C’est vrai!
Consider this interesting story about a young person who left the closed life of an ultra-orthodox community for a secular life, “Young Jews walk out on religious life.” Some may simply celebrate his choice to leave his religious community and leave it at that, but it’s important to note that membership in the religious community he left is voluntary, that he had no legal right not to be shunned, and that he had the freedom to choose to make a very difficult choice to lead a different life.
I had a long conversation tonight with a Muslim friend that touched on similar issues that are being confronted in the Muslim world, as well as in some parts of the Christian and Jewish worlds (and, I presume others, as well). Friends of liberty should remember that state enforced secularism is oppressive, just as state-enforced religiosity is. Freedom to choose is what characterizes just societies. Not because what one chooses is irrelevant, but precisely because the choices we make are important. Were they irrelevant or insignificant, it would be just as good to have them assigned to us as to make the choices ourselves. I choose a life without religion, but I respect the right of others to choose religious lives, not because I am indifferent (I consider religious faith to be unreasonable), but because I believe that respect for human reason, individuality, and responsibility requires respect for the right of others to choose for themselves.
P.S. I was recently involved in working with an editor on an article I wrote on religious freedom, in which the editor had suggested changing the words “What matters is freedom of speech…” to “what was said is insignificant,” to which I pointed out that the reason that freedom matters is not because the content of censored speech is insignificant, but precisely because it is so significant. (The editor did not dispute the point.) Moral relativism is as much an enemy to freedom as the myriad forms of moral absolutism are, for if it’s all “relative” or arbitrary, then why oppose coercion? It’s only because freedom is a positive value that freedom should be defended, and it’s a positive value because the choices that we make are important. Were they insignificant, on what grounds might one oppose the replacement of one choice by another?
Other than places like N. Korea and perhaps Cuba, where is there state-enforced secularism? Are these what you mean? I don’t think friends of liberty have been lax in condemning these regimes.
Syria, Turkey, Mexico, France are examples. The state controls religion in order to exclude it from public influence. In Turkey and in France the veil is banned; in Mexico the Roman collar was banned for decades (I do not know if that is still the case) and religious organizations are banned from owning radio and television companies or stations. In Syria the state is officially secular and exerts powerful control over religion, as does — in a far less malignant way — the state in Turkey. Those are the kinds of illiberal secularism to which I was referring.
The case of Atilla Yayla of Turkey is a good case in point. He has had serious legal problems in Turkey for some very mild remarks he made about the sysem of secularism there. The system of Kemalist secularism in Turkey is not well understood by Americans and Europeans. As Atilla put it about a decade ago at a seminar I organized for him at the Cato Institute, â??People say that you have separation of church and state in America and we have separation of mosque and church and state in Turkey. In America, that means freedom of religion. In Turkey, it means freedom from religion. There is a great difference between the two.â? Private property, contract, and limited government should create the framework for people to decide on their own, through voluntary cooperation, whether and how to build a mosque, a church, a synagogue, or anything else. Such decisions should not be made by state officials, as they are made in Turkey and other states with similar forms of “secularism.”
Here’s some background on Atilla’s case:
http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/041393.php
I am not very familiar with this issue in the 4 countries you named; but in France, hasn’t it primarily been an issue of avoiding religious symbols within gov’t facilities, particulary public schools? I am thinking of the issue of banning headscarves, etc., from public schools, which doesn’t strike me as enforced secularism (assuming one may avoid public schools).
I also thought that in Mexico the anti-clerical laws (e.g. wrt public dress) were repealed in the early 1990s. Also, it isn’t so clear to me that forbidding religious organizations from directly participating in politics is a violation of freedom of religion, particularly since so many religious organizations seem to want political power for the express purpose of forcing their beliefs on others.
Regardless, you are certainly correct — depriving people of freedom of religion is indeed a violation of their rights (again, except when the religion in question involves violations of others’ rights).
In France, up to now, it is not a question to fight a religion as such, but to limit the influence of the religion in the exercise of the political power and administrative and in the control of the State, returning the religious ideas with the field of the individual conscience.
The principle of secularity can transform profoundly the society. In its conception, the obedience with a religious conviction and its tradition and acts do not concern the membership of a pledged religious capacity with the political power of the state.