In the political dialogues these days, focused on the future government in Afghanistan, experts have emphasized the necessity of political secularism. With the experience of Taliban and Mujahideen rule in the 1990s, in addition to the governments of Iran and Sudan, which have provided us with enough assets to evaluate this experience and dialogue, secularism is an issue that should have been discussed a long time ago.
For many years, fundamentalist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Iranian government, and the Taliban have introduced secularism as a synonym for anti-religion, atheism and a term disrespectful of religion, having warned the people that by promoting this system of government, their sanctities will be violated and their values will be trampled. The resort of extremist groups in Afghanistan to terror and explosions meant that no one found the ability to challenge their propaganda, and it was in this way that this lie became the dominant and the fundamentalist discourse was able to establish itself by relying on the promotion of suicide and terrorism.
Secularism does not mean opposition to religion, and in the political sense it only means separating two realms and determining the qualifications of each. One is the domain of mullahs and groups who consider themselves representatives of religion, and the other is the domain of the government, which is not the exclusive right of anyone. Secularism in its simple meaning is that no one can claim a higher right and privilege in the public arena by claiming that he is “the vicegerent of God and the caliph”. The public arena means a place that belongs to everyone and the government is a part of it. This field can be managed based on social contract and everyone’s agreement, and its monopolization in the hands of a person, a group, a religion, a class, or a social spectrum causes bloody conflicts.
Secularism means that the public sphere remains in the hands of the citizens without any discrimination and is governed according to the law. But in the private sphere, everyone should act according to their beliefs. The law is also made through public participation in the creation of the legislature, without discrimination among citizens, and no one is excluded from participating in this process because of their belief about religion. Based on this, religious people of any community groups can have their own temples, religious centers, schools, educational institutions, and media companies; as other citizens will have the same rights. According to this point of view, the activities of citizens in the public arena take place only within the framework of the law, and no one except the government has the right to use coercive power. A secular government means a government that is neutral in religious matters. It neither imposes nor prohibits any religion and applies the law equally to all citizens, regardless of their beliefs.
Historically, the emergence of secularism was a reaction to deception, tyranny, power-seeking and oppression in the name of religion to cut the hands of individuals and groups who used religion as a ladder of power and wealth. The experience of using religion as a tool, as it happened in Europe in the middle ages and the union of the church and political rulers marked a dark and bloody history, also in the Islamic world during the Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman and other kingdoms were repeatedly turned to politics by instrumentalizing religion. Political secularism is for the benefit of religion and to the detriment of those who misuse religion.