Commemorations are being held across France today in memory of the French school teacher, Samuel Paty, beheaded on 16 October by a radical Islamist for having shown cartoons of the prophet Mohammed to his pupils in a class on history and free speech.
On 29 October, a radical Islamist murdered two worshippers and the church’s sacristan by attempted decapitation in Nice’s Notre Dame Basilica, apparently because of President Macron’s defence of France’s right in the name of free speech to publish the cartoons.
France is the Western state that has most suffered at home from Islamic terrorism, with 270 deaths since March 2012. One has to ask, why France? According to President Macron, France is under attack for her values of free speech and freedom of the press. Yet these values are also prominent features of many other western democratic states that have been far less scarred by Islamic terrorism. What is specific about France is the relationship the French state has had, and continues to have, with religion. It is a complex history going back two centuries that not everyone in France understands, let alone those who observe her from afar.
One has to ask, why France?
France is the most rigorously secular state of the democratic world. Separation of Church and State enshrined in the famous 1905 law was the result of over a century of hostility between the Catholic Church and the French State. Mutual hostility began with the 1789 French Revolution. Until then, monarchical France bathed in the glory of being recognised as the “elder daughter of the Catholic Church”. But the revolutionaries saw the Church – like the aristocracy – as a pillar of the old regime that had to be rooted out, often by violence. Many took their cue from the Enlightenment philosopher Diderot: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Anticlericalism and de-christianisation of the State became features of the revolutionary tradition that has continued until today, albeit in muted form.
Until then [1789], monarchical France bathed in the glory of being recognised as the “elder daughter of the Catholic Church”.
A major benefit of the 1905 law was that it put separation of Church and State on a clear legal basis in a predominantly Catholic country. The boundaries were clearly drawn between the temporal and the spiritual: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”. The law guaranteed the French the right to believe or not to believe. Hitherto, the state was legally bound to neutrality in dealing with all religions, while religion was strictly controlled in the public sphere. This is the principle known as “laïcité”.
Following the Nice attack President Macron delivered a sober speech. It was a robust defence of France’s values of free speech and laïcité. But here is where France has a problem – not of values – but of communication. For the very nature of laïcité is often unclear in France itself, poorly understood among her allies, and not at all in the wider world. The English-speaking world has a different, more flexible attitude to religion that clashes with laïcité. There is no separation of Church and State in Britain; the American constitution formally separates the two, but new presidents take an oath of allegiance on the Bible and dollar banknotes clearly state “In God we trust”. Macron is right to defend France’s concept of laïcité, but far more should be done internationally to allay the misconceptions many states and peoples have about its parameters, especially in the Muslim world. Macron’s hour-long interview on the subject to Al-Jazeera television this weekend was a step in the right direction.
Here is where France has a problem – not of values – but of communication.
The other important aspect of Macron’s speech was directed specifically at Catholics: “I want to express, first and foremost, the nation’s support for the Catholics of France and elsewhere. After the assassination of Father Hamel in summer 2016, once again Catholics are attacked in our country, threatened before All Saints’ Day celebrations. The whole nation is at their side and will remain so in order that religion can continue to be freely exercised in our country, because our country knows that. Our values are that everyone is allowed to believe or not believe, but that all religions can be practised. Today the whole nation is beside our Catholic compatriots.”
What is striking in this speech is that since the 1905 Separation French, heads of state have gone out of their way to keep the Catholic Church at arm’s length – even in its times of crisis – as an affirmation of neutrality. After the 2016 Islamist assassination of Father Hamel as he celebrated mass, President François Hollande – while not lacking in compassion – went no further than declaring that: “To kill a priest is to profane the Republic”. Macron has gone further, putting France’s arm around French Catholics and – most significantly – Catholics abroad. Is this a breach in the tradition of rigorous state neutrality and a return to France as protector of French Catholic enclaves around the world, as was the case in the nineteenth century when they were under attack in Syria and the Lebanon?
Since the 1905 Separation French, heads of state have gone out of their way to keep the Catholic Church at arm’s length – even in its times of crisis.
If it is indeed Macron’s intention that France move to defending more actively Catholic minorities abroad, that deserves to be supported by other western governments. Christian minorities generally have been forsaken by Western governments and their media. Their plight is often overlooked, unlike religious minorities such as Uighurs in China or Rohingyas in Myanmar. Why, for instance, shouldn’t French and British development aid be tied to state recipients’ respect for Christian minorities in countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh?
France is under attack internally and internationally for wishing to defend her values. Her chequered past in relation to religion has made her position more trenchant than in other western democratic states. Laïcité is a complex concept that hitherto remains remarkably Franco-French. France must explain actively abroad, in layman’s terms, its importance and why and how it remains a pillar of French Republican values in practice today. The fraught international context requires it. In 1993, the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote what has become a famous text entitled the The Clash of Civilisations. It predicted that future wars would not be between states but between cultures, with Islamic extremism becoming the biggest threat. France must communicate far more effectively the nature of laïcité. Without that explanation, defending French values at home and abroad from attack will continue to be a mighty struggle.
Professor John Keiger is a professor of French history and former research director of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Cambridge.
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