from "Il Partito Nuovo, 1991"

ABSTRACT: The author supports the value of "laicism" against those who tend to consider this word as "obsolete" or to acknowledge a "merely historical" value. These people commit the mistake of being "Eurocentric" and of using a form of "cultural racism". Laicism is a word of universal and up-to-date value if we think of the current events in "entire cultures and civilizations"; obviously, first and foremost in the Islamic world, but also within the "democratic and 'lay' Israel" or in Poland, "the Pope's country" where a "clerical takeover" is possible.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 20 October 1993)

It is a word that characterized the struggle not only against the forms of technocratic government, but also, generally speaking, the influence and forms of clerical power that hindered the advent of a modern state and freedom of religion. In these countries there has been a tendency to consider the lay state as a state that had loosened its ties with the influence of the Church, but in turn renounced and refused to interfere with the internal life of the religious confessions and with freedom of religion [...]. Many politicians and political theorists tend to consider the term as an obsolete one, and to acknowledge its merely historical value. These people are committing a mistake of eurocentrism, and are almost automatically and unconsciously committing a form of cultural racism, which takes it for granted that the values of laicism and of religious and civil tolerance cannot apply to other cultures and civilizations. But if, as we do, it is assumed that they are universal values, if there is no intention

of surrendering entire cultures and civilizations over to the hegemony of intolerant and fundamentalist minorities by excess of simplification (as in a rich and complex religious culture such as Islam has historically been, which the West increasingly identifies with fundamentalism), it is all the more necessary to support and restore the up-to-dateness of the values of laicism.

Faced to the tragic surge of religious fanaticism, we need to uphold the need to separate religiosity and every true demonstration of religiosity from every form of fundamentalism. To convince ourselves of this, we need not look only at Islam ot at the conflicts of the Hindu or Muslim fanatics in some states of India. We need only look at the perimeter of the Judaico-Christian culture, at the danger of an affirmation of a Rabbinic clericalism within the democratic and "lay" Israel or the more than theoretical danger of a clerical takeover in the Pope's country, Catholic Poland.