Faith-based communities and partners to any inter-religious dialogue support religious pluralism.The challenge is how to ensure that religious pluralism accommodate differences in peace and justice.

The idea of separation of state and religion evolved out of this challenge. Far from being "anti-religious", this prescription suggests that religious toleration can only be achieved through the institutionalization of freedom of conscience. This means the right to worship freely, to propagate one's religion, to change one's religion and even to renounce religion.

Toleration is equated with freedom of conscience. This scheme limits the role of conscience to the domain of private faith. Whereas one has the freedom to choose between competing doctrines and pursue one's belief in private religious institutions, one is linked in common citizenry in public state institutions.

The public order is deemed "secular" in that all considerations drawn from belief in God or a sacred authority in one's private life are excluded from the administration of public life. This separation was promoted as historical experience has shown that religious exclusivity tends to undermine solidarity and peaceful co-existence among different communities. Secularism as separation of religion and state evolved as a means to encourage pluralism!

While we may need to rethink secularism as separation of religion and state, the fact that secularism may have the ability to safeguard religious and political pluralism has to be noted.

Among the Abrahamic traditions, the ideal of justice arises out of the belief in an ethical God who insists on justice and equality in interpersonal relations as part of the believer's spiritual perfection. This idea then promotes the indispensable connection between the religious and ethical dimensions of personal life and introduces religious precepts into the public arena. This implies that religion is not separate from politics.

Coercive secularization

It can be said that a fair segment of Muslim community worldwide present secularism as an anti-religious concept designed to alienate Muslims from their religion. The "West" seen as the purveyor of the separation of state and religion, is also perceived as bent on dominating and exploiting Muslims through this scheme. Muslim fears were also grounded on the coercive secularization imposed by authoritarian regimes in Turkey and Iran after the First World War and in many parts of the Muslim world after the Second World War. Muslims regard secularism as a European, Christian concept imposed by colonial and neocolonial forces.

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im maintains that there are serious conceptual confusions in the Muslim discourse on separation of religion and state. Religion is not separate from politics, even in the "secular West".

He offers a working definition of secularism as "a principle of public policy, applied variously in distinct contexts, for organizing the relationship between religion and state". There is a continuum of "secularisms" from the extreme fusion to that of absolute separation between religion and state.

Secularism is dynamic and deeply contextual. The minimum requirement for a positive relationship between religion and state is neutrality. That is, people are neither advantaged or disadvantaged by their adherence to their secular or faith-based tradition.

The state should neither favour nor disfavour one particular religious tradition over another. Secularism's minimum requirement must be the safeguarding of political and religious pluralism in heterogeneous societies.

State neutrality

This minimum requirement runs aground as no public policy is completely neutral: citizens are always believers in something. The question is how people can exercise free democratic choice in accordance with their beliefs (including religion) while the neutrality of the state is maintained.

An-Na'im makes the conclusions that (a) the above possibility exists only if belief systems are internally transformed and that (b) belief systems will be transformed only where the interdependence of religion, secularism (as per An Na'im's working definition) and human rights is well established.

Secularism in this framework requires a transformation. It should serve as an inter-religious and cross-cultural foundation for human rights as a universal norm. Religious believers for example will fail to be inspired by human rights if founded solely on secular grounds.

For example, discrimination against women is often justified on religious grounds in many societies. These violations cannot be eliminated without addressing their allegedly religious rationale. A purely secular discourse can be respectful of religion but its rebuttal of one religion's justifications for discrimination against women is unlikely to convince that religion's adherents.

Secularism alone is insufficient if it does not address the need of religious believers to express the moral implications of their faith in the public domain.

Religion, secularism and human rights

An-Na'im summarises the relationship among religion, secularism and human rights as follows:

  1. Human rights need religion to validate their moral foundation and to mobilize religious adherents in support of universal rights.
  2. Religion needs human rights not only to protect the human dignity and rights of religious adherents within any political system, but human rights also ensure freedom of belief and practice within each religion itself and thus ensure the evolution and continuing relevance of each religion to its own membership.
  3. Human rights need secularism to provide the political stability and peace among communities of believers and non- believers that are necessary for the protection of these rights.
  4. Secular governments need human rights for normative guidance in the daily protection of people against the abuse of state power.
  5. Secularism needs religion to provide a widely accepted source of moral guidance for political community, as well as to help satisfy and discipline the nonpolitical needs of believers within that community.
  6. Religion needs secularism to mediate relations between different communities within (non-religious, religious or anti-religious) that share the same political space.

Some Muslims may think that these propositions undermine belief in the divine source of Islam.

They fail to appreciate, however, that the Quran and Sunna are not manifestations of divinity in the abstract; they are directed at human beings living human lives.

The Quran and Sunna cannot be understood except as applied by human beings temporally and in particular contexts.

An-Na'im further maintains that Islamic life today is not guided solely by Muslim principles. Religious views within the Islamic world are and always have been very diverse. It is in this light of these two recognitions that Islamic communities need to consider the relationship between Islam (under its various interpretations) and the global doctrines of secular government and human rights.

Syariah compliant

I find Khaled Abou el-Fadl's writings on Islam and democracy useful for heterogeneous societies as well. We have our own particular experiences of Islamic law in Malaysia (as regulated by the government in power) in the public domain.

In our conversations on Islam as religion of the federation, Muslims, both professional and the laity have asserted the supremacy of the Syariah.

El Fadl notes that assertions of the supremacy of the Syariah (and the rule of law is often equated with the rule of the Syariah) are often limited to the carrying out of criminal punishments in Islamic law.

"But a government that declares its intention to abide by all positive commandments of Syariah may nevertheless manipulate the rules in order to obtain the desired results."

Thus, under the guise of protecting individuals from slander, it could suppress many forms of political and social criticism. A government could imprison or execute political dissenters, claiming they are sowing fitna (discord and social turmoil). Under pretense of guarding public modesty it could pass arbitrary laws forbidding many forms of public assembly.

Arguably, all these governmental actions can be perceived to be Syariah-compliant unless there is a clear sense of the limits imposed on the ability of the government to service and promote even the Syariah.

The rule of law need not be taken to mean that government is bound by a codebook of specific regulations. Instead it might be interpreted as requiring a government bound by processes of making and interpreting laws.

More importantly, the rule of law requires that those processes themselves be bound by fundamental moral commitments in particular to human dignity and freedom.

El Fadl reiterates the concerns about the reach of state power, something which has antecedents in Muslim history but now forgotten. Todate, new constitutions are being forged which have endowed the state with legislative power over divine law. In so doing, the state has acquired formidable power that has further ingrained the practice of authoritarianism in various countries.

In the Quranic discourse, mercy is not simply forgiveness, nor the willingness to ignore the faults and sins of people, but a state in which the individual is able to be just with him or herself and others. Accordingly, it is not possible to achieve justice unless every possessor of a right (haqq) is granted his or her right.

El Fadl, like An-Na'im and scores of Muslim scholars today emphasise the need to protect human rights as a fulfillment of mercy, peace and justice.

The Quran addresses the inherent dignity of the human person in 17:70 " We have honoured (karammna) the Children of Adam [with karam, that is, 'noble nature'] and carried them on land and sea, and provided them with good things, and preferred them greatly over many of those We created".

This noble nature (karam) makes someone human, autonomous and individually responsible. It is a special endowment (takrim) and honour that no one else among God's creatures posses.

A society that fails to ensure the protection of human rights, no matter how many rules it applies, is neither merciful nor just.

Note:

This is the third and final article arising out of the writer's presentation in a regional inter-faith conference on violence and peace-building in Cipayung, Bogor, Indonesia, Aug 16-19.

References:

Abdullahi Ahmed An Naim, The Future of the Sharia Project (a work in progress for publication in 2005). The work will be published simultaneously in English, Urdu and Bahasa Indonesia.

Khaled Abou el Fadl , Islam and the Challenge of Democracy .