Freedom of Religion and the Accommodation of Religious Diversity: Multiculturalising Secularism

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’.

Is Modern Sectarianism a Product of Secularisation?

This chapter discusses the relationship between modern sectarianism and secularization. It argues that neither the Arab nor the Islamic World more generally was exempt historically from secularization as a process of differentiation. It observes that in the Arab Mashreq, secularization has been imposed from above via the state, and has been interpreted as an abandonment of, or assault on, the religious culture of the majority. It has taken the form of state domination of religion without a struggle over state neutrality in the religious sphere. This chapter also presents how the secularization process in modernity has played a complex role. Sometimes it has been given expression by an expanding state power with no need for religious legitimacy and the shrinking social significance of religion. In other times, top-down secularization coupled with the failure to build a nation on the basis of citizenship can trigger both political religiosity and political sectarianism.