Defending the Enlightenment

The legacy of the Enlightenment has been under a continuous assault not just from the religious right in this country, but has been one of the most favorite targets for the postmodern and postcolonial critique so popular in the academia in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This critique was based on the insistence that the experience of the Enlightenment is a Western experience deeply rooted in the Western European milieu. Therefore, secularism--and its insistence on the separation of church and state--is a Western construction that has been imposed onto non-Western societies either by native authoritarian leaders (Kemal Ataturk in Turkey) or European colonial powers (the British in India, the Austro-Hungarians in Bosnia, etc). This is more than a purely academic debate. What is at heart here is the legitimacy and the future of secular age.

The Enlightenment came out of Europe's bloody religious wars, the Reformation, and the scientific revolution. The right to think freely using reason, empirical observation, challenge dogmas, and push organized religion out of politics, came out of bloody battles on the European continent. While it can be argued that the particular form of secularism in many non-Western European societies was imposed during a foreign rule, such as during the Austro-Hungarians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is equally true that the ideas of the Enlightenment almost always had native voices. Therefore just like the French Revolution of 1789 (that political climax of the Enlightenment) cannot be considered only a French phenomenon (due to its long-term consequences, origins, and echoes throughout Europe and the world), the Enlightenment should not be seen as an exclusively Western European experience.

The critique of the Enlightenment is often brought up by the critics of French/Turkish style of secularism and in defense of the right of Muslim women to wear the Muslim veil in public space. By agreeing to this critique many Western academics have joined in the chorus of condemnation of the Enlightenment by defending the right of Islam to obligate its female followers to wear the veil in public institutions. What this argument completely ignores that Islam itself, like any other religion, is a political ideology. The supposed requirement of women to wear a veil (and the type of veil) is a political decision based on a certain interpretation of the Kur'an and the Hadith.

By insisting that the secularism of the Enlightenment is a Western construction, these critics ignore (purposefully or in ignorance) the fact that all of the strands of Islam (and any other organized religion) are also rooted in a particular historical experience of the Middle East, the Balkans or wherever. Many critics of the Enlightenment also point to Islam's emphasis on God rather than the state in arguing that the separation of church and state in an Islamic context becomes irrelevant. However, this criticism takes Islam's argument about the elevation of God above the state at its face value potentially entrusting those who represent the state with the voice of God (if there is no distinction of God and State then what is the purpose of the state if not to articulate the voice of God?).

In other words, yes all of the ideologies with which we live are historically constructed. But given the history of religion's violence against anyone who dares to challenge its irrational dogmas, I'd rather stick with my Enlightenment. So, let me be!