Dr. Ahmed Afzaal
Despite continuing opposition from various religious movements, and in spite of the presence of a few pockets of resistance here and there, the idea of secularism still enjoys the status of the dominant ideology of our times. Essentially, secularism does not involve any absolute rejection of religion and religious doctrines, its primary claim being that religion has no right to interfere in the matters of the temporal and the mundane world. In other words, all matters concerning social organization, economic norms, legal practices, and political affairs should be decided and executed in terms of liberal, democratic, and non-religious criteria, while religion is to be treated as a personal and individual concern. The secular state is willing to patronize religious sentiments whenever these can be used to gain subservience to the state authority or to achieve the goals set by the state. Thus, religious values and imperatives are often invoked to justify and legitimize political actions, to gain support for political struggle, and to influence voting behavior. At the same time, however, the secular state does not tolerate any reference to religious teachings when it comes to the process of legislation or development of public policies.
Secularism as a doctrine implies that public policies should be based exclusively on this-worldly criteria, i.e., the main concern should be the welfare of humanity in the present life with total disregard for any belief in a supernatural being, salvation of the human soul, dependence on heavenly guidance, or concern for the life-after-death. The fundamental issue in a secular state is the attainment of material prosperity and well-being in the life of this world, as this is thought to be the only road to human happiness and bliss -- the ultimate highway to a worldly Heaven. The hedonistic materialism inherent in the secular mode of life continues to gnaw at the roots of the religious sentiments, till there is nothing left but sheer greed and debauchery.
The degree of religious freedom that a secular state is willing to grant its citizens varies greatly. The French are reluctant, and the Turks openly hostile, to the idea of allowing Muslim women to wear a head-scarf in government offices and on the campus; they fear that this would dangerously undermine their modern and secular values. The Americans are relatively magnanimous in this respect, although we continue to come across incidents reflecting a more rigid and less tolerant attitude on their part too. The main issue, however, is that even the secular state requires its citizens to act morally, to abide by the law, to live according to the accepted rules and norms, and such a mindset cannot be cultivated among the citizens by any of the purely utilitarian ethical philosophies. The fact of the matter is that public morality cannot sustain itself without a powerful private religiosity. Religion, therefore, is needed by the state for its own survival, simply because it is impossible to inculcate goodness of character without the support of religion, and also because all moral values are, in the final analysis, derived from the religious tradition. A growing number of Western thinkers are realizing this truth.
Zbigniew Brezezinski, who has served as the National Security Adviser to President Carter, maintains that the out-of-control secularism contains within it the seeds of cultural self-destruction. He argues that without the development of a moral consciousness and adoption of an ethos of self-restraint instead of self-indulgence, the Western society would be left with no operational criteria for defining what is right and what is wrong, and thereby will slide into self-destruction. Charles W. Colson, founder of the Prison Fellowship, asseverates that there has never been a case in history in which a society has been able to survive for long without a strong moral code, and that there has never been a time when a moral code has not been informed by religious truth. He warns that rejecting transcendental truth is tantamount to committing suicide, as a secular state cannot cultivate virtue.
Thus, the secular state needs its citizenry to act righteously, yet it is not willing to permit religion to come out of its bounds of privacy and encroach upon matters relating to the collective life. This produces a quandary: the restriction and confinement of religion within the boundaries of the individual consciousness inevitably leads to its shrinkage and gradual decline, adversely affecting the moral standards of the society and, in turn, that of the state apparatus itself. The destruction of the traditional moral order in the West at the hands of secularism is a case in point, which has led to an immense amount of suffering, wreckage, and misery in the shape of widespread violence, soaring juvenile crime, rising drug addiction, skyrocketing rates of venereal diseases, and the rapidly growing sense of futility and aimlessness among the youth, leading to the most alarming sign of moral bankruptcy -- teenage suicide. All the rhetoric which one comes across in the Western world about "family values" and "back to the basics" is actually a manifestation of this very quandary.
The birth and development of secularism in the West was intimately linked with the contemporaneous shift of allegiance from God to man, from faith in revelation to that in science, and from reliance on religious authority to freedom of thought. These constituents of the modern mind emerged during Renaissance, were empowered by the Scientific Revolution and solidified during Enlightenment, finding their full realization in the secular nation state which developed during the nineteenth century. It must be stressed that the process of the secularization of state was essentially a European historical experience, basically related to the reaction against the merciless rule and venality of the Roman Catholic Church, and subsequently against the hatred and violence that was perpetuated in the name of religion. Prior to the industrial revolution, secularization in Europe had the support of the Protestants, who had sought to achieve a separation between religion and state in order to purify Christianity by removing it from the realm of worldly corruption. After the decline in the political power of the religious hierarchy, and especially after the industrial revolution, the process of secularization made inroads in the realm of society and social institutions, followed by a general acceptance of liberal humanism.
It is often claimed that secularization of the state was accompanied by a positive rise in religious faith and practice at the private and popular levels. This may be true for the Christian Europe, but it cannot be true for Islam and Muslims. The reason can be understood either in terms of the difference between a mere religion (madhhab) and a total system of human existence (Deen), or by appreciating the fact that the main emphasis in Islam is upon obedience to Allah (SWT) and His Messenger (SAW), and not just on the creed, spiritual enlightenment, or the performance of specified rituals. This is not to say that these elements are absent in the Islamic way of life, but to argue that whereas Christianity primarily aims at attaining salvation through faith, Buddhism stresses the achievement of enlightenment, and Judaism emphasizes the performance of ceremonies and rituals, the fundamental thrust of the Islamic teachings is on observing the commandments of Allah (SWT) and following the example of the Prophet (SAW). The preoccupation with intricacies of creed, attainment of higher spiritual stations, and the performance of spotless rituals are quite useless if they are not accompanied by a total and unconditional adherence to all injunctions of the Shari