The events of October 2020 once again put the question of “secularism” on the political and intellectual agenda. First, a speech by French President Emmanuel Macron, in which he outlined his proposals for curbing “Islamic radicalism” in France; next, several horrific attacks by self-proclaimed Islamists, as if to confirm Macron’s misgivings; finally, reactions to Macron’s speech and his plan for action from Muslim political and opinion leaders around the world, followed by a debate (which is not entirely new) between groups of academics in France, accusing each other of pandering to Islamism or of attempted academic censorship.
Most western European nations were content in the belief that they had solved the question of governing religion and religious diversity through the separation of church and state, each in their own way, until the arrival of Muslim immigrants on a large-scale in the late twentieth century, who began (and demanded) to be recognized qua Muslims, as opposed to national identities of origin as had been the case until then, which in turn led to calls for models of multiculturalism, expressed by both their own spokespeople and sympathizing intellectual circles, in a move that paralleled the global rise of a postmodernist politics of identity.
In two recent pieces published on this platform, I argued in favor of the normative principle of secularism and against the widening practice of mixing politics and religion. As state-religion relations vary around the world, and here I aim to address secularism normatively, I need to clarify what I mean by it, leaving aside the question of whether the various models actually conform to the essentials of the principle – which, I suspect, is the major issue in France, rather than the principle itself.
