No instant secularism
A Syrian man dressed as Santa Claus entertains orphans at the Mar Takla monastery in the Christian village of Maalula on December 23, 2011.
By Ramez Malouf, Special to Gulf News
27/12/2011
Arab Spring offers people an historic opportunity to shape their own governments and make decisions on the place of religion in the state.
For Egyptian Copts, as well as for other Christian communities in the Arab world, it is unlikely that this Christmas was a season to be jolly.
Welcomed by most people in the region, the Arab Spring is being met with nervous ambivalence by Arab Christians everywhere, fearful that Islamist movements will capitalise on gained freedoms to establish governments insensitive, or even inimical, to non-Muslims.
These concerns have been expressed by religious leaders, among them Pope Shenouda III in Egypt, the Maronite Patriarch in Lebanon, and the Orthodox Patriarch Hazim in Syria. All three voiced support for the despotic regimes of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Bashar Al Assad in Syria, because of a fear that the alternative would be governments led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
What Arab Christians, and minorities in general, fear is what the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill referred to as democracy’s “tyranny of the majority”. As the elections in Tunisia and Egypt have shown, there is little doubt that Islamist movements enjoy wide popularity in the Arab world. For good or bad, these movements intend to bring their religious culture and beliefs to bear on the composition of new governments. It is understandable that they should want to do so.
or centuries, the populations of the Arab world — Muslim, Christian or any other — were denied the opportunity to determine their own fate. Governed by the Ottomans from the 14th to the 19th century, they saw that rule replaced by either British or French colonialism. After independence, authoritarian regimes dictated the terms of the relationship between the state, people and religion.
For the first time, the Arab Spring may be offering the people of this region the opportunity to shape their own governments, including making decisions on the place of religion in the state.
Inevitably and necessarily that will be a long, complicated and, at times, a contentious process.
Albeit at a more advanced level, that process continues to take place in the West, where there is still significant debate about the role of prayer in schools, or the teaching of evolutionary biology, or the place of the Bible in decisions about gay marriages.
Slow process
Religious beliefs are entrenched aspects of culture and will be reflected in the shaping of a legal system, or in the make-up of government institutions.
The separation of church from state can only come about incrementally, whenever an apparent religious dictate seems to contravene reason or the well-being of the state or its population.
When that happens, these dictates may be either reinterpreted, or challenged.
There is no royal road for this process, which must necessarily take time, and cannot be imposed through dictums by a foreign power, the army or a dictator. For, as we have seen in Tunisia and Turkey, when given a chance, the people will challenge secularism imposed from above. Although Christian and other minorities in the Arab world will need to fight for more secular states, in the short run they will also need to encourage a greater appreciation for the true meaning of democracy, as Mill would have understood it.
True democracy is rule of the majority coupled with respect for the rights of the individual. The majority, wrote Mill, must recognise that “there should be a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion”. In other words, the will of the majority cannot, in the name of democracy, infringe on the basic rights of the citizen, including the right to equal treatment under the law.
This is why, despite their recourse to elections, neither Israel nor Iran can claim to be democratic countries for they treat their citizens differently. Islamists and advocates of democracy in the Arab world, must, therefore, not emulate these two nations and confuse democracy with the simple rule of the majority. Nor must advocates of secular states expect the separation of state and religion to happen overnight.
The real significance of the Arab Spring is that it offers the Arabs the opportunity to do the right thing. But the right thing will take a long time to do.
Ramez Maluf is an associate professor at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
