November 16, 2003

Secularism makes the state neutral in religious matters and prevents it from interfering with the religious and cultural choices of the people, as long as these do not disturb other people’s sensibilities. It is not about being pro-West

THE news makes quite a pathetic reading. In Turkey, which is credited to be one of the very few democratic countries in the Islamic world, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer recently refused to invite the ruling Justice and Development Party’s legislators’ wives to the official National Day reception as they were likely to wear head scarves. In contrast, the opposition Republican People’s Party parliamentarians did get invitations for their spouses to whom scarves do not matter much.

Though Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his cabinet attended the reception in order to avoid a confrontation with the military-backed president, his partymen boycotted the function.

Head scarf, assumed to be a part of religious attire, is discouraged by the Turkish establishment. It calls its attitude secular. Quite the contrary, it is a great distortion of secularism. Secularism makes the state neutral in religious matters and prevents it from interfering with the religious and cultural choices of the people as long as these do not disturb other people’s sensibilities.

But Turkey’s self-proclaimed secular establishment has made much of scarves — in fact, an antonym of secularism. Is the establishment really so naive as to denounce a completely unharmful cultural practice as being anti-secular, or there is something else behind this apparent paranoia? What has happened in Turkey has happened in that country in the past as well. Today it is the scarf; in the past it was veil and fez, a cylindrical red felt cap which once was commonly worn by men in Turkey.

Successive Turkish governments are not alone, however, in demonstrating their obsession against certain cultural symbols. In the past the governments of some other Muslim countries have also been pursuing similar cultural policies in the name of secularism, depriving people of their choices and persuading them to adopt a particular state-approved code of conduct in their personal lives. This was more of regimentation and could hardly be regarded as a secular approach.

Worth noting is the fact that such policies have been adopted by states almost all of whom have been excessively pro-West. Apart from Turkey, Raza Shah Pahelvi’s Iran, Habib Bourguiba’s Tunisia, etc., also form the same constellation of countries.

In these countries, the Western culture was forced in varying degrees on the people in the name of modernization, and westernization was thought to be the panacea for all of their problems. Without realizing that cultural traits evolve in a given socio-economic and psychological context, these governments tried to graft an alien culture on their societies in the hope that it will make them what the West had in fact become in its own distinct context.

The role played by the liberal and westernized establishments in the Muslim countries in distorting the image of secularism is by no means less than the role of secularism’s reactionary and fundamentalist detractors who describe it as anti-religious and heresy. These elements attribute all evils whether in the Western societies or within their own, to secularism. Therefore, corruption, social under-development, moral decadence and sexual laxity are all presented as products of secularism. As nationalism and democracy are essentially democratic concepts, at times these are also condemned as being heretical.

Notwithstanding the misconceptions and the misunderstandings cultivated by the anti-secular forces, the erroneous and misplaced perceptions of secularism, as projected by the westernized establishments of the Muslim societies, have also greatly encouraged these forces to become more assertive and more obscurantist in their opposition to secularism.

This exaggerated reaction of the fundamentalists is in return used by the establishments to court further Western backing. Thus, both the pro-West establishments and the fundamentalists serve each other’s purpose and reinforce each other’s position.

However, examined with an unprejudiced eye, it is not difficult to understand the concept of secularism and its historical role in transforming societies. Nor is it difficult to understand how with the help of secular approach and ideas the Western society achieved extraordinary scientific and material progress while the Western states improved their democratic character following the secular principles.

The secular ideas were promoted in Europe in the seventeenth century at a time when the Mediaeval Age was coming to end and its social system, i.e. feudalism, was crumbling in the face of the rise of new social forces being led by the commercial and trading class.

Feudalism had its ideological foundations on metaphysical beliefs, and the feudal state had adopted the concept of divine rights as its political ideology. This concept designated the monarch as the viceregent of God who had bestowed upon him authority to rule. This conceptualization ensured obedience of the people and facilitated the monarch with legitimacy.

Given the poor state of human knowledge, poverty of intellectual resources and the lack of understanding of the historical forces which shape social and political evolution, people were condemned to accept what their rulers indoctrinated them with. But with the emergence of new social relations there came into being new classes bent upon breaking the barriers of the past.

With the promotion of commerce new trade routes were discovered, facilitated by new scientific inventions. Scientific discoveries explained away the reasons and causes of hitherto unexplained facts and phenomena. Rationalism, thus, began to replace dogmas. New creative activities led to the liberation of ideas and highlighted the importance of freedom of thought. Independent thinking and freedom of thought and belief could flourish only if societies were democratic in their character and welcomed diversity and dissent.

In such societies, the state could become viable only if it not only did not interfere with its citizens’ freedom of thought, but, in fact, also defended it. Moreover, it was necessary for such states to treat its citizens as equal. The modern nation states which emerged after the seventeenth century, were established, at least in theory, on this very concept of nationhood democracy as its essential component.

From the point of view of cultural and religious attitudes of the citizens, the best policy for the nation states could have been to adopt a neutral position and confined themselves to the worldly and temporal matters. Acquiring of religious postures and a religious character could have been harmful for them as this would have compelled them to compromise their neutrality which would have created distrust against them in one or the other sections of society.

On the other hand, the success of these states rested on to what extent they respected the religious freedom and cared for the religious sensibilities of their citizens. Societies that succeeded in following these principles reached the heights of glory and attained strong nationhood.

The irony of Muslim societies has been that for the major part of their history they remained stagnant. The dawn of Islam had occurred amidst great social transformation of Hijaz. Islam facilitated the process of social change and galvanized intellectual spirit not only in Hijaz, but wherever it went in the next few centuries. Dissent was not discouraged and ideas from as far away as Greece were welcomed. But following the first few centuries of Islam, the Muslim world fell victim to the clutches of feudalism and its political system, monarchy.

Successive Muslim dynasties evolved their own ideology of state which allowed for invoking religion and religious doctrines whenever it suited them and keeping themselves away from religious injunctions if their interests so demanded. There was no room for critical inquiry in such systems. Independent thinking was discouraged if it carried threat to the dominant political ideology, and the proponents of such thinking were subjected to persecution. No wonder thinkers like Ibne Rushd, Ibne Sina and Ibne Arabi were declared infidels.

These socially stagnant and intellectually rigid societies could not withstand the colonial onslaught. The colonial encounter further aggravated their malaise. In the Arab world, following the breakup of the Ottoman empire, the local tribal and traditional social systems were consolidated under the British influence through the Arab Sheikhs and the newly installed royalties.

In Turkey itself, a secular republic was proclaimed after the liquidation of the Ottoman caliphate. Since then Turkey claims itself to be a democratic secular state, a claim which is not generally contested. But a close examination of Turkish political history casts doubts about both the claims.

What was brought about by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as a democratic and republican state soon turned out to be statist authoritarianism which at least in the beginning did not even allow a multi-party system. Moreover, for quite some time the principle of election was not adopted, and instead, a system of nomination of deputies to the Assembly was what was meant to be democracy in Turkey.

The Assembly itself was there only in name, as it was deprived of legislative functions. Though popular among the people, Ataturk relied heavily for his strength and authority on the support of the bureaucracy and military. It took a few decades for Turkey to have a multi-party system and a functional parliament, but the system worked under the supervision of the military which claims to be the custodian of Turkish nationalism and secularism.

Turkish secularism has been equally dubious. Contrary to the general belief, it was not Ataturk who introduced it in Turkey; rather, a process of so-called secularization of education and laws had already started under the influence of the Ottoman bureaucracy, which mediated between the Turkish and the Western capitals during the 19th and the early 20th century. Kemalist secularism was a rigorous development of the existing trend.

Apart from being a plank of state authoritarianism, Kemalist secularism had two other major flaws. Firstly, instead of modernizing Turkey through the promotion of scientific outlook and rationalism, which necessitated radical changes in socio-economic system, it took to the westernization of society. The imported culture could find its followers only among the privileged sections of society, while for millions of Turks it caused resentment and alienation.

Secondly, contrary to the secular essentials, the Turkish state did not take a neutral position viz-a-viz religion. Instead, it interfered with religious practices and choices of the people in the name of secularism. Steps like closing down of certain places of worship, condemnation of the veil, banning the wearing of fez, imposition of restrictions on pilgrimage to Mecca etc. were severe infringements on individual liberty.

These steps invited reaction right in the beginning, in the 1920s and 1930s. Thereafter, though the state withdrew some of the steps, the contradiction of an autocratic state managed by a westernized bureaucracy and a self-righteous military on the one hand, and traditional religious class on the other is still there. Over the years, a large segment of the latter has also transformed into religious zealots. This element has in the last three decades got access to political institutions.

If as a sovereign nation state Turkey succeeds in working out a good economic relationship with the advanced West either through a membership of the European Union — an objective for which it has been longing for long — or without it, it would certainly be beneficial for it. But if its establishment’s refurbished relationship with the West ends up in its own consolidation, the political contest going on in the country for long will continue.

By succeeding in getting Turkey’s membership of NATO the military has already achieved its long desired goal. With this, now, it seems, the internal imbalance of forces has tilted further towards the military, making it more powerful than ever before. Now Turkey is anxious to join the EU, some of whose members apprehend its religious identity. Hence the Turk establishment’s renewed efforts in denouncing and distancing itself from religious symbols.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan whose party traces its roots to a banned religious organization is trying to adjust itself with the military establishment and its pro-West policies. There circulates a theory that his endorsement of the military’s pro-West policies is strategically motivated and that he expects that the Western backing and a membership of the EU will automatically entail the strengthening of democracy and a reduction in the role of the military in Turkish affairs.

While expecting this it should not be forgotten that Western governments and the US are less bothered about the democratic institutions in the developing countries as compared to their strategic military interests and their economic considerations. More often they have destabilized developing democracies for these interests and considerations.

Meanwhile, as long as Turkey and other Muslim countries do not really emancipate their societies, welcome a culture of inquiry and dialogue, and make their states genuinely democratic and secular, the conflict between the fundamentalist components of society and the so-called liberal and westernized elite will continue. So shall continue the conflicts of symbols, of head scarves and self-proclaimed secularisms.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)