Is the Secular State the Final Solution? This was the rather unfortunate title given to an article by Muslim academic Suleman Dangor in his reflections on the secular state in a South African newspaper. He asked whether the secular state has worked. Has it become too powerful? Has it become ‘sacrosanct’ and its leaders ‘deified’? Has it become ‘fundamentalist’ in the sense that it cannot be questioned? Do some people, such as the military in Turkey, defend it with ‘fundamentalist’ zeal for their own ends?

South Africa proclaims proudly that it has the most advanced constitution in the world. This constitution is unashamedly secular, is built on a philosophy of human rights and comes out of a bitter experience in which rights were systematically abused. It might therefore be surprising to hear such reservations from a South African. But some members of the small Muslim community here, as well as ‘bible-based’ Christians, were uneasy about a ‘God-less’ constitution. Most South Africans, however, were sick of living under a so-called Christian constitution designed by racists who owed more to pagan Nazism than Christianity for their ideas. They were ready for the secular experiment.

It was not long before the downsides of the new secular constitution became apparent. A law legalising abortion was swiftly passed, all opposition simply being brushed aside by the ANC. Catholic schools also began to feel the pinch, their subsidies being cut back to the extent that they now receive less help under an ANC government than under the apartheid one. There is the possibility of a kind of partnership between religious schools and the state, but in practice this often leads to a state take over and a subsequent deterioration in the standard of education provided.

South Africans are not so doctrinaire, however, as in the US or France. There is little objection to prayers being offered at political meetings or in schools. Almost everyone believes in God in this secular state and we are all comfortable with expressing this and in going beyond mere tolerance of others religious beliefs to positive respect. The national anthem is a prayer - ‘Lord, bless Africa; may her glory be lifted up; hear our prayer; Lord bless Africa’.

The central problem of the modern state in Africa, is how to defend it from being staked out and taken over by internal or external political bandits. So far the record is not good. African states seem to be inherently up for grabs by the one who is the most ruthless and the most venal.

Whether the state has been religious or secular does not therefore seem to have made much difference. Vervoerd’s South Africa and present day Sudan are two examples of the religious state run by corrupt, racist and violent cliques. Secular Zimbabwe and Nigeria have very poor track records, the former never being able to shake off the violence inherent in its establishment when Mugabe’s forces ‘pacified’ ‘dissidents’ among the minority Ndebele ethnic group, and the former being systematically raped by a series of military regimes.

The issue for the state in Africa is not whether it should be religious or not but whether the state can function or not. Can it work? Is it viable? Does it deliver, for people?

However religion is relevant to the African state in one important aspect. This is the unfortunate competition between Christianity and Islam, clearly and often tragically seen in states like Egypt, the Sudan and Nigeria, where people are killing each other over the question, not of the religious state, but of the Islamic state. When someone like Hassan al Turabi of Sudan says, “We will only stop when the forces of Islam have raised the Islamic flag over Cape Town and the whole continent of Africa has been Islamified” (Lesch, Ann Mosely. The Sudan: Contested National Identities. Indiana: Indiana U. Press 1998), the present writer becomes nervous. When one speaks to the Comboni Missionaries based in Southern Sudan or to confreres working in Egypt, it is not reassuring.

The broad message is that in an Islamic state in Africa, as elsewhere, the Christian and non-Muslim can expect treatment ranging from irritating economic discrimination to straightforward slavery. With these prospects the Christian can be understood for leaning towards the secular state. The one attempt to proclaim a Christian state, in Zambia, was an interesting reaction to the growth of Islam in the region and to memories of the Arab slave trade. The Catholic bishops opposed it, but few people took it too seriously, seeing it more as one of President Chiluba’s political stunts.

In practice the choice for Africa seems to be between the secular state and the Islamic state. In the former there will probably be legal abortion and a measure of state control of institutions. In the latter there will be no legal abortion but non-Muslims will probably be second class citizens and Christian institutions will only be able to function by the grace and favour of the Islamic authorities. The ‘protection’ that the Qu’uran talks about for religious minorities can be interpreted variously and ‘protection’ always seems to involve vulnerability - the unacceptable face of ‘toleration’. In Sudan it seems acceptable for the air force to bomb churches, with people in them, and odd notion of protection.

But the key and pressing point still stands - that the state itself, whether secular or religious, has frequently been taken over by ruthless thugs who care only for their own power and profit. It would have clearly been preferable for the Tutsis of Rwanda to have lived under an Islamic regime that kept order and prevented the genocide, than the secular regime that failed them. For the Christians in southern Sudan, a South African type constitution, must seem very attractive, its abortion legislation notwithstanding, as they suffer slavery and slow genocide at the hands of Khartoum’s religious goons. Paris has always been worth any number of Masses to the power-crazed, and once Paris has been taken, the Mass becomes irrelevant. If denying the Deity is the route to power, that is also fine. As Kwame Nkrumah famously said, ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom, and everything else will be given to you’.

Is Africa’s dilemma any different from the world’s? China, the previous Soviet Union, the Shah’s Iran, Iraq, Syria, France during the Terror. These are or were all secular states which failed their people spectacularly. On the other hand so also do/did Israel, Pakistan, South Africa under apartheid, Iran under the Mullahs, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, Sudan, India - all states that are either explicitly or implicitly religion-based. It often looks like a case of the Devil and the deep blue sea.

It appears that neither religion nor secularism by themselves guarantee a state which serves the needs of people. Perhaps we need to look at secular and religious states that do, if we can find any, and identify the characteristics which enable these firstly to keep the political hyenas at bay and secondly to function properly. A word which was conspicuously absent from Dangor’s article was ‘democracy’.