Common Ground

In recent years, there has been a growing fear in Europe about the spread of Islam throughout the continent.  It is not relegated to one specific area, cropping up in countries such as England and the Netherlands.  It is perhaps most apparent, though, in France, which has gained considerable attention in recent years for taking drastic measures to curb the public display of Islamic religious symbols under the pretense of secularization.  These measures are horribly misguided, and are creating acrimony around a social dynamic that already has a good deal of it.  They are simply a mistake, and completely counter to the democratic ideals that France helped instill across the globe.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not have a favorable view of religion.  I'm an agnostic atheist myself, and I frankly don't think religion is necessary at all in today's world.  However, these measures not only target religion but culture, are based in xenophobia, and do nothing but further acrimony between different religious groups, even those not directly involved.  They should not be tolerated if not for the obvious nature of suppressing human rights, then for the malice they paint the different religious groups with.  I, personally, think that France's history of secularization has been beneficial for the most part.  France has walked a delicate line of keeping government as removed from religion as possible and vice versa without upsetting its large portion of religious citizens (61% Catholics, 6% Islamic, 1% Jewish).  Some secular practices I think could be very beneficial to the United States, such as the requirement that any school receiving government money not require any religious classes as a requirement.  Not only would that be scoffed at here, but some movements have tried to go the other way, manipulating curricula to include religious doctrine as in Texas and Kansas.  Indeed, secularization has some far-reaching benefits, such as the curbing of the systematic degradation of objectivity in the sciences by religious extremists.

That being said, not only are laws like the one passed in France in 2004, banning the wearing of any religious symbol, horribly discriminatory against religion, but are completely detrimental to the cause of secularization.  France, as well as the rest of Europe, has been marred by religious quarrels for as far back as modern history goes.  Ever since Christianity spread to the so-called barbarian tribes that once occupied those lands have they been fighting over who has the correct interpretation, in addition to fighting Muslims from the Ottoman Empire and placing harsh, discriminatory laws on their Jewish populations.  Secularization in France was actually intended to be a response to this, the government is not to interfere in religious matters and religion is not to interfere in the policy-making of government.  This is another example of a secular reform that I think could be universally beneficial, I only dream of the day when politicians such as Bobby Jindal and Ayatollah Khamenei no longer use their government positions in order to broadcast their extremist religious policies.  However, these recent secular reforms go completely against that spirit.

The main argument against secularization has always been that government can become too oppressive, that they can begin to curtail the rights granted to the religious.  Any good secularist should consider it their duty to prevent exactly this from occurring.  When secularization works this is nothing more than an unfounded fear, when these concerns start to become reality they strengthen the arguments against secularization.  American Christians fear secularization, they fear the government intrusion onto their religious practices.  Up until this point those fears have been unfounded, France has had a perfectly functional secular democracy in a country dominated by Catholics.  They know have a right to fear, they can now point to secularization banning religious symbols in school and say that there is concrete evidence of secularization being oppressive.  More than in any other manner, I am against this as a secularist.

The interesting dichotomy that this last point brings up is one of the Christian perspective.  One would think that, especially given the long-standing grudge many American Christians have held towards secularization, these recent bans would be prime fodder for an argument against secularization.  Not so, most Christians I have heard from are largely in favor of this.  Why would that be?  Perhaps because the law doesn't so much target religious expression as it does Islamic culture.  These laws have been passed under the pretense of secularization, but the wearing of religious ornaments in schools has never been an issue for either Jewish or Christian students in the past in France.  It seems it doesn't become an issue until hijabs and burqas begin to become more prevalent.  In short, these secular reforms are specifically targeted at Islam and are supported due to the growing Islamaphobia present in France and other European countries at the moment.  Like the Jews of old Europe, Muslims are now the target of social ridicule and ostracization in an institutionalized manner.  The reason most Christians do not speak out against secularization when they would otherwise is because they, too, harbor some of this Islamaphobia.  I believe I wrote extensively about the golden rule a short while back, again Christians should learn to heed their own scripture.  The Bible preaches tolerance and evangelism not by proselytism, but by setting a good example.

To be fair, there are some within Christianity who do still abide by these principles.  For as much criticism as I heap on the Catholic Church, they are taking the lead in this issue in Europe.  The church has allocated substantial funds to helping immigrants, the bulk of which are Islamic, become more acclimated in their new homes throughout Europe.  Some detractors have called this movement, started under Pope John Paul II, one motivated by his own memories of Polish Jews who were forced into transience during the days of institutionalized racism against Jews.  My question to them is why is this a bad thing?  History is there for us to learn from, to ensure we do not repeat mistakes.  I understand that some might invoke Godwin's Law here, that no one is talking about killing Muslims outright or anything even close to that.  To them, though, I would say that all oppression begins this way, that the oppression of the Jews began with false tales of their supposed supernatural nature and unflattering caricatures and depictions.  It began with a lack of understanding of their culture, and a vilification of them due to this lack of understanding.  This is exactly what we have occurring with Islamic culture.  Will it devolve into mass genocide?  More than likely no, but there is plenty of recent oppression that can be traced back to cultural tensions, such as the fighting in Rwanda and Sudan and the systematic oppression of Muslims in China.  To let this type of cultural warfare not only take hold, but to do so in a country whose thinkers birthed the very ideas of modern democracy and human rights, is simply unconscionable.

Speaking of these cultural differences, they are less pronounced than most people think.  A common rallying cry of secularization supporters who target Islam in Europe is that Muslims want to spread Sharia law.  Aside from the misunderstanding of that word that is inherent in western culture, most Muslims do not actually support Sharia law in the context we commonly know.  The word has been hijacked from religious extremists, and the Muslims who do support Sharia law only support broad, religious principles that are typically synonymous with what we refer to as human rights.  Furthermore, a distinct minority of Muslims actually support subversion of existing governments, only about seven percent.  Another common misconception is one that Muslims do not respect women's rights, and also that the hijab is a solely religious garment.  A majority of Muslim women actually support women's rights, and though smaller, so do a majority of Muslim men.  Muslim women also do not view the hijab as a symbol of female oppression, as has commonly been suggested by western women's movements, but as a part of their culture, and also as a way to be recognized not only by their beauty but by their own intellectual merit.  It is frankly arrogant of westerners to suggest that they do not have the right to choose whether or not it is a symbol of oppression.  Women fought for so long to have the rights to express themselves how they wanted, and now they choose to dogmatically dictate what is oppression and what isn't?  It is hypocrisy at its finest.

The simple truth with Muslims, as with Jews and any other religious groups, is that they are more similar to us than we give them credit for.  They believe in principles of equality and democracy, they choose to go to countries like France not to subvert their culture, as has been claimed, but to adapt to their culture, to find a haven from the oppression that occurs in countries like Iran where religion is used as a smokescreen to hide political authoritarianism.  By focusing on the small differences and using them to vilify and dehumanize a group such as Muslims countries like France are spitting in the face of their democratic ideals.  These laws are wrong; they are wrong on a level of human rights, they are wrong on a level of religious toleration, they are wrong on a level of properly representing secularization.  I am proud of being not only a secularist but an atheist in part because such disputes as this should be beneath either one, and not only does it lessen my pride to see that is not true but it also serves to make me a target of ridiculous arguments that atheists and secularists are religious bigots.  France has three words at the bottom of the symbol of its government: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.  Où est-ce que ta liberté?  Où est-ce que ton egalité?  Où est-ce que ta fraternité?  Liberté, egalité, et fraternité pour tout le monde, ou pour personne.