Global Perspectives on Religious Diversity

Governing Religious Diversity in Global Comparative Perspective

Edited By Tariq ModoodThomas Sealy
Copyright 2024


Available for purchase from Routledge

The contributions in this volume arise out of the GREASE project. It was originally published as a special issue of Religion, State and Society.

This book presents comparative analyses of different modes of the governance of religious diversity and state-religion connections and relations in twenty-three countries in five world regions: Western Europe, Southern and South-Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, the MENA region, and South and Southeast Asia.

Debates and controversies around the governance of religious diversity have become important features of the social and political landscape in different regions and countries across the world. The historical influences and legacies, and the contemporary circumstances provoking these debates vary between contexts, and there have been a range of state and scholarly responses to how, and why, particular understandings and arrangements of state-religion relations should be preferred over others. The analyses of country cases and regions presented in this volume are based on extensive reviews of secondary literature, of legal and policy landscapes, and in some cases on interviews.

Table of Contents

1. Developing a framework for a global comparative analysis of the governance of religious diversity

Tariq Modood and Thomas Sealy

2. Western Europe and Australia: negotiating freedoms of religion

Thomas Sealy and Tariq Modood

3. State-religion relations in Southern and Southeastern Europe: moderate secularism with majoritarian undertones

Tina Magazzini, Anna Triandafyllidou and Liliya Yakova

4. Dynamics in state-religion relations in postcommunist Central Eastern Europe and Russia

Daniel Vekony, Marat Iliyasov and Egdūnas Račius

5. Negotiating religion-state relations in the MENA region: actors’ dynamics, modes, and norms

Georges Fahmi and Mehdi Lahlou

6. South and Southeast Asia: deep diversity under strain

Thomas Sealy, Zawawi Ibrahim, Pradana Boy Zulian and Imran Mohd Rasid

7. Diversities and dynamics in the governance of religion: inter-regional comparative themes

Thomas Sealy and Tariq Modood

Afterwords

Normative vs. Actual Secularism(s)

Haldun Gülalp

Some Reflections on State-Religion Relationships and Political Secularism in the Contemporary World

Gurpreet Mahajan