The Death Of Secularism
~By: Satyanidhi Mehra
From Turkey to the United States, India to Russia, and parts of Europe and the Middle East, secularism is under attack from all sides: from the left, from the right, by liberal multiculturalists and illiberal totalitarians, by racists and xenophobes as a stick with which to beat minorities in various societies, and by religious fundamentalists plotting its demise.
But perhaps today’s greatest foe of secularism is ignorance. Although secularism has played a critical role in defining the contemporary world, it is a lesser-known notion than capitalism, social welfare, or democracy. It is not a subject that is often studied in schools or even universities. This is a hazardous scenario these days when all of modernity’s implicit assumptions are being tested.
Reasonable arguments about secularism based on a common understanding of what it is, what it means, and where it came from are scarce. Secularism is the belief that state institutions should be separate from religious ones, that everyone should have the right to freedom of belief, thought, and practice (unless it infringes on the rights of others), and that the state should not discriminate against people based on their religious or non-religious worldview.
It is a global phenomenon having origins in the past, even though it is typically perceived as a modern and western concept. France and America were the first countries to legislate secularism in the seventeenth century. It has intellectual roots in the West from a variety of places, including pre-Christian European examples of a government that was separate from religion in practice, Christian political philosophy, and post-Christian ideas about deriving government from the consent of the governed rather than from gods. Secularism has its origins in Asia, where Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim thinking all supplied grounds for governments to treat all citizens equally, regardless of faith. Classical Indian philosophy gave birth to conceptions of statecraft that had nothing to do with religion, while colonial interactions gave birth to new forms of secularism.
A government based on divine laws is the oldest and most evident alternative to secularism. If you feel your religion is natural and one of the monotheistic religions that make exclusive truth claims, it is easy to assume that your state should be based solely on your faith. All three features of secularism clash with such “nations under God.” To begin with, there is no distinction between religious and state institutions: they are the same.
Second, if non-adherents to the state’s religion are granted freedom of conscience, it is only to the extent that the state’s religion allows it. Third, instead of treating everyone equally, the state favours its religion in its interactions with society. Full-fledged theocracy is long gone in the West, and it appeared to be dying out globally in the mid-twentieth century, as even the most devout cultures on the planet began giving at least lip service to secularism. It appeared at the time that future politics would be secular all across the world. The Islamist revolution in Iran in 1979, which reversed what had been considered a developing model of secularism, was a major shock to this notion.
In the late twentieth century, optimistic secularists saw Iran as nothing more than a blip on the radar. However, the strains that Asian secularism, such as that of Bangladesh, has recently faced provide a growing challenge to the notion that it can create a sustainable political order everywhere.The abolition of secularism in 1977 was illegal, according to the Bangladesh Supreme Court, because it was carried out under an unconstitutional martial law system. The constitution’s secularism was reinstated by the court. The secular principle presently coexists with the state religion.
In Turkey, President Erdogan’s religious political party is tearing apart the shattered remnants of laiklik (Turkish for secularism) as quickly as it can. The AK Party, which styles itself as the ideological equivalent of a western European conservative Christian Democrat party, was formed in 2001 after its predecessor was shut down by the country’s constitutional court.
In India, Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu nationalist movement alienates non-Hindu populations while tacitly condoning their persecution.
The ethnic nationalists that surrounded the Trump administration in the United States wanted to rebrand the country as a ‘Judeo-Christian’ state, to some extent we can say that Trump was successful in his agenda. In Russia and many other Eastern European nations, illiberal governments are reviving the historic partnership of autocracy and the Orthodox Church by bestowing honours on priests and patriarchs and lavishing public monies. In the Arab East, the people’s preferred option to authoritarianism is increasingly being perceived as an Islamic state rather than a secular democracy.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict dates back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when large nationalism movements arose among Jews and Arabs, both seeking statehood for their people in the Middle East. Persecution of Jews in Europe for decades was the worst of many blemishes in the continent’s history, and Zionists’ desire for a safe haven is reasonable. Zionism, like all other colonial ventures, was founded on a blatant disdain for indigenous people’s rights. Given the harm it has caused the Palestinian people, Israel must make whatever reparations are possible. Aiding the development of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem, should be one of them. Israel should not object to this entity and should also assist in its establishment through generous reparations. Aside from being the right thing to do, realising the Palestinians’ justified desire for their own state would put a stop to the bloodshed directed toward Israel on a regular basis. In addition, any Israeli legislation that discriminates against non-Jews should be repealed. All citizens should have full and equal rights, including Palestinians who want to return to their homeland. These refugees should, in theory, be compensated for their lost homes and lands.
The relativistic Westerners who today suggest that secularism was all along with a narrow Christian and European imposition on the world, doomed to fail, are perhaps the most beguiling critics of secularism. It wasn’t and probably won’t be, but it does face significant obstacles.
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