ABSTRACT
Introduction To speak of religious freedom in the Muslim-majority Middle East and North African countries might seem to be simply a rhetorical exercise. From a European perspective, the idea that secularism, democracy, and religious freedom are an inseparable trio intimately and exclusively linked to the Christian experience is quite widespread. According to this view, not only is Christianity the only religious tradition able to separate God and Caesar, thereby allowing democracy and religious freedom to flourish, but histories and contemporary surveys also try to demonstrate how Islam and this trio stand in opposition. 1 “Islam, and not Islamic fundamentalism”, would be the “underlying problem for the West” 2 and the most dangerous Schmittian “enemy” of Western civilization. In a notorious 2003 decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) solemnly legitimated these assumptions. Presuming to solve centuries of debate within Muslim communities concerning the closing of the “gate of the ijtihâd”, the Court declared sharī’a to be “stable and invariable”, a source of law where “principles such as pluralism in the political sphere or the constant evolution of public freedoms have no place”, and finally, “incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy, as set forth in the Convention”. 3 Ernest Renan’s conviction that “Islam is the most complete negation of Europe” remains a live option in the European landscape. 4
Nevertheless, these ideas, which have their counterparts in the Muslim world, are not persuasive. They understate the complexity of the situation and are self-contradictory. They are based on the idea of the existence of pure civilizations and pure concepts. Further, because of their essentialist and neo-orientalist character, these assumptions undermine the universality of the “religious freedom” they pretend to define, defend, and propagate. Finally, more simply, many of these assumptions are strictly dependent on a political and economic agenda that uses “religious freedom” to export a comprehensive neo-liberal societal model. 5 This is neither new nor surprising, but the awareness of the multiple interests involved in this campaign should help both to evaluate the political role of the “right to religious freedom” and to relativize a too paternalistic Western-Christian attitude toward majoritarian-Muslim countries.
