LAÏCITÉ AND RELIGION

is the French term for secularism. Article 1 of the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State ensures “freedom of conscience” and “the free exercise of religion”. The state has not only a duty to guarantee freedom of religion, but to refrain from interfering in religion.

According to French-egyptian author and activist, Marwan Muhammad, laïcité has evolved from a liberal framework for freedom of religion, into a neo-laicite – an instrument for the demonisation and exclusion of any religious visibility (with a deliberate focus on Muslim communities).

Emmanuel Macron’s introduction of the “Imam Charter” has raised fears of state control over Islam, and violates the laïcité law.

Farid Slim, a former imam in southeast France, called it a “return to a colonial management of the Muslim religion by the state.”