Indian economist Amartya Sen in his book Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny argues that we are becoming increasingly divided along lines of religion and culture, ignoring the many other ways in which people see themselves, from class and professions to morals and politics.
“Our shared humanity”, he writes, “gets savagely challenged when the manifold divisions in the world are unified into one allegedly dominant system of classification – in terms of religion, or community, or culture, or nation, or civilization.”
Our humanity here in Singapore is in danger of being ‘savagely challenged’ by two recent developments.
First of these was MOE’s choice of vendors to teach sex education in schools. Four of the six approved are known to be part of conservative Christian groups.
Then there was the National Art Commission’s decision to cut the funding of theatre group Wild Rice because, the Commission said, it would not fund “projects which are incompatible with the core values promoted by the government…”.
It seems to me that the State, which had declared its determination to protect the secular nature of our society, is privileging one system of values over other value systems and in so doing is in danger of subverting the very nature of a secular society.
What do we mean when we talk of a secular society?
The British philosopher Stephen Law, editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal Think, defines a secular society as, roughly, one that is neutral between different views about religion.
He writes: “It protects freedoms: the freedom to believe or not believe, worship or not worship. It is founded on basic principles framed independently of any particular religious, or indeed, atheist, point of view: principles to which we ought to be able to sign up whether we are religious or not.
“Because you live in a secular society, your right … is protected from those atheists, and those of differing religious views, that might want to take that freedom from you.”
It follows then that one of the responsibilities of a secular state is to maintain the neutrality of all public space. These spaces include institutions of a public nature, such as schools, government offices and government-linked companies.
The choice of conservative Christian groups to teach sex education in schools is a curious choice for the government of a secular society. It is like letting a fox loose in the chicken coop!
The anxieties and fears about social breakdown, marital instability, and teenage pregnancies are real. They should be acknowledged and addressed.
But repression of alternative views and values does not work and has not worked to counter these social problems. Compromising the values of a secular society with political enforcement of conservative values, especially religious conservative values, has to be challenged.
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This article by Constance Singam first appeared on AWARE and we thank her for granting us permission to re-publish this here
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thank you sophie for your apparently reasonable response… unfortunately i had long ago googled to find out as much as possible about the new sexuality vendors … my profound apprehension remains …please google “focus on the family dominionist” … it seems that at least one of our new sexuality vendors might be mightily ill-suited to respect our secularist principles (i’m trying to put this diplomatically) and yet has been approved by our MOE… what is going on here?! it’s mindboggling.
i’m even more alarmed now… u say the new sexuality programme will “not promote abortion/contraception”… is this code for the anti-abortion and anti-contraceptive rants and hyperbole that is so pronounced in christian fundamentalism in the usa? but yet you are going to show the kids how to use condoms? what? with the chant of “…but you’re going to hell if u do use them” in the background?
you can’t blame some of us for suspecting that the usa’s culture wars are being imported here in the guise of sex education. “no threat to secular society”, you say? i bet you 50 push-ups in hong lim park (in the rain) there is!
by the way, most of denmark’s out-of-wedlock babies are born to co-habitating partners (whose relationships last on average longer than married couples)… the formality of marriage is, it seems, increasingly less common in europe… of course i’m not promoting the practice, just reporting it … but hmmmm, i do wonder why denmark always tops the list of happiest countries in the world
Reply to REddotWong,
Let us see how long Denmark and the rest of those Happy euro countries would last.
Europe is going Eurabia and Europeans are fast losing their voice. Some people are happy.
CNA is going to do a piece on Muslims in Europe this coming week. This should be of interest to those watching the program.
http://current.com/news/politics/89738369_eurabia-muslim-rape-a-growing-problem-all-over-europe.htm