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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Area / regional studies
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Beyond Radical Secularism – How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge (Hardcover)
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Beyond Radical Secularism – How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge (Hardcover)
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This is the book that took France by storm upon its publication in
the fall of 2015. It was praised by some for its rare
combination of tough-mindedness and moderation and attacked
by others for suggesting that radical secularism could not provide
the political and spiritual resources to address the Islamic
challenge. The book is even more relevant after the Parisian
terror attacks of November 13, 2015. It is a book that
combines permanence and relevance, that addresses a pressing
political and civilizational problem in a manner that will
endure. Responding to the brutal terror attacks in France in
January 2015, Pierre Manent has written a learned, passionate
essay that reflects broadly and deeply on the political
and religious situation of France and Europe. He freely
acknowledges that the West is at war with fanatics who
despise liberal and Christian civilization. That war must be
conducted with prudent tough-mindedness. At the same time,
serious thought must be given to the Islamic question at home
and abroad. Concentrating on the French situation,
Manent suggests that French Muslims are not entering an
“empty” nation, defined by radical secularism and human
rights alone. France has a secular state, as do all the nations of
the contemporary West. That is a heritage to be cherished.
But the Islamic question will not be “solved” by
transforming Muslims into modern secularists devoid of all
religious sensibility. It must be remembered that France is
also nation of a “Christian mark” with a strong Jewish
presence, both of which enrich its spiritual and political life.
Manent proposes a “social contract” with France’s
Muslims that is at once firm and welcoming. Rejecting radical
secularism, the effort by certain “laicists” to completely
secularize European society, to create a society without
religion, Manent calls for a defensive policy that will allow
Muslims to keep their mores, save the integral veil and polygamy.
In exchange, they must accept the fact that they live in a
society of a Christian mark and they must stop hiding behind
charges of Islamophobia. In liberal and Christian
Europe, there must be total freedom of criticism, including
criticism of the Islamic religion. Muslims must forgo funding
from Arab Islamic states (not to mention extremist movements) and
must recognize they are henceforth participants in the common
life of the French nation. They must become citizens in a nation
that does more than defend individual or communal rights, as
crucial as those rights are. Beyond Radical Secularism also
provides a luminous reflection on the necessary coexistence of the
liberal state and a nation of a Jewish and Christian
mark in a Western liberty worthy of the name. Europeans have
succumbed to passivity in no small part because they reject
the nation which is the indispensable framework of democratic
self-government. They no longer have confidence in human
action, in the elemental human capacity “to put reasons and
actions in common.” That faith in individual and collective
action ultimately depends on belief in “the primacy of the
Good,” or in theological terms, in faith in a
benevolent and Providential God. The West at its best
combined the pride of the citizen and the humility of the believer.
Europeans—and Americans, too—governed themselves in a
“certain relation to the Christian proposition.” The nation was
the instrument par excellence for combining the cardinal
virtues—courage, prudence, justice, moderation—and the
confidence which is specific to the Christian religion.
A capacious sense of Europe and the West, one that
acknowledges its Christian and Jewish mark, is ultimately
necessary to face the Islamic challenge. The Jewish idea of the
Covenant provides a powerful reminder of the ultimate ground
of democratic self-government and of deliberation and action that
respect limits while acknowledging the full range of
human possibilities in a world where the good is not ultimately
without transcendent support. Only by recovering something of
the European faith in a higher ground of freedom will the nations
of Europe be able to muster the realism and the hope
necessary meet the challenge of Islam.
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