Public Commissions on Cultural and Religious Diversity
Public Commissions on Cultural and Religious Diversity

Author: Katayoun Alidadi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 1317073770

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In several Western countries, expert commissions composed of academics, public figures, politicians and community organisers have been established by governments or civil society to reflect on the changes and challenges of an increasingly plural society. Commission recommendations on how to ‘manage’ diversities successfully have shaped national narratives and affected law and public policies, yet research on the workings of such commissions remains rare. This book focuses on the experiences of expert commissions in the UK, France, Quebec and Belgium. Furthering the debate on commissions’ potential and limitations it draws on the first-hand experiences and introspection of former commission members and close observers, along with outside perspectives and critique from independent scholars. Building on its companion volume (Public Commissions on Cultural and Religious Diversity: Analysis, Reception and Challenges), this book engages with core concepts of identity, nationality, citizenship, freedom, equality and accommodation. It will appeal to researchers and students of public policy, sociology, anthropology, law, religion, politics, history and migration studies, as well as policymakers and anyone with a general interest in current debates on ethnic, cultural and religious diversity.

Public Commissions on Cultural and Religious Diversity
Public Commissions on Cultural and Religious Diversity

Author: Solange Lefebvre

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-05-08

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1317073819

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Due to growing negative perceptions about relations between historically entrenched, dominant populations and various minority groups, issues relating to the need to better manage cultural and religious diversity have been intensifying in many countries. These negative perceptions have recently led to a significant increase in popular support for right and extreme right nationalist discourses, and have created so much public tension that national governments have had no choice but to respond. In the last two decades, in several Western contexts in particular, the issues raised by such combined challenges have culminated in the creation of government-initiated or private national commissions. This book presents the results of a multidisciplinary analysis, from a broader framework that includes the national public commissions which have addressed the challenges of managing cultural and religious diversity in Belgium, Britain, Canada (Quebec), France, Morocco and Norway (including also other cases of public management in Australia and Singapore). It includes in-depth studies of the issues and controversies examined by each of the commissions, such as the ways they perceived the issues, their results and impact, the key political players involved, the media debates and reception surrounding each commission, the communication strategies and difficulties their leaders encountered, as well as the legal aspects each commission has raised. The reports represent a rich body of work charting the fundamental questions nations face about their nature, history and future while the impact on peoples’ lives tells us much about different approaches to the issues of cultural identity between countries.

The Transition of Religion to Culture in Law and Public Discourse
The Transition of Religion to Culture in Law and Public Discourse

Author: Lori Beaman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-27

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1000050556

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This book explores the recent trend toward the transformation of religious symbols and practices into culture in Western democracies. Analyses of three legal cases involving religion in the public sphere are used to illuminate this trend: a municipal council chamber; a town hall; and town board meetings. Each case involves a different national context—Canada, France and the United States—and each illustrates something interesting about the shape-shifting nature of religion, specifically its flexibility and dexterity in the face of the secular, the religious and the plural. Despite the differences in national contexts, in each instance religion is transformed into culture or heritage by the courts to justify or excuse its presence and to distance the state from the possibility that it is violating legal norms of distance from religion. The cultural practice or symbol is represented as a shared national value or activity. Transforming the ‘Other’ into ‘Us’ through reconstitution is also possible. Finally, anxiety about the ‘Other’ becomes part of the story of rendering religion as culture, resulting in the impugning of anyone who dares to question the putative shared culture. The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of sociology of religion, religious studies, socio-legal studies, law and public policy, constitutional law, religion and politics, and cultural studies.

Essays on Secularism and Multiculturalism
Essays on Secularism and Multiculturalism

Author: Tariq Modood

Publisher: ECPR Press

Published: 2019-04-25

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1785523171

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Whether the recently settled religious minorities, Muslims, in particular, can be accommodated as religious groups in European countries has become a central political question and threatens to create long-term fault lines. In this collection of essays, Tariq Modood argues that to grasp the nature of the problem we have to see how Muslims have become a target of a cultural racism, Islamophobia. Yet, the problem is not just one of anti-racism but of an understanding of multicultural citizenship, of how minority identities, including those formed by race, ethnicity and religion, can be incorporated into national identities so all can have a sense of belonging together. This means that the tendency amongst some to exclude religious identities from public institutions and the re-making of national identities has to be challenged. Modood suggests that this can be done in a principled yet pragmatic way by drawing on Western Europe's moderate political secularism and eschewing forms of secularism that offer religious groups a second-class citizenship.

A Constructive Critique of Religion
A Constructive Critique of Religion

Author: Mia Lövheim

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-02-06

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1350113107

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Why do some strategies for critique of religion seem to be more beneficial for constructive engagement, whereas others increase intolerance, polarization, and conflict? Through an analysis of the reasons underpinning a critique of religion in institutional contexts of secular democratic societies, A Constructive Critique of Religion explores how constructive interaction and critique can be developed across diverse interests. It shows how social and cultural conditions shaping these institutions enable and structure a critical and constructive engagement across diverging worldviews. A key argument running through the book is that to develop constructive forms of critique a more thorough and systematic investigation of resources for criticism located within religious worldviews themselves is needed. Chapters also address how critique of Islam and Christianity in particular is expressed in areas such as academia, the law, politics, media, education and parenting, with a focus on Northern Europe and North America. The interdisciplinary approach, which combines theoretical perspectives with empirical case studies, contributes to advancing studies of the complex and contentious character of religion in contemporary society.

Public Theology, Religious Diversity, and Interreligious Learning
Public Theology, Religious Diversity, and Interreligious Learning

Author: Manfred L. Pirner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-14

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 042901418X

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This book describes the relationship of Christian Public Theology to other religions and their ways of contributing to the common good. It also promotes mutual learning processes in public education to strengthen the public role and responsibility of religions in pluralistic societies. This volume brings together not only public education and public theology, but also scholars from a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, cultural studies, and sociology, and from different parts of the world. By doing so, the book intends to widen the horizon and provide fresh impulses for public theology as well as the discourse on public religious education.

Religious Diversity in Canadian Public Schools
Religious Diversity in Canadian Public Schools

Author: Dia Dabby

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2022-02-01

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0774864664

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Canadian public schools have long been entrusted with the mandate of socializing children. Yet this duty can rest uneasily alongside religious diversity questions. Grounding its analysis in three seminal Supreme Court cases involving religion in schools, Religious Diversity in Canadian Public Schools reveals legal processes that are unduly linear, compressing multidimensional conversations into an oppositional format and stripping away the voices of children themselves. Dia Dabby contends that schools are in fact microsystems worthy of their own consideration, and with the power to construct their own rules and relationships. This compelling work connects many of the themes that have animated public discourse since multiculturalism was officially enacted in Canada. Situating its analysis in relation to concepts of nation, education, and diversity, Religious Diversity in Canadian Public Schools encourages a deeper conversation about how religion is mediated through public schools and invites a critical reassessment of the role of law in education.

Deep Equality in an Era of Religious Diversity
Deep Equality in an Era of Religious Diversity

Author: Lori G. Beaman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0198803486

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While religious conflict receives plenty of attention, the everyday negotiation of religious diversity does not. Questions of how to accommodate religious minorities and of the limits of tolerance resonate in a variety of contexts and have become central preoccupations for many Western democracies. What might we see if we turned our attention to the positive narratives and success stories of the everyday working out of religious difference? Rather than "tolerance" and "accommodation," and through the stories of ordinary people, this book traces deep equality, which is found in the respect, humor, and friendship of seemingly mundane interactions. Deep Equality in an Era of Religious Diversity shows that the telling of such stories can create an alternative narrative to that of diversity as a problem to be solved. It explores the non-event, or micro-processes of interaction that constitute the foundation for deep equality and the conditions under which deep equality emerges, exists, and sometimes flourishes. Through a systematic search for and examination of such narratives, Lori G. Beaman demonstrates the possibility of uncovering, revealing, and recovering deep equality--a recovery that is vital to living in an increasingly diverse society. In achieving deep equality, identities are fluid, shifting in importance and structure as social interaction unfolds. Rigid identity imaginings, especially religious identities, block our vision to the complexities of social life and press us into corners that trap us in identities that we often ourselves do not recognize, want, or know how to escape. Although the focus of this study is deep equality and its existence and persistence in relation to religious difference, deep equality is located beyond the realm of religion. Beaman draws from the work of those whose primary focus is not in fact religion, and who are doing their own 'deep equality' work in other domains, illustrating especially why equality matters. By retelling and exploring stories of negotiation it is possible to reshape our social imaginary to better facilitate what works, which varies from place to place and time to time.

Secularism and Freedom of Conscience
Secularism and Freedom of Conscience

Author: Jocelyn Maclure

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-10-24

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 0674062957

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Secularism: the definition of this word is as practical and urgent as income inequalities or the paths to sustainable development. In this wide-ranging analysis, Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor provide a clearly reasoned, articulate account of the two main principles of secularism—equal respect, and freedom of conscience—and its two operative modes—separation of Church (or mosque or temple) and State, and State neutrality vis-à-vis religions. But more crucially, they make the powerful argument that in our ever more religiously diverse, politically interconnected world, secularism, properly understood, may offer the only path to religious and philosophical freedom. Secularism and Freedom of Conscience grew out of a very real problem—Quebec’s need for guidelines to balance the equal respect due to all citizens with the right to religious freedom. But the authors go further, rethinking secularism in light of other critical issues of our time. The relationship between religious beliefs and deeply-held secular convictions, the scope of the free exercise of religion, and the place of religion in the public sphere are aspects of the larger challenge Maclure and Taylor address: how to manage moral and religious diversity in a free society. Secularism, they show, is essential to any liberal democracy in which citizens adhere to a plurality of conceptions of what gives meaning and direction to human life. The working model the authors construct in this nuanced account is capacious enough to accommodate difference and freedom of conscience, while holding out hope for a world in which diversity no longer divides us.

Religion, Culture, and the State
Religion, Culture, and the State

Author: Howard Adelman

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2011-01-01

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1442611448

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The Canadian principle of reasonable accommodation demands that the cultural majority make certain concessions to the needs of minority groups if these concessions will not cause 'undue hardship.' This principle has caused much debate in Quebec, particularly over issues of language, Muslim head coverings, and religious symbols such as the kirpan (traditional Sikh dagger). In 2007, Quebec Premier Jean Charest commissioned historian and sociologist Gérard Bouchard and philosopher and political scientist Charles Taylor to co-chair a commission that would investigate the limits of reasonable accommodation in that province. Religion, Culture, and the State addresses reasonable accommodation from legal, political, and anthropological perspectives. Using the 2008 Bouchard-Taylor Report as their point of departure, the contributors contextualize the English and French Canadian experiences of multiculturalism and diversity through socio-historical analysis, political philosophy, and practical comparisons to other jurisdictions. Timely and engaging, Religion, Culture, and the State is a valuable resource in the discussion of religious pluralism in Canadian society.