European Muslim Network

Let me state at the outset, that after having read the discussion paper, I agree with what Dr. Tariq has written very clearly and concisely about the issue of religion in the public sphere. I have been thinking about this issue in my research and wanted to add some points as well as echo some of the arguments already put forward. Sections of the writings below were constructed together with two Christian colleagues, Rev. Angus Ritchie, (Anglican) and Séverine Deneulin (Catholic), during the process of collective research on this topic.

It is important that we begin by considering the complexity of the debate. For the term secularism, which lies at the heart of debates around the appearance of religion in the public sphere, is a debated term and is defined in a number of ways, for example:

Peter Berger: “By secularization we mean the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.”

Alistair Maclntyre: secularization is “the transition from beliefs and activities and institutions presupposing beliefs of a traditionally Christian kind to beliefs and activities and institutions of an atheistic kind”.

The term secularism is thus used differently based on the context and there are different shades of opinion related to the meaning of the word.

In philosophical terms secularism is the stance that life can be best lived by applying ethics, and the universe best understood by the process of reasoning, without reference to deity or other ‘supernatural’ concepts. Hence there are distinct undertones of atheism or agnosticism associated with the term secularism when used in a philosophical context.

In government and political science secularism is more mechanical and often refers to a policy of creating distance between the state and religion, of non-discrimination among religions and of guaranteeing human rights of citizens, regardless of their creed – Peter Berger’s notion of ‘Objective Secularism’.

In practice secularism has taken on many different forms in government ranging from secular orders with an Established Church, such as the UK to total separation, such as the case of French Laicite.

The rationale of secularism finds its roots in enlightenment values as well as the desire to rid Europe of centuries of religious conflict and tension. In this spirit it is also assumed that the public arena will also be free of religious interference. Muslims are hence seen to be ‘disturbing’ the stability of European secularism by reminding society of the medieval past it wants to forget. However, while these assumptions are understandable, they both need to be examined critically.

Liberal political theory, assumes that the stability of Western democracies is best ensured when religious visions of what is good is kept away from the public domain. This assumption is at the root of the difficulties faiths face in expressing their views. John Rawls’s Political Liberalism is a leading example of the liberal approach. Rawls’s idea of public reason demands that public reasoning in democracies must be done according to principles that all should accept as being reasonable. Religious views in the liberal idea of public reason have no place, unless they can be reasonably endorsed by all.¹ Public life is hence a matter of creating a (procedural) framework in which different groups can pursue their visions of the good. If religious views have to be kept away from the public domain to ensure the stability of liberal democracies, why, then, are faith communities gaining increasing attention from the liberal state? The answer is pragmatic. Whilst attendance at worship in some Christian congregations is indeed in decline in countries like the United Kingdom, there is a far more general decline in participation in voluntary associations. Congregations of faith remain by far the largest and best organised networks of citizens - particularly in inner-city areas where politicians are most anxious about declining levels of participation in the political process.

The organisation and mobilisation potential of faith communities make them attractive to politicians in two spheres. One is the sphere of community consultation and engagement. Churches, mosques and temples remain effective ways for reaching large segments of the population, thus in ‘community’ based models of citizenship, such as the British case, government is actively encouraging religious groups to become more organised.

The second sphere which makes faith communities attractive to the government is their role in service provision. With the government seeking an increasing role for volunteering in local communities, and an increasing role for voluntary organisations in service delivery, congregations of faith are amongst the best placed groups to be recruited to this task. For example in Germany a number of hospitals and schools are run by the Church.

After Christendom and the Caliphate: new models of engagement

Christian and Islamic thought on faith and public life are both in a period of transition. For Christianity, the 20th century saw the collapse of the Christendom model - the end of the vision of the entire governance of the state as a Christian project. The earliest Christian thought emerged in a context where the faith was regarded with deep hostility by the State - but the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine ushered in a lengthy period in which Church played an active role in governance. In the United Kingdom, at least, this role has diminished substantially in the 20th century. Much of the contemporary discourse around social change in Muslim thought was developed in the context of attempts in the early 20th century to re-establish the Caliphate after its decline through the 19th century and its official demise in 1924. Especially in light of the experience of colonisation this restorationist approach was adopted by a number of anti-colonial movements across the Islamic spectrum, creating a fascination with the (Islamic) state as the central pillar for the establishment of Freedom and Justice. However, 20th century Islamic movements’ experimentations with the state have not been a happy experience. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan and other states were built in the name of (different brands of) Islam and have all, in one way or another, not lived up their original ambitions, thus serving to remove some of the lustre from the pursuit of the state. In addition to this a large number of Muslims have began to live as minorities over the 20th century to whom the pursuit of an Islamic state is either irrelevant or not of local concern. Furthermore, a number of Muslim thinkers have begun to critique the adoption of the nation state in the context of an Islamic project.²

How do these communities of faith respond to a context in which the establishment of a theocratic state is either impossible or agreed to be undesirable? In Torture and Eucharist, his study of the relationship between Church and State, William, William Cavanaugh distinguishes two models.³ The first model, Humanism, sits very easily with liberal political theory. (Jacques Maritain and John Courtney Murray are its two main protagonists within Christian theology.) What characterizes Humanism is the separation between the state, which is endowed with the legitimate use of coercive force for the stake of public order, and civil society, which is that space of freedom between the state and families. Faith communities belong to the latter civic space, as groups which function independently from the political sphere.

For Humanism, people of faith influence the political sphere by ‘infusing’ it with their religious values. By being members of a faith community, they learn certain values (like loving one’s neighbour as one self), and try to apply these values to decisions that are taken in the public sphere. If for example, the government decides to allocate a higher proportion of its public spending to military expenditures, to the detriment of the education budget, it would be the duty of people of faith to speak out in the public sphere, to infuse the temporal world with the value of peace, and to influence in consequence the government’s decision. It is therefore important that the language being used to influence public policy is understandable and can be accepted by all, independently of their beliefs. In the temporal order, it is important that people of faith engaged in political action do not do so as Muslims or Christians as such, but do so inspired by those values, leaving the space for others to join them in their political action. The Church or Ummah are not allowed to speak and act as bodies in the temporal realm. They have to disappear as distinct social bodies.

The Humanist approach assumes that the values of a community of faith can be separated from both their narrative, and their vision of the human telos. It is such a divorce that Alistair MacIntyre has challenged, in a series of works beginning with After Virtue.⁴ In this work, he argues that the inability of post-Enlightenment culture to resolve moral and political disagreements comes precisely from their abandonment of teleology. Humanism is asking for the impossible: that communities of faith somehow ‘infuse’ liberal culture with their values - without allowing them to articulate the very teloi which give these values their coherence. Such an approach also resonates strongly with Muslim thinkers such as Ziauddin Sardar.⁵

MacIntyre and Cavanaugh conclude that communities of faith in fact have to be political bodies in themselves. Instead of trying to influence the public sphere, the Church and Ummah are themselves public spaces. For Cavanaugh, the Eucharist cannot but make political claims which contradict the liberal state. The Eucharist is a political act in itself, because “to participate in a communal and public discipline of bodies is already to be engaged in a direct confrontation with the politics of the world.”⁶ There is no split between the sacred and the secular. Cavanaugh goes further arguing that, “the Eucharist is the true ‘politics’ because it is the public performance of the true eschatological City of God in the midst of another City which is passing away.”⁷ The Church has to be a “contrast society”, i.e., “a counter-performance of the body to that of the state.”⁸ The Church gathered around the altar does not simply disperse into civil society, the liturgy does more than generating motivations to be better citizens. The liturgy generates the body of Christ which is a social body, a public presence irreducible to a voluntary association of civil society.⁹

In the Humanist model, the Church only provides values and inspiration. On that account entering the public realm involves going out from the worshipping community. Cavanaugh rejects this model: engagement with public life is “a question of what kind of community disciplines we need to produce people of peace capable of speaking truth to power.”¹⁰ Instead of “lobbying”, people of faith should be “witnessing”.

Examination of the way the term secularism was received by the Muslim world is quite revealing. The words, ‘Ilmaniyah (scientism) and La Diniyah (anti-religious) were originally used in Arabic as distinct aspects of and translations of the term secularism, resonating with the way Berger and MacIntyre differently defined two distinct versions of secularism as mentioned above. Although much of the contemporary view of secularism by Muslims is totally rejectionist, a nuanced and careful look at Islamic thought and Muslim history shows that there has always been some notion of separation of din wa dawlah (religion and state), din and muamalat, (the sacred and profane) as well as between Hukkam (rulers) and Ulama (scholars). Hence, Muhammad Abduh talks of tamyiz (distinction) rather than fasl (total separation). It is vital to look at complexity of this discussion rather than discuss secularism in simplistic terms as is often the case today amongst Muslims.

Muslim and Christian histories are a testimony to what can happen when political power is abused. Even very early examples of great scholars such as Imam Malik and Ahmed Ibn Hanbal shows that they were oppressed and pressured by the rulers of the day. Experience shows that after Prophecy, temporal rule needs to be balanced by the mechanisms of statecraft in order to minimise totalitarianism and despotic rule. The experience is restricted to the historical one of tyrannical figures such as Hajjaj bin Yusuf, but also a very contemporary phenomenon. Nor is the experience of only the rulers abusing their authority. Adulkarim Soroush, the Iranian thinker, argues passionately for reduction of the direct role of Clergy in the exercising of State political power following the Iranian example, as has Abdulwahhab El-Affendi argued the case for a division of powers in light of the Sudanese experiment. In this regard the separation of the institutions of ‘Church’ (meaning any religious order) and State seems to be healthy order, along the lines of the modern notion of ‘separation of powers’ of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary such that ‘rule of law’ is ensured.

However there are differences between this position and the liberal expectation of religion to have no place at all in the public realm. And furthermore, the philosophical opposition to a framework based upon revealed knowledge, in which (unlike for many Christians) the Qur’an is seen as the eternal, literal and unchanging Word of God. In this regard there is a problem, for this is a claim that Muslims simply cannot surrender.

But very much like Christianity, Islam regards theology as a discourse which needs explicit articulation in public space. The basic Objectives (Maqasid) of the Shariah are designed to protect life, faith, intellect, progeny, and property. They are the foundations of an Islamic understanding of social justice - in which the ordering of the public realm is necessarily based on submission to its Creator, and must be an embodiment of his care for all that he has made. The Qur’an asserts: “…Be just: this is closest to piety…” In fact man is viewed as God’s steward (khalifah) whose role is to care for the natural order and for life on earth. In a similar vein to the Eucharist, on a day-to-day basis, Muslims are reminded through the practice of the pillars of Islam: salah (prayer), zakah (alms), sawm (fasting) and hajj (pilgrimage) that actions that are deeply spiritual are not devoid of political consequences. The congregational prayer is often held as an example of a community in harmony with believers standing in rows and functioning as one body. Fasting and charity sensitise the believers to those who lead less fortunate lives and make the war against global poverty a vivid reality. The pilgrimage symbolises equality and the breaking of barriers between nations, classes and tongues. Muslims are urged to look beyond their own needs and rights, which are important, to realise that their true role is to be of service (khidmah) to all the people around them, “encouraging good and resisting the bad”.¹¹

In fact this is consistent with European history, and this is where we come back to those two assumptions. For it is arguable that religion never did retreat completely from the public sphere, shattering the myth of secularisation. One only needs to look at European society today, indeed across the world, to see the inspiration of religious values. The welfare state and the National Health Service in Britain were inspired by Christian social teachings. Even the Labour Party had Christian support from the outset. The Polish Solidarity movement which was instrumental in the breakdown of Communism in eastern Europe was based on catholic social teaching and today we can see the influence of the Christian right in USA. We can also see many other such movements and influences:

• Liberation Theology in Latin America and Asia and its influence on Christian thought elsewhere.
• Christian sentiments behind the ‘make poverty history’ campaign.
• Orthodox Christianity and Russian nationalism
• Hindu nationalism.
• Buddhism in Sri Lanka.
• Political Islam as a global movement.
• Israel and Jewish nationalism.
• Sikh nationalism.

For further examples and a fuller discussion of this, one can refer to Peter Berger’s writings¹². For all these reasons, I would say we are not Secular Muslims, in direct answer to the question raised in the discussion paper.

The question of loyalty

This is an important question raised in the discussion paper and perhaps here the differentiation between the Qur’anic terms Qawm (people) and Millah (religious community) are important. In modern Muslim collective psyche, Muslims are highly distinct from non-Muslims and in fact Muslim identity has become reified and oppositional in a rather bizarre manner. This is both contrary to Islamic teachings and unhelpful on a strategic level. The Qur’anic concept of qawm means all the people that one lives among, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The Qur’an relates the story of many messengers, saying that God sent the messengers ‘to their brethren’¹³, who were non-Muslims. The Prophets addressed their community as ‘my People!’¹⁴ (Qawmi). Hence there is a fraternal relationship between the Muslim and his community, regardless of their belief. The Muslim is one of ‘them’, ‘they’ are part of the Qawm. The Qur’an further clarifies this:

“O mankind! Behold, we have created you from a male and female, and have made you nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most conscious of him…”¹⁵

Thus, plurality of cultures and ethnic groups is acknowledged as a positive factor to enhance human life, rather than be a cause of prejudice. Social and public action is not just among one’s Millah, but among one’s Qawm, : “…and join together in pursuit of good and pious things…”¹⁶

An interesting model for civil society engagement is provided by the Citizen Organising Foundation (COF), and its affiliated bodies, Young Citizens (in Birmingham) and The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO). These ‘broad-based organisations’ have managed to bring thousands of volunteers from different faith and non-faith backgrounds, including Muslims, together to work for issues of common local concern. The philosophy is to teach politics through action and to show that individuals can make a difference if they organise themselves together with others. Such partnerships of citizens who come together, to work together in the civil space, deserve much more explorations and emphasis across-the-board. The constriction of the civil space in recent times as government encroaches more on civil liberties is of great concern to Muslims, but it is of concern to many others. The prevalence of consumerism and the subsequent impact of the market on our lives creating consumers rather than citizens is difficult for Muslims to deal with, but again, is an important concern for numerous others. Likewise, a whole range of matters could be presented that are common challenges to many citizens and need common human solutions and alliances.

In summary, then, contemporary Islamic and Christian communities, especially in the West, have had to think beyond the patterns of Caliphate and Christendom. We have argued that while the distance between the formal institutions of Religion and Politics is healthy for society, the Humanist solution (in which theological discourse retreats from the public sphere) is unsatisfactory. The Church and Ummah must find a way of continuing to be public spaces in a pluralist world.

Dilwar Hussain

1. See John Rawls. Political Liberalism. Columbia University Press, 1993. For a critique of John Rawls on this point, see Jeffrey Stout. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton University Press, 2004. [back]
2. See for example: Abdulwahab El-Affendi, Who Needs an Islamic State? London: Grey Seal Books, 1991. [back]
3. William Cavanaugh. Torture and Eucharist. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. See also his later work Theopolitical Imagination. London: T&T, Clark, 2003. [back]
4. Alasdair MacIntyre. After Virtue. London: Duckworth, 1981. [back]
5. See Ziauddin Sardar, The Future of Muslim Civilisation. London: Mansell, 1987. [back]
6. Torture and Eucharist, p. 12. [back]
7. Torture and Eucharist, p. 15. [back]
8. Ibid., p. 180. [back]
9. Theopolitical imagination, p. 83. [back]
10. Ibid., p. 88. [back]
11. Qur’an, [back]
12. For example, The Desecularization of the World, 1999. [back]
13. See Qur’an, 7:65, 7:73, 7:85, 11:50, 11:61, 11: 84. [back]
14. Ibid [back]
15. Qur’an, 49:13. [back]
16. Qur’an, 5: 2. [back]

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