Secularism
May. 28th, 2006 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatarperegrineThis is a topic I've thought about a lot, and wondered how to write about, but I'm not sure I can do it justice. I think it's the most important realization about culture that I've had as a result of moving to Qatar, but the thoughts are still rather inchoate. Maybe by writing this I can clarify them a little.
When I moved to Qatar, I worried about whether my religious views would be offensive to our students. So I did what any good American would do: I acted as though I didn't have any. I didn't bring any apparel that would betray my religious affiliations (cross necklaces, church T-shirts, Goddess keychain) and I didn't talk about my own beliefs, even when students tried to engage me in conversation about religion. Because, you see, by setting aside my religious beliefs, I am less likely to offend those of a different religion. Right?
Right?
I think I'd lived here a year before I really realized how backward I got things. I was acting out of my deeply embedded understanding of secularism: the way to accommodate religious diversity is to purge the public sphere of religiosity, so that people of different faiths can work together on the basis of a shared, ideologically neutral, worldview. We can avoid offending people of different faiths by all acting, most of the time, as though we have no religious views at all. (Which, of course, presupposes the odd notion that it is possible not to have any religious views at all.)
In the U.S., this what I expect in public discourse. Thus, although my own religious beliefs definitely shape my approach to, say, politics, I do not see it as acceptable to justify a proposed policy on religious grounds. If I am discussing politics, I bracket the religious basis of my opinions and argue those opinions on the basis of reason, augmented by some generic, secular values of the type enshrined in the Declaration of Independence or the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. I wouldn't (outside of church) give a religious justification for, say, ending the death penalty, even though my own reasons for opposing it are more religious than not. And, while there are certainly people even in mainstream political debate in the U.S. who do make policy arguments from religion, let's face it, I look down on those people. Even when I agree with their positions (e.g. the right-to-life position on the death penalty) and I agree for explicitly religious reasons, I still think we ought to be able to support our views rationally, without resorting to the weak "because God said so" defense.)
So there is definitely a paradox here, but one I have happily lived with. I am religious and I love religion, but fundamentally I have seen religion as an added dimension of life; it can be set aside, leaving some common bedrock of secular logic and values that public life can be built upon. In short, I am a secularist. Secularism so permeates my thinking that I have been able to think of it not as my worldview at all, but as an ideologically neutral default that remains when religion is stripped away.
To leave my cross necklace behind when I moved to a Muslim country is, I think, a good symbol of this. I thought that leaving it behind made me religiously unmarked, neutral, and not in opposition to Islam. This is, of course, patently ridiculous, because it is not Christianity that Islam perceives as a threat, it is secularism itself -- an ideology that reduces religion to an optional add-on to life, a structure built onto the bedrock of our thinking instead of the bedrock of life itself. An insidious ideology that pretends not to be an ideology but objectiveness itself; a worldview that thinks it is the absence of religious bias instead of simply another viewpoint on religion.
Everything I have said so far is the point I had reached in my thinking on secularism in September, when Georgetown's presentation at the Education City symposium made me think about Christian public discourse and secular public discourse in Qatar. (And this is why I've been less circumspect about discussing my religions views with students this year: I realized in September that my Christianity is less likely to offend them than the suggestion that religious beliefs can and should be bracketed in public discourse. I still don't wear my baptism cross, but I no longer have illusions that this abstention can result in my being seen as unmarked or unbiased.) I came to realize that that secularism is not really a default and that I am wrong to see myself as being objective when I act from within my secular worldview.
But since then, my thinking has been changed again, this time by the Mohammed cartoon controversy. Again and again I have heard the same question asked in Middle Eastern newspapers and by Qataris I know: how would you feel if it were your prophet being defamed? They ask this as though it is unheard of for Jesus or Christianity to be ridiculed in the West, and I find myself explaining again and again that, actually, Jesus gets mocked a lot in the West as well. And the truth is, I'm perfectly fine with that. I think I really CAN compartmentalize in the artificial way of secularism -- to be personally affronted by insults to my religion, but still cherish living in a society where people can mock prophets with impunity. This is not a popular attitude here in Qatar. So, having become temporarily disillusioned with my secularist worldview after realizing that it is a worldview and not a basic fact of life, I am now realizing that I still very much value that worldview.
When I moved to Qatar, I worried about whether my religious views would be offensive to our students. So I did what any good American would do: I acted as though I didn't have any. I didn't bring any apparel that would betray my religious affiliations (cross necklaces, church T-shirts, Goddess keychain) and I didn't talk about my own beliefs, even when students tried to engage me in conversation about religion. Because, you see, by setting aside my religious beliefs, I am less likely to offend those of a different religion. Right?
Right?
I think I'd lived here a year before I really realized how backward I got things. I was acting out of my deeply embedded understanding of secularism: the way to accommodate religious diversity is to purge the public sphere of religiosity, so that people of different faiths can work together on the basis of a shared, ideologically neutral, worldview. We can avoid offending people of different faiths by all acting, most of the time, as though we have no religious views at all. (Which, of course, presupposes the odd notion that it is possible not to have any religious views at all.)
In the U.S., this what I expect in public discourse. Thus, although my own religious beliefs definitely shape my approach to, say, politics, I do not see it as acceptable to justify a proposed policy on religious grounds. If I am discussing politics, I bracket the religious basis of my opinions and argue those opinions on the basis of reason, augmented by some generic, secular values of the type enshrined in the Declaration of Independence or the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. I wouldn't (outside of church) give a religious justification for, say, ending the death penalty, even though my own reasons for opposing it are more religious than not. And, while there are certainly people even in mainstream political debate in the U.S. who do make policy arguments from religion, let's face it, I look down on those people. Even when I agree with their positions (e.g. the right-to-life position on the death penalty) and I agree for explicitly religious reasons, I still think we ought to be able to support our views rationally, without resorting to the weak "because God said so" defense.)
So there is definitely a paradox here, but one I have happily lived with. I am religious and I love religion, but fundamentally I have seen religion as an added dimension of life; it can be set aside, leaving some common bedrock of secular logic and values that public life can be built upon. In short, I am a secularist. Secularism so permeates my thinking that I have been able to think of it not as my worldview at all, but as an ideologically neutral default that remains when religion is stripped away.
To leave my cross necklace behind when I moved to a Muslim country is, I think, a good symbol of this. I thought that leaving it behind made me religiously unmarked, neutral, and not in opposition to Islam. This is, of course, patently ridiculous, because it is not Christianity that Islam perceives as a threat, it is secularism itself -- an ideology that reduces religion to an optional add-on to life, a structure built onto the bedrock of our thinking instead of the bedrock of life itself. An insidious ideology that pretends not to be an ideology but objectiveness itself; a worldview that thinks it is the absence of religious bias instead of simply another viewpoint on religion.
Everything I have said so far is the point I had reached in my thinking on secularism in September, when Georgetown's presentation at the Education City symposium made me think about Christian public discourse and secular public discourse in Qatar. (And this is why I've been less circumspect about discussing my religions views with students this year: I realized in September that my Christianity is less likely to offend them than the suggestion that religious beliefs can and should be bracketed in public discourse. I still don't wear my baptism cross, but I no longer have illusions that this abstention can result in my being seen as unmarked or unbiased.) I came to realize that that secularism is not really a default and that I am wrong to see myself as being objective when I act from within my secular worldview.
But since then, my thinking has been changed again, this time by the Mohammed cartoon controversy. Again and again I have heard the same question asked in Middle Eastern newspapers and by Qataris I know: how would you feel if it were your prophet being defamed? They ask this as though it is unheard of for Jesus or Christianity to be ridiculed in the West, and I find myself explaining again and again that, actually, Jesus gets mocked a lot in the West as well. And the truth is, I'm perfectly fine with that. I think I really CAN compartmentalize in the artificial way of secularism -- to be personally affronted by insults to my religion, but still cherish living in a society where people can mock prophets with impunity. This is not a popular attitude here in Qatar. So, having become temporarily disillusioned with my secularist worldview after realizing that it is a worldview and not a basic fact of life, I am now realizing that I still very much value that worldview.
