French Secularism Today—Its Origin and Conflict with French Muslims

This is my first research paper submitted in English, for Harvard’s well-known Expository Writing course (Expos 20).

From the Introduction

Since the Enlightenment, the separation of church and state has become deeply embedded in Western civilization. However, the understanding of secularism (“indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations”) in the public sphere has varied across different countries.¹

Laïcité is a version of secularism unique to France as an element of French republican ideology.²

One significant manifestation of laïcité is the 1905 law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, which consolidated a secular order in France, wherein the Church “[lost] all official character.”³ At the time it was introduced, it provoked outrage in the Catholic Church, as it seemed to be a radical break from religious tradition.⁴ Although enacted over a century ago, it continues to underlay some contemporary French conflicts. One of the most controversial applications of laicite in Modern France relates to the restrictions on certain elements of Muslim attire, which are denounced as conspicuous religious symbols.⁵

The supporters of a strict definition of laïcité believe headscarves and burkinis violate the principle of secularism; other French citizens find the burqa ban “Islamophobic” and even “racist.”⁶ The United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human rights states that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to (…) [in public or private] manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”⁷ Therefore, what is at stake is not only the problem of some practical applications of laïcité, but also the fundamental moral code of French culture.

Contemporary French secularism is a product of both a break from religious tradition and a partial compromise with the Catholic Church, meaning that French secularism, in its present form, is incompatible with the French Muslim perspective on the role of religion in public life and fails to approach Islam as a religion with its own unique characteristics, which are distinct from those of Catholicism.

Read the full paper here.