Can we assert anything about laïcité? Three truisms, one theorem

Abstract

What if one could reason about secularism — not hurl convictions, but demonstrate? This column runs the experiment in miniature: from three observations no one refuses, logic alone leads to a result that unsettles both camps — what a mathematician would call a theorem. Its lesson: neither closing everything nor opening everything holds; the reasonable setting is interior, and depends on context. In the lineage of Spinoza, who already treated the passions "in the manner of geometers". A sequel to "Defining laïcité is not choosing it". Op-ed no. 4, published on laiciscope.org; critical material tied to the book "Laïcité through the Lens of Reason" (D. A. Zighed).