WE OFTEN talk about secularism as if it were just another choice on the menu — one more application alongside religions, ideologies and philosophy people live by. That is a mistake. Secularism is not an application. It is the operating system, the quiet framework that allows all the applications to run without crashing into one another. And like any operating system, when it works well, we hardly notice it. It hums in the background, invisible, enabling coexistence where there might otherwise be collision.
For the devout, secularism can sound suspicious. But, it asks for something simpler: recognition. You can subscribe to any faith, or none at all, and still be secular. To be secular does not require you to abandon your conviction. It requires you to accept that convictions come in more than one form and others hold theirs as deeply as you hold yours. Secularism is not disbelief. ItÌýis the awareness that belief takes many shapes and each deserves the same protection as yours.
And here lies the deep truth. By defending someone else’s right to believe, you defend your own. A Muslim who speaks up for minorities or national minorities reinforces the principle that safeguards the Muslims in places where they are a vulnerable minority. A Hindu in India who supports the rights of the Muslims or the Dalits strengthens the same framework that protects the Hindus in countries where they are a few. An atheist in China who defends the rights of the Uyghur Muslims also upholds the principle that allows belief and non-belief to coexist. What looks like altruism is, in reality, foresight. Secularism reminds us that protecting another’s flame is often the surest way of keeping our own alive when the wind shifts and darkness falls.
But, some of us must look beyond the applications altogether. While faith sustains individuals, secularism sustains faith. Without the operating system, even the majority religion is insecure, because once exclusion is permitted, no one can be sure whose turn will come next. That fragility is precisely why secularism cannot remain static. It must adapt and evolve, accommodating new ideologies, micro-faiths and shifting identities while keeping the framework steady. It also requires resilience and maturity. It asks some of us to be the grown-ups in the room, debugging the system when it falters, defending its fairness when it is bent and ensuring that it holds for everyone. Because when the operating system fails, the applications do not slow down; they disappear.
Yet, history shows how fragile that balance is. Secularism, when practised in its true spirit, protects the operating sytem. But, too often it has been misused. Governments have invoked ‘secularism’ not to preserve neutrality but to bend it: silencing belief, stripping away identities, or enforcing new orthodoxies. That is not secularism itself. That is politics hijacking the operating system for its own gain. Secularism is neutral, a referee rather than a competitor. Its role is not to tell you what to believe or force you to stop believing but to protect the space for belief and non-belief alike. When the state begins to glorify one belief or suppress another, it is no longer preserving the operating system. ItÌý is rewriting it into malware.
And, the danger extends beyond religion. This neutrality matters for any ideology that claims exclusive truth, whether nationalism, political ideology, or cultural ‘isms.’ A secular framework is what prevents one worldview from crowding out all others. Without it, even non-religious convictions risk hardening into new dogmas enforced by numbers and power. In this sense, secularism protects the freedom of conscience — the space where both faith and doubt can exist without fear.
When the operating system falters, institutions that depend on neutrality sucjh as schools, courts, parliaments, etc, quickly lose credibility. Public life collapses into sectarian arithmetic, where the majority is mistaken for morality and domination masquerades as strength. Yet, the irony is that even the dominant group is weakened. Coercion corrodes belief, leaving only the shell of faith without spirit, a prison of hollow conformity. If secularism is the oxygen that lets conviction breathe, suffocating others eventually chokes the majority, too.
That is why secularism is not optional. It is the condition of survival in a plural world. Without it, society devolves into a zero-sum game where one group’s gain feels like another’s loss. With it, differences can be debated, even fiercely, within a framework that ensures no one’s voice is erased. This is not sentimentality but realism. Defending secularism is defending the long-term security of every conviction.
But the real work of secularism lies less in constitutions than in citizens. Laws may set the rules, but it is everyday choices that keep the operating system alive. A believer who respects another’s right to worship differently might be more secular than an atheist who insists only their worldview is valid. Secularism is not defined by what you believe privately, but by how you act publicly. At its best, it channels conflict into words, votes and ideas instead of violence. If you want your faith to endure freely for your children and grandchildren, you should want the operating system of secularism to remain strong, because without it, even the largest faith is never safe for long.
To be secular, then, is not to be faithless but to recognise the fragile system that lets every belief, including your own, survive. In an age where conviction is too often wielded as a weapon, secularism is the shield that keeps the public square usable for all. You do not need to embrace your neighbor’s creed as true — only to accept it as real. And that is the radical insight: secularism is not the rival of faith but the safeguard that protects every faith, including the choice of none. If the operating system fails, no application is safe. If we defend it, we preserve not only our neighbour’s right to believe differently but also the endurance of our own.
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Kazi Tamaddun, PhD, is a scientist specialising in energy and environmental systems.
