Trying to Understand French Secularism
Talal AsadIn modern society there is typically a multiplicity of religious beliefs and
identities, and—so we are told—they can be held together only by a
formal separation between religious belonging and political status, and
by the allocation of religious belief to the private sphere. To be fully
part of a democratic community, citizens holding different religious
beliefs (or none) must share values that enable them to have a common
political life. These values reflect the unity of the state that represents
them. Without shared values there can be no integration, without inte-
gration no political stability, without some measure of stability no jus-
tice, no freedom, and no tolerance. Secularism provides the framework
for realizing all these things.
But what do people mean when they say that the integration of a
national population requires them to ‘‘share fundamental values’’?
Partly they mean that all citizens should ‘‘respect the law,’’ and that
therefore they should accept the final authority of the national state
(but foreign nationals resident for varying periods in the state as well as
tourists and visitors from many lands are also expected to ‘‘respect the
law’’ without sharing fundamental values). Sometimes they also mean
that if members of society share verbal and behavioral codes they can
communicate better with one another (although good communication
is as likely to facilitate dispute and disagreement as it is to secure con-
sensus). Mostly what people have in mind, I think, is something that
they all value equally and thatthereforeholds them emotionally to-
gether. An interesting question is why everyone’s having essentially the
same values should be thought to be so crucial for urban societies in
which most interactions are between strangers, more often than not
ephemeral in character, and in which most people are probably thankful
they do not have to bond emotionally with one another in every urban
encounter. In each society there are circles of trust and mistrust, archi-
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