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Secularism | Munk Debates

SEASON TWO - EPISODE #38

Secularism

Be it resolved, a secular society is a tolerant society.

Guests
Caroline Fourest
John Bowen
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About this episode

First the banning of headscarves in France’s public schools. Then prohibitions against full face coverings and religious worship in public spaces, and most recently legislation that targets Islamic fundamentalism. And in Quebec, a former colony of France, the outlawing of religious symbols in government workplaces, including schools. These are some of the strong measures that France and Quebec have taken to enforce the separation of church and state that is characteristic of Western democracies. Proponents of secularism, or laïcité as it is called in France, say that secularism promotes healthy democracies by ensuring that competing religious loyalties do not undermine the full equality and free speech necessary to be good citizens. Furthermore, secularism protects religions by providing a framework where believers and non-believers alike can privately and peacefully cohabitate.

What secularism cannot tolerate is politicized religion, which secularists say we are witnessing with the rise of Islamism. They argue that this politicized form of Islam threatens democratic ideals in the same way that the Catholic church undermined the French Republic at the beginning of the last century and must be opposed just as aggressively. The lengths to which France and Quebec are willing to go to promote their vision of a secular society has provoked an international outcry.

Critics argue that modern day secularism is not a neutral policy, but a form of disguised colonialism that targets religious and racialized communities, in particular followers of Islam. They argue that the activist secularist policies we are witnessing right now are based on simplistic ideas about the Muslim faith, such as the assumption that oppression of women is an essential feature of Islam, and that Muslim communities do not adapt or integrate when they join new communities. Prohibiting religious expression is undemocratic and illiberal, a denial of fundamental rights that enrich societies. Rather than supporting peaceful and productive democracies, secularism is another form of fundamentalism that sows the seeds for extremism and terrorism.

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Guests

Caroline Fourest

"Intolerance exists in all societies of the world. French secular society combats political fundamentalism, not by intolerance, but to protect tolerance."

Caroline Fourest

"Intolerance exists in all societies of the world. French secular society combats political fundamentalism, not by intolerance, but to protect tolerance."

Caroline Fourest is a filmmaker, director, teacher, journalist, columnist, and was the co-founder of the journal ProChoix (feminist, anti-racist and secularist). Very well-known in France as journalist and writer, Caroline Fourest wrote more than 22 books about radicalism, both political and religious, including a devastating biography of Marine Le Pen and Genius of Secularism. 

Most of her books are published in paperback and she has received several awards for her work, including the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences Award for The Last Utopia, an academic book analysing the tension between universalism and multiculturalism.  

She has been columnist in Le Monde, France Culture and now in Marianne. Former journalist at Charlie Hebdo, she lost many friends and colleagues in the terrorist attack of January 7, 2015. 

She received threats because of her work on Extremism, and for signing a Manifesto against new Totalitarianism with Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen. 

John Bowen

"It isn't the case that a secular society is a tolerant society. Just by knowing that there's something called secularism we could attribute to a society tells us nothing about how tolerant it's likely to be."

John Bowen

"It isn't the case that a secular society is a tolerant society. Just by knowing that there's something called secularism we could attribute to a society tells us nothing about how tolerant it's likely to be."

John R. Bowen has been studying Islam and society in Indonesia since the late 1970s, and since 2001 has worked in Western Europe and North America on problems of pluralism, law, and religion, and in particular on contemporary efforts to rethink Islamic norms and civil law. His latest books include the collaborative works Pragmatic Inquiry and Women and Property Rights in Indonesian Islamic Legal Contexts. On Indonesia is Islam, Law and Equality in Indonesia: An Anthropology of Public Reasoning. His Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves concerned debates in France on Islam and laïcité. Can Islam be French? treated Muslim debates and institutions in France and appeared in French in 2011.   

His current project is a five-country study of Proving Halal. He also writes regularly for The Boston Review, and for media in France, Britain, and the US. Awarded a Guggenheim prize in 2012 and named a Carnegie Fellow in 2016, Professor Bowen has also served as a recurrent Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

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