Folks,

Please allow me to share the following article published in the viewpoint column of  Wednesday's edition of The Daily Observer newspaper. This particular column is very popular as it normally deals with very important issues of the day. It is very unfortunate that it is never put online.

The article is a lengthy one; so I will post part 1 today and the final part if am not very busy over the weekend.

As I had to re-type it in its entirety myself, I take full responsibilty of any typos and other errors. I shall however do my utmost to minimise them to the best of my ability so as not to distort the writer's views. I hope people will find it interesting.

Have a good day, Gassa.

I s The Gambia a secular State? - By Dr. Omar Jah Jr.

The problem:

The old idea that words possess magical powers is false; but its falsity is the distortion of a very important truth. Words do have magical effect - but not in the way that the magicians supposed, and not on the objects they were trying to influence. Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them....words have power to mold men's thinking, to canalise their feelings, to direct their willing and things.

                       "Words and their meanings" by Aldous Huxley.

Introductions
The theme, as I undoubtedly see it, is a hypothetical question whose answer requires a reasonable degree of scholarly creativity. It sounds naive that the overwhelming majority of those I have so far talked to, including some learned ones have taken its answers for granted. Contrary to well-respected view of this segment of Gambians and non-Gambians, this article intends to prove otherwise.

Let us first begin by posing two basic questions. What is a state? And: Is Gambia a state?

These questions, simple as they are, are necessary for many reasons, the most important of which is to demostrate that attribute of state, which can truly be described as secular.

A state first came into being in the shape of a city. Eurocentric scholars start with Greek city-states. The Greek polis and the Roman civit as had for so long represented the best  social and political units. The city-state, however, was not peculiar to  Greece. it was found in many places in the world including Arabia where city-states existed before Islam. As history unfolded, the polis was turned into  that vast Roman empire, which later disintegrated and its fragmentation can be regarded as the direct foundation of what has long been aspired and known as nation-states. It should, however, be acknowledged that the concept of state goes beyond the polis and civitas. It started with an individual to a family, to a clan and to tribe. It is therefore, an elusive concept.

Having outlined this historical background, I will now ascribe to the view of those scholars who have defined state by exhibiting its basic characteristics. To do so, I will base myself on Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States (1933). It says: The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications. (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government, and (d) capacity to enter into relations with states.

It is appropriate to note that although the term 'state' has been used interchangably with the term government, this definition seems to have become part of customary international law. According to this definition, in order for an entity to be called a state, it has to fulfil the above-stated conditions: a defined territory, government, capacity to fulfil its rights and duties vis-a-vis other states and a permanent population. According to this acceptable definition, the answer to our second question is yes, The Gambia is a state.

Development
Having dealt briefly with the simple part, let us now turn our attention to the gist of the matter. In order to test our hypothesis, the term secular must be carefully analysed. I firmly belive that most people who use the term do not quite understand its real meaning. Most of them do not take its historical development into consideration and as a result, they fail to see that it is a philosophical programme whose main target is to despiritualise human reasons and language.

The term 'secular', from Latin saecularis or speculum, conveys a meaning with a marked dual connotation of time and location; the time refering to the 'now' or 'present' sense of it and location to the 'world' or 'worldly' sense of it. Thus speculum means 'this age' or 'the present time', and this age or the present time refers to events in this world. The terms of the overall meaning of secularism can already be discerned from its literal meaning.

To secularise can technically mean to deliver man first from religious and then metaphysical control over his reason and his language. It is "the losing of the world from religious and quasi-religious understanding of itself, the dispelling of all closed world views, the breaking of all supernatural myths and sacred symbols etc." As a result secularisation comprises the disenchantment of nature, the desacralisation of politics and the deconsecration of values. According to Max Weber, as quoted ibid, disenchantment of nature means freeing it from its religious overtones. By desacralisation of politics meant the abolition of sacral legitimate of political power and authority. By deconsecration of values it is meant the rendering transient and relative all cultural creation and every value system which for them includes religion and world views and as a result, the future is subject to change and man is free to create the change in an evolutionary process. The sum up of the definitions we have gathered from a number of famous English encyclopedias and dictionaries expressed two main points related to the term: (a) worldly materialistic and relatavistic philosophy and (b) rejection of religion as the basis of morally, education and civic affairs.

It is now apparent that laymen or half-baked intellectuals can hardly comprehend the philosophical programme of secularism and secularisation. Some would confine their meanings to a mere separation between religion and state that is the desacralisation of politics.

Such restriction of the meaning of secularism is due either out of our ignorance of the historical background of the term or to the secular tactics and mechanisms used by those who consciously advocate, live for and spread the idea of the East.

Having dealt conscisely with the technical definition of secularism and secularisation, it is appropriate at this point to ask the reader a question. Given the definition of secularism whose target is human reason or intellect, which one of the attributes of state mentioned above can be described as secular?

Secularism is a form of magic and secularists are magicians. The target of magicians is human psychology and reason. And like magic, secularism does not usually affect the essence or quiddity of being but it affects its psychology first and then controls his reason.

That being the case, apart from the people, none of the attributes of state can be described as secular. A defined territory, as an attribute of state, cannot be described as secular because it does not have reason. By the same token, government devoid of the governors cannot be described as secular for the same reason mentioned above. The same thing is true for the third attribute that is the capacity to interact with states. Since all these qualifications cannot truly be described as secular, the only attribute that can truly be as such is the people who permanently or temporarily reside in the territory concerned.

The two opposite world views

But the question here is whether the people of The Gambia are in fact secular?

The answer to our theme depends entirely on the right answer to this particular question.

Given its definition and dimensions outlined above, secularism seeks to replace but not to conform to religion. Secularism as a historical process, which has its roots in antiquity, has a total sweep.

Whether it is sociology as developed by August Compete and Emile Dukheim or the economics of Adam Smith or the political thoughts of Locke, Hobbes and Mills or the psychology of Sigmund Freud, the tenets of seularism are always present. Its easy ascendency in the West was not accidental. The West's makeup from the beginning was reconciled to the separation of religion and state. The Lutheran revolt and the protestant movement are the much later manifestation of a mind-set shaped under the impact of intellectual strings of enlightenment  in the 18th century. If ever there had been any religion that endorses secularism, such a religion itself can never stand a devine scrutiny.

Given the fact that more than 90% of the citizens of The Gambia are Muslims, are the people of The Gambia secular? This question brings us to another question, which is: Can a Muslim be secular? The answer to which is absolutely NO.

There can be an ignorant muslim but because of the following reasons there can never be a secular Muslim: a Muslim is the one who recognises and acknowledges Allah as his only Lord who created him from naught, who sustained him in his mother'e womb and who gives him knowledge after coming out of that womb knowing nothing at all, who consciously understands that all his external and internal sense, perceptions, which constitute his rationality and thus his being are mere gifts from the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent and the Omniscient who, contrary to the claims of the philosophers, know all generals and particulars of life, who recognises the vicegerency of Allah of his proper place in the realm of creation, the one who is certain that the devine values are permanent values and finally the one who believes that what seems to be a contrary dualism in this material existence is nothing but complementary objects that represent a unity which in turn manifests the immaterial underlying absolute reality. In addition to this belief, which is the function of reason and heart, a Muslim consciously demonstrates it in practice. A Muslim therefore, is not the one who only loves Allah but the one who truly demonstrates that love by practicing what that love really implies.

In short a Muslim is that individual who is guided by the worldview of Islam.

To be continued.

There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see, yet small enough to solve. -Mike- Levitt-