At an event in Oxford, Southern England, marking the 400 th anniversary of the King James Bible, the British Prime Minister David Cameron is reported to have said, “We are a Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so.” He also commented, “The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals what makes Britain what it is today.”
Though UK claims to be a leading protagonist of secularism in state policies, Cameron's comments are quite right because the overwhelming majority of the British people are Christians and their social values and morals are mainly derived from the Bible. Actually, in a democratic society, secularism does not mean that beliefs and ideals of the majority need to be ignored.
But in the like manner, if the Prime Minister of Bangladesh says in public that Bangladesh is a Muslim country and we cherish the Koranic values and morals, I fear, many of our political leaders and intellectuals will brand the PM as a diehard Islamist! To them, secularism is the negation of religion!