ANTHONY C. GRAYLING

Western secularism and representative democracy were hard won, over centuries, and reside at the core of Euro-American identity. They are amendable to discussion but not compromise.

Secularism is a very neutral thesis that simply states that all religions, and the state – and its sources of authority – should be kept very distinct from one another so that different religions can flourish and survive without any one of them being privileged above the others so the public domain in the state can be a neutral one where everyone meets as equals.

Christianity's hundreds of years of crusades against Islam, pogroms against Jews, and inquisitions against heretics, was the desire to expunge heterodoxy and 'infidelity', or at least to effect forcible compliance with prevailing orthodoxy. Islam's various jihads and fatwahs had and have the same aim, and it spread half way around the world by conquest and the sword….It is only where religion is on the back foot, reduced to a minority practice, with an insecure tenure in society, that it presents itself as essentially peaceful and charitable.

Christianity's hundreds of years of crusades against Islam, pogroms against Jews, and inquisitions against heretics, was the desire to expunge heterodoxy and 'infidelity', or at least to effect forcible compliance with prevailing orthodoxy. Islam's various jihads and fatwahs had and have the same aim, and it spread half way around the world by conquest and the sword….It is only where religion is on the back foot, reduced to a minority practice, with an insecure tenure in society, that it presents itself as essentially peaceful and charitable.

Western secularism and representative democracy were hard won, over centuries, and reside at the core of Euro-American identity. They are amendable to discussion but not compromise.

Secularism is a very neutral thesis that simply states that all religions, and the state – and its sources of authority – should be kept very distinct from one another so that different religions can flourish and survive without any one of them being privileged above the others so the public domain in the state can be a neutral one where everyone meets as equals.