Why do Middle East states fear secularism?

East Meredith, New York.

Iran is a country that has gone very far in subjecting governance and societal institutions to the crushing influence of religious leadership, and to the clutches of organized clerical power.

Street demonstrations following the June presidential election shook the Iranian regime. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defended the integrity of the election and accused the opposition of disloyalty to the nation. The insecure Iranian regime monitors dissidence as a matter of routine. Universities are strategic environments for mobilizing the opposition. The country’s “moral” police surveys universities and worries even about the spread of social sciences in classrooms. Political sociology and philosophy are now considered dangerous topics. Social science has become “anti-Islamic” and “unpatriotic” to a regime gradually losing its grip over society

When the state and the church (or the mosque and the synagogue) are in constant search for legitimacy, it is natural for them to form an implicit alliance to maintain their hold on society, and this they tend to do against what they perceive to be a common enemy: secularism.

Secularism promotes the separation of religious institutions from state structures. On a personal level, the religious and the secular need not be in conflict. When devout individuals vote for the separation of the church, mosque, or synagogue from the state, they are behaving secularly, but that does not necessarily diminish their commitment to the religious.

In the Middle East examples abound of the interconnectedness between the state and religious structures. In Egypt, the government has doubtless tried to suppress religious parties by denying them representation in Parliament. Yet this restrictiveness has not been effective. The Muslim Brotherhood is the fastest growing movement in the country. In contrast, secular parties and thinkers have suffered the most from government pressure. There is not a single secular Egyptian party rivaling the Muslim Brotherhood. Both the government and the religious authorities often work hand-in-hand to impose silence on free thinkers.

Repetitive and pervasive religious indoctrination in the media has also inhibited independent thinking in Egypt. On many occasions, the government has taken liberal authors to court to challenge their “loyalty” to Islam. The late Egyptian writer and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Naguib Mahfouz barely escaped an assassination attempt for writing his vivid, essentially secular novels. When in doubt, courts ask the supreme religious authority to give their verdicts on accused secularists.

In discouraging secular manifestations outside its control, the Egyptian state is hardly an exception in the Arab world. In Lebanon, state, church and mosque dynamics illustrate ways in which religion and politics feed into mutual communal insecurity. The political elite sustains a sectarian power-sharing system of governance, in collaboration with the clergy. The Lebanese are often socially secular but politically they are not. Sectarianism is passed on from one generation to another and is reinforced by laws regulating identity formation, voting, and personal-status issues such as birth, adoption, marriage and inheritance.

Secularism is not simply a temperament or a philosophy. It is also something vital for political liberation, while its absence promotes the status quo. A secular education leads to scientific problem-solving and allows people to be comfortable with creative doubt. Whatever questions poor governance, rulers for life, invasive theology, dull-witted education, unfair gender laws, abuse of national resources, and more, is bound to come from people who respect science, human rights and the rule of law, and who do not consider matters solely in a religious framework.

As critics of religious leaders and political rulers, secular reformers also become threats to injustice. Political questioning disarms those who possessively hold on to temporal and ecclesiastical power.

Sometimes, strange alliances form between states and religious powers. For example, Israel, led by a largely secular government, has worked with evangelical Western churches in combating political Islam.

Bu then everywhere in the Middle East regimes have developed odd relationships with religion. There are regimes that have assumed the role of protectors of Islam. There are rulers who claim direct descent from the Prophet. There are governments that position clerics above the law. There are nations ruled by religious minorities who pretend to be secular. There are countries claiming to base their constitution on religion, despite glaring violations of the essence of that religion. And there is a state whose people are chosen by God and whose land is considered holy.

The secret code binding together the state and the senior cleric is political survival. Yet their survival comes at the expense of the rest of society.

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Ghassan Michel Rubeiz is an Arab American commentator. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.