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| ...or not |
While we are rightly shocked at the brutality of ISIS, there
really isn't anything new here. Hundreds
of years ago David Livingstone traveled through northern Africa and commented on the "other" slavery practiced by the Barbary pirates.
"To overdraw its evil is a simple impossibility."
The only difference between this and ISIS is digital video
and social media. What only Dr.
Livingstone saw is now on the web for all to see.
But in the wake of the massacre of the
staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie
Hebdo we are getting a very clear contrast of responses to the
intersection of religion and violence.
This intersection is nothing new to Europe. From Constantine's Edict of Toleration Europe
became a 'Churchist' society - meaning the Church was the most significant unit
of society. The Crusades then pit that
'Churchist' society against the Islamic Caliphate and produced decades of
religious wars. Within Christianity
itself, the corruption engendered by the intersection of politics and religion
produced the Reformation, which then produced conflicting religious loyalties -
and more decades of religious wars.
The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was, for all intents and
purposes, written on paper recycled from ashes from some of these wars. The 'nation-state', with borders commonly
recognized by 'international law' as we have come to take for granted, was
born. The important thing to note,
however, was how Europe gradually went from being a 'Churchist' society to a 'Statist'
society, where the State is now the most significant unit of society.
This is the context in which we must evaluate the comments
of Charlie Hebdo's new
editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard in the wake of the massacre. There are some very important clues here: Biard's claim is that the paper does not attack religion
unless religion gets involved in politics.
Every time we draw a cartoon of Muhammad, every time we draw a cartoon of the prophets, every time we draw a cartoon of God, we defend the freedom of religion, we declare that God must not be a political or public figure, He must be a private figure.
In light of Europe's history, this all makes sense. The Enlightenment produced the distinction
between public and private that forms Biard's premise here. This, then, is how Europe views the very idea
of being 'secular'. God, religion and
devotion must be private. Since the
State is the most significant unit of society, and the State is secular,
society (the individual in the public square) must also be 'secular'. And it is the State that defines where the
boundaries between public and private are with respect to religion.
This view of religious freedom is very different than the one
held by America's founding fathers. And
this is why I am not Charlie.
The story of Islam in America is largely the story of a
peaceful coexistence. Along with many
other religious minorities, we have lived peaceably among each other while
Europe struggles to do the same. There
must be a reason why.
I believe it has to do with exactly what we mean by
'secular'.
Where Europe has gone from being a 'Churchist' society to a
'Statist' society - which it remains - our founding fathers built their ideas on the scaffolding of the
tradition in the Reformation that believed one became a Christian by choosing
Christianity for themselves - and thus were baptized as adults rather than
children. This necessarily meant that
the freedom to make (or not to make) that choice must be a freedom that arises
from nature rather than the State and its church. This, then, is the foundation of the American
idea that there are rights - "...among which are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness," that precede government. Therefore the first priority of the exercise
of political power is the securing of those rights to their proper owner – the
individual.
This is why we do not distinguish between public and private
in the American idea of religious freedom.
To do so requires that we allow the State to determine the boundaries
between public and private. And that,
then, means the freedom of religion is subject to the benevolence of the State
rather than ours by nature.
And so when we say we are 'secular', we mean to say we make
the maximum amount of room in our
public spaces and life for the expression and practice of the religions of our
people. And this is why most of our
newspapers did not publish the cartoons.
To expose religious sensibilities and sanctities to public ridicule is
to deny our public spaces and life to those religions and their adherents.
This is what Europe does not yet understand. Biard complains that refusal to run their
cartoons undermines freedom:
When they refuse to publish this cartoon ... they blur out democracy, secularism, freedom of religion, and they insult the citizenship.
Voltaire was wrong. It is exactly the
opposite.
By not publishing cartoons that defame sanctities, we
preserve the essential dignity of our neighbor who practices a religion
different from ours. And that dignity
cannot be divided by the State between public and private - where someone in a
cubicle somewhere decides for everyone else where the border between public and
private is drawn, thus infringing upon both religious freedom and personal
dignity.
Europe's ideas worked well for them while everyone shared
the same history and customs. But the
news today proves ever more clearly that multiculturalism is the inexorable arc
of history. For freedom to endure, it
must be conceived of without boundaries between public and private, and the
State must be conceived of in the context of freedoms and rights which precede
it. This means the State must be secular
so as to preserve the rights of its people to be devout - in public and in private - and to enjoy the dignity their devotions
confer.
[This first appeared in my column "Politics for the Rest of Us" at Communities Digital News.]
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