Abstract
The classical liberal concern for freedom of religion today intersects with concerns of equality and respect for minorities, of what might be loosely termed ‘multiculturalism’. When these minorities were primarily understood in terms of ethno-racial identities, multiculturalism and freedom of religion were seen at that time as quite separate policy and legal fields. As ethno-religious identities have become central to multiculturalism (and to rejections of multiculturalism), specifically in Western Europe in relation to its growing Muslim settlements, not only have the two fields intersected, new approaches to religion and equality have emerged. We consider the relationship between freedom of religion and ethno-religious equality, or alternatively, religion as faith or conscience and religion as group identity. We argue that the normative challenges raised by multicultural equality and integration cannot be met by individualist understandings of religion and freedom, by the idea of state neutrality, nor by laicist understandings of citizenship and equality. Hence, a re-thinking of the place of religion in public life and of religion as a public good and a re-configuring of political secularism in the context of religious diversity is necessary. We explore a number of pro-diversity approaches that suggest what a respectful and inclusive egalitarian governance of religious diversity might look like, and consider what might be usefully learnt from other countries, as Europe struggles with a deeper diversity than it has known for a long time. The moderate secularism that has historically evolved in Western Europe is potentially accommodative of religious diversity, just as it came to be of Christian churches, but it has to be ‘multiculturalised’.
Highlights
From the latter part of the 20th century the relation between freedom of religion and the accommodation of religious diversity has appeared at the forefront of political and scholarly debates in Western Europe, a result of the development of an extra-Christian religious diversity that the region had not known since the Reconquesta stemming from post WWII migration flows
European states are highly exercised by the challenges posed by post-immigration ethno-religious diversity and that the new Muslim settlements of the last fifty years or so are at the centre of it
This contribution to the climate of re-thinking freedom of religion and the accommodation of religious diversity has been to argue that what is sometimes talked about as the ‘post-secular’ or a ‘crisis of secularism’ is, in Western Europe, quite crucially to do with the reality of multiculturalism. This refers to not just the fact of new ethno-religious diversity but the presence of a multiculturalist approach to this diversity: the idea that equality must be extended from uniformity of treatment to include respect for difference; recognition of public/private interdependence rather than dichotomized as in classical liberalism; the public recognition and institutional accommodation of minorities; the reversal of marginalisation and a remaking of national citizenship so that all can have a sense of belonging to it
Summary
From the latter part of the 20th century the relation between freedom of religion and the accommodation of religious diversity has appeared at the forefront of political and scholarly debates in Western Europe, a result of the development of an extra-Christian religious diversity that the region had not known since the Reconquesta stemming from post WWII migration flows. A significant proportion of these populations were Muslim, albeit from diverse places, and it was with a focus on Islam and Muslims that debates and controversies centred on religious diversity came to rest It was claims making by religious minorities on secular states, emanating from a new context of de facto multiculturalism, that reawakened serious consideration of the balance between freedom of religion and religious accommodations. Claims for accommodations on grounds of religion have been made on a variety of issues across Western European countries, including those concerning religious signs and symbols (such as crucifixes and headscarves), buildings (notably mosques and minarets), noise (the adhan, for example), religious holidays (which Christians enjoy by historical inheritance), religious education (in the form of faith schools), funeral rites, and religious law This forces new thinking, about questions of social integration and about the role of religion in relation to national narratives as well as the state and citizenship. A final section will consider a particular mode, that of multiculturalised secularism as an appropriate normative response in Europe
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