Sects: Social Scourge or Scapegoat? Jean Baubérot at the CICNS Colloquium

Jean Baubérot is a French historian and sociologist, the founding holder of the chair “History and Sociology of Laïcité” at the École pratique des hautes études and a leading specialist in the history of French secularism. He was notably the only member of the Stasi commission not to vote for its conclusions, which prescribed, among other things, the prohibition of the veil at school. In this address at the CICNS colloquium « Sectes : fléau social ou bouc émissaire ? » (“Sects: social scourge or scapegoat?”), he situates the French “sects” debate within the long history of laïcité.

CICNS colloquium address. (English translation of the excerpts published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 24 November 2011; the French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation.)

[Interviewer]: Jean Baubérot holds the chair of History and Sociology of Laïcité at the École pratique des hautes études. He is the author or co-author of some twenty books, including a historical novel and Histoire de la laïcité en France, whose fourth edition appeared in February 2007. He is an internationally recognized expert, engaged in society’s debates. He was notably the only member of the Stasi commission not to vote for its conclusions, which prescribed, among other things, the prohibition of the veil.

From his address during this day of reflection, we have selected here an important light shed on medicine — which, with the school, is the privileged site of the conflicts between the French State and minorities of conviction — several elements of a fundamental approach to freedom of thought and, to begin with, some historical perspectives on laïcité.

[Baubérot]: Laïcité is rooted in a long history that could obviously be traced back to the beginning of time, but let us say it can be traced back to Philip the Fair and his jurists — with Rome, Philip the Fair, king of France, taking up in some measure the fight that the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire had waged before him. It is a tradition of religious nationalism in which the king of France wants to be, in a way, “the bishop from without”, as it is called: he wants to keep watch over religion, and at the same time for religion to be somewhat… it is a religion of the nation. Normally, laïcité ought to break with that tradition, since laïcité is, notably, the separation of religion and the State. But in fact, French laïcité took over, in good part, this Gallican tradition of surveillance, of domination of religion by the political power, and at the same time of officialization of a certain religion as a national religion.

Laïcité was a strong element of what has been called republican identity, in the face of the Catholics who, globally, in their dominant tendency, were for a very long time monarchists. And throughout the 19th century there was this politico-religious conflict, and one could say that the law of 1905, precisely, by separating religion and the State, put an end to the conflict of the two Frances. Well, that is true and not true. It is true because it gave a juridical solution to that conflict — a juridical solution in which officiality no longer existed, but in which there was more liberty for the churches. So: less officiality, more liberty. But at the same time, it did not give a complete solution to the conflict, because the conflict continued on the terrain of the school.

Finally, in 1984, there is a possibility for laïcité to become consensual, since the school conflict comes to an end. It is at that moment that laïcité constructs new adversaries for itself: it will be what will come to be called the sects. Now, there are events, there are a number of painful affairs which obviously also explain this, but there is also the construction of a new adversary, and that will be Islam, with the first headscarf affair in ‘89. There too, there are events that explain it — at the beginning of ‘89 there is the Imam Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, etc. All of that is not absolute nonsense, but there is this consensual laïcité which needs new adversaries, and which will all the more enable a reconciliation of the former two Frances in conflict — in fact, of Catholicism and of the laïque movement, which was often somewhat anti-religious, in some of its members at any rate, not all of them fortunately, but in some of its members. They will be reconciled on the backs of these new adversaries.

The prohibition of the so-called illegal practice of medicine dates from the year XI. And that is a moment when medicine has not yet taken off scientifically and technically, and when the physician of the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries strangely resembles Molière’s physician, whom Molière stigmatized because, in fact, he hardly knew how to cure. In Great Britain, which was nevertheless more advanced scientifically and technically in medicine, the prohibition of the illegal practice of medicine would arrive fifty years later. That is to say, it would accompany that scientific and technical take-off; it would not precede it. The legitimacy of Anglo-Saxon medicine could not be merely scientific and technical; it had to be ethical as well. Ethical rules in Anglo-Saxon medicine, English and American, played a more important role than in France, where this sacralization of the institution deprived the physicians, I would say, of that ethical reflection. They did not need it: they had the State, in any case, which made them win the lawsuits they brought against the people who engaged in the so-called illegal practice of medicine.

And so, why this difference? Because from the moment those laicizing regimes — the regimes that claimed 1789, the regimes that claimed the tricolour flag — took their distance from religion, they needed a new source of legitimation, and that new source of legitimation was science — but Science with a capital S. And so, if you will, the political power instilled belief in Science with a capital S, and France was the homeland of positivism.

To take up the example of the women called Islamic: when you go to an airport, everyone finds it normal that men search men and women search women. And yet these are people who have a professional conscience just as much as physicians do, who do their job, and whom one has no reason to suspect a priori, if you will, of wanting to do anything other than their job. But by contrast, it will seem absolutely staggering when a woman asks to be treated by a woman doctor, insofar as possible. Double standard. That clearly shows this sacralization: on one side a trade — the trade of screener at the airport — and on the other side a sacralized personage who is said to have no sex.

French laïcité is a dialectic between freedom of conscience and freedom of thought. Now, I personally think it is a good thing to have not only the concern for freedom of conscience — freedom of thought, on condition that freedom of thought not be « dévoilée » [as machine-heard; plausibly « dévoyée », led astray]. Freedom of thought is the attempt that everything received and inculcated should become, insofar as possible — there is never absolute liberty — but become, insofar as possible, choices. That is to say: one will either interiorize, or change. You are born into a religion and that religion is inculcated in you, or you are born among militant atheists and that religion is inculcated in you. And at some point in your life, you must have received enough diverse information, enough diverse instruments of knowledge, to choose whether you interiorize the religion or the atheism that was transmitted to you, or whether you decide to change. To change religion, to have none, or to convert to a religion. That is freedom of thought, and in itself, personally, I find it a very good thing. It is what is called libre-examen — free inquiry — and indeed the university where my friend Anne Morelli teaches was founded precisely on this theme of free inquiry, and it is very precious.

There is always the temptation to consider one’s own word, one’s own discourse, as superior to the others. And in fact, on the pretext of teaching freedom of thought, to teach a new doctrine. And for the teacher there is always the temptation to say: what your parents tell you is no good, it is tradition, it is this, it is that — and I, the master, will teach you the philosophical truth, etc. You see — republican philosophers who are champions at saying that one needs a master in order to do without a master, but who in fact never do without a master: they are always in the status of disciple before a master. And that is where you see that, at the end of the day, at the limit, if you will, if one follows the process through, there is a risk of sectarian aberration everywhere. There is always a risk of what sociologists call charismatic domination, which is an englobing domination, in which meaning is given — a global meaning that more or less resolves all the various problems of life. And so the teacher, just as much as the leader of a spiritual movement, must be very careful not to be invested with this role of charismatic figure, of giver of englobing meaning — and so must be wary of himself.

In other words — and I shall end with this, to stay within the allotted time — I believe there are two aspects that are inseparable, and once again for everyone: which is, at once, to fight for one’s rights, to watch out for what is not what I call a variable-geometry laïcité — gentle for some, harsh for others, on the basis of social resentments — a laïcité, then, of cool blood, one that knows how to go beyond media emotion, beyond social resentment, to face problems with serenity, with vigilance, but coolly, if you will. And then, the fact of also fighting oneself — of knowing that in every human being there may always be a little cleric slumbering, if you will, and that anticlericalism, which, soundly understood, does seem to me something precious in laïcité, is something that must be fought both in others and in oneself — precisely so as to arrive, together, at finding a true freedom of thought. Thank you.