RELIGION, SOCIETY, TERROR, AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
By Hank Berger

** In the light of the July 7 London bombings **

United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
July 14, 2005

What strikes one about articles like the one reproduced below from Thursday's Financial Times (UK) is the absence in it of any reflection upon what 'religion' may be in our time, and the absence of any reflection on what religion's place in 'society' may be in our time.[1]  Do the mainstream media in Europe and elsewhere really imagine that such questions can only be addressed in small-circulation reviews, university classrooms, and advanced seminars, that they are matters of indifference to the public at large?  (Perhaps such an attitude is related to the failure of European elites to 'sell' their constitutional treaty to the masses without ever addressing European citizens as rational subjects -- the so-called 'democratic deficit' that led to the May 29 fiasco.)

Even a citizen of supposedly ahistorical America like the present writer may ask how an article like Roula Khalaf's in the Financial Times can be published on July 14, the anniversary of the French Revolution, as if the problems it evokes had nothing to do with that historic event.  Has the world forgotten that the French Revolution brought the word 'terrorism' into the world?  That in it are the origins of the problem of modern religion, and the problem of the relation of the modern state to religion?

Almost thirty years ago, a French 20th-century thinker, Paul Bénichou (1908-2001), expressed his thoughts on the relation between the French Revolution and the problem of religion in modern society as he finished up a long discussion of the thought of Edgar Quinet (1803-1875), one of the founders of the secular Republic in France -- which is, we would submit, "the European dream," pace Prof. Jocelyn Cesari of Harvard, who says, in the article below, "I don't think there's a European dream."

Writing in the late 1970s, Bénichou had this to say:

"The [French] Revolution proved unable to extract from [the social problem of religion] any alternative other than this one:  France is either Catholic, or unbelieving.  The Constituent Assembly had wanted to renew the Church morally by allying it with the Revolution, and the Church refused.  The Convention had wished a revolutionary religion, a transposed imitation of Catholic rites and images:  this artificial attempt led to nothing.  The religion that is able to live today could not be an official institution; it depended [quoting Quinet] 'upon inner feeling, upon the secret between man and God, upon the inner heaven':  Robespierre was mistaken about it . . . [I]t is finally in the principle of a free conscience that Quinet seeks the definition of his religion.  Revolutionary assemblies substituted themselves for the faltering Church so as to formulate the credo of modern humanity; on this ground they were, like the State that was born from them, provided with a spiritual authority; but beyond a certain limit the rights of conscience prevail over this authority. . . .

"Thus in the end this thought is divided between a necessary code of social authority and a possible individual experience of transcendence.  Born under the sign of the coming together of the spiritual and the temporal, [Quinet] in fact challenges that unity by enshrining the spiritual privilege of the thinking individual.  We see in Quinet how a certain humanitarian logic, alert against dogma, prepared the ground for a democracy of free thought.  An unknown future credo, a free quest allowed to each person, these themes easily result in the principled rejection of any metaphysical dogma as social bond.

"There is, no doubt, a great distance between 1848 and 1880, from the Second Republic to the Third.  But Quinet allows us to glimpse from what problems we began and by what path we passed from the spirit of one to the spirit of the other.  It is certainly not without reason that his centenary was gloriously celebrated in 1903, by the secular Republic, as that of one of its founders" (Le Temps des prophètes: Doctrines de l'âge romantique [Paris: Gallimard, 1977], pp. 495-96; my translation).

It is no doubt significant that in 2003, perhaps one European in five hundred, and one American in five thousand (wildly optimistic estimates) has any idea who Edgar Quinet was.  But the real question is this:  What conception of human beings have the leaders of our societies come to have in the early years of the 21st century?  Who is that they imagine they are leading?  Are citizens really only to be regarded as consumers, whose purchases fuel an increasingly inegalitarian global neoliberal society, with an occasional referendum to grant a veneer of legitimacy to a ruinous charade?

Perhaps it is not social rejection or failure to 'integrate Muslims' alone that is causing the rejection of Western society, if rejection there is -- and perhaps there is more to examine than objectionable and unjust foreign policies.  Perhaps there has been a betrayal by our elite of the very conception of what a society of free human beings can and should be, here in the West, and elsewhere.

Perhaps it is here that we ought to look for the reasons why young people are yearning for something different than the neoliberal project.  All fully conscious human beings sense, or can sense, that they are in possession of freedom, a desire for knowledge and autonomy, a personal and infinite inner existence, and a longing for and possibility of communion with other human beings and with nature, the universe, and God.

Certainly, the founders of the secular Republic in Europe, like Edgar Quinet, as well as the founders of the secular Republic of the United States of America, recognized these truths.  Where do see evidence that those who conduct the affairs of our societies share a heartfelt recognition of them?

There is, no doubt, some evidence.  But it is all too invisible.  This, we would submit, is just as 'urgent' as "the challenge of bringing Muslim communities in Europe more closely into the mainstream," important as we acknowledge that to be, for in its absence, the European and American "mainstream" (a telling word) is not a very appealing place for anyone -- except a consumer, that is.

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1.

World

Europe

MUSLIMS' INTEGRATION IN EUROPE IS URGENT CHALLENGE
By Roula Khalaf

Financial Times (UK)
July 14, 2005

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5189bbe4-f491-11d9-9dd1-00000e2511c8.html

As security officials warn of a Europe-wide pattern of home-grown religious extremism, the challenge of bringing Muslim communities in Europe more closely into the mainstream isgaining urgency.

The threat posed by radicalized Muslim youth was brutally underlined by last week's London suicide bombings perpetrated by Muslims born and brought up in Britain.

But worries about uneasy integration of Muslim minorities had emerged in the recent past, though they were kept largely in the background while the European Union grappled with more immediate challenges, from enlargement to the constitution.

The need for closer integration was highlighted on Thursday by the results of a Pew Research Center global survey. A large majority of people polled in countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands believe Muslims coming into their country want to be distinct from the broader society rather than adopt their new country's customs.

Meanwhile, a majority of people in European countries surveyed said they felt there was a growing sense of Islamic identity among Muslim communities and judged that this was bad for their countries.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe and Muslims are the largest minority on the continent. They make up as much as 5 per cent of the European population. The total of 20m people is expected to double in 20 years, driven by high birth rates and continued immigration.

Many Muslims in Europe are becoming more religious, as they seek spiritual refuge in an expanding Europe and a globalized world.

“The successful integration of European Muslims is crucial to the future of Europe,” wrote David Masci, a senior research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, in a report published in December. “Muslims will, at the very least, be a significant and sizeable minority that will play an important role in shaping the continent's future.”

The attacks of September 11, 2001, forced governments across Europe to pay closer attention to their Muslim communities. But the “global war on terror” launched in the aftermath of the tragedy also contributed to a deeper sense of marginalization among European Muslims, who felt their religion was coming under fierce attack.

Unlike Muslims in the U.S., for example, immigrant families in Europe Algerians in France for instance often carry with them difficult memories of a colonial past that hampers their integration.

In most cases Muslim communities tend to live in difficult socio-economic conditions. Ironically it is in the U.K. that a well-off Muslim middle class has emerged, though there are still pockets of exclusion.

Jocelyn Cesari, professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard University, has compared attitudes of Muslim minorities in Europe and the U.S.

“Muslim immigrants in the U.S. are well-educated and even after 9/11 they showed more trust in American society,” she said. “There is still an American dream and Muslims are partaking in it. I don't think there's a European dream.”

Governments have adopted different approaches towards the integration of Muslim communities. France, with its strong secular culture, has opted for aggressive assimilation, though Muslims there still feel marginalized. Britain, on the other hand, has taken a far less intrusive approach. “By far the majority of European countries including Germany, Italy and Spain have, at least until recently, taken a third, more laissez-faire, approach; one that has treated Muslim minorities as a temporary phenomenon that will eventually go away and, hence, can safely be ignored,” said Mr. Masci.