Interview with Raphaël Liogier: Full Transcript

A university professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques of Aix-en-Provence, Raphaël Liogier teaches sociology and anthropology. He directs the Observatoire du Religieux and the master’s programme “Religion and Society”. He is notably the author of Le Bouddhisme mondialisé (Éditions Ellipses) and Une laïcité légitime : la France et ses religions d’État (Éditions Entrelacs). In the latter book he deciphers the mechanisms of secularism (laïcité) in France. In this lucid interview he gives us his view — without concessions to received ideas — of this French peculiarity.

CICNS interview, May 2006. (The original page linked to a video of the interview.)

French legislation (notably the law of 1905) implies the incompetence of the state in religious matters. In your book “Une laïcité légitime, la France et ses religions d’État” (Éditions Entrelacs) you speak of the notion of neutrality. What distinction is there between incompetence and neutrality?

There are large stakes in this distinction between “incompetence” and “neutrality”. In fact, we have there two possible definitions of laïcité which have fundamental consequences and which are rarely measured at first sight; and that is in fact what I try to do in my book — I try to measure them.

Incompetence of the state in religious matters?

It happens that when we evoke the notion of laïcité, we have another notion in mind: that of the separation of the religious and the political. Separation of these two spheres — even though, at bottom, historically, laïcité is not that at all. The very word “laïc”, during a very long period of our history, meant only — it is Christian vocabulary — the non-clerical faithful: believers, but not clerics, not priests. It is in the end a religious term, a Christian term. But today, what is understood by laïcité — what sounds in our ears when we hear the word — is this idea of separation of the religious and the political, which was manifested in particular in the subtitle of the famous law of 1905, which provides for the separation of the Churches and the State: a sort of illustration of the separation of the religious and the political.

What can this separation coherently mean? It can coherently mean that, at bottom, the state in particular and the public authorities in general — I say the public authorities because the state, today, is not the whole of the public authorities; as you know, the Region is part of the public authorities but is not the state, for example — declare themselves incompetent in a particular domain, that of the religious. And this is a type of attitude already known in our institutions, found in particular in the judicial order. When you have a legal dispute and you go before a commercial court, and the dispute involves a criminal offence, for example, the commercial court tells you: “I am not competent, since this is an offence.” An offence belongs to the criminal courts, whereas here we are only in the commercial domain — you must go before a criminal court. In the same way, if you go before a civil court with a matter that belongs to the commercial domain — a dispute connected with commercial companies — you will be told: “No, you must go before the commercial court; here you are before the civil court.” Because the court declares itself incompetent. That is what separation is.

Now, when I say that this is what the separation of the Churches and the State, the separation of the religious and the political — a truly coherent laïcité — ought to be, I am answered: “Impossible! How can you expect the state to disengage from a social phenomenon like religion, which is so important?” To which I reply, obviously, that I entirely agree — it is even my profession to study the religious, and I consider it a fundamental phenomenon. Nevertheless, what seems to me pertinent is a question of attitude.

What I reproach the French state with, in a way, is not concerning itself with religion; it is concerning itself with religion by giving definitions of what a religion is — that is, by judging what is religious and what is not. The French state does not manage the religious as it would manage anything else, as if it were a matter of settling problems of public order in the strict sense: public tranquillity, health and safety. No — every time, the French state feels the need to give particular definitions: this, is it religious? Is it not? And the result is an almost incoherent regime, almost schizophrenic, contradictory: within the law of 1905 you have the famous, almost founding sentence that “the State neither recognises nor subsidises any religion (culte)” — that is, there are no recognised religions — and yet there are recognised religions, since the Vivien report of 1985 [i] speaks of recognised religions.

What difference between religion and culte? You will certainly have noticed in my work, in my book [ii] in particular, that when the word “culte” is used in France — when the state in particular, and public intellectuals, use the word “culte” — it is to avoid using the word “religion”. Speaking of culte is a pirouette: when you go on to define what the practice of the culte is — to say “this is the practice of the culte; that is not” — you are indirectly defining what a legitimate religion is and what it is not.

Neutrality of the state

The whole problem of this French situation is that in order to do the opposite of this “incompetence” — that is, in order to intervene — another ideological support had to be found. And that ideological support was found in a notion of such ambiguity, and yet which seems to go without saying: the notion of “neutrality”.

When we speak of neutrality, what does it mean?

It is very strange, this notion of neutrality. Roughly, it means: “I deliver a discourse, I state a certain number of things, but I am neutral. In other words, I state them from nowhere; I have no position, I have no social position, I have no opinion, I have no interest — it is the famous general interest — I simply say it, from nowhere.” Now neutrality, unlike incompetence, is not a way of abstaining; it is a way of justifying that one may intervene at any moment — precisely because one is neutral, because one has no position, because one is on neither one side nor the other. And a discourse that claims to be on neither side, to be unsituated, to come from nowhere as it were — at bottom I have a synonym for this neutrality: it is “religious truth”. A religious truth is a truth, particularly in our monotheistic context, that claims to be “revealed”, such that it comes from nowhere.

So the state can permit itself anything; and being able to permit itself anything, because its discourse comes from nowhere, it is not subject to contradiction. In France there is no possibility, today, of contradicting what the state may do in religious matters. And so this neutrality — built up gradually by legal doctrine; it was not in the legal texts at the start — has made it possible to do, positively, the opposite of what laïcité meant in the sense of “separation”. And concretely, how has this been manifested? Very clearly, in the fact that France is one of the countries that intervenes the most in the religious domain in Europe — giving religious definitions, making religious classifications.

Historical overview

In the long run, if France is structured around this history of sects, of the religious, it is for deep historical reasons. To summarise, one could say that France built itself monolithically — that is, by eliminating the rough edges, by eliminating competing enterprises of meaning, if a religion may be called an enterprise of meaning.

It begins with Philip the Fair [iii] and the famous Gallicanism: the French state’s attempt to eliminate the external power of the Vatican, of Rome, in order to constitute a church that would be the ideological relay of the French state. It works — but the counterpart is that the clerics must be paid.

This monolithic, unitary situation was to be accentuated through what in France was called the absolute monarchy. What is the absolute monarchy? It is a new phase of elimination of all the intermediate bodies. The absolute monarchy rests directly, in theory, on the people, to the detriment of the intermediate bodies — in particular the intermediate body represented by the nobility, which was a sort of counter-power and which existed very strongly, for example, in the United Kingdom. In France the absolute monarchy, particularly with Louis XIV [iv], eliminated the intermediate bodies. That is in fact why there were ministers like Colbert who were commoners, and why the court of Versailles developed, where the nobility was there only to display itself, so to speak, to parade — all power was taken from it. This means that the absolute monarchy would rest directly on the people, and hence on a mystique of the people, completely unitary.

At bottom, this absolute mystique reappears in the construction of the Republic after 1789 — what has been called Jacobinism. And even, I believe, something that goes beyond Jacobinism. There is a mystique of this kind of direct and general will of the people, absolute, expressing itself always and everywhere.

We have a very good illustration of this principle in the difference that can be drawn between John Locke [v] and Jean-Jacques Rousseau [vi]. In John Locke, the social contract is established on the basis of “the interest of the majority”. And if there is a minority that feels itself in contradiction with the interest of that majority, it must yield; it can negotiate some things, but there are limits to the negotiation. It is recognised as having contradictory interests; but if it really cannot yield, it is told to go and make a social contract elsewhere: that is what happened with the Mayflower [vii] and the United States.

In France, that is not what is said. Since the social contract is founded on the abstraction according to which the majority determines the interest of all without exception, if a minority says: “I do not have the impression that what is being done at the level of the Republic, of the State, is in my interest”, it is told: “But you are wrong; if you have not realised that it is in your interest, it is because you have a faulty vision.” At bottom, it is told: “We are going to re-educate your gaze.” Already, this is the idea of manipulation.

Hence the importance of the school, of transmission. That is why I go further than the sociological hypotheses — which are very good — about the strength of national education in France, which is in a way the strategic site of this laïcité, with, since the Third Republic [viii], the imaginary of the schoolmaster transmitting values. You find this in republican philosophers — and among the most liberal at that — like Renouvier, who explains to us that the Republic possesses a spiritual power, that there is a legitimacy in transmitting universal values through the school, through education; admitting that there are religions, but these religions must be considered, in a way, as relays of this spiritual power. If religious values contradict this spiritual power, the religions no longer have legitimacy. That is what we see today. That is why representative institutions are needed. I speak of state religions. Specific state religions are needed, which must be considered as relays. If a movement stands outside these relays — if it does not belong to the Protestant Federation of France, does not belong to the Buddhist Union of France, and so on — then immediately it is suspect. It no longer constitutes a relay of this legitimate transmission.

This secular obsession with education does not manifest itself only from the Third Republic onward, in my view. The Third Republic concentrates it, makes of it something extremely important. But it goes back further still, to this idea according to which, when a particular interest expresses itself and appears to contradict the general interest, it is wrong about its own interest and must therefore be re-educated. It is indeed through education that citizens will have their true interest put into their heads. Laïcité is an education of the gaze.

Obsession with the religious and the multiplicity of association regimes

The French exception is an exception characterised by the obsession with the religious. I will give only one example, but a crucial one: associations. The law of associations is the right recognised to individuals to join together in an association to express ideas and pursue aims, whatever they may be. Of course, this right is recognised in France as it is recognised in most democracies.

But in a country like the United Kingdom, which does not claim to be secular — it is an “Anglican” country — there are two types of associations: normal associations, like our classic 1901-law associations — people gather, they have a given social object, and they get on with life — and then there is another type of association which the British call “charities”, that is, associations that fulfil a certain social function. How can they prove they fulfil this social function? Because they have a charitable posture; there is a social interest — what we call associations of general interest. It happens that there are only two types of association in the United Kingdom.

It is true that among these “charities” there are many religious movements. But if they are offered the possibility of being “charities”, with all the resulting tax advantages — the possibility of receiving donations, etc. — by reason of this general interest, it is not because they are a religion; it is not because a particular definition is given: good religion, bad religion… No, it is not for those reasons. It is by reason of their charitable, humanitarian or other activity. Mistakes can be made; there can be errors; there may be networks pushing for donations to go to this Church rather than that one; but in any case the official reason, in the discussion itself, is not a religious reason.

In France, by contrast: of course we have the associations of general interest. But on the religious side, you have the 1901-law associations, and then you have the 1905-law associations. The law of 1905 — which is after all supposed to separate the religious and the political — in one sense creates what? 1905-law associations, that is, cultual associations whose social object is the religious, the practice of the culte. And so a specific associative type is made for them. But if you are not recognised as practising a culte, you are not given that status. On what criteria can the state judge whether or not to grant that status, if not criteria that are themselves religious — this is the practice of a culte, that is not? So we have decisions of the Conseil d’État that are hilarious in this respect — they would make the whole planet laugh, except us French: it does not make us laugh at all; we find it very serious.

But it does not stop there; it goes further: diocesan associations. A diocesan association is specific; it must be recognised by the state. Would that be tolerated in a country that was not secular, as France is?

Further still — let us not stop while we are at it: the “congregation”. Here, with the congregation, we are squarely before a type of association that enjoys possibilities roughly equivalent to an association of general interest (charities); but as its name indicates — “congregation” — it is granted only to establishments considered as such, with all the debate that must follow to establish that it truly is a congregation, according to criteria which, as you can imagine, are themselves religious, which give a definition of what a congregation is. The Buddhists were the first to obtain congregation status outside the Catholic Church.

The advantages of a good religion

And then, in France, laïcité is characterised by something else: as soon as you are a good religion, you are awarded points — hard cash. You have the possibility of specific insurance; religious clerics can have specific insurance — life insurance, old-age insurance, a specific social-security scheme; the possibility of having prison chaplains; a whole series of things open to you. The possibility of television time on the public channel France 2 on Sunday mornings. All honours are permitted you: that is laïcité!

Then I am told: “No, the only exception to laïcité is Alsace-Moselle, Wallis and Futuna.” No: it is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that finances the Catholic congregations in Jerusalem; it is the President of the Republic who is involved in the appointment of bishops — and not only in Alsace-Moselle, in the rest of France too.

Could you illustrate this French-style laïcité with examples of “good” religions and “bad” religions?

It is true that it is a system of discrimination. And when I say system of discrimination, that is not necessarily pejorative. Discrimination is originally a term from optics: we perceive things only by discriminating them, by distinguishing them — we perceive relief by discriminating the deep from the shallow, blue from green, and so on. The problem is when a perceptive discrimination crystallises into a social self-evidence, a self-evidence of good and evil.

Now in France today there are perceptive discriminations — things that seem, even in aesthetic terms, not to be alike, not to behave in the same way; so we make a judgement of taste; we cannot help it; we find it in “bad” taste. You know what “bad taste” means: it is a way of avoiding having to explain why one rejects a certain number of things.

When judgements of taste translate into forms of exclusion — and that is the case in France in religious matters — then we have a genuinely legal and social discrimination. And this discrimination is manifested in the fact that in France we indeed have religions that are more or less good, more or less bad.

On a scale, we have religions that are merely more or less recognised, and then religions that are outright good religions because they supply values, they are positive — if they were not there, we would not know what to do without them. Those that are simply recognised — well, they are recognised because there is no alternative: traditional religions. There are those that are not recognised but are left alone because they do not move about too much. And then there are those that are outright the bad religions. That is what may be called “the sects”, for example.

The irrelevance of the public-order criterion

The whole problem, then, is to know: who are they, these sects? But above all, why does this religion, and not another, fall into this category? That is what I tried to work on, because I quickly understood that the criterion of public order did not enter into consideration at all — it had no impact. One could decide that any individual who undertakes to withdraw from society, who no longer wants to communicate with anyone, is manipulated. One could decide that, just like that; one would say it is the sign of a bad religion. But then one would have to include the Catholic Church. All things being equal, I never manage, using the criterion of “public order”, to find anything decisive for classifying this or that movement as a “bad religion” or a “good religion”.

So I am obliged to find “scientifically” — that is how one proceeds — other criteria.

The criteria of non-belonging

First of all, the first thing that puts you in the situation of being considered a not-very-respectable religious movement is the mere fact of being a minority and recent.

Then there is a formal criterion: the fact of not belonging either to the Protestant Federation of France [ix], or to the Buddhist Union of France [x], or to the CFCM [xi], or to the equivalent among the Orthodox, in Judaism, in Catholicism, and so on.

The education criterion

Another criterion, since we were speaking of education. It is simple: any minority religious movement in France that has pretensions to education, and that moreover expresses those pretensions by saying it will subsidise schools — better, perhaps even build schools — is almost automatically (it is mechanical) considered “a sect”. No one even thinks about it. I will give you a precise example with Buddhism: there is one Buddhist movement in France that cannot evacuate its claim to a social and educational project — since it was even founded on that in the first place: to transmit through education, which does not seem so horrific on the face of it. It is the Soka Gakkai [xii]. Immediately, systematically: “sect”. As soon as there is “education”, one enters into contradiction, into opposition, into competition with the monopoly that the Republic grants itself in the transmission of legitimate values through education. Any pedagogical discourse emitted by spiritual minorities is invariably qualified as “manipulation” at best, “paedophilia” at worst. It is this suspicion that makes it possible to fight, in the imaginary, against this pretension to education.

The aesthetic criterion

Another criterion is the aesthetic criterion. And aesthetics often passes unnoticed because it is so obvious, right in front of our nose, that we do not see it. Yet there are many aesthetic intolerances that are “euphemised” — that is, intellectually re-processed so as to be justified as differences of civilisation, differences of values, attacks on our fundamental values, on democracy, etc., all the grand words possible and imaginable.

And when you dive into what this attack is supposed to consist of, you realise there is nothing there — that in the end it is an aesthetic criterion, linked, in the most benign version, to ridicule: the Raëlians — it is because they are ridiculous. There is a sort of condescension toward the belief of others because it is not plausible, therefore it must be manipulation: “Come on, you see what I mean!”

If I am talking with organic intellectuals, members of the MIVILUDES, and I say to them: “These people have the right to express themselves all the same; it is freedom of conscience, freedom to express one’s religious convictions” — “Yes, of course, but then what do we do with these good folk waiting for flying saucers?” — “But still!”

That is what is interesting: the “But still!” It is a way of excusing yourself from having to explain; it is a judgement of taste, properly speaking. “Yes, of course, but still!” — “What? What do you mean?” — “Come on, you see what I mean — flying saucers, that is not serious!” — “But apart from the fact that it is not serious, does it justify taking a measure that deprives people of liberty?” — “No, of course, it does not justify that.” — “Then why do you take it?” — “But still!” We come back to the “But still!” So we are in a circular discourse from which there is absolutely no exit.

Aesthetics — what is it? The judgement of taste? It is a way of recognising the other, of recognising the one who behaves like me, who has the same vision of things, who dresses like me — and by dressing like me, I know I can trust him; I know he eats the same things, has the same tastes, etc., so we can reproduce together, we can live together. With the others, no.

This manifested itself very painfully, I think, with this business of the Muslim veil, in the sense that there was imposed — literally imposed, by force, what Bourdieu [xiii] calls “symbolic violence” — a meaning on the wearing of the veil which is not the meaning claimed by the very women who decided to wear it. It is terrible: they were told, “If you wear it, it is because you consider women inferior.”

But let us suppose, by hypothesis, even though it is false, that Islam were historically the most machist religion in the history of humanity: women are inferiorised and shut away behind veils expressly to inferiorise them. Why was no effort made to check whether in France, in the present social context, it might not be different? Why? Because, as the French state is a system obsessed with the religious, which essentialises the religious in itself, which claims to be rational, in multiplicity, but which in reality essentialises the religious — once it had a particular idea of Islam, it could only be that: if the veil at some moment signified that, then essentially it signifies the inferiorisation of women and can signify nothing else. Full stop. And no one has the right to say otherwise.

As a result, what was the answer given to young women who had something extremely coherent to say on this question — explaining that if they put on the veil, for example, it was a form of assertion both of their identity and of a return to a purer Islam, but that at the same time it was not at all in order to inferiorise themselves; that they laid claim to school (most of them, in fact, are among the best at school); that they laid claim to dominant positions; that they did not consider themselves inferiors; and that even, if they put on the veil, it was in one sense a critique of consumer society and in particular a way of not being the direct object of men’s desire —? The more coherent they were, the more they were told they were manipulated — and that the manipulation must be working well indeed for them to be so coherent.

That is to say: from the moment it has been decided that you are manipulated — since the meaning you give to your act is not the meaning it is believed you give it — everything you say will count against you. Never in your favour.

We saw that young woman of Turkish origin — her Turkish origin was played up even though she is completely French — who wanted to be coherent. She said: “I want to respect the rules of the Republic; the Republic forbids me to wear the veil; I forbid myself, for religious reasons — I do have the right to have convictions — to show my hair in public; what do I do? I shave my head.” What was said? She is manipulated; it is an absolute horror; it is a republican provocation. But what provocation? People said: “Yes, it’s her cousin, her uncle…” Yes, perhaps — and who does not talk things over with their cousin or uncle when making a choice in life? It is quick work, in that sense, to say there is manipulation.

The money criterion

Another criterion: if this religiosity has all the external signs of wealth, it will be suspected. And in particular if it makes too many donations, if it finances too many activities and works, there is something suspect, something strange; it must operate as a network; it must draw its money through illegitimate channels.

Classing and déclassement

In any case, any enterprise of meaning in competition with the republican monopoly is suspect from the outset. It must reverse the burden of proof.

One way of reversing the burden of proof is to be a recognised religion — thus to integrate into the large so-called recognised federations.

Next, it is to soften one’s “aesthetic”: not to play the “bonze”; not to wear a beard if one is a Muslim, or a headscarf. It is sad to say, but it is only that. Contrary to what is said, there are Muslims a hundred times more radical than those who wear beards and those who wear headscarves. But what counts — the law itself gives itself away — are the “conspicuous” (ostensible) signs. What does “conspicuous” mean? Only that is conspicuous which shocks, a priori, our judgement of taste. As proof, the example I often give: if you go to class in a state secondary school with an enormous t-shirt bearing an enormous yin and yang [xiv], it will pose no problem, because today the yin and yang is a naturalised, normalised sign, carrying the holistic [xv] self-evidence of world peace, the “cool” side of the average “surfer”. It is not conspicuous; it does not protrude. It is indeed a question of the judgement of taste, since it is just as big and just as religious.

The heart of the “sects” problem is a struggle over classification: how to fight against one’s déclassement as a “sect”? How to fight to be classified as “normal”? There is no possibility other than trying to be close to the official federations; no possibility other than trying to have the official aesthetic, to correspond to the dominant culture, the dominant taste. To eliminate any educational project, any project of transmitting values; that is fundamental. If you do all that — provided there are not too many letters of denunciation — you climb gradually from bad religion to the religion that is “not recognised” but left alone, and possibly, why not, to recognised religion. And then the good religion — that is the case of Buddhism. It is the good religion par excellence, which bothers no one, which lives in an intimist world, which gives the feeling of difference, of otherness — but in reality these are just middle-class Westerners of the city centres, who want to change nothing in the system, whose habits of life are the same as ours even if they claim to be Buddhists. So it looks completely different, but it is completely the same. It might as well be the best religion in the world: even Jules Ferry [xvi] said it was a secular religion.

The unemployment problem versus the sects problem

What you must understand is that the sects problem is roughly the inverse of the unemployment problem. Why? Because the unemployment problem is a real problem. Everyone has in their circle someone who has a problem returning to work, who is in difficulty, who knows precariousness, etc. You can pass all the laws you like, write all the reports you like, take every measure possible and imaginable — you can do everything, and no one will believe you if you say you have solved the problem; you will be laughed at.

Politicians try, in fact: they massage the figures; they announce a very slight reduction of 0.0001 over the last quarter of the last day of the last hour… Laws are attempted with a special contract which, over six months, will allow a very slight, conjunctural reduction so that it can be said that… whatever you like. But the problem remains, because it is a problem so vivid that it does not exist abstractly through figures; it exists concretely in everyday life, for everyone, for most of the individuals we meet, in every neighbourhood, in every family. So it is very difficult to manage; everything attempted is always doomed to a kind of failure in the collective imaginary.

It is the opposite of the sects problem. Apart from all the imaginary, all this generalised diffusion, there is no global social problem linked to sects.

Paedophilia is a phenomenon that developed first in the imaginary but had a certain impact because there was a lesser tolerance in French society for attitudes that were formerly hidden, so it came to light. But it came to light at every level: at school, in all our institutions, in families… At every social level, so to speak — everywhere. So there is no specific problem of paedophilia in the sects.

There is no specific problem of money. There is money in the sects because there are sects that are rich and sects that are poor; there are indeed sects with more people, others with fewer, with more success, less success — that is ordinary. There is no problem of embezzlement: embezzlement exists, but as it does anywhere.

So there is no specific sects problem — and in reality there are very few sects. There are many in terms of multiplicity, of the variety of different associations; but in terms of numbers, the impact on French society is quite small overall. That means that individuals who have concrete, real problems — with their neighbour, with their daughter or their husband — it is zero. In terms of social impact it is 0.000… I am not saying it does not exist; I am saying it is zero in terms of sociological impact; it does not register. Take a class of thirty people: there is one chance in a hundred that one person has ever had anything to do, closely or remotely, with a sect — a minority religious movement said to be strange, a so-called “new religious movement”.

By contrast, in the other direction, everyone has heard of the sects, and everyone finds them somehow more or less frightening, more or less bizarre; we have seen reports on the Raëlians awaiting an embassy from another planet — colourful people dressed in shiny clothes, fighting demons.

All this strangeness, which is fascinating, which is represented negatively, bizarrely — all of it is well anchored in the imaginary, very strongly. And it is played up somewhat in media terms because of the adhesion of certain stars, of the Tom Cruise type, to Scientology.

All this sustains the atmosphere, and so it becomes a problem. And then it is pure profit: the state says, we will pass a law, we will produce a report, we will set up a crisis unit, we will keep the territory under surveillance… The French are reassured: someone is looking after us, the territory is being watched — it is fantastic.

At a given moment they are told there is a very grave problem of sects — proliferation of sects, more and more of them, it is horrible. It is broadcast; two or three people who have been somewhat roasted live on air are invited, with pseudo-specialists, the duty psychiatrist, the duty abandoned wife; and this sort of emotional stew is cooked up with a representative of the MIVILUDES who has never set foot in a religious movement — and all this thickens the sauce, and people say: it is horrible; it is true that it is a problem.

Have you noticed how, at a given moment, the media construct a problem — something that existed at the same level two months earlier, but as there is a sort of media vacuum, hop, that becomes the new problem?

The sects are a bit like that; so it becomes a problem. The state seizes on the problem, takes a whole series of measures for six months, a year. Then six months, a year later, you are told: there, there are fewer sects. Everyone agrees — since in any case the problem had never been felt physically, unlike unemployment — everyone agrees that it is marvellous, what fantastic action. It is true that we no longer see any; there never had been any, but we no longer see any, so the problem is solved.

There is nevertheless a maintenance of this problem. At the beginning, the talk was of the great sects, the great movements. Now the talk is of micro-structures, of an enemy hard to apprehend, almost invisible, which justifies a substantial apparatus of struggle. As if this problem were maintained so as never to be solved. What do you think?

The advantage of the sects problem is that it must remain omnipresent in the background at all times, in case there should be a real, serious problem; and so we always have this little sects problem that can be brought back. The sects problem is also very agreeable for the intelligentsia, the organic republican intellectuals, because it allows them to say they are defending essential values — the values of the Republic, the person, individuality, whatever you like. You can say anything you like about sects: it is indeed a diffuse enemy that can appear anywhere; it is the representation of a permanent aggression that can take the place of the real underlying problems, the social problems, the economic problems, at every level. That is the conjunctural political interest of the fight against sects: the fight against sects gives the feeling that something useful is being done.

Could you give a history of the fight against the sects, specifying the “framing” of these symbolic struggles, in your own terms?

The religious at the Ministry of the Interior

In France, anti-sect policy is a policy housed essentially at the Ministry of the Interior. That is to say, it is a police policy. If it belongs to the Ministry of the Interior, it is because the matter is considered directly a police problem — of public order, of internal affairs, of security. Whereas in most European countries, policy relating to religious movements is a policy that depends most of the time on the Ministry of Justice. That is to say, no “judgement” has yet been made, when it depends on the Ministry of Justice. Whereas police means that it has already been judged dangerous a priori; a priori it is a risk; a priori it belongs to security. That says a great deal about the spirit in which this policy toward the religious is conducted in France.

History of the fight against the sects: from the MILS to the MIVILUDES

At bottom, laïcité is the manifestation of a dominant culture — a culture that dominates the social tableau, that imposes itself on the population while not appearing to impose itself, appearing to be the general interest, to be instituted, to be permanently in accord with a whole, and postulating that this accord already exists. But the reality is that, at bottom, this culture evolves — that is, there are elites who construct and impose it. It evolves also, obviously, according to the power of what are called lobbies, which impose an image: an image of what is a good religion, a bad religion, of what is good, of what is bad. And once the image is imposed, it imposes itself on everyone; it becomes self-evident; no one discusses it any more.

In religious matters there are the lobbies of senior civil servants, the republican lobbies, the secularist associations; there are the lobbies of the so-called “great religions” or “recognised religions”: Catholic, Protestant, Jewish… Then there are the atheist lobbies, the journalists who have a particular representation of what a religion is; and the synthesis of all this produces a dominant image of what is a “dangerous religion” and what is not a “dangerous religion”.

For example, the notion of the sect in the 1970s was attached essentially to an exotic imaginary: these people are a little strange; care is needed; it is childishness… In the 1980s, the image evolved toward that of the mafia-like, paedophile, secret, manipulative network. It evolved completely; we passed from one to the other, and as a result this determined a different type of problem and a different public action. It is what are called operators of meaning who produce this — people who construct the imaginary: journalists, people situated at every level, in networks, whatever you like.

Now, what I observed is that the moment of the negotiation over the vote on the About-Picard law was a pivotal moment. There was a rise in power of the notion of the fight against the sects, with the herald of this rise being Alain Vivien, incontestably, who was everywhere — at once at the CCMM [xvii] (Centre for Documentation, Education and Action Against Mental Manipulations), at the National Assembly; he had been a minister; he directed everything. He simultaneously directed a private association (the CCMM) and at the same time stood on the other side, on the side of the state, of the public authorities. He requested information from an association he himself directed in order to produce a public report. It was the rise in power of the imaginary of the dangerous sect. So we had a whole series of reports that you know — the Vivien report, and then afterwards the Gest-Guyard report [xviii], etc.

And this rise in power was translated, after the creation of an observatory, into the emergence of the MILS (Interministerial Mission for the Fight against Sects). It became inter-governmental, under the direction of the Prime Minister — a major problem. Interministerial means it is important enough to mobilise the services of the various ministries, which are asked to coordinate. We are no longer in the register of the simple parliamentary report. The lobbies it suits — secularist; Catholic; UNADFI: defence of the bourgeois family; CCMM: rather the “laïcard” scientistic side — everyone is happy.

It works well — but it runs away with itself. Last report of the MILS: Alain Vivien has the impression that he is at last going to succeed in purifying humanity of these horrible superstitious, religious dross — and this time he goes off the rails. In his report he begins to write that the sects… and then the religions, the fundamentalisms, everything, everything. So — “all the fundamentalisms”: one thinks of Islam; the Catholics begin to think of the Carmelites [xix]; the Protestants begin to think of certain neo-evangelical movements which are nonetheless part of the Protestant Federation of France.

It must be acknowledged that the lobbies of the great religions sensed at once that there was a danger in overdoing it; so they had let the rise of the sect imaginary proceed, because to a certain extent it suited them — it removed competition from their oligopoly; it purified the market, so to speak — but without going too far.

The ultimate culmination of the rise in power of the imaginary of the sectarian problem is manifested in this last MILS report, which gives rise to what? That fabulous bill against mental manipulations. In France, we adore the declarative function of the law. Here, it culminates in the About-Picard law: a law that adds nothing to the existing legal arsenal. But still, it is a law that is somewhat harsh, that can permit the dissolution of associations, that gives a rather broad definition of this notion of manipulation. It will be possible to intervene more radically, to penalise. A whole series of facilities that are worrying, that are at the limit of respect for freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom to express one’s convictions.

This law is negotiated: National Assembly, Senate. And it is also negotiated in the sense that — as is the tradition — the minister consults various organisations recognised as more or less charitable, which have an impact in the public space, to find out what they think of the law. If it is a law concerning the religious, the human-rights committees are consulted, on which sit the representatives of the so-called “recognised” religions.

And then — reversal of the situation: Élisabeth Guigou [xx] puts the question to these committees…: no, it goes too far; very negative criticisms of the law. As I was telling you, the principle of the sects is that it is pure profit; so the state is not going to trouble itself with something which not only does not exist as a social problem, but where there is moreover a risk of finding lobbies against it. So the law is emptied of its content. That is, the legal qualifications that were too harsh — which might have touched, at the margin, certain movements belonging to the great associations of the so-called recognised religions — are removed.

Following that, Alain Vivien and all that personnel were devalued, and that is when the MILS is transformed into the MIVILUDES. It is marvellous, because there we are at a sort of turning point in the imaginary. In the MILS one sees that in the meantime there was a reversal of the lobbies, which constructed a new image. With the MIVILUDES, one is only vigilant; we will not go so far as to persecute you — because before, there was the right to persecute you. Now: “you are a sect, but we have not said it is negative to be a sect; it is negative only if you commit abuses (dérives).”

Indeed, for a few years after the fiasco of the negotiation of the About-Picard law — which was maintained, which was passed — things calmed down; there was a transformation of the image of the sect, a little more openness, a little more debate, a little more adversarial process: the possibility for suspected movements to intervene within the very framework of the MIVILUDES.

Apparently, today, the situation seems to be hardening in the opposite direction. We would be returning, it seems to me, under cover of the MIVILUDES — even though I have not currently gone into the detail of this question — toward the fight against the sects.

Could you specify the role of the parliamentary reports?

One of the most specific springs of this policy is constantly to claim that one is not intervening — and thus to issue texts that are not legally binding, like the reports, which are merely indicative but which cause harm. That is: they are respected, used by the civil servants of the state, but each time in an indicative capacity, even if harm is done.

We spend our time saying that it is freedom of expression, that there is no problem, that the only limit is public order — but parliamentary reports are produced containing a list of religious movements which sometimes do not even know why they were put there.

As there is nonetheless a minimum of respect for law in our country — since it is well known that the adversarial principle was not respected in compiling these reports — they will not, in fact, be applied. That is, these reports remain merely indicative. They are only indicative — but they cause harm.

For example — it happened three years ago, but it happens so many other times — the representative of a religious movement considered a sect in France but considered both a religious and a humanitarian movement in India, the Sri Ram Chandra Mission [xxi], had his visa for France refused. It took I do not know how many weeks, months of negotiation. Why? Quite simply because at the French embassy, or the consulate — I no longer remember exactly — in India, they looked at the list: it is a sect. Finished; does not enter. An association considered in India to be of public utility!

There is a host of examples of everyday discriminations. I think of a young married woman, with several children, very happy in her marriage, who belongs to a movement called the Soka Gakkai. It happens that she flourishes in this movement. And very recently she lost a major client, with a letter sent to her saying: “If we are not giving you this contract, it is because you belong to such-and-such a movement, which is a sect.” Completely devastated, she goes — trusting her country — before the republican authorities, before the court, saying: “I am suffering discrimination by reason of my religious affiliation, which is punished by law.” Decision of the court of first instance — I confess I am ashamed for my country and for the judges who could write such a thing: “This is not discrimination by reason of her religious affiliation, because she belongs to a sect.” In a word: since it is a sect, she may be discriminated against. That is how harm is done.

Then it will be said: “But by what right do you say it is a sect?” — “It is on the list.” — “But the list is not legally binding.” — “Yes, but here we use it all the same.” By using this list, it means her religious affiliation will not be considered as such, so there is the right not to give her the contract on the pretext that she belongs to this movement. I do not know if you can imagine how discriminatory and fundamentally unjust that is. And she can do nothing. The only thing she can do is wait until all the remedies of our fine country are exhausted — I do not know how many years — in order to go before the European Court, which will obviously find in her favour.

I am not saying, once again, that there are no religious movements dangerous to public order — because anything can be dangerous to public order. There are multinational companies that are dangerous to public order; there are businesses that are dangerous to public order; there are individuals who are violent and dangerous to public order. I am in favour, indeed, of inquiries being made, of a whole series of measures against such individuals; there is no problem on that side, even for these religious movements.

What is astonishing in these reports is that — even before speaking of their use, which seems to me quite abusive given what is announced at the outset, namely that they are only indicative — in reality these reports are the open door for movements that might be genuinely dangerous to drown in the mass and proliferate much more easily than if it were decided to examine whether this or that movement is genuinely dangerous, taking all the required precautions. That would not be anything extraordinary — there would not be hundreds of movements — but at least it would be effective: people would have been questioned; there could have been an adversarial debate, etc.

But here one senses very clearly that the objective of these reports is in no way to target genuinely dangerous movements. That is not the objective — I am convinced of it today. It cannot be the objective; otherwise one would not proceed in this way; one would conduct inquiries, go on site, let people speak, see what is happening.

Synthesis

What I want above all to underline is this. I am told: “You criticise this system, you call it into question; but after all, the essence of the system is freedom of expression, the will to promote freedom of expression and of conscience; so of course you point out — and you are right — problems, grains of sand; the system is not being applied as it ought to be applied; but what can be done?”

That is not at all what I am saying. I am saying that, on the contrary, the system is being applied very well — but that it was not made to develop what people imagine. That is: in reality, the system of neutrality is a system of neutralisation, which was made for that from the origin. This is the normal application of the system. The fact that there is the MILS, the MIVILUDES — that is not a malfunction; it is the system. It is French public policy in religious matters. And how does it function? It functions quite simply by denying what it is doing at the moment it does it, in order to be able to do it more, without having to explain itself — since it has denied that it was doing it.

Once again, I am not saying that laïcité does not exist. I am saying that it exists; I am saying that it is an exception — but not an exception in the sense in which people imagine it. It is an exception in the sense that laïcité is a more massive intervention than elsewhere in the religious domain, and an intervention that presupposes ceaselessly judging movements according to a religious definition. The sociological definition of laïcité, really, is that. What one would not permit oneself to do elsewhere, in the very name of being a secularised state, one permits oneself in France because one is “laïc”. It is something rather paradoxical, but that is how it works.

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Notes

[i] Report submitted in February 1983 by the deputy Alain Vivien to Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy, on Les sectes en France : expression de la liberté morale ou facteurs de manipulation ? This report was circulated in 1985.

[ii] Une laïcité légitime : la France et ses religions d’État, Raphaël Liogier, Éditions Entrelacs, March 2006.

[iii] Philip IV of France, known as Philip the Fair, born at Fontainebleau in 1268, where he died on 29 November 1314, was King of France from 1285 to 1314, the eleventh of the dynasty known as the direct Capetians.

[iv] Louis XIV was, from 14 May 1643 until his death, King of France and of Navarre, the third of the House of Bourbon of the Capetian dynasty.

[v] John Locke, born at Wrington in Somerset in 1632, is the theoretician of political liberalism. The idea developed in his work Two Treatises of Government, published in 1690, is the necessary subordination of the activity of governors to popular consent.

[vi] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born 28 June 1712, died 2 July 1778, was a French-language Swiss writer and philosopher.

[vii] The Mayflower, a merchant vessel, is the ship that carried about a hundred English migrants to North America in 1620.

[viii] The Third Republic was, strictly speaking, the political regime of France from 1875 to 1940.

[ix] Founded in 1905, the Protestant Federation of France gathered, in 2006, 22 Churches and 81 communities, institutions, works and movements for a common witness.

[x] The Buddhist Union of France, founded in 1986, maintains the links between the Buddhist associations and the public authorities as a whole.

[xi] The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) is an association intended to represent the Muslims of France. The consultation initiated in 1999 by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, continued by Daniel Vaillant, culminated in 2003. The association was officially created with the support of Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior.

[xii] The Soka Gakkai is a spiritual movement founded in 1930 in Japan by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, which refers to the teaching of Nichiren Daishonin, a thirteenth-century monk.

[xiii] Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist (1930–2002). It would appear that the expression “society of control” was proposed by Gilles Deleuze (taking up an invention of William Burroughs) to designate the societies that followed the end of the disciplinary institutions.

[xiv] In Chinese philosophy, the yin (pinyin: yīn) and the yang (yáng) are two symbiotic and complementary categories, which can be found in all aspects of life and the universe.

[xv] The principle of holism (from the Greek ολoς (holos): whole) holds that one knows a being when one knows the whole — the totality — of the system of which it is a part.

[xvi] Jules Ferry (1832–1893), French politician. As Minister of Public Instruction he promulgated the Ferry laws of 1881 and 1882, which made primary instruction compulsory for boys and girls aged 6 to 13. The state school then became free and secular.

[xvii] The Centre for Documentation, Education and Action Against Mental Manipulations (CCMM), founded by Roger Ikor in 1981.

[xviii] Parliamentary report No. 2468 of the National Assembly, produced in the name of the commission of inquiry into sects, known as the “Gest-Guyard report”. This famous report, published in January 1996 and drawing up a list of 172 sects, issued from a parliamentary commission and therefore has no normative value.

[xix] Carmelite friars and nuns, contemplative Catholic religious orders.

[xx] Élisabeth Guigou was Minister of Justice in 2001.

[xxi] The Sri Ram Chandra Mission (SRCM) was registered in India in 1945. The Mission is a non-profit spiritual organisation, in India and in every country where it is registered. Its members practise the Sahaj Marg system of meditation.