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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Religion and the State Today [Introduction] We find ourselves, in Europe and in America, after centuries of separation between religion and the state: religion is regarded as a matter of freedom of conscience, concerning the private life of a person, while the state deals with the administration, neutral in relation to the private convictions of citizens, in the public interest.

The modern state is built on the premise of a separation: public interest actions originate in secular reasons and people have the unrestricted freedom to promote their religious beliefs, in their private life and in worship places. Constitutions have judicially confirmed the separation.

For example, in the Bill of Rights (1791), the well-known part of the Constitution of the United States , the First Amendment states that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, of prohibiting the free exercise hereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.

At the same time, the Constitution of France (1958), in Article 1, stipulates that: ”La France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale. Elle assure l'égalité devant la loi de tous les citoyens sans distinction d'origine, de race ou de religion.

Elle respecte toutes les croyances”, after, in the Declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen it was already stated that: ”Nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions, même religieuses, pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l'ordre public établi par la loi”[^1] , the public force (la force publique) being ”instituée pour l’avantage de tous, et non pour l’utilité particulière de ceux auxquels elle est confiée”[^2] . The examples may, of course, continue.

Meanwhile, a new activism in favour of the separation from religion was added to the classical separation between the state and religion.

For instance, Paul Kurtz recently published a sort of manifesto, entitled What Is Secular Humanism (2007), going beyond the already established separation: the well-known editor of pragmatic writing argues in favour of removing religion not only from the public life of the state, but also from the people’s individual life projects, which are, by their nature, private.