The demise of liberalism, which is no longer capable of understanding itself

In their attempt to maintain a neutral stance amongst all worldviews, liberal societies risk, above all, hastening their own demise, writes philosopher Peggy Sastre in the weekly magazine *Le Point*. Since 2018, Sastre has been working as a columnist and translator in the ‘Ideas and Debates’ section (*Le Postillon*) of *Le Point*. Her latest book is Sexe, sciences, censure (Éditions de l’Observatoire), in which, together with the political scientist Leonardo Orlando, she explores without taboos the differences between men and women – differences which militant activists stubbornly refuse to acknowledge despite their scientific basis. “On 3 March 2009, at Samford University in Alabama, the essayist Christopher Hitchens took part in a debate with the mathematician and Christian apologist John Lennox, under the auspices of the Socratic Club,” writes Sastre. “The title of the event clearly hinted at the opening question – ‘Is God great?’ – before the discussion moved beyond the question of divine existence to address the far more earthly issue of the role that a liberal society should reserve for religion. And Hitchens left posterity with this phrase: ‘Do people want to pray? Let them pray; you cannot stop them. But the state must not fund their prayers, their preachers or their chaplains. Give it up, or entrust this task to your worst enemy – and pay out of your own pocket for the rope with which he will hang you’. A stark image, but one that has the merit of highlighting one of the perhaps most characteristic paradoxes of our age: in the name of its own commitment to liberalism, it would seem that a section of the liberal world is convinced that it must grant space, respectability, if not actually a share of power, to those who regard its principles as false, corrupting, imperialist or fit only for the rubbish bin.

Although this knot in my throat rarely comes to mind, I thought about it intensely on 11 August whilst reading Andrew Gilligan’s article in The Spectator about Farah Ahmed, a research assistant at the Faculty of Education at Cambridge; her background, now brought to light, is such that it brings a lump to the throat. In a text published in 2002 for Hizb ut-Tahrir – an Islamist movement now considered a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and therefore banned – Ahmed described Western education as a ‘threat’ to Muslims, the British curriculum as ‘systematic indoctrination’ and democracy as a ‘corrupt tradition’. He also criticized the school system for placing Islam on an equal footing with other religions, for presenting polygamy and marriage before the age of 16 as archaic, and for teaching the theory of evolution. Even Shakespeare came under fire, with Romeo and Juliet accused of encouraging disobedience towards parents and premarital relationships. Since then, Ahmed has stated that she has left Hizb ut-Tahrir and no longer shares its views; however, Gilligan also cites more recent studies that challenge a view of education centred on reading, arithmetic and subject-specific knowledge, as well as a conference she co-organised in 2023 which described science as a ‘colonial’ project. But wondering how a more or less repentant Islamist could have gained entry to Cambridge is the least interesting question.

University is a place where one should be able to meet, read and listen to people whose ideas seem to us to be wrong, silly, shocking or abominable. An academic world in which only ideas approved by the Ministry of Truth circulate would no longer truly deserve the name. A far more significant problem is the one raised by the reasoning that Cambridge seems to have adopted in considering such notions compatible with its institutional mission. And it is precisely here, it seems to me, that the greatest blind spot of the last (roughly) eighty years manifests itself: we do not know what liberalism is. It is as though, by dint of observing the workings of liberal societies, we have reduced liberalism to a mere mechanical formula: take elections, add a pinch of freedom of expression, two spoonfuls of religious tolerance, a generous dose of non-discrimination, mix it all together with a Declaration of Human Rights, and there you have it: a liberal democracy. It is as though, by constantly reducing liberal civilisation to its internal rules, we have forgotten that it is founded on an extremely specific worldview and, so to speak, on a particular anthropology. What might its genetic code be? That the individual exists independently of their clan or religion. That a woman has the same legal status as a man. That revelation does not exempt one from reasoning. That a law made by human beings can be amended by human beings. That one may abandon one’s religion, criticise it, mock it. And that a scientific thesis is not more or less true depending on whether it pleases one’s God, one’s group or the eye behind the microscope. So many things that are so obvious we will end up taking them for granted, without realising that this is precisely what exposes us to the worst kind of drowning: that which comes through inattention. For these are the very foundations of liberalism, not its fascinating derivatives. A liberal society may remain neutral amongst a thousand ways of life, but not between itself and its own negation without turning tolerance into the art of self-destruction. “A civilisation that no longer dares to say what deserves to be handed down forbids itself from distinguishing between what perpetuates it and what seeks to destroy it; it equates ‘neutrality’ with its own inability to articulate the terms of its existence; it does not pursue the path of liberalism; it pays the price for its own ruin.”