Marieme Helie Lucas, Political Awakening, Secularism, and Women’s Rights
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/31
Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist, activist, founder of ‘Secularism is a Women’s Issue,’ and founder and former International Coordinator of ‘Women Living Under Muslim Laws.’ We discuss religious fundamentalism and women’s rights. Part 1.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was the moment of political awakening for you?
Marieme Helie Lucas:Being born and raised in a colonised country and having lived through a very bloody liberation struggle from French colonialism… there is no way to ignore politics and their consequences on individuals. Moreover, I was born and raised into a family of strong feminists for several generations; let’s say that I fell into the pot from childhood…
Jacobsen: When did your personal and professional attention turn to activism, religious fundamentalism, and women’s rights?
Lucas: Well, prepared by the colonial situation and by my family’s political awareness, I was an activist – as well as a feminist one – since an early teenager, under various forms, depending on the period of time (pre-independence struggle, during the struggle for liberation, after independence, when women’s rights were curtailed by the new family code, under armed fundamentalists’ attempts to impose a theocracy in Algeria in the 90s, etc…). I became a full-time activist in the early eighties, when I left research and teaching in university, and founded the WLUML (Women Living Under Muslim Laws) network. I remained a full-time activist since then. But my academic research was already focused on people’s rights and women’s rights.
WLUML was a non-confessional network of women whose lives were shaped and governed by laws said to be Islamic, regardless of their personal faith. Our research (1) on laws affecting women in many countries – in North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, West Africa – show that these man-made laws (rather than of divine inspiration) borrow not just from very different interpretations of Islam, but mostly from local traditions, cultural practices, and even colonial laws, when it suits both patriarchy and religious fundamentalism. Over the past decades, we could monitor the progressive eradication of progressive laws and Muslim fundamentalists’ dedication to exhuming, picking and choosing the most backwards and reactionary practices and passing them off as Islamic. (2)
Interestingly, many journalists and human rights organisations failed to understand our sociological and political approach. They focused on the ‘religious’ flavour in our name, thus attempting to force us into a religious identity we never claimed. For instance, they often renamed us as women ‘under the Muslim Law’ (in the singular!) or even ‘under the Islamic Law.’ This recurrent ideological ‘mistake’ speaks volumes about their urgent need to put us ‘under religious/cultural arrest’ and deny us universal rights and our common humanity.
Jacobsen: You founded ‘Secularism is a Women’s Issue.’ Of course, the title provides the general idea. What is the more formal argument to derive the connection between secularism and women’s issues?
Lucas: Secularism is the legal/administrative provision that separates state from organised religions. It was defined during the French Revolution and later codified in the 1905-1906 laws on separation. Article 1 of the law guarantees freedom of belief and practice to individuals; article 2 stipulates that the Secular Republic does not recognise, therefore dialogue with or fund religions, their representatives and their institutions. The secular Republic only knows equal citizens with equal rights under the law.
The concept of separation at that time successfully challenged the political power of the Vatican and the Catholic Church in the French kingdom. (So much for those ignorant writers and preachers who now pretend secular laws in France were designed against Muslims, since there was NO significant Muslim emigration to France at the time of the French revolution).
In the UK, as the King/Queen is both the Head of State and the Head of the Anglican Church, the concept of separation was hard to swallow. This is why they developed a very misleading re-definition of secularism as equal tolerance by the state towards all religions – which indeed involves and ties together the State and organised religions.
This distortion of the original revolutionary concept spread across European countries where Churches had a strong base. In the present context in Europe, we witness an increasing trend to grant in the name of rights – what a perversion of the very idea of rights! – to separate laws to different religious ‘communities.’ This breeds communalism and creates inequalities between citizens, especially women. For instance, some UK citizens may have rights that other UK citizens will not have access to, if they are, let’s say, Muslims. Sharia courts do not grant equal rights to women in the family. All the recent attempts by Muslim fundamentalists in the UK to promote gender segregation in universities or sharia-compliant wills point in the same political direction. Governments are so keen to trade hard-won women’s rights to appease the religious extreme-right!
This is also the situation in the former British Empire. For instance, in South Asia, where the definition of secularism that prevails is not separation, but equal to tolerance by the state. We deplore that even the Left is hardly aware of this unholy colonial legacy …
It should not be necessary to explain here that, within all religions, reactionary forces generally prevailed that justified women’s oppression by god’s will. It is certainly the dominant political trend today, especially but not exclusively among Muslims.
Moreover, when laws are designed as representing god’s intentions on earth, they become un-changeable, a-historical. Theocracy is the antithesis of democracy where laws are voted by the people and can be changed according to the will of the people.
Women always have a hard time in getting patriarchal laws changed according to international standards of human rights, but it is obviously more so when they can be accused of hurting religious sentiments by doing so, or worse, of apostasy or blasphemy – crimes that are punished by death penalty in Muslim contexts.
In Europe today, xenophobic extreme right movements are attempting to co-opt and manipulate the concept of secularism and to use it against citizens of migrant descent, especially those deemed to be Muslims. This certainly does not make the struggle of secular opponents to Muslim fundamentalism any easier. We need to walk the fine line, challenging at the same time both the new religious extreme rights which condemn secularism and atheism, and ‘traditional’ xenophobic extreme rights which are hijacking the concept of secularism to justify their claim to white Christian superiority. Unfortunately the European Left and Far-Left, that should have our natural allies, have not yet understood that they should not throw themselves in the arms of Muslim fundamentalists in order to counter the traditional extreme right parties… thus choosing to support one extreme right against the other. Instead, they should support us, who confronted Muslim fundamentalists in our countries of origin and now have to do it all over again in Europe.
References
1. Knowing Our Rights: Women, family, laws and customs in the Muslim …
2 Dossier 23-24: What is your tribe? Women’s struggles and the …
http://www.wluml.org/fr/node/343
3 Great Ancestors: Women Claiming Rights in Muslim Contexts | Women …
http://www.wluml.org/…/great-ancestors-women-claiming-rights-muslim…
4 Dossier 30-31 The struggle for secularism in europe and North America
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