How secular is America?

Will Barack Obama's presidency usher a new age of tolerance in a country that has seen religious discrimination rise after September 11, 2001?

Nishi Malhotra  Washington DC

The Halloween festival, held on the last day every October, is an annual American ritual featuring kids and adults dressed in witch and ghost costumes, playfully spooking neighbours and friends with tricks and begging for candy treats. Returning home on the Metro this past Halloween, I was accompanied by the usual jovial cast of partying goblins and devils. Most people, however, were giving a wide berth to a lone traveller dressed in regular sneakers and sweatshirt - and a keffiyeh covering his face. That one sartorial item -an Arab scarf used sometimes to protect the face and eyes from dust - was his Halloween ‘costume'. Ironically, in the same compartment was another guy dressed all in black with a ski mask over his face - but no one avoided him.

The boy with the keffiyeh got off at my station and stepped onto the escalator right behind me. Halfway up I turned to him and jokingly remarked that he was scaring more people with his costume than he would with a Dracula mask. He laughed and answered in a distinct Chinese accent, "Yes, people think I am a terrorist and don't come near me."

This incident and the presidential election have lately had me thinking about religious discrimination and secularism in the United States. Although the US, like India, is a constitutionally secular nation, the word ‘secular' is used quite differently here than it is in India. To be ‘secular' in India typically means that one is respectful and tolerant towards different religions. In the US, ‘secular' has somehow come to imply a ‘godlessness' that is akin to if not the same as atheism. The subject is often the cause for heated debate between ultra Leftwing liberals and the rabid Right - the former are accused of wanting to ban prayers and the word ‘God' from schools and other public spheres, while the latter are seen to be Christian fundamentalists who want the teaching of Biblical creationism to replace Darwinian evolutionism.

American secularism is different from that of two other countries - France and Turkey - where secularism is constitutionally enshrined as well. In a paper titled Politics and Religion in Secular States, scholar Ahmet T Kuru states that the US embodies "passive secularism" which implies State neutrality towards religion. France and Turkey primarily practice ‘assertive secularism' which means that the State favours a secular worldview in the public sphere and confines religion to the private sphere. On July 12, 1995, the then US president Bill Clinton issued the ‘Memorandum on Religion in Schools' which stressed that "students may display religious messages on items of clothing to the same extent that they are permitted to display other comparable messages... When wearing particular attire, such as yarmulkes and headscarves during the school day is part of students' religious practice... schools generally may not prohibit the wearing of such items."

This memorandum was not an isolated statement but a part of general state policies in the US toward individuals' display of religious symbols in school. It also appears to be similar to the Indian practice of religious tolerance. But in an attempt to be non-discriminatory towards any particular religion, the US, despite being majority Christian, does not allow ‘The Lords Prayer' to be said at school assemblies in public schools. In India, of course, some government schools often begin their day with Hindu prayers.