Secularism Is Not Democratic

A FEW people in this country who claim to care about democratic practices are apparently worried by the presence of religion. They fear that if religion is left unchecked it will soon triumph over democracy, so they are seeking a way of preventing this from happening.

Thus, religion must be minimised or at best eliminated if democracy is to survive.These enlightened brothers (Basson and Itembu) fail to point out the truth that not all religious people are automatically theocrats.Given that not all religionists are theocrats, is religion really a threat to democracy or does secularism simply hate the presence of religion. Since the aim of secularism is to remove religion from the public square, when its ideologies are pushed to its logical conclusion, I fail to see how this is not atheism in a different cloak.Secularism has one aim – minimise or at best eliminate the influence of religion. Fighting religion in general is important for secularism’s survival, for if it addressed only a specific religion that threatens democracy, it’ll have nothing to oppose. So it’s in the interest of secularism to indiscriminately fight religion as anything else would be counterproductive.This calls into question the very meaning of democracy in the secularist’s mind.But, how do the secularists intend to remove religion from the public square? Their arguments against the existence of God have failed centuries ago and will most likely not gain an audience in Namibia.Speaking of intellectual persuasion, secularism just doesn’t stand a chance to become a majority worldview. Thus, it may require more than just rational persuasion. Voltaire’s dream of strangling the last king by the priest’s intestines would be a logical consequence. Perhaps to strangle Pohamba (an Anglican) with Kameeta’s (Lutheran) intestines? This has been history’s best proven method of safeguarding secularism and privatising or eliminating religion in Russia.The desire to dispossess society of its religious character in my opinion is in itself anti-democratic and incites intolerance even against democratic religionists.One can’t help but point out that this stand against religion is in itself a propagation of hate speech and intolerance and to talk about ‘Peaceful Co-existence’ is a contradiction of terms. On the one hand I feel as if we’ve exhausted the basic tenets of our positions as secularists and religionists and may have to look for a different platform to perhaps shed more light on our differing opinion rather then the limited writings.Basilius M KaseraBy e-mail