Session 3
Citizenship and Political Participation
Dr Theodoros Koutroubas
Thank you professor. I would also like to address the issue of citizenship and political participation. I think that in the modern, secular conception of citizenship, a citizen is somebody who has rights and duties and, who in the framework of representative democracy, participates in the making of the norms, the making of the laws. A citizen is somebody who has the right as everybody residing in a modern secular country, to change his or her religion, to adopt another one, to choose for non-religious values in order to run his/her life and then change his or her mind again. Of course there are citizens who profess the Muslim religion, as I think that there are still some who profess the Christian one !, but I'm not sure that it is productive to put the adjective Muslim or Christian in front of the word citizen. It is true on the other hand that citizenship, effective citizenship, real citizenship, is not everywhere lived in the same context.
There are countries, like for example, Greece or Ireland, where the dominant religion, the religion at least openly professed by the majority of population is so closely linked to the national identity that non-Orthodox or non-Catholic people, in the case of Ireland,, are automatically considered by the majority of the population more or less as foreigners. And even though legally they enjoy all the rights linked to citizenship, the fact that they are considered like strangers affects political participation and the challenge here is to emancipate effective citizenship from this. On the other hand there are countries as Belgium, for example, which have evolved into culturally plural collectives, nationally plural collectives as well, many languages are spoken, people are not coming even from the same ethnic background and so on and so forth. Then in the case of these countries, it is true, in the case of France as well, religion as a component of the majority's conception of their own identity is not very important, and thus religious concerns do not play a very important role with regards to political participation. Probable ethnic origins do. Thus, I'm a little bit uneasy again when we talk of the Muslim vote. How do we know that these people vote in favour of this party because they are Muslim?
Why for example couldn't we think that people of Maghrebian origin in France vote in favour of the socialist party, because of its pro-immigration attitudes and stop there? Why should we explain this vote with regards to their Muslim origins. I mean after all the socialist party is rather anti-clerical, anti-religious, whilst most of the right wing parties have a rather more pro-religious tendency. They're rather in favour of citizens bringing their religious beliefs in the political arena, so that’s why I am a little bit uneasy with that. In Belgium we have recently seen a significant number of elected persons and of candidates- we have now our elections on the 18th of May - who come from a Muslim background. It is interesting to note : people coming from a Muslim background culturally, do not necessarily confess the Muslim religion. For example we have a significant minority in Belgium of Christians coming from majoritatively Muslim countries and I have the feeling that these people have much more cultural affinities with Muslim Belgian citizens or citizens who were originally Muslim and they live in Belgium than with the Belgians who were born there. So we have many candidates, we have a significant number of elected persons who are from a Muslim background and it is interesting to note that almost all of them have chosen not to bring religion, to make religion a part of their political agenda. On the other hand it is discussed a lot that those, the few of them who have made religion a part of their political agenda, have contributed to the discourse of the extreme right wing parties who then are trying to profit from xenophobic feelings in a part of the population who feels frustrated for many economical or other reasons. So the challenge there is to contain extremism coming from both sides, whilst informing, at the same time, all of the citizens on their rights and on the benefits of a society which guarantees equality for all. Another issue is to extend the rights of citizenships, the rights of legal citizenship, so including political participation, the right to stand for election, to those who are living in the country, but wouldn't like to change their original passport for many reasons, sometimes for affective reasons. Another issue might be the tendency that we see in some countries to treat Muslim citizens, again it's a term I'm not easy with, as citizens with special cultural needs. I think that it would be more productive to conceive religion as a private affair, whilst political participation- of course religion inspires agendas being completely legitimate - should become more, let's say, secular. Not in the sense of anti-clerical, but secular in the sense of viewing citizens as citizens, as participants in the political entity, rather than as members of a religious (or other) community. I think the State should be above all a community of individual citizens linked by common values and not a composition of communities defending specific agendas. Thank you.
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