Islam and Secularism
Last week we discussed the introductory part of an article written by Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim titled “God Save Us from ‘Religious’ Laws.” We highlighted the two areas of agreement and the overwhelming load of contradiction that characterized it. The next section of his article titled “The Secular and the Profane” compels us to examine closely today the concept of secularism, its evolution and results.
Origin
One thing interesting to note is that both Islam and Christianity do recognize the existence of the secular domain in human affairs, if not in doctrine, at least in history. But Dr. Ibrahim should note that the issue of secularism as essentially a Christian doctrine goes beyond the religio-political polemic in Nigeria. I strongly feel the need here to revisit the origins of secularism.
There are about five reasons responsible for the rise of secularism, all of them sequential. Some of these reasons are mentioned in a review under “Church and State” in Encyclopedia Britannica. The first is the scripture itself which as in Mark 7:17 has formed the basis for separating the secular (“what is Caesars”) from the spiritual (“what is unto God”). According to the encyclopedia,
“a theory of two powers came to the basis of Christian thought and teaching from earliest times.”
The second is what we can adduce to the separation between the Old and the New testament, as a result of the rejection of the Messiah-hood of Jesus (may the peace of God be upon him) by Jews. The Old Testament or that part of the Bible that includes the Law (Torah) contained comprehensive rules for secular affairs as revealed to Moses (may the peace of God be upon him!). The message of Jesus was to confirm and to make soften the Law in the Torah, and to particularly emphasize the spiritual rejuvenation of the Israelites. The two books were meant to remain one: the Torah for secular matters and the Injil preponderantly for the spiritual. Thus, in describing his mission statement, the Quran reported Jesus the Messiah as saying:
“And (I come) confirming that which was before me of the Torah, and to make lawful some of that which was forbidden unto you. I come unto you with a sign from your Lord, so keep your duty to Allah and obey me.”
Unfortunately the Jews rejected Jesus and persecuted his followers in Palestine. Christianity had to grow elsewhere, in pagan Rome, under the Caesars. Here lies the third reason for growth of secularism. The encyclopedia recounted:
“During the 1st century AD the Apostles, living under a pagan empire, taught respect for and obedience to the governing powers so long as such obedience did not violate the higher, or divine, law, which superseded political jurisdiction.”
The fourth reason was when the Roman Empire collapsed and the responsibility of maintaining a civil society fell squarely on the Church. The encyclopedia continued:
“With the decline of the Roman Empire in the West, civil authority fell into the hands of the only educated class that remained – the churchmen. The church which formed the only organized institution, became the seat of temporal as well as spiritual power. In the East the civil authorities, centered in Constantinople, dominated the ecclesiastical throughout the Byzantine period.”
The Church was involved in struggle for state power for centuries. Numerous controversies caused division in the western church until ‘discipline was relaxed, and the church prestige fell in all parts of Europe.” Reformation did further damage.
The Enlightenment had a profound effect. A politically weak church had to contend also with challenges which technicalization posed on its fundamental beliefs and worldview. This is the point to which Dr. Ibrahim referred the origin of secularism, when he talked about the increased functional differentiation of knowledge.
In A History of God, Karen Armstrong said:
“This new confidence in the natural powers of human beings meant that people came to believe that they could achieve enlightenment by means of their own exertions.”
This apparently innocent effort led to the conclusion that was unfortunate for the Christianity in Europe. Armstrong continued:
“They no longer felt that they needed to rely on inherited tradition, an institution or an elite – or, even, a revelation from God – to discover the truth.. The new scientific spirit was empirical, based solely on observation and experiment.. The western sciences could take nothing for granted in this way and the pioneers were increasingly ready to risk a mistake or knock down established authorities and institutions such as the Bible, the Church and the Christian tradition.”
The effort by some scientists to find a place for God gave rise to a number of problems. Scientists like Blaise Pascal, Descartes and Newton have professed the conviction that the existence of God could be proved through the various methods they adopted. Even philosophers like Spinoza and Kant were not bold enough to profess absolute atheism. The nineteenth century scientists and philosophers declared their independence from God. Thus Ludwig, Marx, Freud, Darwin and Nietzsche all could not find a place for Him in their thoughts. Armstrong said:
“The idea of God which has been fostered for centuries in Christian West now appeared disastrously inadequate and the age of reason seemed to have triumphed over centuries of superstition and bigotry..”
Lastly, the fifth reason has to do with what we may call ‘the minority syndrome.’ Whenever a minority population feels threatened by the political domination of another group, the former sees its survival as a direct function of secularization of political power. This has happened at various times in the history of nations but most especially after the French Enlightenment.
People of various groups and religions have thus supported secularism. The Jews in Europe and America, conscious of the centuries of the persecution they underwent in the Old world have supported and propagated the argument of secularism in Europe and America, though knowing very well that it contravenes the Mosaic law. Even in some parts of the Muslim world, some women feel that it guarantees them social freedom from male dominance. Baptists in the United States and other established churches promoted the “secular concept of government” as a means of guaranteeing their survival against the hangover of puritanical influences of the seventeenth century. The article in Encyclopedia Britannica explained that:
“The great wave of migration to the United States by Roman Catholics in the 1840s prompted a reassertion of the principle of secular government by state legislatures fearing allocation of government funds to parochial educational facilities. The 20th century saw the First and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution applied with considerable strictness by the courts in the field of education.”
If you want to grasp the extent of commitment of the US government to secularism please read this excerpt from America on the Brink:
“In November 1980, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Ten Commandments could not be posted on the wall of a schoolroom in Kentucky because seeing the words of the Mosaic law on the wall “may induce children to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and to obey the commandments”
Consequences
The ‘minority syndrome’ was what Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim used to justify his theory that only secularism is the answer to the religion-cum national question in Nigeria.
To be fair however it is important to say that it will not be surprising if a Christian like Dr. Ibrahim ordinarily feels repugnant to secularism because it is a concept deeply rooted in his scripture as well as his history. If it were so in Islam, Tilde would have behaved the same way. We shall see that next week.
Meanwhile, I still believe that Dr. Ibrahim, despite being Christian, should have sympathized with the tribulation which the faith in the West is right now undergoing as a result of secularism. There, the concept of secularism has so much weakened the stand of the church in secular matters and is currently depriving it of any right even in the spiritual domain. This has led Europe and America into the agony of violence, desperation and decline. Let’s listen to the expression of sorrow from one of their churchmen. In America on the Brink, Jim N. Black (he is white), quoting from The American Hour of Os Guiness, said:
“Americans with a purely secular view of life have too much to live with and too little to live for. Everything is permitted and nothing is important.” Thanks to the secularization of our age and the degree to which Christians hide their faith (in order to avoid embarrassment), the marks of character have grown soft, often invisible. Many people today have traded their faith in the eternal verities for the cheap substitute of material possessions, and predictably the soul of the nation has grown weak.
“Secular answers to society’s problems are hollow and unfulfilling, and Guiness warns “once growth and prosperity cease to be their reason for existence, they are bound to ask questions about the purpose and meaning of their lives: Whence? Whither? Why? And to such questions secularism has no answers that have yet proved widely satisfying in practice.
“The human spirit requires more than mere physical food for its deepest hungers. It needs spiritual meat. And the soul of the nation cannot survive when greed, lust, selfishness, and ambition are our only criteria of value. Whether in Europe, in the Soviet Russia, or in modern America, materialism is a disease that destroys character. The only cure for our spiritual emptiness is a return to the moral values that made this nation great. And such values only come through faith in God..
“Character must be built on a foundation of moral values, and without religion there can be no genuine morality..”
There are additional developments in the West that would frighten the religious in other parts of the world, whether Christian or Muslim. That is while people like Guiness and Black publicly lament the decline of spirituality in American institutions and public, the church itself is inflicted with unbelievable influence of the moral decline in the larger society. Those of us living outside the West, Muslims and Christians alike, lament how the European and American churches appear impotent in the face of secularism so much that even morally degenerate groups like homosexuals have the courage to fight for recognition by the church. They are getting that. Now they are pressing for priesthood. And the churches in many countries are yielding to this unholy pressure.
I have always held the view that our christian brothers in Nigeria would closely examine the effects of secularism on western society. They should work out a way on how the nation can continue to enjoy economic growth and political harmony without risking the deteriorating effects of secularism. Certainly they do not need to see their survival as guaranteed by secularism just because Muslims are dominant in some parts of the country. It is encouraging to note that some church leaders have started to take up the challenge.
I am saying so because the end result of secularism would deny the church its influence even in the spiritual domain as it is happening now in the west. No doubt the twentieth century and perhaps the first few decades of the twenty-first are American. Anything American sells like a hot cake. But we need to use our senses and pray to God for salvation. I once listened over the NTA to the Archbishop of Abuja saying that Christians should not give the impression that they do not care about morality. He emphasized that the Shariah issue has provided the opportunity for them to come forward and contribute in raising the moral aptitude of the nation. This is encouraging.
In an international forum organized by the Anglican Church to address such issues two years ago in Britain, the BBC Hausa Service interviewed a representative from Nigeria on the accommodation of homosexuals by the church. He lamented and despised the western society. He implored that we in Africa should pray that our society should never deteriorate to such levels. I absolutely agree with him and furthermore understand that the virus that brought that predicament in the West is secularism – the concept that denied religion any participation in state affairs. That is why Friday Discourse, just like our Anglican priest in the BBC interview, would continue to open and close all our articles in this series with the prayer that may God save us from secular laws.
Showing posts with label Secularism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secularism. Show all posts
Thursday, May 20, 2010
God Save Us from Secular Laws
God Save Us from Secular Laws
About a month ago I was glad to read the contribution of Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim titled God Save Us from ‘Religious’ Laws as the lead comment in this weekly. I was expecting similar contributions from many other scholars. Surprisingly none was so elaborate, strong and bold enough to warrant a reply.
Today I would like to touch on the introductory part of his article. It will be a journey that both of us will start on points of mutual agreement. But we shall find ourselves departing as soon we attempt to probe the very fundamentals of his thesis. The essence of the matter is that Dr. Ibrahim has generalized so much and contradicted himself to the extent that he built premisses that are not strong enough to support his conclusion. (Readers should please forgive me for using a double ‘s’ in the word ‘premiss’, as is the convention in Logic). Part of the problem really lies in the noble desire of Dr. Jibrin to retain his Christian faith while at the same time preaching the atheistic doctrines of his subject of specialization, sociology. This is a common problem he seems to share with many other people in his position.
On Religious Laws
I fairly agree with his opening statement and which I consider fundamental to our discussion today. He said:
“Throughout history, divine and religious laws have provided rules, regulations, moral precepts and standards of the highest nature to keep humankind along the narrow and difficult path of devotion to God, moral probity, selflessness, kindness and service to fellow human beings.”
It is important also to note that Dr. Ibrahim has put the word ‘religious’ in his title in quotes, implying something purported to be Godly though it is not actually so. Thus in his second paragraph he said:
“Throughout history, religious laws have more often than not, been used by amoral charlatans for their selfish and sometimes wicked and sectarian purposes.”
He gave valid examples saying,
“They were used to deprive people of their spouses, their property, their freedom and indeed, their humanity.”
He immediately concluded the paragraph with a prayer saying,
“May God save us from human (mis)-application of religious laws.”
This is another area of agreement. God himself has acknowledged that religion could be prone to manipulation by man. In the introduction of a celebrated beginners text of the traditional syllabus of Islamic jurisprudence commonly called Akhdari, the issue of ‘survival’ through manipulating religion was listed among the major sins a Muslim must desist from.
In practice however, Europe present the best specter of manipulation of religion. The Muslim world has on many occasions fallen a victim of such orchestration. Take the crusades for example. They were attempts by the Christian West to check the expansion of Islam and to reclaim earlier lost territories between Portugal and Palestine beginning from the end of the eleventh century. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries of their success saw a reign of barbarism and nothing close to what any religion could justify. Sometimes these expeditions were initiated and led by priests. Yet their conduct remained terribly barbaric. When they entered cities like Jerusalem and Damascus, they massacred women, children and the old. Nothing Godly was witnessed in the ‘religious laws’ with which they ruled the reclaimed lands.
If the crusades could be regarded as too distant in our memory, a contemporary example is what happened in the Balkans during the last decade of the twentieth century. Barbarism was again unleashed on the Muslim populations in the name of cleansing Europe of Muslims, as the Serbs claimed. The story has remained the same over the years. So consistent was the trend that Christian historians find it difficult to hide it from their accounts. In Muslim Discovery of Europe, a contemporary orientalist, Bernard Lewis, has this to say about the fate of Muslims under Christian domination:
“Christianity was imposed by force and Muslims sooner or later forced to choose between conversion, exile, and death.”
So like the persecuted Jews, Muslims clearly understand, in fact in a broader sense, why Dr. Ibrahim should pray for God’s help against ‘religious’ laws.
It is these ‘religious’ laws that attempted to strangulate the growth of science in Europe during the Middle Ages. Thousands of scientists were executed or expelled for holding rational views about nature and the universe. At last the scientists won and retaliated by excommunicating the Church away from public domain. Unfortunately they were blanket in their treatment. They condemned all religions of the world for the crime once committed by the Church in Europe.
This led to the ascendancy of the atheistic doctrines that attempted to deny religion any relevance to the extent of questioning the existence of God. Hence the popular statement of Karl Marx that “religion is the opium of the people.” Julian Huxley said, “it is man who created God. It was not God that created man.” I have in an earlier article quoted Nietche saying that they have “killed God.”
I am happy to note that Dr. Ibrahim has not presented these atheistic doctrines. Rather, as a good Christian, he was ready to admit that religious laws set “standards of the highest nature”. But the problem with such laws according to him lies elsewhere:
“They have almost always been applied by human beings whose spiritual and moral standards have been far below the requirement of what was necessary to faithfully and truthfully implement the divine legal imperative.”
Contradictions
Notwithstanding the seeming validity of the above statements, Dr. Ibrahim failed to use them as a valid foundation for his article. His attempt resulted in fundamental contradictions. Let us just consider the main ones.
It will be difficult to understand why a person that is ready to describe religious laws as “highest” in standard would later reject them and advocate in their place others that are of lesser merit. He has even gone further to raise the normal secularist alarm that
“The adoption of religious laws is always a threat to the state because it is seen to serve the interest of only those who belong to the ruling religion..”
How could laws of the “highest” standard, divine as they are, threaten the legitimacy of a state? This is only possible in one of two cases: either the law itself is not qualified to be described as of “highest” in standard or the modern state does not aspire to live by highest standards. The rule of contradictory propositions is that both could not be assigned the same truth-value. If one is correct, the other must be wrong.
But we will prefer to hold on to our earlier agreement with Dr. Ibrahim that religion has set “highest” standards for human conduct. Let us assign it a true value, in which case we are forced to automatically accept that the “modern state” does not aspire to live to such “highest” standards. The “modern state” is thus ready to settle for laws that are lower in standard, very much lower, just enough to enable it become, according to Dr. Ibrahim
“a provider of public goods and more important, a neutral arbiter that guarantees the security of all sections of society.”
Still at this low level, “the standards of the highest nature” which Dr. Ibrahim correctly associated with religion refuse to vanish. They are made of universal values that cannot be dispensed of even if the entire essence of the state is zeroed to the provision of public goods and security. Could such a state do without what Dr. Ibrahim called
“devotion to God, moral probity, selflessness, kindness and service to fellow human beings?”
Part of the difficulty arises from how Dr. Ibrahim failed to maintain the relevance or significance of his single quotation marks in the word ‘religious’ later in the article when he attempted to discuss the relationship between religion and the state. While the marks are significant if they were meant, as they should be, to mean non-religious laws dressed with the cloth of religion, the author later failed to put the word religion in quotes. This means that he has a quarrel not only with the fake but also with the genuine. Religion in general has finally been made a culprit. Hence the charge that it threatens the legitimacy of the state. In which case, the earlier quotes in the word ‘religious’ could as well be regarded as meaningless.
Still, the contradiction defies dissolution. One finds himself returning to the same question that was initially asked: why should he quarrel with a law that he has already described as “highest in standard?”
False Premisses
Lets us escape from these cyclic arguments regarding ‘religious laws’ and religion. We can put aside whatever contradictions they are impregnated with in order to make progress. Let us bring out the core of his introduction that represents the theoretical basis of his thesis. We will arrive at the following:
Though religion has set high standards to guide human conduct, its laws are not suitable because their path is “narrow and difficult” and liable to abuse ‘in most cases’ but especially in multi-religious societies. No part of Nigeria is “uni-religious”, so religious laws are unsuitable anywhere in the country.
I do not agree with the above argument for a number of reasons. One, I do not accept that whatever is said about religion by western social scientists should be equally applied to any religion, Islam and Christianity in our case. The two religions extensively differ in their scriptures, history and geography. We shall see this in detail next week.
Two, describing something as “narrow and difficult” does not invalidate its legitimacy or make it impractical in life. In fact uprightness can never be achieved without the discipline to operate within the confines of morality and law. An effective knife must have a sharp edge. There is no law with the aim and capacity of elevating mankind without limiting the latitude of freedom of the individual. This, in fact, as we shall again see next week, is the reason behind the collapse of the social order in the West today. This is not our judgement but that of its intellectuals.
Three, the fact that a law stands to be misapplied has never made it unsuitable for adoption. One would like to ask whether the authors of secular laws do vaccinate them against the virus of abuse. This is too weak a reason to warrant the condemnation of religion and its laws.
Four, the adoption of a particular religion by a multi-religious society does not necessarily endanger the security of its minorities. There is enough evidence in history of civilizations to prove the contrary.
Five, the observation that no part of Nigeria is uni-religious is not correct. The presence of a minority religion in a society does not prevent that society from being labeled by the religion of the majority. Britain, Germany and even the United States describe themselves as Christian nations though all of them today have millions of Muslims and Jews as citizens living within their borders. Here in Nigeria, I see no reason why I should be considered wrong if I would describe Plateau, Benue and Anambra states for example as Christian.
In fact, the principle of majority rule is a cornerstone of democracy. Also, our choice for federalism in Nigeria is based on the correct realization of (and the desire to) maintain our differences in culture and worldview. We shall examine this further in the last part of the series.
Conclusion
The contention of Dr. Ibrahim that religious laws are not suitable for any part of Nigeria cannot be logically deduced from its premisses. Next week we shall look at his arguments about religion, secularism and the modern state in more detail. We hope to finally conclude the series by focussing on Nigeria and specifically with respect to the achievements of secularism and the gains from return to religion. I believe when that x-ray is presented for examination, the prayer of the objective reader will not be other than “God save us from secular laws.”
About a month ago I was glad to read the contribution of Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim titled God Save Us from ‘Religious’ Laws as the lead comment in this weekly. I was expecting similar contributions from many other scholars. Surprisingly none was so elaborate, strong and bold enough to warrant a reply.
Today I would like to touch on the introductory part of his article. It will be a journey that both of us will start on points of mutual agreement. But we shall find ourselves departing as soon we attempt to probe the very fundamentals of his thesis. The essence of the matter is that Dr. Ibrahim has generalized so much and contradicted himself to the extent that he built premisses that are not strong enough to support his conclusion. (Readers should please forgive me for using a double ‘s’ in the word ‘premiss’, as is the convention in Logic). Part of the problem really lies in the noble desire of Dr. Jibrin to retain his Christian faith while at the same time preaching the atheistic doctrines of his subject of specialization, sociology. This is a common problem he seems to share with many other people in his position.
On Religious Laws
I fairly agree with his opening statement and which I consider fundamental to our discussion today. He said:
“Throughout history, divine and religious laws have provided rules, regulations, moral precepts and standards of the highest nature to keep humankind along the narrow and difficult path of devotion to God, moral probity, selflessness, kindness and service to fellow human beings.”
It is important also to note that Dr. Ibrahim has put the word ‘religious’ in his title in quotes, implying something purported to be Godly though it is not actually so. Thus in his second paragraph he said:
“Throughout history, religious laws have more often than not, been used by amoral charlatans for their selfish and sometimes wicked and sectarian purposes.”
He gave valid examples saying,
“They were used to deprive people of their spouses, their property, their freedom and indeed, their humanity.”
He immediately concluded the paragraph with a prayer saying,
“May God save us from human (mis)-application of religious laws.”
This is another area of agreement. God himself has acknowledged that religion could be prone to manipulation by man. In the introduction of a celebrated beginners text of the traditional syllabus of Islamic jurisprudence commonly called Akhdari, the issue of ‘survival’ through manipulating religion was listed among the major sins a Muslim must desist from.
In practice however, Europe present the best specter of manipulation of religion. The Muslim world has on many occasions fallen a victim of such orchestration. Take the crusades for example. They were attempts by the Christian West to check the expansion of Islam and to reclaim earlier lost territories between Portugal and Palestine beginning from the end of the eleventh century. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries of their success saw a reign of barbarism and nothing close to what any religion could justify. Sometimes these expeditions were initiated and led by priests. Yet their conduct remained terribly barbaric. When they entered cities like Jerusalem and Damascus, they massacred women, children and the old. Nothing Godly was witnessed in the ‘religious laws’ with which they ruled the reclaimed lands.
If the crusades could be regarded as too distant in our memory, a contemporary example is what happened in the Balkans during the last decade of the twentieth century. Barbarism was again unleashed on the Muslim populations in the name of cleansing Europe of Muslims, as the Serbs claimed. The story has remained the same over the years. So consistent was the trend that Christian historians find it difficult to hide it from their accounts. In Muslim Discovery of Europe, a contemporary orientalist, Bernard Lewis, has this to say about the fate of Muslims under Christian domination:
“Christianity was imposed by force and Muslims sooner or later forced to choose between conversion, exile, and death.”
So like the persecuted Jews, Muslims clearly understand, in fact in a broader sense, why Dr. Ibrahim should pray for God’s help against ‘religious’ laws.
It is these ‘religious’ laws that attempted to strangulate the growth of science in Europe during the Middle Ages. Thousands of scientists were executed or expelled for holding rational views about nature and the universe. At last the scientists won and retaliated by excommunicating the Church away from public domain. Unfortunately they were blanket in their treatment. They condemned all religions of the world for the crime once committed by the Church in Europe.
This led to the ascendancy of the atheistic doctrines that attempted to deny religion any relevance to the extent of questioning the existence of God. Hence the popular statement of Karl Marx that “religion is the opium of the people.” Julian Huxley said, “it is man who created God. It was not God that created man.” I have in an earlier article quoted Nietche saying that they have “killed God.”
I am happy to note that Dr. Ibrahim has not presented these atheistic doctrines. Rather, as a good Christian, he was ready to admit that religious laws set “standards of the highest nature”. But the problem with such laws according to him lies elsewhere:
“They have almost always been applied by human beings whose spiritual and moral standards have been far below the requirement of what was necessary to faithfully and truthfully implement the divine legal imperative.”
Contradictions
Notwithstanding the seeming validity of the above statements, Dr. Ibrahim failed to use them as a valid foundation for his article. His attempt resulted in fundamental contradictions. Let us just consider the main ones.
It will be difficult to understand why a person that is ready to describe religious laws as “highest” in standard would later reject them and advocate in their place others that are of lesser merit. He has even gone further to raise the normal secularist alarm that
“The adoption of religious laws is always a threat to the state because it is seen to serve the interest of only those who belong to the ruling religion..”
How could laws of the “highest” standard, divine as they are, threaten the legitimacy of a state? This is only possible in one of two cases: either the law itself is not qualified to be described as of “highest” in standard or the modern state does not aspire to live by highest standards. The rule of contradictory propositions is that both could not be assigned the same truth-value. If one is correct, the other must be wrong.
But we will prefer to hold on to our earlier agreement with Dr. Ibrahim that religion has set “highest” standards for human conduct. Let us assign it a true value, in which case we are forced to automatically accept that the “modern state” does not aspire to live to such “highest” standards. The “modern state” is thus ready to settle for laws that are lower in standard, very much lower, just enough to enable it become, according to Dr. Ibrahim
“a provider of public goods and more important, a neutral arbiter that guarantees the security of all sections of society.”
Still at this low level, “the standards of the highest nature” which Dr. Ibrahim correctly associated with religion refuse to vanish. They are made of universal values that cannot be dispensed of even if the entire essence of the state is zeroed to the provision of public goods and security. Could such a state do without what Dr. Ibrahim called
“devotion to God, moral probity, selflessness, kindness and service to fellow human beings?”
Part of the difficulty arises from how Dr. Ibrahim failed to maintain the relevance or significance of his single quotation marks in the word ‘religious’ later in the article when he attempted to discuss the relationship between religion and the state. While the marks are significant if they were meant, as they should be, to mean non-religious laws dressed with the cloth of religion, the author later failed to put the word religion in quotes. This means that he has a quarrel not only with the fake but also with the genuine. Religion in general has finally been made a culprit. Hence the charge that it threatens the legitimacy of the state. In which case, the earlier quotes in the word ‘religious’ could as well be regarded as meaningless.
Still, the contradiction defies dissolution. One finds himself returning to the same question that was initially asked: why should he quarrel with a law that he has already described as “highest in standard?”
False Premisses
Lets us escape from these cyclic arguments regarding ‘religious laws’ and religion. We can put aside whatever contradictions they are impregnated with in order to make progress. Let us bring out the core of his introduction that represents the theoretical basis of his thesis. We will arrive at the following:
Though religion has set high standards to guide human conduct, its laws are not suitable because their path is “narrow and difficult” and liable to abuse ‘in most cases’ but especially in multi-religious societies. No part of Nigeria is “uni-religious”, so religious laws are unsuitable anywhere in the country.
I do not agree with the above argument for a number of reasons. One, I do not accept that whatever is said about religion by western social scientists should be equally applied to any religion, Islam and Christianity in our case. The two religions extensively differ in their scriptures, history and geography. We shall see this in detail next week.
Two, describing something as “narrow and difficult” does not invalidate its legitimacy or make it impractical in life. In fact uprightness can never be achieved without the discipline to operate within the confines of morality and law. An effective knife must have a sharp edge. There is no law with the aim and capacity of elevating mankind without limiting the latitude of freedom of the individual. This, in fact, as we shall again see next week, is the reason behind the collapse of the social order in the West today. This is not our judgement but that of its intellectuals.
Three, the fact that a law stands to be misapplied has never made it unsuitable for adoption. One would like to ask whether the authors of secular laws do vaccinate them against the virus of abuse. This is too weak a reason to warrant the condemnation of religion and its laws.
Four, the adoption of a particular religion by a multi-religious society does not necessarily endanger the security of its minorities. There is enough evidence in history of civilizations to prove the contrary.
Five, the observation that no part of Nigeria is uni-religious is not correct. The presence of a minority religion in a society does not prevent that society from being labeled by the religion of the majority. Britain, Germany and even the United States describe themselves as Christian nations though all of them today have millions of Muslims and Jews as citizens living within their borders. Here in Nigeria, I see no reason why I should be considered wrong if I would describe Plateau, Benue and Anambra states for example as Christian.
In fact, the principle of majority rule is a cornerstone of democracy. Also, our choice for federalism in Nigeria is based on the correct realization of (and the desire to) maintain our differences in culture and worldview. We shall examine this further in the last part of the series.
Conclusion
The contention of Dr. Ibrahim that religious laws are not suitable for any part of Nigeria cannot be logically deduced from its premisses. Next week we shall look at his arguments about religion, secularism and the modern state in more detail. We hope to finally conclude the series by focussing on Nigeria and specifically with respect to the achievements of secularism and the gains from return to religion. I believe when that x-ray is presented for examination, the prayer of the objective reader will not be other than “God save us from secular laws.”
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