Why 'questioning secularism' destroys religious freedom

The relationship of Islam to modern democracy - or rather, the assumption of its incompatibility with it - has once again been under the spotlight in Australia. The recent “IQ2” debate, held in Sydney’s City Recital Hall on April 15, polarised public opinion around the issue in Sydney’s professional elite, with a relatively even divide for and against the proposition that Islam was not compatible with democracy. Fifty-four per cent of 5,521 respondents to a Sydney Morning Herald poll published the same day supported the incompatibility thesis while 52 per cent of the audience on the night of the debate voted against it.

This polarisation is worrying in itself, but even more worrying is the terms in which the debate is framed.

First, Muslims are no more nor less able to live within democracies than are followers of other faiths; the battle for secular democracy was a long and violent one within Christianity also, and is by no means over, as was demonstrated by the former Howard government’s relentless re-Christianisation of public space, community services and government funding directions (such as increased funding to Christian schools).

Second, Islam is as internally diverse as other religions, and has ultra-fundamentalist anti-democratic factions just as it has pro-democracy, pro-secular schools of thought.

Third, and most importantly, the debate question is illogical, as we are being asked to compare two things that are different in nature and in their social function. Religions are to do with transcendence, faith, and the idea of divine law decided by a supernatural entity; democracies and various other political systems are to do with the terre-à-terre dilemmas of governance and social organisation, and with positive law decided by human beings.

I am aware of the arguments that there is no separation of church and state within Islam, but nor was there, at one point in time, within Catholicism; and many scholars of Islamic thought, that one might broadly describe as the inheritors of Islamic modernism, would refute the argument that the Koran is able to fulfil the function of generating positive law.

Linked to this positing of “Islam” in relation to democracy is the idea of “questioning secularism” that has become a fashionable topic for conferencing and publishing both within and outside academia in Australia as elsewhere. The argument here, however, is similarly flawed, and similarly dangerous, as it displaces the more important debate about racism and structural discrimination. It also dodges the real question about religion and the secular in Western countries, which surely should be the continued influence of the Christian church in what should be a religiously neutral public sphere.

Framing these debates around a “questioning of secularism” is based on confusion - often deliberately maintained in the service of religiously conservative agendas - between the imperfect realisation of secularism in Western societies and the very principles of secularism itself. Secularism is not about atheism or the persecution of religious believers, it is about maintaining absolute religious neutrality in public institutions, including public education.

“Questioning secularism”, far from creating a more liberal space for all Muslims, is opening a discursive space where both Muslim and Christian conservatism can come galloping back into the public sphere.

Concerns about the place of Christian conservatism have been raised via, among other things, media discussion of the Exclusive Brethren’s donations to the Liberal Party (ABC, April 30, 2006, The Sydney Morning Herald, July 1, 2006), and, more recently of the funding and politics of Hillsong Church and the Mercy Ministries (The Sydney Morning Herald, March 18 and 19).

More recently again, concern about Islamic fundamentalist incursions into public life and in particular the life of our secular university system have been expressed in relation to Saudi funding of the Griffith University branch of the tri-university National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies (The Australian, April 22, April 30).

While the terms in which The Australian has reported this are on occasion unfortunate, bankrolling of various community and educative initiatives has been a typical Saudi strategy to gain a space for conservative proselytism across the world, from Paris to Manila. One thus has good reason to be concerned about sources of funding within public educational institutions that are potentially linked to a theocratic agenda.

Less public, but more immediately worrying, has been an attempt by Islamic conservatives to dictate the content of curriculum in another branch of the National Centre for Excellence, the University of Western Sydney’s Centre for Islamic Studies (the third branch, and founder of the initiative, launched in October 2007, being the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Islamic Law and Society, headed by Sultan of Oman Endowed Chair in Arab and Islamic Studies Abdullah Saeed).

A petition launched by the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), and circulating via email networks and websites such as Muslim Village over recent days, calls on the management of the University of Western Sydney to “reassess” the content and teaching of a Unit of Study titled “Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature” taught by Samar Habib, because according to ANIC it does not accurately represent the “normative teachings of Islam”, and provides “a very negative view of women in Islam”.

(Dr Habib, whose University of Sydney doctoral thesis looked at expressions of female sexuality and homoerotic desire in 9th-13th century Arabic literature, made headlines in 2005 as the young author of the novel A Tree Like Rain. She is also a co-founder of the successful University of Sydney postgraduate online journal Philament.)

The petition was due to be presented to UWS management on April 30; but news I received on April 27 indicated that the management were already aware of it and were supportive of Dr Habib and the curriculum for which she is responsible. They thus had no intention of even entertaining the arguments put by ANIC. The petition, along with the pervasiveness of the “Islam and democracy” and “questioning secularism” debates, does, however, raise broader concerns about religious questioning of secular public space and academic freedom, and about the credence given to Islamic religious conservatives by public authorities and particularly by non-Muslims who would like to think of themselves as progressive.

Consider, for example, the role played in the UWS incident by individuals such as Hanan Dover, who has been busying herself throughout April to garner support for the position expressed in the ANIC petition, claiming, in discussion fora on the Muslim Village website, that she has the ear of “key people” in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, including Muslim academics who were apparently in agreement with her position. Habib and ANIC are explicitly mentioned in this discussion and one participant in the forum badges the UWS Centre for Islamic Studies as the “Centre for Kufr” (unbelief).

Ms Dover, a psychologist and Islamic ultra-conservative, is a very problematic and largely unchallenged presence in “Muslim community consultation” networks. She is on UWS’s Harmony Reference Group and on the National Consultative Council for the National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies, and in 2007, the UWS Office of University Engagement awarded her a “Partnership Award” for her work in Muslim community mental health, her cultural awareness training at UWS and her work in introducing “prominent Muslim scholars” to UWS. She was also invited to participate in the health forum of the Rudd Government’s 2020 Summit, as an expert in Muslim community mental health.

Yet, Dover was suspended (*as the correspondence from UWS below states, this statement is incorrect. Ms Dover was not suspended, and OLO apologises for any hurt or damage that this misstatement may have caused her) in 2002 from her post as a lecturer in psychology at UWS because of her homophobic views and practices (she has also expressed anti-Semitic and anti-feminist views). Suspension is an extreme measure, only possible when evidence has been found to support allegations of serious misconduct, such as misuse of university funds or serious breach of the University Code of Conduct.

Ms Dover was suspended (*see correspondence below) under the University’s Equal Opportunity policy. On June 28, 2002, she had joined Sheikh Hilali’s right-hand man, Keysar Trad, in a talk at UWS’s Bankstown campus, organised by an Islamic fundamentalist student association. In that talk, she claimed, among a number of ridiculous statements, that international Muslim gay rights organisation Al-Fatiha was “funded by zionists” and accused gay counsellors more generally of brainwashing young Muslims.

She recommended Islamic counselling as an antidote to this and stated that she was “working with Sheikh Shadi in order to try to marry Islam and psychological therapy”. This is the same Sheikh Shadi who called for sharia courts to be set up in Australia and for gays to be stoned to death. Hanan Dover would presumably prefer to counsel them to death. She also refused access for gay Muslims both to her talk and to a group she was establishing for Muslim health workers. Keysar Trad, her co-speaker at the forum, was reported by gay rights activists present at the talk to have suggested that Australian anti-discrimination laws were not valid for Muslims, who should defy them. Trad has since denied having said this.

Regardless of these 2002 incidents, Dover continues to be given space as a “community representative” and “mental health expert”, and to speak within UWS fora: an upcoming talk, on May 3, 2008, is a defence of presumed Islamic prescriptions to wear hijab. (Nothing in the Koran requires Muslim women to wear it, as much Muslim scholarship over the last two decades has attested, and many practising Muslim women - even the majority in many countries - go bareheaded.)

The fact that an individual who holds such views as Dover should be given such a profile, and such credence, by non-Muslims in positions of authority, including the Federal government, is a matter of extreme concern.

It is all the more worrying in that this is happening at a time when that same government is in the news for taking measures, first, to remove all remaining discriminations against homosexuals in Australian law, and second, to broaden Muslim community consultation so as to put an end to the dominant presence of religious conservatives and to their demonstrably false claim that they represent all Australian Muslims. The Australian public, and particularly Australian Muslims, are thus being sent very mixed messages indeed.

The existence of religious conservatism in our society is certainly not specific to Islam. What is of concern is that while support for Christian conservatism is generally associated with the political right in Australia, support for Islamic conservatism often comes, perversely, from a left acting in the name of some misplaced white guilt.

Not only does this deny a voice to Muslims who are fighting such conservatism, but it also leaves the terrain free to right wing politicians and media commentators who are always eager to find yet more reasons to deem “Islam” incompatible with modern secular democracy and its institutions.

The legitimate combat against racism experienced by Australian ethnic Muslims is not served by remaining silent on gay-bashing by Islamic ultra-conservatives or their attempts to theocratise public education and other public and community institutions.

It is high time that we collectively reaffirm the values of secularism as the only true guarantor of freedom of religion and of conscience, of intellectual freedom in our public education institutions and of the respect of the human and civil rights of all, in a country that would like to pride itself anew, in a post-Howard era, as an exemplar of a healthy, multicultural democracy.

*To whom it may concern 

I am writing to address incorrect information posted to your website in May 2008 and to ask that a correction be posted. 

In “Why ‘questioning secularism’ destroys religious freedom” Dr Bronwyn Winter makes statements about Hanan Dover, including that “…Dover was suspended in 2002 from her post as lecturer in psychology at UWS because of her homophobic views and practices”, and “Ms Dover was suspended under the University’s Equal Opportunity policy.”  This is not the case. 

“Suspension is an extreme measure,” states Dr Winter quite rightly.  Suspension can cause irreparable damage to a reputation and slow - even halt - a career. Incorrect rumours of suspension can also cause such damage. Suspension was not a measure used in addressing the issues that arose from the talk given by Keysar Trad and Ms Dover. Ms Dover cooperated with me as I sought to firstly clarify the nature of the talks and then to address some concerns that had been raised with me. After a thorough review, the University of Western Sydney addressed and resolved those issues in accordance with its policy. 

Ms Dover is a well known and valued community representative, and is a mental health professional. As a community representative who chooses to wear hijab, she provides a positive example to many Muslim women as a woman engaged with her communities: social, religious, professional, educational. She has made many contributions to the community and within UWS. She is an excellent contributor to the University’s Muslim Harmony Group which I have chaired over a few years.  

The University of Western Sydney prides itself on providing an environment that fosters tolerance, understanding, discussion and debate, in many cases for groups and individuals who have had limited access to such opportunities. 

Thank you for publishing this letter.

Yours sincerely

Rhonda Hawkins, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Corporate Strategy and Services), University of Western Sydney