Re: France: Reaping the Fruits of Aggressive Secularism

[Ed Brayton]

Rick Duncan wrote: Maggie Gallagher has a column today that links the riots in France to "France's religious oppression."   Here is a money excerpt, in which she quotes Seamus Hasson of Becket Fund: Meanwhile, he says what France should have learned from its repression of religious minorities, but hasn't yet, is "it always backfires." Hasson is the founder of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which defends religious _expression_ as a basic human right here and around the world. The Becket Fund recently sponsored an exhibit at the U.S. Capitol, "Bodies of Belief," that included the French ban on religious symbols in public schools as one of many examples of worldwide religious repression. "It would be simplistic to say they banned headscarves in public schools, and now there are riots," notes Hasson. "But the underlying reason the French found it necessary to ban headscarves is what's responsible: a hard secularism that says religion is like second-hand smoke, something you can indulge in in private, but it's the government's job to protect you from it in public." France, he argues, has "oppressed believers of all stripes for centuries and is once again reaping the whirlwind." Separation of church and state is the problem; religious liberty is the solution. Any thoughts? Any lessons here for America" For UW? Believe it or not, Rick, I mostly agree with this. I've written scathingly of the religious clothing policy in France and of their warped idea of secularism in general. But I think America is quite different. Secularism in France means that even entirely private decisions about religion, like choosing to wear a cross or a headscarf, is viewed as a public act subject to regulation. In America, the courts and legislatures have gone to great lengths to enforce teh free exercise clause (and rightly so). We aren't perfect in this regard, of course, but we do tend to make a distinction between government endorsement of a religious practice and an individual's choice to engage in a religious practice. And even those who are the most staunch in making sure that there is no government endorsement of religion are generally in favor of protecting the individual's right to practice their religion even when it is inconvenient to do so and even when it bothers other people considerably. And if people began to push the kind of policies that France has in this regard in America, you would find that fairly strict separationists like me will be right by your side in battling those policies in the legislatures and the courts. Ed Brayton

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