Secularism And Islamic World: It Is Truly Bizarre To Assess Whether Muslims En Masse Are Moderate Or Terror-Friendly
By Ahmed Benchemsi
January 26, 2015
Here we go
again. Each time deranged terrorists invoking Islam strike in the West,
alongside the mourning of the victims comes the heated debate over how the
world’s Muslims should react to the attack.
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Belligerent
rightists demand that Muslims distance themselves from terrorists or be deemed
their accomplices. Righteous leftists warn against bigotry and Islamophobia
while affirming that Muslims, being overwhelmingly moderate people, have
nothing to do with terrorism. And then you have the Bill Maher approach: urging
Muslims to prove their overall moderation beyond simply condemning terrorism.
It is a
truly bizarre ritual, this rush to assess whether Muslims en masse are moderate
or terror-friendly; and, in either case, to what extent.
The
absurdity of the exercise begins with the way mainstream western discourse
defines “Muslims”: a monolithic compact of 1.6 billion people intensely
adhering to a faith by mere virtue of geography. Labelling all North Africans
and Middle Easterners pious Muslims is akin to assuming that everyone who lives
in America, or Europe, is devoutly Christian. There is a difference between
cultural heritage and religious obedience. Why would the notion of a “Christian
world” be dubious and debatable, but that of a “Muslim world” never be
questioned?
As a
liberal Moroccan journalist, it was bad enough to have my state refuse me my
freedom of conscience; it’s all the more galling when it is Western liberals
who refuse me that right with their blanket paternalistic sentiments about what
“those people” are like.
It’s no
wonder the West has been quick to give up on, or forget, the liberal,
cosmopolitan youth that fueled the Arab Spring of recent years – a demographic
that hardly fits into the Western view that everyone in these countries is
primarily characterized by religiosity.
Islam is
not encoded in anyone’s DNA. Being religious is a personal choice, one that every
individual is free to make—or not—as stated in the Universal declaration of
Human Rights. As it happens, human rights (including freedom of belief) are
widely denied to the 1.6 billion persons we’re talking about, by most of the
governments they live under—as well as by the prejudices of well-meaning
Western liberals who bend over backwards in their politically correct efforts
to be understanding of “Muslim countries” and their ways. What well-meaning
Westerners need to understand is the wide gap between Islam as it should be—a
personal choice—and as it most often is—a set of pervasive constraints enforced
by undemocratic States.
In all the
countries where Islam is the religion of the State, merely criticizing the
faith (let alone leaving it) is a criminal offense. In 2007, as the publisher
of the Moroccan weekly magazine Nishan, I ran a cover story about popular humor
in my country. Because the issue included jokes about Islam (harmless ones at
that—the most notable one featured God assigning a deceased Muslim man of
virtue to hell, before teasing him: “Smile, it’s the candid camera!”), copies
of the magazine were publicly burnt by grimacing extremists, and my colleagues
and I received hundreds of death threats. Yet instead of cracking down against
the fanatics, the government prosecuted us for “damaging religious morals,” and
banned the magazine for 3 months.
It’s not
just about mandatory religiosity. In most “Muslim countries,” school curricula
include inescapable religious classes at every grade, with disturbing teachings
about the role of women (mainly to procreate and stay at home), the duty to
“defend Islam” and “fight its enemies,” and so on. Grown-ups are not spared
either, with omnipresent state media never losing a chance to hammer into them
that Islam is the highest moral norm, and transnational Arab channels like
Al-Jazeera engaging in constant “us-versus-them” rhetoric (“us” being Muslims
and “them,” Westerns, of course). Even opposition parties (mostly made of
Islamist groups) do nothing but double down on religious intransigence, hoping
to outdo the—already bigoted—official institutions. In these conditions, the
psychological pressure is such that opting out of Islam is unthinkable—or more
accurately, unthought-of—for the vast majority of the people.
This is not
to say that no one living in the swath of territory from Morocco to Indonesia
adheres to Islam out of intimate conviction. Many obviously do. Yet as long as
coercion isn’t replaced by freedom of choice, the extent to which these people can
be truly identified with the Islamic faith is dubious. Flatly calling 1.6
billion people Muslims—even with the purpose of praising their moderation—only
makes you the accomplice of their oppressors.
The same
flawed assumptions are taking place in France. As a consequence of the
horrendous Charlie Hebdo massacre perpetrated by local-born-and-bred religious
fanatics, “French Muslims” are, once again, in the eye of the storm. Depending
on the political sympathies of the commentator, they’re either guilty of moral
association with terrorists or misunderstood moderates. But no one is letting
them off the hook for their Muslimhood.
All sides
of the debate presume that the five million citizens of North- and West-African
descent, whose parents immigrated from former French colonies one or two
generations ago, are Muslim. Many of these families are certainly religious by
choice, but those who’d rather not be are afforded very little space to carry
on with their secular lives—especially amidst so many well-meaning efforts to
“understand” the immigrant communities’ “Muslim essence.” All this despite the
fact that the French republic is supposedly blind to the religious affiliations
of its citizens.
Secularism—actually,
headscarf-banning laïcité, a more aggressive brand of it—is the cornerstone of
modern France’s founding values. Alongside fine wines, exotic cheeses and
relaxed sexual mores, its church-bashing culture (of which the slain Charlie
Hebdo cartoonists were the proud flag-bearers) is one of France’s main staples.
Any French intellectual would gasp in horror at the assertion that 60 millions
of his fellow citizens are Christians, yet president François Hollande lumps
together the other five million to refer to them as “Muslims” (who should not
be conflated with terrorists, yes, we know).
French
citizens of North- or West-African origin have attended the same schools as
their native countrymen; and they studied Voltaire and the enlightenment age
just as much as them. Unless we consider that ethnicity impacts mental
processes (the definition of racism) there is no reason to believe that
France’s citizens of colour are less receptive than others to the proud
teachings of the école républicaine
laïque. Yet the country’s common discourse singles them out as a religious
group. Liberté Egalité Fraternité?
Not really.
Westerners
are rightly concerned about the danger posed by Islamic radicalism, but
anxiously assessing the commitment of more than a billion people to religious
moderation doesn’t help in any way. All it does is deepen the—already
profound—misunderstanding.
When it
comes to Islamic terrorism, the worthy social debate is about the way to drain
its breeding ground. My two cents: promoting secular democracy in the so-called
Muslim countries (and please, no need to bomb them for that—empowering local
liberals is enough) would be a good place to start.
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Ahmed Benchemsi is the editor in chief of
FreeArabs.com. He wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.
Original Headline: Why Will No One Let the
Muslim World Be Secular?
Source: The Time
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/secularism-islamic-world-truly-bizarre/d/123366
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