Is secularism a belief like any other?

Secularism is a word that has come up a lot in public discourse over the past twenty years. The idea is often shared that the secularization of Western societies is the best thing ever; an approach in which the divine has been set aside to make way for science, rationality and technology. But have we really removed the sacred, or have we just given it another name? This is how philosopher Mohamad Amer Meziane views European secularism.

At the time, the intellectual G.W. Hegel asserted that only Christianity had enabled secularization, because it divinized man and humanized God. This fundamental idea was to find its way into the West, which was suddenly to treat religion in this way, i.e. anything that opposed the new dogma, which placed the political, scientific and social at the heart rather than myths. Except that this definition of religion is connoted, and was intended above all as a way of justifying political, warlike and other acts carried out in the name of secularization against those "barbaric societies that place the divine at the center of everything". Of course, Islam is undoubtedly the religion most targeted by these thinkers.

Since the "glorious" period of the Crusades has been over for centuries, this new fight for secularism allows us to go back to fighting against Muslims who, according to the European and Western orientalist vision, are fundamentally fanatical and monstrous; the anti-civilization, as it were. A rather supremacist approach that takes no account whatsoever of the Muslim reality, which, like any society, certainly has orthodox clerics, but also many people for whom belief is totally a low priority, who also want humanist policies, and so on.

Running time: 19 minutes

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