Theological and Political: Redux

I posted a few weeks back about the theological-political issue where Islam is designated as that particular religion where religion and politics cannot be separated.  I came across this article from 2003 while looking up works cited by Giorgio Agamben.

It seems very interesting and thoughtful while still claiming:

thus [Europe's] specificity in regard to other civilizations - is found in its political secularism, and that this secularism has its roots precisely in Christianity.

 It also reinforces the distinction with Islam:

This refusal is, in large part, an appropriation from Christianity, which introduced into history - with much greater clarity than Judaism and especially Islam - the distinction between religion and politics.

But then insists that the European constitution (this is back in 2003, mind you) ought not simply to mention the Judeo-Christian heritage.

The reference to Judaism and Christianity leaves out only Islam from among the great religions of the Mediterranean basin. Apart from the fact that this is politically inopportune, it seems to me fundamentally unjust: around the end of the first millennium Europe acquired a debt toward Islam that the following centuries of conflict were not able to cancel....For all these reasons, if it is thought opportune to modify the second clause of the preamble of the future European constitution (which now reads, "Inspired by the cultural, religious, and humanistic heritage of Europe..."), one could consider a formula of this tenor: "Inspired by the heritage constituted by the Greek and Roman civilizations, by the Jewish and Christian religious traditions, in fertile dialogue with the Muslim tradition, by the philosophical currents of the age of the Enlightenment..."

I'm not sure I understand this correctly, but the author asks us to recognize the specificity of the Christian contribution to secularism and then to acknowledge the shared dialogue with the Muslim tradition.  It seems a reasonable compromise for someone writing from within the Catholic tradition.  While I might not agree with him about the "clarity" of the Christian tradition on the separation of church and state authority, and while I might not agree with him about the particular circumstances of what he calls a "dialogue," this is one of the more thoughtful approaches to the "Christian roots" argument.

At the same time, as a certain Cambridge professor once noted to me, issues of origins are at bottom issues of ownership.