Europe and the Turkish question
Let us try to review the political elements of the situation in which the phenomenon of secularization is central. Grossly enough, we can distinguish three elements, or levels : the individual level, the social level, the properly political level.
About the individual level, it is impossible to say anything pertinent. Statistics say nothing, even less than nothing, about what is going on in individual souls. None of us can know with any certainty what is happening in his or her own soul. Can I say « I believe » without moving away, however faintly, from sincerity ? It is impossible to say anything pertinent at this level, but it is important to remember that it is impossible. It is the secret heart of things.
I have insisted that it is impossible to treat the other two levels separately. The social level, the level at which secularization operates and acquires its present meaning and import, appears to be self-sufficient – it is part of the way it operates to appear to be so - , but it is closely related to the way the political whole defines itself. In fact, these two levels combine three elements : the secular society, the neutral State, the Christian nation. Only one element is univocally determined and does not occasion much uncertainty : the neutral State. We do not fear, or in any way expect, that in any Western country, the State will abandon its neutrality in the foreseeable future. The uncertainty concerns the relation between the secular society and the Christian nation.
Some will say that the former is simply the new, contemporary form of the latter. I have stressed that the secular society could never completely break free from the Christian nation, that the purported transformation could never be entirely completed. So that the question of the Christian character of the body politic cannot fail to crop up again at some junction, depending on the vagaries of fortune. In the case of European nations, the Muslim challenge will not fail to reactivate the effort toward collective self-definition. Not to beat around the bush : every passably perceptive person in Europe understands, or at least feels, the fateful character of the Turkish question, whether one is favorable or hostile to Turkey’s becoming part of the European Union. And he or she gathers that the orations about « democratic values » are just malarkey, that the real issue is the Muslim character of the Turkish nation. The extreme secularists, who until recently held the reins in Europe, did not pursue a simply political project, however ambitious. They intended, and still intend, to prove the religious, or quasi religious, point, that no difference, especially no religious difference between human groups can be legitimately taken into account in any human, including or especially political, endeavor. So that Turkey should be introduced into Europe not because the Turkish State is secular – it is by the way nothing of the sort – but because the Turkish nation is Muslim. If these extreme secularists achieved their aims, they would accomplish the contrary of what they set out to accomplish. If the political body called Turkey became part of the European councils, we would not contemplate a « simply human » Europe as a result, but, in a very definite sense, a Muslim Europe, a Europe with a « Muslim mark ».
But secularism is a two-way street. Just as some secularists would islamize Europe in the name of secularism rightly understood, other ones, hitherto undisturbed by the incessant erosion of Europe’s Christian character, now dismayed at the ever growing presence in Europe of a religion with little understanding of religious neutrality, are led back, in an often confused or muddled way, toward the original definition or experience of the European nation. However secular, however unchurched, Europe is the scene of a political and religious battle as momentous as any in her long history. However thinly attended our church offices, the question of our religious collective self-definition needs to be answered as urgently as at any time in the past. It is because of the urgency and significance of this issue for Europeans that the American insistence on our making room for Turkey is so ill-conceived, no, so outrageous. To incessantly prod us to take this irreversible decision is to behave like an enemy, because it means to force us to do something which will destroy our self-respect, or what remains of it.
Looking at the Turkish question in a more theoretical perspective, we see how deceptive this notion of secularization is, how it comes to the fore and takes on a kind of self-evidence only when we lose sight of the two principal realities : the individual souls on one hand, the political wholes, or bodies, on the other hand. The phenomenon of secularization is not a figment of the imagination indeed, but it is nevertheless determined by political and religious factors which point beyond secularization, or which at least prevent us from ever finding a solid and lasting home in this our secular condition. Under the deceptive allure of a « simply human » society, the incessantly gnawing question : Of which whole am I a part ? Of which community am I a member ?
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