At Changing Turkey in a Changing World, Sune Lægaard, assistant professor of philosophy at the Centre for the Study of Equality and Multiculturalism, discusses Dr. Ahmet Kuru’s distinction of two contending constructs of secularism: the “passive” secularism of the US, on one hand, and the “assertive” secularism practiced by the Turkish and French governments, on the other. Writes Lægaard:
In American style secularism, the reason for having a secular state is that religion is considered extremely important for people and as much too important to allow the state to have any say over organised religion. In French style secularism, which was taken over by the Kemalists in Turkey, the basic intuition driving secularism is that religion is a problematic, anti-progressive force, which should perhaps not be that important for people in their private lives, but which first of all is problematic from a political perspective, since a religiously based political order would be unjust, oppressive and anti-progressive and would make for counter enlightenment policies.
Roughly, one could say that the reason for separating state and church (but not politics and religion at a broader, more informal level) in the US is mainly based on a consideration of the importance of religion and a fear of the dangers to people’s religious freedom inherent in state control of religious life. In the French variety, to the contrary, the main reason for separation has to do with the importance of instituting a certain kind of republican, democratic and enlightened political order and with the dangers religion poses to this kind of politics.
Read the full piece here and Changing Turkey’s interview with Dr. Kuru, assistant professor of political science at San Diego State University, here.