Where’s the Value in Secularism?

There’s a popular article in today’s London Times called How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam by Phyllis Chesler, weirdly subtitled ‘Is it racist to condemn fanaticism?’ The jist of the article is that Islam itself is racist, and sexist, and if Sharia law isn’t taken on directly and altered to fit modern norms then fanatical Islam is going to take over the world. At the end of the article secularism is proscribed as the only safe and acceptable future for Islam. Chesler writes, “Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.” (Emphasis mine). I have to say, this makes me really uncomfortable. I agree that sexism, racism, and hatred are bad no matter what context they’re in, but I don’t think waging a “secular war” against Islam is realistic or a good plan. Why? Because when you bring the word secular to the table, what most religious people hear is “heathen.” My Jewish education was filled with pejorative comments about the secular world, and secular Jews. This was obviously a bad strategy, but I think it’s important to recognize that if you come to a religious leader or a member of a religious community and say, “We think it’s safer, better, wiser and truer to the word of God to live by this secular lifestyle,” you’re not going to convince anyone to join your team. Those communities define themselves by NOT being secular. If you use text study, legal analysis, and serious debate you might get somewhere because to religious people these things matter. But secularism? It’s everything they hate and are afraid of. This is relevant in the Jewish community as much as it is in the Muslim community. While there are, of course, sects and communities that are completely unwilling to change their stances on any issue, most community leaders want to be able to champion a revolutionary new cause. It makes them look good and important, and it guarantees that they go down in history books. And even the most dogmatic communities tend to go along with what their fearless leader proscribes. Consider the Chafetz Chaim, a prominent rabbi who died only 73 years ago, and who went squarely against a Talmudic statement in Sotah 20b R. Eliezer says: Whoever teaches his daughter Torah teaches her obscenity. The Chafetz Chaim explained “Nowadays, in our iniquity, as parental tradition has been seriously weakened and women, moreover, regularly study secular subjects, it is certainly a great mitzvah to teach them Chumash, Prophets and Writings, and rabbinic ethics, such as Pirkei Avot, Menorat Hamaor, and the like, so as to validate our sacred belief; otherwise they may stray totally from G-d's path and transgress the basic tenets of religion, G-d forbid." (I got this translation from a Chabad source, but I think it’s pretty good.) See, right there the word secular is used AS A BAD THING, even though what’s being promoted is a secular (and good) idea. If we come charging at the Muslim world saying that they’ve been doing it wrong and the secular lifestyle is the way to go, we’re not going to convince anyone, and we’re going to make people defensive. But if we remind fundamentalists everywhere that the world’s three major religions were based on people coming onto the scene and implementing reforms, and then we find places in their texts and legal documents that can support our humanist claims…then we can get somewhere. Or at least I hope we can.