The Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée (French National Freethought Organisation) and the Ligue de l’Enseignement (League for Education) met in Paris on July 7, 2006 to discuss the situation current situation regarding secularism. Our organisations, amongst the oldest of the French secularist movement, are the bearers of identities and programs which are different, though based on common values. Our history has sometimes been tumultuous – debates and confrontations, sometimes virulent, were part of this, as were common struggles in the service of secularisation of society and of the republican institutions. Today, we jointly acknowledge the need to confront our analyses and seek convergences.

The Ligue de l’Enseignement and the Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée are pleased to see that many secularist associations have jointly adopted a declaration: “Do not touch the 1905 Law”. The Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée and the Ligue de l’Enseignement too affirm their absolute opposition to two private members’ bills recently put on the agenda of the French National Assembly. To embark on a revision of the law obviously implies many risks for the very principle of secularism.

The first bill, whose author is the MP Jean-Marc Roubaud, is nothing but the reestablishment of the offence of blasphemy in the press. We recall that this offence had disappeared during the Revolution, and that only King Charles X’s reactionary regime – he was the sanctimonious king – tried to re-establish it. There is no possibility for democracy without absolute freedom of expression and without accepting that all opinions must be granted equal status. This regression, which follows the same line as that of the French extreme right, is completely unacceptable.

The second bill, as unacceptable as the first one, was authored by the MP Jacques Myard. According to the provisions of its first article: “No cultural or religious prescription allows anyone to put a veil over one’s face in a public street; anyone moving on the territory of the republic must have an unveiled face, allowing one’s recognition or identification”. The third article provides for the deportation of all foreigners wearing an Islamic veil. The text does not even hide its ulterior motives behind its veil of hypocrisies. Only one category of people is targeted – Muslim women. It does not seem that women belonging to the Roman Catholic religious order should be concerned by this prohibition.

Those two bills completely ignore the principles on which a secular republic is based. Their adoption would be a violation of the first article of the constitution as well as the first two articles of the 1905 law, and on the other hand it would place France in an awkward position concerning its sovereign international commitments.

The Ligue de l’Enseignement and the Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée consider that the absolute freedom of conscience established by the first article of the 1905 law includes the right for anyone to have a religion or not to have one as well as the possibility to have either of those beliefs criticised.

Both belief and non belief are part of individual convictions. The law has nothing to say in such matters, unless one has to define, democratically, the extent of public order. Likewise, law courts should not establish themselves as referees of religious fashion.

The strict separation between the world of individual convictions, including religion, and that of the public service, as established by the 1905 law, implies a number of consequences: criticising religion or claiming one’s religious belief is a matter of individual freedom of expression only; the State has the obligation to keep a strict neutrality when it intervenes in the framework of a mission of general interest, which justifies the prohibition of the wearing of any religious sign by public servants.

More generally, the Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée and the Ligue de l’Enseignement, will not accept any law of exception, discriminatory by principle. This is why both organisations have jointly criticised the law of March 15, 2004 concerning the wearing of religious signs or items of clothing in public primary or secondary schools. It was a law with electoral aims and which, in spite of its apparent general wording, was targeting only one category of people. Significantly, the popular reference to it is “the law concerning the veil”. The stigmatisation of any category of the population cannot but lead to discrimination, xenophobic temptations and communitarian clashes.

The Ligue de l’Enseignement and the Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée are also absolutely opposed to the provisions of article 89 of the law of August 13, 2004 concerning local liberties and responsibilities, which make contribution by town councils towards the cost of education of pupils going to private schools mandatory – even those which are located outside their territory. Both organisations demand the abrogation of this article which notably increases the public funding of private schools, to the detriment of the development of the secular public service of education.

The Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée and the Ligue de l’Enseignement hereby agreed to have further and regular exchanges of their viewpoints. They seek, with respect to the diversity of their approaches, all convergences of viewpoints, thus making it possible the daily implementation of secularism which allows the emancipation of individuals and the safeguarding of the plurality of opinions. They propose to broaden those meetings to all secular organisations willing to build a coalition that could open new paths for common actions in defence of secularism of School and State.

Ligue de l’enseignement
Jean-Michel Ducomte, President Fédération nationale de la Libre Pensée Christian Eyschen, Secretary General