mixing stuff

Lars Vilks, the artist who has stirred up quite a lot of things by portraying Muhammad as a dog, ends his latest statement in Dagens nyheter by saying that politics and religion have to be kept separate. A lawyer was quoted in Svenska dagbladet as saying that politicians should have no influence over how law is practiced. His comment is one of the contributions in a recent Swedish debate over changes in the legislation on sexual violence. I take it that one of his points was that politicians should not interfere with the business of interpreting laws.

To me, these two statements cannot be said to be anything but outrageously stupid. Of course, Vilks and the lawyer comment on things that are very different in nature, but what these two commentators have in common is a belief in life as consisting of quite separate areas, which have to be kept clean from influence so as not to loose their function. It seems that the idea about functionality is inherent in this picture, even if expressed in a lot of different ways.

Of course, there are some situations in which it becomes important to point out that a question concerns politics, rather than religion. A political question is often masked in religious language. And the same goes for the relation between law and politics. There are many practices, principles and laws aimed at preventing arbitrariness in (e.g) imprisonments and in trials (habeas corpus, to mention but one example, has that function, as far as I can see). In the debates over the Guantánamo camp we can see this discussion in full bloom. See this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3867067.stm

But the problem is that the examples of how one question is confused for another, or how one question is disguised into unrecognizibility, need not in itself elicit ideas about politics as an area with a particular function, which necessarily stands in opposition to other areas. It is, I would say, just as easy to come up with sound examples of how polictics and religion, or law and polictics, are intertwined, as it is to mention examples of how it is vital to keep them distinct from each other.