View previous stories
	Chileans elect their first woman president by Reuters / Open Democracy / The Guardian Chile   09 March 2006   Interview with Michelle Bachelet Chile"s new President, by Spiegel - Germany.   Michelle Bachelet, 54, who will be sworn in as Chile"s next president this Saturday, discusses efforts to deal with her country"s difficult Pinochet legacy, Chile"s dramatic economic growth and Latin America"s leftward swing.   Spiegel: Ms. Bachelet, your country is experiencing growth rates most Europeans can only dream about and you"re being celebrated as the symbol of Chile"s transformation from dictatorship to democracy. Besides, you"re also a socialist even (US President) George W. Bush can tolerate. Under these circumstances, governing must a lot of fun.   Bachelet: What"s most important to me is to be able to fulfill the hopes of as many citizens as possible. You"re right, I am South America"s first democratically elected female president. I perceive running the government as an honorable task, but also one that comes with a great deal of responsibility. That"s because the Chileans expect me to pay more attention to social justice and bring more democracy to the country.   Spiegel: You are a single mother, a physician and an agnostic. You have appointed ten women to your cabinet, and as many men. That"s the equivalent of a small revolution in a country marked by such strong Catholic and male-dominated traditions. Has Chile changed that much?   Bachelet: Women are the heads of one-third of Chilean households. In other words, I"m a completely normal woman in Chile. In fact, we have experienced a cultural shift in the last 30 years. Many women run social organizations, are union leaders and play important roles in their children"s schools. The only place where women were still absent was at the higher levels of government. My predecessor Ricardo Lagos"s decision to place women in powerful positions in the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry was ground-breaking.   Spiegel: On Sept. 11, 1973, you watched - from the roof of the medical school - the bombing, ordered by General Pinochet, of the building that housed the offices of President Allende, the Moneda. Now you"ll be moving into that building. What does that dark chapter in history mean for Chileans today?   Bachelet: It"s part of our history. We must take pains to process the things that happened to us, in the interest of truth, justice and providing compensation for all victims of political violence, regardless of their political affiliations. Full respect for human rights, not just civil liberties, will play a very important role in my administration.   Spiegel: Are the recently begun trials of former military leaders splitting Chileans into two camps? Pinochet and his family are under investigation for tax evasion.   Bachelet: A country that has experienced such deep trauma as Chile can never be completely healed. I"m a doctor, so allow me to use a medical analogy to explain the problem: Only cleaned wounds can heal, otherwise they"ll keep opening up again, and will likely become infected and begin to fester. It"s clear to me that the truth must be brought to light. Of course, there are those - but they"re a minority today - who just want to sweep everything under the rug. In a constitutional state, the government must take steps to ensure that the judiciary can operate without obstruction. The fact that I was elected shows that Chile has a mature society. And that"s why most citizens insist that no one should be allowed to place themselves above the law and escape punishment.   Spiegel: Your father, a general loyal to Allende, was arrested, tortured and died as a result. As a politician, you have avoided talking about reconciliation with past adversaries. Instead, you"ve referred to the process as a "reencounter." Why?   Bachelet: Reconciliation also means that the victim must forgive the perpetrator. But not everyone is capable of forgiving. It depends on the experiences of the individual, on that person"s ability to overcome them, and that"s not something that you can order everyone to do. But the government can establish the conditions under which the different camps can encounter one another in joint projects.   Spiegel: You and your mother were also arrested, and you were tortured at the intelligence agency"s notorious Villa Grimaldi prison. Years later, you encountered one of your tormentors in an elevator. Your eyes were bound when you were in prison, but you recognized the man by his odor. How did the two of you react to the encounter?   Bachelet: It just so happens that this man lived in our building and used the same elevator, quite a coincidence in such a large city as Santiago. It wasn"t easy for me at first. I found it deeply disturbing. It was also difficult for him, because we ran into each other at a time when he was facing various charges in court, charges for which he was eventually sentenced. Perhaps it was even more difficult for him than it was for me. I had already reached a new phase in my life at the time. But whenever he saw me or my mother, he was forced to think of his own crimes, the crimes for which he would be held accountable.   Spiegel: You lived in East Germany after fleeing from Chile. (Former East German President Erich Honecker"s widow) Margot Honecker lives in Santiago today. Did you invite her to your inauguration?   Bachelet: I have only met her in person once here in Santiago. It was at the funeral of the president of the Chilean Communist Party. But I have always made it clear that I was treated very well in East Germany when I was forced to leave Chile with my family, and I have very fond memories of my temporary home.   Spiegel: What does the disappearance of East Germany mean to you personally? And what does the collapse of most of the world"s communist regimes mean to you as a socialist?   Bachelet: People must choose their own what type of society they want to build. The world has changed tremendously since the end of the Cold War. However, I do believe that many people still yearn for greater equity, that they finally want to see an end to poverty, a world in which everyone has the same opportunities.   Spiegel: You were Chile"s defense minister for almost three years. Do you believe that the military leadership can now abide by democratic principles?   Bachelet: Yes, all of our institutions operate democratically today. For some time now, the armed forces have accepted the fact that the president is their commander-in-chief, and that the president exercises this power through the defense minister. In our case, women will assume both of these offices.   Spiegel: Will women serving as commanders-in-chief be more successful at integrating officers into society who have spent far too much time rattling their sabers?   Bachelet: I made sure of that when I was defense minister. I completely opened up military service to women, and I made it possible for women to advance to the highest ranks. I also took pains to bring soldiers into contact with civilians, and I ordered military training to include instruction on the workings of the constitutional state and the importance of human rights.   Spiegel: Despite all progress, some still claim that there are two parties in Chile, the military and big business, and that if those two entities are fully operational, the country can even afford a socialist government. Is there any truth to that?   Bachelet: Pinochet no longer plays a role in politics. A military career is a profession like any other. That was something I managed to make sure of as defense minister. The military no longer holds any claim to power today. As citizens, soldiers have the right to vote. I don"t rule out the possibility that many voted for me. After all, they know me. The business community also knows that I will continue to encourage growth. But I have made it clear that decisions over economic development will have to be made as part of a social dialogue, one that involves the government, employers and workers.   Spiegel: Last year"s constitutional reform finally eliminated the system of appointing senators, which Pinochet introduced. As a result, your coalition of democratic parties has the majority in both houses of parliament. Which remnants of dictatorship do you still plan to wipe out?   Bachelet: The election system, most of all, because it doesn"t reflect the true relationship among the parties. We must also safeguard the rights of indigenous peoples in the constitution. One of my biggest concerns is to get citizens to be more involved. This is why I want to decentralize administration and give regions and municipalities the opportunity to make direct decisions.   Spiegel: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has invented what he calls the "axis of good," in which he includes his country, Fidel Castro"s Cuba and the Bolivia of former coca farmer leader Evo Morales. Will you also become a member of this club?   Bachelet: I don"t want us to launch another Cold War, nor do I think it"s a good idea to divide the world in good and evil. One should never condemn any regime from the start. I want to work with everyone to combat the true threats to Latin America - widespread poverty and the fact that many, indigenous peoples in particular, as well as women and children, are not receiving their fair share of progress.   Spiegel:We"re likely to see a continuing shift to the left in this year"s elections in Latin America. What"s behind this?   Bachelet: Many citizens are dissatisfied with the way some economic models have affected their lives in the past.   Spiegel: Does the new Latin American left have a common denominator?   Bachelet: Our common goal is to enable our people to live better lives. But we use different strategies in approaching the shared challenge of bringing about more social justice. There are no standard recipes for all Latin Americans, not even in our cuisines. There are many problems - the energy supply, environmental issues - that individual countries can"t resolve on their own. The European Union could be our model in many respects.   Spiegel: Chavez is already calling on Chile to abandon its successful bilateral free trade agreements in favor of a Latin American alliance. Would you be open to the invitation, or is there a conflict in the works here?   Bachelet: I agree with many of my colleagues that we live on an extremely diverse continent. Nevertheless, I do believe it is possible to achieve a basic trade agreement in Latin America, one that we can all live with. I am optimistic that we will find this magic formula.   (The interview was conducted by Hans Hoyng and Helene Zuber. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan).   Santiago, Chile. Jan 15, 2006   "Chileans elect their first woman president", by Fiona Ortiz. (Reuters)   Socialist Michelle Bachelet was elected Chile"s first woman president on Sunday, taking more than half the vote, consolidating gains the left has made in recent years throughout Latin America.   Bachelet, from Chile"s ruling center-left coalition, had 53.51 percent of the vote while opposition candidate Sebastian Pinera had 46.48 percent, based on a tally of 97.52 percent votes counted, the government Electoral Service said.   "I want to congratulate Michelle Bachelet for her triumph," Pinera, a moderate conservative and one of Chile"s wealthiest men, said in a concession speech on live television.   Bachelet, imprisoned and tortured during the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, will be the fourth consecutive president from the center-left pact formed in the 1980s to oppose Pinochet. It has run the country of 16 million people since Pinochet stepped down in 1990.   Supporters began celebrating at Bachelet"s downtown election headquarters immediately after the official results were read on television by an electoral official.   "It"s a great vote for the republic"s first woman president," said Sergio Bitar, a former cabinet minister and top member of Bachelet"s campaign team.   A Bachelet victory consolidates a shift to the left in Latin America, where leftists now run Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela. A socialist will soon take office in Bolivia and a leftist is favored to win Mexico"s July presidential election.   Bachelet, a medical doctor and former defense minister, will be only the second woman elected to head a South American nation, and the first who was not the widow of a former president.   16 - 1 - 2006   Michelle Bachelet"s triumph, by Justin Vogler. (openDemocracy)   Michelle Bachelet has ended the male dominance of Chilean politics and showed how democratic pluralism is blossoming in the post-Pinochet era, reports Justin Vogler in Santiago.   Michelle Bachelet, the 54-year-old paediatrician who once described herself as incarnating “all the capital sins: socialist, my father’s daughter, divorced and an agnostic”, is set to become Chile’s first woman president after winning 53.45% of the vote in the 15 January run-off election.   Votes are counted quickly and transparently in Chile. When Bachelet’s victory was confirmed at 6.30pm on Sunday, all over Chile her supporters poured onto streets and plazas to celebrate. Improvised motor cavalcades formed with flags flowing from car windows and horns blasting. Thousands of women donned presidential ribbons to mark their collective victory. By 7.00pm, Bachelet’s contender, billionaire businessman Sebastian Piñera, had graciously conceded defeat.   From an improvised stage in Santiago’s wide central avenue, the president-elect addressed a joyous crowd. “Who would have thought it?”, she roared. “Who would have thought it twenty, ten, five years ago that Chile would elect a woman president?” Choking back tears, Bachelet went on to promise a new style of politics. “More consensus orientated, more participative; I’ve been the citizen’s candidate and I will be the citizen’s president.”   Chile’s rightwing press tried desperately to portray the race as a close one. But with countless opinion polls confirming her commanding lead, few doubted that Bachelet – representing Concertación, the broad coalition of leftist parties and Christian democrats who have ruled Chile since Augusto Pinochet stood down in 1990 – would win.   Religion, money and gender   The election result owes something to an environment of political and economic stability. The Chilean economy grew by nearly 6% in 2005 and the outgoing president, Ricardo Lagos, enjoys popularity ratings of more than 60%. But there are deeper factors at work. The election reveals how far this once pious, conservative country has come. As Carolina Toha, congresswoman and close Bachelet aide, told me: “Bachelet’s election is a manifestation of profound changes sweeping across Chilean society. It shows how Chile has been rapidly liberated from a huge amount of fear, trauma and hypocrisy in the last few years.”   Such value-shifts were played out in the campaign. In an appeal to the religious vote, Piñera had firmly opposed abortion and gay marriage and cast himself as a “Christian humanist”. Bachelet left religion to her Christian Democrat partners who skilfully sidestepped her agnosticism and identified her with progressive Christian values.   As the campaign progressed, Bachelet increasingly emphasised the theme of gender equality. She promised equal representation of men and women in her cabinet, and in the final televised debate called on people to vote for her as a woman:   “A president has to understand a country’s needs. I am a mother and a doctor; I know the needs of my family and those of my country. Together we restored democracy and now I invite you to help pass another milestone. Make history and choose Chile’s first woman president.”   Bachelet: from exile to stateswoman   Michelle Bachelet’s father was an air-force general, Alberto Bachelet, who served in Salvador Allende’s government and died under torture following the 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power. Michelle and her mother were held at the notorious Villa Grimalde torture centre before being exiled, eventually reaching East Germany.   Michelle returned to Chile in 1979. After a rapid professional and political rise that included two years as health minister and a masters’ degree from the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, she became Latin America’s first woman defence minister in 2002. Her successful, reformist two-year term in the post made her favourite to win the presidency.   Isabel Allende – socialist congresswoman, daughter of Salvador Allende and cousin of the author of the same name – told me in a recent interview: “This was the first time in Chile that a presidential candidate has emerged by popular demand and not through negotiations within the political parties.”   The journey to La Moneda palace has not been smooth. The initial attacks on Bachelet as a Marxist proved counterproductive in a country long tired of ideological animosity, so the next tack was to portray her as a political lightweight. The Oxford-educated historian Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt called her “a populist product of media marketing”.   Carlos Huneeus from the Centro de Estudios de Realidad Contemporánea (Cerc), a Santiago-based think-tank and polling agency, rejects this assessment. “The media and the polls helped position her but didn’t create her”, he says; rather, they revealed Bachelet’s personal strength and political ability. Huneeus attributes the president-elect’s success to her being a socialist who has both tamed and wooed Chile’s authoritarian military.   Myrna Troncoso, president of the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos y Eject (Association of Relatives of Disappeared and Executed Political Detainees), pays tribute to Bachelet’s “stateswomanship”: “she left aside her personal feelings and worked with men who tortured her and her mother and murdered her father.”   Adios Pinochet   On the other side of Chile’s historic divide, many in the armed forces have a high regard for a woman who, as one middle ranking army officer told me, “speaks our language and understands our codes”. As the first socialist to embrace the military since the 1973 coup, Bachelet has become a symbol of national reconciliation. Many in the military have quietly welcomed Bachelet-style reinvention.   For sixteen years Chilean politics has been divided between those who voted on different sides in the 1989 plebiscite called by General Pinochet to endorse and extend his rule. Piñera’s eruption onto the scene as the right’s de facto leader has at last broken that mould. Crucially – unlike his conservative cohorts and past rightwing candidates – Piñera voted against Pinochet in 1989. Thus, from both sides the 2005-06 election is a milestone in the process of Chilean democratic consolidation.   The emergence of a democratic post-Pinochet Chilean right is the culmination of a long process that has progressively seen Pinochet discredited and sidelined. In 1997, when he retired as army commander-in-chief and awarded himself the position of life-senator, Pinochet was still a pivotal figure in Chilean politics. Isabel Allende says that two events outside Chile – Pinochet’s 500-day detention in London in 1998-2000, and the subsequent discovery of multimillion-dollar bank accounts in his name in the United States – have decimated the 90-year old ex-dictator’s public image and left his lawyers fighting off numerous lawsuits.   “There are people who justified the human-rights abuses saying it was necessary,” said Allende. “But robbery is a different matter. In the parliament you see long-term Pinochet supporters feeling very uncomfortable, they can’t justify it any longer.”   Michelle Bachelet has said pledged to change the binominal (or first-two-past-the-post) electoral system that Pinochet bestowed on Chile’s infant democracy. This effectively guarantees the political right the same parliamentary representation as the Concertación with as little as 33% per cent of the vote; smaller parties, notably the communists, are denied any representation.   The right agreed to vote through a raft of constitutional reforms in 2005, eliminating the post of life-senator (also granted by Pinochet to other heads of the armed forces) and restoring civilian authority over the military. Introducing a system of proportional representation to replace the binominal system is widely regarded as the last step in Chile’s long transition to a fully entrenched democracy.   South America: the politics of inclusion   Marta Lagos, director of Mori Chile, sees a continent-wide pattern in Bachelet’s election; those long excluded from politics – for reasons of class, race or gender – are finally storming the governmental strongholds. Brazil’s Luis Ignácio Lula da Silva was a metal worker; the dark-skinned Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chávez the son of a village schoolteacher; the president-elect of Bolivia, Evo Morales, will be the first indigenous politician to reach the summit of power in the hemisphere since Mexico’s Benito Juárez in 1858.   The trend will surely continue. The Argentinean senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner may succeed her husband Néstor Kirchner as the next president. Peru’s election in April promises a runoff between the indigenous nationalist and Chávez protégé, Ollante Humala, and the conservative woman candidate, Lourdes Flores – alike testifying to the passing of an era in which South American politics was the exclusive domain of the white, male, middle classes.   Michelle Bachelet is not the first woman to become a head of state in the hemisphere. Argentina’s Isabel Perón took power after her husband fell ill in 1974 and, in 1997, Guyana’s Janet Jagan - widow of long-term president Cheddi Jagan – became the first South American woman elected to the presidency. But as Steve Anderson, director of the Santiago Times observes: “Bachelet is the first female president in South America to be elected strictly on her own merit and not as the wife of a ‘great man’.” Visit the related web page
	Can Politics remain Secular by International Herald Tribune / New Statesman   March 10, 2006   The twisted religion of Blair and Bush, by Phillip Blond & Adrian Pabst. (International Herald Tribune)   Secular Britain was shocked last weekend when Prime Minister Tony Blair said that God would be his judge over the war in Iraq. Similarly, President George W. Bush has often used God to justify the war on terror as a religiously blessed and righteous campaign against "evil doers." Predictably, those who oppose the war view themselves as secular progressives untainted by religious fundamentalism and the madness it produces.   Unfortunately for liberals, the origins of Bush''s and Blair''s religious convictions lie not within Christianity but rather within the history of Western modernization and, most important, within contemporary liberalism itself.   Religious fundamentalism has often been used to justify extreme political ideologies. Currently both sides of the war on terror legitimate their actions by perverted theological reasoning.   The neo-cons and their acolytes have launched a unilateral pre-emptive conflict, masquerading as a "just war," with horrendous consequences. In the name of good versus evil, people are being killed, imprisoned and tortured with impunity. Likewise, in a quest to rebuild and expand the imperial Caliphate, Al Qaeda and its henchmen are engaged in a modern variant of jihad: They have removed all traditional Islamic limits on warfare, propagating instead mass civilian death via the suicide of their followers.   The usurpation of the great faiths by secular ideology is not usually recognized. This process has a historical and a contemporary dimension. For all the major monotheistic faiths, their primary historical distortion lies with their utilization for the purposes of state formation and nationalism.   Both Judaism and Islam suffer from being religions that are synonymous with the construction of states and political power. This was recognized within Judaism by a constant tension between the prophets and the kings, with the former always calling the latter back to a true righteousness untouched by the corruption of power and avarice.   Islam had a not dissimilar distinction, with the imams often limiting the political ambit of the caliphs, directing them to a properly configured vision of an Islamic polity. It is disastrous that both of these critical religious legacies have been lost to a secular politics that now has no limits.   Christianity had a better start. For almost three centuries it avoided capture by the logic of the state, and was able to form human beings into a community that transcended class, race and geography. This tradition was eclipsed in A.D. 325, when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Since states put a premium on conformity and political allegiance, religion became a primary way to ensure mass compliance with state authority.   This dubious historical legacy was further compromised when, in the so-called wars of religion of the 16th century, European princes competed for power. Notions of race and nation were deployed alongside religion to formulate political identities that were ethnically and culturally exclusive. Historically speaking, secular nationalism and racism undermined religion''s universal claims and tied faith to state power.   Contemporary liberalism has championed the secularization of both religion and politics. In the name of tolerance and pluralism, secular liberals relegated religion to the private sphere. By denying religion any public import, this hitherto shared realm became drained of any objective moral beliefs. Society was atomized and culture surrendered to relativism.   Paradoxically, by privatizing religion, secular settlements produced religious fundamentalism. Confined to the personal sphere, religion is deprived of civic engagement that would mitigate fanaticism and foster moderation, and faith answers to no authority other than subjective inner conscience.   Indeed, this is why Blair thinks the invasion of Iraq is consonant with his Christian beliefs: On television he explained, "The only way you can take a decision like that is to do the right thing according to your conscience." The trouble is that once liberalism has surrendered any belief in objective truths, all personal subjective beliefs become true. Once all things are equally valid, the only way to attain supremacy is through war and power. Thus does liberalism make fundamentalists out of us all.   Hence, convinced of their own self-righteousness, Blair and Bush are blind to the reality of their actions. With religious zeal, they pursue their shared project to make Western hegemony irreversible. In so doing, they have embraced a profoundly secular logic - the destruction of traditional religion at home and abroad and the merciless expansion of market democracies across the globe. Blair and Bush seek to create a brave new world in the image of their faith, a vision that just happens to be irreconcilable with Christianity.   (Phillip Blond lectures in philosophy and religion at St. Martin''s College, Lancaster. Adrian Pabst is a doctoral candidate at Peterhouse, Cambridge University, and a research fellow at the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies.)   January 2006   Can Politics remain Secular, by Katy Long. (New Statesman)   "From the ashes of political idealism, religion has risen, seductive because it offers a simplistic division of right from wrong that suits both political spin and political vision.."   The politics of our secular modern age is the "art of the possible". In fact, politics might be better framed as a contest for the ownership of the universal ideal of a just society. Justice, after all, is as much the aim of sharia law as the goal of liberal democracy. In western Europe and much of the rest of the world throughout the 20th century, the pursuit of such justice through the political was presented as a purely secular paradigm: post-Enlightenment reason illuminating the superstitions and injustices of religion to the benefit of mankind and the progress of human civilisation.   In the first years of the 21st century, we have watched a series of events unfold, punctuated by the rhetoric of religious fundamentalism, that has torn through such fabrications of western secularism. Now, the media and the political elite construct a "war on terror", a "clash of civilisations" - the splintered division of the world into the faithful and infidels, Islamic and Christian, Christian and Islamic. Religion, it seems, is creeping back into the political, a sphere claimed as a prize by the secular in 18th- and 19th-century Europe.   Yet politics has never divided absolutely from religion; the secular transformation is at best incomplete. Religion remains the opiate of the people. Its powers of sedation are matched only by its power to inspire the zealous and the dogmatic. It is for these reasons that politics and religion have always remained linked. The manipulation of power, after all, requires a justifying ideology. What better ordering of the universe than a divine one?   Politics cannot simply "remain" secular. It must first become fully secularised. And for this to happen, it must be recognised that existing secular politics is failing to address the challenges of the modern age. The religion of the 21st century is comprehensible only as a response, of both the powerful and the powerless, to poverty, inequality and injustice that is wholly modern. Religious thought provides explanation for suffering, even demands it in the pursuit of a "next world". The religious may place their ultimate faith in God. The secular see only human agency in human misery, a cruel expose both of politicians" failings and the disempowerment of the majority of the world"s people; there is no refuge in fate.   This is not to deny the achievements of secular politics: for example, universal human rights, with their increasingly global recognition, find their foundations in the ethics of secular humanism. Similarly, doctrines of popular sovereignty are secular in principle. Yet the west should be wary of taking too orientalist a view of these "universal" secular truths, founded as they are upon a particular Judaeo-Christian heritage. Internationally, politics is not secular: the Middle Eastern Islamic states (from "evil" Iran to western-allied Saudi Arabia) define and contain political activity through religious maxims. Israel owes its very existence to the connections between politics and religion, while the 60 years of bloody violence which have followed the usurpation of Palestine are proof of the dangerous and destructive powers of religion, particularly because the absolute truth of the religious is by necessity an exclusive creed. In such countries, politics and power are understood and constantly underlined through refractions of religious belief that have an impact upon every aspect of global politics.   Even in the heartland of proclaimed secularism - the formal politics of western Europe - sceptical thinkers can find flaws in this claimed separation of the religious from the political. The close relationship between German church and state is demonstrated by the payment of church tax to fund Protestant and Catholic organisations. Politically, many of the parties which have governed Europe since the Second World War have approached topics such as social justice through recourse to Christianity, witness the German, Swedish or Norwegian Christian Democrats. The British political system also allows bishops to sit in the House of Lords and the public political comments of religious leaders, most notably the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be recognised as valid contributions within the British political system. America is still "one nation under God".   However, secular politics cannot be understood simply in terms of formal high politics. Too often, a secular political grammar masks religious language in the new reality of the multifaith state. In India, the largest secular state, politics remains steeped in religious intention, exemplified by the populist Hindu nationalism of the BJP and the Sikh response. Popular American-Christian evangelism has been well documented as a political phenomenon in its own right: arguably it won George W Bush his second term in November 2004. Even in France, proud defender of the fruits of its 1789 revolution, a rise in anti-Semitism is indication that the paradigm of national politics, particularly the politics of identity and entitlement, is not free from the exclusive and conveniently manipulated dictates of religion.   If secularism is as yet an unfinished project, it should, however, also be recognised that the past decade has brought a shift, both in rhetoric and action, towards a more intense and obvious religiosity within politics. There has been a subtle change in the dimensions of international relations, perceived most obviously by western citizens in the rise of al-Qaeda and its direct attack upon the secular values of the west. Yet if Islamic terrorism is the most frequently cited example of this new religious political paradigm, it should not be forgotten that its rise has occurred in tandem with that of the evangelical Christian right in the United States which attacks the same secular society and demands the teaching of creationism and the outlawing of abortion.   Religious solutions to political questions are increasingly expected in this new paradigm. In the wake of the July London bombings, Tony Blair"s response was to turn to leaders of Muslim communities in the hope of stemming extremism, a response to religious fundamentalism framed by religious structures of segregation. Simultaneously, in condemning the London suicide bombers as "evil", he sought refuge in the language of irrational religious dualism in order to avoid discussion of the more concrete political causes of British Muslim disaffection.   The answer to why the 21st century has seen the increasing construction of politics in a religious rather than a rational context can be found only in recognition of the fundamental nature of politics itself. Politics is concerned with power, power to construct society according to the rules of justice determined by the powerful. Politics, in short, is the struggle to gain enough power to build a version of utopia, and thus there is a need for ideology to structure and guide power: to provide inspiration. Yet the last years of the 20th century witnessed the disillusion of the political left and the ascendancy of the pragmatic centre, not only in Britain but throughout Europe and North America. Pragmatic politics lacks the power to inspire either social vision among political leaders or fidelity in the elite"s popular sovereigns (consider, for example, the decline of democracy in the UK since 1979). Return to a religious paradigm provides a substitute for political ideology. From the ashes of political idealism, religion has risen, seductive because it offers a simplistic division of right from wrong that suits both political spin and political vision. Furthermore, religion also exercises strong influence as a personal motivation: Blair"s zeal for social reform bears comparison with the Gladstonian crusades of the 19th century. The lines drawn between the personal and the political are artificial: religion as political motivation transcends them.   The growth of religious politics is also a product of international political history. For all its rational development goals and practical targets, secular internationalism has failed to deliver the developing world from poverty and exploitation by the west, both in economic and political terms. Frustration, misery and anger are met with religion; it is the final promise to the dispossessed, an assertion that the gross injustices of the present world will be addressed again in the next. For authoritarian regimes - Iran or Saudi Arabia, for example - such other-worldliness provides scope for reinforcing the existing power hierarchy: a continuing "divine right of kings". Yet for popular movements, including those exploited by global power-brokers such as Osama Bin Laden and fashioned into terrorist networks, religious politics is a cry to radical action. The hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was after all elected Iran"s president with the votes of Tehran"s poor. The irrational is seductive when "rational" secularism is perceived as clearly designed to perpetuate rather than address power inequalities. The G8 nations have consistently failed to act on reluctant half-promises to reform trade tariffs, or redistribute power within international organisations such as the UN or World Trade Organisation. This problem is not simply international: as Belfast burned in September, the sectarian politics of Northern Ireland once more underlined the potential for religion, perverted, to define riots that were in truth an articulation of economic alienation and political frustration.   Nor should it be thought that political religious propaganda is the domain of the foreign, the other, or even that its reach is confined to the edges of politics in Europe, to Muslim pamphlets or to American evangelical publications. British politics has long asserted religion"s power as a tool for cultural and historical continuity, a means of asserting identity. The Victorian Christian ethics of empire is not yet dead: our understanding of Africa, diffracted through the British media, still relies upon the narrative of the helpless African and divine intercession through western charity. With every unfolding famine headlines scream "For God''''s sake help us". National identity politics have been further complicated in the west by the fracture of Christendom into multifaith communities, each asserting political identity through segregated religion and in doing so shaping the nature of the political agenda, even as most western citizens continue to embrace secularism and its inclusive principles.   For what it is important to recognise is that religious politics is most dangerous because of its exclusivity - its tendency towards the antagonistic, the intolerant. These qualities are not uniquely religious: aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism have led to bitter fighting, war, even genocide. The ideologies that underpinned the cold war and its divided imagined communities for nearly half a century were not religious, but were strikingly similar in their fundamentalist demands for total compliance with specific political creeds. Religion itself is not the difficulty; the problem is that when transformed into religiously driven politics, it provides a tool for the political machinations of global elites and allows for underlying inequalities to be conceived of in the irrational terms of medieval crusaders and not in terms of practical political action.   Political secularism is not dead, particularly not in its European heartland; its greatest protection lies in the continued strength of Europe"s overwhelmingly secular society. Yet Mohammad Sidique Khan"s chilling videotape message, delivered from beyond the grave, underlines how despair at the injustices of the present political order can easily turn to political activism understood through and justified by religion. One fact is clear: until the fundamental inequalities that promote poverty on a national and an international scale are addressed, the position of political secularism will continue to weaken. Blair and Bush have instead concentrated on using the language of the religious, irrational and abstract, to divert attention away from the real and rational. In their "condemnation" of religious extremism, they are simultaneously reinforcing the paradigm of religious politics.   Yet we must hope politics remains a secular forum, and campaign for it to become more so. Ultimately, although religion may prove a powerful motivating factor for social justice, its exclusivity offers no opportunity for the imagining of an inclusive political arena - essential if the people of this world are not to suffer the terrible injustices of the modern age one day. This is because, though religion provides the moral certainty to act on paradise-inspired visions, in the same breath it removes from society absolute responsibility for human suffering. Secularism may reveal bleak truths about inequality in the world today, but these revelations alone can provide the empowerment necessary for real progress towards the universal utopia of a just society.
	View more stories