Europe is witnessing a (persistent) paradox: while Europeans become increasingly unchurched and religiously indifferent, there is also an opposed current that makes religion assertively present in the media, in politics and in everyday life through the vilification of religious minorities, Muslims in particular.
Two factors can explain this paradox: on one hand, while for most Europeans religion is sharply declining as a salient identity, it is not so for a number of minorities, especially Muslims; relatedly, a growing Islamophobia targets Muslims who are suspected not to be ‘loyal citizens’, and to instead adhere to radical currents of socially conservative Islam. On the other hand, this paradox is rooted in a growing feeling among Europeans that religion should not be in the public sphere.
As part of our EU-funded GREASE project we look at the ways in which religion is governed in different European countries. Indeed we have found that Europe today has ‘a bewildering variety’ of church-state models as well as legal, institutional and political arrangements when it comes to the management of religious diversity.
