Brother Saul,
First of all, i join Brother KB and else in extending you a belated
congratulation on your powerful polemic on Kebba Joke. I wonder if we will
ever see him again - he has taken too much flak of late to keep a straight
face on this List. My instincts inform me that he will surface again with
another garbage. Bloodsucking cowards like Joke never get it until they get
their own taste of the medicine Jammeh has been precribing to all his
critics. There and then he shall realise that we aren't haters or extremists
but people who have a conscience and acted thus because our consciences
cannot let us tolerate the intolerable degeneration of civility in the Gambia.
I'm running out of time, so i shall just get to the point. The piece you
forwarded by Al-Ghazzali is just brilliantly argued if only its unfounded
despairing against secularism. This is understandable. He acknowledges that
he hasn't read much into the doctrine of secularism. Well, i will say that in
retrospect, i have dealt with certain amount of his concerns in my last
presentation and will endeavour to delve into secularism further in
subsequent presentations for secularism is very central to the edifice i'm
aiming to modestly construct. Some of his fears and concerns i share wholly,
but secularism is not inherently hostile towards religion as he seems to
believe. Yes, secularism is susceptible to moves that are on the whole very
hostile towards religion but as the late Levy Strauss points out, this is
wholly a question of understanding, application and the long haul of
political finessing. Secularism as understand by Hobbees, i.e., a benign or
blind indifference by the State towards religious orientation or belief, is
inevitable in modern societies where pluralism is a fact of life rather than
the imagination of political theorists. No religion - this refers to religion
in practice rather than in theory - or any other monist philosophy can
successfully cope with the demanding vicissitudes, contradictions and
incongruence of the pluralistic values that make up modern societies.
Secularism, as espoused by Hobbes, at any rate, is an inter-faith peace
treaty tacitly negotiated and entered into by adherents of different values,
faiths and ways of life inhabiting a particular polity. As Alan Ryan of New
College, puts it "if ways of life are irreducibly different and no argument
can settle the superioty of one over another, should we not lower our sights
and simply try to keep the peace between? How the peace is kept is a matter
of political prudence." It is this political prudence that secularism can
cope with more abiding neutrality vis-a-vis inter-faith adjudication arising
from clashes of values far more than any universal monist philosophy, be it
Islam or Christianity; at any rate in modern societies and the present
natures of the practices of all the great religions.
I will, however, grant that in such exceptional historical antecedents like
Islam under the leadership of the Prophet [pbuh] and his immediate heirs,
Muslim/Moorish Spain, Afghanistan, India, Buddhist Asia all displayed
impressive tolerance towards values that were wholly different from theirs.
Yet - and this is most applicable to Islam and Christianity - what made this
more possible then was the lack of factitious bickering of what is the true
heritage of their respective religions pace the clarifying moments of their
apogee of glory. An Islamicised Gambia cannot guarantee that Ahmadis - who
are viewed as heretics by most Muslims - will not face discriminatory purges.
Similar concerns/contentions apply to all those groups that are viewed as
heretic and their renegacy is punishable only by outlawing them. No amount of
assurance of political finessing will settle my doubts about how Islam - in
its present form of multiplying sects and with all it's fratricidal
disputations on virtually all its basic tenets - can successfully accomodate
other vlaues without being hostile to them. This is primarily why i, both a
professing and practising Muslim, would prefer a secular polity that doesn't
interfere with my private religious pursuits - in so far as they don't
interfere with that of others. Secularism is ideal for modern societies
because in principle, it can stay robustly neutral in disputes over values,
interests and freedoms in a polity. No religion can afford neutrality in the
scale that secularism can afford. Religions already have original and
anchored positions and in disputes over values, freedoms and beliefs, cannot
accomodate judgements that will proliferate other judgements that will
undermine their coherence. Only secularism can afford this. This is not to
say that secularism doesn't have values of its own. The difference lies in
the fact that secularism is a corporation of all those corpora that different
religious affiliations share and would not undermine their vibrancy in
extending to other beliefs and value systems. Chief amongst these is
tolerance as understood by Hobbes as a strategy for peaceful co-existence.
On the question of the Bill before the National Assembly to legally
secularise the Gambian polity, i think people like Joseph Joof haven't done
their homework properly or else they would have noticed that even the 1997
constitution implicitly states the case that the Gambian polity is a secular
one. I don't know what is achievable by re-writing that again and making it
explicit. Perhaps it is to pander to an increasingly worried international
community that was panicked by Jammeh's off-the-mark pronounciations that he
will be introducing Sharia as the chief law in the Gambia. My guess is that
the said Bill is a measured attempt to allay such fears of an Islamic
fundamentalist Gambia. One of Jawara's achievements was how secularism in
the body politic never exhibited large scale hostilities towards private
religious pursuits. Admittedly, there were hiccups here and there but on the
whole a very good record. There need not be anyting untoward or changeable to
that as it were. But we are dealing with philistines here and for them,
religious sentiments have to be exploited for political gains. In a piece
that i wrote for the Daily Observer during the fifth anniversary celebrations
of the AFPRC/APRC, i noted that: "Historical Inevitability with all it’s
ringing fallacies and it’s sharp contradictions with the pluralist political
culture we aim to erect in our nascent Second Republic, promotes what the
German Sociologist Ulrich Beck called a “sub politics” of fringe sectarian
and identity politics which both are inimical to a multicultural, religious
and tolerant society. These sectarian and identity fringe politics imprints
could be gleaned from the rising temperature of religious intolerance and
disputes from Brikama to Bansang with the State or those affiliated with the
government of the day either implicitly taking sides or having a stake in
the outcome of such disputes. Then there is the blurring and compromising
of the perceived line betweenour secular polity and the fringe sectarian
polity that previously harmoniously co-existed alongside each other without
overlapping into each other’s traditional territory. Now with the novel idea
of a Secretary of State responsible for religious affairs poking it’s nose in
a hitherto non governmental territory; a mosque at the seat and heart of
government and the religiously provocative sermons of the mosque’s chief
cleric, our secular polity all but exists in theory."
A secular polity can flourish very nicely with a healthy and vibrant
religious fringe without much acrimony. For this to be the case, actions
sanctioned in the name of secularism should not seek to breed hostility,
irrational fear and ingrained prejudices. Al-Ghazzali is right about the fact
that a secular polity that asphyxiates the religious instincts of a nation
seeks to undermine the health of the society that the polity serves. One of
the reasons why American liberalism has become exhausted and the butt-end of
so much ridicule has got to do with the radical insurrection of the 60s
leftist mov'ts' reckless interpretation of secularism and in the process,
through liberal legalism via the courts, created a polity very hostile to
religion. The result of this radical insurrection into the American polity
was to unleash a backlash from a nation that ironically and albeit being
linked to the decay of Western secularism, is the most religious secular
nation in the Western hemisphere. This backlash came in the form of a very
vicious conservative renewal and a liberal Dunkirk in the form of a corrosion
and dilution of virtually all the great liberal landmarks associated with
post war America.
In the interim, i wish to thank Brother Abdou Toure, who did a very good
critique of my first presentation. Our only differences only happen to be a
matter of emphasis vis-a-vis the Platonic and Popperian questions. However, i
think we are in agreement that the two questions squared off delicately is
the ideal for any polity. But i will insist on emphasizing Popper's question.
True, a reconciliation of the two is the ideal but where tradeoffs have to be
entered into a bargain, i will stick with Popper. My reservations about
Plato, is not so much the elitist proclivities inherent in his thought but
his general lack of trust in the abilities of ordinary people to freely make
wise choices in their lives. This might have more to do with the fact that in
Plato's day, wisdom is something elitist and generally not prescribed for
ordinary folks.
Finally, i thank all the friends of the struggle who never for a second
dithered in their unequivocal denunciation of the moronic and philistine
despotism that has hijacked the Gambia. I hope by Saturday/Sunday, i get more
leeway to be able to join the fray.
Best wishes,
Hamjatta - Kanteh
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]
URL: http://hometown.aol.co.uk/hamzakanteh/myhomepage/newsletter.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
