200 Years Anniversary of Jefferson's Letter on Separation of Church and State

Conference 28 and 29 September 2002, France

No to Sharia:
For a separation of mosque and state

 Reasons for Separation of Religion and State:

1. Freedom of Conscience
(i) King James II of England:"It is and has of long time been our constant sense and opinion that conscience ought not to be constrained, nor people forced in matters of religion". (Declaration of Indulgence, October 1687)

(ii) John Milton, "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all other liberties". (Areopagitica ,1644)


2. Religious Liberty:

(i) Thomas Jefferson: "Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and other half hypocrites" (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1784).  

I do not want to rehearse all the reasons in detail for insisting on a separation of state and church, they are adumbrated in the quotes above. It is not the business of the state to interfere with the freedom of conscience and thought of its citizens. The state cannot make the people religious by force; at best it may enforce outward observance, but at the cost of sincerity of belief. By mandating belief in one religion, one is cutting oneself and an entire age or generation off from further enlightenment and progress. As Kant put it: "To unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public -that is absolutely forbidden ". That is to abdicate reason, renounce enlightenment, and trample on the rights of mankind. We must also get away from the notion that we are "born Muslim " or "born Christian " and that we cannot do anything about it. We should be free to enter or leave any particular creed, otherwise there would be no progress, freedom, or reform .

Once the principle of the separation of church and state is admitted, a free discussion of religion should follow without fear of torture. However, this is precisely what theocratic governments or religious autocrats fear - freethought.

As soon as you have an established religious institution that is beyond doubt then you have tyranny, thought police and absence of the critical sense that hinders intellectual and moral progress. In an Islamic theocracy, God is the absolute ruler whose words must be obeyed absolutely, without doubt, without discussion, without questions; we cannot plea bargain with God, nor can we override God's veto. The Islamic God is not a democrat (not even a Republican ...); we cannot get rid of Him as we can a human representative elected by the people in a representative democracy. If power corrupts, then absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Islamic law (the Sharia) tries to legislate every single aspect of an individual's life. Islamic Law denies the rights of women and non-Muslim minorities. Women are considered inferior to men, and they have fewer rights: in regard to evidence in a court of law, and inheritance, a woman is counted as half a man; in marriage and divorce her position is less advantageous, a man may even beat her according to the Koran. A Muslim does not have the right to change his or her religion; apostasy is punishable by death. Under Sharia, adultery and theft are punishable by stoning to death and the amputation of limbs, respectively.

The dangers of giving into Muslim minorities demands to live in their own way should now be apparent: in France it would mean the end of the Republic. One might think that it cannot possibly happen here, in the West, in France. But it has already happened and is still happening. Take the example of polygamy. It is estimated that in France in the Paris area alone there are 200 000 people who live in polygamous families. In the Paris suburb of Ivry, there are 1500 African immigrants, and 2 out of 3 families are polygamous.

How did this happen? In the 1980s, it was the Socialist government's discreet but illegal policy to allow more than one wife per husband as a part of its policy of family re-unification. This iniquitous practice was justified by the age-old argument of cultural relativism, tolerance for the traditions of the immigrants. But now the African women themselves are speaking out against this custom. In an interview (The International Herald Tribune, Feb.2, 1996), Ms Madine Diallo said: "We've been telling the French for ten years that this [tolerance of polygamy] was wrong, that ploygamy couldn't work here because we saw the problems". Ms Keita from Senegal recounts: "Polygamy doesn't work in France … It is unbearable because there is no room for two or three wives and 15 children in one small place ....The women are rivals. The husband is never fair .....There are horrible fights."

Thus a well-meaning tolerance - which is really condescension, perhaps even racism, in disguise -towards other cultures has resulted in the denial of human rights of thousands of women. The women themselves are reacting against this situation; thus it is decidedly not the case that cultural imperialists are forcing a certain set of Western values onto a helpless people. Rather it is a revolution from within a community by women wishing to assert their dignity and claim their human rights, as they demand a uniform civil code that will affirm the principle of absolute equality before the law.

I shall end with a quote from Singapore journalist Janadas Devan: "Is it too much to claim, really, that Asian nationals have agency, that when they seek a more democratic future for themselves it is because democracy is as much a part of THEIR modernity as it is of the West's?". (New York Review of Books , June 6 , 1996).

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