Secularism, a basic worth for the left | EUROtoday

Dhistoric outbreak in French society, the assassination, simply ten years in the past, of journalists and cartoonists Charlie Hebdo marked a tragic turning level within the historical past of public freedoms: via non secular fanaticism, we are able to, within the twenty first^e century, kill, in France, for a drawing, an article. For phrases too, or just for the operate we train, as dramatically proven by the demise of Samuel Paty, historical past professor, in 2020, and that of Dominique Bernard, French professor, in 2023.

Under these shocks, the divide in opinion on the query of secularism has continued to widen. Perceptible since 1989 on the query of sporting the Islamic scarf in school, worsened within the worldwide context ensuing from the assaults of September 11, 2001 in New York, consistently exploited within the French political debate, this fault primarily considerations the left, for which secularism is a founding precept. Since the carnage of Charliethe appropriate to criticize Islam, to publish caricatures and to blaspheme has develop into an important marker.

A decade later, we should welcome the truth that greater than three out of 4 French folks think about freedom of expression and caricature to be a basic proper and that this opinion, in accordance with an IFOP survey revealed on January 7, is growing. Beyond this obvious consensus, the identical survey displays the failings in public opinion: 37% of individuals near La France insoumise (LFI) – in comparison with 24% on common – consider that“we cannot say and caricature anything under the guise of freedom of expression”. Likewise, LFI is the one phase of the voters the place solely a minority acknowledges the appropriate to blasphemy.

Instrumentalization

This political panorama sheds gentle on Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s comparatively current abandonment of his vigorous protection of secularism, to seduce the younger voters and in addition Muslims with a speech denouncing “Islamophobia” and open to neighborhood tendencies. But the about-face of the chief of LFI poses a major problem for the left, each by its excessive cynicism and by the danger of abandoning the universalist values ​​which underpin our residing collectively.

On January 16, 2015, Mr. Mélenchon denounced in a trembling voice, in entrance of the coffin of his pal Charb, a murdered cartoonist, “our most narrow-minded enemies, the religious fanatics, bloody morons.” His group right this moment avoids the phrase “Islamist” and denounces the positions of Charliea newspaper which claims its roots on the left, after a decade of rising tensions round secularism and Islam. On the left, different music is heard, exhibiting agency assist for the elemental freedoms that the weekly now symbolizes.

If the anniversary of the January 2015 killings, that of Charlie Hebdo like that of Hyper Cacher, carries a message, it’s that of the necessity to recall and defend the foundations of the secular precept, removed from their caricatures or their instrumentalization. Secularism is the rule which, removed from advocating the combat in opposition to religions, ensures the liberty to consider or to not consider. Neither an id marker nor a weapon in opposition to Islam, it makes it potential to sanction anybody who seeks to drive others to follow worship or to forestall them from doing so. Rather than presenting secularism as a supply of discrimination, the precedence is to carry it to life in concrete phrases, because the assure of an important particular person freedom, that of selecting one’s identities, with out being subjected to the slightest strain.