a certain political party under the banner of Sector Commanders’ Forum have been conspiring to distablise [sic] the political situation of the country by giving objectionable and instigating speeches. We condemn and protest at their ill-bred remarks. Historically it is true that the architect of our independence and former president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with family was killed when Sector Commanders’ Forum leaders Major General (Retd.) Shafiullah and Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) AK Khandakar were chief of army staff and air force chief respectively, and subsequently they expressed their allegiance to President Khandakar Mushtaq only to justify Mujib’s killing and also to corroborate their links with the killing. But to save their skin, they become turncoats and got nomination from Awami League to contest in election earlier and remain still involved with AL politics. Another leader of the Sector
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HABIBUL HAQUE KHONDKER Commanders’ Forum and also former chief of army staff Major General (Retd.) M Harun-or-Rashid took part in a procession organized by Awami Leaguers, flouting the existing laws of the land. Their another leader, as the president of a communal organization, Major General CR Dutt (ousted from army), very often launches tirades against JIB by making offensive and instigating speeches that threaten to distablise [sic] the country. Another leader of the forum, AK Khandakar, who was a minister of former dictator HM Ershad, did not file any objections or raise questions when he was in the cabinet. Using the banner of Sector Commanders’ Forum they are launching attacks, thanks to information terrorism and yellow journalism. Their speeches and statements are instigating, indecent and above all they are made out of jealousy. Jamaate-Islami Bangladesh is a legal and constitutional political party which firmly believes and responsibly practises democracy in every tier of its organization. Those who are hatching plots, issuing statements against the party and stigmatizing its democratic image are out to destroy democracy and the constitutional process of the country. Had their intention been good, they would not have created chaos about a matter settled long before by both the architect of independence and founder, President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the proclaimer of independence, President Ziaur Rahman. The valiant freedom fighters are respected by all. Following the independence of the country, many of them have floated their organization or forum. As the freedom fighters work for every political party, so Jamaat has also several thousand activists who really actively participated in the War of Independence. A real freedom fighter cannot split and divide the nation. So what the sector commanders are conspiring to do goes completely against the ethics of the patriotic freedom fighters, and regrettably, their statements go in favor of those who beat several people to death in broad daylight on 28 October in 2006.
I quote the Jamaat leader at length to highlight the cunningness of the party’s new postures. In the statement quoted above, they seemingly recognize the role of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and yet malign the commanders of the liberation war for their alleged support for the Awami League. In the last sentence he refers to a tragic incident when an angry mob — allegedly supporters of the Awami League — beat an opponent to death in a clash on 28 October 2006, which received much media attention. That incident was also a prelude to the declaration of emergency on 11 January 2007. The Jamaat leader put the blame predictably on India and affirmed that nothing will stop them from pursuing the religion-based movement: I want to articulate saying that the war criminal issue is a brainchild of Indian intellectuals — Bhaskar Roy, Sandwip Dixit and Hiranmay
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Karlekar. They not only wrote on the issue but also delivered speeches at some gatherings in the country, aiming at proving that Bangladesh is a failed and dysfunctional state. Shahriar Kabir, a leader of Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, is now visiting different countries of the world with a mission to try the war. Thus it makes very clear that Jamaat is made a target only because it is an Islamic movement. So we want to inform you that we promote the Islamic movement in response to the demand of our faith or Imam. It is our constitutional right to practise Islam and no threat or intimidation can stop us from exercising the religious tenets (http://www.jamaat-e-islami.org/index.php?option=com_statement& task=detail&info_id=17 [accessed on 8 November 2008]).
The Indian intellectuals named above are mostly journalists of high standing. One of them, Hiranmay Karlekar, wrote a book titled Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan? The book created a lot of controversy in Bangladesh. It had its share of speculations but was not devoid of facts. The title of the book drew a lot of criticism from all sections in Bangladesh as it unwittingly suggested a possible takeover by the Al-Qaeda — the possibility of which remains very far-fetched. However, Karlekar recognizes that the vast majority of Bangladeshis remain moderate in their approach to religion and that the militants are a tiny minority in this country of approximately 141 million people. What was worrisome was the presence of over 50,000 Islamic extremists belonging to more than 40 militant groups. In recent years, a multitude of radical Islamic organizations have sprung up, funded by Islamic charities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The synchronized bombings of 63 of the 64 districts in Bangladesh on 17 August 2005 clearly demonstrated their power and organizational strength: “In an unprecedented scale of terror attacks, a banned Islamist militant group yesterday simultaneously blasted at least 459 time bombs in 63 of 64 districts across the country. … Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, the banned militant group, claimed responsibility for the blasts through leaflets that left the countrymen in shock” (The Daily Star, 18 August 2005). The terrorists meticulously exploded the bombs between 11:00 am and 11:30 am, targeting government establishments, mainly the offices of the local district administrations and courts. In the leaflets (in Bangla and Arabic) found with the bomb devices, Jama’atul, which had been banned on 23 February 2005, said: “It is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh. There is no future with man-made law.” The suspected bombers distributed leaflets during serial bombings across the country under the letterhead of
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the outlawed Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) with a demand to establish Islamic rule, failing of which they would launch a counteroffensive against the government. The leaflets claimed: “We are the soldiers of Allah. We’ve taken up arms for the implementation of Allah’s law the way Prophet, Sahabis and heroic Mujahideen have done for centuries.” Although not many people in Bangladesh were worried about an impending Taliban rule, the rising trends in the growth of Islamist parties and the mushrooming of madrassas in the face of the declining public education system led to some genuine concerns about the de-secularization of Bangladesh society. In 1999, there were 64,000 madrassas in the country, of which only 7,122 were run with government assistance. The rest, known as Qwami madrassas, were funded by local and external sources and their curricula are often not vetted. The Daily Star, a popular English daily, found over 30 religious militant organizations with networks across the country since 1989 with the central objective of establishing an Islamic state. Many of them received training to conduct jihad. These militant organizations were: Harkatul Jihad, Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), Islami Biplobi Parishad, Shahadat Al Hiqma, Hizbut Towhid, Hizb-utTahrir, Ahle Hadith Andolon, Towhidi Janata, Bishwa Islami Front, Juma’atul Sadat, Al Jomiatul Islamia, Iqra Islami Jote, Allahr Dal, Al Khidmat Bahini, Al Mujhid, Jama’ati Yahia Al Turag, Jihadi Party, Al Harkat al Islamia, Al Mahfuz Al Islami, Jama’atul Faladia, Shahadat-e-Nabuwat, Joish-e-Mostafa, Tahfize Haramaine Parishad, Hizbul Mojahedeen, Duranta Kafela and Muslim Guerrilla. Many of their activists were Afghan and Palestinian war veterans who fought there after receiving training in Pakistan, Libya and Palestine. After returning to Bangladesh, these militants scattered throughout the country and started militant activities since the early 1990s. According to intelligence agencies, about 7,000 members from different organizations including the Freedom Party were trained in Libya in the early 1980s and 1990s. Sources said over 200 Bangladeshi Jihadis were killed and 500 wounded in battles in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine. When they returned from foreign frontiers, a number of them set up madrassas as a cover, mainly toeing the Qwami line, which is the more orthodox system of Islamic education and needs no government registration.
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They chose the forests of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, mosques and the Qwami madrassas mainly in the north to train their activists. Although the government did not admit the existence of any extremist organizations, it banned Shahadat Al Hiqma on 9 February 2003, and JMJB and JMB on 23 February 2005. A press note issued on 23 February said: “These groups are engaged in murders, robberies and bombings … by capitalizing on religious sentiments.” But Prime Minister Khaleda Zia on 1 July 2003 had previously told parliament that no Al-Qaeda men existed in Bangladesh. “There are no fundamentalists or zealots in the country,” she told ulamas (Islamic scholars) on 6 September 2003. On the contrary, however, ruling coalition partner Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ) Chairman Fazlul Haq Amini on 8 March 1999 told a public meeting: “We are for Osama [bin Laden], we are for the Taliban and we will be in government in 2000 through an Islamic revolution.” “An Islamic revolution will take place by Qwami madrassas,” Amini said at an Islamic conference in Comilla on 1 March 2005 (Ahsan 2005). The theme of the rules or laws of Allah often recurs in the demands of the pro-Islamic parties in Bangladesh. In 2008, the Jamaat-e-Islami, a party that does not propose an armed struggle, challenged the interim government’s support for passing legislation towards gender equality in terms of inheritance of property under the rubric of “National Women Development Policy 2008.” Jamaat termed this proposal as “a de facto violation of rules and regulations given by Allah and His messenger.” The Ameer of Jamaat, Maulana Motiur Rahman Nizami, reminded the government that “it is not the government’s duty to enact laws that go against Al-Quran. Rather, the government’s duty is to ensure women’s rights that the Quran had granted them. No one has the right to alter the divine laws given by Allah” (http:// www.jamaat-e-islami.org/index.php?option=com_statement&task=detail& info_id=22). The Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh does not see itself only as a political party. It views itself as a social movement in the broadest sense of the term. It “upholds Islam in its entirety. It aims at bringing about changes in all phases and spheres of human activities on the basis of the guidance revealed by Allah and exemplified by His Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Thus the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh is at the same time a
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religious, political, social and cultural movement …” (http://www.jamaate-islami.org/index.php?option=com_about&task=introduction). Bangladesh has a large number of Islam-based political parties. While some of them are parties that favor the adoption of Islamic principles and injunctions to be the guiding principles in the society and the Islamic laws to inform the polity, others want a radical transformation of society. After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the members of IOJ — one of the constituents of the ruling coalition led by the BNP — took to the streets chanting, “We will be the Taliban, and Bangladesh will be Afghanistan” (Griswold 2005). The Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh is the largest, oldest and the most organized, well-funded party in Bangladesh: The Jamaat is now the largest and most active Islam-based political party in Bangladesh. It has strong institutional networks and support throughout the country. With a considerable number of followers among the students, intelligentsia, civil servants, military and other strata of the society, Jamaat has already emerged as a force to be reckoned with in national politics. It has also attracted a sizeable portion of the votes cast in all recent national and local elections. The Islami Chatra Shibir, the student wing of the Jamaat, has gained ground steadily both among the students of traditional madrassas and modern institutions (Hossain and Siddiquee 2004, p. 385).
The above claims were perhaps somewhat short-sighted. The Jamaat won only two parliamentary seats in the 2008 parliamentary elections and its poor showing was instrumental in the failure of the BNP-led fourparty coalition to win the election. It did not fare very well in the 1996 parliamentary elections either, managing to win only three parliamentary seats, and most of its candidates lost their deposits. In 2001, however, Jamaat had a better showing, winning 17 out of the 31 seats they were allotted by the coalition, with marginal losses in some of the other 14 constituencies they contested. In 2001, Jamaat’s alliance with the BNP had proved so successful that the ruling coalition was able to gain an absolute majority in the parliament from 2001 to 2006. Such an overwhelming control of the legislature gave the coalition led by Khaleda Zia a free hand at patronage politics and the resultant rampant corruption. In recent years, Mullahs in rural Bangladesh have issued various objections against sculptures or other arts which they redefined as “statues,” and invoked the scriptures against idolatry as found in a certain reading
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of the religious texts. In the waz-mahfil (a makeshift lecture event by the Mullahs), various “religious” issues are routinely discussed and sermons are given over loudspeakers denouncing all kinds of so-called “un-Islamic” practices ranging from wearing high-heels and carrying fashionable bags by women to keeping dolls or sculptures at home. The contents of these lectures vary from covering social issues to political issues. In the past, the social issues were the staple of these harangues, while in recent decades, political issues seem to receive wider attention. The vast majority of the Muslims in rural Bangladesh are not always swayed by such “teachings,” as displayed in their voting behavior. The 29 December 2008 elections marked a decline in the share of votes that the religion-based political parties received. One ought to be cautious so as not to overestimate the impact of Jamaat-inspired religious teachings in rural Bangladesh. Elora Shahabuddin suggests that “poor, rural women and Jamaat have different notions of what connotes ‘Islamic’ or ‘religious’ leadership. Village women are impressed that Sheikh Hasina has performed hajj twice and covers her hair … ” (Shahabuddin 1999, p. 164). The village women had no problem with seeing a woman as the leader of the country — in fact, they preferred a woman to a man as leader (Shahabuddin 1999, p. 165). The growing popularity of Islam among the diasporic Bangladeshis in the West (Kibria 2008a) is not linked to the radicalization of Islam and the onslaught against secularism in Bangladesh. The rise of Islamic radicalism in Bangladesh has to be situated in the context of the rise of political Islam informed by puritanical or the Salafi form of Islam, a strain that wants a return to Islam’s puritanical roots as practiced during the first three generations of the religion. Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the resultant conflicts, there has been a gradual growth of Salafists around the globe. Bangladesh, with her closer ties with Pakistan since the post-1975 political changes, has also been affected. The Salafist ideology has been exported from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world where oil revenues play a contributing role. Saudi Arabia and other charities linked to the Gulf are often among the major donors to the growing religion-based Bangladeshi NGOs and private madrassa education. Many of the Bangladeshi migrant workers who go to the Gulf for work return home with a zeal for Islamization (Kibria 2008b), but it is not clear how much of that zeal lends support to extremism. Yet, it poses a challenge to the secular values of Bangladesh. Islam in Bangladesh — which has traditionally been
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spiritual, tolerant and syncretistic in nature as idealized in the folk songs of Lalan Shah — is now faced with challenges from the radical strains of Islam often grown in the context of globalization that produces shifting identities and a condition of generalized hopelessness and alienation.
REFERENCES Ahmed, Mumtaz (2008). Islam, State, and Society in Bangladesh. In Esposito, John L., Voll, John O. and Bakar, Osman (eds.), Asian Islam in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 49–79. Ahmed, Salahuddin (1994). Bengali Nationalism and the Emergence of Bangladesh. Dhaka: International Centre for Bengal Studies. Ahmed, Tajuddin (1999). Tajuddin Ahmeder Diary (in Bengali). Dhaka: Proti Bhash. Ahsan, Zayadul (21 August 2005). Inside the Militant Groups–1: Trained in Foreign Lands, They Spread Inlands. The Daily Star, Dhaka. Geertz, Clifford (1960). The Religion of Java. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. Griswold, Eliza (23 January 2005). The Next Islamist Revolution. New York Times. Hossain, Ishtiaq and N.A. Siddiquee (2004). Islam in Bangladesh Politics: The Role of Ghulam Azam of Jamaat-i-Islami. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5(3). Kamal, Ahmed (2001). Kaler Kollol (in Bengali). Dhaka: Mouli Prakashani. Karlekar, Hiranmay (2005). Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan? New Delhi: Sage. Khondker, Habibul Haque (2009). Dhaka and the Contestation over Public Space. City, 13(1). Kibria, Nazli (2008a). The ‘New Islam’ and Bangladeshi Youth in Britain and the US. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(2), 243–266. Kibria, Nazli (2008b). Muslim Encounters in the Global Economy. Ethnicities, 8(4), 518–535. Novak, James (1993). Bangladesh: Reflections on the Water. Dhaka: University Press Limited. Riaz, Ali (2003). God Willing: The Politics and Ideology of Islamism in Bangladesh. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and Middle East, 23(1/2), 301–320. Roy, Asim (1983). The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Roy, Oliver (2007). Secularism Confronts Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. Sen, Amartya (2006). The Argumentative Indian. London: Penguin Books. Shahabuddin, Elora (1999). Beware of the Bed of Fire: Gender, Democracy, and the Jama’ati-Islami in Bangladesh. Journal of Women’s History, 10(4), 148–171. The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh (1986). Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh: Ministry of Law and Justice. The Daily Star (18 August 2005). 459 Blasts in 63 Districts in 30 Minutes. The New York Times (31 March 2007). Bangladesh Hangs 6 Islamist Militants in the Killings of 2 Judges. Wilkinson, Steven I. (2000). Democratic Consolidation and Failure: Lessons from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Democratization, 7(3).
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The State, Egyptian Intellectuals, Intolerance and Religious Discourse MONA ABAZA∗
It has been often argued that Islamization from the top was a tactic initiated by the late President Anwar al-Sadat to counteract the opposing secular and leftist forces. Islamization in Egypt started from the top. Islamization proceeded alongside the liberalizing of the economy, a major component of Sadat’s shifting allegiance away from the Soviet Union and a socialist economy, to the United States. Sadat, the champion of a liberal laissez-faire economy, introduced the Islamic shariah law into the constitution. Islamists were given much more freedom under Sadat. Religious television programs multiplied, and the construction of mosques was allowed as a tax exemption. Later, secularism came under strong attack because most of the corrupt Arab regimes fought their Islamic opponents under a secularist banner. This claim of “secularism” to oppose the “dark” Islamists is just a semblance, however, since doses of religiosity have been injected into all cultural and political spheres in recent years. Religion has been incorporated in the modern Arab state with most Muslim countries adopting shariah law within their legal systems.
The return of the “religious” as a central theme in the discourse on modernity seems to go together with the trend of the disenchantment with the values of enlightenment, rationalization and progress. Evidently this is not a novel trend. Its roots can be traced to the German Romantic movement with its emphasis on nature and the neglected powers of instinctive forces. For 20th century philosophical thought, the writings of the Frankfurt school, in particular the work of Adorno/Horkheimer in the ∗ The views developed here could be read as a continuation of some ideas I developed earlier in “Rethinking Debates on Islamization in Egypt” (1999), in Discourses in Contemporary Egypt, Enid Hill (ed.), Cairo Papers, The American University in Cairo, 22(4), 85–118. I would like to thank the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) for awarding me a wonderful fellowship during 2006–2007 to work on the topic of the debates on enlightenment in the Arab world.
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now classic Dialectic of Enlightenment, is considered a landmark in its modern critique of the Enlightenment. The Culture Industry, which epitomized the height of mass production, was understood as a form of banalization and homogenization of culture that was ultimately heading towards undemocratic rule. The Frankfurt school insisted that the emphasis on rationalization, empiricism and classification — all being essential premises of the Enlightenment age — has eventually led to the disaster of “instrumental reason” which hardly ever questioned the Holocaust. The discontent with civilization for being entrapped within the “iron cage” of rationalization has become the main concern of 20th century thinkers from Freud to Max Weber and Norbert Elias, and then to Michel Foucault. Foucault insisted upon the reverse side of the Enlightenment, which went with the enforcement of discipline, control and punishment as part and parcel of power construction. Foucault’s main concern was that no civilization is erected without the suppression of its inherent madness, without the invention of confinement of the chaotic, uncontrolled, unwanted “Other.” It is perhaps the Foucaultian upshot, understood by many as one of the harshest critiques of post-modern meta-narratives (even though Foucault refused to be called a post-modern), having equally influenced a whole school of post-colonial studies, which triggered a fierce debate about the deadlock of Euro-centricity in the European Enlightenment. Certainly, equally important was Edward Said’s Orientalism, which traced the long history of ethnocentrism in the making of the academic spheres in inventing an imagined Orient. The interest in the return of the religious seems to have gained prominence amongst social scientists in recent years.1 Perhaps the most pertinent critique of Western secularism as having had its roots in religion is Talal Asad’s work, which challenged the idea of the linear simplistic progression from the religious to the secular.2 Asad’s merit was to reveal the intricacies and myths about a homogeneous evolution in Europe in the separation of religion from secular institutions in government.3 This prelude was to explain that in spite — if not because of — the long heritage of the European Enlightenment, the ambiguity and intricacy of 1 I am thinking of the recent works of Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, Nilufer Göle, and Sabah Mahmud. 2 Talal Asad (2005). Formations of the Secular. Stanford University Press, pp. 1–2. 3 Ibid.
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modernity and religion still remain unresolved in the Western “democratic” world. A closer look at most of the Muslim countries today will tell us that they have always maintained an equally ambiguous relationship with their management of religion within the confinements of the modern nation-states. Modernization for a significant section of contemporary Arab intellectuals was synonymous with renaissance (nahda) and enlightenment (tanwir). It saw the light with the movement of tanzimat in the Ottoman period. Without the reforms of the tanzimat, there would not have been a movement. At least, this is what a section of secular intellectuals like the Syrian philosopher Sadeq Jalal al-Azam have argued. This means that a material transformation had already occurred as an overture before the intellectual movement took place. The tanzimat movement started around 1830 through a decree. These universal reforms appealed to reason. As Aziz al-Azmeh argued, this was the trigger for modernity, with the notion of citizenship replacing religious affiliations.4 Most of the Arab countries then experienced a process of modernization with the colonial encounter. Parliaments, the press, secular and educational institutions erected by missionaries, foreign schools, modern national universities, modern armies, dormitories, disciplinary conventions and training borrowed from Western countries were introduced from the second half of the 19th century. Students were sent to Europe, and accounts about the manners and customs of the Westerners were popularized. Consumer culture and European lifestyles in housing, ornamenting salons and in dressing were spread. The Haussmanian, grid- or boulevard-inspired rational and modern city was erected in contradistinction to the traditional labyrinth of the Islamic city. Translations and commentaries of the European Enlightenment thinkers had an impact in opening up visionary perspectives of ruling and governing. Novels were written and theater became popular. All these were the crucial elements of burgeoning nationalism. However, with the advent of the nationalist post-colonial regimes, and the wave of Islamization of both the regimes through fighting the religious opposition, religion has been incorporated in the modern Arab state with most Muslim countries adopting shariah law within their legal systems. This is part of what Sami Zubaida calls 4 Aziz al-Azmeh (2003). Laicité et Culturalisme dans le Monde Arabe. In Réformer l’islam, une introduction
aux débats contemporains, éditions de la découverte, Abdou Filali-Ansary (ed.). Paris, pp. 149–150.
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the “etatization” of religion and law, where religion is submitted to political authority rather than separated from it.5 Equally in recent years, secularism has come under strong attack because most of the corrupt Arab regimes fought their Islamic opponents under the secularist banner.6 The claim of “secularism” to oppose the “dark” Islamists is just a pretence. Doses of religiosity have been injected into all cultural and political spheres for almost four decades. Islamization in Egypt started from the top. In the 1970s, the late President Sadat encouraged Islamists onto university campuses and distributed free Islamic attire to counteract communists and secular trends. Islamization proceeded alongside the liberalizing of the economy, a major component of Sadat’s shifting allegiance away from the Soviet Union and a socialist economy, to the United States. Furthermore, Sadat encouraged the banned Muslim Brothers organization to return to Egypt and allowed them to publish journals. Sadat, the champion of a liberal laissez-faire economy, introduced the Islamic shariah law into the constitution.7 Islamists were given much more freedom under Sadat, who called himself the “president believer” (al-ra’is al-mu’min). Religious television programs multiplied and the construction of mosques was allowed as a tax exemption. Under Mubarak, the politics of becoming more royalist than the king continued. State violence was perpetrated not only against Islamists but also against poor citizens. Quotidian violence against the poor was one strategy to remind people that opposition would be ruthlessly crushed, as it was during the bread riots in 1977, or the mutiny by security forces conscripts in 1986. Repression still goes on, as demonstrated in the December 2006 response to strikes by 20,000 textile workers in Mahalla. Terrorist attacks against government officials and clashes between the police and Islamic jihadists significantly multiplied in the 1980s. This violence reached a peak in the early 1990s with the murder of the sardonic secular intellectual, Farag Foda, 5 Sami Zubaida (2003). Law and Order in the Islamic World. I.B. Tauris, p. 159. 6 Egypt scores as one of the most corrupt regimes in the MENA region, according to the corruption
perception index. In 2002, 48 high-ranking officials were convicted of corruption. See Gamal Essam ElDin, “Catching up with High Profile Corruption,” in al-Ahram Weekly, 4–10 March 2004. According to the report of the administrative control authority, in the last five years there have been 80,000 cases of corruption in Egypt (see http//www.ikwanweb.com/home, 8 March 2007). 7 During Sadat’s rule, there were two amendments to the constitution (1971 and 1980). The first included the following sentence: “Islam is the religion of the state, Arabic is the official language; and the principles (mabadi’) of shariah are a principal source of legislation.” See Sami Zubaida (2003), p. 166.
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and a terrible record of human rights violations.8 Egyptian law, we are told by Sami Zubaida, does not make apostasy an offence, neither does it specify what it is. However, there were repeated attempts to charge the philosophy professor Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd in the years 1992–1996, claiming that his writings provided sufficient evidence for such a charge.9 Yet this happened in parallel with an official government endeavor to promote a campaign of enlightenment (tanwir) via the Ministry of Culture. This schizophrenic behavior, Islamizing state apparatuses on the one hand and claiming a “secular” façade on the other, was designed to maintain international credibility and attract foreign aid. The state managed to coopt the secular and former leftist intellectuals into media apparatuses and Ministries of Culture, a process that has been brilliantly described by Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd.10 These intellectuals used Enlightenment discourse as an instrument against both those representing the religious institution of alAzhar, which was implementing state Islamization, and the Islamists. This led to an unconditional elitist support of the government characterized by statements like: “… The hell of military despotic regimes is more merciful than the heaven of the preachers.”11 Islamization became obvious in the spread of Islamic attire, the imposition of sex segregation on university campuses, and increasing displays of ritual and religiosity in public spaces. Equally, the Islamists taxed the government endeavor to spread official Enlightenment propaganda.12 They attacked moves by Egypt’s First Lady to empower women, the Ministry of Culture’s project to reprint works by Arab pioneers of the Enlightenment, the fostering of the arts by the Minister of Culture, and the creation of a television “channel of enlightenment.” Even more aggressively, the Islamists have defined secular intellectuals as “secular Westernizers” and as traitors. In the Islamists’ jargon, secularism
8 According to the Muslim Brothers organization, some 20,000 Muslim Brothers were arrested in around
the past 15 years. 9 Sami Zubaida (2003). Law and Order in the Islamic World. I.B. Tauris. 10 Abu Zayd uses the Arabic word tagnid, meaning to mobilize or recruit intellectuals to the service of the state. 11 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, “Wizarat al-thaqafa: i‘laan fashal al-tanwir al-bragmaati, hal hunaka tariq aakhar? al-tathweeir la al-tanwir” (“The Ministry of Culture, Declaring the Failure of Pragmatic Enlightenment, Is There another Path?”), in Akhbar al-Adab, 18 February 2001. 12 Gaber Asfur (2000). didd al-ta’ assub (Against Fanaticism). Cairo: mahragaan al-quira’ lil gamii‘ maktabat al-usra, p. 303.
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connotes atheism or unbelief and thus the license to takfir.13 The secular camp believes that the license to incite the killing of unbelieving opponents is inherently embedded within the state discourse. Various protagonists have appropriated the term. The confrontation between the government and the Islamists, which is undertaken through co-opting of a significant section of the secularists, seems to take a fascinating dimension; one and the same identical language, historical figures and symbols are today dissected and torn apart by each camp. Precisely at the moment when the government is trying to sell to the Western “democratic” and free world an image of a civilized “enlightened” government, combating its “dark” opponents, it has itself reinvented Middle Ages practices such as publicly sexually harassing protesting female demonstrators and the stripping off of their clothes by thugs paid by the regime in May 2005. These unprecedented events in Egypt’s history have instigated a series of public sexual harassments by young Egyptian males following the example of the regime, as well as further research by human rights organizations on the shameful and despicable state of the arts of sexual harassment and how police forces are just as appalling in their sexist attitude by equally practicing sexual harassment.14 Government Enlightenment has combined with the regime’s mounting of barbaric practices in its attempts at harshly disciplining the unruly. The situation reached its peak in 2008 with escalating political tensions, including handcuffing in hospitals the seriously wounded workers of Mahalla al Kubra who demonstrated during April 2008.
TRADING WITH TANWIR I would like to depict here four different positions to portray how the term “trading” has been used, abused and recycled by several opposing factions of intellectuals. The first intellectual is Galal Amin who has written two books in Arabic on the subject, al-tanwir al-za’ef (False Enlightenment)15 and dedd al-taqaddum (Against Progress). The second intellectual, Nasr Abu Zayd, published a series of articles on the topic, which he compiled later into a book. These two intellectuals might be opposing each other politically on 13 Gaber Asfur (2000), p. 303. 14 See the inspiring article by Mona Eltahawy (2008). Shame and Sexual Harassment in Egypt. Distributed
by Agence Global. 15 Galal Amin (1999). al-tanwir al-za’ef (False Enlightenment). Cairo: dar al-ma’aref.
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the issues of religion and secularism. However, both seem to direct a bitter critique regarding the current use and abuse of the concept of tanwir amongst both the Egyptian intellectuals and state officials. Refa‘at al-Sa‘id and Jaber ‘Asfur represent the secular authoritarian “Government Enlightenment.” Texts need to be read in context. This is why these four intellectuals can only be read as complementing each other. Against Progress is written in a simple, easygoing style, which explains its overwhelming success, being translated in many reprints, in addition to the English translation by AUC Press. Apparently, it has recently found a wide reception in Egypt with the growing Islamization of the public sphere. The negative stand towards the idea of progress could be understood as a simplistic justification for the critique of a nebulous entity seen as the West. Indeed, Amin here seems to want to convey to the Arab reader that he is the first intellectual who critiqued progress, and through undertaking this he appeals to the growing nationalist sentiments, and even more so, to populism which has been generated by the long history of defeat with the colonial encounter epitomized in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Amin’s success in the Egyptian intellectual field says a lot about the significance of erasure of history and forgetfulness, or rather about the conscious suppression of the Western critical philosophical tradition as part and parcel of a conscious misreading of the “Other” West. Galal Amin is an Egyptian economist, a veteran adherent of the dependencia school, who won in recent years the state prize for his book, Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Amin has shifted in recent years to adopt an increasingly nationalist tone. His position, interestingly enough, converges with numerous standpoints defended by the Islamists. In fact, one could read him as a strong apologist for the Islamists and their witch-hunting of novelists and intellectuals. Amin’s starting point, which is certainly not novel, is that the values of the Enlightenment are not universally applicable. Amin begins the opening chapter in False Enlightenment with the title “Tanwir, or the feeling of Shame” by recalling that when he was a PhD student of economics in London, he and his colleagues from various Third World countries agreed on one point: that there existed two worlds, a developed and an underdeveloped world. The main point was that all stages of development were converging on one path; thus, some nations had taken a more advanced path, while other nations were lagging behind. There
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was nothing more noble than to attempt to bridge this gap between “Us” and “Them” by trying to climb progressively up the stages. Amin tells us that like many of the students of the time, he believed naively in Rostow’s stages of development, which naturally implied that the Third World was then experiencing a lower stage of development. Through imitating the American model, it was believed that it was possible to reach the same standards of living. It was indeed, according to him, naive thinking. Another problem, Amin argues, was that “We,” meaning all those newly coming to Europe, had a strong feeling of shame because “We” came from an underdeveloped world. Amin wants to convey that he did not have this feeling of shame as an individual, because he considered himself to be amongst the elite of his own society. Had he not originated from the elite, he would still have been granted the PhD and therefore he would have still ended up amongst the elite. Indeed, Amin felt that he was amongst the lucky few, but he still felt ashamed vis-à-vis the “Other,” the foreigner, for reasons that need explanation elsewhere.16 As time went by, Amin discovered that development was not at all an issue of stages. The West can easily fall back to a former stage, or to tradition. History is no longer seen as stages like a ladder, but rather like multiple, intertwining paths.17 Amin then develops his main thesis. He argues that those who claim to be enlightened are as authoritarian as the non-enlightened. If enlightenment meant the triumph of reason over the magical and the mythical worldview, it did not necessarily mean that reason took over. If the enlightened argue that their values are about respect for the opinion of others, tolerance and universal values, the prevalence of reason and science, this might not be constantly true because these values were never realized in an absolute manner.18 Most defenders of tanwir, who are fighting for freedom of thought, freedom of expression and tolerance for others, have ignored the content of what some “free thinkers” and some writers have written in their claim that the freedom of expression is absolute.19 Amin insists that there is no absolute freedom; everything, including thinking structures, entails a boundary. 16 Galal Amin (1999), p. 7. 17 Ibid., p. 9. 18 Ibid., p. 24. 19 Ibid., p. 28.
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Voltaire, one of the dominant Enlightenment thinkers, was willing to give up the attack on freedom and intolerance when it did not match with his main argument.20 It is erroneous to believe that transcendental and religious beliefs would in the main lead to intolerance, violence or disasters. It is also wrong to believe that religious beliefs would lead in general to the destruction of science or to a deviation from the logical structures of scientific thinking.21 Put differently, the rejection of religious thinking and worldview is neither a necessary condition for eradicating intolerance and violent acts, nor is it the symbol of the triumph of science or objectivism. One could be a religious scientist and be equally tolerant of others and reject violence. One could also be a kafir,22 and maintain a hostile attitude towards science, and be very harsh in dealing with those who have different opinions.23 All these requirements for the freedom of thought and the freedom of expression were always qualified. They are very similar to the notion of freedom in ancient Greece which excluded the slaves.24 Secularist intolerance can be as anti-scientific and destructive, much like religious fanaticism was against science. This applies similarly to the fanatic communists of the Soviet Union and the Fascists as well as the American media in their attack on all those who are trying to threaten the American way of life.25 Amin further argues that in Egyptian cultural life, there is a glorification of works that are considered innovative, even if they are superficial. Amin elaborates on this idea by insisting that these works are celebrated because they insult and debase religion. Under the excuse of freedom of expression, the enlightened or tanwiri intellectuals can say what they please.26 Much like the tanwir, intellectuals (muthaqaful-tanwir) are exercising a form of oppression. Clearly, here Amin is arguing that one should not allow total freedom of expression, similar to the idea that there are limits to tolerance. One can read Amin’s statements as an invitation to legitimizing 20 Ibid., p. 29. 21 Ibid., p. 25. 22 Amin uses this term to mean disbelief, and possibly to include atheists. 23 Ibid., p. 35. 24 Ibid., p. 29. 25 Ibid., p. 37. 26 Ibid., p. 39.
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the recent government endeavors, aided by the al-Azhar religious institution, of censoring the literary works and witch-hunting writers and artistic productions with the excuse that these works are offending public morality. Amin then challenges the idea that humanity is continually progressing or improving and that it will reach the highest stage of perfection.27 For Amin,28 it would seem that the traders of enlightenment (tanwir) in contemporary Egypt are in reality the staunch defenders of the “New World Order” and the “Free World,” which is nothing but American imperialism. He refers to the Cold War period when the US, threatened by communism, used religion to counteract nationalist movements. These movements were regarded as communist and thus as faithless atheism. Amin reminds the Arab reader that the shaping and defending of the “Free World” went hand-in-hand with the anti-communist, witch-hunting politics of McCarthyism and the growing role of the CIA in instigating coup d’etat in several nationalist Third World countries. He then focuses on the class of Egyptian intellectuals who were, according to him, the “lackeys” of the Americans after World War II. He points to some journalists in the Akhbar al-Youm newspaper who were known for their pro-American views and the publication of al-Mukhtar magazine as propagating an American worldview. However, politics changed drastically with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of communism. The friendly relationship between the US and Israel was strengthened further. Since fighting communism was no longer the issue, Fukuyama replaced it with the celebrated notion of the End of History. In Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, Islam replaced communism as the next Manichean-Other-enemy. It is thus clear that Islamic terrorism has become the future demon to be extinguished. Amin tells us that similar to the defenders of the pro-American “Free World” of the earlier period, the staunch attackers of Islam as a religion of terror seem to be playing the same pro-American card. Amin seems to blame (the secular) intellectuals for using a similar tactic through attacking the Islamic camp, though with divergent aims. If religion was meant to be protected from communism 27 Ibid., p. 40. 28 In the following passages I will summarize Galal Amin’s ideas in the chapter entitled “The truth about
(tanwir) under the light of the new world order” in al-tanwir al-za’ef (False Enlightenment) (1999). But the book was also published as Galal Amin (2005). al-tanwir al-za’if, second edition. Cairo: dar al-‘ain lil-nashr.
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during the Cold War, today the argument runs as follows: it is for defending the freedom of opinion from religion. If in earlier times any defender of social justice was regarded as kafir (non-believer), the charges today are just the opposite: to pass hasty judgments on others as kafirs. In other words, if in the past the charge was that faith was not strong enough, today too much faith is perceived as a danger. Amin’s conclusion is thus that those who are today raising the banner of tanwir, are the “traders” and defenders of American values, and by deduction they are thus defending Israel as a lackey of imperialism. Earlier, Amin dedicates long passages to the role of Israel as a key actor in what he regards as a triumphant Israeli era. Although disagreeing with many of the premises Amin advances, I agree with his idea that there is an overwhelmingly powerful Zionist project and the opposition to it is often regarded as terrorism and Islamic fanaticism.29 One can only agree with Amin’s criticism of the imperialist PaxAmericana expansion, and that Islam has replaced the communist threat and was made enemy number one in the Western world. However, it is his affinity with the Islamists in attacking secular intellectuals that is disturbing. Is Amin here not reproducing the familiar fear by reducing everything to a Zionist and Orientalist conspiracy which Sadeq Galal al-‘Azm vehemently criticized with great irony? In a paper criticizing Hassan Hanafi’s naive Occidentalism, Adonis’s re-inventing of the spiritual Orient versus a materialist-technical-reason-oriented West as a form of “Orientalism in reverse,” as well as Jean Braudrillard’s sheer simplistic Orientalism, al-‘Azm brilliantly showed the contemporary effectiveness of the conspiracy theories in our part of the world. Conspiracy theory is one way to interpret the unconditional support of Americans for Israel and yet the Arabs have to face the dilemma of remaining faithful allies because of oil interests. The Arabs needed an explanation for the hegemonic policies of the US. For years, the blame was directed against Jewish-Zionist organizations and the conspiracies. For al-‘Azm, it seems that the Iranians have excelled amongst the Arabs in championing conspiracy theories. Collateral to conspiracy are the secret “agents” who are a vital element in the conspiracy theory.30 Al-‘Azm maintains that Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses was perceived as a work of a secret agent of resurgent Shi’ism and that there was a secret 29 Galal Amin (1999), p. 56. 30 Sadik J. Al-‘Azm (2006). Orientalism and Conspiracy. Unpublished paper.
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agreement between Khomeini and Rushdie, since the fatwa of the death sentence led indirectly to the glorification of Khomeini.31 I am afraid that Amin’s analysis implies that all secular intellectuals and novelists as well as all those who consider themselves as belonging to the liberal camp are, in the end, effectively the “agents of Western conspiracies.” Amin’s new book32 is much celebrated amongst official circles. The disturbing thing about Amin’s critique of the Enlightenment is his rejection of the long-standing Western philosophical and sociological tradition of critiquing the very premises of Enlightenment. Much has been written about the unresolved relationship between the secular and the sacred in Europe. Talal Asad’s recent work mainly looks at the complexity of secularism in the West to argue as follows: “The question of secularism has emerged as an object of academic argument and of practical dispute. If anything is agreed upon, it is that a straightforward narrative of progress from the religious to the secular is no longer acceptable. But does it follow that secularism is not universally valid?”33 Here again it would seem that Amin has never really looked into any of these vigorous contemporary debates. He has ignored the crucial critique of the Enlightenment of the Frankfurt school and their views of modern barbarism as exemplified in the Holocaust; the writings of Michel Foucault about civilization and power, which entail a sharp critique of the limits of reason; the critical writings of the German sociologist Norbert Elias on the process of civilization and barbarism; Stuart Hall’s Formations of Modernity, which devotes a whole chapter to the history of the critique of the idea of progress; and not to forget the brilliant critiques by the Indian subaltern studies group against both colonial domination and the association of progress and reason with modernity. Amin’s analysis portrays a simplistic understanding of the Enlightenment as a monolithic movement, and refers to Voltaire and Condorcet as if they are contemporaries and as if no critical works have been produced amongst Western academics about them. His reference to Western sources leaves a lot to be desired. Take, for instance, Jonathan Israel’s brilliant study on “Radical Enlightenment” where he argues that there were strong differences between the moderate mainstream Enlightenment of Locke, Newton and Voltaire, and the radical 31 Ibid., p. 47. 32 The Illusion of Progress in the Arab World: A Critique of Western Misconstructions (published by AUC Press
in 2006). 33 Talal Asad (2005). Formations of the Secular. Stanford University Press, p. 1.
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Enlightenment which included Bayle, Fontenelles, Boulainvilliers, Tyssot de Patot, Lahontan and others.34 Radical Enlightenment was epitomized in the writings of Spinoza and in Spinozism. The merit of Israel’s work is that it stresses the intricate and complex relationship between the history of ideas and material conditions, and equally the multi-faceted and complex streams of intellectualism which teaches us that the Enlightenment in Europe has never been homogenous. Equally, it seems that Amin has never heard of post-modern deconstruction. Likewise, no mention is made of the serious works of the subaltern studies group in India and the challenge of Western modernity. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference35 is a skillful example of the deconstruction of a mythological Europe from a postcolonial perspective. It finely discusses the paradoxes of “authoritative enlightenment” imposed by the colonial encounter. Chakrabarty takes a subtle stand by arguing that “Nativism” cannot replace, or be a solution to, Eurocentrism. Although he points out the limits of Western Enlightenment, he remains a universalist by insisting on the significance of social critique to understand various non-Western societies, like India. Chakrabarty’s writings are easily applicable to the Egyptian case. In fact, compared to another prominent subaltern studies group, like Partha Chatterjee’s theorization on nationalism, Amin’s writings are simplistic, indeed chauvinistic,36 and no doubt fall into the trap of a Manichean dichotomy of a monolithic West versus an entity seen as the Third World. But the timing of its publication seems to be crucial in serving a populist purpose.
THE SLANDER OF TAHA HUSSEIN Taha Hussein, the dean of Arabic culture of the “liberal age”37 and one of the most important literati of modern Egypt, maintained that education is a necessity like water and air and therefore should be free for all. In recent 34 Jonathan I. Israel (2006). Enlightenment Contested, Philosophy, Modernity and The Emancipation of Man
1670–1752. Oxford University Press, p. 43. 35 Published by Princeton University Press in 2001. 36 Concerning Amin’s chauvinism, see the book review of Galal Amin’s False Enlightenment by Nur
Elmessiri, “Better than More,” in al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No. 433, 10–16 June 1999. 37 I borrow this term from Albert Hourani (1983). Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939.
Cambridge University Press.
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years, the late Taha Hussein has been subjected to harsh attacks from the Islamists. He was accused of being a lackey of the Orientalists and a mere imitator of the West. His thesis that Egypt belonged to the Mediterranean, Greco-Roman culture, which he developed in his book, The Future of Culture in Egypt, has been simplistically and unjustly misinterpreted to portray him as a blind follower and imitator of the West. He and other similar figures became the battlefield upon which the secular-Islamist camps are sharpening their controversies. His books have been banned from school curricula. I agree with Fauzi M. Najjar that Taha Hussein “has become the object of abuse, condemnation and ridicule by Islamic extremists.”38 Galal Amin seems to ride on the wave of the smear campaign against Taha Hussein by sharing a common ground with the Islamists in attacking the liberal age thinkers. Unfortunately, the liberal age thinkers mainly fought the enemies of European bourgeois enlightenment, which were in reality far from being theirs. They imitated the West in countering religion, which discredited them. But Amin believes that it was not necessary for “our form of tanwir,” be it political, technological or scientific progress, to fight religion. Individualistic values and liberalism were adopted to struggle against anything considered as antiquated. Amin raises the following tricky questions: Did Taha Hussein really need to attack so vehemently the men of religion and the clergy of al-Azhar? Did he need to create this unnatural case (quadiyya mufta’ala) about pre-Islamic poetry? Was pre-Islamic poetry really pre-Islamic?39 To simply raise such a question, would it not be debasing Islam and a falsification of issues? Was he not simply repeating what some British Orientalists said, and getting unnecessarily excited because it was a new idea?40 Did Taha Hussein’s enlightenment really need to advocate the teaching of Greek and Latin as preconditions for a rejuvenated Arabic literature, simply because these two languages are much celebrated in the French education system?41 By so arguing, Amin seems to obfuscate what was at stake, namely the courageous battle which cost Taha Hussein a 38 Fauzi M. Najjar (1996). The Debate on Islam and Secularism in Egypt. Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 18, p. 2. 39 In 1926, Taha Hussein published a book on pre-Islamic poetry, which led to a scandal and to him being attacked by al-Azhar ulama for defaming religion. He was prosecuted, strongly attacked in the press, and his book was banned. It was nevertheless published later with modifications. 40 Galal Amin (1999), p. 47. 41 Ibid., pp. 48–49.
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scandal and a ban on his writings. We are back again to the issue of banning thoughts for the sake of public morality. For Refa‘at al-Sa‘id, the distortion of Hussein’s courageous stand is in itself symptomatic of a political and ideological struggle. The attack on Taha Hussein took place because he had the courage to stand out against the corrupt men of al-Azhar who were given a free hand to punish anyone who opposed them and to impose what pleased them. Islam thrived for centuries without the assistance of alAzhar in censoring its opponents. In fact, Taha Hussein was aiming at the antiquated clergy, which only followed the whims of rulers and failed to cope with the major societal transformations brought about by modernization, Westernization and colonialism.42 To sum up, it seems that veteran leftist and dependencia theorist Galal Amin has been increasingly flirting with the Islamists’ way of argumentation by his attacks on Zaki Naguib Mahmud and Taha Hussein. Tasgheer alkubaraa’ (“The belittling of the intellectual giants”) is the title of a chapter in False Enlightenment. For Amin, it seems that what these so-called intellectuals are after is the attack on all sacred icons and symbols (muqadassat) under the banner of tanwir and progress. Their stand reflects their wish to attract the attention and gain the favor of foreigners at the expense of debasing their own people. Amin then argues that this approach was already present in Europe, as exemplified through L. Strachey in England, E. Ludwig in Germany and A. Maurois in France, as well as H. Adams in the US, who all aimed at character assassination.43 He compares this attitude to the adolescent’s Oedipal complex, which, by rebelling against his parents, belittles them. However, this reveals nothing but an act of immaturity. Amin remains unclear about who these intellectual giants are and who their critics are. In fact, his protest against the attack on the sacred icons is nothing but a defense of nasty censorship and the banning of literary works. Even though I have reservations from a cinematographic point of view about the films of the director Youssef Chahine, I find that Amin’s harsh attacks of Chahine are no different from the Islamists’ stand and that of those who sought to ban the screening. Amin again adopts an ultra-nationalist tone against Youssef Chahine to argue that his cinema is directed at Western audiences and that 42 Refa‘at al-Sa‘id (1995). al-irhab, islam am ta’aslum (Terrorism, Is It Islam? Or Islamization?). Cairo: Sina lil nashr, p. 334. 43 Galal Amin (1999), p. 80.
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he is not a “real Egyptian.” To remind the reader, Chahine, who is Egyptian, is of Levantine Christian origin. However, the question is, why has Amin gained so much popularity? It could be his easy, journalistic style that slips into populism. It is no coincidence that he shares so many affinities with the Islamists. But Amin’s success could be interpreted differently; namely, that the field of sociological academic production is seriously defective in Egypt. Many believe that critical academic intellectual production is non-existent. If it ever existed, what purpose does it fulfill? And whom would sociological studies serve? Who would be the public concerned? In other words, would sociological investigation on the army or the impact of the 1967 defeat on society, the youth, or the sexuality of Egyptians, ever be taken seriously by the officials? Would policies advocated by social scientists ever be implemented? Would studies undertaken for only social engineering targets be seriously taken into consideration by state officials? This is very doubtful. For example, the Egyptian sociologist Sa‘ad Eddin Ibrahim was jailed for spying and for tarnishing the country’s reputation. Surprisingly, his plight was met with silent approval from the opposing intelligentsia which sided this time with the government. Many today would argue that critical sociological investigation is hardly possible because of the omnipresent role of the authoritarian state in interfering and controlling research. Yet, research centers have witnessed in recent years a flourishing that coincided with the privatization of research since most of them are based on foreign funding. Paradoxically, when interviewed by al-Ahram Weekly, most university professors stated that these research centers play a minimal role as thinktanks in influencing politicians.44 Academics are entirely dependent on the institutions of the state. No critical sociology, outside the influence of the government apparatus, could exist. Therefore, what developed instead was the model of the “public intellectual,” who was able to gain cultural capital through public visibility on television and in the press at the expense of being less and less prominent in the academic field. The journalistic style, rather than academic work, is much celebrated today in Egypt. Sa‘ad Eddin
44 According to the Cairo University Professor of Political Science, Mustafa Kamel El Sayyed, there are 30 research centers specialized in political and strategic studies. See Magda el-Ghitany, “What’s in a Centre?” in al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No. 724, 6–12 January 2005.
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Ibrahim,45 Nawal El Sa‘adawi and Galal Amin would belong to the category of public intellectuals who are raising stormy issues such as minorities’ and women’s status. Sa‘ad Eddin Ibrahim, for instance, influenced by the “discourse of activism,” aspired to fulfill the function of the organic intellectual. He translated the Gramscian idea of the organic intellectual into becoming the adviser to the princes and rulers as the intermediary interpreter of reality. This can perhaps explain why he attracted the wrath of the authoritarian princes who, after having celebrated him, turned against him because they were unable to accept minimal criticism. Ibrahim was the first promoter of the discourse of civil society, but with the double-bind situation of receiving substantive funds from the West, of becoming a tycoon in the field of research and foreign funding, and in maintaining close relations with the US by the fact of his double American-Egyptian nationality. All these privileges meant also disadvantages for a section of some nationalists. Ibrahim has for a long time been one of the staunch defenders of including the Islamic opposition in the official political arena.
THE SECULAR CAMP: ( JABER) GABER ‘ASFUR (Jaber) Gaber ‘Asfur is the Secretary-General of the High Council of Culture in Egypt and one of the brains behind the official project of enlightenment (tanwir), which, through the Ministry of Culture, allocates funds for publishing inexpensive books of the pioneers of enlightenment and promotes translations of significant social science and literary works into Arabic. He is a central figure in creating the series of books (kutub al-tanwir). He has organized numerous conferences featuring the most prominent intellectuals from all over the Arab world. His book didd al-ta‘assub,46 (Against Fanaticism), is worth analyzing since ‘Asfur deals with the major contemporary takfir (disbelief) and ridda (apostacy) cases as well as the witchhunting and scandals which several intellectuals and novelists underwent in the Arab world during the last two decades. Several chapters have been 45 One has to state that Ibrahim combines both portraits, the academic and the public figure. Sa‘ad Eddin
Ibrahim has undertaken serious sociological work on the Islamists, on urban Cairo and poverty, and on minorities. Perhaps because he was successful as both an academic who could attract significant amounts of foreign funding, and as a public intellectual, he instigated resentment and perhaps jealousy. 46 (Jaber) Gaber ‘Asfur (2000). didd al-ta‘assub (Against Fanaticism). Cairo: mahrajan al-quira’ lil jamii‘ maktabat al-usra.
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previously published in the al-Hayyat newspaper. It is noteworthy to state that the book was published by the series founded by the First Lady Suzaan Mubarak, the maktabat al-usra, which celebrated its seventh year in 2000, priding the fact that it published 1,700 titles with about 30 million copies. Although ‘Asfur is a staunch secularist, in the incident of the banning of the three novels, as a state official he had to behave as a “commissar” (a term I borrow from Ferial Ghazoul)47 and support Faruk Hosni’s approval of the withdrawal of the novels.48 As I argue in this section, this incident entirely contradicted ‘Asfur’s writings. Here again, ‘Asfur the intellectual has been compromised because of his position as a state functionary. ‘Asfur begins his book by arguing that freedom of expression is an essential part of the doctrinal, political and social freedom of man. Innovation requires attempts at trials and errors. The supremacy of reason means the right to differ and to experiment with innovation. The right of thinking and innovation is a religious responsibility for anyone who believes in religion. ‘Asfur then stresses that there is no freedom of thought without liberating thought from all its chains. There is no sense in the existence of universities that place restrictions on the professors and impose a clannish or tribal way of thinking, deciding upon what is allowed. There is no real innovation with the predominance of censorship, just as there is no future for an intellectual movement without the courage to challenge, to question and to doubt. ‘Asfur believes that there is a specific mindset that leads to intolerance. He provides several reasons for this flaw, but one main reason is the long history of authoritarian rule in the Arab world, resulting in social and intellectual fanaticism. He argues that the rise of authoritarian military regimes went hand-in-hand with religious authoritarianism, leading to the curtailment of freedom. Censorship and repression were then exercised externally and internally. In fact, his book aims at revealing that there is a logical chain in the fanatic mindset and a long history during this century of suppressing 47 Ferial Ghazoul, “The Artist vs The Commissar,” in al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No. 518, 25–31 January
2001. 48 The event happened in January 2001 when a Muslim Brother parliamentarian protested against the publication of three novels by one of the government institutions for indecency. The interrogation undertaken by the Ministry led to the formal dismissal of the series editor Mohammad al-Busati, together with the managing editor, and the banning of the three novels. Concerning the details of the banning of the three novels, see the excellent article by Samia Mehrez, “Take Them Out of the Ball Game: Egypt’s Cultural Players in Crisis,” in Middle East Report, No. 219, Summer 2001.
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intellectuals and thinkers who opposed injustice and aspired for change in society. It is no coincidence that ‘Asfur and many other intellectuals direct much attention time and again to Taha Hussein, who is regarded as “the courageous” intellectual who fought the Azharis relentlessly. The freedom which Taha Hussein aspired for was difficult to obtain and was the consequence of a hard confrontation, similar to ‘Ali ‘Abdel Raziq’s confrontation with al-Azhar after the publication of al-Islam wa usul alhuqm. Therefore, ‘Asfur reminds us that the struggle is one and the same. A few months after ‘Ali ‘Abdel Raziq’s scandal, Taha Hussein published his book on pre-Islamic poetry, leading to another scandal, similar to the witch-hunting against the ijtihad of Sheikh Bekheit on the rules of fasting and Naguib Mahfouz’s banning of awlad haritna (The Children of the Alley), all the way to the apostatizing of Nasr Abu Zayd. ‘Asfur then directs a strong critique against the Islamists known as jama‘at al-ta’aslum al-siyasi (the groups of political Islam). They are responsible for the escalation of violence, through organized murders and intimidation of tanwiri intellectuals (al-muthaqafin al-mustaneerin). This again goes hand-inhand with advocating a theological state that violently eliminates opponents. ‘Asfur points to the atmosphere of terror experienced by witch-hunted actors and film directors (actress Youssra, film directors Youssef Chahine, Wahid Hamed, and actor ‘Adel Imam) and novelists like ‘Ala’ Hamed who was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for writing a novel allegedly offending public morality. Furthermore, the Islamists managed to intervene and change some texts published by al-haya’ al-‘amma lil kitab, the government’s publishing house, by interfering in the printing process. Similarly, previously published novels of Ihsan ‘Abdel Quddus were later censored and whole sections removed.49 ‘Asfur then devotes two chapters to the Nasr Abu Zayd case, combining the chronological events with the minute details of the case. He spends another chapter on the takfir case of the Sorbonne-trained Professor Hassan Hanafi and argues that the public reaction to Hanafi’s takfir was not the same as Abu Zayd’s. Hanafi never departed from the religious bonds according to ‘Asfur. Hanafi’s close relationship to the Muslim Brothers and his later studies with Catholic professors, leading to his rapprochement with prominent 49 Gaber ‘Asfur (2000), p. 292.
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Christian figures, made him a celebrity. The fact that Hanafi was much influenced by the Latin American theology of liberation, which shaped his Left Islam and his sympathies with the Iranian revolution, made him more acceptable to the Islamic camp. ‘Asfur, however, notes that Hanafi has been for a long time flirting with the Islamic movement and insisting that he is the spiritual son or follower of Sayyed Qutb. Yet, this did not spare him from the wrath of the Islamists who still consider him a traitor. In fact, he is a dangerous traitor because he attempted to “humanize” religion.50 Here ‘Asfur notes that takfir is used by established figures such as the Islamicoriented Mohammad ‘Immara to terrorize opponents. ‘Immara openly stated that Hanafi’s project emptied religion of its content and desacralized it through having borrowed the values of Western enlightenment.51
REFA‘AT AL-SA‘ID For the Marxist intellectual Refa‘at al-Sa‘id, an active member of the Nasserite-Marxist coalition party, al-tagammu, the story of enlightenment and Islamism is told differently. Refa‘at al-Sa‘id has received in recent years death threats from the Islamists. He regards them as much more dangerous than the regime which al-Sa‘id is willing to work closely with. Al-irhab, islam am ta’ aslum (Terrorism, Islam or Islamizing?) is one of the many books which al-Sa‘id published on secularism, Islam and tanwir.52 The book is a compilation of newspaper articles, mostly published in the left-wing al-Ahali newspaper in the early 1990s. For al-Sa‘id, it seems that Egypt has recently witnessed a “mad era”; it is a structured, planned madness, which he then defines as an “Islamized madness” (gunun muta‘aslim).53 He reminds us that one should differentiate between religion and religious thinking which is man-made, leading to confusion. Al-Sa‘id then argues that the main cause for this disaster is what he labels as “Bedouin Islamization” (al-ta’aslum albadawi), which invaded Egypt with the coming of the petro-dollars and petro-Islam. In other words, the Pax-Saudiana has been the major force in dictating this ugly and frightening transformation.54 Like many intellectuals, 50 Ibid., p. 301. 51 Ibid., pp. 294–295. 52 Refa‘at al-Sa‘id (1995). al-irhab, islam am ta’ aslum (Terrorism, Is It Islam? Or Islamization?). Cairo:
Sina lil nashr. 53 Refa‘at al-Sa‘id (1995), p. 8. 54 Ibid., p. 12.
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al-Sa‘id targets the irrationality of some known Sheikhs such as the notorious Sheikh Ben Baz’s fatwa regarding the flatness of the Earth, and Sheikh Sha‘arawi’s fatwa favoring slavery, particularly in a situation of war. He shows that these are simply unacceptable positions violating human rights. He concludes that all these pronouncements are directed at their enemies (i.e., the secularists).55 These ideas slipped very easily into violent acts and murders. Did Sheikh al-Ghazali not compromise with terrorism in the case of the late Farag Foda (assassinated by Islamists) by authorizing takfir, thus giving a green light to kill the opponent? We are in the era of Semeida (symbolizing a coarse peasant name, also probably symbolizing the triumph of ignorant populism) who filed a case to divorce the Cairo University professor of philosophy Nasr Abu Zayd from his wife.56 The book states recurrently that Egypt’s main problem has turned out to be an Islamized terrorism (al-irhab al-mutaslim). The first chapter starts with a set of points about the Islamic movement and terrorism. I would like to summarize a few of these points: (1) Hassan al-Banna was the initial starter in terrorizing the Wafd Party (before the 1952 revolution). He promulgated the slogan that: “God is with the king.” (2) Hassan al-Banna was the main actor behind all terrorist operations. (3) Historically, the Muslim Brothers did exercise violence in different periods, and there was no violence directed at them. (4) There is no distinction between extremists and moderates in the Islamic movement, i.e., they are all extremists. (5) There has been an organized plan from “above” aiming at changing the general intellectual atmosphere of the Egyptian society for the service of extremism. (6) Iran has been the main source of terrorist action in the region. (7) It has never happened in Egypt’s history that the successive Sudanese governments have been hostile to Egypt. The change came only when the Iranians interfered with financing counter-movements to reduce the role of Egypt in Africa and the Arab world. (8) The military camps training the extremists in the Sudan have all been well-known. Sudan does not seek to hide the fact that it is involved 55 Ibid., p. 17. 56 Ibid., p. 20.
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in such trainings. It even uses this to exercise pressure on the Egyptian government. (9) The Americans should provide an explanation to the queries raised by Egyptian officials concerning the presence of Sheikh ‘Abdel Rahman in the US. (10) The Islamic groups believe that the Copts are the “bent wall,” meaning that they have become the main problem of Egypt. This is, of course, very problematic. (11) The al-Sha‘b newspaper does play a major role in stirring up confessional conflicts between Copts (the Christians of Egypt) and Muslims.57 Al-Sa‘id then picks up these points and provides a detailed analysis to support his argument. On the issue of refusing to categorize the Islamists into moderates and extremists because they all fall under the banner of intolerant violent groups, he insists that when these groups decide that the whole society is a jahili (pre-Islamic society), the only way to change it is through violence. Their opponents are considered enemies of God to be eliminated by violence. On this point, al-Sa‘id seems to agree with Abu Zayd’s main argument in his work, The Critique of the Religious Discourse, namely that the difference between the moderate and extremist Islamists is only a matter of degree. There are no basic disagreements on the intellectual premises. When asked by the al-Hayyat newspaper to comment on a conference held on the Muslim liberals, al-Sa‘id refused to use the term “Islamists” and proposed instead the term muta’slimun (I would translate it as “artificially Islamizing, Islamicizing”). The entire article is about how illiberal Muslim thinkers, like veteran Marxist Mohammad ‘Immara or Kamal Abul Magd,58 turned to Islam on the issue of power negotiations. They all speak of democracy and confuse it with Shura. They speak of dialogue with the “Other,” but once they come to power they will declare the opponents as kafirs (non-believers) and prosecute them.59 57 Ibid., p. 36. 58 Ahmad Kamal Abu al-Magd is a constitutional lawyer. He is vice-president of the Egyptian National
Council for Human Rights. Both he and ‘Immara have been critical of Azhari and are labeled by some as representing a Muslim liberal line. Some secular intellectuals still view them as sharing many points with hardline Islamists. 59 Ibid., p. 129.
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Rashed al-Ghanoushi, Fahmi Huwaydi and Sheikh Mohammad alGhazali are all put together in one basket. They are, according to ‘Asfur, (mis)taken for liberals, and they are far from being so. Sheikh al-Ghazali, for instance, claimed that Michel ‘Aflaq, the founder of Arabism, married the daughter of Golda Meier, and that Arabism is a Zionist crusaders’ creation. Al-Sa‘id tells us that some were angry with his attacks against the so-called “moderate sheikh” who allowed the charges of apostasy. Tanwir is for alSa‘id not only an idea, but a struggle. Tanwir is aspiring towards the freedom of thought and giving a free hand to reason; it is a fierce struggle against the muta’ slim trend which wants to turn off all the lights of thought and reason. It is only through the words and action with the people that the muta’ slim trend will be defeated.60
NASR HAMID ABU ZAYD Although Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd underwent the sad fate of being declared an apostate, and was defended by a section of secular intellectuals, he seems to direct bitter criticism at both camps, the secularists and Islamists. Abu Zayd interprets the government’s endeavor in publishing the series of enlightenment books, silsilat kutub al-tanwir, as a clear policy to counteract “terrorism.” It was part and parcel of what he takes as the “cultural-security confrontation” against terrorism (al-mawagaha al-thaqafiyya al-amniyya didd al-irhab), in the aftermath of the series of attempts to murder the President of the People’s Assembly, Rifa‘at al-Mahgub, and the murder of the secular satirical intellectual Farag Foda by Islamists.61 According to Abu Zayd, there were two contradictory policies initiated by the government. One consisted of negotiating with the Islamists, and the other was to use violence. Negotiations took place three times. The first was in 1992 in jail between the officers and the Jihad group. The second was in 1993 between the intellectuals and the ulama, like Sheikh Metwalli al-Sha‘arawi, ‘Abdel Sabbur Shahin, Mohammad al-Ghazali, the journalist Fahmi Huwaydi and Mohammad ‘Immara. The Minister of Interior Abdel Halim Musa had also participated in the discussions. The third time was when the Amir of the 60 Ibid., pp. 204–207. 61 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, “wizarat al-thaqafa: i‘lan fashal al-tanwir al-bragmati, hal hunaq tariq akhar?
al-tathwir la al-tanwir,” in Akhbar al-Adab, 18 February 2001.
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Jama‘at (the Prince of Jama’at, the spiritual leader) was on trial in Aswan and he proposed to negotiate, but alas the government refused. Abu Zayd claims that there was a move to mobilize (tagnid ) the intellectuals for a war against terrorism, and to co-opt them to key positions in the Ministry of Culture. The intellectuals then came up with ready-made enlightened solutions to rescue the government from the “fire of fundamentalism” with simplistic idioms like al-‘aql badilan ‘an al-naql: reason instead of imitation, tolerance instead of fanaticism, accepting the Other instead of reclusion, innovation instead of imitation. Abu Zayd holds that the discourse of tanwir became associated with the discourse of elites — it became devoid of content. It was pragmatically and ideologically used as an instrument in a war against terrorism. Tanwir thus became associated with supporting the government. The muthaqaf nahdawi (the enlightened, renaissance intellectual) sought to always work within the parameters of the government, even if he would from time to time be rebellious. He never transcended the state employee mentality, shifting between co-optation and conquest. The institutions that produced modernization were by definition weak and young in their formation. Abu Zayd talks of modernization without modernity, tahdith bila hadatha, meaning that an infrastructure, a cinema, an opera, the press, political parties, trade unions and parliaments were erected, but these evidently did not produce modernity. The nahda discourse was an elitist, middleclass movement that took place only in the two metropolises, Cairo and Alexandria, and existed nowhere else. In another article, Nasr insists that the project of the nahda at the beginning of the last century is in fact an accommodative or eclectic project of trying to blend Islamic heritage with Western European heritage and scientific discoveries.62 This accommodative attempt has continued until today and is very much influenced by the confrontational relationship between the East and the West. Abu Zayd argues that the contradiction between the self and the Other and the crisis of identity began really with the colonial confrontation. This confrontation was one main reason why the search for solutions was directed towards accommodative solutions. The argument leads to the idea that “only iron can bend iron.” Thus, in order to reform and compete, the Muslims 62 Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, “mashru‘al-nahda bayna talfiqiyyat al-tabaqa wal-turath al-talfiqi,” in al-Muhit
al-thaqafi, 1 March 2002.
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had to borrow all Western innovations and fight back with the same tools. This explains the advocacy of the scientific explanation of the Qur‘an, that the jinns are nothing but the psychological forces that are stirring lust, and that tayr al-ababil (the ababil bird in the Qur‘an) is nothing but the plague. This position involves the denial of miracles. But the Europe as perceived by the 19th century Arabs was homogeneous. They confused the Europe of 18th century Enlightenment with the colonial, imperial Europe of the 19th century. This led to a dualist understanding of Western heritage. Abu Zayd argues that this position became even more complicated because the Islamic rationalist heritage which could compete with the European Enlightenment values, as exemplified in Muslim thinkers, philosophers and scientists like Averroes, al-Razi, Ibn al-Haytham and Ibn al-Nafis, was marginalized in the Islamic civilization. It was marginalized at the expense of the school of law of Hanbalism, the Ash‘aris and the Sufis. The resulting uncertainty contradicted the project of enlightenment itself. Taha Hussein had to retreat from his project of analyzing the modern aspects of poetry, similar to Sheikh ‘Ali ‘Abdel Raziq’s publication of islam wa usul al-hukm (Islam and Fundaments of Rule) and Naguib Mahfouz’s awlad haretna. Abu Zayd insists that tawfiq (accommodation) led to talfik (eclecticism), which ran parallel with a lack of class-consciousness. Abu Zayd quotes the late Egyptian Marxist intellectual Ghali Shukri to stress that this accommodative situation led to the decline of the nahda project. The early nahda reformists were, by virtue of their training, men of religion. They admired Europe and always sought in their argumentation to accommodate religion with science. This accommodative position was not accepted by al-Azhar clergy, leading to the reformists’ works being banned and their positions being endangered. It forced these liberal intellectuals to retreat and submit themselves to censoring instead of fighting back. In spite of these chastisements, the social system, the constitution, the parties and women’s rights all seemed to have adopted the accommodative position but went beyond it. However, Abu Zayd argues that the state has always dealt in a paradoxical manner with opposing secular intellectuals. It gives a free hand to al-Azhar institutions to censor their works and uses the internal security services to constantly harass them. Yet, ironically, the liberal projects of these intellectuals do not contradict at all the aims of the regime. For example, Abu Zayd reminds us that it is difficult to consider the judge Mohammed
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Sa‘id al-‘Ashmawi an opponent of the regime. In fact, he is a highly placed state functionary and yet his books have been banned by al-Azhar.
CONCLUSION I have attempted in this article to trace the various positions and discourses pertaining to tanwir. I tried to look closely at the stand of some secular intellectuals who have been co-opted in the government channels. In recent years, many veteran left-wing intellectuals, like Tareq al-Bishri, the late ‘Abdel Wahhab al-Messiri, the late ‘Adel Hussein and Galal Amin, have shifted their orientation towards Islam. I have elsewhere analyzed some of the writings of Tareq al-Bishri and ‘Abdel Wahhab al-Messiri, which have some affinities with Galal Amin’s stand. As mentioned earlier, it seems that Amin, like many Arab intellectuals, perpetrates a simplistic, unilateral understanding of Western enlightenment. Abu Zayd’s explanation of the closure of nahda as a consequence of its accommodative stand in merging faith with reason is equally questionable. This stand was, however, exactly what Jonathan Israel coined as the trend of “conservative enlightenment” in contrast to “radical enlightenment.” He further argues that there were always streams and counter-streams in the debate on “whether reason alone reigns supreme in human life or whether philosophy’s scope must be limited and reason reconciled with faith and tradition.”63 The accommodative stand is therefore not a particularity of Muslim reformism; it is just that the social conditions in the West allowed the flourishing of “two enlightenments” which led to the dominance of one stream over another. A close look at Refa‘at al-Sa‘id’s statements reveals that he denies the fact that the regime has been the main instigator of violence against the Muslim Brothers (and by the way, also against the communists by jailing both groups in the 1950s and 1960s and hanging two workers for demonstrating during the early years of the 1952 revolution). For al-Sa‘id, it is as if violence was mainly perpetrated by the Islamists, ignoring the escalation of violence dating back to the 1950s perpetrated by the authoritarian, military state. He seems to discard the fact that Sayyed Qutb was made a martyr by being hanged by the Nasser regime, and thus al-Sa‘id repeats the same one-sided arguments by holding the Islamists responsible for all evils. Al-Sa‘id condemns the al-Sha‘ab weekly newspaper for spreading fanaticism. It is hard to disagree with both al-Sa‘id’s 63 Jonathan I. Israel (2006). Enlightenment Contested. Oxford University Press, p. 10.
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and ‘Asfur’s condemnation of the Islamists’ witch-hunting of novelists and writers, but their interpretation is too simplistic. Samia Mehrez, in providing the background of Haydar Haydar’s scandal,64 reminds us that just before this event, three al-Sha‘ab reporters were arrested and charged for slandering the then Minister of Agriculture Youssef Wali, who was later convicted for importing carcinogenic fertilizers and banned products from the EU. Wali has a long record of high-level corruption and for having undertaken massive collaborative projects with Israel in the agricultural sector. Thus, the Islamists had correctly opened the files of corruption. Al-Sha‘ab used the Banquet for Seaweed to react against the regime’s oppressive measures towards the Islamists. It was a way to embarrass the corrupt regime. As Mehrez puts it, “The cultural players inevitably got caught in the middle of the showdown between the Islamists and the political field.”65 Richard Jacquemond espouses a similar view: The indeterminate boundary between censorship and criticism appears in many literary controversies, where criticism of a work can degenerate into calls, more or less explicit, for its censorship. Contrary to the generally accepted idea here, which opposes, in Manichean fashion, “reactionaries” or “fundamentalists” in the role of censors to “progressivists” or “secularists” in the role of the defenders of freedom, contemporary history shows that writers can always be found in both camps, and also in the conflicts internal to each, who are ready to use their positions within the field of power to silence their peers who do not share their opinions.66
Abu Zayd develops perhaps an equally nuanced and subtle analysis in blaming both the government and the Islamists for adopting inflexible stands. It seems all players are caught in an escalating autism.
64 A Banquet for Seaweed was published by the prominent Syrian writer Haydar Haydar in 1983, 17 years
before the explosion of the scandal in Cairo (in 2000). The novel has been a success and was reprinted several times during these years. Haydar Haydar published several novels before the Banquet, which were all well received. The question then was why was it that suddenly, a novel that probably none of the alAzhar clergy or the protesting students ever read, attracted so much anger? Why was it that the Islamists and in particular the Islamic-oriented al-Sha‘ab magazine rode on the event and decided to demonize the Ministry of Culture for reprinting it? It is important to note here that the Islamic opposition launched a harsh campaign against Haydar Haydar for being a kafir. 65 Samia Mehrez, “Take Them Out of the Ball Game: Egypt’s Cultural Players in Crisis,” in Middle East Report, No. 219, Summer 2001. 66 Richard Jacquemond (2008). Conscience of the Nation, Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt. Cairo: The American University Press, p. 44.
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Chapter
15
Perda, Fatwa and the Challenge to Secular Citizenship in Indonesia ROBERTUS ROBET
By its nature, Pancasila, the Indonesian state ideology, is secular. It was formulated and implemented with the confident belief that only through an open and pluralist state can Indonesian unity be fully achieved. Eventually, this has become the basis of Indonesian citizenship. Pancasila is a feature of cultural and political identity. However, this has been challenged by the emergence of Islamic political ideology. It has appeared on two fronts: in the politico-legal area, and in the transformation and the expansion of fatwa. Consequently, it leads to tension between a secular interpretation of state ideology and Islamic political ideology. The fate of what constitutes an Indonesian depends on the interplay of these two tendencies.
INTRODUCTION On the occasion of commemorating the birth of Soejatmoko, the late Dan Lev once delivered an amazing speech entitled “Democracy or Republic.” One key point in the short speech was about the constant tension between religion and the state. The tension occurred because religion and the state were both battling for the loyalty of the same subjects, namely the citizens. Lev said: … the competition for the allegiance and submission of the people, which the state asks from its citizens and which religion asks from the followers of God and religious observations. Both demands are sometimes considered absolute. If one or the other prevails, we can imagine how hard and dangerous it would be, and the problem could become so embedded in our history such that a solution will never be long-lasting …1 1 Lev, Daniel S. (1995). Demokrasi atau Republik. Speech in Yayasan Soejatmoko, p. 11.
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From Lev’s perspective, the character of the state is not based on the existence of legal formal institutions, but on its civil political structure and nature. In this case, how far does the population identify with the legal principles of an open and secular state on the one hand, and manage its relationship with a particular religious worldview on the other? From a theoretical perspective, Lev’s view is similar to Turner’s concept of citizenship, namely that citizenship can be defined as the set of practices (juridical, political, economic and cultural) which defines a person as a competent member of society.2 This paper, holding fast to Lev’s view, describes state–religion relations through the changes in the concept of citizenship in Indonesia, especially those driven by the regulation, normalization and institutionalization of religion in personal life.
THE BASIS OF SECULAR NATIONALISM IN INDONESIA Officially, Indonesian nationalism is not based on ethnicity, religion or race, but on a secular view. The secular nature of Indonesian nationalism can be understood in the establishment of Pancasila as the ideological foundation of the Indonesian state, which is particularly meant to avoid including religion as part of the foundation. As it is known, after Soekarno’s speech on 1 June 1945 at the BPUPKI (Badan Penyelidik Usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia/Investigating Committee for the Preparatory Work for Indonesian Independence), the debate on the foundation of the state escalated and intensified. The debate was whether or not to include religious thought in the first principle of the Pancasila. This debate split the BPUPKI into two political groups: the “Nationalist” group represented by Soekarno, Hatta and Yamin; and the “Islamic” group who then proposed the Jakarta Charter (Piagam Djakarta). The split culminated in the 22 June 1945 debate, which in turn gave birth to what Soekarno labelled a “gentlemen’s agreement,” whereupon the Jakarta Charter was then accepted. 2 See Turner, Bryan S. (1993). Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Citizenship. In Citizenship and
Social Theory, Turner (ed.). London: Sage Publisher, p. 2.
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However, on 18 August 1945, the “gentlemen’s agreement” was cancelled by removing several words from the Jakarta Charter, namely: “Ke-Tuhanan dengan kewajiban menjalankan Sya’riat Islam bagi pemeluknya” (“The belief in God with the obligation to carry out the Islamic law/syariah for Moslems”). The removal of these words was said to be mediated by Hatta with the Islamic figures. Hatta was sympathetic to the pleas of prominent figures from the eastern part of Indonesia. They argued that the Jakarta Charter had not taken into account the “feelings” of the regions where the predominant population was not Moslem. With that in mind, Hatta proposed that in order to achieve a “solid unity,” the several words were to be erased.3 It is clear then that Indonesian nationalism was to prevent the emergence of a religious state, based on the need to establish a united Indonesia. Unfortunately, the political agreement could not resolve various ideological challenges that would constantly develop, and nation-building was fragile. The consensus on Pancasila reached on 18 August 1945 was replaced in 1956–1959 by the Konstituante (Constitutional Assembly). In the debate regarding the state foundation, the Konstituante was divided into three major alignments. The first alignment wanted the Pancasila to be the state foundation. It consisted of PNI (Partai Nasional Indonesia/Indonesian National Party), Partai Katolik (Catholic Party), PSI (Partai Sosialis Indonesia/Indonesian Socialist Party) and PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia/Indonesian Communist Party). The second alignment was supported by parties such as Murba (Musyawarah Rakyat Banyak/Consensus of People at Large), Partai Buruh (Labor Party) and Acoma (Angkatan Comunis Muda/Young Communist Generation). The third alignment wanted the founding of an Islamic state, and it consisted of Partai Masyumi (Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia/Indonesian Consultative Council of Moslems) and NU (Nahdlatul Ulama/Awakening of Ulamas). The ongoing struggle and debate finally ended, this time not because of a compromise and lobbying as in 1945, but because of Soekarno’s Presidential Decree of 5 July 1959. It was issued under pressure from the army. The Decree ended the ideological debate by re-establishing the UUD 1945 (1945 Constitution) and disbanding the Konstituante. From that point on, the 3 Mangkusasmito, Prawoto (1970). Pertumbuhan Historis Rumus dasar Negara dan Sebuah Proyeksi. Djakarta:
Penerbit Hadayu.
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Pancasila of 18 August 1945 was re-affirmed together with the beginning of the Era of Guided Democracy (Demokrasi Terpimpin).4 The secular nationalism enshrined in Pancasila survived even after the fall of the Soekarno regime. The rise of Soeharto and the army enhanced the political character of this secular national system. Unfortunately, this was based on repression of the following groups — first, the leftist groups and supporters of Soekarno (the 1965 Incident); second, the socialist and nationalist remnants (the Malari Incident of 1974); third, the Islamic groups (Priok Incident, Lampung Incident, etc.). The resulting political landscape became a complex combination of ideology, nationalism and repression. Because Pancasila was part of the New Order establishment, secular nationalism was also identified with repression. This identification carried a hefty cost, in that when the New Order fell, blows directed at it were also aimed at Pancasila and other attributes of the Old Order.
DEBATING PANCASILA: CHARGES AT AND SHIFTS IN THE SECULAR NATIONAL PRINCIPLES OF INDONESIA The shifts in the Indonesian secular paradigm can be seen in the debates on Pancasila. After the fall of the Soeharto regime, the dispute on the position of Pancasila by the factions within the MPR (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat/People’s Consultative Assembly) could be observed through the UUD 1945 amendment proceedings in the First Ad Hoc Committee of MPR’s Working Group. Here, the debate on Pancasila was on how to position Pancasila both as a basic value and as a national ideology. The factions of parties with Islam as the ideology (Fraksi PDU/ Perserikatan Daulathul Ummah/People’s Sovereignty Union, Fraksi PBB/ Partai Bulan Bintang/Crescent Moon Party, and Fraksi PPP/Partai Persatuan Pembangunan/Unity Development Party), the Fraksi PKB (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa/People’s Awakening Party) and Fraksi Reformasi (Reform Faction) wanted Pancasila to be a basic value that would have its place only in the Preamble of the UUD 1945. They considered the word “Pancasila” to be unnecessary and therefore recommended it to be removed from the UUD’s 4 See Nasution, Adnan Buyung (1995). Aspirasi Pemerintahan Konstitusional di Indonesia: Studi Sosio-Legal
atas Konstituante 1956–1959. Jakarta: Grafiti Pers.
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chapters. As a substitute, the faction of Islamic parties proposed to mention only the concept of the Foundation of the Indonesian State. The Partai Bulan Bintang Faction (Fraksi PBB) and the Partai Daulatul Ummah Faction (Fraksi PDU) proposed to change the title of the first chapter to “Form and Sovereignty,” so that the Dasar Negara (Pancasila) would not be included in the first chapter. This was also the view of the Fraksi Reformasi, as was stated by Patrialis Akbar of the Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN): Article 1 Paragraph (2): Foundation of the State. The Foundation of the Indonesian State is: The Belief of the One and Only God, A Just and Civilized Humanity, The Unity of Indonesia, Democracy Guided by the Insightful Wisdom in Unanimity/Representation and Social Justice for all the People of Indonesia. […] In the Foundation of the State, we also explicitly did not include the phrase “Pancasila” in order to avoid misinterpretation. After seeing the actual practices, we firmly maintain the phrase of the Foundation of the State.5
The view of the Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa Faction (F-PKB) was expressed by Abdul Khaliq Ahmad: Article 1 Paragraph (2): The Indonesian State is founded on the Belief of the One and Only God, a Just and Civilized Humanity, the Unity of Indonesia, Deliberation Guided by the Insightful Wisdom in Unanimity/Representation and Social Justice for all the People of Indonesia …. […] So we did not explicitly mention Pancasila but its principles are affirmed in this Article 1 Paragraph (2).6
On the other hand, factions of parties supporting the Pancasila ideology chose to place Pancasila in two positions, i.e., as a basic value and as an ideology. The view of Seto Harianto of the Fraksi PDKB (Faction of the Partai Demokrasi Kasih Bangsa/Love of the Nation Democratic Party) is one that represented this position. Fraksi PDKB proposed that the first chapter be “Form and Sovereignty,” with its first article expanded into three paragraphs, as was stated by Seto Harianto: The reason for the amendment is that we have been so prioritizing unity instead of plurality that the co-existence or the diversity of the values that are alive, growing and expanding was never recognized as a sociological and cultural reality. Therefore we have amended Article 1 5 See Minutes of the 32nd First Ad Hoc Committee Meeting of the MPR Working Committee on
factions’ proposals about chapter I of UUD 1945, Wednesday, 17 May 2000. 6 See Minutes of the 32nd First Ad Hoc Committee Meeting of the MPR Working Committee, 17 May 2000.
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The argument of Fraksi PDKB was also supported by the Utusan Golongan (Special Groups Representatives) Faction (UG), through Valina S. Subekti. This position was also supported by the Fraksi TNI-Polri (Indonesian National Armed Forces — National Police), which at that time still had a place in the MPR, through Hendy Tjaswadi who proposed Article 1 Paragraph (3): The State Foundation is Pancasila. The Fraksi PDIP (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan/Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle), through Soetjipto, also took a position of including the word “Pancasila” explicitly in the chapters of the UUD 1945: In the past, many groups in society challenged the position of Pancasila as the State Foundation by asking whether or not the principle set out in the Preamble can be appropriately called Pancasila, because not one word of Pancasila was included in the entire chapters of the UUD 1945. Bearing that in mind, our faction proposes that the Pancasila State Foundation be included in the first chapter, which is an integral part as it is inscribed in the fourth paragraph of the UUD 1945 Preamble.8
The debate on whether or not the word “Pancasila” should be inserted into the UUD (Undang-undang Dasar/Constitution) was a phenomenon worthy of close attention. Fraksi Reformasi, through Patrialis Akbar (PAN/Partai Amanat Nasional/National Mandate Party), explicitly opposed the inclusion of the word “Pancasila” in the UUD for fear of abusing its meaning. The Fraksi Reformasi referred to the practices of the New Order that used “Pancasila” as a deadly weapon to suppress the people and its political opponents. The insertion of the word “Pancasila” meant giving a “blank cheque” or an “ultimate weapon” to a power that can abuse it. For factions such as PDIP, Golkar and FTNI, not including the word “Pancasila” as a referential representation of the five precepts in the Preamble would allow free interpretation of each of the five precepts. This opportunity is feared as an entry point for the re-emergence of the concept of a religious state. 7 See Minutes of the 32nd First Ad Hoc Committee Meeting of the MPR Working Committee, 17
May 2000. 8 See Minutes of the 51st Plenary Meeting of the First Ad Hoc Committee (PAH I) MPR Working Committee. Final statement from factions on the Final Formulation of the Constitution, 29 July 2000.
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From the preceding sections, we can see that even though the Ad Hoc Committee decided to keep Pancasila as a State Foundation, the once seemingly untouchable Pancasila had again been challenged, similar to the Jakarta Charter in 1945 and the Konstituante. After the decision, the secular nature of the Indonesian state was determined by its constitution. Nonetheless, the explicit form of that position still did not provide security for the secular public life it is meant to protect. The demands for a religious state appeared as regional regulations and fatwas, i.e., in subtler form and at lower levels.
THE SHIFT IN THE DISCOURSE OF CITIZENS IN INDONESIA The emergence of the New Order regime can be seen as the second chapter in the decline of liberal tradition in Indonesian politics, the first of which was Soekarno’s “Guided Democracy.” In the retreat from liberalism, one of the spearheads and political strategies of the New Order was to use Pancasila to reach out and define social life, including private and most subtle aspects. One of the most important dimensions here was the anthropological dimension. This was where Soeharto’s political ideology was built, namely through the formulation of the citizenship concept that is almost totalitarian. In the New Order’s “organism perspective,” the concept of the individual is unknown because the individual is always seen as part of the state. The upholding of citizen rights will always be related first and foremost with the supremacy of the state and “public interest.” Therefore, citizens are defined as “passive bearers of duty.” This was the core of Soeharto’s citizen politics. The citizenship concept is then formulated as the “Indonesian person,” the “complete Indonesian,” and even “the Pancasila family and children.” This is the type of discourse that Philip Kitley explained in his study on “the New Order’s image of children and ideal family” through the TV series “Si Unyil” which was very popular during the New Order era. “Si Unyil” was the propagandic figure which was intended to provide the role model of a wholesome or complete Indonesian, namely religious (portrayed as wearing a peci and a sarong) but at the same time pluralist and
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tolerant (portrayed as very sympathetic to the character Melan, who was of Chinese descent), not feudalistic yet not Western-oriented. In short, “Si Unyil” was the most perfect image Soeharto saw as “a person with Pancasila personality.”9 The biggest challenge to the New Order’s “Indonesian person” came mainly from the idea of human rights. With regards to this, a number of intellectuals such as Rahman Tolleng and Marsillam Simanjuntak, who would later establish Forum Demokrasi together with Abdurahman Wahid, played a central role in presenting alternative discourses that challenged the New Order conception of being Indonesian. Along with them, there emerged NGOs, especially those that fought for the human rights issue based on law such as the Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), which also played a very central role in furthering the alternative citizenship conception.10 Their critique was presented in the form of a challenge to and an evaluation of the repressive political practices of the New Order regime. The evaluation was mainly based on the principle of humanism in the conception of human rights. Therefore, the communitarian perspective of the “Indonesian person” was challenged by a new view of “universal being.” The universality of being human was interpreted to accommodate the various new agents of social change such as laborers, farmers, and the poor in general. This was where the cluster of the new alternative citizenship concepts emerged, which was expressed in the normative identifications such as “labor rights,” “farmers’ rights” and “the people’s rights,” as the counter to the “complete Indonesian human” concept. This universal identification concept became the main basis of Indonesian reform movements — even those based on Islam — until the fall of Soeharto’s regime in 1998. However, the relatively open, universal and liberal citizenship concept was not stabilized for a long time. Following the fall of Soeharto’s political pillars and ideology, Indonesia’s politics has been colored by the emergence 9 Kitley, Philip (1999). Pancasila in the Minor Key: TVRI’s “Si Unyil” the Model Child. Indonesia
No. 68, October. 10 See Bourchier, David (1997). Totalitarianism and the “National Personality”: Recent Controversy about the Philosophical Basis of the Indonesian State. In Imagining Indonesia: Cultural Politics and Political Culture, Schiller and Martin-Schileer, Barbara (eds.). Ohio: Ohio University Centre for International Studies, pp. 167–171.
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of multi-ideology politics, which includes specifically Islamic politics. Islamic political groups had always operated under the cover of the liberaluniversal human and citizenship concept (i.e., taken shelter under the human rights conception) before the fall of the Soeharto regime. After its fall, they started to formulate their own idea of citizenship. This has been evident in the formation of political parties and organizations based on Islam, with the objective to form an Islamic government through democratic channels. Although the effort to formulate alternatives other than Pancasila as the secular nationalism precept was not successful at the state level during the constitutional amendments from 1999 to 2002, the effort to push for a political life based on religion began to emerge. This can be seen from two phenomena. One is through legal channels but at a lower level, namely through the implementation of syariah-inspired regional government regulations (or Perda), followed by various efforts to reconstruct a new religious identity. The second is widening the scope covered by fatwas issued by the MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia/Indonesian Ulama Council).
SYARIAH REGIONAL REGULATION: THE REGULATION AND NORMALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS BEINGS Two of the products of reform are Law No. 22 of the year 1999 on Regional Autonomy and Law No. 25 of 1999 on the Balancing of Financing between the Central and Regional Government, which was amended to Law No. 32 of 2004 on Regional Government. The law was expected to reduce centralism, which during the New Order era was one of the obstacles to democracy. With autonomy, power distribution and regions’ independence, it was expected that there would be policies based on the needs of the local communities, thus expanding the scope of justice. However, the procedural freedom enabled by regional autonomy has not automatically produced a new and healthier political system. In fact, what really happened was that the institutional set-up was used by the old power networks, namely the bureaucrats nurtured by the New Order, local bosses and gangsters, to enhance their interests. In other words, the changes and institutional reforms at the local level, which happened without the removal
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of old elements and elites, have been utilized to facilitate the return of old powers that reproduce inequity and identity politics.11 Within this kind of relations, the syariah regional regulations have emerged. They are not only the instrument and symbol of rejuvenation of Islamic politics in Indonesia, they have also become the basis for accommodation of interests between the local elites. From here on, it becomes clear why parties such as Golkar have taken part in the implementation of the Syariah Regional Regulations. Since Regional Autonomy was initiated, there have been at least 30 regions, including provinces and districts/cities, implementing Syariahinspired Regional Regulations. The Southern Sulawesi province has become one of the provinces with the most number of districts implementing Syariah Regional Regulations. Bulukumba occupies the first position with five Syariah Regional Regulations already in place. Other districts in the same province have also implemented the Syariah Regional Regulations, namely the Enrekang, Gowa, Takalar, Maros and Sinjai districts.12 In Bulukumba district, Syariah Islam has been rapidly implemented up to the village level. Some of the Syariah regional regulations in this region stipulate the obligation for women to wear Moslem attire or jilbab (head cover), whereas couples who intend to be married are obligated to know how to read and write Al-Qur’an. Aside from that, the citizens are obligated to pay zakat, infak, and sedekah.13 Moreover, 12 villages have been designated as the pilot Moslem villages in this district. In a further development, this activity became the trigger for competition between the villages so they could be chosen as pilot villages.14 The implication was that each village then formulated for itself the standard 11 See Hadiz, Vedi R. (2003). Power and Politics in North Sumatra: The Uncompleted Reformasi.
In Local Power and Politics in Indonesia: Decentralization and Democratization, Aspinal and Fealy (eds.). Singapore: ISEAS and Jakarta: CSIS, pp. 119–131. 12 The acceptance of Perda can be linked with the role of Komite Persiapan Penegakan Syariat Islam Sulsel. At the beginning, this committee was chaired by Abdul Aziz Kahar Muzakkar, son of Kahar Muzakkar (the leader of Darul Islam/Tentara Islam Indonesia). Abdul Aziz has succeeded in establishing representatives in every Kabupaten in South Sulawesi. See “Syariat Isalam di Jalur Lambat” (http://www.tempointeraktif.com/hg/mbmtempo/free/nasional.html). 13 See also “Menguji Perda Syariat di Ranah Majemuk” (http://www.liputan6.com/view/ 8,127209,1,0,1155170742.html). 14 The spread of the implementation of Syariah Islam in the villages as a pilot project happened very fast. In some cases, it was even faster than Perda in Kabupatens and Provinces.
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of Islam for the inhabitants of the village. For example, the enactment of Village Regulation No. 5 of 2006 on Flogging Punishment in Padang Moslem Village stirred up much controversy. The Village Regulation stipulates that anyone who consumes alcohol beverage is punishable by 40 times of flogging; adulterers shall be subjected to 100 times of flogging; accusing others of adultery without the testimony of four witnesses is punishable by 80 times of flogging; anyone who gambles shall be subjected to 40 times of flogging; and anyone who commits assault shall be flogged 20 times.15 In the meantime, the effort to implement the Syariah Regional Regulations also occurs in other regions, for example, in several districts in West Java, West Sumatera (Sumbar), Aceh, South Kalimantan (Kalsel), Banten, Riau, Mataram, and Pamekasan district, etc. An assortment of syariah regulations have been enacted in these regions in various forms. Several syariah regulations were issued in the form of regional regulations, Qanun, circular letters, or Regional Regulation decrees. In West Java province, some of the districts that have already implemented Syariah Regional Regulations are: Indramayu, Tasikmalaya, Garut, Cianjur districts, and Cianjur cities. Several notable experiences during the implementation of syariah have occurred in these regions. In Cianjur, the formalization of Syariah Islam actually became the subject of political bargaining by the then candidate Mayor, who at the time was still the regional secretary. Wasidi Swastomo Msi in 1999 promised to uphold Syariah Islam if he was elected to be the Mayor. When he was, Wasidi established the agenda of “Marhamah Gate” in the form of religious symbolism through naming roads with Arabic names and passing the regulation to wear jilbab through the Circular Letter No. 061/2896/Org dated 29 August 2003. The regulation was implemented by the principal of Government High School SMUN 1 as obligatory.16 Research by The Wahid Institute states that syariah implementation in Indonesia has proceeded in five stages. First, through family law, which governs marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Second, through economic and finance law, including Islamic banking institutions and zakat. Third, through 15 See “Desa Muslim” (14 August 2006), Jaringan Islam Liberal. 16 See Imparsial Team Research (2006). Unification and Totalization of World Life as a Threat to Human
Rights, Study Policy Report December 2006. Jakarta: Imparsial.
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religious practices and the establishment of religious personalities, in the form of the obligation to wear jilbab, and the prohibition of gambling and alcohol. Once the first and second stages have been well implemented and have been considered as normal at national level, the third stage is to work at the regional level through regional regulation. The fourth stage is the implementation of Islamic criminal law, and the fifth and last stage is to have Islam as the foundation of the state. According to Rumadi from The Wahid Institute, the implementation of syariah at lower levels will simultaneously give the space for its execution at a higher level.17 Therefore, it can be stated that the stages of syariah implementation are systematic and expansive. The possibility of expansion in the implementation of Syariah Islam can easily be understood when one considers the views of Mutamminul ‘Ula, one of the figures in Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Welfare Justice Party). When touching on the issue of Syariah Islam’s implementation in Aceh, Mutamminul stated that: The implementation of Islamic Criminal Regulations in NAD (Nanggroe Aceh Darrusalam) has to be more expansive than what has been proposed by NAD’s DPRD (Provincial People’s Representative Assembly). In the elucidation of Law on Religious Court Article 49, it is stated that individuals or legal entities voluntarily subject themselves to Islamic Law. With the existence of the words “voluntarily subject themselves,” it can be stated that non-Moslem individuals can also choose Islamic Law as the basis of dispute resolution, as long as the matter falls under the jurisdiction of the Religious Court.18
From there, Mutamminul ‘Ula then arrived at the conclusion: Based on this formulation, the enactment of Syariah in Aceh in the Draft Law of Aceh Government is not only for Moslems, but also for non-Moslems subjecting themselves to Islam.19
If, in the case of ‘Ula, the intent to expand the implementation of syariah at the level of this region was expressed in the form of opinion, in various regions the expansion is conducted legally and explicitly in the articles of the regional regulations themselves. One example is the Regional Regulation 17 http://www.wahidinstitute.org/indonesia/content/view/270/52. 18 See ‘Ula, Mutamminul (2006). Guarding Law Enforcement. Jakarta: Pustaka Inovasi, p. 47. 19 Ibid.
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of Lima Puluh Kota district in West Sumatera, No. 5 of year 2003 on the Compulsory Moslem Attire. Regarding the target subjects of the compulsory Moslem attire: Article 5 (1) All male and female employees of the State and Private Entities, students of Government and Private universities, high schools and their equivalent, junior high schools and their equivalent, as well as elementary schools and their equivalent, are obligated to wear Moslem Attire.
After stipulating the legal subjects of the syariah obligation, the Regional Regulation further expands the scope to go beyond the Moslems. This can be seen in Article 6: (1) All members of the general public of all professions and on all occasions are requested to always wear Moslem attire.
With the structure and expanded scope, the Regional Regulation is openly and explicitly directed at the non-Moslem population. Therefore, the Regional Regulation’s enforcement capacity, in principle, is greater than the Jakarta Charter, which limited the implementation of Syariah only to the Moslems. Thus, without even having to change the foundation of the state, the implementation of these regional regulations has automatically become an instrument for a religion-based socio-political life.
THE EXPANSION OF FATWA AND THE SHIFT IN CITIZEN IDENTITY Aside from the implementation of local laws which is directly impacting on the effort to reconstruct and control public morality, the regional regulations are also aimed directly at the body and physical identity. The regional regulations represent a new discourse on what is human. This is evident from the continuation of the regional regulations’ implementation over the bodies of the students, starting from the alteration of the type of uniform to the change in the model of the uniforms themselves, from one that is “more nationalistic” into another that is more Islamist. With such a process, students, public employees, and the public in general begin to be incorporated into a new identification system, from being citizens into believers of a religion. Here, the role of the secular state is diminished.
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The shift is furthered even more by the strengthening and expansion of the roles and functions of fatwa from the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) and the accommodation of MUI’s fatwas that exclude certain citizens. This can be seen from the case of haram fatwa against pluralism, liberalism and secularism, and the MUI’s fatwa determining Ahmadiyah as a heretical sect. Previously, fatwa had a more social function and was used “only” as guidelines in exercising personal Moslem duties and acknowledging the authority of God in religion in general.20 In this context, fatwa was more limited to the specific and private religious relations. However, in 2005, the MUI issued a controversial fatwa, namely fatwa No. 7 of 2005 on Pluralism, Liberalism, and Religious Secularism. The fatwa declares pluralism, liberalism, and secularism as haram. More was to come. MUI issued fatwa No. 11 of 2005 on Ahmadiyah. Although MUI claimed that the fatwa on pluralism, liberalism and secularism was only for Moslems, it is difficult to ignore the reality that the fatwa is considered to have triggered a number of cases of violence and destruction of prayer houses of minority religions in various places in Indonesia. The expansion of fatwa into public life can be seen even clearer in the Ahmadiyah case. The fatwa not only appealed internally to the Moslems; it has also been used to pressure the state to adopt repressive policies to disperse the Ahmadiyah sect. This is the point where fatwa has changed its character. It is no longer circulated as an internal guideline; instead, it has expanded and challenged the established constitutional citizenship. In this case, by pressurizing the government to disperse Ahmadiyah, the fatwa intends to change the concept of citizenship from legal and constitutional-based into one based on religion/fatwa. Fatwa has therefore created a new tension between the inclusive citizenship principles based on the constitution which protects everyone as citizens, and the principle of religion-based citizenship which demands exclusion for the believers of Ahmadiyah. The pressure on the state was evident when the then Government of Indonesia issued a decree in the form of a Joint Ministerial Decision (SKB) between the Minister of Religious 20 Hooker, M.B. (2003). Indonesian Islam: Social Change Through Contemporary Fatawa. Honolulu: Asian
Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen and Unwin and University of Hawaii Press.
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Affairs and the Attorney-General’s Office, stating that Ahmadiyah is a prohibited organization; yet it has not dispersed. Although not dispersed, the SKB has clearly advanced the interests of many conservative religious groups in Indonesia. Therefore, although the constitution still seems to grant protection to Ahmadiyah, the SKB has in an essential manner transferred the conception of Indonesian citizenship into the hands of religion. This is a prominent sign of the shift in conception from the open and secular “Indonesian citizen” to an increasingly exclusive one.
CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF SECULAR CITIZENSHIP When viewed from the constitutionalist position, the concern that Indonesia will turn into a religious state — at least in the next 10 to 15 years — is still almost groundless. This is based on the fact that such a situation will require the total defeat of the nationalist-secular factions such as PDI-P, some elements in PKB and NU as well as Golkar. Such a major defeat is hard to be achieved in such a short span of time. However, although the installation of a religious state remains difficult and faces tremendous challenges, it does not mean that the secular character of the Indonesian state is secure. The major source of concern is not the birth of a religious state through open constitutional channels, but the retreat of secular culture, which results in reduced individual rights and freedom of expression as well as ever-expanding intolerance. More substantially, in the political arena, religion’s encroachment through legal means and cultural restrictions has resulted in the decline of egalitarian and democratic citizenship principles. Citizenship is no longer based on the quality and participation of citizens in the social and political sphere as well as in other fields, but rather determined primarily by religious categories — ranging from simple public offices (such as regional heads), all the way to the large and prestigious ones. The shift in the concept of citizenship has not only eroded the principle of equality before the law, which is the basis and foundation of a modern constitutional democratic state, but it has also destroyed the powerful cornerstones of Indonesian society.
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Not only should we pay close attention to the official form of the state, but more so to the substance of the conceptual shift, from an open, secular citizenship to one with a religious identity. The effort and tension towards this end can be seen in the development of two situations. First, the strengthening role of fatwa and ulama, which increasingly have equal standing with the constitution and the state’s legal apparatus. Here, fatwa has expanded far beyond its old function to one which engages itself publicly in social change; it has morphed into an instrument that forms the more subtle changes of political, law and citizenship identity. Second, the use of the body politic to define and transform individuality within the framework of religion, for example, through Regional Regulations and the recent Law on Pornography. In this area, the target is no longer the formal state, but the bodies and personalities of the citizens. To sum up, we should watch out for the shifts towards the more powerful influence of views and claims on “purity” (purity of religion, etc.) that provide the basis for extremism and fanaticism, which in turn shall end up in violence and disintegration.
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Chapter
16
Malaysia: Multicultural Society, Islamic State, or What? JOHAN SARAVANAMUTTU
One central issue in Malaysian politics is the contestation over Islam’s political role. It has given rise to two forms of statist Islam sponsored respectively by the dominant ruling Malay party, UMNO, and the oppositional Islamic party, PAS. This chapter will delve into the history and politics of this contestation and examine its ramifications on Malaysian multicultural society. At the peak of this contestation, leaders of the ruling UMNO have declared Malaysia to be an “Islamic state.” This is, however, contested by secular political actors and constitutional experts. Contestation over the role and place of Islam in society has also spilled over into civil society, with the surfacing of numerous ethnic altercations over cultural rights issues such as apostasy and religious conversions. This chapter will examine the aborted attempt by civil society actors to form an Inter-Faith Commission in 2005 and explore its social and political ramifications. The chapter argues that the route to a multicultural secular practice of recognizing the “equal worth” of citizens remains stymied in a contested political moment with democracy serving as the most significant and enabling conditionality for progressive change.
INTRODUCTION Malaysian society is undoubtedly unique in its history, colonial legacy and contemporary manifestation. Famously epitomizing the colonial condition of a so-called “plural society,” this social formation morphed into its formal modern shape as a semi-democratic multicultural polity in 1957, complete with a political pact dubbed as the “social contract” among the major ethnic communities of Malays, Chinese and Indians. The major features of the consociational pact were that citizen rights would be granted to all on the principle of jus soli (by virtue of birth-right, not blood-right), but that the special position of the Malays (later, Bumiputeras or sons of soil) would be preserved; and that religious freedom would be guaranteed, 279
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though Islam is privileged as the “religion of the federation.” Such a potent mix of constitutional provisions was bound to presage social and political conflict, but miraculously Malaysia has survived a half-century of arguable social peace, save for the major incident of 13 May 1969. With ethnic confrontation in check, contestations over Islam’s political role have now become increasingly prominent and have given rise to two forms of statist Islam sponsored respectively by the dominant ruling Malay party, United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the oppositional Islamic party, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS). This chapter will delve into the history and politics of this contestation and examine its ramifications on Malaysian multicultural society. At the peak of this contestation, leaders of the ruling UMNO have declared Malaysia to be an “Islamic state.” This is, however, contested by secular political actors and constitutional experts. Contestation over the role and place of Islam in society has also spilled over into civil society, with the surfacing of numerous ethnic altercations over cultural rights issues such as apostasy and religious conversions. The chapter argues that these contestations are occurring in an “actually existing multicultural society” which has produced a hybrid or hybridized state, neither fully religious (Islamic) nor fully secular. In such a situation, the route to a multicultural secular practice of recognizing the “equal worth” of citizens remains stymied in a contested political moment with democracy serving as the most significant and enabling condition for progressive change.
MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY At the point of independence from Britain in 1957, Malaya was already undeniably a “multicultural society.” However, multiculturalism as such was never acknowledged as political practice by the newly formed Malayan government. Indeed, its ideological and political creed was that of ethnicism, allowing for the valorization of ethnic discourse and politics. The ruling coalition, the Alliance Party, comprised three organizations representing the three largest ethnic communities, namely: the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC). Nevertheless, it should be noted that in the run-up to independence, there were groups and organizations that opposed the overt ethnicization of politics. Some 10 years before independence,
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the coalition of groups known by the acronym PUTERA-AMCJA1 put forward a “People’s Constitution” under which all Malayans were entitled to be called “Melayu,”2 clearly a deliberate move to remove overt ethnic connotations from political practice. In actual fact, Malayan society was deeply steeped in ethnicity from the outset. J.S. Furnivall’s (1948) discourse of the “plural society,” while Orientalist in conception, captured the contours of Malaysian society rather succinctly and accurately, viz.: • The presence of different ethnic groups brought together only for fundamental commercial ends. • They meet typically in the “marketplace” with no real social mixing and cross-cultural contact. • Economic specialization and an ethnic division of labor. • The lack of shared values and “common will.” • The society is held together by dint of colonial power. • The plural society is inherently an unstable social form. Furthermore, for writers like M.G. Smith, plural societies were marked by “mutually incompatible” social structures, values and belief systems as well as systems of action at the “cultural core,” and hence, merely a formal diversity in the basic system of compulsory institutions as explicated below: • internal ethnic integration of ethnic groups, and consistency within closed socio-cultural units. • a political order in which a cultural section(s) is (are) subordinate to the other(s). • social and political relations defined by “dissensus” and “conflict.”3 Still within the discourse of plural society, Arend Lijphart (1977), whose model takes its point of departure from European experiences, has provided a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic treatment. Lijphart’s fundamental points were that ethnically divided societies could live with 1 PUTERA stood for Pusat Tenaga Rakyat (Center for People’s Power) and AMCJA, All-Malayan
Council for Joint Action. The former comprised Malay groups while the latter, non-Malay. Interestingly, Tan Cheng Lock of the MCA was the initial leader of the AMCJA. 2 “Melayu” is the Malay term for “Malays”; allowing everybody this privilege meant the devalorization of “Malayness” itself. 3 See Smith (1965), which is a collection of his writings.
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their ethnic cleavages, that conflict could be contained by elites and leaders of ethnic communities, that democracy is possible within such ethnically divided societies and that formal institutional arrangements such as federalism and proportional representation could be used to contain conflict. He suggested four conditions for the successful implementation of what he called “consociationalism” or consociational democracy, namely: • • • •
grand coalition of all ethnic groups. mutual veto in decision-making. ethnic proportionality in allocation of opportunities and offices. ethnic autonomy, often through federalism.
Writers like Milne and Mauzy (1978, p. 352) have shown that consociationalism could be applied with some modification to Malaysia. I am inclined to accept this thesis, but would stress that looking at Malaysian politics through the lens of consociationalism does not provide the full picture, including important class and political economy dimensions, and most importantly now, Islam as a factor central to the current phase of Malaysian politics.4 From the perspective of multiculturalism, the plural society paradigm qua consociational democracy has a rather static quality about it. It is pragmatic and realist, but remains essentially within the discourse of conflict management (as opposed to that of conflict resolution) and does not account sufficiently for the role of human agency in positive (or negative) dynamic change over time. Put differently, it is basically a status quo, unreflexive approach to ethnic relations. Because social and political relations change dynamically over time, this has affected not only pluralism as discursive practice but also, concomitantly, the understanding and advocacy of multiculturalism by political and social groups within Malaysia. It is important now to briefly review and interrogate the evolution of Malaysia as an actually existing multicultural society. Initially, the practice of multiculturalism, such as it was, fitted to a tee the plural society mould described above. The Alliance government, which comprised the three dominant communal parties of Malaya, crafted the famous formula of inter-ethnic accommodation between Malays, Chinese 4 For an attempt to go beyond the plural society, see the cultural approach advocated by Kahn and Loh (1992). An important recent effort to look beyond ethnicity and yet not ignore it is Maznah and Wong (2001).
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and Indians as the basic social contract of the newly independent Malayan state. Something of the M.G. Smith notion of ethnic domination by one group existed, in this case, the Malays as primus inter pares, based on the notion of ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy). Hardly anyone questioned the fact that the Malays were an originary ethnic community who provided the basis of polity prior to the arrival of colonists in Malaya.5 However, there has always been only a grudging acceptance, if not rejection, of a secondary citizenship by the non-Malays. Chinese political groups, in particular the Democratic Action Party (DAP), rejected the implied non-equal worth of citizens in political practice, as has the newly formed and now proscribed Indian Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF). Certainly the concept of ketuanan Melayu could not be applied to Sabah and Sarawak, which joined Malaysia in 1963, where non-Malay indigenes were in the majority (Kadazan) or were the largest plurality (Iban). Hence, the term Bumiputera (sons of soil) was coined to accommodate the change. The Barisan Nasional (BN) government today incorporates political parties representing all ethnic communities, with UMNO acting as the dominant political force. And today, as in the past, Bumiputeras receive special rights and affirmative action in educational and employment opportunities up to the point of their numerical strength. In other words, proportionality is maintained. One should stress that all communities have largely accepted the positive discrimination policies as correctives for the economically disadvantaged Bumiputeras. A defining moment in Malaysian political history occurred on 13 May 1969 when communal riots broke out in Kuala Lumpur after a general election, eventually leading to the suspension of parliament. Remarkably, some 22 months later, in 1971, democratic processes were restored but new restrictions were imposed on civil liberties through the Sedition Act, among others. More importantly, the new five-year plan of 1971–1976 introduced a plethora of measures to further uplift Bumiputera economic conditions. A quiescent non-Bumiputera minority was hardly able to object when presented with hard facts of continued Bumiputera “backwardness,” now touted as the root cause of the 13 May event. In some sense, the M.G. Smith form of plural society was applied a fortiori post-1969 and may be said to have further justified excesses of an authoritarian state such as the crackdown on 107 social activists 5 Cf. the earlier work of Gullick (1958) and more recent work of Milner (1982) on this subject.
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and opposition politicians in 1987. But a major difference in political mobilization has perhaps occurred since the 1980s, evidenced by the rise of middle-class forces from all ethnic groups within a nascent civil society. They have protested against illiberal legislations ranging from the amendments to the Societies Act (1981) and the Official Secrets Act (1986), and they continue to oppose legislations like the Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial.6 The state, in a particularly “secular” political moment, introduced in the 1990s an apparent shift of approach to ethnic relations, enunciated through Mahathir’s Vision 2020 policy. It called for: • national integration and the development of a Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian “race”). • creating a psychologically liberated and secure Malaysian society. • developing a mature and democratic society based on communitarian democracy. • establishing a matured liberal and tolerant society. • establishing a caring society and a caring culture. • ensuring an economically just society. • establishing a moral and ethical society. In its most recent incarnation in the early 2000s, the Malaysian state may have morphed into yet a third form with the emergence of a more selfconscious political Islam. Islamization had already crept into practice under the Mahathir tenure, but was given much more play during the tenure of his successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The next section deals with how this Islamization may be equated or seen as a palpable movement toward the formation of an Islamic state, but in effect, has led to a hybridized semisecular state.
ISLAMIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS It would not be incorrect to say that a form of political Islam surfaced on the eve of independence in Malaya in the 1950s. The nascent Islamic party, Hizbul Muslimin, existed for a number of months in 1948 before the British banned it along with the radical Malay party, Parti Kebangsaan 6 See my analysis of middle-class politics and the political awakening of Malaysian civil society (2001a,b).
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Melayu Malaya (PKMM), or the Malay Nationalist Party. PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia) was formed one day before the closing of nominations for the 1955 elections, in which it took one seat.7 Like the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), PAS was known by its English name, Pan-Malayan Islamic Party (PMIP), and initially based its politics on Malay rights within the framework of Islam. Only in 1971 did PMIP officially adopt the acronym PAS. Viewed more broadly, the politicization of Islam may be said to have traversed the phases of Islamic resurgence in the late 1970s, state-sponsored Islamization policies from the 1980s, contestation over Islamization within society and among statist actors (political parties) from the 1990s, and the introduction of the policy of “civilizational” Islam (Islam Hadhari ) post-2004 under the Abdullah Badawi government.8 Contestation over Islamization at the statist level reached a peak in the aftermath of the 1999 general election when PAS captured the state of Terengganu while retaining control of Kelantan. Both state governments have passed legislation — Kelantan since 1992 — to introduce Hudud and Qisas (criminal) laws under the syariah (Islamic) system of law, which is currently largely confined to family law. Hudud and Qisas laws deal with mandatory punishments derived from the Qu’ran and Sunnah. Under Hudud, theft, robbery, illicit sex, alcohol consumption and apostasy are considered offenses. Punishments for these are corporal in nature, involving whipping, stoning to death and amputation of the limbs. Qisas law refers to offenses that involve bodily injury or loss of life. The punishment is death or imprisonment, but compensation in the form of money or property is acceptable if the guardian of the victim forgives the offender.9 The Kelantan and Terengganu state enactments are thwarted by a constitutional and a de facto impasse that the federal government, under the BN, will not endorse such legislation. This has not prevented either state from introducing various Islamic practices like compulsory veiling for Muslim women, or more explicitly in October 2005, naming Kota Bharu (the capital of Kelantan) as an “Islamic City.” In late 2001, after the September 11 event, the Islamic State issue captured center stage in 7 For the most comprehensive study of PAS to be written to date, see F.A. Noor (2004). 8 For a depiction of political Islam in terms of the UMNO–PAS contestation in the Mahathir period,
see Liow (2004). 9 See “Q and A on the Hudud and Qisas Enactment,” Aliran Monthly, 22(6), 25–29.
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political debates in Malaysia. The Prime Minister got into the fray when he suggested that Malaysia was already a practicing Islamic State (Negara Islam), and governmental ideologue and Law Minister Rais Yatim echoed this. PAS called for the matter to be openly debated as did the DAP, for diametrically opposite reasons. The DAP left the Alternative Front of opposition forces in August 2001 because of disagreements with PAS over the Islamic State issue. Meanwhile, a spokesperson of PAS, the former Chief Justice Salleh Abas, argued that Malaysia would not be an Islamic state until it introduced comprehensive syariah law for all Muslims in the country. A shift in the statist nuance of Muslim politics came with the landslide electoral victory of the BN in 2004 under the leadership of Abdullah Badawi, whereby the coalition not only captured 90% of the parliamentary seats but dealt a blow to the Islamic party, PAS, as well as to Parti Keadilan Nasional (PKN). PAS failed to retain control of Terengganu and nearly lost its base in Kelantan as well. PKN, which had an effective merger with the Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM), was only barely able to hold on to the seat held by its president, Wan Azizah Ismail, the wife of the then jailed Anwar Ibrahim. After assuming the helm of leadership in October 2003, Abdullah introduced a softer version of a modernist and moderate Islam, known by the term his government coined Islam Hadhari or “civilizational Islam.” This concept of Islam has been the hallmark of his orientation towards the Western world and especially in the face of the American-led “global war against terrorism.” The tenets of Islam Hadhari were adumbrated by Dr. Abdullah Mat Zin, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, as follows10 : Rationale for the policy: 1. Malaysia as an Islamic state 2. Improvement of the Islamization policy (embedding Islamic values) 3. Making Islam the means for resolving current challenges Definition: An approach to human development, society and the Malaysian state that is comprehensive based on the parameters of growing Islamic civilization with the view of producing individuals and an Islamic society which is spiritual, intellectual, with material strength, self-reliance, competitiveness, is forward-looking, innovative as well as capable of handling current challenges in a manner that is wise, rational and peaceful. 10 This exposition was carried out in a talk (in Bahasa Malaysia) sponsored by the Islamic development management group of the School of Social Sciences, USM, Penang, on 30 July 2004. The translation, based on a summary, is mine.
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Vision: Make Malaysia a role model for an Islamic state. Mission: To implement a development agenda for the state and the ummah premised upon Islamic teachings which are progressive, civilized, tolerant and balanced. Objectives: 1. To fulfill Muslim duties and obligations (akidah), law (syariah) and Islamic morality (akhlak ummah) 2. To practice Islam as a basis for national development in various fields of endeavor 3. To make Islam as the catalyst for implementing the development of the ummah and the state Pillars: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
A society that is knowledgeable, moral, and possesses virtues Development which maintains a balance between the spiritual and the physical Enjoyment of the comforts of life An approach that is moderate and thoughtful Holding on to the heritage of the past along with new legacies which are beneficial 6. Universalism Features: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
Using Islamic sources Good governance Prosperous livelihood Improving quality of life Strengthening integrity Dynamism Completeness Pragmatism Self-reliance Freedom, creativity and innovativeness Strengthening the institution, scope and focus on family Educational development Economic development Development administration and management Development of science and technology Agricultural development
However, it appeared that even a “moderate” Islam Hadhari, as depicted above, left little room for tolerance of non-believers. This became evident in the highly publicized action of the demolition of the “Sky Kingdom” in Terengganu in July 2005. The “kingdom” in question was a commune with structures and quaint buildings looking like teapots set up by one Ayah
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Pin (a pseudonym). The “Sky Kingdom” commune had earlier witnessed a mob attack by unidentified assailants and a religious authority raid, which drove Ayah Pin and his wife, Che Minah, into hiding. The wife had also filed a petition in the High Court against the demolition which the Court dismissed.11 I would argue that there are now two contrasting versions or constructs of Islamic statehood of UMNO and PAS, and that these constructs inform certain levels of articulation of Muslim politics. More often than not, the rhetoric, debates, and even policies of such statist discourse and practices are lost to the ordinary Muslim person. In the heady politics of the Reformasi period, following the Anwar Ibrahim episode and leading on to the 1999 general election, PAS was able to capitalize on Muslim discontent and outrage to capture the state of Terengganu. For years prior to this, its Islamic rhetoric and ultra-conservative leadership under the fiery Hadi Awang had failed to make a significant dent in Terengganu politics. Clearly, the UMNO approach to Islam under the new leadership of Abdullah Badawi presented a more “moderate” and universalist version of Islamic statehood. While there may be no substantial change to existing policies, its palpable shift has blunted PAS’s agenda for a more thorough-going Islamism. Abdullah’s failure in the March 2008 general election shows that Islam Hadhari had lost its luster, and poor governance and a series of faux pas by the now outgoing prime minister overwhelmed its symbolism. As for PAS, the soft-pedaling of its Islamist agenda was particularly evident in the run-up and campaign of the March 2008 general election. Instead of the usual call for an “Islamic State,” PAS in its election campaign proposed the idea of Negara Berkebajikan, that is, a welfare state.12 In fact, nowhere in its official manifesto calling for “A Trustworthy, Just and Clean Government” was an Islamic state mentioned. The Kelantan manifesto used the slogan Membangun Bersama Islam (Develop with Islam).
A HYBRIDIZED STATE? The debate on the Islamic State question has reached a point in Malaysia where practitioners and scholars alike have bifurcated on two sides of the 11 The series of events pertaining to the “Sky Kingdom” received wide coverage on the Internet and in the local press. See, for example, coverage by the Internet paper, Malaysiakini.com, 16 January 2006. 12 See Ooi, Saravanamuttu and Lee (2008).
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Malaysia: Multicultural Society, Islamic State, or What? Table 1 Politicians Mahathir Mohamed (Already Islamic state, 929 statement) Abdullah Badawi, Najib Razak (Islamic State, various pronouncements) Nik Aziz Nik Mat (Islamic welfare state in Kelantan — Negara Berkebajikan) Salleh Abbas (Not without comprehensive syariah) Lim Kit Siang (Secular state based on constitution) Anwar Ibrahim (Islamic civil society — Masyarakat Madani)
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Islamic State Debate. Scholars Joseph Fernando (Constitutional framers created a secular, not Islamic, state) Ahmad Ibrahim/Abdul Aziz Bari (Islam’s constitutional supremacy, state not declared as “secular”/imperative to improve syariah) Patricia Martinez, Joseph Liow, Meredith Weiss (Not Islamic yet, but deepening Islamization) Zainah Anwar, Maznah Mohamad (May be Islamic for Muslims) Farish Noor, A.B. Shamsul (Islam already embedded in many contexts) Kikue Hamayotsu (Advanced syariah system in place) Shad Saleem Faruqi (Hybrid system, need to plug constitutional loopholes)
debate, some inclining toward the notion that Malaysia is already one and others insisting that Malaysia is still a secular state. I summarize the various positions and stances of politicians and writers in Table 1, providing the reader with a smattering of the most well-known protagonists in the debate.13 My view, as indicated earlier, is that the Malaysian state may be a hybridized or hybrid state which functions on the basis of a fundamentally secular constitution which, however, has seen the increasing penetration of Islamic precepts in both the discursive and practical realms of state practices. Figure 1 indicates how this hybrid state has become manifested. Constitutional provisions since the time of independence in 1957 allowed for what could be called a “Muslim exceptionalism,” which has become the wedge for such penetration of Islamic practices. This has been effectuated through the enhancement of the syariah court system and a growing plethora of federal institutions and agencies, given Islam’s designation as the religion of the federation. Furthermore, in 1988, Article 121 was amended to insulate 13 A good recent summary of the debate and its various protagonists on the political stage and in civil
society can be found in Tan and Lee (2008).
State-Level Institutions: Conference of Rulers Sultans as Heads of State Muftis as Heads of Islam Religious Departments Fatwa Committees
Islamization at federal level Islamic courts and authorities at state and federal level Three tiers of syariah state-level courts: magistrate, high and appeal Dept. of Islamic Development (JAKIM since 1997 replaced BAHEIS, 1968) State authorities: JAWI, JAIS, etc.
Fig. 1
The Malaysian Hybrid State.
PAS-led Statist Islam: Islamization at state level (Kelantan and Terengganu) Regulation of social norms, dress code, etc. Enactment of Hudud and Qisas but no implementation
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Kelantan (Muslims 90%+) Terengganu (Muslims 90%+) Perlis (Muslim dominant) Kedah (Muslim dominant) Pahang (Muslim dominant) Johor (Muslim dominant) N. Sembilan (Muslim dominant) Malacca (Muslim dominant) Selangor (Mixed) Perak (Mixed) Penang (Non-Muslim majority) Sarawak (Non-Muslim majority) Sabah (Non-Muslim majority)
UMNO-led Statist Islam:
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YDP Agong as Head of State Legislature: Parliament (2 houses) Executive (Cabinet form with Prime Minister) Malaysian Judiciary (5 tiers of courts: federal, appeal, high, sessions, magistrate)
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Religious freedom — Article 11 Muslim exceptionalism — Article 11 Islam in state list of purviews Islam as Religion of the Federation (Article 3) Insulation of Syariah Courts from Civil Courts (Article 121 (1A), 1988) Syariah enactments, 1965, 1984, 1997
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Constitutional Provisions since 1957:
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the syariah courts from judicial oversight by the High Court or Federal Court.14 Appellate syariah courts were also created at the state level. Both UMNO-led and PAS-led Islamization led to the further expansion of Islamic bodies and bureaucracies at the state and federal levels, as indicated in Figure 1. The only reference to date of a hybrid state is by constitutional law specialist Shad Saleem Faruqi (2005). Other constitutional experts differ at two extreme positions of the debate. For example, Fernando (2006) maintains that Malaysia is a secular state in conception and intention, while Abdul Aziz Bari (2005) is equally resolute that Islamic moral precepts are embedded in Malaysia’s constitutional provisions.15 Social scientists such as Liow (2004) and Weiss (2004) are closer to the spectrum of scholarship that argues that a deepening Islamization has yet to produce a full-fledged Islamic state. Another view is that an Islamic state may already be the order of the day for Muslims in Malaysia (Zainah 2005; Maznah 2004) or that it is already embedded in the nature of Islamic governance or cultural practice (Noor 2003, 2004; Shamsul 2005). Finally, some scholars have shown in no uncertain terms that the Islamic legal structure has grown through the institutionalization of syariah courts, while the promulgation of a series of syariah enactments has spawned a veritable Islamic bureaucracy and a de facto Islamic state (Hamayotsu 2003).
THE IFC CONTROVERSY We now turn to the contestation that developed over the proposed establishment of an inter-faith commission, proposed by various groups in civil society. The contestation over the setting up of the Inter-Faith Commission of Malaysia (IFC) in February of 2005 provides an interesting case study of Muslims and their everyday politics. It should be stated at the outset that the very idea of discussing the establishment of an interfaith commission was itself rather remarkable, but the proposal soon became controversial. The problem hinged around the issue of Islam as the official state religion, as some would have it, or more correctly, the religion of the 14 See footnote 19. 15 Bari’s often publicly declared view is that whether Malaysia is a secular state is debatable since the
constitution is silent on it.
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federation. In any case, there was little doubt that it is the recognized primus inter pares of faiths in Malaysia. That being said, the Malaysian Constitution, under Article 11, guarantees the freedom of worship of all other faiths. Members of the human rights subcommittee of the Bar Council mooted the IFC idea some years ago. Some advocates of the idea, which included prominent Muslims, in particular Malik Imtiaz Sarwar,16 felt that the existing inter-faith dialogue mechanism — the Malaysian Consultative Council for Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism (MCCBCHS) — was inadequate to deal with thorny inter-faith matters, not least of all because Muslims were not members of the MCCBCHS. Indeed, Muslim groups partook of no formal inter-faith mechanisms. Hence, the idea of the Commission came about. All religious groups, and especially Muslim groups, were invited to participate in this initiative of the Bar Council. The Bar Council, incidentally, was at the time led by a Muslim lawyer, Khutubul Zaman Bukhari. The long and short of it was that eventually, after many meetings, a broad consensus was arrived at to hold a national conference to discuss the setting up of the IFC. The main objective was to iron out differences and reassure doubters about the bona fide intentions and the value of having such a commission. It should be said that right from the outset, some Muslim groups were not overly enthusiastic about the idea, but no strong objection was registered. Groups like ABIM (Muslim Youth Movement) participated in the early decision-making but later chose to stay out. One other such group which demurred participation was the Movement for a Just World, led by Muslim intellectual Chandra Muzaffar. In contrast, the Sisters in Islam, a liberal-minded Muslim women’s group, supported the idea and participated actively in the conference. The holding of the conference, involving some 200 multi-faith participants representing various faiths, was itself an achievement. It was also interesting that a minister, Rais Yatim, a lawyer by profession, officiated at the event. But the inevitable happened. A coalition of 13 Muslim groups calling itself the Allied Coordinating Committee of Islamic NGOs (ACCIN) demanded that the government scuttle the idea of the IFC. A spokesperson of ACCIN, Mustapha Ma, made statements to the effect that there was deep hatred against Islam among some of the proponents of the 16 Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a prominent human rights advocate and lawyer, was chairman of the Steering
Committee of the IFC initiative.
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IFC idea. As quoted by the Internet paper Malaysiakini, he also allegedly remarked: It was said that Malaysia would have achieved Islamic State status if not for the interference of the colonial masters and the arrival of non-Muslims. Are we now witnessing the regression of our country into a secular state with Islam as a mere ornament? (www.malaysiakini.com, accessed on 1 March 2005)
It became a supreme irony that the very idea of an inter-faith commission proposed by civil society groups turned out to be an issue requiring the eventual intervention of politicians and the prime minister no less. Prime Minster Abdullah Badawi stepped in at the height of the controversy to pronounce that the IFC idea should be shelved and that the government was only prepared to consider it at a later time. The boldness and inaccuracy of the ACCIN spokesperson’s remark may be attributed to the fact that the previous prime minister had proclaimed Malaysia to be already an Islamic state, although in actual fact the Malaysian Constitution only states that Islam is the religion of the federation. Many constitutional experts have argued that this means that the Malaysian state remains one not based on any particular religion, but one that guarantees freedom of all faiths as stipulated in Article 11 of the Constitution. However, in 1988 when the Amendment 121 (1A) was passed, the syariah courts were seemingly given absolute discretion over matters of Islam. This introduced yet another perhaps intended consequence on matters pertaining to religious freedom as we shall see below.
FAITH AND BODY POLITICS: MOORTHY AND LINA JOY Let me now touch on two controversial legal cases which no doubt had a bearing on the aborted IFC. These two cases were among a slew of controversies swirling around the issue of whether syariah courts have primacy over the civil courts in matters pertaining to Muslims and even non-Muslims who are related to Muslims. In December 2005, a major religious controversy engulfed Muslims and non-Muslims, in particular Hindus, sparked by the Kuala Lumpur religious authority, JAWI,17 laying claim literally on the dead body of one 17 Jabatan Agama Wilayah Persekutuan (Federal Territory Religious Department).
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Moorthy Maniam (alias Mohammad Abdullah)18 on the grounds that he had converted to Islam some time prior to his death. JAWI approached the KL Syariah Court on 22 December and got the ruling that Moorthy’s conversion to Islam was valid. This was, however, disputed by his wife S. Kaliammal, who took the matter to the High Court which heard the case on 28 December. The three-paneled Court of Appeal ruled that there was no “relief ” for Kaliammal on the grounds that Article 121 (1A) of the Malaysian Constitution proscribed a civil court from ruling on matters of Islam. The Constitutional Amendment Bill of 1988 which allowed for the insertion of Article 121 (1A) states that civil courts, despite being federal courts, shall have no jurisdiction with respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of syariah courts, which are state-level religious courts.19 A sequence of events followed which is typical of Malaysian consociational politics. Some 35 Hindu organizations, led by the Malaysian Hindu Sangam, protested the action of JAWI and called for an amendment to Article 121 (1A) of the Constitution. A similar stand was then taken by the inter-faith MCCBCHS which called on the government to “urgently cure the grave defect in our legal system by making the necessary amendments to the Federal Constitution and all other legislation so that jurisdiction to determine the validity of conversions into and out of Islam is vested in the High Court where all Malaysians can be parties and have equal rights as witnesses.” At the peak of the controversy, nine non-Muslim ministers in the Cabinet submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister for the matter to be brought up for discussion in the Cabinet. It was clear from this request that the non-Muslims were greatly perturbed by the Moorthy decision and wanted the Prime Minister to take a stand more sympathetic to them. However, the Prime Minister did the opposite and prevailed on the ministers to withdraw their request after privately discussing the issue with five of the ministers (Utusan Malaysia, 22 January 2005). For the non-Muslim
18 Corporal Moorthy, who died at the age of 36 from serious head injuries, was one of the 10 individuals in the Malaysian team, two of whom reached the peak of Mount Everest on 23 May 1997, the first Malaysians to achieve the feat. Moorthy was posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant in the midst of the controversy. 19 See Aliran Monthly, 25(11/12), 2005, for a discussion of this. The inserted Section 1A of Article 121 simply reads: “The courts referred to in Clause (1) [High Courts] shall have no jurisdiction in respect of any matter within the jurisdiction of the syariah courts.”
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ministers, this move effectively meant that they had failed to represent the interests of their constituents. After Moorthy, another case that made international headlines was that of Lina Joy, a Muslim woman of 43 years who embraced Christianity in 1988. She applied to the National Registration Department (NRD) for a change of name and religious status in 1997. In 1998, the NRD allowed the name change, but not the change of religion. Lina Joy appealed against this decision in the High Court in 2001. The High Court ruled against the change of religion, stating that the jurisdiction in conversion matters lies solely in the hands of the Syariah Court. In 2004, Lina Joy’s case to the Court of Appeal was dismissed on the grounds that the Syariah Court or any other Islamic authority did not confirm her renunciation of Islam. In her appeal, Lina Joy’s application to have her conversion to Christianity validated was struck off by the highest court of the land, the Federal Court, on 30 May 2007, ending a 10-year legal battle. The Court ruled in a 2-1 split decision that the NRD was correct to ask Lina Joy to seek a declaration from the Syariah Court to confirm her conversion. The Chief Justice, who sat on the three-man bench, argued that Muslims could not change their religion at their own whim and fancy. The dissenting judge, a Christian, argued that the NRD’s demand on Lina Joy was unreasonable, discriminatory and unconstitutional. It should be noted that the Moorthy controversy was compounded by another similar controversy involving the burial of a certain “Nyonya Tahir” which emerged at about the same time. This was a case of a 89year-old woman, of mixed Malay-Chinese parentage, who was married to a Chinese man who did not convert to Islam. Nyonya Tahir lived her life as a Buddhist and had also declared herself as such before a Commissioner of Oaths. Her family asked that her body be released by the Negeri Sembilan Islamic religious authority for Buddhist burial rites. The Seremban Syariah Court granted the request on the grounds that Nyonya Tahir did not live as a Muslim, at worst was an apostate, and thereby could not be buried under Muslim rites (Utusan Malaysia, 22 January 2005). There have also been other cases of controversial conversions that have surfaced in the recent past. One such case surfaced in April 2004, when the High Court dismissed the suit of one Shamala Sathiyaseelan who had asked for nullification of the conversion of her two infants to Islam by her
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estranged husband. The Court averred that only the syariah courts could decide on such a matter and moreover, that Shamala, not being Muslim, had no standing in a syariah court. The High Court, however, gave joint custody of the children to Shamala and her husband, with the caveat that the children should be brought up as Muslims and observe its strictures, or she would lose custody of them (Aliran Monthly, Vol. 25, No. 11/12, 2005). It could be said that Malaysia reached a new dangerous threshold of ethnic relations by the year 2007 because of the issues and contestations discussed above.20 The core of this new context of ethnic relations was an inter-ethnic, as well as an intra-Muslim, conflict, debate and discourse over Islam and religious rights. One side considered that Islam was becoming too embedded and was impinging negatively on the lives and rights of ordinary Malaysians and that Malaysians should look to the constitution for guarantees of civil liberties and freedom of religion. Contrariwise, the other side argued that while Islam was constitutionally embedded, there had been an erosion of its status and, furthermore, that all questions of religious rights and freedoms must be cast in terms of the dominant status of Islam as the official religion of the state. The second group often turned to the amendment to Article 121 (1A) which gave syariah courts full jurisdiction over questions of Islam. An impasse remained, nonetheless, as such matters are still referred to the civil courts and non-Muslims do not have legal standing in syariah courts. However, the highest legal authority, the Federal Court, had ruled in the Lina Joy case to confirm the primacy of syariah courts in matters pertaining to Islam. Inevitably, the implications of such a complex problem and its resolution or lack of resolution have impacted on Muslim–non-Muslim (in the old mould, Malay–non-Malay) relations. Undeniably, Muslim–non-Muslim relations at the formal level have greatly strained the government’s consociational model. Evidently, such cases as Moorthy and Lina Joy had pushed the non-Malay cabinet ministers to hand over a memorandum on inter-faith issues to the Prime Minister. The failure of Abdullah to deal sympathetically with the problem undermined the legitimacy 20 In some ways, the 8 March 2008 General Election was the political safety valve that allowed for the
venting of angst and grievances on the part of non-Muslims. That said, the fact that PAS was able to enter into an electoral pact and later into a political alliance with the People’s Justice Party (PKR) and the Democratic Action Party (DAP) augurs well for the resilience of Malaysian society.
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of his non-Muslim political partners in the ruling coalition. At the civil society level, the Malaysian Consultative Council for Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism was greatly exercised over such interfaith controversies and supported the formation of the IFC, which, unfortunately, was shelved by the government for reasons that remain opaque.
CONCLUSION: MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY, HYBRIDIZED STATE If Malaysian society was indeed at the new threshold of a changed context of ethnic relations, what then would have been plausible directions for a new political understanding amongst the political class and within civil society? The Malay-led political class seemingly had no appetite or gumption to tackle the problem. The governing UMNO party represented by the then Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi took umbrage over his non-Malay ministers’ mild protest and handled the newly emergent religious issues in an authoritarian manner by basically silencing their dissent. Mahathir, while known to be “modernist,” introduced Islamization and announced that Malaysia was already an Islamic state in 2001. By putting the lid on the IFC, the Abdullah government seemed to have given the pro-syariah Muslims reason to believe they had succeeded in winning an important round of the inter-religious debate. This changed context of ethnic relations indicated to the broad public that there was now a new conservative political ideology of the ruling coalition in conflict management, and that conflict avoidance may have become the preferred approach of the UMNO-led government. This was further enforced by the fact that civil society remained largely politically divided and fragmented along ethnic lines, despite the presence of a strong section of progressive Muslims who continued to rely on democratic procedures rather than violent altercation to resolve outstanding issues. The good news is that religious differences in Malaysia have remained within the realm of civil contestations and have not morphed into militant, intractable conflict. This said, Malaysia, for all intents and purposes, is still an intensely divided, conflicted and hybridized state, although not any more in the old mould of the “plural society.” Ethnic communities are increasingly in direct
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contact and in friction, although cultural separation and polarization is still a feature of society. Religion has become the major cleavage rather than race or ethnicity. Malaysia’s “secular” constitutional provisions tend to guarantee civil liberties, but at the same time the constitution provides that Islam is the religion of the federation. This set of contradictory provisions, augmented by ad hoc amendments of the UMNO-led government, permits secularists to argue for the implementation of minority cultural rights while also allowing Islamists to argue for a syariah-compliant state. To complicate matters, over time, two constructs of statist Islam have emerged in rhetoric and political practice: one propagated by PAS and the other by UMNO. Kelantan, a state run by PAS for almost two decades, has instituted a form of “Islamic state” in which an Islamic society and an Islamic lifestyle have become embedded in the social fabric. Terengganu remains contested by the two Malay parties, but is also for all intents and purposes “Islamic” in political practice. PAS now shares power in Kedah and also in Perak and could well try to introduce elements of Islamic lifestyle consonant with its notion of Islamic society. The 8 March General Election of 2008, which has been termed a “political tsunami” by many commentators, has added a new dimension to the morphing of the hybrid Malaysian state. The Barisan Nasional (BN) government, led by Abdullah Badawi, lost its two-thirds majority in parliament and lost four state governments to the opposition parties, while PAS retained the state of Kelantan. It is clear that the inter-faith fractures discussed above greatly impacted on the poor showing of BN, which suffered the worst defeat in its history. It triggered the impending retirement from politics in 2009 of Abdullah Badawi, the ineffectual leader of the BN. One of the factors that created such a result was the massive swing of Indian voters to the opposition parties, a factor related to the event organized by the Hindu Rights Action Front (HINDRAF) on 25 November 2007. HINDRAF, which was formed after the Moorthy decision discussed above, fought for the religious rights and the betterment of the Indian community. The Abdullah government again took umbrage when thousands of Indians took to the streets on 25 November to demonstrate, among other things, against the wanton demolition of Hindu temples and the alleged economic marginalization of Indians. Abdullah used the draconian Internal Security Act to detain five HINDRAF leaders. In the general election, only three Indian parliamentarians of the BN were returned and the leader of the
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Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), Samy Vellu, lost his seat. Religious issues like the Lina Joy case also greatly influenced Malaysian Christians to vote against the BN candidates. There is arguably a silver lining for interfaith developments as a consequence of the 2008 election. The opposition coalition of parties — led by the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR/People’s Justice Party), with its partners the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Islamic Party (PAS) — has now muted the call for an Islamic state, and inter-faith matters are being prioritized for more sustained resolution. The BN government on its part may be forced now to address inter-faith issues in a more consistent and compassionate manner.
REFERENCES Bari, Abdul Aziz (2005). The Enforcement of Morality through the Law. Paper presented at the National Law Symposium 2005, organized by the Law Students Society, International Islamic University Malaysia, Nikko Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. Faruqi, Shad Saleem (2005). The Malaysian Constitution, the Islamic State and Hudud Laws. In Islam in Southeast Asia: Political, Social and Strategic Challenges for the 21st Century, K.S. Nathan and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (eds.). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Fernando, Joseph M. (2006). The Position of Islam in the Constitution of Malaysia. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 37(2), 249–266. Furnivall, J.S. (1948). Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gullick, John M. (1958). Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya. London: Athlone Press. London School of Economics Monograph on Social Anthropology, No. 17. Hamayotsu, Kikue (2003). Politics of Syariah Reform: The Making of the State ReligioLegal Apparatus. In Malaysia: Islam, Society and Politics, Virginia Hooker and Narani Othman (eds.). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Kahn, Joel S. and Francis K.W. Loh (eds.) (1992). Fragmented Vision: Culture and Politics in Contemporary Malaysia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Lijphart, Arend (1977). Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Liow, Joseph Chinyong (2004). Political Islam in Malaysia: Problematising Discourse and Practice in the UMNO-PAS “Islamisation Race”. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 42(2), 184–205. Maznah, Mohamad (2004). Women’s Engagement with Political Islam in Malaysia. Global Change, Peace and Security, 16(2), 133–149. Maznah, Mohamad and Soak Koon Wong (eds.) (2001). Risking Malaysia: Culture, Politics and Identity. Bangi: Penerbit UKM in association with Malaysian Social Science Association. Milne, R.S. and Diane K. Mauzy (1978). Politics and Government in Malaysia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
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Milner, A.C. (1982). Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. Association for Asian Studies Monograph 40. Noor, Farish A. (2004). Islam Embedded: The Historical Development of the Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party PAS (1951–2003), Vols. 1 & 2. Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Sociological Research Institute. (2003). The Localization of Islamist Discourse in the Tafsir of Tun Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat, Murshid’ul Am of PAS. In Malaysia: Islam, Society and Politics, Virginia Hooker and Norani Othman (eds.). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Ooi, Kee Beng, Johan Saravanamuttu and Hock Guan Lee (2008). March 8: Eclipsing May 13. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Saravanamuttu, Johan (2001a). Is There a Politics of the Malaysian Middle Class? In Southeast Asian Middle Classes: Prospects for Social Change and Democratization, Abdul Rahman Embong (ed.). Bangi: Penerbit UKM. (2001b). Malaysian Civil Society — Awakenings? In Risking Malaysia: Culture, Politics and Identity, Maznah Mohamad and Wong Soak Koon (eds.). Bangi: Penerbit UKM in association with Malaysian Social Science Association, pp. 93–111. Shamsul, A.B. (2005). Islam Embedded: ‘Moderate’ Political Islam and Governance in the Malay World. In Islam in Southeast Asia: Political, Social and Strategic Challenges for the 21st Century, K.S. Nathan and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (eds.). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Smith, Martin G. (1965). The Plural Society in the British West Indies. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Tan, Nathaniel and John Lee (eds.) (2008). Religion Under Siege? Lina Joy, the Islamic State and Freedom of Faith. Kuala Lumpur: Kinibooks. Weiss, Meredith L. (2004). The Changing Shape of Islamic Politics in Malaysia. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 4, 139–173. Zainah, Anwar (2005). Law-Making in the Name of Islam: Implications for Democratic Governance. In Islam in Southeast Asia: Political, Social and Strategic Challenges for the 21st Century, K.S. Nathan and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (eds.). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
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Chapter
17
Religious Revival and the Emerging Secularism in China ZHAO LITAO
China has been de-secularizing since the early 1980s when the government shifted from a policy of suppressing religion to one of co-opting and controlling it. As a central player in re-defining the state–religion relationship, the state has been more tolerant of religion while also more effective in managing it. This chapter will review the management system put in place by the Chinese government, highlighting how this system allows for a nationwide religious revival on one hand while maintaining a firm grip on politically threatening religious movements on the other. It will also discuss how factors such as the central–local relationship, the changing economy and society, and the international environment have shaped the state–religion relationship in China, examining the reviving folk religions and each of the five institutional religions — Buddhism, Daoism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam.
China began to shift from Mao’s radical policies to Deng’s economic reforms in the late 1970s. Profound economic and social changes have occurred in the past three decades. Religious revival, as reflected in rebuilt worship places, the re-emergence of religious activities, and the increasing number of religious believers, has become a fact. Deng’s economic reforms have resulted in growing spiritual needs that the economic reforms per se cannot address, thereby creating a situation in which religion is allowed to come back. It is beyond dispute that religion is playing a larger role in the social life of the Chinese people. The issue is whether the reviving religion(s) will present a serious problem to the party-state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). There have been episodes of conflicts between religious organizations/sects and the CCP. As religious believers strive for more freedom, no one can rule out the possibility of violent confrontation. 301
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But, so far, the religious revival has largely been a non-violent and nonconfrontational one. By and large, the tension between religion and the state has been less salient than in many other countries. The discussion about the relationship of religion and state has not assumed a central place in the public discourse as well, in part because the CCP does not allow any debate on this subject, but also because the dominant discourse in China is modernization defined in secular terms. China seems to be in a contradictory dual-transition process. On the one hand, there is a growing interest in, and a strong revival of, religion. Some scholars describe this change in terms of de-secularization (Yang 2004). On the other hand, China is seeking to modernize the country by endorsing secular values and creating secular institutions, such as education, trade, investment, enterprise, rule of law, and so on. Religion is regarded as unimportant or irrelevant because it does not provide a model of modernization. This seemingly contradictory dual-transition is clearly taking place in China. This chapter will provide an analytical framework to account for this change, based on a typology of secularism proposed by Wang Gungwu (2004) that contrasts Chinese and Indian secularism with that of the West. It highlights that China is shifting not from a secular state to a religious country, but from an extreme form of secularism to a more moderate form of secularism, even though the term “secularism” is rarely used in the Chinese context. The shift gives more freedom to religious believers, but fundamentally the party-state remains dominant in the state– religion relationship, a position unlikely to change no matter how much religion has revived in China.
THREE TYPES OF SECULARISM From China’s own experience, there are at least three types of secularism, if the term is used in a broad sense. The first type of secularism originated from China’s past and is associated with Confucianism, which has been modified by Buddhism and Daoism over time. With an emphasis on this world, this type of secularism features rational and this-worldly attitudes towards religion (Wang 2004a). From the Han dynasty onward, this type of secularism had largely prevailed in China until the turn of the 20th century.
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The introduction of Buddhism and the appearance of Daoism about 2,000 years ago did not fundamentally change the “secular” outlook of the Chinese, even though the term “secular” or “secularism” was rarely used to describe China’s state–religion relationship (Wang 2004b). During the last few hundred years, some kind of Low Confucianism emerged among ordinary Chinese, which included a whole range of syncretic values and practices derived from Buddhism, Daoism and folk religions (Wang 1988). To the extent that it was embedded in family and community, religion simply became part of everyday life. Yet, despite the countrywide presence of religion, it has never become a dominant model of economic, social, and political organization in China. By and large, religion has always been weak vis-à-vis the state: “For many hundreds of years, the Chinese state in all its forms has assumed that it has the right and obligation to control every aspect of life, including religious beliefs and practices” (Overmyer 2003, p. 308). Although the state capacity for control varied from time to time, religion was never allowed to develop into an independent source of power that could challenge and replace the secular state. The second type of secularism was imported from the West from the 19th century. It is associated with modernization in Western Europe and North America. This modern secularism, which was the end-product of the difficult separation of church and state, emphasized secular values and institutions as the precondition for modernization. With the global expansion of capitalism, this type of secularism has gained a dominant position in the world in the last two or three centuries. As China’s own secularism failed to respond to foreign invasions since the mid-19th century, Chinese reform-minded officials and intellectuals began to search for ways to modernize the country. It became clear to many that the West provided the only model of modernization. Japan’s success made the argument even more convincing. In the early 20th century, many Chinese came to see science and democracy as what could make China rich and strong. Thus, the Chinese began to accept the concepts and ideals associated with the second type of secularism. This type of capitalism-secularism, however, quickly lost appeal among left-wing intellectuals and young revolutionaries. To them, the major fault line was not between the secular and the sacred, but rather between the
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haves and the have-nots. The second type of secularism was not seen as universal, but associated with capitalism, while the truth lied in communism. With the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, China quickly embraced communism before the second type of secularism was able to take root. Communism as a third type of secularism shares many aspirations and ideals with the second type of secularism. But unlike the second type that sought to achieve progress through secular institutions “liberated” in the process of church–state separation, communism was an extreme form of secularism. It became the state ideology as well as the way of organizing the economy and society. As a result, religion became the enemy of the state in China. Communism was also in sharp contrast to China’s own secularism as it took religion much more seriously, something that most Chinese would not expect and could not understand. As the most extreme manifestation of the hostile relationship between communism and religion, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) destroyed almost all worship places and suppressed any religious activity. This scope and extent of state intervention was unprecedented in Chinese history. Since the late 1970s, China began to abandon Mao’s repressive policies and shift from political struggle to economic development. This shift involved a transition from central planning to market allocation. It therefore signaled a shift away from the third type of secularism towards the second type of secularism, at least in the way the economy is organized. Central to Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms was a renewed emphasis on science, technology, materialistic incentives, and integration with the world economy dominated by the US and Europe. Underlying this modernization project was the secular and materialistic culture originating from Western Europe and North America, rather than the secular fundamentalism practiced in communist countries especially Maoist China. To a large extent, China still rejects liberal democracy and civil society. Transition from communism to the second type of secularism is therefore, at best, partial. However, even this partial transition has created enough room for religion to revive at an unprecedented pace. Meanwhile, there have also been calls to revive traditional Chinese culture. Therefore, some elements of the first type of secularism may come back as well.
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DEPARTURE FROM EXTREME SECULARISM In late 1978, the CCP began to move away from Mao’s radical policies. This in turn led to a departure from the repressive policy on religion. The official Party policy on religion was issued in 1982, widely known as “Document No. 19.” The CCP, of course, was rhetorically committed to communism. But at the policy level, there was a fundamental change from suppression to respect for, and protection of, the freedom of religious belief. The new Party directive recognized religious belief as a private matter, and regarded it as counterproductive to prevent religious belief through coercion (Potter 2003). The distinction between the private and the public was not exactly the same as the separation of church and state. Nevertheless, such a distinction allowed the state–religion relationship to shift from secular fundamentalism to a more moderate form of secularism. There were still many restrictions, which have attracted much attention and criticism from scholars and religious communities. While the state acknowledged the freedom to believe in religion, it privileged the freedom to not believe in religion, and was committed to using propaganda and the school system to marginalize religious belief (MacInnis 1989). Moreover, the state recognized only five religions — Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism — and excluded folk religions and other forms of belief from legal protection. It also attempted to confine religious activities to worship places that were recognized by and registered with the government, and prohibit preaching and proselytization outside worship places. The restrictions on religious belief and activities hindered the transition from secular fundamentalism to moderate secularism, but did not prevent that transition from happening. The CCP tried to legitimize the transition by reference to the positive function of religion in the Chinese society. It acknowledged the influence of religion among religious believers, and emphasized the important role of religion in unifying diverse groups of people into a United Front. Such positive functions of religion created favorable social conditions for modernization. In this connection, the CCP’s tolerant policy on religion was linked to the second type of secularism. There remained some discrepancy between the state ideology and religious policy. The CCP’s commitment to communism was at odds with
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its tolerant policy on religion. To minimize the tension resulting from this discrepancy, the CCP argued that religion would eventually disappear and communism would prevail in the end. Based on this argument, the CCP decoupled the ideological core — communism — from the imperative social and economic conditions. It went on to argue that the right way to get rid of religion was not through coercion and suppression, as what was done in the Cultural Revolution, but through economic development and social progress, which would remove socioeconomic conditions that produce and sustain religion. This interesting argument was not inconsistent with what Marx wrote about religion. It provided a way out of the secular fundamentalism practiced in the Mao period. The new argument was in sharp contrast to the old one that was dominant in the Mao period. The old argument saw religion as an impediment to social and economic progress, a wrong ideology that had to be destroyed in the first place before modernization could be achieved. Under this extreme secularism, religion was given no place whatsoever. The CCP’s new argument in the early 1980s continued to see religion as undesirable, but stressed modernization as the precondition for religion to disappear. Social and economic progress should take precedence over the disappearance of religion, not the other way around. Modernization not only became the end in itself, but also a means to get rid of religion. The CCP’s new argument therefore placed its tolerant policy on the grounds of moderate secularism, shifting away from the Maoist repressive policy on religion.
CONSOLIDATING TRANSITION THROUGH “RULE OF LAW” The 1982 “Document No. 19” set the tone for China’s policy on religion in the reform era. Domestic and international changes in the 1980s and 1990s prompted the CCP to review its religious policy, in an effort to prevent religion from becoming a source of social instability, ethnic conflict and political challenge. Subsequent policies did not move beyond the framework of moderate secularism, although there were exceptions of harsh crackdowns on separatist movements and the “evil cults” such as Falungong. The CCP felt the need to co-opt religious adherents while repressing any challenge to its power in the aftermath of social unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang
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in 1988–1989 and the Tiananmen incident in 1989. It issued “Document No. 6” in 1991 as a policy update. The 1991 policy reaffirmed the principle of non-interference with “normal” religious activities and the internal affairs of religious organizations. Of course, what was “normal” was ambiguous and subject to Party interpretation. For religious activities deemed as not normal, the CCP emphasized regulatory control (Chan and Hunter 1995). This was the first time that the CCP brought the issue of religious regulation under the framework of rule of law. The Religious Bureau under the State Council was responsible for drafting religious regulations; at the sub-national level, provincial governments were allowed to issue local regulations in accordance with national regulations. The 1991 “Document No. 6” established a second approach to manage the state–religion relationship. The first approach, the United Front one, emphasized tolerant management and co-option of religious adherents, and was established in the 1940s when the CCP was fighting a civil war with the Kuomintang (KMT). This approach was recognized in the 1982 “Document No. 19” as China was mobilizing social support for Deng Xiaoping’s market-oriented reforms. The second approach, established in the 1991 “Document No. 6,” emphasized the need for a limited tolerance and strict enforcement of state regulations on religion. For instance, the 1991 Document directed public security organs to curb those who use religion to “engage in disruptive activities,” “stir up trouble, endanger public safety, and weaken the unification of the country and national unity,” or “collude with hostile forces outside the country to endanger China’s security” (Spiegel 1992). With different emphases, these two approaches formed the basis of the Party’s response to the evolving state–religion relationship. Depending on the situation, one approach may be emphasized over the other. The two approaches may also be used jointly to strike a balance between tolerance of “normal” religious activities and repression of what was deemed as heterodoxy (Potter 2003). Despite an emphasis on limited tolerance and regulatory control, the second approach should not be viewed as a return to Maoist secular fundamentalism. In fact, the second approach attempted to transform the religious issue, which is complex and involves values, identities, sentiments and perhaps politics, into a legal issue, which can be discussed in value-neutral and rational terms. The concept of “rule of
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law,” which was used to legitimize the second approach, was central to the separation of church and state and the state-building in the West. Seen in this light, the second approach consolidated the transition from extreme secularism to modern secularism characterized by an emphasis on secular institutions such as rule of law. More regulations were issued in the 1990s to strengthen regulatory control on religion. Special attention was given to the places of worship. In January 1994, the State Council issued Regulations Regarding the Management of Places of Religious Activities; in July 1996, the State Council issued Method for Annual Inspection of Places of Religious Activities. Every worship place should be formally registered and undergo annual inspections. The annual inspection covered a wide spectrum of activities and performance, including compliance with laws, regulations and Party policies; religious activities; and financial management. In terms of compliance with laws, regulations and Party policies, the bottom line was that the places of worship should not engage in activities that would harm national unity, ethnic solidarity, social stability, physical health of citizens, or obstruct the educational system. The annual inspection allowed the partystate to control religion in a more institutionalized and effective way. The regulatory control also extended to religious activities by foreigners. In January 1994, the State Council issued Regulation on the Management of Religious Activities of Foreigners in the People’s Republic of China. According to this regulation, foreigners can undertake religious activities in churches or other worship places that are formally registered, and establish relationships with Chinese religious practitioners through official religious organizations at the provincial or national level. The donation by foreigners or foreign organizations for training Chinese religious personnel overseas should be managed by China’s national religious associations. Foreign organizations are prohibited from interfering with China’s independence and autonomy in managing worship places and selecting and promoting religious personnel. Foreigners are prohibited from proselytizing; recruiting candidates to go abroad for instruction; and establishing religious organizations, worship places, religious schools or training sessions inside China (Potter 2003). From the viewpoint of religious freedom, many have criticized China’s stringent control on religion. Compared with the Cultural Revolution,
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however, there has been a fundamental change in the mechanism of control. The Cultural Revolution used large-scale social movements to attack religion, even to the point of losing government control. In contrast, the control on religion since the 1990s was taken as a legal and administrative issue. There was an effort to insulate secular institutions such as education and sovereignty from the interference of religion. By and large, the shift from social movements to regulatory control reflected a profound transition from secular fundamentalism to moderate secularism.
TRANSITION TO A HYBRID FORM OF SECULARISM I have briefly described the departure away from Mao’s extreme secularism. It remains an issue whether a distinctive form of secularism is taking shape. There are at least two alternative forms of moderate secularism that can define China’s state–religion relationship. One form is derived from China’s own past. Within this type of secularism, religions existed without becoming a model of economic, social, and political organization for the larger society. There was no need for an emphasis on the separation of church and state, because religion was generally weak and under the control of the state (Yang 1961). While religion occasionally became a source of resistance and peasant uprising, it did not change its weak position vis-à-vis the state when order was restored or reestablished. Another form of moderate secularism is associated with modernization in the West. Of course, it took centuries of worldly competition for wealth and power before the West modernized. The process of state–religion separation and state-building was difficult, involving a much higher degree of violence than the type of state–religion relationship in China’s past. Nevertheless, when compared with the communism practiced in the Cultural Revolution, the type of secularism derived from the Enlightenment project in Europe was much more favorable towards religion, and was therefore a more moderate form of secularism. China’s three decades of transition are long enough to allow some preliminary assessment of the shape of the state–religion relationship. In the past three decades, with the decline and collapse of communism, the West provided China the only model of modernization. While China
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selectively learned from the West, focusing on economics more than any other experiences, the Western emphasis on secular values and institutions such as science, technology, education, and rule of law has strongly shaped China’s transformation. One possible scenario is therefore a convergence of the state–religion relationship to the type of secularism that has matured in the West in the past two centuries. The modern state and the secular institutions become the most important determinant of social and economic well-being. Another scenario is a return to the traditional form of secularism, as China regains some confidence in its past with its reemergence from hundreds of years of humiliation.
Transition to Modern Secularism? There are certain aspects of modern secularism in China’s state–religion relationship in the reform era. Modern secularism features a separation of secular functions and religious activities and an emphasis on building secular institutions to promote economic development, public health and social welfare (Smith 1970). In China, considerable efforts have been made to institutionalize and rationalize secular functions. In the past three decades, China looked to the West instead of its own past for clues about how to build a market economy, expand the legal system, and reform the government structure. Pursuing secular goals, which are defined in economic, social and political terms, has been China’s focus in the past three decades. To a large extent, the CCP’s religious policy is oriented toward the achievement of secular goals. Two examples illustrate the CCP’s effort to create modern secularism by preventing religion from interfering with secular functions and goals. The first is the protection of schools from religious penetration. On one hand, discrimination in educational opportunity based on religion is prohibited; on the other hand, religion is not allowed to interfere with the state educational system.1 “Activities such as recruiting believers among primary and secondary school students, propagating religious ideology in school, establishing illegal (that is, not properly approved and registered) religious schools and enrolling young people” violate the regulation that religion should not interfere with state education (Potter 2003, p. 326). 1 See the Education Law (1995) Article 9.
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Another example is more controversial, but it clearly shows the CCP’s stronger commitment to secular values than religious and sacred ones. The CCP has developed a strong commitment to secular values such as sovereignty and national unity, which have become the bottom line. To protect such secular values from being challenged by religion and other forces, the CCP takes tough measures whenever it perceives any such threat. In Tibet, the outbreak of unrest in 1988–1989 prompted a series of measures from the CCP that sought to maintain order and marginalize the influence of the Dalai Lama, including the imposition of martial law, the ban against the display and possession of the Dalai Lama’s photograph, the use of school education to subordinate religion, and the re-education and, in some cases, expulsion of monks over their loyalty to the Dalai Lama (Karmel 1995). While these measures may look counterproductive to religious scholars and China watchers, they clearly show the CCP’s determination to put sovereignty and national unity ahead of religious freedom. In Xinjiang, regulation of Islam has also tightened over time. With the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia, the CCP sees the need to sustain the loyalty of Chinese Muslims while isolating and containing Turkic separatists in Xinjiang (Gladney 2003). As a result, while the religion is generally not considered a political threat in other parts of China, Islam embraced by the Uighur remains heavily regulated in Xinjiang. As Potter (2003, p. 329) described: religious activities and personnel must remain within the localities where they are registered, and religious teaching and the distribution of religious materials is closely controlled. Education and training of religious personnel is permitted only by approved patriotic religious groups, while people in charge of scripture classes must support the leadership of the Party and the socialist system, and safeguard unity of all nationalities and unification of the motherland.
Since the 9/11 event, the CCP has used the US-led “War on Terror” to justify repression of Islamic activities in Xinjiang. The CCP’s crackdown on Islamic separatists is not framed as a conflict between religious fundamentalism and modern secularism, but rather in secular terms as a conflict between separatism and national unity. The more difficult relationship between the CCP and Catholicism (than that between the CCP and Protestantism) also sheds light on China’s
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determination to defend secular values such as sovereignty and autonomy even at the cost of alienating some domestic religious believers. The hostility between the CCP and Catholicism can be explained by the Catholic faith owing its religious authority to the Roman Catholic Pope in the Vatican City, and with conversion entailing recognizing one’s religious allegiance to the Holy See while subjecting national loyalty to doubt. Church law requires a priest to receive approval from the Vatican to be licitly made a bishop, while the CCP insists that China’s bishops do not need such approval. The CCP’s approach, which emphasizes autonomy and non-interference from foreign religion and manages Catholicism by subsuming it under “internal affairs,” has created a great deal of tension between the official Patriotic Catholic Association and the unofficial underground Catholic churches. While the CCP and the Vatican have worked out some practical ways to minimize the bishop approval dispute, many hurdles remain to prevent the two sides from establishing normal diplomatic relations. The conflict between the CCP’s emphasis on religious autonomy and the Vatican’s demand for religious authority continues to be the root of the problem (Madsen 2003). From the early 1980s, the CCP has approved five major religions — Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism — and sought to regulate them within the modern framework of “rule of law.” In spite of a shift from repression to tolerance towards these religions, the CCP has always been skeptical of their interference with secular values and functions throughout the reform era, more so for those that are formally structured and/or more susceptible to foreign influence. Regardless of the basis of such skepticism, the CCP has taken religion seriously. Heavy emphasis is placed on prohibitions against using religion to challenge CCP leadership, disrupt social order, or destroy unity among nationalities. The CCP sees the need to protect sovereignty, national unity and social stability as both the ultimate secular values and the preconditions for China to eventually achieve modernization. While its religious policy has drawn criticism for limiting religious freedom and disrespecting human rights, the CCP’s suspicion of religion and its effort to build a buffer zone between religion and secular functions nonetheless remind us of the bitter separation of church and state in the West. The very criticism that the CCP has taken religion too seriously underscores the difficult transition to modern secularism characterized by
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the structural separation of church and state and an emphasis on the need to build secular institutions to achieve secular goals.
Return to Traditional Secularism? While some elements of modern secularism are evident in China’s transition away from communism, such a transition also paves the way for some elements of traditional secularism to come back. The secular values in ancient Chinese thought “had begun not with God or gods but with a faith in the three-part continuum of Heaven, Earth and Man, in which Man and Earth had prominence and Man was given a firm if not exactly equal place” (Wang 2004a, p. 113). Confucius endorsed this position with an emphasis on this life rather than the afterlife. Over the next 2,000 years, the early secularism of Confucianism underwent profound changes, as the introduction of Mahayana Buddhism and the rise of Daoism prompted Confucian elites to reinterpret their own classics by recognizing the spiritual needs of the people and incorporating some of the doctrines of Buddhism and Daoism (Wang 2004a). China’s own secularism eventually failed, and China began to embrace modern secular values from the West at the turn of the 20th century as a replacement. Communism was chosen, but failed quickly in a short span of three decades from 1949 to 1979. The failure of communism led to a critical reexamination of both modern Western cultures and traditional Chinese culture (Gu 1999). Many have come to emphasize the virtues and possibilities of Chinese traditional culture and religion (Fang 1988; Ge 1987). Within this larger context, there has been a strong revival of traditional secularism, which features active syncretism of different doctrines and rituals and an emphasis on the utilitarian purposes of religion. Traditionally, the Chinese have been syncretic in their religious beliefs and inclusive in their religious practices. Active syncretism over the centuries has intertwined numerous religious elements in Buddhism, Daoism and folk religions together and it is now difficult to distinguish them, especially among the people’s common beliefs. It helps to soften the conflicts between different schools of thought and doctrine, thus minimizing the potential tension common among the monolithic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The ordinary Chinese people embrace religion for utilitarian purposes. They
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turn to religion for healing, good fortune and divination, not for political advice and participation; and they worship different gods and deities as long as these gods and deities are believed to possess supernatural power. There have been no conflicts in showing loyalty to different powers, be they secular or religious. The syncretic and non-political nature of the traditional Chinese faiths is best demonstrated in local communal religions, which combine beliefs and practices from Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism and take the form of ancestor and protective deity worships, geomancy, exorcism, and prognostication. Unlike the five major faiths that are approved by the state, the CCP’s narrow definition of religion leaves local communal religions out of legal recognition. In practice, however, none of the five major faiths can match the revival of local communal religions, which had been part of family life and communal identity for centuries. Their revival is most evident in Southeast China, where annual festivals for local and regional gods often mobilize the entire village population for elaborate rites and rituals. At the local level, the boundary between the secular and the religious is blurred, as local elites from both traditional secular institutions (such as lineage heads) and modern secular institutions (such as retired cadres) are actively involved in the organization of religious activities in local communities. Moreover, the “remarkably dense network of local temple alliances and clusters of nested hierarchies of temples … has taken on many local administrative tasks, forming an unofficial second tier of local governance” (Dean 2003, p. 342). While modern secularism emphasizes the separation of church and state, the reviving communal religions in China reflect a different type of secularism and a different kind of relationship between the secular and the sacred. In this type of secularism, it is custom rather than law that regulates the religious activities. Religion is embedded in the larger structure that involves both secular institutions and religious beliefs and practices. With the help of ritual specialists, local secular elites provide the authority and organizational skills to make annual festivals for gods happen. In short, this type of secularism removes the tension between the sacred and the secular by embedding religion in local communities. It was this embeddedness that characterized the type of secularism in China before China began to accept modern secularism from the West. Since the 1980s, China’s departure from
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communism has paved the way for this type of secularism to revive in many parts of China.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE China’s transformation is not finished yet, as political and social reforms have yet to begin or take root. In the ongoing transition from communism, China’s emerging secularism is likely to be shaped by both modern concepts and institutions from the West and China’s own experience in the past, because the West provides the only model of modernization while China’s confidence in its past has increased with its re-emergence as one of the big powers in the world. The way the CCP seeks to regulate religion has been strongly influenced by modern secularism derived from the West. The CCP has embraced the ideal of “rule of law” and stressed the need to regulate religion in accordance with law. Its (over-) emphasis on the non-interference of religion with secular institutions and values can be traced to the long rivalry and eventual separation of church and state in the West, not from its own past. With the regained legal recognition, the five major faiths — Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism — have revived their activities and organizations; rebuilt their temples, mosques and churches; and claimed growing numbers of believers. In the case of Catholicism, the estimated membership increased from about 3 million in 1949 to 10–12 million in 2001; Protestantism has expanded even more rapidly, from less than one million to 25–30 million (Zhao 2008). Despite the strong religious revival, the state–religion relationship in China has been criticized as an unbalanced one in favor of the state. Many hope for a more balanced relationship, which would be closer to the Western model that allows for more religious freedom without undermining secular institutions and values. Whether China will follow this path depends on whether China will transform into a liberal democracy. As advocated by Zhou Tianyong, an adviser to the CCP’s Central Committee, “by 2020, China will basically finish its political and institutional reforms . . . . There will be many more non-governmental organizations, chambers of commerce, industry associations and other social groups. Religion should also be given a wider platform to play a position role. We should protect
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religious freedom” (quoted from The Daily Telegraph, 15 October 2008).2 Zhou’s proposal, however, has yet to become a Party consensus. The direction and pace of China’s political reform remain unclear so far. The CCP’s regulatory focus on the five major faiths allows local communal religions to revive even more strongly. The revival of local communal religions, however, reflects the emergence of a different type of secularism, which is not derived from the West but from China’s own past. This type of secularism sees religion not as an independent source of power and morality that rivals the secular state, but as one of the many institutions embedded in local communities. Local communal religions had been part of family life and community identity for centuries. To local people, they are effective in dealing with their wishes and pains. To the CCP, given that people turn to religion for healing and blessing rather than for social and political mobilization, and as long as the revival of local communal religions is non-violent and non-confrontational, there is no need to suddenly shift away from the current tolerant policy. Nevertheless, the CCP’s suspicion of local communal religions as intertwining superstitions makes it unwilling to legalize local communal religions. For this reason, the type of secularism embodied in the revival of local communal religions is unlikely to be promoted by the CCP. As a result, there is a limit to the re-emergence of traditional secularism as a new model for managing the state–religion relationship. In short, both types of secularism, one influenced by the West and the other by the past, are likely to continue their emergence in the foreseeable future without converging.
REFERENCES Chan, Kim-Kwong and Alan Hunter (1995). New Light on Religious Policy in the PRC. Issues and Studies, 31(2), 21–36. Dean, Kenneth (2003). Local Communal Religion in Contemporary South-east China. The China Quarterly, 174(2), 338–358. Fang, Litian (1988). Zhongguo fojiao yu chuantong wenhua [Chinese Buddhism and Traditional Culture]. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press. Ge, Zhaoguang (1987). Daojiao yu zhongguo wenhua [Daoism and Chinese Culture]. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press. 2 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/3195370/China-will-be-a-democracy-
by-2020-says-senior-party-figure.html [accessed 20 October 2008].
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Gladney, Dru C. (2003). Islam in China: Accommodation or Separatism. The China Quarterly, 174(2), 453–467. Gu, Edward X. (1999). Cultural Intellectuals and the Politics of Cultural Public Space in Communist China (1979–1989). Journal of Asian Studies, 58(2), 389–431. Karmel, Solomon M. (1995). Ethnic Tension and the Struggle for Order: China’s Policies in Tibet. Pacific Affairs, 68(4), 485–508. MacInnis, Donald E. (1989). Religion in China Today: Policy and Practice. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Madsen, Richard (2003). Catholic Revival during the Reform Era. The China Quarterly, 174(2), 469–487. Overmyer, Daneil L. (2003). Religion in China Today: Introduction. The China Quarterly, 174(2), 307–316. Potter, Pitman B. (2003). Belief in Control: Regulation of Religion in China. The China Quarterly, 174(2), 317–337. Smith, Donald Eugene (1970). Religion and Political Development. Boston: Little Brown. Spiegel, Mickey (1992). Freedom of Religion in China (Appendix 1). Washington, London and Brussels: Human Rights Watch/Asia. Wang, Gungwu (1988). Trade and Cultural Values: Australia and the Four Dragons. Current Issues in Asian Studies Series, No. 1. Victoria, Australia: The Asian Studies Association of Australia. Wang, Gungwu (2004a). State and Faith: Secular Values in Asia and the West. In Gregor Benton and Hong Liu (eds.), Diasporic Chinese Ventures: The Life and Work of Wang Gungwu. London: RoutledgeCurzon, pp. 103–123. Wang, Gungwu (2004b). Secular China. In Gregor Benton and Hong Liu (eds.), Diasporic Chinese Ventures: The Life and Work of Wang Gungwu. London: RoutledgeCurzon, pp. 124–139. Yang, C. K. (1961). Religion in Chinese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yang, Fenggang (2004). Between Secularist Ideology and Desecularizing Reality: The Birth and Growth of Religious Research in Communist China. Sociology of Religion, 65(2), 101–119. Zhao, Litao (2008). Zhengce zhuanxing yu zhongguo de zongjiao fuxing [Policy Change and China’s Religious Revival]. Twenty-First Century, 109, 15–25.
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18
State and Religion in Turkey: Which Secularism? RECEP S¸ ENTÜRK
Turkey is the only secular Muslim country which wants to be a part of a nonMuslim union, the EU. Turkish secularism is confusing to outside observers, in particular to the Europeans, and poses a problem in its integration into the EU. Turkish secularism is usually compared to French secularism. Yet there are major differences between them. The only parallel that can be found in the world to Turkish secularism is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Chinesestyle secularism where the state controls religion. The present political tensions in Turkey should be analyzed in the light of this phenomenon. The current main political cleavage in Turkey is not between Islamists and secularists, but between advocates of Western-style democratic secularism and advocates of the authoritarian-style secularism. The latter are against the Western-style democratic secularism and therefore against the EU.
In modern Turkey, secularism was introduced as synonymous with modernism during the first half of the 20th century. Therefore, secularization has become part of Turkish modernization and Westernization. It was argued that the secret of the success of the triumphant Western nations lied in their secular approach and institutions. Consequently, secularism has been accepted as a prerequisite of being modern following the model of the developed Western nations. However, in the world, there are divergent practices of secularism. As a result, determination to make Turkey a secular country brought about another pressing question: which secularism? Specifically, is it the AngloSaxon, French, German or the Soviet secularism that Turkey should adopt? This question has yet to be answered clearly in Turkey. Some advocate that Turkey should adopt the American form of secularism, while some advocate 319
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that the French model should be adopted. Others defend preserving the present model which — as I will demonstrate below — has striking structural similarities with the Soviet model, but it is not an exact replication of it. Consequently, today in Turkish society, there is a consensus on accepting secularism, but there is a conflict over the meaning of it and how it should be implemented. A significant segment of the Turkish society, from majority and minority religious groups, is critical of the practices of the present authoritarian secularism, though for different reasons, and demand reform toward a more liberal and democratic secular model following the Western democratic countries. These demands increase in parallel to the progress of Turkey’s membership application in the European Union (EU). The persistent lack of clarity on the meaning of secularism is reflected in the successive Turkish constitutions. The Republic of Turkey was declared in 1923 on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire (1299–1923) following its defeat in the First World War against European powers.1 The first Turkish Constitution, which was accepted in 1924, stated that “the religion of the state is Islam.” This article was removed from the Constitution in 1934. Laicism entered the Turkish Constitution for the first time in 1937, a year prior to the death of Ataturk (1881–1938). It has been kept in the later constitutions of 1961 and 1982. However, all Turkish constitutions have been completely silent about what is meant by laicism. Why has this been so? How should we interpret this silence? What is it that the authors of the constitution aimed to achieve by remaining silent on such a critical issue? This lack of clarity regarding the definition of laicism and its social, legal and political implications constitute the problem I will explore in this paper. Prior to that, I will provide a brief survey of the history of secularization in Turkey to illustrate the context for those who are not familiar with it. The silence of the Turkish Constitution on the meaning of laicism has been the source of great tension and controversy among politicians, lawyers, journalists, intellectuals and the general public. The still pressing question is how to understand laicism: Is it freedom of religion and separation of the state and religion? Is it total state control over religion? Is it atheism and de-establishment of religion? The liberals argue that secularism is separation 1 For a brief survey of Turkish history from the rise of the Ottoman Empire to the present, see Feroz
Ahmad (2003). Turkey: The Quest for Identity. Oxford: One World.
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of religion and state and the guarantee for freedom of religion. Yet for the advocates of authoritarianism, secularism is the state control over religion. Presently, Turkey has a social consensus on adopting secularism by all strands in the political spectrum, but each political group has a different and sometimes opposing concept of secularism. However, this can hardly continue for a long time without clarifying what is meant by secularism and building a consensus on the meaning of secularism as well. The future of Turkish secularism may witness efforts to build consensus on the meaning of secularism. Since its first adoption in 1937, the secularist ruling elite has been excessively vigilant and very concerned to protect the secular nature of the Republic against possible threats from within the Turkish society by “reactionary” and ideologically “backward” segments. The official discourse, especially during the celebration of national days, explicitly reflects this angst. As a result of this anxious approach, the present Turkish Constitution, which was accepted in 1982 after a coup d’état, made “laïcité” an unchangeable principle of the Constitution. The Constitution prohibits even proposing or suggesting any such amendment.
HISTORY OF SECULARIZATION IN TURKEY The present Constitution of Turkey, which was accepted two years after the military coup in 1980, is not the first one to adopt laicism as the fundamental feature of the Turkish political system. Laicism became part of the Turkish Constitution in 1937 through a constitutional amendment. However, some historians trace the roots of laicism back to the Tanzimat era2 (1839), the reform period under Sultan Mahmud II, followed by the First and the Second Ottoman constitutional periods in 1876 and 1908. As we will see below, some historians even trace it to the classical period of the Ottoman Empire. Although laicism was legally accepted in 1937 by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, in practice it may be considered to have been the last phase of a process which had been initiated in 1923 when representative 2 In Turkish, “tanzimat” means reform. It refers to the reform movement initiated by Sultan Mahmud II by a declaration in 1839. The purpose of Tanzimat was to save the Ottoman Empire by reforming it following the model of Western states.
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democracy was accepted. Subsequent radical reform efforts under Ataturk to build a secular state, society and culture continued.3 Laicism was accepted as one of the pillars of Kemalism as symbolized in the “Six Arrows” which are used to sum up the Kemalist ideology. The Six Arrows were formulated and accepted in the general meeting of the People’s Republican Party (founded by Ataturk), then the only and ruling party of Turkey, in 1927 and 1931 as part of the party statute. Soon they were included in the Constitution. The Six Arrows are also pictured in the flag of the People’s Republican Party, which ruled Turkey during the single-party regime until 1950. Placing the principle of laicism in its broader context may require us to take a brief look at the fundamental principles of Kemalism. The first arrow of Kemalism symbolizes republicanism, meaning antimonarchism rather than democratic res publica. The republican system was adopted to replace the Ottoman system which was based on Islamic political doctrine. The Ottoman Sultan came from the Ottoman dynasty and combined in himself both the religious authority as the Caliph (the leader of Muslims worldwide) and the political authority as the ruler of the state. This model of leadership was inherited by Muslim leaders from Prophet Muhammad (571–632), who served as the leader of his community in both religious and political issues. The office of the Sultan and the Caliph was separated in 1922; the monarchy was abolished and the last Ottoman Sultan, Vahdettin, was expelled from the country. In 1924, the Caliphate was abolished and the last Caliph, Abdulmecid (1868–1944), was exiled to Europe. The second arrow of Kemalism is secularism, which means that there would be no state religion and there would be secular control of religion, law and education. The efforts to secularize law led to the abolition of the Shari’ah courts in 1925 together with the adoption of the Swiss civil and Italian penal codes in 1926. Secularization also led to the suppression of the Sufi lodges and religious schools, the latinizing of the alphabet, the 3 On the history of secularization in Turkey, see Niyazi Berkes (1998). The Development of Secularism in
Turkey. London: Hurst & Company; Yael Navaro-Yashin (2002). Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Andrew Davison (1998). Secularism, Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration. New Haven: Yale University Press; Esra Özyürek (2006). Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. Durham: Duke University Press; Soner Cagaptay (2006). Islam Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk? London: Routledge.
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enforced change to a Western style of dress, emancipation of women, and Turkification of the Qur’an and the adhan (the Islamic call for prayers). The third arrow of Kemalism is nationalism. Adopting a nationalist ideology was also part of the de-establishment of Islam which emphasized belonging to the global Muslim community (ummah). National Turkish identity was introduced to replace the global Islamic identity. The state officially promoted the idea that anyone who speaks Turkish is a Turk. From this perspective, the Turkish language identifies the members of the nation and national identity is devoid of racial, religious or ethnic sense. Instead, it encompasses all those who live within the confines of Turkish territory. The fourth arrow of Kemalism symbolizes populism. It stresses sovereignty of the people as opposed to the ruler’s will or religious law (shari’ah), the mutual responsibility of state and individual, and also the absence of social class. This principle was developed against the elitism of the Ottoman dynasty. People are expected to express their will through elections to elect their representatives. However, the single-party rule in Turkey until 1950 was justified by the claim that the Turkish people were not educated or enlightened enough to make right choices to vote for the right party, i.e., the People’s Republican Party. The fifth arrow of Kemalism symbolizes revolutionism. It refers to the top-down radical and comprehensive transformation of society to bring it into the family of advanced nations in the West. However, revolution for Kemalism does not mean changing the infrastructure or the class structure as understood by socialist revolutionaries. Instead, it aims to change the super-structure such as culture, alphabet, dress, social norms, law, science and technology. The sixth and final arrow of Kemalism stands for Étatism. It means that the state should play an active role in economic development and in social, cultural and educational activities. It also indicates that very little room, if at all, should be given to civil society and free market economy. It resembles the socialist state practices regarding economy and society which were fashionable at that time. We need to understand the concept and practice of Turkish laicism within the above-mentioned broader context of Kemalist ideology and its policies on the ground. It is, in general, a thinly formulated ideology compared to Marxism and other modern ideologies. Consequently, its view on secularism
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is also thinly formulated. This is expected, because for the revolutionary of that time, theory should follow practice.4 It should also be added that there are different interpretations of Kemalism. Similar to other grand ideologies, Kemalism has also been interpreted in different ways. Some of these interpretations are extremely friendly in their approach to religion, while others present Kemalism as antithetical with religion. It seems the purpose of formulating such a secular ideology was to replace the existing religious worldview derived from religion, namely Islam. The religious political ideology was inherited from the Ottomans and shared by the majority of the society. The newly established Republic of Turkey had to grow under the shadow of this glorious past. Consequently, it disinherited the Ottoman legacy. There was another reason why a secular ideology was needed: providing legitimacy for the top-down revolutions and other state actions. In the Ottoman Empire, the ulama (religious scholars) provided legitimacy for state actions on religious grounds. Yet in a secular regime, the views of the ulama would not help in justifying secular reforms. Therefore, a secular intelligentsia was called to task to produce an ideology that would bring legitimacy to state actions.5 Therefore, practice counts more than theory regarding secularization in Turkey. For this reason, it would be necessary to look at the practices on behalf of laicism. The revolutionary policies which aimed at secularizing Turkish culture, political structure and society focused in particular on the following areas: • State structure: The Ottoman Sultan was also the Caliph who was the leader of all Muslims. The Caliphate was abolished and the last Caliph was exiled to Europe. The sovereignty was no longer with the Sultan-Caliph but it was said to be transferred to the people of Turkey as represented by 4 Bernard Lewis (1968). The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London: Oxford University Press. 5 Ideologically speaking, secularization in Turkey meant transition from Islamic Fiqh to Western social
sciences. The Ottoman ulama relied on Fiqh, which is a traditional Islamic discipline studying human action with regard to its normative aspects, while addressing the issue of political legitimacy. In contrast, secular intellectuals relied on the modern Western social sciences, in particular Durkheimian sociology, in providing legitimacy to state actions from a secularist perspective. Ziya Gökalp was a leading sociologist of the time whose ideas influenced both the Young Turks during the late Ottoman Empire and also the politicians of the Republic of Turkey.
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the Grand National Assembly. Yet, Turkey was ruled by a single-party regime from 1923 until 1950. The sovereignty of the people was not allowed; instead, the ruling elite acted “for people but despite people.” Law: Islamic law (shari’ah) was abolished and secular codes from Western countries were adopted. Education: Education was standardized using a secularist perspective and put under the monopoly of the state by the Unification of Education Law. According to this law, only the secular state could give education, including religious education. This caused great concern within the nonMuslim minorities, whose schools came under the control of the Ministry of Education. Islamic religious education was not given at all during the early decades of the Republic. Religious groups: Sufi brotherhoods were banned and the Sufi lodges were outlawed as bastions of reactionaries. Sufism was seen as an obstacle before modernization because it did not promote rationalism and scientific progress. It was criticized for promoting laziness and inertia. Pious foundations (awqaf): Pious foundations in the Ottoman Empire had funded seminaries, mosques, hospitals and Sufi lodges among other religious and charitable institutions. They were formed by civil society outside the control of the state. A special ministry, Ministry of Foundations, had managed them. They were all closed down and their property was nationalized under the newly founded Directorate of Foundations. Holiday: The holiday was shifted from Friday (an Islamic holiday) to Saturday (traditionally the Jewish day for holiday) and Sunday (a Christian holiday) following the Western countries. Calendar: The Gregorian calendar was adopted instead of the Islamic calendar, the Hijra calendar. Script: The Latin script was adopted instead of the Arabic script. Dress code: Traditional Islamic and Turkish attires were outlawed and they were replaced by Western dress; in particular, the hat was made obligatory to wear. This was known as the Hat Revolution. Clergy: The ulama order, which means religious scholars and clergy, were outlawed as their knowledge was seen as obsolete and contradictory with modern science. This period could be compared to the period of anti-clericalism in France. The modern secular academicians and
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intellectuals were expected to take the place of the ulama. The clergy (imam and mufti) were turned into civil servants. Turkey became the only Muslim country without the ulama. • Civil society: Civil society groups, in particular religious ones, were outlawed and religion was made a part of state bureaucracy. The Presidency of Religious Affairs was established to offer religious services, control mosques and publish religious books. Traditionally, the mosques and the clergy had been funded by charitable civil groups, in particular pious foundations. At that time, secularization was not seen as an option but as a necessity. The goal of these reforms was to make the Turkish state, society and culture a Western one. This was seen as the only way to save the nation from the backwardness and darkness of the Middle Ages. The purpose was to shift Turkey from the domain of Islamic civilization to the domain of Western civilization — a goal that has yet to be achieved completely. It was believed that there was only one civilization: the Western civilization. Turkey had to become part of it in order to survive. One can observe from the above list, which has no claim to be exhaustive, that these changes were state actions. The statesmen made the decision about them and carried them out in a swift manner in such a way that there was no preceding public debate to convince the society about their necessity. The secularist intelligentsia produced public arguments for legitimacy following the reforms initiated by the statesmen. As the above listed top-down reforms demonstrate, secularism or “laïcité”6 has not been practiced in Turkey as the separation of state and religion.7 In contrast, the state has tried to control religion through the Presidency of Religious Affairs, whose president reports to a minister of the state. The duties of the Presidency of Religious Affairs are to supervise the activities concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of Islam, enlighten 6 I use, in this paper, secularism and laicism interchangably. The presently used Turkish word for
secularism is “laiklik.” It is derived from the French word “laicism.” The usage of the AngloSaxon words “secularism” and “secularization” (Turkish spelling “sekülerizm” and “sekülerizasyon” or “sekülerle¸sme”) has started recently. Sometimes a distinction is made between “laicism” and secularism, but it is difficult to ground such a distinction. The word “laicism” was first translated into Turkish as “lâdiniyye.” Sometimes, secularization is translated as “dünyevile¸smek.” 7 For authoritarian secularism in Turkey, see Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (2008). Islam and the Secular State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 182–222.
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the public about their religion, and administer the sacred places of worship. All mosques are under the control of the Presidency of Religious Affairs and the imams are civil servants who are paid by the state. These reform efforts are commonly known as Kemalist revolutions. Their aim is remodeling religion and its place in Turkish social, cultural and political life. At times they amount to religion-building. They are under constitutional protection and are among the irrevocable laws.8 Ironically, some of these reforms are no longer relevant such as the legal obligation to wear a Western-style hat because presently no one wears a hat but it is still in the Constitution as an irrevocable article. This obligation was introduced by a law during the “Hat Revolution” which outlawed the old-style Turkish hats, in particular the turban used by the ulama. Some ulama refused to take off their turbans and were penalized severely for being anti-revolution. Political sociology demonstrates that despite all these legal restrictions — if not because of them — Islam has been a strong force in Turkish politics.9 Restrictions on freedom of religion had been common especially during the single-party regime until 1950. During this period, Turkey was under the ideological influence of August Comte’s evolutionary ideas which believed 8 Part Five of the 1982 Constitution is dedicated to this issue. Under the title “Preservation of Reform
Laws” the following is stated: Article 174. No provision of the Constitution shall be construed or interpreted as rendering unconstitutional the Reform Laws indicated below, which aim to raise Turkish society above the level of contemporary civilization and to safeguard the secular character of the Republic, and which were in force on the date of the adoption by referendum of the Constitution of Turkey. 1. Act No. 430 of 3 March 1340 (1924) on the Unification of the Educational System; 2. Act No. 671 of 25 November 1341 (1925) on the Wearing of Hats; 3. Act No. 677 of 30 November 1341 (1925) on the Closure of Dervish Monasteries and Tombs, the Abolition of the Office of Keeper of Tombs and the Abolition and Prohibition of Certain Titles; 4. The principle of civil marriage according to which the marriage act shall be concluded in the presence of the competent official, adopted with the Turkish Civil Code No. 743 of 17 February 1926, and Article 110 of the Code; 5. Act No. 1288 of 20 May 1928 on the Adoption of International Numerals; 6. Act No. 1353 of 1 November 1928 on the Adoption and Application of the Turkish Alphabet; 7. Act No. 2590 of 26 November 1934 on the Abolition of Titles and Appellations such as Efendi, Bey or Pasha; 8. Act No. 2596 of 3 December 1934 on the Prohibition of the Wearing of Certain Garments. 9 Binnaz Toprak (1981). Islam and Political Development in Turkey. Leiden: Brill; see also S¸ erif Mardin (1989). Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi. Albany: State University of New York.
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that religion is bound to disappear as the society makes progress in science. Those who did not abandon their religious faith and identity were accused of being backward reactionaries and obstacles in the way to progress. They were also seen as a potential threat to secularism. However, Islamic concerns have always been on the agenda of the major parties after 1950 such as the Democratic Party headed by Adnan Menderes, the Justice Party headed by Suleyma Demirel, the National Salvation Party headed by Necmettin Erbakan, the Motherland Party headed by Turgut Ozal, the Welfare Party headed again by Erbakan, and most recently the AK Party headed by Tayyib Erdo˘gan. Political parties have to respond to the popular demands for more freedom of religion and less restrictions on religious practice. However, the legal constraints would not allow them to accommodate these popular demands. Several parties were closed down by the Constitutional Court for violating the principle of laicism. In 2008, the ruling AK Party, which won 48% of the votes, came on the verge of being banned for being the focus of anti-secular activities. The Turkish Constitutional Court penalized the AK Party by cutting half of the state subsidy to it based on the accusation of becoming the focus of anti-secularism by using anti-secular language. We will now take a closer look at these legal rules on secularism and freedom of religion.
CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES ON LAICISM Although the Turkish Constitution is completely silent on the definition of laicism, which gives rise to contesting interpretations and expectations, there are detailed regulations in the Turkish legal system about secularism and religion. Therefore, it would be instructive to take a closer look at the relevant principles of the Turkish Constitution to better comprehend the official view on laicism and its legal implementation. This exercise may also help us figure out what the authors of the constitution meant by secularism which they intentionally left undefined. Turkey has witnessed three military coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980. Each coup d’état produced a new constitution, but the secularism clause has been preserved in all of them. Yet, the current constitution which was prepared after the 1980 military coup strengthened its legal position by
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including it among the unchangeable founding principles of the Turkish Republic. The 1982 Constitution10 asserts that Turkey is a democratic and secular republic,11 deriving its sovereignty from the people.12 This sovereignty rests with the Turkish Nation, who delegates its exercise to an elected unicameral parliament, the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Article 4 declares the irrecovability and immutability of the founding principles of the Republic defined in the first three Articles: (1) “secularism, social equality, equality before law” (2) “the Republican form of government” (3) “the indivisibility of the Republic and of the Turkish Nation.” The Constitution bans proposing amendments to these articles.13 This is because they define the fundamental features of the Turkish Republic as a secular nation-state. For the same reason, according to the Constitution, human rights and freedoms14 cannot be used to undermine the secular system. The Constitution also requires that the political parties cannot contradict this secularism in their statutes, programs, activities or ideas. Such an act would constitute grounds for closing the political party by the Constitutional Court. 10 For the English translations of the Turkish Constitution as a whole text, see http://www.anayasa.gen.
tr/1982constitution.htm. 11 The preamble of the Constitution states the following: “The recognition that no protection shall be accorded to an activity contrary to Turkish national interests, the principle of the indivisibility of the existence of Turkey with its state and territory, Turkish historical and moral values or the nationalism, principles, reforms and modernism of Atatürk and that, as required by the principle of secularism, there shall be no interference whatsoever by sacred religious feelings in state affairs and politics.” 12 At the outset, the characteristics of the Republic are defined in Article 2 as follows: “The Republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state governed by the rule of law; bearing in mind the concepts of public peace, national solidarity and justice; respecting human rights; loyal to the nationalism of Atatürk, and based on the fundamental tenets set forth in the Preamble.” 13 Under the title “Irrevocable Provisions,” Article 4 states that “The provision of Article 1 of the Constitution establishing the form of the state as a Republic, the provisions in Article 2 on the characteristics of the Republic, and the provision of Article 3 shall not be amended, nor shall their amendment be proposed.” 14 Article 14 (as amended on 17 October 2001) in the section on the “Prohibition of Abuse of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms” states that “None of the rights and freedoms embodied in the Constitution shall be exercised with the aim of violating the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation, and endangering the existence of the democratic and secular order of the Turkish Republic based upon human rights.”
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The Presidency of Religious Affairs was also founded by the Constitution. It is a state organ which is required to function in accordance with the principles of secularism.15 Article 24 under the section on “Freedom of Religion and Conscience” in the Constitution grants freedom of religion but makes the primary religious education, which can be given by the state alone, compulsory: Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, religious belief and conviction. Acts of worship, religious services, and ceremonies shall be conducted freely, provided that they do not violate the provisions of Article 14. No one shall be compelled to worship, or to participate in religious ceremonies and rites, to reveal religious beliefs and convictions, or be blamed or accused because of his religious beliefs and convictions. Education and instruction in religion and ethics shall be conducted under state supervision and control. Instruction in religious culture and moral education shall be compulsory in the curricula of primary and secondary schools. Other religious education and instruction shall be subject to the individual’s own desire, and in the case of minors, to the request of their legal representatives. No one shall be allowed to exploit or abuse religion or religious feelings, or things held sacred by religion, in any manner whatsoever, for the purpose of personal or political influence, or for even partially basing the fundamental, social, economic, political, and legal order of the state on religious tenets.
The most controversial element in this clause is the one about compulsory religious education which raises the following questions: Can the secular state give religious education? Which religion will be taught? How will the religious education be given? Controversy over these questions persists even today. From the above survey, it could be concluded that for the authors of the constitution, laicism meant state control over religion but not separation of religion and state. However, this is not explicitly stated in the Constitution. One can easily reach this conclusion by surveying the relevant articles in the Constitution and the practices justified by them. The most recent controversial example of authoritarian secularism has been the ban on Muslim women’s headscarves (hijab) in the public sphere 15 “Article 136. The Department of Religious Affairs, which is within the general administration, shall exercise its duties prescribed in its particular law, in accordance with the principles of secularism, removed from all political views and ideas, and aiming at national solidarity and integrity.”
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including all government offices, hospitals and schools. In the universities, this ban has been applied not only to the employees but also to the students.
SECULARIST AND RELIGIOUS CRITICS OF AUTHORITARIAN LAICISM The existing regulations and practices of secularism in Turkey have been criticized by both secularist and religious segments in Turkish society. The criticism of each side is based on different arguments which derive from a particular interpretation of secularism. This goes back to the lack of clarity and consensus as to what is meant by secularism. Some secularist critics and members of minority religious groups argue that the Turkish state’s support for and regulation of Sunni religious institutions — including mandatory religious education for children deemed by the state to be Muslims — amount to de facto violations of secularism. Non-Muslim children are exempted from the compulsory religious education. Yet the Alevi children are also required to attend these lessons. Some of the Alevis are not happy that their children learn the Sunni interpretation of Islam. It is claimed that this cooperation between Sunni Islam and the secular state arose in the 1960s during the Cold War, as the result of an anti-leftist alliance between secular and religious conservatives. Conversely, some religious intellectuals and politicians argue that Turkish secularism unduly restricts individual religious freedom. Debate arises over the issue of to what degree religious observance ought to be restricted to the private sphere. Most famously, this critique has been raised in connection with the issues of headscarves and religion-based political parties. The issue of an independent Greek Orthodox seminary is also a matter of controversy with regard to Turkey’s accession to the European Union. Some religious intellectuals criticize the state for producing a statetheology because the Presidency of Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Education adopt a particular interpretation of Islam at the expense of others. This version of religion which is adopted and propagated by state institutions is seen as state intervention in religion and favoring one interpretation over others.
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WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF TURKISH SECULARISM? There is yet another controversy about the origin of Turkish laicism. There are several conflicting claims regarding the origin of the Turkish model of secularism. Below I will try to summarize these claims. The first is that it is a continuation of the Ottoman tradition because the Ottoman state was secular, and not an Islamic one. The second is that Turkish secularism has been borrowed from the West because the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic state, a theocracy. Accepting this view raises another question: Which Western model was adopted by Turkey — the liberal democratic or socialist model? Those who try to demonstrate that secularism is not a rootless ideology in Turkey advocate the first claim: Turkish secularism is a continuation of the Ottoman tradition. Their emphasis is on continuity. They also think that the legitimacy of Turkish secularism can be obtained from the historical precedent in the Ottoman Empire. Implicit in this approach is that secularism has not been only a Western phenomenon. The second claim that secularism was adopted from the West is advocated by those whose emphasis is on discontinuity and the revolutionary nature of Turkish reforms. For them, justification for secularism cannot be derived from the Ottoman tradition because it was a theocracy. From their perspective, secularism is a product of modern Western civilization and it is impossible to find it elsewhere. Below, I will critically examine these claims by summarizing the arguments of each opposing strand.
Secularism was Inherited from the Ottoman Empire This controversy revolves around whether the Turks had a secular political tradition before the Turkish Republic. Historians are divided on the issue into two groups. Some prominent historians such as Halil ˙Inalcik and Ömer Lütfi Barkan advocate that the Ottoman Empire had a secular tradition because some laws were formulated outside of religion. These laws were called kanun. They reflected the will of the Sultan on matters outside the Islamic law. Each sultan produced a kanunname. Yet this view is rejected by other respected historians of Ottoman law such as Mehmet Akif Aydin, Ahmet Akgündüz and Halil Cin. They argue
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that kanun was part of the Islamic legal tradition and it was also produced by the ulama (Islamic scholars) similar to Islamic law. Furthermore, there was only a single-court system to implement both Islamic law and kanun. In my opinion, there are two conceptual problems in this debate. First, it is difficult to understand the Ottoman system by retrospectively projecting our present concepts to the history. Second, it is difficult to understand the Ottoman Empire by applying to it theories derived from Western political history. Briefly put, we need a conceptual framework for the Ottoman Empire which recognizes its differences from the West of that time and also from the present age. For this reason, we cannot call the Ottoman Empire a theocracy or a secular state. Theocracy is a Western type of rule where the church rules in the name of God, but in Islam there is no church. The Ottoman Empire was not ruled by a church or clergy. But it was not a secular state either because it derived legitimacy from Islam, saw itself as the defender of Islam and practiced Islamic law under the leadership of a Caliph-Sultan. However, we should also recognize that there are structural similarities between the way religion was managed in the Ottoman state and in modern Turkey. For instance, in the Ottoman state, religion was part of the state bureaucracy and the head of the clergy, Shayk al-Islam, was appointed by the head of the state. This is similar to modern Turkey where the head of the Presidency of Religious Affairs is appointed by the President of the Republic.
Secularism was Borrowed from Western Europe Turkish secularism is one of the most confusing political-cultural models in the world for the outside observers. It was introduced as part of the Westernization project during the first quarter of the 20th century. One wonders which Western country served as the model for Turkish secularism because each Western country has a different model of secularism and there are striking differences from country to country in Europe and America. Yet, this search to determine the Western origin of Turkish secularism is futile because one cannot find a parallel model to Turkish secularism in Western countries. This is what makes Turkish secularism intriguing: it was introduced and presented inside the country and abroad as a Western model, but there is
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no parallel to it in the West. Today, very few people are aware of this. The majority are under the impression that the Turkish model was borrowed from France, which has the most strict model of secularism. However, there are serious structural differences between the French and Turkish models. In France, the church has been preserved and given autonomy. Conversely, in Turkey, the state has monopoly over religion and religious education, as the religious establishment was completely abolished and management of religious institutions has been made a part of the government system while the Turkish Constitution recognizes the Turkish state as the sole provider of religious education. In Turkey, no one is legally allowed to give religious education or open mosques other than the state. However, in France, these activities are carried out by the church.
Secularism was Borrowed from Socialist Countries If the present laicism in Turkey has not been borrowed from a liberal democratic European country, then where did the Turks receive this model? To be able to answer this question, we must turn to the non-Western models of secularism where religion is subjugated to state authority and government regulations. Such a model existed in the USSR, China and other socialist countries. We should also remember that during the early years of the Republic, there were friendly relations between the USSR and Turkey. Ideologically speaking, socialist countries have seen religion as part of a super-structure, the main instrument of justification in the hands of the ruling class for the exploitation of lower classes, the opium of masses, a manifestation of alienation, and a major block that needs to be removed for the progress of the country. Politically speaking, the socialist government model established a monopoly for the control of society without leaving any social or economic elements outside government control. Therefore, there has been almost no civil society in the socialist states. Consequently, for these ideological, political and administrative reasons, the socialist states abolished religious hierarchy and put worship places under government control. The socialist state raised the clergy on an ideologically loaded religious education and paid their salaries. This policy turned churches into government offices and the clergy into civil servants to help the government establish an extremely strict control over religion.
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These similarities may lead to the conclusion that some important features of Turkish secularism have been borrowed from Eastern socialist countries instead of Western democratic countries. However, it is paradoxical that it was installed in Turkey as part of the Westernization project and introduced to the Turkish population as a Western model.
PRESENT CLEAVAGE IN TURKISH POLITICS: WHICH SECULARISM? Complete state control over religion — although it is not explicitly stated in the legal documents — has thus far been the dominant practice of laicism in Turkey, which shaped the ensuing practices in the legal, political, cultural, educational and religious domains. This understanding and practice has, as mentioned above, no parallel except in the former socialist countries like the USSR. Yet those who have viewed laicism as freedom of religion based on a separation of religion and the state have objected to such an authoritarian definition of laicism and the resulting restrictive practices. The increasing realization that the present model of secularism in Turkey and the practices justified by laicism have no parallel in the modern democratic countries of Europe and America makes it more questionable and objectionable, particularly for the liberal-minded new generation. There are four important factors that contribute to the critique of laicism as conventionally understood and practiced in Turkey: (1) The collapse of the USSR, which demonstrated that the model adopted by Turkey had failed in its own homeland. (2) The process of accession of Turkey to the EU, which pushes Turkey towards adopting Western standards of freedom of religion and the relations between religion and the state. (3) Globalization and the media, which increased the familiarity of the Turkish population with the way secularism is practiced in the democratic Western countries where a democratic approach to secularism is adopted. (4) Upward mobility and the rise in the educational and economic levels of the population, in particular those religious segments who used to be seen as the periphery.
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The current cleavage in Turkey regarding secularism is not about whether Turkey should remain secular or become an Islamic theocracy, but whether Turkey should reform its secularism following Western models and abandon the present model which failed even in its home country (the USSR). Turkish liberals, be they religious, a-religious or non-religious, advocate the view that laicism is freedom of religion, and the state should not put unnecessary restrictions on the practice of religion. These liberal-minded religious politicians, academicians, intellectuals and journalists defend their claim for reform by referring to the liberal practices of secularism in Western democratic countries. Yet they are frequently accused by the defenders of the present model of authoritarian secularism as being Islamists and anti-secularists. In the polemic over secularism, it is used at times as a political weapon to attack political opponents and rivals. For instance, the current ruling party, the AK Party, is accused by the People’s Republican Party as undermining the secular system. Accusing the AK Party for being pro-Islamist and anti-secularism is not always convincing to the public as Turkey is the only Muslim nation which seeks to become part of a Western club, namely the EU. The paradox lies in the fact that the policy of EU accession has been pushed more by the politicians who are accused by their opponents as being Islamists, such as Turgut Özal and Recep Tayyip Erdoˇgan, than their colleagues who present themselves as the champions of secularism. The population therefore sees that it would be unimaginable for a pro-Islamist, anti-secular politician to push Turkey’s membership in a non-Muslim union.
CONCLUSION The fact that the Turkish Constitution is completely silent about the definition of laicism, despite its repeated and excessively detailed emphasis on laicism, has caused wide-ranging controversies in Turkey. Consequently, a conflict has emerged between those who understand laicism as freedom of religion and separation of state and religion, and those who understand it as complete state control over religion. The most striking feature of laicism in Turkey is that religion is not left to civil society; instead, it is made a part of the state apparatus. There is an
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increasing awareness among the Turkish population that the present model of laicism has no counterpart in the West. As a result, there is a growing critique and demand for reform following the European democratic models of secularism. The EU has recently emerged as a new actor in the controversy over the meaning of secularism and the way it should be implemented. Both the liberals and the advocates of authoritarianism attempt to elicit EU support for their particular camp. When the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) sided with the authoritarians regarding the ban on the headscarf of women in universities, the liberals were greatly disappointed with the EU. It is possible that the EU may play a constructive role in clearly defining what is meant by laicism from a liberal democratic perspective. The present cleavage in Turkey is not between defenders and enemies of secularism, but between the advocates of liberal and authoritarian models of secularism. “Which secularism” is the pressing question to be answered in the near future. A social consensus must be built around the concept of secularism because presently, the society is divided between those who want to conserve the present authoritarian model and those who want to reform it following liberal democratic models in the West.
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Chapter
19
Pragmatic Secularism, Civil Religion, and Political Legitimacy in Singapore KENNETH PAUL TAN
This chapter analyzes the discourse and practices of Singapore’s nation-state as a kind of civil religion, identifying in particular their “religion-like” elements that have played a part in securing the People’s Action Party (PAP) government’s political legitimacy since the country attained independence in 1965. The chapter locates the evolution of Singapore’s civil religion within a public sphere defined by a “pragmatic” mode of secularism and the contradictory tendencies of transactional and transformational modes of leadership that the government, endeavoring to secure the economic and moral bases of its authority, has tried to control.
The discourse and practices of Singapore’s nation-state are a kind of civil religion. In particular, their “religion-like” elements have played a part in securing the People’s Action Party (PAP) government’s political legitimacy since the country attained independence in 1965. The chapter locates the evolution of Singapore’s civil religion within a public sphere defined by a “pragmatic” mode of secularism and the contradictory tendencies of transactional and transformational modes of leadership that the government, endeavoring to secure the economic and moral bases of its authority, has tried to control.
SECULARISM José Casanova differentiates three different propositions that are often confounded in discussions about secularization: (1) “secularization as decline of religious beliefs and practices,” (2) “secularization as differentiation of the secular spheres from religious institutions and norms,” and 339
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(3) “secularization as marginalization of religion to a privatized sphere” (Casanova 1994, p. 211). In contemporary Singapore, proposition 1 is not supported by the most recent census data of 2000: 42.5% of the population say that they are Buddhists, 14.9% Muslims, 14.6% Christians, 8.5% Taoists, 4.0% Hindus, 0.6% that they belong to other religions, and 14.8% that they have no religion (although some from this category may practice certain religious rites). Over the decades, Singapore’s multi-religious character has continued to be strong, with a major decline in Taoism, but a clear growth in Christianity and strong indications of a revival in Buddhism. Since 1980, the percentage of Singaporeans with no religion has increased by less than 2% (Tong 2008). In ultra-modern Singapore, there are tensions between industrial and post-industrial values — tensions which have not led to a decline of religious belief and practices, but to their revival. Often, individuals look to religion for thick community, moral anchors, and higher meaning to escape the alienation of a capitalist-industrial society. As one of the most open economies in the world, Singapore is set to face more frequent and perplexing periods of economic crisis, creating conditions that could induce people to turn to religion. At the same time, the logic and resources of capitalism have provided religion with new techniques for expansion, in many cases through the dynamics of mass production, marketing, advertising, and customer satisfaction. Religious organizations in Singapore’s civil society, traditionally active in performing their welfare and social service roles, have become more confident, empowered, and skilful in articulating their views with regard to matters of public importance. Proposition 2 most adequately describes the Singapore case, where the state and politics are insulated from religious institutions and norms, whose de-politicized forms are allowed and at times even encouraged to flourish in the community life of a multi-religious society as long as inter-religious harmony and public order are maintained. Eugene Tan notes how freedom of religion, as provided in the Constitution, is interpreted according to a “belief-action distinction,” where religious adherents are free to believe the tenets of their respective faiths (including proscribed faiths), but acting on these beliefs in ways that are contrary to law and order will be deemed as illegal (Tan, E. 2008). The Penal Code and Sedition Act are available for dealing with criminal offences that relate to religion; but in more
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serious cases that require pre-emptive action, the Internal Security Act provides for preventive detention without trial or judicial review, for twoyear periods that are renewable. A less draconian measure to prevent the mixing of religion and politics is the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act introduced in 1990. Through this Act, religious leaders who engage in politics can be issued with restraining orders. While the secular state prohibits the politicization of the religious sphere, it also secures its moral authority over a multi-religious society by not taking sides, performing a crucial role as a reliably fair and neutral arbiter in the settlement of possible disagreements among religious communities. The state’s authority, rather than being derived from or aligned to the divine mandate of a dominant religion, actually depends on its demonstrated equidistance from all religions and their respective logics and beliefs in the settlement of contentious matters. According to a Hobbesian logic, religious minorities and majorities, in their own ways, stand to benefit from ceding some of their freedoms to a neutral authority collectively in order to secure peace and self-preservation. Although the government maintains “a policy of strict neutrality,” Thio Li-Ann observes a “qualified secularism” practiced in Singapore. The government is, for example, required by the Constitution to protect racial and religious minorities, and to safeguard the “special position” of the Malays in particular, which includes promoting their religious interests (Thio 2008). The Malay-Muslim community receives government assistance in mosque-building efforts and tertiary education fees, and Muslims can refer to separate shari’ah courts for legal matters pertaining to marriage and divorce. This qualified secularism, however, has not been carefully rationalized, and appears implicitly to draw arguments from both “indigenous rights” thinking as well as “positive discrimination/affirmative action” approaches to leveling the playing field for an effective meritocracy. To maintain hegemony, the state — through the use of persuasion and (often as a last resort) coercion — continually works to align and articulate with the dominant ideology the contradictory interests of classes and forces in society, including religiously defined ones (Gramsci 1971). While the law and the state’s instruments of enforcement make up the coercive framework, the state also relies strongly on its ideological apparatuses to get the religious groups to buy into the system. Multiracialism and meritocracy, for example, have been codified as Singapore’s version of multiculturalism that all should
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adhere to, lest the racial riots of the 1950s and 1960s — vividly documented in The Singapore Story — should re-emerge to tear apart Singapore society. The state’s ideological work is greatly helped by its skilful practice of state corporatism, where the traditional leadership of religious communities and groups is, to some official degree, co-opted, making it more difficult for them to challenge the state since their legitimacy is also derived from the state. No less than two-thirds of the membership of the Presidential Council for Religious Harmony, whose function is “to consider and report to the Minister on matters affecting the maintenance of religious harmony in Singapore which are referred to the Council by the Minister or by Parliament,” is constitutionally required to be made up of representatives of the major religions in Singapore. Administrative bodies such as the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) and the Council on Education for Muslim Children (MENDAKI) for the Malay-Muslims, the Hindu Advisory Board and Hindu Endowments Board for the Hindus, and the Central Sikh Gurdwara Board and Sikh Advisory Board for the Sikhs are heavily supported by the state, which also has a strong influence on the appointment of their office-holders. After the events of 9/11, the government set up Inter-Racial Confidence Circles (now called Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles) and Harmony Circles to promote dialogue and build confidence at the constituency and workplace levels respectively. The government also initiated a “grassroots” project that saw religious leaders coming together to work on a code of conduct for religious communities called the Declaration of Religious Harmony, which reads: We, the people in Singapore, declare that religious harmony is vital for peace, progress and prosperity in our multi-racial and multireligious Nation. We resolve to strengthen religious harmony through mutual tolerance, confidence, respect, and understanding. We shall always recognize the secular nature of our State, promote cohesion within our society, respect each other’s freedom of religion, grow our common space while respecting our diversity, foster inter-religious communications, and thereby ensure that religion will not be abused to create conflict and disharmony in Singapore.
These initiatives on the ground, which Eugene Tan describes as “soft-law instruments” (Tan, E. 2008, p. 73), have all been part of the government’s strategy to secure ideological hegemony.
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If the state is sensitive to the potential for resistance and opposition from religious quarters and the threat they pose to hegemony, the state is just as aware of religion’s usefulness for building and strengthening hegemony. A significant number of organs within civil society such as schools and voluntary welfare organizations are managed by religious groups, which receive substantial state funding support to supplement their own fundraising efforts. Through these organizations, the government is able to sustain its ideological resistance to comprehensive state welfare while making sure that, through voluntarism and indirect state assistance, people in need are not left uncared for. Religious groups are, to the government, a very important component of civil society, not only in their performance of a vital welfare and social service role, but also in their widespread promotion of the spirit of voluntarism in the service of others. The government’s preference for a de-politicized “civic” society — as opposed to the more liberal notion of “civil” society — is well-illustrated in its enthusiasm for the religious communities’ service roles while discouraging any turn to political advocacy. Eugene Tan observes how religious groups are entitled to preach their values and beliefs to their communities, [but] they must not mobilize their congregations to be confrontational in their engagement with the state. Neither should religious groups undermine the government’s authority, legitimacy as well as the democratic process (Tan, E. 2008, p. 70).
In the 1980s, the government made direct use of religion as a moral and cultural resource to deepen its own efforts at nation-building. The years of industrialization and socialization following political independence had led to a realization by the government that Singaporeans may not have adequate moral and cultural bearings to make sense of, and to act sensibly in, a more complex world, presented at the time in terms of negative influences from the West. Economic development and growth, for instance, were starting to put pressure on the patriarchal family unit as wives and mothers were actively being recruited into the workforce, their traditional family roles being taken over by an influx of migrant female domestic workers from the region. Masses of Singaporeans, once the power base of militant trade unions, were being trained to be good industrial cogs, docile enough to be part of an attractive industrial infrastructure and tax incentive package that the government used to lure foreign investors and multinational companies.
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Singaporeans, reduced to being merely efficient worker-consumers, may be too thinly rooted to their country and perhaps to the government, since such rootedness would be almost entirely dependent upon their material gratification rather than anything more spiritual and inspirational. In 1982, the government decided to introduce Religious Knowledge into the secondary school curriculum as a compulsory and examinable subject. Students could choose to study Bible Knowledge, Buddhist Studies, Islamic Religious Knowledge, Hindu Studies, Sikh Studies, or Confucian Ethics. Although Confucianism was not generally regarded as a religion, it was probably the most important option offered for Religious Knowledge as far as the government was concerned. The 1980s saw East Asian countries like Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore reaching doubledigit growth rates and, aside from being collectively known as “Asian tiger” economies, these countries and their remarkable success were being explained in neo-Weberian fashion in terms of their Confucian values. Confucian respect for learned authority and its somewhat rigid notions of hierarchy were also viewed positively by an authoritarian government whose leaders were selected mainly on the criterion of academic success and whose deep and wide exercise of power required cultural as much as material reasons for obedience. The Religious Knowledge experiment was short-lived. In 1986, the Internal Security Department published a report that detailed a rise in “religious fervor” in Singapore, “over-zealous” proselytizing by evangelical Christian groups, and religious leaders who preached political messages from the pulpit. In 1987, 22 people were detained under the Internal Security Act, charged for conspiring to turn Singapore into a Marxist state. They were in fact a group of socially conscious individuals ranging from social workers, lawyers, theater practitioners, women’s issues activists, opposition party members, and Roman Catholic church workers, volunteering to advance the rights and well-being of low-skilled migrant workers who were mainly in the construction and domestic service sectors. The religious connection drew attention to the radical activities of proponents of liberation theology that appeared to be gaining ground in Southeast Asia, especially in the Philippines. In 1990, Religious Knowledge stopped being a compulsory subject in the curriculum. The favored Confucian Ethics option turned out to not be as popular as expected, with most students electing to read
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the more overtly religious Buddhist Studies and Bible Knowledge options instead. Subsequently, students were given the option to study Religious Knowledge as an O-level subject, but they had to take classes held outside of school hours. Before long, the subject withered away on the vine. In its place was a new and overtly more secular Civic and Moral Education subject. While Thio Li-Ann observes a “quasi-secularism” operating in Singapore (Thio 2008, p. 80), what many religious leaders and their communities are nervous about is the prospect of this non-dogmatic practice of secularism transforming into Casanova’s proposition 3: that religion would be exiled from the public sphere into a very limited private sphere where — though it is celebrated by the state for its good works in social services — it is effectively marginalized in ways that curtail its moral force for advocating good in the world. Thio also fears the “religious cleansing of the public square” and a “religious apartheid” that attempts to “de-legitimate and silence religious voices” (Thio 2008, p. 93). One manifestation of this is a complete evacuation of religious reasons from the public sphere, dominated by reasoning that is dictated by the profit-making and consumerdriven imperatives of the market and the technically rational policy-making and legitimacy-generating imperatives of the state. This marginalization of religious reasoning, they fear, could be justified by setting up a false dichotomy between secular and religious modes of understanding and judgment, with the religious modes unfairly classified and characterized as dogmatic, unscientific, emotional, irrational, and therefore inadmissible in any universal and reasonable sphere of argumentation. Already, Anglican Bishop John Chew, in a newsletter to his congregation, has lamented what he perceives as a “crooked and perverse generation” in a more liberal Singapore: Singapore has to be a “fun” city attractive to its own and open to the world, so they argue, albeit with moderation but evolution as time and tide of society norms change. In order to be globally attractive and competitive, society has to loosen up and be in tune and in line with the progressives, the so-called “mature,” so they say. In the midst of all these, for God’s faithful people, Paul’s sentinel call should be voiced and heard clearly once again: “Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you
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KENNETH PAUL TAN shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life…” (Phil 2:1416; also 2 Tim 4:1-4). But don’t get Paul wrong! He is challenging us to build up extra robust capacity over the childish level of debate and controversy, and it could not be more timely and urgent (Chew 2003).
In a study of religiously inflected “anti-gay” arguments represented in letters published in the Singapore media, I concluded that: formalizing a public secularism that excludes all religious reasons from the public sphere can effectively distort the capacity for more open public dialogue motivated by a collective pursuit of higher-order knowledge of what is good. A strict and formal secularism can have the effect of demonizing religious reasons and transforming them into a defensive discourse. Complexity, subtlety, variety and engagement are distorted into simple “us” versus “them” modes of reasoning. In the case study, it is clear that religious people and even authorities can have a range of views that are anything from conservative to the most liberal. However, a siege mentality reduces discussion into a battlefield of rigid notions of good and evil and right and wrong, all marked by suspicion and hostility between the forces of religion and secularism. The capacity to step into “other people’s shoes,” that is, to think with empathy and an enlarged mentality, is severely diminished (Tan, K. 2008b, p. 429).
Demerath identifies in the US a paradoxically symbiotic relationship between its clear separation of church and state on the one hand, and its civil religion on the other. Each legitimizes the other by guarding “against the other’s excesses.” Demerath observes how the pronounced existence of “overarching civil religious ceremonials” ensures that the “substantive separation of church and state in important matters of government policy” is “never a total rupture” (Demerath 2003, p. 355). In a loosely similar though certainly more complicated way, perhaps, Singapore’s separation of religion and the state (as well as politics) needs the countervailing influence of a civil religion. As well, since a Singaporean civil religion cannot be substantively based on any one particular existing religion, it will have to be constructed in a much more pragmatic than dogmatic way, and adherence to it will need to also be tempered by a pragmatic approach. But it is also pragmatism itself — demonstrated in the government’s economic opportunism and response to crisis at the global level — that creates ideological tensions in the hegemonic struggles to contain resistance and opposition from the religious sphere.
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PRAGMATISM In Singapore, pragmatism is understood to mean doing “what works.” Looking back at Singapore’s history of economic success, Lee Kuan Yew explained, “If a thing works, let’s work it, and that eventually evolved into the kind of economy that we have today. Our test was: Does it work? Does it bring benefits to the people?” (Lee 1998a, p. 109). However, the actual meaning of the term shifts according to circumstances. At times, Singapore-style pragmatism describes an opposition to the kind of arguments and positions that it dismisses as naively idealistic, unrealistically utopian, or hypocritically high-minded. In this way, pragmatism offers a mode of deflecting criticisms based on ideals such as individual freedom, equality, democracy, and human rights, as well as those based on religious doctrine and values. At other times, Singapore-style pragmatism opposes substantive ideologies such as Marxism and liberalism, falsely assuming and asserting that pragmatism itself is not ideological. The fact that pragmatism’s association with capitalism is obscured, and that the ideological roots of both are actively disguised, makes pragmatism deeply ideological — since ideology masks its own ideological condition. Yet, at other times, pragmatism reflects an aversion to systematic approaches, generalizations, and theory that seeks to universalize. Chua Beng-Huat describes pragmatism as an “operant” concept “governed by ad hoc contextual rationality that seeks to achieve specific gains at particular points in time and pays scant attention to systematicity and coherence as necessary rational criteria for action,” contrasting it with “utopian rationality [that] emphasizes the whole and at times sacrifices the contextual gains to preserve it, if necessary” (Chua 1997, p. 58). According to pragmatism, policies need to be terminated or adjusted if no longer effective. Policies need to adapt to changing circumstances so as to avert crises and to seize opportunities. Neo Boon Siong and Geraldine Chen have argued that systems and institutions of governance need to be dynamic by ensuring that they have the capability to “look ahead,” “look across,” and “look again” (Neo and Chen 2007). Often, Singapore-style pragmatism prefers to learn best practices from other systems and to adapt them to local context in a sensitive and meaningful way, rather than to reinvent the wheel. Copying from others helps to accelerate development as well as avoid the costs of experimenting with
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new approaches. Singapore-style pragmatism is concerned with adopting and perfecting “value-free” means, techniques, and methods for achieving given ends, but the ends themselves are not generally open to philosophical, much less religious, investigation. Chua argues that Singapore’s overriding end is “continuous economic growth” (Chua 1997), and so questions of efficiency and profit will always be at the forefront. As far as pragmatists are concerned, modes of reasoning must involve concrete and quantifiable evidence to support arguments that are linear and free of metaphysics. Otherwise, they are inadmissible in any public debate and will be ignored. The public sphere, then, is reduced to technical considerations expressed purely in problem-solving mode; questions of larger philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic significance are rendered meaningless. Singapore-style pragmatism often takes on an elitist complexion, dismissing democratic participation as a noisy, uneducated, distorting, and irrational force in public policy-making, threatening to corrupt the purity of coordinated technocratic solutions to complex technical problems. The selection of Singapore’s political leaders and public managers has been described as stringently meritocratic, so that meritocracy itself comes to be seen as a principle of good governance, held as an alternative to the checks and balances prescribed by liberal democracy (Tan, K. 2008a). Public consultation is conducted according to agendas set by the government, in the hopes of obtaining useful inputs and feedback from the ground and frontlines without necessarily committing to taking these views seriously, especially if they differ significantly from the preferred official lines. Chua argues: Since it admits no inviolate principles, pragmatism as the basis for government will not contribute to democratization. Instead it may stand in its way because, for democracy to be established, certain principles must be maintained regardless of contingent societal conditions (Chua 1997, p. 192).
In many ways, these various meanings of pragmatism would all seem to point towards Casanova’s third proposition: Religious reasons — viewed as naively idealistic, unrealistically utopian, doctrinally inflexible, and mostly unquantifiable — should not be democratically admitted into Singapore’s rational public policy debates, especially when they stand in the way of economic growth. However, the PAP government has not generally
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marginalized religious voices by calling for a “religious cleansing of the public square”; paradoxically, also for pragmatic reasons. To maintain hegemony, the government has had to balance two quite different modes of leadership: transactional and transformational (Burns 1978). Transactional leaders motivate their followers through the mechanism of an exchange: For their success or compliance, followers are rewarded, and for their failure or disobedience, they are punished. Singaporeans have generally offered their votes and obedience to the PAP government in exchange for material comfort and security, which the government has for the most part been able to deliver, or indeed to convince Singaporeans that they have been able to deliver. However, this instrumental, utilitarian, and largely conditional acceptance of the government’s authority based on material advantage and gratification constitutes only one form of legitimacy. Without an overarching framework of public morality and sense of belonging to a meaningful community, this legitimacy may be too fragile, particularly at a time of frequent crises witnessed on a global scale. The government, therefore, also needs to be active moral agents attempting to transform citizens into moral beings with purposes that are higher than the pursuit of material benefit in the private sphere. Transformational leaders work towards achieving a deep and lasting relationship with their followers. Through this relationship, both leaders and followers are mutually elevated to higher levels of motivation and morality, especially in relation to conduct and ethical aspirations. Transformational leadership is built upon moral authority, while transactional leadership is led by pragmatic reasons and materialistic goals. As self-declared pragmatists, the PAP government knows the importance of being able to deliver the economic goods, but also appreciates the importance of effecting a transformational and moral basis of leadership, if only to motivate and inspire Singaporeans in ways that are conducive to nation-building, economic flourishing, and state legitimacy. In this regard, culture, values, and morals — the vocabulary of transformational leadership — can be viewed pragmatically as a synthetic technology for capitalism which can motivate, support, and justify the desired productive and consuming behaviors. It is really pragmatism, then, that explains the Singapore government’s interest in constructing and
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reconstructing an official Singaporean culture and value system, variously appropriating “Western values” such as rugged individualism and “Asian values” such as thrift, diligence, group orientation, and respect for authority that are imagined and strategically drawn up to describe the ideal Singapore worker-consumer-citizen. The state also excluded “unsuitable” values such as Asian superstitiousness and contempt for merchants and soldiers, as well as Western individualism, freedom, equality and mistrust of government, all loosely associated with classical liberal democracy. Clearly, this latter set of values also contradicted the PAP government’s authoritarianism, which partly explains why the government invoked an essentialist language of Confucian values mainly in the 1980s and Asian values mainly in the 1990s to repel its liberal and human rights critics mostly based in the West. In this sense, the “Asianization” of Singapore was really a thoroughly modern project that employed the “traditional” as cultural materials for the economy and authoritarian politics. Today, it is a pragmatic project — an inauthentic transformational leadership — that picks and chooses useful and harmful values for the nation-state’s survival and prosperity, marks them off arbitrarily as “Asian” and “Western,” and then promotes and demotes them respectively under these labels to generate a synthetic Singaporean culture conducive to and supportive of Singapore’s performance within the context of neo-liberal global capitalism and, simultaneously, the government’s political legitimacy.
HEGEMONIC NEGOTIATIONS As part of the continuous ideological work to maintain its hegemony, the PAP government has had to ensure that it fully exploits the opportunities of being a global city plugged into the neo-liberalized global economy, while exerting strong political control to mitigate the crises and social divisions that inevitably accompany neo-liberal globalization. Part of this state control will have to involve transformational leadership abilities to motivate Singaporeans to make sacrifices for their nation-community and to come together as a cohesive and resilient nation. Richard Florida’s account of the creative class helps to explain the strategies and policies that the PAP government has adopted in order to fully exploit the global economic opportunities. Florida argues that US
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cities with high-performing economies are closely correlated with high levels of technology, talent, and tolerance — the last signaled by the concentration of immigrants, artists, and gays living and working in the city. Since homophobia is thought to be the last bastion of bigotry, a city that is welcoming of gays sends a very positive signal about tolerance to the creative class which include “nerds,” “geeks,” eccentrics, and people who have chosen alternative lifestyles (Florida 2002). In a 2003 interview with journalists for an article in Time magazine, then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong replied to a question about the then unimpressive results of Singapore’s foreign talent policies, with an announcement that his government adopted a non-discriminatory hiring policy that made it possible for openly homosexual employees to be placed even in sensitive civil service positions. Gay activists saw an opportunity to move forward in their efforts to gain acceptance for homosexuals in mainstream society and to convince the government to decriminalize gay sex; but this was met by anti-gay arguments and objections that emerged from the more conservative end of the religious communities, the most well-organized of which were the Christians (Tan with Lee 2007). In a letter published in The Straits Times, an emboldened reader issued a veiled threat to the government for appearing to ignore the wishes of the silent majority: “a government that does not appease the wishes of its people may not last long … the Government has shown quite clearly by its action that it has lost its moral authority” (Lim 2003). To bring closure to the heated public debates in cyberspace and the print media, Goh stated emphatically in his National Day Rally speech that he did not “encourage or endorse a gay lifestyle,” nor any policies that would “erode the moral standards of Singapore, or our family values.” In the speech, he warned gays of a possible “backlash” from the “conservative mainstream,” and praised conservative Singaporeans and religious leaders for articulating their views on the matter in a clear and responsible way (Goh 2003). The following year, in 2004, the government decided to allow two casinos to be built in Singapore as a way to give the global city more of a buzz in order to attract tourists and foreign talent. Although the matter was extensively debated in public where economic and social benefits and costs were clearly stated and evaluated, and even though there appeared to be as many Singaporeans who were against the casinos as there were for them, the government went ahead with the decision. The main objections predictably
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came from the religious communities; but this time, their views were not heeded, other than through government assurances that it would do its best to contain the mainly social problems that could arise from having casinos in Singapore. In this regard, the government put in place a prohibitive entry charge for Singaporeans and made sure that the developments were not just casinos but integrated resorts housing cultural, educational, and familyoriented entertainment facilities as well. Why did the government choose to appease the conservative religious communities (by playing the moral authority and transformational leadership card) when it came to the gay issue, but not the casino decision? Were the outcomes simply the result of the government’s careful technical evaluation of the various arguments in the public sphere? Was there more at stake in the casino decision than in the gay issue? And if so, was the government being tactical by losing one battle in order to win a more important one? Pragmatism in these sorts of hegemonic negotiations needs to be carefully managed, or else the government’s ability to lead with moral authority may quickly lose its appearance of authenticity. If the government is going to make a show of taking religious claims “seriously” when it suits them and then overturn these religious reasons by mouthing the pragmatist (and even secularist) rhetoric whenever it seems more profitable to do so, then the government will need a higher and more compelling account of nationhood to maintain hegemony. For a pragmatic approach to policy-making in a secular public sphere that does not exclude religious reasons, the government will need to upkeep a civil religion that transcends any particular religion and provides a sense of identity, common framework of morality, a shared culture, and a fundamental basis for stability.
CIVIL RELIGION In the final years of the last millennium, a time marked by prolonged pessimism provoked by the Asian economic crisis of 1997, independent Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew wrote his memoirs in two separate volumes. His older testament chronicled the monumental events that had led to the creation of a nation-state, whose pre-creation narrative dovetailed in a strangely logical way with the protagonist’s own coming of age — the memoirs were, in fact, titled The Singapore Story (Lee 1998b). Lee’s
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newer testament was a synoptic revelation of the teleological story of nationbuilding, of how Singapore developed “from Third World to First” (Lee 2000). Through this second volume, Lee codified the articles of faith that have come to dominate the way Singaporeans are meant to understand and relate to their nation and state. The principles of “good government” that have included meritocracy, pragmatism, and honesty have not only served as a moral-political compass in Singapore, but also as doctrinal resources to secure widespread obedience to an authoritarian state. Goh Chok Tong, Lee’s successor from 1990 to 2004, ushered in a new period of kinder and gentler government that promised to be more open and consultative. Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s third prime minister, envisioned a more compassionate, open, and inclusive society for his new Singapore and spoke in a somewhat visionary way about a “vibrant global city” (Lee 2005), loosely analogous with prophetic visions of New Jerusalem. Goh, too, had adopted such psalmic imagery as “valleys” and “highlands” in his National Day Rally speech in the gloomy climate of 2003. And Lee Kuan Yew, in his first National Day Rally speech in 1966, explained how “It is in the nature of things that we must talk in parables. And the older I become, the more I am convinced that sometimes perhaps, the Prophets spoke in parables because they had also to take into account so many factors prevailing in their time” (Lee 1966). In its outlines, independent Singapore’s political history resonates with Biblical language, figures, narratives, tropes, motifs, and iconography. The PAP also appears self-consciously to model itself after a kind of priesthood. Party members wear an all-white official uniform — a kind of priestly vestment — to strongly signify purity and incorruption. Party candidates for parliament do not generally come from the Party rank and file, but are talent-spotted and invited to meet with the Party’s inner sanctum at fabled “tea sessions” through which the patriarchs decide if they are worthy to be anointed. In his memoirs, Lee explains how he devised the PAP’s cadre system which he adapted from the Vatican system in which the Pope nominates the cardinals, who in turn elect the Pope (Lee 1998b, p. 287). The PAP Central Executive Committee (CEC) — most of whose members are also Cabinet ministers — appoint an estimated 1,000 secret cadres from ordinary members, who in turn vote every two years for the members of the CEC. A cult of secrecy mystifies the internal workings of both organizations.
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In the school system, students stand in front of the national flag at assembly every morning to sing the national anthem and recite the national pledge (“We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people regardless of race, language, or religion …”). On the back page of their exercise books are printed a list of the five Shared Values which were officially codified in 1991 to anchor a Singapore/Asian identity and value system at a time of heightened sensitivity to global opportunities and threats: • Nation before community and society above self • Family as the basic unit of society • Community support and respect for the individual • Consensus, not conflict • Racial and religious harmony. Once a year, since 1966, Singaporeans become grandly transformed into a national congregation through the spectacle of their annual multimillion-dollar National Day Parade, meant to commemorate national independence gained on 9 August 1965. Since the mid-1980s, in addition to a traditional ceremonial and mainly military segment, these parades have included multimedia-saturated mass performances that mostly re-enact the official Singapore Story before climaxing in a grand display of fireworks. In one of the country’s most blatantly nationalistic activities, Singaporeans — enraptured by the multi-sensory spectacle — drop any inhibitions they might have about patriotic expression and participate enthusiastically in the celebration of their national challenges and achievements, the latter attributed to the courageous and prophetic efforts of pioneer leaders of the PAP. The parade begins with the mass singing of patriotic songs before the solemnly announced arrival of members of the ruling party who, dressed in their all-white uniforms, ceremonially enter and take their seats on the grandstand, as the people cheer them on. The program’s format, that remains very much the same each year, is a liturgical sequence of rituals and congregational singing of national “hymns.” A couple of weeks after the parade each year, the prime minister addresses the nation through the National Day Rally Speech, Singapore’s version of the United States president’s State of the Union address. Carefully staged before a hand-picked audience/congregation meant to represent the crosssection of Singapore society and televised with translations into every official
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language, the speech-event enables the prime minister — speaking in Malay, Mandarin, then English — to take stock of Singapore’s accomplishments for the year and to chart the way forward. Its predictable format always includes a reiteration of Singapore’s vulnerabilities, challenges, and achievements; a rallying call for Singaporeans to unite against adversity; and a slew of policy announcements for the year. Embedded in the speech are national values and principles such as “survivalism,” “multiracialism,” “meritocracy,” and “pragmatism.” The tone is generally hyperbolic and the style is meant to inspire the wider citizenry (Tan 2007). The discourse and practices of Singapore’s nation-state are clearly an example of “civil religion.” The intellectual tradition of Emile Durkheim’s sociology of religion, on which is based the orthodox thinking about civil religion today, is described by Michael Hughey (1983) as holding that every relatively stable society will possess a set of shared beliefs and symbols that express the highest values of the society and that are considered sacred. Against the many conflicts present in everyday life, the collective sharing of these values serves to remind members of society of what they hold in common, thereby providing for the order, stability, and integration of the society as a whole. Periodic collective rites, during which the shared values are celebrated and reaffirmed, constitute the specific mechanisms through which these states are attained and sustained (Hughey 1983, p. xiii).
Similarly, N.J. Demerath III, in a discussion of civil society and religion in the United States, defines civil religion as “any society’s most common religious denominator which consecrates its sense of nationhood and pivots around a set of tenets and rituals forged in the fires of a shared history” (Demerath 2003, p. 353). While he identifies the Judeo-Christian tradition as a “passive cultural legacy” which has formed the basis of American civil religion, the case of Singapore’s civil religion — as described above — is much more like what he describes as “an activist political decision” (p. 354), but one that also seems to rely for its form, style, and imagery on a JudeoChristian tradition which, oddly, is held by only about 15% of Singapore’s multi-religious population. Demerath argues that civil society and civil religion are mutually dependent, where the former in all its diversity requires “some degree of shared cultural bearings” for successful coordination in the name of civility, which the cultural climate defines. In the competition for public
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endorsement, those agents of civil society “that cleave closest to the civil religion are,” according to Demerath, “best able to use it as a source of both legitimacy and cultural power.” In turn, civil religion requires the infrastructure of a coordinated civil society in order to be activated when necessary (p. 357). The “religion-like” elements of Singapore’s nation-state discourse and practices have played a small part as a source of civil society legitimacy and cultural power, but they have played a much greater role in securing the PAP government’s political legitimacy. The evolution of Singapore’s civil religion can be located within a public sphere defined by a pragmatic mode of secularism obtained largely through transactional leadership. To fill the moral authority deficit created by overly pragmatic and materialistic policy-making, and exacerbated by strategic but unsustainable appeasements to religious communities, the government has had to develop a civil religion that transcends each particular substantive religion while retaining the form and style of religion. As Singapore becomes more deeply embedded in the global network of opportunities and threats, its government will have to work harder at securing both the economic and moral bases of its authority.
REFERENCES Burns, James M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Casanova, José (1994). Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chew, John (2003). Shaping of maturity. Diocesan Digest, September. http://www.anglican. org.sg/bishopchew_message_sep03.html. Chua, Beng-Huat (1997). Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore. London and New York: Routledge. Demerath III, N. J. (2003). Civil society and civil religion as mutually dependent. In Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, Michele Dillon (ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 348–358. Florida, Richard (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, & Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books. Goh, Chok Tong (2003). From the valley to the highlands. National Day Rally Address by Singapore’s then Prime Minister, 17 August 2003. Text available from Speech-Text Archival and Retrieval System (STARS) website managed by National Archives of Singapore. http://stars.nhb.gov.sg/stars/public/. Gramsci, Antonio (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers. Hughey, Michael W. (1983). Civil Religion and Moral Order: Theoretical and Historical Dimensions. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
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Lee, Hsien Loong (2005). National Day Rally Address by the Prime Minister, 21 August 2005. Text available from Speech-Text Archival and Retrieval System (STARS) website managed by National Archives of Singapore. http://stars.nhb.gov.sg/stars/public/. Lee, Kuan Yew (1966). National Day Rally Address by Singapore’s then Prime Minister, 8 August 1966. Text available from Speech-Text Archival and Retrieval System (STARS) website managed by National Archives of Singapore. http://stars.nhb.gov.sg/stars/ public/. Lee, Kuan Yew (1998a). Speech in parliament on the White Paper on Ministerial Salaries on 1 November 1994. Reproduced in Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas, Han Fook Kwang, Warren Fernandez, and Sumiko Tan (eds.). Singapore: Times Editions, pp. 313–316. Lee, Kuan Yew (1998b). The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore: Times Editions. Lee, Kuan Yew (2000). From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965–2000. Singapore: Times Editions. Lim, George (2003). Government should rethink hiring of gays. The Straits Times, 15 July. Neo, Boon Siong, and Geraldine Chen (2007). Dynamic Governance: Embedding Culture, Capabilities and Change in Singapore. Singapore: World Scientific. Tan, Eugene (2008). Keeping God in place: The management of religion in Singapore. In Religious Diversity in Singapore, Lai Ah Eng (ed.). Singapore: ISEAS, pp. 55–82. Tan, Kenneth Paul (2007). Singapore’s National Day Rally speech: A site of ideological negotiation. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 37(3), 292–308. Tan, Kenneth Paul (2008a). Meritocracy and elitism in a global city: Ideological shifts in Singapore. International Political Science Review, 29(1), 7–27. Tan, Kenneth Paul (2008b). Religious reasons in a secular public sphere: Debates in the media about homosexuality. In Religious Diversity in Singapore, Lai Ah Eng (ed.). Singapore: ISEAS, pp. 413–433. Tan, Kenneth Paul, with Gary Lee (2007). Imagining the gay community in Singapore. Critical Asian Studies, 39(2), 179–204. Thio, Li-Ann (2008). Religion in the public sphere of Singapore: Wall of division or public square? In Religious Diversity and Civil Society: A Comparative Analysis, Bryan S. Turner (ed.). Oxford: The Bardwell Press, pp. 73–103. Tong, Chee Kiong (2008). Religious trends and issues in Singapore. In Religious Diversity in Singapore, Lai Ah Eng (ed.). Singapore: ISEAS, pp. 28–54.
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Index Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 198, 202 bigotry, 33 BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party), 171, 175 Blasphemy Law, 202, 204 BN (Barisan Nasional), 283, 298 BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party), 215 Bradlaugh, Charles, 96 Brelawis, 186, 187, 195 British, 170–172, 175 Buddhism, 100, 106, 108, 301–303, 305, 312–315 Buddhists, 206, 340, 344, 345 Bumiputera, 279, 283 burdens of judgment, 16
absolutism, 104, 105, 115, 120–122 Abu Zayd, Nasr Hamid, 239, 257, 258 acquis communautaire, 81, 89, 90 adultery, 202 Advani, L.K., 176 afterlife, 7, 8, 12 agnostic, 11, 96, 110, 111 Ahmadiyya, 195, 198, 201, 204, 208 AK Party, 328, 336 al-Azhar, 239, 244, 248, 249, 253, 259–261 al-Banna, Hassan, 255 Al-Qaeda, 205 al-Sa‘id, Refa‘at, 241, 249, 254, 260 Amin, Galal, 240–242, 244, 245, 247–249, 251, 260 Analects, 107, 109–122 Anglicanism, 79 Anglo-Saxon, 319, 326 apostasy, 239, 257 Asad, Talal, 236, 246 ‘Asfur, Jaber, 251 Ataturk, 320, 322, 329 atheism, 96 atheists, 11, 12, 16 authoritarian, 101, 104, 105, 319, 320, 326, 330, 331, 335–337 autonomy, 103, 104 Awami League, 215–218, 223–228
Caliph, 322, 324, 333 capitalist-industrial society, 340 caste, 20, 169–171, 173–175, 177, 179, 180, 182, 183, 193, 194 Catholic Church, 123–126, 134 Catholics, 11, 12, 16, 85, 86 CCP (Chinese Communist Party), 102 Central Sikh Gurdwara Board, 342 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, 82 Chirac, Jacques, 78 Christianity, 12, 18–20, 96–98, 100, 101, 106–108 Christians, 340, 344, 351, 355 citizenship, 263, 264, 269–271, 276–278 civil religion, 339, 346, 352, 355, 356 civil society, 340, 343, 355, 356 Communism, 101, 304–306, 309, 313, 315 communitarism, 129, 130
Bajrang Dal, 180, 181 Balagangadhara, S.N., 18, 19 Bangladesh, 213–221, 223–233 belonging, 83, 88–90 Bengali culture, 218 359
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360 compassion, 157, 159, 162, 165–168 Comte, August, 8 Confucianism, 95, 99, 100, 104–109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 119–122, 302, 303, 313, 314, 344 Confucius, 104, 105, 107–114, 116–122 consociationalism, 282 conversion, 18–20 cultural heritage, 23, 24, 30, 34 cultural imperialism, 103 Cultural Revolution, 99, 102 Daoism, 100, 106, 108, 301–303, 305, 312–315 DAP (Democratic Action Party), 283, 296, 299 Dar-ul-Harb, 200 Dar-ul-Islam, 200 De Roover, Jakob, 18 de-secularization, 302 Declaration of Religious Harmony, 342 Delors, Jacques, 77, 80 democracy, 185–188, 193, 196–199, 206–209, 256 democratic, 237, 240 demos, 124 Deoband, 171 Deobandis, 186 diversity, 9, 16, 17 “Document No. 19”, 305–307 doxa, 86 Dravidian castes, 180 ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), 135, 337 economic reform, 301, 304 emancipation, 127, 128, 130, 131 England, 125 Enlightenment, 25, 27, 29, 30, 33 enlightenment (tanwir), 237, 239, 244, 251 Erbakan, Necmettin, 328 Erdoˇgan, Recep Tayyip, 336 Ershad, General, 215, 225 EU (European Union), 77, 78, 80–82, 84, 87–91, 135, 320 euhemerism, 81, 84
b805-Index
Index Eurobarometer, 81, 85, 86, 88 Europe, 24, 25, 32 European Constitutional Treaty, 136 European Convention on Human Rights, 84 European Values Survey, 85, 86 extreme secularism, 305, 306, 308, 309 fairness, 14, 15 fallibility, 12, 13 Falungong, 100 family values, 351 fatwa, 263, 269, 271, 275, 276, 278 filial piety (xiao), 109, 111 Fiqh, 191 Fischer, Joschka, 79 Foda, Farag, 238, 255, 257 fornication, 202 Foucault, Michel, 236, 246 France, 124–126, 130, 133–136 freedom, 9–11, 15, 17, 19, 20 fundamentalism, 19 Gandhi, Indira, 176 Gandhi, Mahatma, 25, 27–30, 33, 173 gay, 346, 351, 352 Ghazali, 191 globalization, 88, 89 Golden Rule, 15 Gourgouris, Stathis, 78 Greece, 125, 126, 134 Gujarat, 174, 178, 181 Habermas, Jûrgen, 78 hadith, 189, 190, 208, 209 Hanafi, Hassan, 245, 253 hard secularism, 96, 101 Harmony Circles, 342 Hat Revolution, 325, 327 Haydar, Haydar, 261 Heaven (tian), 110, 114 hegemony, 341–343, 349, 350, 352 HINDRAF, 283, 298 Hindu Advisory Board, 342 Hinduism, 18, 20
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Index Hindus, 169–171, 177, 179, 187, 192–195, 206 Holyoake, George, 95 Hoodbhoy, Pervez, 191 Hudud, 285 human dignity, 82, 83 Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 203 humanism, 84 Husain, Zakir, 173 Hussein, Taha, 247–249, 253, 259 Iban, 283 Ibrahim, Sa‘ad Eddin, 250, 251 ijtihad, 191 ‘Immara, Mohammad, 254, 256, 257 immortality, 8 India, 98, 99, 169–175, 178, 179, 181–183 Indian National Congress, 170–172, 186, 187, 199 individual freedom, 103 “Indonesian person”, 269, 270 Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles, 342 Internal Security Act, 341, 344 Iqbal, Sir Muhammad, 194 Iran, 191, 204, 207 Islam, 18, 19, 98, 100, 106, 238, 244, 245, 248, 249, 253, 254, 256, 259, 260, 320, 322–324, 326, 327, 331, 333 Islam Hadhari, 285–288 Islamic democracy, 188, 193, 196, 198, 199, 208 Islamic fundamentalism, 199 Islamic jurisprudence, 191 Islamic state, 185, 186, 188, 189, 196, 199–201, 206–209, 279, 280, 284–289, 291, 293, 297–299 Islamism, 199, 201, 202, 208, 209 Islamist positions, 187 Islamists, 185, 187, 188, 196, 198–202, 204–209 Islamization, 200, 204 Israel, Jonathan, 246, 247, 260 Italy, 126, 134
361 Jacquemond, Richard, 261 Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, 229, 230 Jamaat-e-Islami, 215, 225–229, 231, 232 Jiang, Zemin, 102 jihad, 188, 201, 204, 205, 208 Jinnah, Mohammad Ali, 170, 185, 194, 221 John Paul II, 123, 125 Juncker, Jean-Claude, 84 jus soli, 279 justice, 155, 157, 159, 162–168 Kadazan, 283 kafirs, 201 Keightley, David, 105 Kemalism, 322–324 ketuanan Melayu, 283 Khan, Liaqat Ali, 197 Khan, Mohammad Ayub, 197 Kothari Commission, 173 krisis, 77, 78, 81, 91 laïcité, 123–125, 130, 133–136 laicism, 320–324, 326, 328, 330–332, 334–337 Lamassoure, Alain, 88 Lambert, Yves, 86 laos, 123, 124 legitimacy, 339, 342, 343, 345, 349, 350, 356 legitimacy (legitimation), 114–117, 119, 120 liberal democracy, 98, 101 liberals, 98, 101, 122 liberation theology, 344 liberty, 9–11, 13 Lisbon Treaty, 81, 83, 84, 91, 135, 136 Lithuania, 86 Locke, John, 11 logic, 160, 162 love, 157, 159, 161–165, 167, 168 Lukács, Georg, 78, 90 Madan, T.N., 23–25, 27–29, 31, 32, 87, 90, 98 Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, 341
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Index
Malay, 341, 342, 355 Mandal Commission, 177 Marxists, 196 Maududi, Abul Ala, 199 Mecca, 188 Mehrez, Samia, 252, 261 Melayu, 281, 283, 285 MENDAKI (Council on Education for Muslim Children), 342 meritocracy, 341, 348, 353, 355 metaphysical, 9 MIC (Malayan Indian Congress), 280, 299 Mill, John Stuart, 8 modernity, 24, 25, 28, 32, 35, 96, 97, 101, 192, 205, 206, 235, 237, 246, 247, 258 modernization, 24, 32, 95, 96, 194, 237, 249, 258, 302–306, 309, 312, 315 Mongols, 191 moral authority, 341, 349, 351, 352, 356 moralism, 115, 120 MPR (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat/People’s Consultative Assembly), 266 Mughals, 191, 206 MUIS (Islamic Religious Council of Singapore), 342 multiculturalism, 77, 80, 81, 341 multiracialism, 341, 355 Munir, Muhammad, 196, 201 Musharraf, Pervez, 205 Muslim Brothers, 238, 239, 252, 253, 255, 260 Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 198, 203 Muslim League, 185–187, 195, 199, 201 Muslims, 170–173, 175, 177–181, 340–342
non-violence, 157 Nussbaum, Martha, 11
Nandy, Aishi, 26–28, 30, 33 Narain, Jaiprakash, 176 nation-building, 30, 32 National Day Parade, 354 Nazi Germany, 27 NDA (National Democratic Alliance), 182 Negara Berkebajikan, 288, 289 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 32, 172 neutrality, 18
Qisas, 285 Quaid-e-Azam, 196 Qur’an, 174, 323 Quran, 188–190, 197, 202, 208, 209
Ottoman, 189, 191, 206, 320–325, 332, 333 pagan, 15, 18–20 Pakistan, 170, 176 Pakistan Constituent Assembly, 194, 197 Pakistan National Assembly, 204 Pakistan People’s Party, 198 Pakistani nationalism, 187, 195 Pancasila, 263–271 PAP (People’s Action Party), 339 PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia), 280, 285 peace, 163, 164, 166 Penal Code, 202, 340 People’s Republican Party (Turkey), 322, 323, 336 Perda, 263, 271, 272 Pines, Yuri, 108, 118 PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat), 299 plural society, 279, 281–283, 297 pluralism, 16–18 Poland, 134, 135 polygamy, 198 pragmatism, 346–349, 352, 353, 355 PRC (People’s Republic of China), 99 Presidency of Religious Affairs (Turkey), 326, 327, 330, 331, 333 Presidential Council for Religious Harmony, 342 Prophet Muhammad, 322 proselytism, 18, 20 Protestant, 16
Rahman, Ziaur, 215, 226, 228 Ramjanambhoomi temple, 177, 179 rationality, 192 rationalization, 235, 236
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Index Rawls, John, 16 Reformasi, 288 reformism, 260 reformists, 259 religion, 23–34 Religion of Humanity, 8, 9 religious freedom, 96, 97, 99, 102–104, 122, 132 religious inheritance, 135, 136 Religious Knowledge, 344, 345 religious revival, 301, 302, 315 renaissance, 237, 258 ritual (rite), 101, 108–111, 113, 115 RJD (Rashtriya Janta Dal), 175 rootedness, 88 RSS (Rashtriyaswayam Sevak Sangh), 173, 175 Safavids, 191, 206 Said, Edward, 236 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 86 Saudi Arabia, 204, 207 scientific temper, 27 secular, 169–172, 174, 175, 177, 178, 180–183 secular citizenship, 263, 277, 278 secularism, 7, 14, 16, 17, 23–34, 77, 79–82, 86, 87, 155–158, 185, 187, 188, 194–196, 207–209, 213–215, 217–220, 224, 233, 235, 236, 238, 239, 241, 246, 248, 254, 339, 341, 345, 346, 356 secularization, 77–81, 85, 86, 88, 91, 98, 100, 103, 107, 339, 340 Sedition Act, 340 Semitic, 18–20 separation of church and state, 13, 17 separation of religion and politics, 102 September 11, 99 Shah Bano, 177, 178 Shared Values, 354, 355 shari’ah, 322, 323, 325, 341 Sheikh Hasina, 218, 233 Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, 213, 214, 218, 224, 227, 228 Shias, 189, 191, 201, 204
b805-Index
363 Sikhs, 171 SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India), 181 Six Arrows, 322 slavery, 193 Slovenia, 134 soft secularism, 96, 99 Sommerville, C.J., 79, 86 “soul for Europe”, 77, 80 SP (Samajwadi Party), 175 state, 25–27, 29, 30, 33, 34 state corporatism, 342 subsidiarity, 82, 90 Sufi, 186, 195, 217, 322, 325 Sunna, 189, 197, 202 Sunnis, 186, 188, 189, 191, 193, 195, 201, 204 survivalism, 355 syariah, 285–287, 289, 291, 293–298 Taliban, 205, 207 Tanzimat, 321 Taoists, 340 taqlid, 191 Taylor, Charles, 97 Taylor, Rodney, 105, 107, 113 terrorism, 244, 245, 249, 254, 255, 257, 258 Tharamangalam, Joseph, 90 The Singapore Story, 352 theo-democracy, 188, 199, 208 theological, 8 tolerance, 25, 27 tradition, 17–20, 27, 29, 30, 33–35 traditional secularism, 313, 316 transactional leadership, 349, 356 transformational leadership, 349, 350, 352 truth, 9, 10, 12, 17–20, 155, 159, 161–163, 165 Turkey, 319–329, 331–337 ulama, 171, 172, 186, 194, 195, 197, 198, 201, 203, 204, 324–327, 333 ummah, 287
December 16, 2009
12:9
364 UMNO (United Malays National Organization), 280, 285 United States, 205 universal values, 23 universalism, 123, 125, 127 USSR, 319, 334–336 Vaidic, 155, 158, 159, 167 Vatican, 102, 123, 125, 134 violence, 14, 19 Vlaams Belang, 90
9in x 6in
b805-Index
Index Wang, Gungwu, 99, 101–103 Weber, Max, 79, 86, 89 Willaime, Jean-Paul, 88 Williams, Roger, 11 women’s rights, 185, 203, 209 zakat, 188, 204 Zia, Khaleda, 225, 226, 231, 232 Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad, 202 Zubaida, Sami, 237–239
