Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy, Aflevering 1 2015

Freedom of Religion and the Politics of the Liberal Public-Private Divide

Daniel Augenstein

Noten

  • 1 Michael Walzer, ‘Liberalism and the Art of Separation,’ Political Theory 12(3) (1984): 315.

  • 2 Walzer, ‘Liberalism,’ 315.

  • 3 Walzer, ‘Liberalism,’ 315.

  • 4 As Walzer himself notes, the distinction between the public-as-secular and the religious-as-private is but one manifestation of the liberal art of separation alongside, for example, the distinction between public politics and private economic activity, see Walzer, ‘Liberalism,’ 316. I shall focus on the distinction between the secular and the religious in order to shed some broader light on the way the public-private divide structures liberal politics.

  • 5 Judith Shklar’s ‘liberalism of fear,’ for example, was born out of the cruelties of the post-Reformation religious wars in Europe; see Judith Shklar, ‘Liberalism of Fear,’ in Varieties of Liberalism Today, ed. N. Rosenbaum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 21, 13.

  • 6 Andras Sajó, ‘Preliminaries to a concept of constitutional secularism,’ International Journal of Constitutional Law 6 (2008): 605-29.

  • 7 Ever since Habermas has drawn attention to the central importance of the public sphere for modern liberal democracy, critics have complained that rather than enabling rational public debate among citizens as equals, it creates an exclusionary space that perpetuates inherited power relations, see Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989) and the contributions collected in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992). In his later work, Habermas has attempted to tackle the problem of the non-neutrality of liberal public sphere by submitting the very distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ to democratic deliberation under the moral point of view, which enjoins a mutual ‘translation’ requirement on secular and religious citizens, see Jürgen Habermas, ‘Religion in the Public Sphere,’ European Journal of Philosophy 14 (2006): 1-25; Jürgen Habermas, ‘Religion in the Public Sphere: Cognitive Presuppositions for the “Public Use of Reason” by Religious and Secular Citizens,’ in his Between Naturalism and Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press: 2008), 114-48.

  • 8 See Amnesty International, Choice and Prejudice: Discrimination against Muslims in Europe (London: 2012).

  • 9 As Mancini and Rosenfeld conclude their comparative survey, religious symbols-related conflicts in Europe ‘are often characterised in terms of a sharp antagonism between Islam and the Christian “West.”’ Whereas ‘majority symbols are legitimized as representing cultural values that are universally shared by the citizenry,’ the display of the Islamic headscarf is banned ‘either as incompatible with certain core principles of a democratic system (frequently gender equality) or with democracy tout court,’ see Susanna Mancini and Michael Rosenfeld, ‘Unveiling the Limits of Tolerance,’ in Law, State and Religion in the New Europe, ed. Lorenzo Zucca and Camil Ungureanu (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 160, 182.

  • 10 ECtHR, Dahlab v. Switzerland (Admissibility Decision of 15 February 2001).

  • 11 ECtHR, Lautsi and Others v. Italy (Grand Chamber Judgment of 18 March 2011), paras 72-74.

  • 12 Parts of this section draw on Daniel Augenstein, ‘Normative Fault-Lines of Trans-National Human Rights Jurisprudence: National Pride and Religious Prejudice in the European Legal Space,’ Global Constitutionalism 2 (2013): 469-97. There, I compare the French tradition of laïque republicanism with the German and the British approach to religious diversity and engage in a more systematic analysis of European case-law on religious symbols in the public sphere than I can provide for in the framework of my present philosophical argument.

  • 13 Sebastian Poulter, ‘Muslim Headscarves in School: Contrasting Legal Approaches in England and France,’ Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 17 (1997): 43, 50.

  • 14 Conseil d’État, Avis nr. 346893 (27 November 1989), English summary in [1990] Public Law, 434-35.

  • 15 In Kherouaa, Kachour, Balo, Kizic (Nr. 130.394, 2 November 1992), for example, the Conseil d’État struck down a school regulation on the ground that it was too general and indiscriminate, thus violating the pupils’ freedom of religion; in Mlle Saglamer (Nr. 169.522, 27 November 1996) the court stressed that penalties for wearing a headscarf could only be applied if it was established that the behaviour of the pupil amounted to an act of pressure or proselytism or interfered with the public order in school. In Aoukili (Nr. 159.981, 10 March 1995), by contrast, it upheld the exclusion of students in the more specific context of physical education classes.

  • 16 Cited in Dominik McGoldrick, Human Rights and Religion: The Islamic Headscarf Debate in Europe (Oxford: Hart, 2006), 82.

  • 17 Commission de Réflexion sur l’application du principe de la laïcité dans la République, ‘Rapport au Président de la République’ (11 December 2003), paras 13, 58.

  • 18 Loi no 2004-225 du 15 mars 2004 encadrant, en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées public.

  • 19 Loi no 2010-1192, Journal Officiel de la République Française (12 October 2010).

  • 20 Assemblée nationale, ‘Rapport d’information n. 2262, au nom de la mission d’information sur la pratique du port du voile intégral sur le territoire national’ (26 January 2010); see further Mancini and Rosenfeld, ‘Unveiling the Limits of Tolerance,’ 174-77.

  • 21 Conseil Constitutionnel, Décision no 2010-613 DC (7 October 2010). The law was upheld except for its ban of full-faced veils in public places of worship.

  • 22 ECtHR, SAS v. France (Grand Chamber Judgment of 1 July 2014).

  • 23 ECtHR, SAS v. France, para 110.

  • 24 ECtHR, SAS v. France, para 127.

  • 25 ECtHR, SAS v. France, para 141.

  • 26 Danièle Hervieu-Léger, ‘The Role of Religion in Establishing Social Cohesion,’ in Religion in the New Europe, ed. Krzysztof Michalski (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006), 45, 51.

  • 27 Anna E. Galeotti, Toleration as Recognition (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), 127-28.

  • 28 Tariq Modood, ‘Anti-Essentialism, Multiculturalism and the “Recognition” of Religious Groups,’ Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (1998): 378, 393.

  • 29 Cecile Laborde, ‘Toleration and laïcité,’ in The Culture of Toleration in Diverse Societies, ed. Catriona McKinnon and Dario Castiglione (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 161-78.

  • 30 Cited in Doreen Carvajal, ‘Sarkozy Backs Drive to Eliminate the Burqa,’ The New York Times, 23 June 2009.

  • 31 Etienne Balibar, ‘Dissonances within Laïcité,’ Constellations 11 (2004): 353, 359.

  • 32 See Laborde,‘Toleration and laïcité,’ 170.

  • 33 Journal Officiel de la République Française 17(2) (2004), A.N. (C.R.), at 1463 ; ‘L’islam est d’implantation relativement récente chez nous. Sa croyance est parfaitement respectable. Mais, comme pour toutes les autres, c’est aux tenants de cette religion de s’adapter à nos valeurs et traditions et non l’inverse.’

  • 34 From a socio-anthropological perspective, John Bowen shows how laïcité has been invoked strategically in the French public debate leading up to the 2004 law in order to address broader concerns surrounding headscarves in France (the growth in ‘communalism’ at the expense of social mixing; the increasing influence of international ‘Islamism’ on French society; and the denigration of women in the poor suburbs) and to justify claims for assimilation to what is portrayed as shared French republican values, see John R. Bowen, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

  • 35 The Epistola de Tolerantia was first published anonymously in Latin in 1689. Citations refer to the initial English translation by William Popple, as reprinted in John Locke’s Letter On Toleration in Focus, ed. Susan Mendus and John Horton (London: Routledge, 1991), 12, 37.

  • 36 See further Stanley Fish, ‘Mission Impossible: Settling the Just Boundaries between Church and State,’ Columbia Law Review 97 (1997): 2255-333.

  • 37 See Locke, John Locke’s Letter, 46-47.

  • 38 Jeremy Waldron thinks that Locke should be read literally here, thus charging Muslims rather than Catholics – which would serve my argument just as well, see Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke and Equality (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), 221.

  • 39 See Locke, John Locke’s Letter, 47.

  • 40 Locke, John Locke’s Letter, 47.

  • 41 John Dunn, ‘What is Living and What is Dead in the Political Theory of John Locke?,’ in Interpreting Political Responsibility (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), 2-26.

  • 42 Brian Barry, ‘How Not to Defend Liberal Institutions,’ in Liberalism and the Good, ed. Robert Douglass et al. (London: Routledge, 1990), 44, 57.

  • 43 Barry, ‘How Not to Defend Liberal Institutions,’ 56.

  • 44 John Finnis, ‘Endorsing Discrimination Between Faiths: A Case of Extreme Speech?,’ in Extreme Speech and Democracy, ed. Ivan Hare and James Weinstein (Oxford: OUP, 2009), 430-44.

  • 45 See, respectively, ECtHR, Leyla Şahin v. Turkey (Judgement of 29 June 2004); ECtHR, Leyla Şahin v. Turkey (Grand Chamber Judgement of 10 November 2005); and House of Lords, Regina (SB) v. Governors of Denbigh High School [2006] UKHL 15 (Begum).

  • 46 See Begum, paras 50, 54.

  • 47 See Finnis, ‘Endorsing Discrimination Between Faiths,’ 433.

  • 48 For a more detailed analysis see Nicholas Gibson, ‘Faith in the Courts: Religious Dress and Human Rights,’ Cambridge Law Journal 66 (2007): 657-97.

  • 49 See Finnis, ‘Endorsing Discrimination Between Faiths,’ 440.

  • 50 See Begum, para 2.

  • 51 See Finnis, ‘Endorsing Discrimination Between Faiths,’ 436; ECtHR, Refah Partisi and Others v. Turkey (Judgement of 31 July 2001) and ECtHR, Refah Partisi and Others v. Turkey (Grand Chamber Judgement of 13 February 2003).

  • 52 The applicant, by contrast, accepted the importance of upholding the principle of secularism and the neutrality of Turkish universities, but maintained that her wearing a headscarf had not caused any disruption, disturbance or threat to the public order. In her view, the headscarf did not threaten republican values or the rights of others, nor could it be regarded as inherently incompatible with the principle of secularism and the neutrality of education, see Şahin 2004, paras 83-88.

  • 53 Şahin 2004, para 96.

  • 54 See Şahin 2005, para 99.

  • 55 Şahin 2005, Dissenting Opinion of Judge Tulkens, para 5.

  • 56 See Finnis, ‘Endorsing Discrimination Between Faiths,’ 439.

  • 57 See Şahin 2005, paras 108-9.

  • 58 John Finnis, ‘Nationality, alienage and constitutional principle,’ Law Quarterly Review 123 (2007): 417, 443.

  • 59 House of Lords, A and others v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] UKHL 56.

  • 60 See Finnis, ‘Nationality, alienage and constitutional principle,’ 444.

  • 61 Finnis, ‘Nationality, alienage and constitutional principle,’ 444-45.

  • 62 Finnis, ‘Nationality, alienage and constitutional principle,’ 445.

  • 63 Under the amended UK Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, British citizens who hold a double nationality can be deprived of their citizenship if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the deprivation is ‘conductive to the public good.’

  • 64 See Dunn, ‘What is Living,’ 19.

  • 65 See Waldron, God, Locke and Equality, 221.

  • 66 See Locke, John Locke’s Letter, 46-47.

  • 67 See Dunn, ‘What is Living,’ 9.

  • 68 Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 159.

  • 69 Assad, Formations of the Secular, 161.

  • 70 Assad, Formations of the Secular, 173.

  • 71 Hannah Arendt, for example, traces the distinction between the public sphere and the private sphere to a corresponding distinction between the polis and the household/family in the ancient Greek city-state, see Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

  • 72 Ian Loader and Neil Walker, Civilising Security (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), 176-82.

  • 73 Similarly Will Kymlicka, ‘Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality,’ Ethics 99 (1989): 883-905.

  • 74 Hans Lindahl, ‘Constituent Power and Reflexive Identity: Towards an Ontology of Collective Selfhood,’ in The Paradox of Constitutionalism, ed. Martin Loughlin and Neil Walker (Oxford: OUP, 2007), 9, 14.

  • 75 Lindahl, ‘Constituent Power and Reflexive Identity,’ 19.

  • 76 Lindahl, ‘Constituent Power and Reflexive Identity,’ 22.

  • 77 Lindahl, ‘Constituent Power and Reflexive Identity,’ 23.

  • 78 Joseph Raz, ‘Multiculturalism,’ Ratio Juris 11 (1998): 193, 201.

  • 79 See Locke, John Locke’s Letter, 52.

  • 80 See Barry, ‘How Not to Defend Liberal Institutions,’ 57.