Thank heaven for Church, state separation (1)

Like the other guests and presenter during the BondiPlus show on Monday, I was shocked when I heard the Imam's comments expressing agreement with the Sharia practice of chopping off a thief's hands. I was taken aback mostly because, on all other occasions when I heard him speak, Mohammed El Sadi always sounded quite moderate in his views.

However, on reflection, I realised that he could not have said anything else. He is an Imam, and he can no more say that the Koran is wrong than a priest can declare that God was doing evil when he ordered people to be stoned to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36).

The problem is not Islam. The problem is that Islam is enforced by the government. The problem is that state and religion are one and the same in many of these countries. History teaches us that, when Christianity had the same kind of power in Europe, its rule was no less brutal - instead of chopping off people's hands they were burned alive. There was no distinction between sin and crime, between Church and state.

It is this that distinguishes us from places where Sharia is the law of the land. Europe progressed past its violent times not because Christianity is intrinsically gentler, but because Europeans defined strict borders which demarcated the territories of Church and state. The government would no longer tell the believer whom to worship, and the Church would no longer tell the government how to govern.

This is vitally important because, while our sense of morality changes over time, religions take longer to adapt. Practices which were commonplace a few centuries ago are unacceptable by today's standards, and laws must reflect this. It was not until 1992 that the Vatican formally accepted that Galileo had been right over 300 years before. Although this only drew some amused comments, things would have been different if schools were not allowed to teach that the earth orbits around the sun until that day.

The separation between Church and state is not a threat to religion, nor does it prevent people from being good Christians (or Muslims, or anything else). On the contrary it is a safeguard, a guarantee to one's freedom of beliefs. The price is not being able to impose religious beliefs on others, and it is a price well worth paying.