Page 171 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

154 Joyce Smith

Islamism (islamisme) has become a usefully ambiguous term for some
French social scientists and journalists. It is used to refer to movements
that advocate creating Islamic states as well as to those that merely
promote public manifestations of Islam. What both references share is a
negative feature, the denial of a European notion that religion properly
belongs in the private sphere. The ambiguity permits writers to draw on
fears of totalitarian Islamist regimes abroad in order to condemn French
Muslim associations that advocate a public presence for Islam in France.
(Bowen 2007: 156)

Later, Bowen makes the problem of defining the public clear: “Islamism
is global and transnational, and thus particularly ill-equipped to become
citoyen” (Bowen 2007: 188).
One gets the sense from Bowen that other publics exist only to define
and defend the Republic (the French version of Marty’s the the public).
Arguments that succeeded in extricating the Catholic church from the public
sphere (especially in terms of women’s liberation) are now employed in the
Islamisme debate (Bowen 2007: 221). Particularly in periods of the (re)
establishment of national identity, a government may use religious publics to
legitimize and popularize their regime (cf. Chen 2007: 183). Much of this
is done via symbols made visible in mass media: for example, a broadcast
of Russian president Vladimir Putin attending a service at St. Basil’s
Cathedral. The visual element of a newscast (especially if only a backdrop
to commentary) does not require the actor to provide a justification for his
actions. The fact that the secular leader is doing something (lighting a candle
during a Russian Orthodox service) is enough to suggest approval from the
religious public and, in turn, grants the religious public legitimacy in the the
public (The Associated Press 2004).
Finally, religious publics have been known to conduct their internal soul
searching not only in but through the press. Consider the recognition of
homosexuals by Anglican provinces. The differences in opinion between
members of the global Anglican public play out in news media (notably the
struggles between African and American bishops), but so too do the rifts
within local communities, as evidenced by “sniping” via letters to the editor
rather than, as Nicholas Adams puts it, “debat(ing) patiently and charitably
in synod” (Adams 2006: 21). The group most ably translating its argument
for the public sphere may gain enough support from the the public to prevail,
regardless of the merits of its theological case.
Occasionally the search for a solution to an internal religious problem
finds its way back into the the public. James Kelly traces the phrase “common
ground” to its origins in a piece published December 26, 1989 in the St. Louis
Dispatch titled: “Common Ground on Abortion.” In it, Andrew Puzder, a