SOME non-governmental organisations at a chat with Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin last month expressed concern that Western liberalism and secularism were posing a threat to religion.

Coincidentally a day later, Deputy Federal Territories Minister Datuk Seri Dr Edmund Santhara said at a Rukun Negara forum that Malaysians should understand their own religion and that of others.

Do these “others” also include the West, particularly Europe, and are its values threatening religion?

The answer is “no”.

It is Covid-19 that poses a threat, not Western liberalism and secularism as commonly assumed.

Europe has a very long history of civilised institutional religion dating back more than a thousand years.

But under rigid theocratic laws, only the state religion could be practised except for listed ethno-cultural minorities granted the right to practise their own religions.

Modern Western values have done much good despite their perceived evils.

Liberalism and secularism have freed the European mind, turning Europe into the world’s interfaith hub.

Any white European is free to embrace Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism or Taoism.

Liberalism is a movement to liberate the mind, and secularism is a movement to free a nation’s legal system from theocratic despotism.

Although much has been said about churches in Europe having no crowds, there is more to it than what the tourist eye sees.

Millions of Europeans stay loyal to Christianity but many spend their Sundays walking in the forest or meditating at spirituality centres where the focus is on finding higher dimensions of life beyond rituals.

Religion fosters mass social bonding so vital for starting and maintaining any civilisation.

No other institution has the force of conviction to motivate entire populations to congregate every week for bonding.

Many religious congregations number several thousands at every weekly gathering, testifying to the enormous influence that religion has over society.

The rituals of bonding are plentiful: ablution, communion, greetings, hugging, singing, chanting, standing together, prostrating together, and food after service.

These rituals cement the bonding of a population, infusing its culture and civilisation with vibrancy.

Social distancing, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, breaks all this.

Limited to clan-sized gatherings, the social capital starts to evaporate.

For congregations that depend on ritualistic socialisation, the absence of mass gatherings will be crushing.

This is why lawsuits have been filed in the United States against state governments to stop mass-gathering bans from being applied to religious services.

Missing out on face-to-face interactions will loosen the dense web of social connections that strengthen relationships.

It is this social capital that enables a whole community to think, feel and act in unison at the leadership’s direction.

This is a communally shared experience like no other.

But in a pandemic, all the rituals of social bonding, if allowed to continue unrestricted, will lead to mass deaths.

You don’t have to cough to pass on the virus; you just have to talk without a mask.

To save religion, preachers should constantly highlight one key point in their sermons: Let there be no Covid-19.

What must your congregation do?

First, it must learn the facts.

Covid-19 is the end result of jungle clearing for plantations and extension of towns.

Wildlife is driven out, along with the coronaviruses that jump from animal to human.

By instinct, wild animals keep their distance from humans. But with encroachment, the distance has narrowed.

These animals are then captured for sale to exotic food markets, traditional medicine dealers and trophy shops.

Pangolins, tigers, rhinos, wild pigeons, snakes, bats, deer, wild boar, porcupine, junglefowl, grasscutter rodents, leopards, bears, elephants, hornbills – no species is safe in any continent.

To prevent more coronaviruses leaping to humans, we must completely ban forest clearing and wildlife trading in every country including Malaysia.

The only exception should be the keeping of wild animals for research and education.

By the way, forest destruction happens in Asia, Africa and South America, but not Europe.

It is in the interest of all religions that they should launch a global platform to initiate collaborative actions for prevention of Covid-19.

Religion exercises the biggest influence and holds the strongest grip over populations.

We have the knowledge to sustain humanity – what is missing is the political and religious collaboration.

If we continue going our separate ways, that is the wrong way leading to a dead end.

The writer champions interfaith harmony. Comments: [email protected]

Rabat – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at French President Emmanuel Macron over his remarks on Islam. Macron had used an October 2 speech to claim Islam was “in crisis” worldwide, prompting a global backlash. Erdogan joined the outrage at Macron’s statements in a speech to Turkish religious workers on Tuesday, accusing Macron of disrespect and ignorance.

Erdogan called Macron’s remarks on Islam an “open provocation,” according to state-sponsored Anadolu News Agency. The Turkish president said the remarks were especially tone-deaf as Macron spoke from a Muslim-majority neigborhood in Paris. Approximately 10-15% of Parisians are adherents of Islam and Muslims make up a majority of Paris’ immigrant population.

President Erdogan called Macron’s statements against Islam worldwide a “clear provocation.” He stated that Macron was “rude” and had no business demanding reforms in a religion that is not his own. 

Erdogan’s analysis

Erdogan pointed to growing xenophobia and Islamophobia in Europe as the motivation behind Macron’s speech. “Attacking Muslims has become one of the most important tools for European politicians to hide their failure,” Erdogan told the crowd. Demonizing Islam to avoid an introspective dialogue in Europe is part of “cheap” tactics employed by “fascist groups,” he said.

While many in the Islamic world disagree with Erdogan’s governing style and foreign policy ambitions, his analysis of and push-back on Macron’s remarks will likely garner some support. Erdogan considered the speech to be a part of domestic politics, an effort to appease increasingly Islamophobic voters who are likely to support parties opposing Macron.

“European leaders who are stuck in domestic politics and failed in foreign policy try to cover up their inadequacy by targeting Islam,” Erdogan stated. He accused Macron of trying to “hide the crisis that France and French society face” and saw the move as a push to “settle accounts with Islam and Muslims.”

Erdogan directly accused Macron of fueling tensions by stigmatizing the French Muslim population while protecting Islamophobes and racists. Macron, he said, is harming French society more by encouraging racism and Islamophobia and should not “pretend to be a colonial governor.”

Islam in crisis

Macron’s October 2 remarks singled out Islam as a perceived threat to French secularism. “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country,” the French president said. His speech mixed references to Islamic radicalism, islamic seperatism, and Islam as a whole in a problematic fashion.

Macron fed on national angst following the stabbing of several people by two Muslim immigrants near the former office of controversial satirical publication Charlie Hebdo. The stabbings followed the reprint of images of the Islamic prophet, which Muslims see as a grave offense. Amid national fear of extremism, Macron appears to make an effort to not lose xenophobic voters to the openly Islamophobic National Front.

The National Front narrowly beat Macron’s party in the 2019 European Parliamentary election and has gained in approval polls since March. The French president appeared eager to reverse this trend by promoting his own brand of anti-Islam policies that are popular among Europe’s growing segment of xenophobic and racist voters.

Crisis in Europe

Macron’s focus on Islam appears to gloss over, and further mainstream, the growing extremism among Europe’s far-right. As Erdogan pointed out, Macron’s remarks only further fuel the growing acceptance of racism in European society. 

Europe experienced a slowly growing internal awareness of its historically destructive and predatory colonialism in its museums and textbooks over the last decade. However, economic hardship and shrinking opportunities appear to again reharden opinions on the continent. Macron and other mainstream neoliberal politicians are increasingly reaching for xenophobia as a scapegoat. 

After nearly four decades of center-right neoliberal economics in Europe, the continent is left more unequal and with ever-shrinking public services. The blame for this growing crisis is the politicians who instituted those changes, not the relatively powerless Muslim minorities. 

While Erdogan receives little praise in the Islamic world, the Turkish president’s analysis of Macron’s remarks is likely to garner temporary sympathy.

Read also: Macron Blunders Through the Middle East Amid Crisis at Home

Turkey today condemned French President Emmanuel Macron’s bid to rid France of ‘Islamic separatism’, saying his statements ‘encourage Islamophobia’.  

Eighteen months before a French presidential election in which he is expected to face a challenge from the right, Macron described Islam as a religion ‘in crisis’ worldwide on Friday.

Turkish President Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Macron’s ‘dangerous and provocative’ vision ‘encourages Islamophobia and anti-Muslim populism’.

The ruling AKP party’s spokesman Omer Celik added Macron‘s ‘talk about a “French Islam” is a dictatorial approach and utter ignorance’. 

He said: ‘Macron’s point of view only provides ideological munitions to terror groups like the Islamic State.’

On Sunday, the Turkish foreign ministry said Macron’s initiative would have ‘grave consequences rather than solve France’s problems’.

Macron’s plan to ‘liberate Islam in France from foreign influences’ adds to a growing list of disputes between the French leader and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

Turkish officials frequently attack Macron, who last year said NATO was showing signs of ‘brain death’ by failing to stand up to Turkey’s unilateral military intervention in Syria.

Macron and Erdogan are currently feuding over maritime rights in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria and, most recently, the escalating conflict in Azerbaijan’s Armenian separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Emmanuel Macron  described Islam as ‘a religion that is in crisis all over the world’ as he unveiled his proposal to battle Islamic radicalism, saying it had created a ‘parallel society’ living outside of French values. 

In a keynote speech lasting more than an hour, France’s head of state said on Friday that Islam was in crisis due to ‘an extreme hardening’ of positions in recent years.

He said the government would this year present a draft law aimed at strengthening secularism in France against what Macron described as ‘Islamist separatism’ in the country. 

Macron insisted ‘no concessions’ would be made in a new drive to push religion out of education and the public sector across the country. 

He coined the term ‘separatism’ to describe the underworld that thrives in some neighborhoods around France where Muslims with a radical vision of their religion take control of the local population to inculcate their beliefs. 

But members of the nation’s six-million-strong Muslim community — the largest in Western Europe — immediately accused him of stirring up Islamophobic and racist feeling so as to appeal to far-Right voters ahead of the presidential elections. 

In a speech broadcast live from Les Mureaux, north of Paris, Mr Macron said ‘we must tackle Islamist separatism’ while not ‘stigmatising all Muslims’.

A new law will allow the dissolution of religious groups that ‘attack the dignity of people, using psychological or physical pressure, and break the values of France’.

There will also be an end to the system of ‘seconded Imams’ which allows extremist clerics and other preachers to be trained abroad before moving to France.

‘We ourselves are going to train our Imams and Chanters in France, and therefore we must detach this link which is what is called consular Islam,’ said Macron.

He said all French Imams would have to be certified from now on and could be shut down at any time.

The equivalent of more than £9.7million will be spent to work France’s Islam Foundation – a moderate organisation which promotes traditional Muslim study in culture, history and science. 

Macron said this would help to ensure the dominance of a religion ‘respects the values ​​of the Republic’.  

The head of state added that there would also be closer scrutiny of the curriculum at private schools and stricter limits on home-schooling for reasons other than a child’s health problems. 

Some 1,700 private Muslim school and colleges currently teach around 85,000 children in France. 

Community associations that receive state subsidies will have to sign a contract avowing their commitment to secularism and the values of France.  

The new measures will also include a ban on the wearing of religious symbols for employees of subcontractors providing public services, such as transport operators.

The rule already applies to public servants.

Macron said there had been increased reports of abuses by sub-contracting staff, including bus drivers refusing women entry for wearing clothing considered too revealing.

He emphasised that it was necessary to ‘liberate Islam in France from foreign influences,’ naming countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.  

Macron stressed that the measures did not seek to stigmatise or alienate France’s Muslims but to bolster ‘our ability to live together’. 

He urged better understanding of Islam and said the problem of radicalisation was partly a product of the ‘ghettoisation’ of French cities and towns where ‘we constructed our own separatism’.

‘We have concentrated populations based on their origins, we have not sufficiently created diversity, or ensured economic and social mobility in segregated areas,’ he said.

Radical Islamists have swooped in, taking advantage of ‘our withdrawal, our cowardice,’ he added. 

But Macron was immediately criticised for stirring up Islamophobic and racist feeling to appeal to far-Right voters ahead of the presidential elections.

Yassar Louati, a prominent civil liberties activist based in Paris, has said: ‘The repression of Muslims has been a threat, now it is a promise. 

‘In a one-hour speech #Macron burried #laicite, emboldened the far right, anti-Muslim leftists and threatened the lives of Muslim students by calling for drastic limits on home schooling despite a global pandemic.’ 

Rim-Sarah Alaoune, a French academic, also took to social media to say: ‘President Macron described Islam as “a religion that is in crisis all over the world today”. I don’t even know what to say. 

‘This remark is so dumb (sorry it is) that it does not need any further analysis… I won’t hide that I am concerned. 

‘No mention of white supremacy even though we are the country that exported the racist and white supremacist theory of the “great replacement”, used by the terrorist who committed the horrific massacre in #Christchurch.’ 

Friday’s speech came as a trial was underway in Paris over the deadly January 2015 attacks on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket by French-born Islamic extremists. 

Last week, a man from Pakistan stabbed two people near Charlie Hebdo’s former offices in anger over its publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. 

Earlier this month, divisions were highlighted when MPs walked out when a university student entered parliament in a headscarf. 

And in January, a renewed debate about freedom of expression erupted when a teenager received death threats for attacking Islam in an expletive-laden Instagram rant. 

Macron’s long-awaited address came 18 months before presidential elections where he is set to face a challenge from the right, as public concern grows over security in France.  

The proposed law is expected to go before parliament for debate in the first part of next year.   

This article has been adapted from its original source.