From Secularism to Laicite and Analyzing Turkish Authoritarian Laiklik.

• Author: Celik, Nevzet
• Position: ARTICLE - Essay

Secularism or Laicite

The idea of the secular or laic state is not present or apparent in Muslim societies. It was an idea that emerged in Europe to obstruct the control of religion, that is to say, the hegemony of the Church over the social and political spheres. Since then, secularism has played a major role in the development of western societies. Eventually, all the social developments in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries, such as concepts of freedom of thought, nationalism, rationalism, humanism, materialism and industrial development arose in modern European societies after the implementation of secular principles. (1) As a term, "secular" or "secularism/secularization," has a variety of meanings and comes from the Latin saeculum, meaning "this age" and "this world." In the Middle Ages, the term referred to a "priest who worked out in the world of local parishes" and later during the Reformation, the term secular indicated a "distancing from the sacred, the eternal, and the otherworldly." (2) Laicite, a French term, comes from the ancient Greek, laos, common people, which then passed to French through the Latin laicus, "the one who didn't enter in religious order." (3) Finally, the term laiklik in Turkish comes from the French laic, which is perceived as the separation of religious and political affairs by the state's constitution.

The diverse conceptual meanings of secularism and laicite and state-religion in relation to western societies were formed according to their historical, national and religious histories, which caused different forms of secularism in Catholic and Protestant societies. (4) Generally speaking, secularism does not mean to be opposed to religion but it does not approve of certain types of relationships between the state and religion. (5) Furthermore, secularism and laicite were not defined following neutral ideas of religion versus nation, but they were characterized by the societies that produced them with local values. This fact has caused Europe, particularly after both World Wars, to be characterized by specific "values" rather than basing their identity on religion or nationalism, which was perceived as a factual cause of the trouble. (6) Though each country has created its own secular form, the outcome is two major perspectives of the secular state in the West. The Anglo-Saxon model--represented by the U.S., as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, and northern Europe--and the French laicite, which Shakman Hurd points out, is a powerful organizing principle in modern politics: "it has been influential in France, the former Soviet Union, Turkey, China, and elsewhere." (7)

In France, the concept of Laicite is the result of a socio-political process and closely related to its Christian and Roman Catholic past throughout history. (8) The earlier leading French intellectuals such as Montesquieu (1689-1755), Voltaire (1694-1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Denis Diderot (1713-1784) were among the most influential figures who led laic society in France and eventually, their thoughts influenced the social and political climate of other western societies. Even though the thoughts of laicite in France go back earlier than the 19th century, it was at that time that the idea of laicite emerged in the context of "the independence from any religion or religious principles." (9) The French Revolution, 1789-1799, was an influential era of socio-political and religious upheaval in France. This is because, in the history of France, the Roman Catholic Church had enjoyed explicit influence over the sociopolitical arena. Therefore, the Republicans aimed to draw a distinction between religion and the political sphere. The Revolution led to the restructuring of the Republic, and limited the power of the Church, forcing it to adapt to civil law (la loi sur la constitution Civile de clerge--July 12, 1790) and the Church eventually became one of the components of the French Republic as a separate institution. (10) The process of implementing civil society through laicite ended the autocracy of the Church and led to the application of civil principles in France, however, almost a decade later, Napoleon Bonaparte signed an agreement with Pope Pius VII on July 15, 1801 in Paris called the Concordat, known as the regime concordataire francais. The Concordat regime aimed to organize and restructure the relationship between the state and religion and particularly to restore relations with the Catholic Church. The Concordat recognized Catholicism as a major religion of the French people. (11) Furthermore, the battle with the Church continued and led the state to create a new law in 1881 called the Jules Ferry law, (12) in which public education was restructured by completing its secularization and eliminating the religious (Roman Catholic) influence that had dominated the French educational sphere for centuries. (13)

After this interlude, the actual concept of laicite developed through different stages, taking more than a century to complete the separation of religion and state, which was then mentioned as a fundamental Republic law in 1905, officially disengaging the state from religious affairs, and vice versa. The influence of laicite, therefore increased not only in the political sphere but also became notably widespread in education and other socio-economic fields. For instance, as Franck Fregosi points out, the laws in January 1907 legitimated that all religious buildings are part of the public domain and led to the adaptation of the rules of their urbanization, which authorized the State to dispose of any buildings of worship at will. (14) However, it took almost two decades (1924) for Catholic groups to fully accept the terms of laicite in France. Here it is important to note that although the Concordat regime was abolished in 1905 and the state no longer recognized the Church, it had been effective as a "droit local" (local law) of the Alsace and Moselle regions, which became part of France after victory against Germany in 1918. Due to this reason, the act of laicite in 1905 regarding the separation of the Church and state is not completely effective in what is today the Alsace-Lorraine region. (15) In the strict sense, conceptual clarification of the laicite in France, although debated and in question, is introduced by Raphael Liogier as "a clear acknowledgment of the lack of competence in the religious domain by the public authorities, exactly as a civil court declares itself not competent under penal law. Interference in religion by the public authorities is however, not the exception but, on the contrary, the normal state of what is, and has ever been, labeled laicite in France." (16)

Unlike Catholicism, Anglo-Saxon secularism derived from its Protestant culture within its historical process, and subsequent Protestant Reformation and Protestant thinkers such as Martin Luther, Roger Williams, and John Locke. (17) Anglo-Saxon secularism proposed building a bridge between the religious and secular world, and this relationship is in many ways similar to countries that adopted liberal democracy in the contemporary world, the U.S. adding its particular contribution to this model. (18) Throughout history, secularism evolved visa-vis within the Protestant world as an internal dynamic process to provide religious freedom through civil discussion--as Jose Casanova points out--it aimed to bring religion and religious monks out from the monasteries and into the secular world. It took several reforms and attained prominence in the Anglo-Saxon Calvinist cultural domain. "Such a dynamic tends to transcend the dualism by blurring the boundaries between the religious and the secular, by making the religious secular and the secular religious through mutual reciprocal infusion." (19)

It is also important to see that religious diversity in the U.S. demonstrates that there has never been only one approved church and religious system in the country. The diverse religion of immigrants in the U.S. throughout history, which was brought and continued by religious immigrants, has been welcomed with empathy, and its immigrants remain religiously active compared to most European countries. (20) Illustrating the differences of secularism in context as opposed to the U.S. in France, because of the particularly bloody history of the country with Catholicism, religious groups and their visibilities have always been perceived as a dividing force. Contrary to France, as Charles Taylor points out, the perception of social cohesion in the U.S. enabled the reception of new immigrants gathered around established groups, side by side, which in fact bound the population together "in a consensual civil religion.'" (21)Although in the beginning, these organizations were Protestant Catholic or Jewish, arriving immigrants brought together other religions, including Islam, and joined in this consensual mechanism in later times. Americans built their society on the integration of different faiths, as demonstrated in this consensual relationship with the common "civil religion." (22) People could go to the religious establishment of their choice, which included the growing Muslim populations freedom to attend mosques. "When imams began to appear at prayer breakfasts, along with priests, pastors, and rabbis, the signal was that Islam was being invited into the consensus." Taylor explained, "That means that one can be integrated as an American through ones faith or religious identity. This contrasts with the Jacobin-republican formula of 'laicite,' where integration takes place by ignoring, sidelining or privatizing the religious identity, if any." (23) As Jose Casanova explains, "From the Enlightenment and Independence till the present, processes of radical social change and modernization are often accompanied by "great awakening" and by religious growth." (24) The expression of religion in the...