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"Secularism, a leaven of civil peace and republican harmony"

2020-11-06T12:17:41.634Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - If a good number of French people adhere to the principle of secularism, a significant fringe of Muslims shows a worrying reluctance, analyzes Jean-Pierre Sakoun, based on a recent survey by the IFOP. According to the President of the Laïcité République Committee, we must do awareness-raising work on the issue in schools.


Jean-Pierre Sakoun is President of the Laïcité République Committee.

The IFOP-Comité Laïcité République (CLR) survey on secularism was to be made public on the occasion of the award ceremony of the CLR Secularity Prizes, on November 5, 2020 in the large salons of the Town Hall of Paris.

The ceremony has been postponed for health reasons, but the investigation is now published and available.

The FIFG carried out this survey according to the rules of the art, with a representative sample of the French population.

It has the originality of isolating several sub-groups rarely studied as such on this subject, Catholics, Muslims, non-believers.

It shows the massive adherence of the French to secular principles, which they support up to 88%, including the majority of the sample of Muslims.

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These French people who claim to be secular do so knowingly, as their answers to the very specific questions of the survey show.

We even note that, far from being satisfied with a secularism which would be confused simply with the neutrality of the State, they demand a secularized society, sometimes well beyond the rules imposed by the law.

Finally, we note with satisfaction that the Catholics are on all these questions just as favorable - sometimes more - than the whole of the French to an authentic and unifying secularism, protector of the freedoms and of the republican fraternity.

This positive finding is however clouded by the consistency, survey after survey, of the divide that we see within the sample of French Muslims between those who integrate secularism and those who are very critical of secular rules and secularization in a much larger percentage than the average French.

If they approve of the law of 1905 in the same proportions as the rest of the population, they are much more reluctant to appreciate at their true emancipatory value some of the rules which result from it.

66% of French Muslims oppose the right of teachers to show caricatures of religious figures to their students

Thus, 66% of French Muslims oppose the right of teachers to show caricatures of religious figures to their students, while 75% of French people are in favor, and even 80% of Catholics.

Similarly, 56% of them are opposed to the 2004 law prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols in public schools, colleges and high schools.

The most worrying figure concerns the opinion that religious rules are more important than the law of the Republic.

This point of view is shared by 38% of Muslims composing the sample and in particular 57% of 18-25 year olds, up 10 points since 2016, while Catholics are only 15% to affirm this superiority.

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Faced with this observation, the Laïcité République Committee, which has worked for thirty years to promote full and complete secularism, favoring emancipation and freedom of conscience, calls on the public authorities which seem to have, since the electroshock caused by the he barbaric assassination of Samuel Paty, aware of the major danger of Islamism, to rely on these 88% of French citizens who demand more secularism.

Among them, let us not forget our fellow citizens of the Muslim faith, assimilated and integrated, who share this aspiration in large numbers.

It is absolutely necessary to fight without delay, with all the necessary firmness and all the means of public order, against illegal acts, violence and crimes committed by the Islamists.

It is just as essential to regain the ground lost by secularism, at school - both among students and among many teachers - at the university, in public services and in local communities.

It is a long-term undertaking which requires conviction, consistency and commitment from those who implement it.

Secularism will be recognized for what it is, a doctrine of liberation and emancipation and not a set of coercive rules

It is under these conditions that secularism will be recognized for what it is, a doctrine of liberation and emancipation and not a set of coercive rules.

The Laïcité République Committee finally underlines that the Republic is indivisible and secular, that is to say united because it is democratic and promotes social justice and that the separation of Churches and State is the pillar of this edifice. .

The legislators of 1946 and 1958 made these ideals the inaugural phrase of our Constitution.

It is time to put it back in the spotlight.

Just as it is time to constitutionalize separation, by integrating this reminder into our fundamental law, the Republic does not recognize, pay or subsidize any religion.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-11-06

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