Khaled Salih is our new Fertile Crescent Correspondent (Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Kurdistan). For today’s article, though, he wears a second hat: our Comparative Politics Correspondent. As a Doctor in the field of Political Science and the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr in (Iraqi) Kurdistan, he is ideally qualified for the task. [And isn’t it just delicious that an Iraqi citizen is lecturing the ever-pompous France on democratic institutions?!]
In today’s piece he responds, somewhat lukewarmly, to my proposal to partition France along civilisational lines. Like Jean Valjean upon the barricades, he waves the tricolour for a reinforced Open Society in the Republic; a nation buttressed by strong institutions and the protection of the individual. As ever, it is the debate itself, not our differing conclusions, that is the point. After all, isn’t that, not rioting, the very spirit of liberal democracy? - Daniel Clarke-Serret (Editor, Guerre and Shalom).
THE ARTICLE TO WHICH KHALED IS RESPONDING:
ALSO FROM THE FRENCH RIOTS SYMPOSIUM:
More reflections on France to come. Continue to submit your articles!
“When a Republic Proposes to Partition Itself” by Khaled Salih
Daniel Clarke-Serret has proposed something that, at first encounter, sounds almost impossible to take seriously: a two-state solution for France. Not between France and another country. Not between two peoples separated by an international border. But within the French Republic itself.
His proposal, presented in an essay titled The French Two-State Solution, imagines territorial separation between the secular republic and communities whose political and religious commitments, he argues, have become incompatible with its constitutional foundations. He gives the proposed alternative territory a deliberately provocative name: Fralestine.
I know Daniel. He has been cooperating with me in bringing Kurdistanî Azad, the book I wrote with Ann-Catrin Emanuelsson, to readers through his Substack publication. That cooperation matters to me. So does the intellectual freedom to disagree.
I do not think Daniel’s proposal should be dismissed merely because it is provocative. Nor do I think it should be accepted because it gives a dramatic form to frustrations that many Europeans recognize. A provocative conjecture deserves something better than applause or outrage. It deserves criticism.
And Daniel’s proposal raises a question considerably more interesting than whether France should divide itself:
What must have gone wrong in a republic for territorial partition to become an imaginable remedy for an ideological problem?
I suspect the answer reaches beyond France, beyond political Islamism, and beyond the present European argument about immigration and integration. It concerns a recurring failure of political institutions: their tendency to mistake the administration of a problem for an explanation of it. And sometimes, when administration fails, they propose reorganizing the territory rather than correcting the institution.
Also from Guerre and Shalom:
The Problem Daniel Has Identified
There is something important in Daniel’s starting point. An open society cannot assume that everyone living within its territory shares the principles that make that society possible. People may enjoy freedom of expression while believing that certain ideas should be prohibited from criticism. They may benefit from freedom of conscience while regarding apostasy as a punishable offense. They may participate in democratic institutions while seeking political arrangements in which religious authority cannot be challenged. These contradictions deserve serious attention. But the problem must be described accurately.
Islam is a religion with diverse interpretations, traditions, and adherents. Muslims are individuals with different political commitments, degrees of religious observance and understandings of their faith.
Political Islamism encompasses movements whose objectives and methods also differ. Some religious conservatives seek to persuade others while accepting constitutional limits. Others seek to impose religious rules through political power. Some movements tolerate dissent; others suppress it. Calling all these phenomena Islam or even Islamism without further distinctions risks explaining too much and therefore explaining very little.
In my book When Parochial Error Goes Global, I investigated how systems of ideas can preserve themselves by making criticism costly, dangerous or illegitimate. The central problem was not that people possess convictions. Human beings cannot function without convictions. The problem arises when convictions acquire protection from criticism, particularly when that protection is enforced through institutions, social coercion, intimidation or violence. An idea that cannot survive criticism may seek to prevent criticism. That is a mechanism worth investigating.
But it is not confined to religion. Political movements, nationalisms, revolutionary parties, bureaucracies and even institutions established in the name of Enlightenment values can develop comparable defenses against correction.
The question is therefore not whether France should protect itself from Muslims. It is whether France can protect the freedom of every individual—including Muslims—from organizations and authorities that seek to make certain beliefs compulsory. That is a different problem. And it requires a different solution.
Also from Guerre and Shalom:
When the Republic Confuses Neutrality With Indifference
France has a distinctive republican tradition. Its principle of laïcité concerns the secular character of public authority, freedom of conscience and the relationship between religion and the state. Yet a secular state can misunderstand its own responsibilities. It may believe that treating citizens equally requires refusing to examine the ideas and institutional practices that shape their lives. It may become reluctant to distinguish between voluntary religious observance and religious coercion. It may interpret criticism of a religious organization as hostility toward everyone associated with that religion.
Or it may make the opposite mistake: treating membership in a religious community as evidence that an individual shares the most illiberal doctrines attributed to its leaders. Both mistakes deny individual agency.
Consider a woman living in a religiously conservative environment. She may freely embrace its practices. She may reject them privately but fear the consequences of saying so. She may wish to leave a marriage, change her beliefs, or abandon religion altogether.
The state’s responsibility cannot be fulfilled merely by announcing that everyone enjoys freedom of conscience. The relevant question is whether that freedom is available in practice. Can she seek protection? Can she leave? Can she criticize? Can she refuse? Can she appeal to institutions that will protect her against threats and coercion? The difference between a constitutional promise and an effective freedom can be enormous.
But recognizing that difference does not authorize the state to police private beliefs. A liberal republic must protect people against coercion while preserving their right to hold beliefs that other citizens regard as mistaken, offensive or deeply illiberal. That distinction is difficult. It is also indispensable. The state cannot guarantee freedom of conscience by becoming the final judge of acceptable conscience.
The Attraction of a Territorial Solution
This brings me back to Daniel’s proposal. Why partition?
Imagine that the French state concludes that certain communities have become sufficiently resistant to republican integration that continued coexistence under common institutions is no longer viable. One response would be to strengthen the institutions that protect individual rights. Another would be to improve education, policing, judicial remedies and the practical capacity of individuals to resist coercion. A third would be to investigate whether existing integration policies have failed and why. Daniel proposes something more radical: territorial separation.
The attraction is understandable. If two systems of authority cannot coexist, perhaps they should occupy different spaces. But this explanation contains a hidden assumption. It assumes that the problem is primarily located in the territory occupied by the people associated with those ideas.
What if the problem is not geographical? Ideas do not remain where they originated. They travel through families, schools, religious institutions, political organizations, television, books, social networks and digital communication. More importantly, people are not passive containers of the ideas circulating around them. They interpret them. They reject them. They modify them. They sometimes defend them against overwhelming criticism. And sometimes they change their minds.
Drawing a border around a population does not explain how coercive authority arises within it. Nor does it explain why that authority would disappear, weaken, or become less dangerous after partition. The border might change the jurisdiction. It might change the balance of power. It might change the costs of enforcing particular rules. Those consequences would need to be investigated. But the border itself is not an explanation of the ideological problem. Partition can redistribute political authority without correcting the ideas through which that authority is exercised. This is the weakness I find most difficult to overcome in Daniel’s proposal.
Also from Guerre and Shalom:
Who Would Live in Fralestine?
There is another question. It is less abstract and perhaps more important. Who would live in the proposed territory? Would residence be determined by religion? By ancestry? By political convictions? By neighborhood? By voluntary choice? (Editor note: I did address this in the original article.)
Suppose a Muslim woman rejects the religious authorities who would govern the enclave. Would she remain under their jurisdiction? Suppose a secular Muslim family wishes to remain part of the French Republic. Would it have to move? Suppose a Christian, an atheist, or a Jewish family already lives in the designated territory. What happens to them? And what happens to a person who initially supports the new arrangement but later changes their mind? (Editor note: I did address this in the original article.)
A territorial solution must answer these questions before it can claim to be a solution. If the arrangement is voluntary, its supporters must explain how voluntary consent would be established and protected. If it is compulsory, they must explain how it could be reconciled with equal citizenship and fundamental rights.
These are not administrative details to be addressed after the political decision. They are part of the problem the proposal claims to solve. A person cannot be treated as the property of an ideology merely because that ideology is influential in the community where the person lives. That would be an extraordinary concession to the very principle of collective authority that an open society ought to resist.
The Question I Learned to Ask Through Kurdistan
Here I encounter a difficulty in my own argument. It would be convenient to say that France is one republic, that its territory must remain indivisible, and that the discussion should end there. But I cannot say that. I have spent much of my intellectual life examining the political consequences of treating inherited borders as though they were facts of nature.
In Kurdistanî Azad, Ann-Catrin and I examined the long struggle for Kurdish self-rule. In my subsequent work, I have continued investigating why Kurdish political possibilities are so frequently treated as illegitimate before their merits can even be considered. The existence of a state does not establish that every feature of its political arrangement is justified. Nor does the historical origin of a border establish that it must be abolished. A border is an institutional fact. It is not a final philosophical argument.
That principle must apply to France as well. If I reject the proposition that the borders governing Kurdistan are beyond criticism, I cannot defend the borders of France merely because they are French. The difference must be explained.
And I think there is an important difference between the Kurdish question and Daniel’s proposed partition. Kurdish claims to political self-determination concern a people with a distinct history, language, political experience, and competing aspirations for self-government. Those claims do not automatically establish the justice of any particular border, government, or constitutional arrangement. They do establish that Kurdish political agency cannot simply be dismissed because existing states prefer the inherited settlement.
Daniel’s proposal, by contrast, appears to begin with a conflict over the beliefs and political conduct of populations already living within a common constitutional order. It then proposes territorial separation as a remedy for that conflict. These are not identical problems.
But the distinction must not become another protected assumption. There may be circumstances in which territorial autonomy or even separation is justified. The question is whether the proposed arrangement solves identifiable problems while protecting the rights and agency of everyone affected. That is the standard I would apply to Kurdistan. It is the standard I must apply to France. And it is the standard I would ask Daniel to apply to Fralestine.
Also from Guerre and Shalom:
A People Is Not Its Ideology
One of the most persistent political errors is the conversion of people into representatives of ideas. A Kurdish person becomes responsible for the decisions of a Kurdish party. A Jewish person becomes responsible for the decisions of an Israeli government. A Palestinian becomes responsible for the actions of Hamas. A Muslim becomes responsible for the doctrines of an Islamist organization. A French citizen becomes responsible for every failure of the French Republic.
The mechanism is familiar. A political organization claims to represent a population. Observers begin treating the organization and the population as interchangeable. Criticism of the organization becomes criticism of the people. Or defense of the people becomes protection of the organization. Both transformations are dangerous. A people is not a conjecture awaiting approval. Its political arrangements are conjectures that must remain open to criticism.
That distinction matters here. A Muslim citizen’s right to live freely in France does not depend on proving that Islam is compatible with every philosophical commitment of the Enlightenment. Nor does that right protect a religious organization from investigation when it uses threats, violence, or other unlawful means to impose its authority. A person’s freedom is not conditional on the correctness of their beliefs. An organization’s exercise of coercive power is not justified by the sincerity of its beliefs. If a republic cannot maintain those distinctions, it has already lost something important. And partition will not restore it.
The Most Dangerous Temptation
Daniel’s proposal raises a further question that deserves attention. What happens when defenders of the open society become convinced that its enemies can no longer be persuaded?
The temptation is to stop treating those people as capable of changing their minds. They become permanent carriers of an ideology. Their present beliefs become their future. Their children inherit the classification. Their neighborhoods become ideological territories. Eventually, geography begins to stand in for explanation. This is precisely where I would resist.
Human beings are capable of creating new knowledge. That does not mean everyone will abandon destructive beliefs. It does not mean education always succeeds. It does not mean persuasion is sufficient to prevent violence. And it certainly does not mean the state should refrain from enforcing the law while waiting for better ideas to emerge. It means that political institutions should not be designed around the assumption that entire populations are permanently incapable of intellectual or moral change.
That assumption is particularly dangerous when applied to children. A child born into a religiously conservative family has not consented to every belief held by its elders. A young woman who questions her community’s rules is not an exception to be administratively accommodated. She is a person exercising a fundamental human capacity. A young man who abandons a political ideology should not discover that the state has already assigned him permanently to the territory of that ideology.
If the purpose of the open society is to preserve the possibility of criticism and correction, its institutions must protect those possibilities for individuals living inside communities that discourage them. This is not sentimental optimism. It is a practical institutional obligation.
Also from Khaled Salih:
The Republic Must Also Be Criticisable
There is, however, a danger in my preferred alternative. I have argued that France should protect individual rights, investigate coercive organizations, and ensure that its constitutional principles are effective in practice. But who protects individuals against the state when the state makes mistakes?
Suppose an administration begins denying public funding to organizations because officials dislike their religious doctrines. Suppose criticism of republican policy is interpreted as hostility to the republic. Suppose an unpopular religious minority is subjected to exceptional scrutiny without adequate evidence. Suppose political authorities use the language of defending secularism to restrict lawful dissent. These possibilities cannot be dismissed merely because the state claims to defend Enlightenment values.
The state is not an infallible guardian of rationality. It is an institution operated by fallible human beings. Its decisions require evidence. Its powers require limits. Its classifications require review. Its mistakes require remedies. That is why the alternative to partition cannot simply be a more confident or more aggressive republic. It must be a republic better equipped to discover and correct its own errors.
Consider public funding. A state may legitimately require organizations receiving public money to comply with transparent legal obligations, including nondiscrimination, financial accountability, and the protection of fundamental rights. It may investigate fraud, coercion, threats, or unlawful discrimination. It may withdraw funding where lawful conditions are violated, subject to fair procedures. But it should not make access to ordinary civil liberties conditional on agreement with an official philosophical doctrine.
A religious organization may defend ideas I consider profoundly mistaken. That alone does not establish that the state should prohibit it. The question is what the organization does, what powers it exercises, and whether individuals remain free to challenge or leave it. The same principle applies to secular political organizations. And it must apply to the French state itself. An open society cannot defend criticism by granting its defenders immunity from criticism.
What Would Change My Mind?
I do not want my objection to Daniel’s proposal to become another protected conclusion. There are circumstances under which territorial separation can reduce conflict, create political accountability, or enable communities to govern themselves more effectively. Therefore, I cannot reject every form of partition in advance.
Daniel’s proposal would become more persuasive if it could demonstrate that territorial separation would protect individual freedoms more effectively than credible alternatives. It would need to explain how the arrangement would operate without compulsory religious classification, forced displacement or the abandonment of dissenters. It would need to establish that the proposed institutions would remain accountable to the people living under them. And it would need to identify the causal mechanism through which partition would reduce coercion rather than simply transfer coercive authority to a new jurisdiction.
My own alternative must face criticism too. If France’s existing legal and institutional mechanisms repeatedly fail to protect individuals against coercion, I cannot answer merely by recommending that those institutions perform better. I must explain which reforms could plausibly change the outcome. That requires evidence about enforcement, access to justice, education, public funding, institutional accountability, and the actual experiences of people whose freedom is constrained. There is no intellectual achievement in saying that institutions should correct their mistakes while refusing to examine why they have failed to do so. The argument must remain open on both sides.
Also from Khaled Salih:
The Problem Is Larger Than France
I began with Daniel’s proposal because it is provocative. But the underlying problem is familiar. Political authorities repeatedly respond to failures of explanation by rearranging the visible world. They redraw borders. They create administrative categories. They establish commissions. They announce new doctrines. They rename institutions. Sometimes these changes are necessary. Sometimes they are useful. But they can also conceal the absence of an explanation.
A government may change the jurisdiction without changing the incentives that produced the problem.It may prohibit an organization without understanding how its ideas continue to circulate. It may defend freedom in language while allowing individuals to remain unfree in practice. These are different forms of the same intellectual temptation: mistaking an observable administrative change for the correction of the underlying error.
In my work on Kurdistan, I have encountered this temptation repeatedly. The political existence of Kurds is acknowledged in some contexts, restricted in others, and often translated into administrative categories that leave the question of political agency unresolved. The problem is not that every proposed Kurdish political arrangement must be accepted. It is that existing arrangements are frequently treated as the unquestioned starting point, while alternatives must overcome exceptional burdens of justification.
France presents a different case. But the same demand for intellectual consistency applies. No political arrangement should be protected merely because it already exists. No proposed alternative should be accepted merely because it is radical. Both must explain what problems they solve, what new problems they create, and how the people affected can correct their mistakes.
What I Would Ask Daniel
I would ask Daniel to reconsider his proposal, not withdraw the question that produced it. The question deserves attention. How can a democratic republic protect individuals against movements that seek to restrict their freedom? How can a secular state distinguish religious liberty from religious coercion? How can public institutions investigate organizations whose internal practices contradict their external declarations? How can a society defend the conditions of open criticism without treating every unpopular doctrine as a threat requiring state suppression? And what should happen when the institutions responsible for protecting freedom repeatedly fail?
These are serious questions. I suspect Daniel and I agree that they cannot be answered through denial, bureaucratic complacency or the hope that ideological conflicts will disappear if nobody discusses them. Where I differ is in the proposed remedy.
I do not think France should begin by dividing its territory according to an ideological conflict. It should begin by identifying the institutions, incentives, and practices that allow coercive authority to escape effective scrutiny. That investigation might reveal failures of law enforcement. It might reveal inadequate protection for people seeking to leave coercive environments. It might reveal failures in public funding or institutional oversight. It might also reveal that some commonly repeated claims about entire communities are exaggerated or unsupported. A serious investigation must permit all these possibilities. Otherwise, it is not an investigation. It is an effort to confirm a conclusion already reached.
Daniel has offered a conjecture. I am offering a competing one. The value of our disagreement depends on whether either of us is willing to discover that he is wrong.
The Future Cannot Be Partitioned in Advance
The deeper problem with territorial partition as a remedy for ideological conflict is that it risks treating present beliefs as permanent human characteristics. It converts today’s disagreement into tomorrow’s political geography. But people change.
Knowledge can grow and bad explanations can be abandoned. Good institutions can deteriorate. And arrangements that appear indispensable to one generation can become obstacles to the next. A political order should preserve the capacity to respond to those changes.
This is what I have increasingly come to understand through my work on Kurdistan. The purpose of political freedom cannot be to guarantee that a particular people, government, or movement will always make the correct decisions. There is no such guarantee. Its purpose is to preserve the possibility of discovering mistakes and doing something about them.
That possibility must remain available to Kurds. It must remain available to French citizens. It must remain available to Muslims who reject religious coercion, to religious conservatives who accept peaceful disagreement, and to secular citizens whose political institutions have failed them. It must also remain available to those who criticize the republic itself. A free society does not require everyone to share the same conclusions. It requires institutions through which people can disagree without surrendering their freedom to one another.
Daniel’s proposed partition has helped me see the problem more clearly. Perhaps that is the most valuable thing a provocative conjecture can accomplish. It can expose an assumption that deserves criticism, even when the proposed solution does not survive the criticism it invites.
My conclusion is therefore provisional. France does not need to partition its people to protect its principles. It needs institutions capable of protecting individuals against coercion while remaining open to criticism themselves. And if those institutions fail, the answer cannot be to declare the people they were meant to protect incapable of freedom. The answer is to discover why the institutions failed. Then correct them.
The open society does not begin with a final map. It begins with the possibility that the map, the institutions, and the explanations governing human lives may all be mistaken. And that the future remains open to something better.
EDITOR’S AFTERWORD: It would be wrong for me to respond to Khaled straightaway. His article needs time to breathe. But everyone must be completely clear in my objectives: not to demonise French Muslims, but to protect those Muslims who came to France to escape Islamist domination. In particular, I seek to protect French women, including Leila and Loubna, those who I spoke about with such feeling in Pax Arabica (see below) - Daniel
