Books: By Timothy Lehmann Timothy Lehmann on La République, les religions, l’espérance by Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy. La République, les religions,
l’espérance. Editions du Cerf. 172 pages. €17.
I n this last American election cycle, political observers noted a significant gap between the ways in which George W. Bush and John Kerry approached the delicate matter of politics and religion. Bush was comfortable proclaiming his faith as an integral, if not the most essential, aspect of his life. Kerry, on the other hand, was considerably more reticent. Much of his rhetoric seemed to suggest that American politics is simply a secular affair, in which all political claims derived from religious teaching are prima facie illegitimate, because values cannot or should not be imposed on others who do not share them. These two Americans are poles apart regarding the manner in which they discuss religion and politics, and their disparity highlights the increasing differences with which American conservatives and American liberals and most Europeans view the role of religion in public life.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Nicolas
Sarkozy, formerly France’s interior minister and
minister of finance, who was recently overwhelmingly elected as
leader of France’s major center-right political party, is
causing a stir with his singular understanding of this question.
His new book, La République, les
religions, l’espérance (The Republic, religions, and hope), is being touted as a quasi-revolutionary document that
seeks to redefine relations between religion and politics in
France. In it he unveils his “personal sentiments,” the
result of his experience in political life, condensed and revealed
in a series of interviews. Most Americans, plagued either by a
Francophilia that wants to enlist France’s muscular military
forces and diplomatic finesse in the war against terrorism, or a
Francophobia that condemns France, its history, and all it has ever
produced as a spineless and subversive menace beyond any hope of
rapprochement, don’t seem to be noticing. Few Americans even
attempt to steer a via media toward a more measured (one hesitates
to say “nuanced”) understanding of the proper
relationship between America and France, or to appreciate potential
friends among the allegedly homogeneously oppositional French.
A protégé of Jacques Chirac in
the 1970s,
Nicolas Sarkozy is an unabashedly ambitious politician who is
currently Chirac’s most feared rival, and is positioning
himself to capture the French presidency in 2007. A deal was struck in
early September 2004 between Chirac and Sarkozy that would allow Sarkozy to run
for head of the Union for a Popular Movement (ump), Chirac’s moderate
conservative party, if he promised to resign as minister of finance
in November. Now Sarkozy is head of the ump, a potential springboard to
the presidency.
I t might seem strange that a former finance minister who managed the important though relatively prosaic job of trying to spur France’s perennially flagging economy would now be in the national spotlight for raising the question of religion and politics in France. But as minister of the interior, Sarkozy has increased police presence in Muslim neighborhoods and worked energetically and optimistically with the recently formed French Council on the Muslim Religion (cfcm) and its Union of Islamic Organizations of France (uoif) in the hope of dissuading Muslim leaders from embracing extremist politics and integrating them into democratic processes. By appealing to, and indeed clearly appreciating, religious believers in national life, “Sarko” seems to be breathing new life into demons long thought dead and fanning the flames of spirits that haven’t yet been killed. France’s elites are not taking kindly to his ideas: In an interview in L’Express, he was told that his book was “disturbing,” and he was derided for his “offensive manner.”
France’s religious demons were supposed
to have been exorcized with the enactment in 1905 of a law forbidding state
funding of religion. This was the culmination of a hundred-year
religious war of sorts that began when — after the often
strange and violent events following the beginning of the French
Revolution in 1789 — laïcité triumphed, and religion was banished from the
public square, hopefully to die a slow and quiet death in the
hearts of the last few believers.
But with the influx of Muslim immigrants from
the Maghreb, of whom there are now at least 5 million and counting —
including a burgeoning number of youth — the challenge and
political necessity of integrating them into France’s
increasingly secular society has fallen to its political leaders.
Sarkozy has thus far been the most visible and articulate
interpreter of the question of religion and politics and his views
have come into daylight with the publication of this book. La Republic vigorously
challenges France’s existing laws and status quo,
reinvigorates questions about the soul, and throws into doubt
widely accepted and encrusted beliefs about the temporal and the
eternal. While Sarkozy’s practical concern is how to improve
French society and promote tolerance among Muslims, Jews,
Christians, and nonbelievers in France, his overall approach to the
question of religion and society has much in common with the views
of many American conservatives.
Although it is unwise to try to make windows
into men’s souls to know their true beliefs, what is
incontrovertibly true is that Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a
Hungarian emigrant father and a French Jewish mother, and he is
also a member of the Roman Catholic Church. As he puts it, “I
am of Catholic culture, Catholic tradition, Catholic faith. Even if
my religious practice is episodic, I acknowledge myself as a member
of the Catholic Church.” Furthermore, he believes that
“spiritual need and hope are not satisfied by the republican
ideal. . . . [The republic] is the best way to live together, but
it is not the finality of man.” Sarkozy acknowledges the
importance of religion in France and of the religious sphere in
life generally. He follows America’s friendly critic, Alexis
de Tocqueville, who advised Americans to avoid the tragedies of
Europe’s past by not integrating politics and religion too
closely, but also cautioned us not to remove either from human life
altogether. His views stand in stark contrast to those of most
contemporary secular French politicians, who see no place for this
outmoded, superstitious, dangerous, and apparently superfluous
aspect of human life. Sarkozy’s book appeared on the heels of
a summer in which Christianity’s meaning and impact on
Europe’s traditions and contemporary life had been hotly
debated, with scant success achieved by religious leaders.
It is important to make a distinction regarding
political secularism that is often forgotten. Sarkozy recoils from
any “sectarian” understanding of laïcité and is
unequivocally committed to secular democracy. Good secular
government also ensures that religious leaders do not manage the
untidy business of political power, in spite of all temptation.
Spiritual and temporal powers must remain separate, and Sarkozy
opposes writing God into the European constitution. But he is an
opponent of the absolute secularization of society that attempts to
remove any and all religious influence from human life.
W hile the 1905 law’s explicit intention was to deny any state-sanctioned religion, its effectual end was the crippling of the Catholic religion in public life by denying it, or any other religion, government funding. In contradistinction to this stark division between the secular and the sacred, Sarkozy favors a “laïcité positive,” one that guarantees the right to live one’s religion as a fundamental right. To his mind, this includes providing public funding for religions. If soccer fields, libraries, and theaters all benefit from public funding, Sarkozy wonders, why shouldn’t religious communities, which also promote cultural flourishing, also receive funds? While he doesn’t favor earmarking funds to build mosques per se, he favors funding for parking lots for them, as well as for Muslim “cultural centers.” Sarkozy recognizes that the 1905 law was the result of a delicate “equilibrium,” reached after divisions that tore the nation, and thus “it is necessary to reflect carefully” before breaking with the spirit of the law. Without modifying its basic structure, he favors public financing of the “great religions” of France. To that end, he advocates funding “national republican” education for religious leaders, reasoning that it is preferable to have imams educated in French universities and speaking French than to have imams educated abroad who are hostile to the existing republic. It also discourages the clandestine extremism that plagues many banlieues, the often decrepit Muslim-dominated neighborhoods of France’s largest cities, and promotes transparency of religious education.
Sarkozy is not about to fling France back into
the Dark Ages: He’s wary of “those who call for a
return to the past . . . . The search for solutions by looking
backwards is at the antipodes of my reflexes.” But he makes
an adroit observation about life: “My long-held conviction is
that the need for hope is consubstantial to human existence; and
that what makes religious liberty so important is that it is in
reality a matter of the liberty to hope.”
More potential dangers seem to attend believing
ages (without forgetting the militant atheism of the twentieth
century). For this reason it might seem sensible (or at least
useful, if not politically necessary) to advocate removing that
threat by tempering and eventually eliminating it altogether
through the process of secularizing all aspects of life. But the
long-term prospects of a universalized secularism are dubious at
best, for some of the deepest sources of decent political life may be obscured or
effaced in the process of hyper-secularization. Regarding the
question of forbidding young Muslim females from wearing the veil
at school, Sarkozy defended the ban without being as viscerally
supportive of it as some of France’s more secular
politicians. He viewed the fact that many young Muslims ignored the
prohibition as a reflex of cultural identity in a secular society
that they perceive as hostile. Moreover, he sees the veil question
as a matter of freedom of expression, though one which can only be
protected within the framework of laïcité.
A persuasive argument could be made that the
welcome approval of religion in France could lead to increased
levels of anti-Semitism and a reduction of tolerance among sects
and factions. France’s historical and contemporary
anti-Semitism is a stain and a poison. It compelled Theodor Herzl
to declare that if the French Jew Alfred Dreyfus could be unjustly
convicted of treason in 1894 in a country whose fundamental principles proclaimed
the universal liberté,
égalité, and fraternité of all
men, then there could be no completely satisfying settlement on the
Jewish question between Jews and any modern liberal democracy.
However, Sarkozy is himself of Jewish descent and therefore
particularly sensitive to such threats, and in any case
France’s periodic spates of anti-Semitic animus seem to have
deeper roots that haven’t been eradicated with the advent of
secular political institutions, liberal or otherwise. The existence
and continued influence of Jean-Marie Le Pen is a case in point.
Sarkozy reserves the possibility “for the state to expel by
military force any imam who exhorts hatred toward Jews, the West, or
modern societies.” As the cfcm gains in credibility and stature,
“responsible” Jews, Muslims, and Christians must,
through dialogue, “act hand in hand” to combat
racism and xenophobia.
In continuing to affirm the pluralism of the
French Republic, Sarkozy allows for competition among religions,
which has long been a useful means to block the takeover of
politics by a single dominant religion. This is unquestionably a
difficult balancing act, as it has been in times past, but can it
really be asserted that with Europe’s current lack of fervor
in faith there is any serious impending danger to the rights of its citizens?
Both the American and the French systems of government lay claim to
being dedicated to political freedom. Surely both countries can be
counted on to continue to affirm the superiority of their political
organizations over the undemocratic and corrupt governments of the
world.
In Sarkozy’s mind, religion answers an
important need in any healthy society. A stable balance between
religion and good politics can be achieved without sanctioning a
state religion and forced proselytism, and without favoring one
religion over another. Sarkozy doesn’t fail to point out that
the religion which he has worked hardest to incorporate into French
society, Islam, is not his own. He has labored for it not in the
name of his own faith but in the name of the republic. While he is
a proud defender of the established French Republic (and its
intransigent division between the autonomy of the political,
governed by free human beings, and religious authority), he
realizes equally the need and importance of religion in any
society, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or otherwise. “The
spiritual question,” he says, “is one of hope, of hope
to have, after death, a perspective of accomplishment in
eternity.”
O ne of the ultimate questions is whether a rational and enlightened (or irrationally enlightened) Europe has really figured things out, once and for all. Can people live contentedly in a post-historical paradise of material pursuit? Or is there something not completely satisfying about those circumstances? The debate over religion in Europe is whether it was a noxious (and now discredited) fairy tale that caused needless bloodshed and suffering in the Middle Ages, or an important part of society, the absence of which caused needless bloodshed and suffering in the century just past. Clearly, both alternatives in their extremes sought to establish unnatural utopias on earth. The attempt to satisfy religious longings was horrifyingly damaging to decent political and social life in the Middle Ages. But the attempted extirpation by force of the unsatisfied religious longing from Nazi Germany and Communist Russia was equally, if not more horrifyingly, damaging to Europe. Its unforced extirpation in some of the liberal democracies of the West is damaging in its own way. In Sarkozy’s eyes, “religions must exist elsewhere besides in the museums, and the churches must not become nostalgic conservatories of a glorious past. . . .We’re not in the ussr where the churches became markets and gymnasiums.” He sees in religious structures “a factor of integration, of meetings, of exchanges, whichever religion is concerned.”
Although Sarkozy must know that there are
considerable risks involved in melding democracy and Islam, he
refuses to countenance the possibility of their ultimate
incompatibility, dismissing such suggestions as
“irresponsible.” This may well be rhetoric intended to appeal to potential
Muslim democrats, but it may indeed be irresponsible not to
consider, or to underemphasize, the ways in which Islam has
manifested itself in the past, and its tolerance (or lack) of
political freedom. The French must therefore confront the terrible
possibility that Islam as it has existed in the past and their
secular democracy may not be able to unite over the long term.
Sarkozy isn’t so naïve as not to realize that
religion can be used to justify violence and intolerance. A
real clash of civilizations could occur if he and his allies fail
to guide French politics successfully, as Tocqueville warned at the
beginning of the democratic era. To be sure, Tocqueville’s
isn’t the last word on the matter, and many faithful Muslims,
like Dalil Boubakeur, the head of the Paris mosque, are more
sanguine than he was about establishing a democratic Islam. Muslim
citizens enjoy the same rights as others, as Sarkozy makes clear,
and they should not be deprived of their right to believe. Time and
time again, Sarkozy insists that there must be an Islam of France,
not an Islam in France.
The cfcm is intended to organize and represent Muslim
believers by allowing them to associate publicly, to encourage
dialogue with others and thus promote democratic compromise, and to
deprive the extremists of their main arguments. Regional councils
have also been created, encouraging local representation. In
addition, Sarkozy favors educating more young Muslims in public
administration, which has so far been a successful experiment at
the prestigious Sciences-Po.
Sarkozy’s strong support of religion in
public life may shock people who believe that taking religion
seriously is symptomatic of nostalgia for the dark ages. However,
he knows there can be absolutely no thought of going back to
pre-democratic times. Secular democratic politics and some degree
of materialism are acceptable if tempered by a pre-democratic
religious inheritance outside the contours of secular modernity.
Sarkozy is said to “love” American culture, and even
met with Tom Cruise (whom he regards as a “great
actor”) during the American’s recent trip to Paris.
In the absence — or nonarrival —
of a new age of German-inspired gods disclosing themselves
to men to light up our horizon for the better, we might be
witnessing the revitalization of a moderate religious influence on
modern democratic life. Europe’s current leaders and many of
its citizens will hardly be keen on such a prospect: Hollywood
films on Saturday night and mass on Sunday — quelle horreur! The
coexistence of mosque-goers and shameless Euro Disney tourists with
sophisticated Gauloise-smoking grande
école graduates will be
trying at the very least. But Sarkozy’s ambitious plans may
be steering French democracy in that direction. If he is
unsuccessful the alternatives may be far uglier. None of his
critics has proposed a feasible alternative strategy.
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