Editorials: All the Editorials Since the CICNS's First Newsletter
CICNS
Editorials
All the editorials since the CICNS’s first newsletter
January 2008
The mere mention of a questioning of our “French-style laïcité” sufficed to rekindle a conflict more than two hundred years old, which the law of 1905 did not manage to extinguish.
Yesterday a good part of the left took offence at the audacity of a head of State daring to defy the immutable principles of our secular Republic: “Atheist friends, return to your depression, you no longer belong to the human race…”, dramatises Caroline Fourest. Today, the Grand Orient waxes indignant at “the cults’ offensive on Europe” and calls for a mobilisation “at a time when some - and the cults in the front rank - mean to reform the French law of 1905”.
According to Raphaël Liogier, sociologist of religions: “The French exception is an exception characterised by the obsession with the religious”. Is it then permitted to consider that, despite a few “historical shortcuts that are cavalier to say the least” (A. Duhamel, Libération, 23/01/08), Nicolas Sarkozy’s remarks echo the deep aspiration of a part of the French to live their faith openly, whatever it may be?
Mr Liogier continues by describing how, from the historical point of view, France has come to be “one of the countries that intervenes the most in the religious domain in Europe, by giving religious definitions, by making religious classifications.” A study that would surprise many partisans of laïcité if they took the trouble to read this university research, which we need so badly to bring a little good sense back into these parochial quarrels.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Barack Obama, candidate for the presidential election, is also breaking the old taboos: “In nine short days, nearly half the country will have the occasion to join us in saying that we have had enough of the old habits of Washington, that we are hungry for change and that we are ready to believe again,” declares the senator from Illinois.
If the world is moving, why should France not move with it?
January 2008
Nicolas Sarkozy, during his visit to the Vatican, reaffirmed his conviction that the French are waiting for spirituality, values and hope. It is indeed the reality of a large part of the population, which is turning to the spiritual search in the hope of finding a deeper meaning to existence. The number of books testifying to spiritual experiences, the growing attendance at courses offering spaces of replenishment and meditation, the multiplication of groups of people gathered around common spiritual values, translate this strong need for values and meaning that the President perceives in his compatriots.
Paradoxically, the fight against the spiritual movements stigmatised under the term cults is intensifying, and the MIVILUDES has just brought out a new guide, intended for all the actors of economic life, to sensitise managers and employees to cultic risks. In this work one can read a list of suspect words the reader is invited to associate with the idea of dérive sectaire. To cite only a few: self-accomplishment - well-being - quest for meaning - interpersonal skills - trust - sense of sharing… These expressions, which are precisely the reflection of the quest for meaning of a multitude of French people, are thus pointed at in order to instil ever more distrust and fear towards every spiritual path.
The anti-cult crusade of these last twenty-five years will nevertheless not have succeeded in extinguishing faith and hope in the hearts of the French. The growing malaise of materialist society cannot be only the seedbed of hatred, fear and violence; it also carries within it the germ of a more just and fraternal society, turned towards humanist and spiritual values.
At the dawn of this year 2008, the CICNS invites all the people concerned by spirituality not to yield to fear, but to claim their fundamental right to live, without hiding, the spirituality of their choice.
Our team will continue its information work with the general public and the authorities to attempt to establish a constructive dialogue on the place of spirituality in society. We will be very attentive to the way our President of the Republic reconciles his conviction of the French people’s need for spirituality with the policy conducted by his government to condemn and fight every new expression of the spiritual quest.
December 2007
We know that the anti-cult discourse resembles an attempt at “skull-stuffing” more than a pedagogical will to alert the population to a real menace. The incantatory repetition of a danger whose proofs are non-existent (despite three parliamentary commissions!), the simplistic statements that betray the desire to frighten more than to educate, the opportunism of certain politicians’ interventions (in election periods, for example), the amalgams and the crudeness of the caricatures presented to the general public are the demonstration of a totalitarian intention which obviously cannot display itself in broad daylight. Somewhere, someone thought a great cleaning-out was needed. The suggestion seduced a few lobbies and the machine set itself in motion. Complaints, reminders of essential notions like those of human rights or individual liberties, will do nothing, for it is not (for most of the anti-cult actors) a matter of a misunderstanding or a lack of education, but of a campaign determined to rid the landscape of the spiritual minorities. No negotiations possible, or “one does not discuss with the cults”, according to the general watchword. That is why our action cannot be limited to the mere “information” of the public authorities, but must also widen to that of the spiritual minorities themselves, and of the general public, which has heard only one insistent side of the story ring out for more than 25 years, to the point of still being deafened by it. We count on your help to relay the information we have gathered and thus allow the year 2008 to see a little wisdom, discernment or good sense reborn in the midst of this morass.
December 2007
Madame Picard spoke at Brest on the subject of the cult movements: “They practise manipulation, seduce, multiply enticing propositions in the domains of care, health, food, children’s education, cultural, scientific and environmental activities. The cult movements are invading every domain of life.”
In the issue of Libération of 30 November 2007, Olivier Bomsel, economist, member of the mission on downloading, gives his opinion on the body “UFC Que choisir”: “The UFC is a cult of charlatans. A cult because it represents only itself and instrumentalises the consumer in public debate (…) Far from the consumer, the cult now defends only its own errors”. There is a link between these two statements, even if it does not appear at first sight. The anti-cult rhetoric of exclusion of the spiritual minorities has built itself a vocabulary, a posture in debate, which is winning imitators just about everywhere; why go without, the effect is guaranteed.
Madame Picard, along with a certain number of people waging the same combat as she, have become masters in the art of installing a climate of fear around an imaginary enemy. This technique of manipulation insinuates itself into every sector of society: rather than engaging in a serene dialogue, despite differences of point of view, one begins by verbally discrediting one’s contradictor, the important thing being not to be constructive but to lay low. All this in the name of Truth, of Democracy, of Consumer Freedom, etc.
In a certain way, the spiritual minorities are no longer alone in carrying the burden of the cult label. Should one rejoice? No, for the generalisation of a new rhetoric of discrimination is a regression. Yet this situation can make it possible to return to more intelligence in the debate, by observing that the reproaches addressed to the spiritual minorities, once relieved of their charge of ostracism, are not particular to these groups. From there, an overall, comparative reflection can be engaged to understand better the springs of human groups. And it is only at the end of that reflection that public action can take over, if need be.
Our Observatory project is an illustration of this approach.
November 2007
An AFP dispatch published in Le Monde.fr of 12 November 2007 mentions that the Council of Europe rapporteur, Dick Marty, “attacks, in his latest report, another aspect of the antiterrorist fight: the blacklists of presumed terrorists”. Here are a few extracts:
“The Swiss senator denounces the absence of ‘rights of the defence’ for the people listed”; “The consequences can be dramatic for personal and professional life”; “One country proposes to include a person on the list without supplying detailed reasons (…) The other gives its agreement without hearing, or even informing, the person concerned”. “He (Dick Marty) also proposes a ‘de-listing’ procedure. “Now, and this is frankly the last straw, no such procedure exists”.
As regards the lists (but also on account of the police violence of certain assaults), senator Dick Marty would assuredly arrive at the conclusion that the spiritual minorities in France are treated like terrorists (an ethnologist like Maurice Duval presents the theme of the cults, moreover, as the French-style “axis of evil”). The same “non-law” weighs on the people who have been listed.
To get out of this rut, the CICNS proposes the creation of an independent observatory of the spiritual minorities. The success of its creation, beyond the financial and technical aspects, rests on a new paradigm: the spiritual emergence of recent years could be the renewed expression of an essential human dimension which ought not to be pushed aside, still less stigmatised, as it unfortunately has been for thirty years.
November 2007
The Île-de-France region grants a subsidy of €17,000 per year over three years to the ADFI to “catalogue the groups active on the themes of health and personal development” so as to track “unscrupulous gurus, disguised as therapists, Yoga teachers or clairvoyants, (who) prey on fragile people and on professionals” (Source).
This is, then, in plain terms, a new list of persons or groups judged dangerous. The State, scrupulous about offering a more presentable image, subcontracts the dirty work of producing a list to its fetish association.
Following the last parliamentary commission of enquiry on the cults, it clearly appeared that the ADFIs and the UNADFI also serve as relays to supply the MIVILUDES with the results of their assessments of beliefs: an approach the public authorities can hardly avow openly if they want to respect, at least in appearance, the secular pact.
There is no need to return to the incompetence of the UNADFI and the ADFIs in treating these questions. But the irresponsibility of these practices is truly worrying, as is the absence of any supervisory organ capable of sounding the alarm within the public authorities (the Observatory of laïcité seeming to be only another ceremonial “contraption”, to use a well-known expression). The finding therefore remains negative on this front after three years of our association’s action. We count on your support and your testimonies to give the necessary weight to what we denounce.
October 2007
At a recent conference within the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in Warsaw, from 24 September to 5 October 2007, and in the more precise framework of the ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights), the French government, through the voice of its ambassador, permanent representative of France to the OSCE, supported the position of the MIVILUDES and of FECRIS, notably by denouncing “those who reverse the roles when they position themselves as victims of religious discrimination”: http://www.miviludes.gouv.fr/spip.php?article244&iddiv=2.
We will not comment on the regrettable quasi-obligation of the French government to support a mission it created, the MIVILUDES, and a federation it finances, FECRIS, whatever the statements made by these bodies. It is interesting to note, moreover, that FECRIS stands for European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Sectarianism. We would like to know what is to be understood by “Centre of Research”, an expression suggesting a set of university or equivalent authorities recognised in the matter; which are they? We suspect that where France is concerned, the authority is the UNADFI. Let us be clear: the ADFIs have no authority, credibility or competence in terms of scientific research on religious movements or on what is called sectarianism. The only competence of these associations is self-proclaimed and unfortunately validated by the public-utility status granted by the State.
Let us come back to the argument: the spiritual minorities, alleged to be responsible for numerous “victims of sectarianism”, are said to pass themselves off “dishonestly” as “victims of anti-sectarianism”.
The French debate on the cults has reached the point of confusion where proofs are inaudible. There are two currents of thought that rub shoulders, avoid each other with rare exceptions, and when an exchange takes place, it tips into the mode of confrontation and is therefore inoperative; the research results in sociology of religions and legal sociology become beside the point; the only arguments that “get through” are at the emotional level, often a generator of aggressiveness, and they resemble, on both sides, an appropriation of the “true” defence of human rights.
Outside all factual data, the citizen might then tell himself that all this is six of one and half a dozen of the other. Yet, while waiting for the space to be created where the proofs will at last be audible, it is worth insisting on the enormous difference there is, in the reference to fundamental values, between the discourse of the MIVILUDES/FECRIS type and the discourse of the CICNS, for example.
In the first case, this reference is affirmed, while refusing an open dialogue with those principally concerned - the new spiritualities - and departing as far as possible from an approach of knowledge. For illustration, let us recall the remarks of Mr Roulet (President of the MIVILUDES) on the subject of the annual meeting of CESNUR in Bordeaux: a way “for a few academics to spend their time citing one another” (source: Sud-Ouest, 2 June 2007, article by Hélène Rouquette-Valeins). Respect for the person is granted only when it goes in the direction of a policy of selective victimisation, and the principle of the presumption of guilt is systematically applied against the spiritual minorities.
On the contrary, the CICNS affirms the necessity of respecting spiritual freedom and the spirit of the 1905 law, by re-establishing a permanent dialogue with the members of the spiritual minorities (tens of thousands of people) and by using the analytical work of the sociologists, the jurists and all the people for whom the presumption of innocence is the basic principle of the relationship to the other. This overall work would be the mission of an independent observatory of the new spiritualities, whose creation is one of the CICNS’s objectives.
The difference evoked above thus distinguishes a society that contents itself with appearing democratic from a really democratic society. Some, evidently, content themselves with the appearance.
September 2007
Why is it important to relaunch a real debate on the question of the said cults?
Because there is no human question that is not resolved through dialogue and mutual respect. Yet the current treatment of this subject has made it taboo, making suspect in the eyes of opinion those who dare to confront the received ideas. This intellectual laziness is sly: it transforms intolerant behaviour and counter-truths into “self-evident facts”.
Because one cannot pass over the dark parts of a democracy while exalting its virtues. Above all if that exaltation is the alibi for justifying anti-democratic behaviour. Justifying the fight against the cults as practised in France in the name of laïcité and the defence of human rights is one of those impostures.
Because believing oneself safe today, when one is oneself directly concerned by the accusation of being a “cult”, is an illusion. The anti-cult discourse in our country is based on rumour, which takes little account of a discreet and law-abiding attitude. Rumour sweeps away in a day what then requires years of reconstruction, if that is even possible.
Because defending freedom of conscience, spiritual freedom, freedom of therapeutic choice, is not a restrictive attitude intended to guarantee the exercise of one’s own belief or path. It is necessarily a global attitude, within the respect of the laws, which it is necessary to adopt when the constitutional and legislative texts, though eloquent and protective as regards these freedoms, are no longer respected in their spirit.
We hope that many of you will understand the necessity of mobilising this Sunday 30 September 2007 in order to help regenerate this debate.
September 2007
The UNADFI, through the voice of Jean-Pierre Jougla, addressed the Council of Europe on 28 June 2007. We take an extract (Source, translated from the English by the CICNS):
The followers of the cults are chronic victims who undergo a prolonged and repeated victimisation over an indefinite lapse of time and with multiple traumas. They are always (whatever the cult) victims of an excessive influence and their state of weakness is abused. Unlike the ordinary victims of tangible, visible or sudden aggressions caused by a third party, the followers of cults are not conscious of their state as victims nor of the mental influence of which they are the object. One can therefore affirm that they are deprived of the lucidity necessary for their free consent…
The tens of thousands of people targeted by these words, because they are accused of being in cults, and who have made a conscious life choice, will feel justly indignant at this total absence of respect for freedom of conscience, disguised as protection of human rights and of victims “in spite of themselves”. The forced victimisation of persons, doubled with an affirmation of their unconsciousness, is the fashionable rhetorical tool for attempting to discredit the new spiritualities.
These words would matter little if they did not come precisely from an association declared of public utility in France, with the financial and moral support of the State. It is urgent to restore a balance both with our government (which does not do itself credit by very often associating itself with such statements) and with the European bodies. Our forthcoming colloquium will contribute to this indispensable awakening.
-------------- the text in English
cult followers are chronic victims who undergo prolonged and repeated victimisation in an undefined lapse of time with multiple traumatisms. They are always (whatever the cult) victims of undue influence and whose state of weakness has been abused. Contrarily to current victims of tangible aggressions, visible or sudden, caused by a third person, the cult followers are unaware of their state of victim and are not conscious of the mental influence of which they are the object. One can thus affirm that they are deprived of the lucidity which should accompany the freedom of assent
September 2007
At this stage of our action, we wish to alert all the people engaged in spiritual paths or alternative ways of life respectful of the human being to the growing urgency of joining the CICNS’s action and making their voice heard by the authorities (by writing to the MIVILUDES and the Prime Minister to testify to the benefits of their spiritual paths or to denounce the discriminations and police abuses suffered, by signing our petition, by organising screenings of our film, by taking part in our colloquium). Not a week now goes by without our learning of the closure of a venue hosting courses (one in Paris and one near Nice recently), or of police harassment of others. Our warning is apparently not carrying far enough or loudly enough, and the dissolution of the French spiritual landscape is under way, in silence, fear or general indifference. The new president of the National Assembly is even said to have taken a position by offering his protection to a person accused of defamation by a spiritual minority in a lawsuit. The media continue to use their power of influence to soil reputations, to substitute themselves for Justice and to promote the most aggressive activists of crude French anti-cultism. The misdeeds of a democracy adrift are multiplying, and if the spiritual minorities are the first to feel the effects, they will certainly not be the last. It is perhaps not too late for the people concerned to wake from the collective hypnosis and torpor, to come out of withdrawal and resignation, and to manifest their impulse of solidarity within this morass.
Do not hesitate to contact us to allow us to relay your testimonies, or to ask to take part in our action. Do not let this campaign of denigration smother your deepest aspirations.
August 2007
According to an AFP dispatch of 31 July 2007, the Minister of the Interior, Michèle Alliot-Marie, is contemplating an adaptation of the status of the faiths without however calling into question the 1905 law on laïcité. It will be a matter of “permitting the establishment of a financial flow between the worship associations governed by the 1905 law and the associations falling under the regime of the 1901 law”.
Anne Demetz criticises this approach on Betapolitique. We will not comment on the soundness or otherwise of the measure contemplated by the Minister, but on one of the shock arguments given to criticise it: the current law is said to be “one of the best guarantees against fundamentalist and cultish practices”, an argument illustrated again in the rest of the article.
The cultic fear is decidedly the all-purpose argument that allows any contradictor to win over the doubtful to his cause. If the factual arguments do not suffice, then the fantasy of the cultic danger should do.
What are “the cults” (that great indistinct ensemble of so-called dangerous movements) doing in a debate on the financial flows of a 1905 association towards a 1901 association? The worship legal status has long been refused to movements alleged to be cultish, with a few exceptions, like the Antoinists or the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is true that the precautionary principle currently in place commands the suspicion of everyone except the great religions, and that the list of the cults varies according to the interlocutor. Let us note in passing that the current tax dispute between the State and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, if it ended in the State’s favour, would herald a complete calling into question of the financing of all the worship associations; but it is true that this is a “cult”, so some will then know how to justify, in this case, the modification of the spirit of the 1905 law.
Not only do the spiritual minorities designated as cults have no access to worship status, but the character of a faith is refused them because of that label. Which then allows certain magistrates to invalidate complaints of religious discrimination when the group to which the complainant belongs is considered a cult (see our interview with Raphaël Liogier). In this case again, few are moved by the disregard of the 1905 law.
Let us recall, finally, that these “cults” acquired this defamatory label, or will acquire it, following parliamentary reports and MIVILUDES reports without legal value, and under cover of article 1 of the About-Picard law, of which one still wonders who has the competence and the means to apply it.
July 2007
In an article in Le Monde, the CEO of Peugeot-Citroën denounces the amalgam between suicide and working conditions: “The media and many contributors solicited by the press, such as the unions, the doctors, the psychologists, wanted to establish a close link between work and suicide, notes Mr Streiff. (…) I protest against the amalgam that is made to say that ‘work kills’; I think it makes no sense. It is a lack of humility before a fact that nobody understands.”
These words seem sensible to us. They do not, of course, exonerate the CEOs of industry from questioning themselves very seriously about “dehumanising” working conditions, where productivity and objectives of excellence serve as dogma, where money makes law. Let us add the 3 suicides at Renault, and imagine for a moment these dramatic events within spiritual minorities. The kill would have been sounded. The anti-cult campaigners of every stripe would have bayed for blood, denouncing mental manipulation, the suicidal cults. Files would have been hastily reassembled in all the weeklies, evoking Waco and the OTS, to show the enemy. By comparison, Mr Streiff in fact benefits from a certain media “restraint”, not to mention that he can express himself, which spiritual groups condemned in advance could not have done.
Let us pursue the comparisons. In a recent affair at Lisieux, the About-Picard law is going to be invoked. Since everyone is equal before the law, could one not invoke abuse of weakness at Renault and Peugeot? Which would unfailingly have been the case if these suicides had taken place within spiritual groups. It is not a matter for us of encouraging the use of this bad law (see news 1 and news 2), whose promoters are feverishly trying to obtain its inclusion in our case law - on the contrary. But it is useful to bring out the discrimination suffered by all those arbitrarily classed in the cult category.
These media gesticulations are the norm today; the victim-centred treatment of social problems allows us to doze off between two puffs of indignation and to evade substantive reflection (see our book digest).
June 2007
It is when one suffers rumour oneself that one fully measures its effect, both personally and in the consequences it can have on those around one.
A freemason testifies to his stupor on learning that the MIVILUDES wishes to check whether there might not be dérives sectaires within the masonic obediences: Link
That stupor, thousands of people within the spiritual minorities have lived it and live it every day. It is astonishing that the first reaction of this freemason citizen is: “As if there were not enough cults to deal with” - and not to realise the indifference, indeed the approval, aroused by the discredit cast on others, of whom one generally knows nothing, and before any enquiry.
If we are not careful, the whole of civil society will soon have been put through the sieve of cultic prevention. So long as rumour is not denounced for others - even, and perhaps above all, when it crushes us - there will be a soil that keeps it alive. What, then, was the use of the Outreau tragedy?
We do not endorse the extension of the MIVILUDES’s anti-cult fight, for the blindness that accompanies this body’s action leaves one perplexed. The damage caused by a policy that pushes a precautionary principle to the extreme, violating freedom of conscience, is far greater than the number of so-called victims it claims to protect. This damage is unfortunately considered “collateral” and ignored by the greatest number.
June 2007
Certain small political parties presenting candidates in the legislative elections were qualified as “wacky”, in an implicit amalgam with the cults, on the public channel (France 2, Wednesday 6 June 2007, 8 pm news). Every week now brings its share of anti-cultish accusations. And everyone will appreciate the democratic character of this attitude directed against the alternative movements, a few days before the elections.
One must, once again and without great hope, castigate the absence of professional ethics of the principal media on the theme of the cults, and deplore its gravity.
Certainly, “images of people jumping on carpets” are surprising in a presidential election, but in the end no more so than the rather vulgar pile-up of eleven footballers just after a goal: sport being very well regarded among our politicians (the author of these lines rather likes football).
The most formidable adversary of tolerance is not the group of frenzied anti-cult figures who haunt the public domain, and some of whose representatives quickly seized on the France 2 report to drive in the anti-cultish thorn. Certainly, that group holds the megaphone today, but it represents few people. The most formidable adversary of tolerance is the anti-cult campaigner lurking in each of us, who, after making us say that the cult hunt is an absurdity, leads us to designate one peremptorily.
May 2007
The word “secte” has become an insult thrown in the face to discredit one’s opponent. Its use for nearly thirty years concerning the spiritual minorities has produced imitators who have well perceived its power of discredit.
Thus Claude Allègre (among others), in his latest work “Ma vérité sur la planète”, speaks of the green cult to designate the ecologists who disturb industrial interests. In an article in Libération, there is talk of the blue cult to designate the French national team. The political parties LCR and FO have also enjoyed the favours of this appellation (the red cult?).
The word ends up designating evil generically, a little as one spoke of the demon not so long ago. With the same supernatural and indisputable character that allows one to dispense with explanations or proofs. The concept has merely been secularised.
When personalities with a large media audience use so charged a word to advance their arguments, their first reflex ought to be to question the prior intentions that drive them to denigrate the other a priori with so wounding a term. But very few have that honesty.
May 2007
The UNADFI is taking an interest in the “doctrinal content of the cults” (see “news”). This point had been mentioned by Mme Picard, President of the UNADFI, during her hearing before the third parliamentary commission of enquiry on the cults (see our comments on the hearings). Mme Picard specified that her association owed it to itself to study doctrines when they harm public order. Nobody within the commission found anything to say…
That an association should decide to evaluate beliefs in a country of free expression is its most legitimate right. That an association declared of public utility should do so, when it is the principal supplier of information on the subject to the public authorities, raises the question of its competence to give such opinions. When one knows that the sociologists of religions are pushed aside from the debate by these same public authorities, no legitimacy remains to this organisation.
We may seriously question the assertion of the executive and legislative authorities that they do not concern themselves with beliefs, so true is it that our “laïcité” has variable geometry. The Republic does not judge them, but apparently “delegates” this mission to associations declared of public utility. A good subject for the new Observatory of laïcité.
May 2007
The good and bad use of victim status are very well illustrated in an article in Le Monde by Alain Salles of 21 April 2007. Alain Salles explains: “Who can be against the victims? The political parties are at their bedside. Jean-Pierre Raffarin gave them an ephemeral secretary of State: Nicole Guedj. Nicolas Sarkozy wants to create judges dedicated to them. Ségolène Royal proposes to ‘place a lawyer at the disposal of the victims of grave violence within the hour following the filing of the complaint’.”
Further on, he gives the floor to Daniel Soulez Larivière and Caroline Eliacheff: “The ever more massive arrival of victims on the criminal judicial scene is a retreat of symbolisation in justice; and under fallacious pretexts of care lavished on the victims, it is an occasion of social and individual regression.” And he concludes: “The victim comes to court to obtain vengeance. Now, the judicial system is built to oppose vengeance and lynching.”
Alain Salles also cites Robert Badinter: “There has been a drift and a recuperation of this just cause. We have passed from the legitimate preoccupation with the condition of the victims to a political activism. Aid associations have transformed themselves into associations for the defence of this or that party, given a role equivalent to that of the civil parties or the public prosecutor in the judicial process, in a selective compassion.” “Justice cannot become a psychological assistance service, a ‘justice of mourning’.” These words could not better translate the instrumentalisation of the victims of alleged “cults”.
April 2007
Much has been said about the candidates, too much no doubt. A word about the militants. The enthusiasm they demonstrate for their champion at rallies deserves a pause. In many regards, their impulsive ovations at the slightest emphatic proposal from the speaker are similar to the hurrahs of sports supporters. These noisy manifestations, like so many goals scored against the adversaries, add no credit to political action, which ought to leave the competitive mode in which it has got stuck, and we regret that a large part of the electoral effort consists in discrediting one’s adversary or showing that he is not up to the job.
Most of the media also seem more interested in the tactics of the game, the dribble or the winning tackle, than in the deep meaning of the match. They are at the surface, and question the accuracy of the analyses and forecasts, a futile activity if ever there was one.
Everyone will swear that the future of France is at stake, but how much does that element really weigh against the pleasure of suspense in the electoral joust?
The circus games will stop when we have had enough. In the meantime our team has chosen the “fighter” who seems to us the most willing to defend the value of the spiritual dimension and a more fraternal “living together”.
April 2007
Words return ceaselessly in the candidates’ speeches: poverty, precariousness, unemployment… and their remedies: growth, competitiveness, solidarity in effort, restarting the economic machine. One constant emerges: the primordial value granted to work. To the point of associating human dignity with it; not to have work is to feel unworthy (Nicolas Sarkozy), humiliated (Ségolène Royal).
Should a mother at home feel unworthy? Everyone will answer no, of course, but it is a worrying trait of our consumer society to have reduced human dignity to the sole fact of having work socially recognised as such. Adolescents express their worry about unemployment very early because they are hammered with this fear of joblessness, and their life prospects are reduced to this value of work, pillar of our consumer society.
For many, and notably the people who bring alive a spiritual dimension, the value of life is within oneself, and dignity rests on values different from that of work as the pillar of existence. These testimonies are a richness for society, to help it out of its consumerist madness and its dread of economic degrowth.
But space would still have to be left for that inspiration; we noted this sentence from Nicolas Sarkozy (Villebon speech): “I claim the right to say that capitalism cannot survive without an ethics, without the respect of a certain number of spiritual values, without humanism”, and we find refreshing the “Long live life” at the end of François Bayrou’s speech (Zénith)… so much more so than the Marseillaise and the violence of its verses.
France is world champion in “laïcité”. And it wishes to beat its own record. It has therefore just created an Observatory of laïcité. We will wait to see what this organ’s action will be, but one may already worry about it. The spirit of laïcité is not respected in France. The spiritual minorities are well placed to know it, since the denomination of “cults” takes them de facto out of the framework of that laïcité. If this observatory has the function of re-establishing that initial spirit of tolerance and protection of faiths and beliefs, in the respect of public order and without debasing the notion of public order, then this observatory will have a point. If this body is to support the fight against the cults and observe the mothers wearing religious signs while accompanying their children on school outings, we may wager that our public authorities will discredit themselves further at their fellow citizens’ expense.
March 2007
On 27 February 2007, the Official Journal published a question from Mr Fenech (deputy and recently president of the commission of enquiry on the theme of the cults and minors) to the Minister of Justice, on the motives that had led the Chancellery to call into question the training of magistrates in the fight against dérives sectaires (in the framework of the National School of the Magistracy: ENM).
Mr Fenech speaks coyly of the cultic phenomenon as a “developing social phenomenon whose victims belong to fragilised publics, in the front rank of which are minors”, thereby justifying an ad hoc training within the ENM.
The government departments heard by the third parliamentary commission of enquiry (of which Justice was one) all supplied figures showing, on the contrary, that the cultic phenomenon is insignificant. Let us recall Occam’s principle, a scientific principle that has proved itself: faced with a question, it is desirable to reduce the number of hypotheses, and the simplest is generally the right one. If the figures indicate that the number of cases of dérives sectaires is insignificant, the simplest hypothesis is to say that there is no developing social phenomenon (above all if several departments simultaneously arrive at the same result), and not that the departments did their work badly, as the commission of enquiry concluded. The Chancellery seems to have understood this.
It is not surprising that Mr Fenech perseveres on the path traced by the commission he chaired, but he is defending preventive measures that correspond to no reality, are sources of discrimination and cost the taxpayer money.
February 2007
There comes a day, in our societies, when one realises that to remain whole, faithful to one’s faith or one’s life choices, one must confront the oppression of the powerful and the ignorant. That day, one feels there are still two possible choices: to keep quiet and remain undisturbed in the shadow of liberticidal laws, or to speak and risk being jostled by exposing one’s disagreement. But the more the laws become effectively liberticidal, the less real the choice is.
Indeed, the abuses mean that it is no longer merely a matter of being discreet and conforming, but of quite simply abandoning what one feels to be just and precious.
There is then no alternative left, short of disowning oneself: we must live our life in accord with what is just and precious, because one simply cannot sacrifice it. What life would remain behind such a sacrifice? So there is no longer any question, even if sadness and powerlessness are sometimes present.
That day has come. The harassments are more and more frequent (see our press release in “new on the site”), and the sword of Damocles of the powerful hangs over the heads of all those who asked only to live this existence as they see fit. The pressure of the powerful can only awaken the disagreement of the minorities. And the world has evolved more than once in this way in the past. Let us make our disagreement known, peacefully but with courage.
February 2007
According to an article in Le Monde of 6 February 2007: “The French would take religious irreverence badly.” “51% of them find it unacceptable that a religion should be pointed at for its influence on society. Criticism of the way religions function, or of their teaching, is also considered unwelcome” (see also the ongoing trial of Charlie Hebdo over the caricatures of Muhammad. The caricatures of the “cults” that the magazine had made had not made so many waves).
What must the thousands of people who belong to spiritual minorities think of these figures, when they are dragged through the mud (the police and gendarmerie assaults have multiplied in recent weeks) through endless parliamentary enquiries and MIVILUDES reports? It appears, once again, that the fact of being cited as “cults” takes the incriminated groups out of the framework of laïcité, and therefore out of the statistics.
Irreverence then becomes commonplace. We believe that a public informed in a balanced way would have a consideration for the new forms of spiritual expression similar to the one it has for the religions. The current French situation is the result of a deliberate political action; it will be righted by a political will. But that will knows only the law of the ballot box. It is therefore important to show that the people who make a particular life choice and want to give a deep meaning to their existence are an electoral force that counts.
That is the meaning of our presidential test-bench and of the declaration of commitment sent to the various candidates.
February 2007
In an article in Le Monde of 20 January 2007, Jean-Michel Dumay testifies to the phenomenon of “school phobia” experienced by a growing number of pupils.
It is not surprising that, some time after the release of the parliamentary report “cults and minors”, one of the real questions should resurface, since the anti-cult psychosis is the inverted pointer of the principal problems society does not manage to treat.
So “school phobia” has been replaced by “cult phobia”, and legislative amendments have been tabled against the alternatives to the Republic’s schooling, the latter guaranteeing the flourishing of our children (?).
Let us propose a test. Take the children who live this “school phobia” and launch a parliamentary commission of enquiry on the subject using the methods of the “cults and minors” commission, that is to say taking into account only the testimony of these pupils… National Education would unfailingly be declared a “dangerous cult” and closed. Is that an acceptable approach, even if in this case a fundamental reform is needed in that institution? The answer is no, of course.
There are the real problems, like that of education, and then those that are invented. The MIVILUDES has just invented (incidentally at the CICNS’s expense) a cultic activity of “lobbying in the domain of intellectual property”. Nobody had heard of it, but no matter: true or false problem, the alleged cults will have to shoulder the responsibility for it.
January 2007
Good feelings give us a good conscience.
In the name of the protection of childhood, of the development of the critical spirit, of contact with hard human reality, a parliamentary commission of enquiry is attempting to reduce to nothing the attempts, perhaps sometimes clumsy but sincere, of certain people to teach children new values. Yet one need only watch the television news and the end-of-year programmes to observe the stupefaction of which we should on no account deprive our youth.
Just as, at a certain period, the nobility hid its lack of hygiene by perfuming itself, a certain right-thinking class sprays itself and us with good feelings to preserve a system of values that no longer corresponds to the aspiration of many people, or serves only as a foil.
The start of the year is symbolically a moment for good resolutions. The coming election period is propitious for making heard the voice of a change that few candidates take into account: giving the spiritual dimension the place it deserves in society.
December 2006
A year after the anniversary of the 1905 law, France demonstrates its difficulty (its incapacity?) in being truly secular. The insistence of a good number of political officials on wearing laïcité like an apparatchik’s decoration is certainly the mark of a badly lived inner tearing. The press conference of the parliamentary commission of enquiry on the cults reproduced all the known artifices for demonstrating that it is not healthy to make an alternative spiritual choice outside the religions recognised or labelled by the State. The expression “little recognition” contains all the hypocrisy of the system.
The latest battering-ram blow, after the failure of all the other measures to eradicate spiritual diversity, was to use the theme of childhood. Of course, the deputies affirm, condescendingly, that adults may do as they wish (understand: delude themselves about the meaning they give their existence), but children will have to bend to the republican requirements (that is to say, those decided by a few deputies), and if the parents do not agree… they know what remains for them to do.
We have expressed several times the inanity of this indiscriminate fight: it will not turn away from their choice the hundreds of thousands of people who mean to live differently. This rearguard combat makes life needlessly difficult; it is a waste of time for the community.
December 2006
In an article in La Croix of 28 November 2006, the journalist Marie Boëton cites the deputies of the parliamentary commission of enquiry on the cults (MM Fenech, Gest, Vuilque, Brard). Following a three-hour visit to the community of Tabitha’s Place, these deputies granted themselves a competence in child psychology and behavioural analysis which they share with the media planet, which takes at face value, and without much discernment, this hammering of unfounded alarmist statements (the deputies say they are “in shock”, “it is urgent to fight the psychological and social isolation of these children”).
Behind the grand feelings and, let us concede it, perhaps a desire to do well in some, minors are today a political showpiece. Fifteen deputies were present to vote on the delinquency law. As if, once the games were played, the subject lost its interest. There is no doubt that the broad lines of the proposals of the parliamentary report on the cults were already written in June 2006, at the launch of the commission of enquiry. They will be announced come what may, at holiday time, even if reality must be bent and good sense replaced by an avalanche of liberticidal amendments.
Apart from the inconsequence and lack of humility of our deputies who proclaim themselves psychologists (an attitude they would readily qualify as a “dérive sectaire” in others), one may fear the impact of these media sallies on the people in the field - National Education inspectors, social workers, etc. - who do not confuse the evaluation of a child’s education with a quiz show and who, through listening and dialogue, have a fruitful cooperation with the people offering an alternative to the Republic’s schooling. That is the true meaning of freedom of education.
To reduce education to knowledge and to a potpourri of culture (Mozart, Zidane, the Beatles - without any value judgement or judgement of taste on our part about these figures) is certainly the greatest misapprehension of our educational system; it is not surprising, therefore, that many within the spiritual minorities put forward other values.
December 2006
In Kazakhstan, a governmental commission must rule on the question of a spiritual minority: the Society for Krishna Consciousness. Before the publication of the report, the authorities undertook an operation to demolish the dwellings of certain members of this minority.
In France, a parliamentary commission of enquiry running out of breath, on the theme “cults and minors”, launches a mediatised raid on a community with the objective of proposing laws making school attendance compulsory and protecting minors from “cultic” influence. Let us recall that in France school attendance is not compulsory, only instruction is, according to the fundamental principle of freedom of education recognised by the laws of the Republic and confirmed by the decision of the Constitutional Council of 23 November 1977, and that the school results of home-educated children are equal to and sometimes higher than those of national education.
If there is a difference of form in the treatment (and this point would deserve deeper study - read again our article on the assaults), is there a real difference of objective between these two events? Although we hear more often here about the values of our Republic, the framework of our law, the bedrock of our laïcité, the difference is minimal in the facts, for if in that other Republic the diggers expelled the undesirables without scruple, in ours, short of a genuine citizens’ awakening, the laws and directives will end up smothering every expression of difference, even if that difference expresses itself within the framework of the laws and the respect of the Constitution.
November 2006
The CICNS has carried out an analysis of the hearings of the parliamentary commission of enquiry on the theme “cults and minors”. Our finding is severe.
Many see society as sick. It is probable that one of the causes of the sickness is the resistance to accepting the forces of change within society. The spiritual minorities, despite possible clumsiness, bring a dynamic of change.
Most of the members of the commission think, on the contrary, that they are the sickness. Rather than looking at what causes it and attacking those causes, they seek to generalise a name for this sickness, as if that could help cure it. The names of the sickness are “secte”, “dérive sectaire”. And they try “feverishly” to stick the label on everything that disturbs by its difference.
These expressions, in the French context, are inextricably associated with an approach of amalgams that rejects wholesale everything outside the norm. Instead of studying case by case the situations that raise questions, the commission maintains a system of all-out stigmatisation. Amalgams have one sad advantage: one guilty, all guilty. Yet everything shows that the problem, as it is apprehended, does not exist.
Can they hear that it is better to accompany this change than to confront it?
November 2006
The intervention of Didier Leschi during his hearing before the third parliamentary commission of enquiry on the cults is significant. It shows that a certain number of people in government have understood the difficulty of the questions posed and, before that difficulty, refuse to practise the amalgam. They are, we are persuaded, more numerous than those who practise systematic stigmatisation, but curiously the latter hold the megaphone.
The supposed disturbance of public order, ceaselessly evoked in this commission, leads in principle, sooner or later, to a court action or an opinion of the Conseil d’État. It therefore appears natural, in a state governed by law, to refer in fine to the decisions of these bodies to evaluate the disturbance of public order.
Apparently the deputies of the commission do not see it that way, and explain that a level of disturbance exists which is not taken into account by case law but is nevertheless significant, and documented in the various international conventions for the defence of children’s rights.
The commission invokes “victims’ testimonies” to support its theses of the dangerousness of the spiritual minorities. Even if these testimonies must be heard, they can in no way constitute a sufficient element for asserting a dangerousness globally: in these situations, what share belongs to human behaviour that could be found in any organisation whatsoever, and what share of that behaviour can be attributed to the group’s doctrine? Let us acknowledge, moreover, that if any organisation were evaluated on the basis of the people who leave it and turn against it, none would survive. But evidently, in this case, that is the aim sought.
The deputies of the commission consider, without proof therefore, that a menace not delimited by the courts must be taken into account. Let us grant it. But then, the members of this commission have not assembled the expertise required to evaluate this new “disturbance of public order”. The question having been subtly displaced from the sphere of law towards a sphere of psychological, sociological, ethnological evaluation, are we meant to believe that the few people heard (in the great majority, moreover, spokespeople of the anti-cult discourse) will allow the deputies to assess justly all the minorities they are targeting? That is not serious.
The only way out of the impasse is to create in France a genuine observatory of spirituality, as the CICNS proposes. This observatory, independent, will allow the various assembled expertises to adopt at last an approach of knowledge and to turn their backs on a path of stigmatisation followed for too many years. It will also spare some of our deputies from improvising dramatically on sensitive subjects.
October 2006
The debates of the presidential campaign have begun. There is talk of “consuming better”, of “living better”, the second proposition often being dependent on the first.
Yet, for many people engaged in a spiritual path, life is defined at a deeper level. This domain was long a private matter in France, but the negative exposure of the spiritual minorities over many years has reversed that tendency. Today they are “undergoing” a third parliamentary enquiry which designates them as the enemy to be brought down.
Why can the French-style fight against the cults have no successful outcome? Because the great majority of the people who have chosen an alternative spiritual path are sincere and have made a conscious choice that gives meaning to their existence. They will therefore pursue their path in one way or another. Stigmatising them serves only to envenom relations that could be tolerant, if not harmonious.
It is time our political leaders realised this simple reality, either with their good sense or, in time, no doubt, through the peaceful electoral force represented by the hundreds of thousands of spiritually committed people who contemplate a society based first on human, and not mercantile, relations.
Let us salute in this regard the remarks of Didier Leschi, Director of the bureau of worship, addressed to the presidents of the parliamentary commission of enquiry and of the Miviludes. The fact that he notes indisputable “approximations” in the treatment of the question of the so-called “cults” by these two bodies is a sign of an indispensable rebalancing on this social question.
October 2006
The CICNS was present at the new Science and Conscience encounters 2006, whose theme was: “Freedom - what have we done with it?”. 1,200 people attended, over two days, the forty lectures on offer. The site itself (Le Hohwald) is not unrelated to the convivial atmosphere of these encounters, where everyone could exchange peacefully on a subject that is nevertheless delicate: freedom. The majority of the talks (Pierre Rabhi, Jean-Marie Pelt and others…) invited us to a different “living together” that does not seem out of reach at these encounters.
We presented our action at a lecture that was the occasion for screening our film on the new spiritualities in France. The authorisation to show this film during the lecture was withdrawn from us at the last moment by the colloquium’s organising committee: it did not find the film positive enough! (the film was nevertheless authorised for showing at our stand). This little incident is interesting in several respects. First because it shows that the film shakes up received ideas: it is therefore playing its role. Then because this “disturbance” shows how difficult the debate is on a subject where some have the impression they are taking risks if it is tackled head-on - perhaps rightly. But one cannot eternally content oneself with soothing words; there were, moreover, no soothing words from the speakers at the colloquium, which shows that the fear attached to this particular theme is artificial. In any event, we warmly thank Nicole Bertaud (organiser of the colloquium), who supported with dynamism the presentation of our action.
The people present at the lecture made possible a fruitful exchange that contrasts vividly with the pre-formatted and one-sided statements regularly heard in the media. One can only salute this gathering of ideas allowing openness and dialogue, and regret the impoverishment of reflection maintained by the press and the public authorities.
Many people came to our stand to speak of the difficulty of living peacefully the spirituality or convictions of their choice. It is a reality that often expresses itself discreetly: some do not want to awaken difficult memories, or even tell themselves they are not safe from further trouble. But each in their own way, by their determination to remain in accord with their life choices, made it possible to evoke the necessary solidarity that must be created between all the people attached to the right to spiritual freedom.
September 2006
In our last newsletter, we recalled the physical violence of the assaults that a certain number of spiritual minorities have suffered.
There is another violence, a verbal one, which has become banal over the last decade. To say of a group that it is a cult implies grave offences: manipulation and exploitation of persons, violence against children, paedophilia, rape, mafia-style fraud… It is therefore a statement that cannot be used lightly in a state governed by law.
Yet it is a common expression, and almost nobody worries about it today. Certain parliamentarians use the term abundantly to designate those they consider the enemies of human rights. The great majority of the media, because they confuse the sensational and the ratings with information, no longer have any interest in asking themselves the question (since only “the profit and loss account” matters, as Patrick Le Lay asserted in reply to François Bayrou after his intervention on the role of the media).
For that matter, our case law does not consider the term defamatory. For it to be so, one must for example say “dangerous cult”, which is a redundant expression. Let us note, then, that a spiritual minority must be designated as dangerous at least twice in the same sentence before the possibility of defamation begins to be considered.
This “banalised” verbal violence is doubtless the most insidious, and very certainly leads one day or another to the physical excesses observed during the assaults.
September 2006
Two dangers deserve our attention, in particular as to the real impact they have on French society: the cultic danger, and the danger of the psychosis maintained around the cultic problem.
The cult question has been analysed for twenty years by the public authorities. What proofs, research work or in-depth enquiries, university references, convincing statistics - verifiable by independent observers - do we have to speak of a social scourge and justify the arsenal of struggle put in place? Many sociologists and jurists answer that the social scourge does not exist; which does not mean there are no problems worthy of being looked at both sociologically and legally, but nothing resembles, from near or far, the peril evoked, and nothing justifies the absence of open debate on these questions.
The second problem is the feeding of a psychosis about the supposed cultic danger: parliamentary reports not respecting the adversarial principle and establishing blacklists, specific legislation against the spiritual minorities suggesting the idea that their dangerousness requires specific action outside the common law, a partial and biased media coverage of the phenomenon (let us cite, as the latest example to date, the France Inter programme of 5 September 2006, “Le téléphone sonne”, on the theme “Where does the cults’ money come from?”). This programme, distressing in its bias, without the slightest ambition of critical spirit, gives an idea of what the French media have become. The impact of this psychosis is patent: discriminations passed over in silence, and a banishment from society for all the people concerned.
Is the real disturbance of public order - so often invoked against the spiritual minorities, to get round the spirit of the 1905 law, foundation of our laïcité - not in the maintenance of this national, unjustified fear, which insidiously turns French society against a part of itself?
September 2006
The question of the cults has known no summer truce. The polemic around the gathering of the Jehovah’s Witnesses at Lens sums up on its own the ambiguities and, one might say, the meanders of French laïcité, as well as the difficulty of the spiritual minorities in finding a place in French society.
The State recognises no faith. That is the 1905 law. It is therefore not the State that decides who is or is not a faith. When 20,000 people decide to gather around their more than century-old faith, one can hardly deny the worship character of their movement and the right to meet within the framework of their associations. But the confusion comes from the “worship association status” granted or not by the State on criteria rarely free, moreover, of value judgements, and therefore of assessment of the content of the faith. This granting is therefore in principle not a “recognition” of the faith that unites these people (since the State is supposed to be incompetent on this question), but makes it possible to specify a legal status and to grant tax advantages.
Some (including Mr Nicolas Sarkozy) justified the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ right of assembly by reason of the worship status granted to the association, while others (including Me Pesenti on RFI: http://www.cicns.net/RFI.htm) refuse that right because the Jehovah’s Witnesses are supposedly not recognised as a worship association within the meaning of the aforesaid status. Let us note that worship status is not even sufficient for being treated with dignity, since the Antoinists, who obtained it, were placed on the 1996 list of cults in an arbitrary manner, like 171 other minority spiritual movements.
Jean-Pierre Elkabbach on Europe 1 (18 July 2006) finally summed up the heart of the problem by asking Nicolas Sarkozy, caricaturally: “Is it a cult or not?”, speaking of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
This question, which one could replace with “are all these people criminals or not”, is a blank cheque for stepping with impunity outside the democratic framework and outside laïcité, and for authorising, for example, Mr Jean-Pierre Brard on TF1 (20 July 2006) to call the Jehovah’s Witnesses “perfect delinquents”. It then becomes admissible to discriminate against groups considered a priori guilty.
The third parliamentary enquiry, which is to rule in December 2006 on the impact of the “cults” (understand: the spiritual minorities) on minors, starts from the same presumption of guilt that authorises, in the name of the great principles, this “exit” from the framework of our laïcité, and more simply from that of respect and tolerance.
Things can change if many of us testify together to another view of what are called the “cults”.
July 2006
The Caesars of Rome organised circus games to please and subdue the people. Today they are organised by the market economy, like the football World Cup. It is not a matter of sulking at the beauty of the game when it is there, but of recognising the illusion at work. A short while ago, grievances and disagreements were piling up; our qualification for the final brings the French together. Really?
At the moment when France shines in sport and believes it is finding its unity again through sport, a much duller reality is coming to light. The parliamentary commission of enquiry that is to rule on “the influence of movements of a cultic character and the consequences of their practices on the physical and mental health of minors” has been launched. It must deliver its report in December 2006. The parliamentarians of our secular Republic have therefore chosen to continue the discrimination of certain of their fellow citizens on the question of spiritual freedom. To be convinced of it, a few citations from some of them (source AFP): “The indoctrination of children is a major stake for the cultic groups: it is indeed when individuals are most malleable that the hold can be complete”, “abuses and ill-treatment that can lead to death are established”, “the number of children present in the cults is estimated at nearly 20,000”. On the subject of the Raffarin circular of June 2005, which seemed to put an end to the method of blacklists: “In reality, the question posed by the Prime Minister (editor’s note: Mr Raffarin) was that of the ageing of the information collected in 1995 and 1999”.
These few extracts indicate that the results of this enquiry - is the word enquiry not being debased? - will certainly be of the same tenor as the two previous ones (1995, 1999), with effects of an equally great brutality. Numerous support for our project of a Citizens’ Commission of Enquiry on spiritual freedom would constitute a strong signal of the affirmation of our rights addressed to our elected representatives.
We wish you a good holiday.
June 2006
On 30 May 2006, the Official Journal published a question from Mr Éric Raoult to the Minister of Justice: “Mr Éric Raoult draws the attention of the Minister of Justice to the development of the cults in our country. Indeed, according to various pieces of information appearing both in the press and in certain reports, notably parliamentary ones, these cults have been developing for several years in the suburbs, in the overseas departments, through the intermediary of professional-training organisations directed at youth. This information is worrying in the current context of tension. He therefore asks him to specify the action he intends to conduct in this domain.”
A draft parliamentary commission of enquiry entitled Influence of movements of a cultic character and consequences of their practices on the physical and moral health of minors was on the agenda on Wednesday 21 June 2006 in the law commission.
Recently Raphaël Liogier, university professor at the IEP of Aix-en-Provence, told us that the studies, the proofs, on the question of the spiritual minorities seemed to be of no use, in the sense that the anti-cult fight continues while resting on no evidence. The two announcements above are two examples among others.
One explanation for this is certainly that two discourses, carried on at different levels, do not manage to meet. The anti-cult discourse is emotional, defensive and founded on fear. It cannot accommodate a step back and factual evidence. To realise this, one need only stroll through the anti-cult forums, where every attempt at reasoned speech immediately meets an aggressive, indeed insulting, response.
One can however have no indulgence for our elected representatives, who dispose of sufficient elements to engage another type of reflection, which would moreover be their role. Even granting that some of them find themselves helpless before the cultic fear, it is flagrant that this subject serves to divert attention. Who can seriously think that the so-called cultic phenomenon has any influence whatsoever on the “current context of tension”? It is a fraud! The danger the spiritual minorities represent in our country is sociologically insignificant. The danger represented by a political use of the cultic fear deserves all our attention (see our interview with Maurice Duval).
So should we continue to bring sensible and balanced information? Yes, for it keeps us alert. One can however compare the cultic fear to a little Berlin wall artificially separating people whom everything permits to live together. A little wall of shame. What made the Berlin wall fall without a blow struck? One can reasonably say that it was because a great number of people willed it at the same time. For the wall of cultic fear to fall, we must will it. That is the meaning of the impulse of solidarity the CICNS wishes to initiate.
June 2006
In Le Monde of 7 June 2006, an article draws a worrying picture of delinquency, more particularly on the subject of weapons in schools; recommendation of the DCRG: “filtering of access, development of video surveillance around and even in the corridors, installation of alarms and motion-triggered lighting, police presence in the public spaces around the establishments. The RG suggest raising the anti-intrusion railings and multiplying the number of supervisors.”
Ségolène Royal, saying out loud what some had doubtless not dared to say, spoke of military supervision for delinquents.
Some time ago, we mentioned a colloquium of the parliamentary study group on the cults wishing to alert opinion to the indoctrination of children in the cults - without proof, of course. What irony!
Our society no longer dares look itself in the face. Not in the sense that the problems are not mentioned - on the contrary, we are stupefied with bad news. But in a certain way responsibility is evaded: nowhere, or onto a scapegoat. Very often, the only riposte of our elected representatives is then rot or repression; our values of competition and generalised mercantilism are never called into question.
A single example, even if it does not cover the whole question: many studies have shown that the violence of the young has a relationship with the force-feeding they undergo (the word is almost a euphemism) of video games and TV series in which this violence is banalised. One statistic has estimated that an American child of 12 has already ingested 130,000 aggressions of every kind and 9,500 murders and assassinations. Have we heard proposals for concrete measures to stop this drift of the free market? No, people prefer to contemplate installing video surveillance, a police presence, military supervision - in fact, ultimately, recreating the atmosphere of those video games in reality, since they are the reflection of the way we preserve our values; and, when the occasion arises, as often as possible, pinning the blame for a dangerous education on the alleged cults.
May 2006
The approach of the presidential and legislative elections has restarted the electoral machine.
We are thus witnessing the beginning of that long series of media contortions which often hide merciless combats and where there is nevertheless talk of peace, security, social integration and progress. Spot the error.
A recent poll showed that a large majority of the French no longer trust the political world. It is not certain, for that matter, that we are not ambivalent - simultaneously depressed by the political spectacle and captivated by these confrontations, so much does our weariness vie with our thirst for spectacle.
Nevertheless, if it is difficult to believe the electoral promises of our candidates - who are, it must be acknowledged, assailed by conflicting demands - it is essential to continue to believe in ourselves. The interest of the coming electoral campaigns lies not first in the expectation that what we ask will be realised, but in the solidarity that unites us in expressing it. It is an unavoidable beginning if one wants things to change. The politicians will follow, since they can in any case no longer do otherwise today.
We have initiated a test-bench on our site which will progressively compare the visions of the various candidates on the question of the new spiritualities. We are asking them concrete questions whose answers will assuredly be instructive. Who knows, perhaps we will have a good surprise among all these candidates. It will then be for each person, in their soul and conscience, to match their choices to their aspirations.
May 2006
It is interesting to set side by side two recent events: the publication of the 2005 MIVILUDES report and the Clearstream affair. In both cases, accusations are proffered in the form of rumours, of partial and biased information, of disinformation. Against alternative spiritual and health paths in the first case, against the political class in the second.
In the Clearstream affair, the many political personalities implicated at once took public offence at these unjust attacks. A great media and judicial effervescence took place to shed light on these rumours and find the “crow” responsible for this shambles. We may wager that even if some do not have a clear conscience, they will slip through the net.
What means are given to the spiritual minorities to silence the unfounded rumours that have designated them a menace to the Republic for more than twenty years?
Where is the true menace? In the sometimes clumsy attempts of some to recover, alone or in a group, a harmony through a spiritual path? Or in that dismaying display of political low blows, conflicts of interest and power struggles, so recurrent that one ends up getting used to it, once the first dismay has passed?
May 2006
The fight against the cults in France is an example of a derisory combat that justifies itself by inventing new angles of attack against a non-existent enemy.
First there was talk of cults, well structured; then, faced with the impossibility of demonstrating any social scourge whatsoever, it is explained that the phenomenon is evolving, that it is no longer solely a matter of large groups but of small groups that hide, that mutate in their forms and their doings. What could be more practical than an invisible and mutant enemy to justify any repressive measure, however inconsequential?
First studied and discredited in the United States (http://www.cesnur.org/testi/melton.htm), the notion of brainwashing was imported into France under the slightly more watered-down term of mental manipulation, which transformed itself in the About-Picard law into abuse of weakness, a term more in conformity with our law. The words are chosen to become acceptable and to fit the democratic framework; the acts, for their part, can remain anti-democratic.
There was talk of cult offences; we passed to dérives sectaires, then to actions of a cultic character. A gradation into vagueness whose only aim is to leave no doubt about the cultic risks.
The accent was placed on the alleged tormentors, but that did not bear enough fruit, so the spotlight is placed on the supposedly numerous victims, a discourse more apt to touch the emotional fibre and a defensive attitude: a university diploma in victimology linked to cultic harm has just been created.
One could give many examples of this self-adaptation of the anti-cult discourse in France. What a waste of time, carefully avoiding understanding an unavoidable social phenomenon from which society has everything to gain.
April 2006
Extract from the UN report on freedom of religion and conviction in France (18-29 September 2005), paragraph 108: “However, she [the Special Rapporteur] is of the opinion that the policy followed and the measures adopted by the French authorities have provoked situations where the right to freedom of religion or conviction of members of these groups has been unduly restricted. Furthermore, the public condemnation of certain of these groups, as well as the stigmatisation of their members, has resulted in certain forms of discrimination, notably with regard to their children…”
Remarks made at a colloquium of the Study Group on the cults of the National Assembly at Saint-Priest (Rhône), 30 March 2006 (source AFP): “Several thousand children and adolescents are today in cults. They represent a profitable investment: they secure the next generation”… “50,000 children are victims of cultic hold out of 700,000 followers.”
The contrast between these two visions is striking. Beyond any argument for one camp or the other, when national elected representatives mandated by the French Parliament in the framework of a study on the cults have an assessment so radically opposed to that of foreign observers mandated by the reference body on human rights, it is time to open an independent public debate on the subject.
If the public authorities cannot have the distance necessary to apprehend the question of the new spiritualities, it is for citizens and experts of every horizon to take the floor and bring back good sense.
April 2006
In an article in Le Monde of 18 March 2006, one can read:
Almost all the media derailments in criminal news stories occur in the first 48 hours. Before rushing at a sensitive story, “we will look twice, even at the cost of losing a little ground to our colleagues,” promises Mr Grenu, of France 3 Nord - Pas-de-Calais. “One often speaks of the solitude of the investigating judge; there is also the solitude of the journalist,” underlines Jean-Luc Evin, editor-in-chief at Ouest-France. “We encourage colleagues to share their doubts, even at the cost of delaying a story by a day.”
The whole limit of the efforts conceded is contained in that concession: “even at the cost of losing a little ground”. What will that “little” weigh against the sacrosanct ratings? Is there really an acceptable degree of haste when there is a risk of defaming, and therefore of soiling, people presumed innocent for long years? As for the solitude of the journalist, one wonders what it consists of, if it is a matter of relating the facts as accurately as possible - when they are known, that is, and when there is something to say - unless that solitude is linked to the fragility of renown and the difficulty of obtaining a “scoop”.
The journalists’ charter contains all the rights and duties permitting a respectful and effective journalism. Following the Outreau affair, one is astonished that the great media have not already taken public measures to recover the sense of that charter. But let us keep hope…
The image of the spiritual minorities would be quite different today if those journalistic values had been respected these last twenty years.
March 2006
If you happen to stop at motorway service areas, you will surely have noticed those little kiosks presenting guides on very diverse subjects: history, politics, science, etc. They are in general quite well made. One concerns civic education “…based on respect for the other within the framework of life in society…”.
In the middle of this booklet, there is a paragraph on non-discrimination: the 1958 constitution ensures “the equality before the law of all citizens, without distinction of origin, race or religion”. It is also mentioned that a whole legal arsenal has been put in place “in order to fight sexual, racial, name-based and physical-appearance discrimination”. Let us note that this arsenal for preserving the values of our constitution omits to mention the term “religion”. It is not surprising that difficulties appear if essential words are deleted.
Just after this paragraph, a yellow inset evokes the resurgence of the cults and the efforts deployed to determine properly the frontier between cult and religion. There follows a definition of the cult, which we will spare you. Let us note the feat of arriving at a definition where the contemporary sociologists who have studied the question seriously have given up.
It is important to keep the traveller, even on the road to his holidays, alert to the dramatic and worrying social scourge that the cults constitute…
February 2006
What does the affair of the Muhammad caricatures teach us? Did the caricaturists have the right to make those drawings? Must freedom of the press be respected at all costs? Must religions be protected from blasphemy?
Right (even divine right) is invoked to the rescue of each position. Some will say it is a matter of liberty, but that liberty is generally expressed within the framework of the law. Another way of approaching the question might be to ask: what is the intention of each protagonist? What was the intention of the caricaturists? What really motivates those who want to protect the right of the press, or the image of their religion? What was the intention of those who envenomed things? Is it an intention of openness towards the other, a tolerant one, or the contrary? This simple honest assessment, which does not hide behind the invocation of the law, would be of a nature to appease the divergences, and would doubtless allow the observation that the caricatures are only pretexts. A few drawings suffice to inflame a whole region of the world and leave another at a loss.
February 2006
On the subject of the Outreau affair, the Minister of Justice speaks: “Everyone is deeply moved. It is a good first step and we must not stop there; the second step is that we will have to recover our composure and legislate with a little distance.”
That distance does indeed seem often absent. Certain “methods” similar to those one wants to denounce seem to be used in the search for a culprit… for another scapegoat, as if to counterbalance the horrors the first victims suffered.
Is this wisdom of “distance”, of “stepping back”, not the foundation of justice in a state governed by law? The Outreau commission will have served no purpose if it does not result in promoting that taking of distance on every subject. One test will be to observe the behaviour of the judicial apparatus and, more generally, of the public authorities and the media towards the new spiritualities.
January 2006
The parliamentary commission of enquiry into the Outreau affair brings its share of revelations and emotion every day.
A threshold of tolerance was crossed in this affair which obliges a reconsideration of the whole judicial system.
And the new spiritualities in all this? At the risk of repetition, let us recall the way they were stigmatised in an arbitrary parliamentary report, and how the resulting discriminations are passed over in silence in the media. That is a threshold of tolerance one may call high, but apparently insufficient to arouse questioning at the level of the public authorities.
At the CICNS, we have been able to observe that the psychological shock of Outreau has not yet had any effect on the treatment of the new spiritualities. The same rumours and amalgams are used, including in the course of certain trials. These rumours shift things, crudely or subtly depending on the case, from the presumption of innocence - which is the foundation of our law - to the presumption of guilt.
What is needed to return to the presumption of innocence?
It is desirable that the adjustments that will be made to the judicial system play their role as safeguards. But those safeguards will certainly not be able to put an end to an attitude of distrust towards difference without the rebirth of certain human values. How can a society based on competition and gain hope to develop fraternity?
Yet this new fraternity exists, in multiple forms, and in particular within the new spiritualities. It is doubtless enough to affirm it with patience, in a great impulse of solidarity.
January 2006
An article in Le Monde of 7 January 2006, lost in the mass of news items, informs us that, according to certain researchers, and in large part because of human actions, a massive extinction of species could occur in the 21st century.
It is remarkable to observe how “globalisation”, which could be a showcasing of diversity, leads unfailingly to uniformisation, indeed destruction.
The rejection of spirituality in its diversity in France falls within that great crusher which is single-track thinking, at the origin of our criminal behaviour towards nature and towards men.
Many voices are rising in the ambient hubbub to propose a new vision of the world. It is up to us to make 2006 a “megaphone” year for the right to spiritual freedom.
December 2005
The UNADFI has won at first instance a lawsuit against a collective of lawyers and complainants accusing it of being a thought police.
The judgment considered that their honour and reputation had been harmed. In a press release, the UNADFI asserts that the claimants in reality aimed only to “instrumentalise justice…”.
Let us ask what is done about the honour and reputation of the thousands of people who have been soiled over the last twenty years by defamations, rumours and (instrumentalised?) trials by reason of their spiritual affiliation, and who prefer to keep quiet about it. Indignation at the ravages of unfounded accusations has not yet reached the spiritual sphere. We will continue to work to restore a necessary balance.
December 2005
The events in the suburbs of the great cities show that the only response of our democracy to difficult questions is to build a rampart of violence (physical, political, media-based or legal).
That rampart is closer to or further from our space of liberty depending on the subject. Concerning the new spiritualities, the policy of fighting dérives sectaires very quickly restricted the citizens’ space of expression.
Violence belongs to man. The spiritual impulse is not at fault, even if, on occasion, that impulse can be perverted by violence. What the new spiritualities, and the religions in a general way, bring in their initial message is the idea of a possible fraternity between men.
We have ended up accepting that individual liberties be flouted for various reasons, invoked whenever convenient: reason of State, public order, social scourge, etc. And the idea of fraternity very quickly gives way to the certainty that man is a wolf to man and that only a restriction of liberties, and violence, will restore order.
The 1905 law, by separating the spiritual sphere and the sphere of the State, finally allowed the people who wish to bring alive their spiritual dimension to revivify in their own way that idea of fraternity which the State has trouble keeping alive.
The separation can remain as it is, but the State could advantageously take up for itself this idea of a new fraternity, which is for that matter part of our republican motto: “Liberty, equality, fraternity”. What indeed is that fraternity, if not the idea that men can live something other than competition and distrust policed by social rules?
November 2005
For four days, the CICNS took part in the Éveil et Action encounter in Paris. We met many people very concerned by our action, many of whom told us their painful story, often with very hard words against the ADFI, and calling a cult “this fascist country in which one is forced to think ill of every alternative path”.
At the same time, few of them really know the situation. Those who believe they know it best declare that the situation in France is improving and that the public authorities are more tolerant, and it would indeed seem that certain large spiritual movements are being left more in peace. On the other hand, individuals testify to a worsening of the harm to their freedom of thought.
The some 600 people who took part in this encounter had in common a desire to share values other than those advocated by our declining materialist society, and carried a message of peace, sharing and fraternity. They testified to a dynamism and a great creativity through concrete and solid projects capable of bringing immediate solutions to the problems of health, energy, education and social and family relations, as well as in the political and economic domains. They also testified to the difficulty of finding, in France, a space in which to express oneself freely, above all as soon as one speaks of spirituality or of a holistic vision of life.
We carried out a few interviews which this newsletter will echo, and doors opened towards spiritual movements with which we had very positive contacts, promising common actions.
In a general way, the CICNS’s message was very well received and strongly encouraged, and many came to bring their support to our project of a Citizens’ Commission of Enquiry, not hesitating to show their joy at seeing such an initiative take shape.
Thanks to all those who were there and welcomed us, as to all those who read us and join us in this great, peaceful movement of solidarity that is changing the world.
November 2005
27 June 2005: Press release of the deputies Philippe Vuilque, Georges Fenech, Jean-Pierre Brard, members of the study group on the cults at the National Assembly:
“With the RAFFARIN circular of 27 May 2005, some would like to see a turning point in the French policy of fighting the cults, and more particularly a calling into question of the list of cults established by the 1995 parliamentary report and updated in 1999… the circular in no way recommends putting an end to the parliamentary list… Better still, by this ruling, the Conseil d’État confirms the ‘informative’ interest of the parliamentary list, which therefore remains a reference for the work of prevention and of the fight against dérives sectaires.”
Which unfortunately puts an end to the hopes of those who saw in the Raffarin circular a positive inflection of the blind fight against dérives sectaires.
AFP, 29 September 2005: in an interview, Jean-Michel Roulet, new president of the MIVILUDES, declares:
“We are not very good at receiving the victims of mental rapes; there is training to be done among the police, the magistrates, so that these victims can testify.” Mr Jean-Michel Roulet would like “to advance by even five judgments” during his presidency.
Is it a matter, as already happened in 1998, of manufacturing culprits to justify the arsenal of the anti-cult policy?
Saturday 8 October 2005: Anne Hidalgo, deputy to the Mayor of Paris, in an interview with La Vie no. 3136: “The nebula of the cult movements, which practise mental manipulation and want to take possession of the individual’s liberty… A great public debate should take place on this question.”
Many in France have now discovered that they are part of this nebula, of which a map will be kept up to date in Paris by the City Hall. The enemy is designated; it is nebulous, therefore difficult to define, which makes it all the more dangerous, and at the same stroke justifies every excess.
It is in this climate of maintained psychosis that Mme Hidalgo wishes for a public debate and that MM Philippe Vuilque, Georges Fenech and Jean-Pierre Brard call for the creation of a parliamentary commission of enquiry. Can one believe that the public authorities wish to balance the debate on the spiritual minorities?
If, after 20 years of surveillance, no statistics are available on the importance of the phenomenon of dérives sectaires, the question is perhaps moot. It is not a matter of denying the existence of offences, which the courts can treat without creating specific legislation, but of firmly calling into question the policy of amalgam and discrimination followed until now.
That is what we propose to study in the framework of the Citizens’ Commission of Enquiry on spiritual freedom in France. This enquiry is an opportunity we are giving ourselves to get out of the disinformation. Will this opportunity find an echo among the more than 500,000 people who are in this so-called nebula, unjustly pointed at, and who ask only to live openly and, for the great majority of them, within the framework of the law? We know that a certain inertia still weighs on the victims of the campaign against the spiritual minorities, but we hope for an imminent awakening.
October 2005
The debate on spiritual freedom frightens. But it also frightens those who, in a certain way, promote the new spiritualities.
As announced in the previous newsletter, we were to take part in a programme on Radio Ici et Maintenant on Thursday 15 September, as well as in the “Restez Zen” fair in Paris from 16 to 19 September. In both cases, the organisers finally did not accept our participation. We apologise to those who would have liked to listen to us or meet us at these events. Listening to their fears and their arguments, the negative answer of these organisations to our proposal to prompt reflection on spiritual freedom brings out two things:
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A French context which has long installed the dread of simply mentioning the subject of the spiritual minorities, and which has generated a self-censorship.
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The germ of discrimination which is in each of us. Because the choice of avoiding a debate on spiritual freedom potentially hides certain settled ideas about who is dangerous and who is not. And we may then ask ourselves the question: on what is this fear founded, is my information reliable, complete, have I taken the trouble to listen to other sides of the story? Am I not myself suspect in the eyes of some? And even if my assessment is founded, does that prevent me from speaking of it without passion?
This questioning leads to the acceptance of the other in his difference, with discernment but without judgement (that is the role of Justice). The impulse of solidarity we wish to create through the petition for the Citizens’ Commission of Enquiry on spiritual freedom in France is an affirmation of this attitude of openness, to look things in the face within the framework of the law.
September 2005
For several years now we have been challenging the public authorities and the media on the policy of discrimination that targets the spiritual minorities.
Abundant information has been and continues to be brought by the CICNS and by people recognised for their competence (sociologists, jurists, philosophers), or by people testifying directly to the discrimination they have suffered, to prompt a balanced debate on the subject.
Despite this, the public authorities have made no concrete and credible proposal for truly understanding and taking stock of the emergence of the new spiritualities. The only analysis offered is truncated and places excessive attention on the problem, alleged to be of great scale, of dérives sectaires. This last expression perpetuates the amalgam between spirituality and criminality, and thus banishes from society all the people who simply wish to live the spiritual dimension that animates them.
It is time to launch a project for a Citizens’ Commission of Enquiry on spiritual freedom in France. The term “citizens’” implies that citizens take the initiative of the enquiry. It is therefore important that this action be supported by the greatest number of people, by signing the support petition, to constitute a representative voice.
Responsibility for the enquiry will be given to a Steering Committee made up of academics (sociologists, ethnologists, specialists in law) and jurists (lawyers). The members of this Committee will have to have a recognised competence and neutrality on the subject.
The first contacts we have made for the constitution of the Committee have received a positive echo for this initiative. We are confident of being able to bring together, with your support, the people who will bring credibility to the results of this enquiry, while being conscious that this commitment demands accepting the criticisms and pressures inevitable on a subject difficult to depassion in France. But is this difficulty of our democracy with self-analysis not one more reason to act?
This impulse of solidarity will gather the people attached to spiritual freedom, beyond beliefs and fears and in the respect of the law. It will be the testimony of the acceptance of the other in his difference and the recognition that diversity is a chance and a richness. That is already inscribed in our French, European and universal Constitutions; let us know how to recover in our behaviour the inspiration of those founding texts.
August 2005
The new religious movements? “Soon it won’t interest anyone any more. Everything is done so that it interests nobody.”
Such were the words recently offered us by Bernard Renaud, a publisher in the domain of esotericism, spirituality and natural health.
We do indeed observe the advance of repression in its legal contours, the vexations inflicted on the spiritual movements by way of the town halls, the banks and certain administrations, but also in the consecration that the “anti-cult fight” receives from certain media, writers, politicians or film-makers, who take up without distinction or precaution received statements and ideas, and thus banalise the banishment from society of a part of its citizens.
If we share the observation, we do not associate ourselves with this pessimistic prophecy. The CICNS, over this summer, has been enriched by new contacts, has met people who, like Bernard Renaud, are ready to denounce the smothering of spirituality in what is most alive in it.
The CICNS has also been enriched by new members, and by the now discreet spectacle of the inexorable and silent renewal of the spiritual impulse within the very heart of a society whose face is made up with materialism and cynicism.
The CICNS’s return from the summer break will come with the announcement of new projects and a vitality equal to the demands of the news.
July 2005
A new anti-terrorist bill will be presented at the end of August in France. If it is accepted, a camera should be installed in every bus in Paris (4,000 in all): “In the name of the fight against terrorism, the government will therefore propose to Parliament, which will discuss it in the autumn, to multiply the surveillance devices in public places (metro, buses, shops) and to oblige the operators to keep the record of telephone calls (excluding the content of conversations) and of emails” (Le Monde of 27/07/05).
The answer to the great social problems is always the same: an increase in surveillance and in the repression of individual liberties… in the name of their defence. Who can believe that these cameras will be used only in the event of terrorist threats, and that conversations will not be listened to for any other reason? The new technologies are now in the service of the control of populations.
The difficulty of the spiritual minorities in living their faith falls within a general movement of suspicion towards everything that can imperil the consumer society. It is not a matter here of defending terrorism, which is a true calamity, but of seeing how our societies, based on competition and on the a priori that difference is a danger, are led to create enemies. What would remain of our values if there were no more enemies? So when one disappears, another must quickly be created.
The spiritual minorities, sources of new ideas, bring another perception of life in an ailing society. Is that the reason they are hunted like terrorists? Another vision nevertheless seems unavoidable if we want to get out of an increasingly vicious circle. Our individual choice is at the heart of the answer to the problems, and of what will or will not come to pass.
June 2005
The HALDE (High Authority for the Fight against Discrimination and for Equality) is, on paper, the most promising apparatus proposed today by the public authorities for fighting all discriminations. The speech of the President of the Republic at the installation of the HALDE nevertheless clearly defined the principal orientation of this body: equality of opportunity in the world of work. That objective is laudable. Nevertheless, if one sets this strong inaugural message beside the many press comments that pointed out the HALDE’s lack of resources for treating all the files and complaints that will come up, it appears that discriminations against the spiritual minorities will assuredly come at the tail end of this institution’s preoccupations.
The France 2 8 o’clock news of 20 June 2005 generated a certain emotion among people sensitive to spiritual freedom. A report in the bulletin mentions the intention of the public authorities to put an end to the use of the 1995 parliamentary report. One does not quite know what the expression “put an end” covers, insofar as, theoretically, that report has long had no legal or normative value. Should one see in it an admission by the State of the absence of legal and normative value of the Ministry of the Interior’s notes?
Be that as it may, another very plausible way of understanding the intentions of the public authorities in this announcement is that, far from limiting itself to the 172 movements of the first report, the fight is going to extend to all the movements (between 600 and 800) catalogued by the ADFI as “cultic” groups. Where is the change? The list will be extended, but it will not be official.
Looking more closely, this report is a model of the genre in its way of launching different contradictory messages. One may perhaps be astonished that a public television channel does not seek to clarify them. But can one really still be astonished?
These two events, placed end to end, point always in the same direction. Short of a rather unexpected reversal on the part of the public authorities and the media, the spiritual minorities are destined for condemnation.
It would suffice, however, for all the spiritual seekers, representing more than one per cent of the population, to affirm in solidarity their right to a spiritual life, for there to rise up in France a force of peaceful resistance that would touch consciences and make heard a voice other than that of intolerance and oppression.
June 2005
This newsletter no. 18 reaches you earlier than planned because we judge that the revelation of Mme Hidalgo’s project in Paris demands our attention as a matter of urgency.
The list of the 1995 parliamentary report on the cults has no normative or legal value. It seems vain to recall it, since it continues to be a reference for putting a part of the population on the index: the map of the cults in Paris is the illustration. The public authorities know perfectly well the destructive power of rumour. They are at the origin of this rumour and maintain it while protecting themselves legally: the report cannot be challenged, and the Ministry of the Interior is itself the origin of the note legally disqualifying the report. It is an implacable mechanism. But who is fooled?
Thank you for reading our article and circulating it widely. You are also invited to write to the mayor of Paris or the arrondissement mayors, as well as to the political officials of your choice. A model letter is available on this page, but you are encouraged to write it even more spontaneously, making your voice heard before this totalitarian turn our society is taking.
May 2005
The Teva channel, the Nouvel Observateur, soon France 2, speak of the alleged cults. The discourse is without surprises. We present a testimony from Doctor Tal Schaller. Between these two visions of one and the same reality, does a bridge exist? We think so. First factually: it seems possible to us to assemble the evidence showing that the rejection by the former rests on no reality permitting them to denounce the abuses of the spiritual minorities as a significant phenomenon. Beyond this factual evidence, there is a share of the irrational in the attitude of rejecting the other who is different and who disturbs because he calls for change. It is probable that even in the face of the evidence, some will continue to react against what frightens them or what they do not agree with. One might almost say that these are the foundations of that bridge we are trying to build together. To manage to accept the other even if one does not agree with him, because it is in that diversity that life expresses itself. This part of the bridge must be built from both sides, but we will go as far as possible towards the other bank to hold out our hand.
May 2005
The results of the CICNS’s tour in March 2005 continue to take concrete form with the release (on your computer screens) of the interview films made during that journey. You now have the testimony of Maurice Duval at your disposal; others are in preparation. These new perspectives make even more alive the message of openness to the diversity of spiritual paths that we wish to share. The path is barely cleared, but there is no lack of good will, or of citizens full of ardour to bring their experience, their knowledge or quite simply their good faith to the illumination of a domain of human existence that must be able to be lived in broad daylight. It is enough to gather one’s energies in one form or another to create a movement of solidarity, a first movement of butterfly wings that will become a salutary breath, that one. Spring is a bearer of new ideas. We will not fail to present them to you as soon as they have hatched.
April 2005
The CICNS’s perspective is awakening a renewed interest, if the visitor statistics of our site are to be believed (about 500 visitors a day). Beyond the figures, the positive echoes following our presentation tour this spring encourage us on the path traced. Each person can transmit this message of openness for a freer spirituality. It is addressed first to oneself, for accepting difference, accepting the other, is not always simple, and can then be addressed to others. This period, against the background of the referendum, is favourable to great confusion, so fogged do the debates seem by reactions and fears. Some do not hesitate to speak of a choice of civilisation in the times to come. The MIVILUDES, through its president, prides itself on the scale of the administrative and legal apparatus put in place to fight the significant phenomenon of dérives sectaires. It specifies however that one of the objectives of the coming year will be to define this notion, and that there are no figures for measuring its importance, the figures not being reliable. We have thus been witnessing, for many years, the installation of a phenomenal apparatus without knowing precisely what it is for, either in quality or in quantity: there is indeed something to be proud of. It seems that the people attached to spiritual freedom and freedom of conscience are being pushed to demonstrate their innocence. May this conjuncture bring us closer to one another and encourage us to unite, to speak with that same determined and serene voice the world so greatly needs today.
March 2005
From Tours to Marseille, the CICNS’s journey was a fascinating adventure. Two weeks of nomadism under the sign of spiritual freedom, two weeks punctuated by very diverse sharings, all equally rich, of experiences, ideas, advice.
On the menu, first of all, five lectures, which gathered some sixty people. If the number is still small, the encounters, on the other hand, are of great quality. We were able to exchange with the members of several spiritual minorities, who told us very simply of both their difficulties and their fears, but above all of their aspiration to true solidarity, the kind that, beyond differences, allows the voice of spirituality, alive, to be raised against the lie.
We had, moreover, the opportunity to carry out some ten filmed interviews, for the 52-minute documentary whose project you know. Authenticity and depth guaranteed. We now have “in the can” a multiple and documented material that answers many questions on the legal, sociological and spiritual planes. Clear, “bracing” testimonies that lift the veil and dismantle the mechanisms of the anti-cult fight.
Three stages remain for us to complete this tour, and we hope, of course, for the presence of many people from Montpellier and Toulouse at the coming encounters. But already we can testify to a new and essential stage in our work: that of taking root, the one where the work of the last two years begins to bear concrete fruit, through tangible options, effective support. We feel clearly that we have left the domain of mere hopes to enter that of realisation. More than ever today we must remain vigilant, but the light is on the march, and we owe it to our unity. Thank you.
January 2005
Did you say “cults”? We say: “New Spiritualities”.
The CICNS (Centre d’Information et de Conseil des Nouvelles Spiritualités) is an association born from the observation that spiritual orientations and practices have, in France, for several years, been battered by the tendentious amalgams of a discriminatory crusade against the new expressions of the spiritual search. Not a day passes in France without a lecture venue, a spiritual group, a therapist or a private individual having to endure the intimidation attempts of the activists of the fight against the spiritual minorities.
The media speak of gurus, of mental manipulation and of collective suicides. We, for our part, meet people who have simply gathered in communal or associative form to follow their deep aspiration to rediscover life.
Most of these “spiritual minorities” are above all hearths of mutual aid and reflection, where certain values, lost in the strayings of our societies of profit and falsehood, are beginning to be reborn.
Criminality and suicide within these groups are practically non-existent, very much less frequent than in the rest of society.
The spiritual leaders of these groups, contrary to received ideas, most of the time show an integrity and a disinterestedness from which many company directors or party leaders could draw inspiration.
All suffer this rejection by society, and some, who are no different from the others, are openly discriminated against, calumniated, sometimes lose custody of their children, when they do not undergo “raids” by armed men, as if they were terrorists.
Where does this gulf of incomprehension come from, this rejection, when it is not hatred?
Sources
- Tous les éditoriaux depuis la première lettre du CICNS (archived copy of http://www.cicns.net/Editoriaux.htm)
English translation of Tous les éditoriaux depuis la première lettre du CICNS (French), originally by CICNS.