While American secularists’ attention has been fixed on recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions undermining church-state separation, there have been major developments on the international scene that warrant our concern and attention.
In Turkey, the demagogic Islamist President Tayyip Erdoğan has continued his campaign to undermine the secular state established by Kemal Atatürk. On the regional scene, he aims to restore Ottoman imperial hegemony. Internally, he seeks to reestablish Islam. His latest symbolic gesture in July 2020 was to de-secularize the Hagia Sophia and reinstate it as a mosque. Once the centerpiece of Orthodox Christianity and the largest building in the world, the Hagia Sophia was constructed as a Cathedral by the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I in 532–537. After the fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1453, it became the Grand Mosque of the renamed Istanbul. It was a constant symbol of Christian-Muslim and Greek-Turkish hostility. Following the downfall of the Ottoman Sultan and Caliph in 1923 and the formation of the secular Turkish Republic, Atatürk made an important gesture against both religions by converting the Hagia Sophia into a museum. Thus, he neutralized religious divisions by transforming sacred religious space into sacred secular space.
Erdoğan’s retrograde move raised interfaith tensions and was strenuously criticized by Orthodox Christians, especially in Greece and Russia, but also by the Pope. The international Christian opposition received much media attention, but unfortunately there was little comment from secular organizations upon Erdoğan’s overturning of a historic secular initiative that sought to replace religious strife with secular neutrality. It was a missed opportunity to publicize the value of secularism as a force for peace in the world.
In September, a new trial began in France linked to the Islamist terrorist outrages connected to the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the first of a string of deadly assaults by Islamic State militants that killed 130 people across Paris in November 2015 and a further eighty-six in Nice in July 2016. The core issue at stake was and is the French citizen’s freedom of expression, including the freedom to blaspheme against religion. Radical Islamists objected to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and felt justified in murdering blasphemers. Many still do. In fact, during the current trial, a young Pakistani refugee knifed two TV journalists in a case of mistaken identity; the attacker thought they were Charlie Hebdo employees.
The French Republic’s policy of laïcité is predicated on the assumption that religion is a private matter. In October 2020, President Emannuel Macron issued a strong defense of secularism:
Laïcité means that people of different religions and beliefs are equal under the law. Radical Islam was a danger to France because it held its own laws above all others, and this often results in the creation of a counterculture. … Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today; we are not just seeing this in our country.
Macron has demanded tougher laws to tackle “Islamist separatism” and defend secular values. He has proposed legislation for Parliamentary approval by the end of the year to prevent children being kept out of public schools and homeschooled. It also includes state oversight of the financing of mosques and sporting, cultural, and other community activities that “are a pretext to teach principles that do not conform to the laws of the republic.”
Despite Macron’s statements that these measures are not directed against all Muslims but only extremists, as one might expect, some human rights activists oppose these proposals as oppression of Muslims. But there exists in France, unlike in the United States, an anti-Muslim Left that recognizes the folly of trying to placate religious fanatics who preach misogyny, homophobia, and hatred of nonbelievers. Most French people today are aware that there is a terrible historical precedent of the cost of appeasement. In 1940, France’s Third Republic fell as a result of Nazi invasion and the treachery of fascist and communist organizations opposed to a “bourgeois war.” The collaborationist Vichy “Etat de France” led by Marshal Philippe Pétain replaced the republican motto “liberte, egalite, fraternite”—freedom, equality, brotherhood—with the fascist motto “patrie, famille, travail”—nation, family, work. The Vichy regime, with its links to ultramontane Catholicism, introduced Nazi-style anti-Jewish exclusionary legislation as well as new laws against homosexuality, which had not been illegal under the Republic. Following liberation, France reemerged “as an indivisible, secular, democratic and social republic,” according to its 1958 constitution.
It is refreshing to see a Western political leader who has the courage of his secular convictions and is willing to defend what amount to traditional liberal values, such as free speech. In addition, President Macron has recently enjoyed a surprise endorsement of republican ideals. In early October 2020, a referendum on independence from France was defeated in the South Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia. The majority’s decision by the Pacific islanders to maintain their ties with France, which have existed since 1853, was welcomed by Macron as “an expression of confidence in the Republic” and so in the principle of laïcité.