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Newly established religious minorities in Western European countries and Australia have sparked fresh questions about the public place of religion. The current situation in the region reflects a certain agonism over the place of public religion and its relation to liberal secular order. This has especially been the case for the region's Muslims in a context marked by fears of radicalisation and extremism. This contribution considers these responses in relation to Belgium, France, Germany, and the UK; and Australia. The contribution explores the norm of freedom of religion that forms the region's core similarity but also the ground on which divergences in norms of state-religion connections can be found. It identifies key norms that operate in the region in order to draw out similarities as well as important differences between the countries. Exploring how the governance of religious diversity comes to reflect diversity-enhancing or diversity-limiting features, it assesses the ways and extent to which the region can be characterised under 'moderate secularism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's commentary on the issue's featured article "The national identities of the ‘death of multiculturalism’ discourse in Western Europe," by Marinus Ossewaarde, included in the issue, discussing the alleged failed status of multiculturalism in Western Europe. The author reviews Ossewaarde's major assertions, offers comments and critique of Ossewaarde's perspectives, and presents an exploration of different manifestations of cultural integration.

The article discusses political secularism as an institutional arrangement where religious authority and religious reasons for action and political authority and political reasons for action are distinguished. It cites the author's focus in Western Europe which is currently witnessing a transition from a secular to a postsecular society where secular citizens must express a previously denied respect for religious citizens. It notes how religion is again being recognized as a legitimate basis of public engagement and political action which results in a contemporary crisis of secularism globally. It suggests for political secularists to thing on how to multiculturalize moderate secularism and avoid provoking the crisis by pressing for radical secularism.

I offer a rebuttal of the view, now common among the political classes in Western Europe, that Muslim assertiveness is incompatible with the universalism of liberal democratic citizenship. I do so by sketching a view of multicultural citizenship in which respect for difference is grounded in universalist values. My conception of political multiculturalism is based on the ideas of 'difference', 'multi' and a double conception of equality. Multiculturalism seeks the goal of positive difference and the means to achieve it, which crucially involve the appreciation of the fact of multiplicity and groupness, the building of group pride among those marked by negative difference, and political engagement with the sources of negatitivity and racism. While the focus is not on anything so narrow as normally understood by 'culture', and multicultural equality cannot be achieved without other forms of equality, such as those relating to socioeconomic opportunities, its distinctive feature is about the inclusion into and the making of a shared public space in terms of equality of respect as well as equal dignity. I marry this conception of multiculturalism to a vision of citizenship that is not confined to the state but dispersed across society, compatible with the multiple forms of contemporary groupness and sustained through dialogue, plural forms of representation that do not take one group as the model to whom all others have to conform and new, reformed national identities. Citizenship consists of a framework of rights and practices of participation, but also discourses and symbols of belonging, ways of imagining and remaking ourselves as a country and expressing our sense of commonalities, as well as differences in ways in which these identities qualify each other and create inclusive public spaces. I show in some detail that some British Muslims' identity debates have precisely this character. Ideological and violent extremism is indeed undermining the conditions and hopes for multiculturalism, but this extremism has nothing to do with multiculturalism and is coming into the domestic arena from the international. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political secularism takes many forms but a fundamental distinction is between radical and moderate kinds. The latter is a genuine secularism and not just a failure to take secularism to its logical conclusion. The failure to appreciate this obscures the secularism that exists in western Europe. Namely, an accommodation of organised religion which sees it as a potential public good or national resource (not just a private benefit), which the state can in some circumstances assist to realise—even through an ‘established’ church. I adumbrate five types of reasons the state might be interested in religion: truth, danger, utility, identity and respect. The challenge facing such secularism today is whether it can be pluralised or multiculturalised, in particular whether it can accommodate Muslims. A ground for optimism is the respect that some people, especially some Muslims, have for religions other than their own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]