We’ve invited a small handful of scholars to comment on the increasing influence of anti-immigration and anti-Islam ideas and parties across Europe and to offer their thoughts on how best to accommodate minority claims (especially those involving Islam) in a democratic and liberal Europe.

Our respondents are:

Sindre Bangstad, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo

Keith Banting, Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies and Queen’s Chair in Public Policy, Queen’s University; Will Kymlicka, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy, Queen’s University

Rajeev Bhargava, Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

Jocelyne Cesari, Research Fellow in Political Science and Director, Islam in the West Program, Harvard University

Grace Davie, Professor of Sociology, University of Exeter

Ruby Gropas, Visiting Scholar, CDDRL, Stanford University and Research Fellow, ELIAMEP

Elizabeth H. Prodromou, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Boston University

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Sindre Bangstad, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo

The breaking down of the cordon sanitaire surrounding right-wing populism is in fact not as recent a phenomenon as we like to think in Europe.  The political impulse to declare multiculturalism a dead letter—even where it never existed—seem to relate to the fallacious understandings of what multiculturalism might conceivably have meant prevailing among many European politicians. Critiques of multiculturalism are, these days, often used as rhetorical proxy for critiques of Islam and Muslims in Europe.  Anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments need to be unpacked, analyzed, and responded to primarily at the level of particular nation-state histories and imaginaries. There is also an unprecedented level of co-ordination between various populist right-wing movements and activists across Europe. So much so that rhetorical tropes concerning Islam and Muslims travel seamlessly across the continent.  Right-wing populism in contemporary Europe also feeds on a liberal-secular nationalism of sorts, on anti-elitism, anti-intellectualism, and legitimate concerns over the future sustainability of European welfare states. Under the sign of democratic technocracy, across Europe we are witnessing a failure of political leadership and of intellectual vision, articulated in a conception of politics in which poll ratings and pandering to the shifting popular sentiment have become more important than the ideals and principles one espouses. This is a failure of both the mainstream political Left and Right. It requires a monumental intellectual effort by mainstream political parties to formulate more positive and less defensive narratives about the increasingly multicultural societies in which we happen to live; it is an effort still to be pursued in any systematic manner. Muslim minority claims are not necessarily the ‘special cases’ they are often made out to be; pragmatic approaches offer the best way forward.

Europe has a particularly dark history regarding its treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, and with that follows a burden of moral responsibility. It is a burden that must be shouldered even in the bleak and challenging times we are living in at present.

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Keith Banting, Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies and Queen’s Chair in Public Policy, Queen’s University

Will Kymlicka, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy, Queen’s University

In interpreting contemporary debates about multiculturalism in Europe, it is critical to distinguish between political discourse and government policies. At the level of discourse, there is a widespread perception that multiculturalism has ‘failed’ and that governments that once embraced a multicultural approach to diversity are turning away, adopting a strong emphasis on civic integration. This reaction, we are told, “reflects a seismic shift not just in the Netherlands, but in other European societies as well.” However, focusing on the level of government programs brings a very different pattern into view. New evidence from our Multiculturalism Policy Index (MCP Index) tracks the strength of multicultural policies for European countries and several traditional countries of immigration at three points in time (1980, 2000, and 2010). The results—available here—paint a different picture of contemporary Europe. While a small number of countries, including most notably the Netherlands, have weakened established multicultural policies during the 2000s, such a shift is the exception. Most countries that adopted multicultural approaches in the later part of the twentieth century have maintained their programs; and several countries have added new ones. Indeed, for Europe as a whole, the average score on the MCP Index went up, not down, between 2000 and 2010. This suggests that civic integration initiatives are often being layered on top of existing multicultural programs, leading to a blended approach to diversity. Moreover, as we argue elsewhere, more liberal forms of civic integration can certainly be combined with multiculturalism. It is the more illiberal or coercive forms that are incompatible with a robust multicultural approach.

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Rajeev Bhargava, Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

Securing individual freedoms has been a strong point of Europe; handling diversity has not.

As is well known, the process of confessionalization in the early 16th century created religiously homogenized political units. Confessional dissenters were exterminated or expelled. A large majority of Jews were forced to immigrate to Poland. There were virtually no resident Muslims left in any part of Europe. This has changed in the 20th century. Cultural and religious diversity is precisely what characterizes Europe now.

Writing in the sixties, when Christianity was adapting to the intellectual hegemony of a scientific rationality, Wilfred Cantwell Smith wrote that the challenge posed to Christianity by science would be a cake-walk compared to the challenge of emerging religious diversity. Years later, writing specifically about Islam, Smith warned that few in the West realize how their perpetual reservations about Muslims and the generally negative perception of Islam follow a pattern set during the Crusades. More than a millennia of animosity between Christians and Muslims survives in the collective memory of both and so too does the urge to compete and settle old scores—not everywhere, not in everyone, but with sufficient strength to adversely affect us all.

In order to accommodate minority claims involving Islam, these virtually invisible background conditions need to be altered. The collective memory of mutual hatred has to be addressed head on. The European Left needs to see multiculturalism or religious pluralism as an integral part of its ideology, not as an enemy or a conservative ideology merely to be tolerated. Religious diversity must be rescued from the conservatives.

It will help if liberals and democrats shed their individualist bias and learn to make a distinction between ‘communitarian’ and what we in India call ‘communal’—between those who see themselves as belonging to a community and those who view their communal affiliation as necessarily antagonistic towards other communities. Such a distinction exists at least implicitly in the European constitution. Therefore, the salvation of every single European country lies in a proper European union. The ills of Europe can be rid only by more of Europe.

Finally, it would not do right-thinking people any harm if they introduced a mixture of prudence and ancient wisdom into their universe of moral principles. Without all this, minority claims do not have much chance of being met in Europe. And this failure would be a big disaster for the entire world.

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Jocelyne Cesari, Research Fellow in Political Science and Director, Islam in the West Program, Harvard University

The recent victory of socialist François Hollande in France’s 2012 presidential election was certainly a turning point for the social and economic politics of France. Unfortunately, this is less true when it comes to immigration, race, and culture, evidenced by Hollande saying he would firmly support France’s ban on niqabs, or face-covering Islamic veils, and his stance against Turkish accession to the EU.

François Hollande has made clear that he will address the material conditions and worries of French citizens. But he has been quite silent on questions pertaining to cultural diversity and social cohesion, for the simple reason that he shares with Sarkozy the same conception of French national identity, defined as an abstract community of citizens bound together by principles of equality and liberty. In these conditions, the cultural and religious background of citizens is not part and should not interfere with civic solidarity and public life.

However, such an ideal has been increasingly difficult to uphold when Muslims, among other cultural and regional groups, are claiming their right to express their specificity in public space, which has in turn raised the anxiety and fears of a lot of French citizens. These fears have been the main reason for the long-standing political success of the National Front, from its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen to his daughter Marine, the current leader of the party . At the same time, Muslims of all colors and stripes keep asserting that there is no contradiction between being French and being a Muslim.

Nations or groups need to exist in opposition to an ‘Other,’ and in today’s national imagination, Islam plays that role. It may be impossible for societies to completely rid themselves of this polarizing rhetoric.

That said, societies differ in how much their political imaginations are subjected to open critical discussion. Accordingly, it is necessary for French politicians across the political spectrum to explicitly reject economic and social issues being linked to cultural issues or the ‘Islamization’ of Europe. It is also imperative for policymakers to change the dominant narrative of French national identity by including Islamic culture and history.

Such a change would involve a new education project where, from history to arts and culture, Muslims are not described as the Other. It means acknowledging the cross pollination of philosophical and scientific ideas as well as the multiple encounters of artists, merchants, clerics, and migrants from medieval times to the immigration waves after WWII. Most Muslims already acknowledge France as their home and have made numerous artistic and cultural contributions to the French ‘patrimoine.’ The challenge is to reshape French imagination so Muslims can be seen as legitimate fellow citizens.

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Grace Davie, Professor of Sociology, University of Exeter

Two things are happening at once in European societies. On one hand the process of secularization continues, at times remorselessly; on the other religion has returned to the public sphere. The combination is difficult to handle. Continuing secularization has led, amongst other things, to a marked decline in religious literacy. At the same time complex religious questions make new demands on the knowledge and sensitivities of the actors involved. Hence an uncomfortable paradox: at precisely the moment European populations need them most, they are losing the vocabulary, concepts, and narratives that are necessary to take part in serious conversation about religion. The result, all too often, is a debate that is ill-mannered and ill-informed.

A debate that is ill-mannered denotes a lack of respect for both people and issues. Even more serious is the lack of regard for religion as such. Those for whom religion means little are unable to imagine the damage that is done by the public denigration of faith, be it Christian or other. Legitimate claims, frequently those of minority faiths (such as Islam), are lost in the confusion.

A debate that is ill-informed means that European populations are increasingly susceptible to error and exaggeration. An excellent example can be found in the wildly exaggerated statistics concerning immigration in general and Islam in particular. Astute politicians know this and—at times—overstep the mark. Unfortunately, acute economic uncertainty will make matters worse.

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Ruby Gropas, Visiting Scholar, CDDRL, Stanford University and Research Fellow, ELIAMEP

Over the past two decades, surveys have consistently noted a clear message: European citizens are anxious about immigration and its impact on society. Throughout this time, mainstream political parties and European political elites have attempted to respond to these trends: demonstrating the economic and demographic benefits of immigration; encouraging and promoting multicultural initiatives; consolidating and institutionalizing an anti-discrimination framework through EU directives, regulations, and national legislation; and adopting an inclusive discourse promoting the value of diversity, cultural exchange, toleration, and pluralism. They have also become increasingly detached from their base through the professionalization of politics. Throughout this same period, populist and extremist parties have done precisely the opposite. Positioning themselves as representatives of the ‘simple, average citizen’ they have been speaking out about the ‘real and everyday’ threats posed by ‘uncontrolled,’ ‘illegal,’ ‘massive’ immigration and of the ‘incapacity’ or ‘unwillingness’ of Muslim communities to integrate. They have gradually moved from underdog parties on the fringes to actually framing and conditioning pre-election debates and changes in citizenship and migration policies. Moreover, they have built an active presence at the neighborhood and local levels. The lower middle classes, skilled and unskilled working class citizens who increasingly find themselves in conditions of economic insecurity—whether due to the pressures of globalization, the eurozone crisis, or economic recession—have been identifying with the latter’s discourse, finding resonance and comfort in the statements of right-wing populists. Economic grievances, induced by insecure job prospects and shrinking wages and the perception of unfair competition over increasingly scarce social goods such as social housing, health, and pension coverage, are being coupled with strong feelings of cultural threat and the opinion that Muslim migrant communities pose an evident threat to national identity, civic values, and the country’s overall way of life. What is even more disconcerting is that this is taking place against a wider backdrop of dissatisfaction with the functioning of the country’s democratic governance and with falling trust in the mainstream political parties, exacerbated in many cases by corruption and mismanagement scandals.

It is urgent that mainstream political parties re-engage with the local level. There has been a growing gap between governing parties and their constituencies. In order to counter the influence of populist extremists, mainstream parties need to engage once again with voters who feel alienated and become once again integral parts of the communities they represent. At the same time, activities that encourage sustainable and meaningful interaction between different communities at the neighborhood, at the city, and at the regional levels must be intensified. Bringing together members of different groups has always increased understanding, countered perceptions of threat, and created ties that are much needed today to maintain the civic and social cohesion of European societies.

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Elizabeth H. Prodromou, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Boston University

The success of Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi), a fascist party that secured 21 seats in the Greek parliament on the strength of 7 percent of the popular vote, mirrors the alarming consolidation of far-right political parties and social movements underway across the Continent since the end of the last decade.

The Golden Dawn leadership drew directly from the toolbox of the New European Right—by mixing fascistic symbols, ethno-nationalist discourse, an anti-immigrant platform, and the use of street violence—to critique the colossal governance failures of Greece’s traditional political parties (left-of-center PASOK and right-of-center New Democracy). Golden Dawn spun standard, if extremist, Euro-populist discourse to excoriate mainstream PASOK and New Democracy leaders for bankrupting Greece, and this narrative resonated with the country’s shell-shocked middle- and working-classes voters. Similarly, Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos echoed the xenophobic chauvinism of European rightists, such as Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, and Umberto Bossi, in linking Greece’s economic travails to immigration patterns that have produced one of the most accelerated demographic pluralizations in post-Cold War Europe.

Golden Dawn, then, is not a tale of putative Greek exceptionalism vis-à-vis a norm of EU modernity, but instead points to socio-political diffusion from ‘center’ to ‘periphery’ in Europe.

At the same time, Golden Dawn diverges notably from its far-right cohort in other EU member-states. For starters, the Golden Dawn qua party is likely to be an ephemeral force in politics. Most polls predict a decline in electoral support for Golden Dawn in the upcoming national elections in June, as protest-voters turn away from the party as a credible governing option.

More significantly, there is a specificity to the extreme Right’s message in Greece, which stands apart from the Islamophobic essentialism that has come to define the New European Right in other EU member-states. Chrysi Avgi blames clandestine, external forces as the cause for Greece’s economic travails; given the likelihood that the country’s economic implosion will continue apace in the near term, the search for ‘foreign’ culprits will maintain purchase in Greek society. But anti-immigrant intolerance, as well as some racist sloganeering and violent hooliganism, in Greece have been absent the deliberately, explicitly religious—read: anti-Muslim—vector of discrimination and prejudice that orients the New Right in the aforementioned European cases. Instead, Greece’s right-wing ideologues have deployed the broad rubric ‘foreign’—immigrants, Great Powers, and historical foes in the region—in a manner designed to evoke and to amplify a historical record marked by chronic linkages between the loss of economic sovereignty, on the one hand, and conditionalized political sovereignty and territorial loss, on the other. The origins and evolution of this distinction in Greece’s version of the New European Right bears additional study and attention, as part of any efficacious response by liberal democratic forces to reinforce tolerance, civility, and pluralism in EU politics and society.

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Here’s a plausible solution to this paradox. We could say, roughly, that freedom of religion is in fact a sub-set of a broader class of freedoms. So instead of seeing religion itself as a special good, we say that religion is one of the ways in which individuals seek the good for themselves. Exercising one’s freedom of religion is one of the ways in which we exercise a more generic freedom—moral freedom. Let us call this an egalitarian solution to the paradox I started with. An egalitarian theory of religious freedom does not deny that religious belief is special and should be respected and protected. What it denies is that religious belief is uniquely special: it can and should be analogized with other beliefs and commitments. Many contemporary liberal philosophers are egalitarians in this sense. John Rawls argues that what the liberal state protects is our ability to form and pursue comprehensive conceptions of the good. Ronald Dworkin sees “ethical independence” as the core value protected by freedom of religion. Martha Nussbaum connects freedom of religion to a conscientious search for “ultimate meaning.”

It is in this context that Charles Taylor and Jocelyn MacLure’s little book Secularism and Freedom of Conscience is of considerable interest. In it, Taylor and MacLure put forward their own egalitarian theory of religious freedom, and a radically inclusive one at that: they argue that all “meaning-giving commitments” should be protected on the same basis as religious commitment. The volume is also fascinating when read as a statement of Taylor’s political theory—a normative companion to the more historical, epistemological, and philosophical diagnoses of our contemporary condition found in Sources of the Self and A Secular Age.

To put my cards on the table: I agree with Taylor and MacLure that normative egalitarianism is the right response, ethically speaking, to the deep moral pluralism of the secular age. What I shall suggest, however, is that they—like other egalitarian philosophers—have underestimated the profound tensions that beset egalitarian theories of religious freedom. And these tensions can be traced back to the difficulties of identifying a liberal theory of the good in the secular age—in a world where conceptions of the good are irreducibly pluralized, individualized, and subjectivized. In brief, the story I want to tell is also a very Taylorian story, for it is one that raises questions about liberal neutrality about the good.

Writing in the context of the Canadian debate about reasonable accommodations, Taylor and MacLure begin by defending the idea that members of religious minorities have a right, on non-discrimination grounds, to enjoy similar opportunities to practice their religion as members of the majority. I have no quarrel with this idea, and have argued along similar lines in relation to the affaire du foulard in France. But I’d like to focus on their second main point, namely that the question of reasonable accommodations raises a more fundamental problem: in virtue of what are religious believers entitled to special consideration in the first place? They answer that religious belief, for purposes of legal exemptions, should only be seen as a subset of a broader category of beliefs that deserve protection: “moral beliefs which structure moral identity”—what they call “meaning-giving beliefs and commitments.” And this also covers a broad spectrum of non-religious beliefs and practices—from secular pacifism to eco-centric vegetarianism, through duties of care to terminally-ill loved ones. The notion of meaning-giving commitments is broader than that used by other egalitarian philosophers: in contrast to Rawls, they do not insist that individual beliefs be ‘comprehensive’ in scope; and they reject Nussbaum’s emphasis on “ultimate existential questions.” It is a feature of the secular age, they point out, that people’s ethical commitments take the form of “fluid, eclectic set(s) of values,” which are not integrated into a comprehensive, integrated whole, and which are not perceived as ‘unconditional rules for action.” At certain times, however—such as the illness of a loved one—the pursuit of certain core values become paramount and gives meaning and shape to one’s life. In sum, we can say that Taylor and MacLure take the ethical pluralism of the secular age far more seriously than other egalitarian philosophers. Rawls and Nussbaum, it seems, still hold a traditionally religious understanding of the scope (comprehensive) and content (“ultimate questions”) of what counts as a morally weighty secular belief.

Drawing on Taylor’s rehabilitation of “ordinary life” in Sources of the Self, Taylor and MacLure detect pockets of moral depth in ordinary life—in the sudden encounter with finitude in the event of the death of a loved one; or in eco-centric vegetarians’ profound convictions about the wrongness of meat consumption—to take their two favourite examples. What makes those commitments particularly weighty is that they allow individuals to act with integrity—where integrity is defined as congruence between one’s perceptions of one’s duties and one’s actual actions. What the end-of-life carer and the eco-centric vegetarian have in common is that they both seek to act in accordance with their conscience. “Here I stand, I can do no other,” as Martin Luther is said to have said. Taylor and MacLure note that forcing someone to act against her deep conscientious convictions constitutes a “moral harm” equivalent to the kind of “physical harm” that justifies the special accommodation of citizens with disabilities. So, they conclude, citizens with intense categorical meaning-giving secular beliefs have a pro tanto claim to be considered for exemptions from burdensome laws.

So have Taylor and MacLure developed a plausibly egalitarian definition of morally weighty beliefs, which is not biased in favor of religious beliefs, yet adequately protects the underlying values expressed by the ideal of freedom of religion? My assessment is in two parts. In the first, I draw attention to one significant virtue of their account, which is that it implicitly relies on a very Taylorian idea of “strong evaluation,” In the second, I cast some doubts about the viability of the individualistic, Protestantized, subjectivist conception of strong evaluation that underpins their account.

First: Taylor and MacLure get to the heart of a key feature of freedom of religion—one that is strangely neglected by contemporary liberals. It is this: what Taylor said about negative freedoms in general—that they are empty without “strong evaluations” of what they allow the pursuit of—applies with particular acuity to freedom of religion. Freedom of religion, by contrast to more generic freedoms of thought, belief, and association, relies on a moralized distinction between valuable and non-valuable activities, and serves to protect a sub-set of the former. It is a freedom to pursue a specific end and activity: it refers to the pursuit of a conception of the good with a specific shape, content, and form, rather than the means through which any conception of the good can be pursued. Furthermore, in the case of exemptions and accommodations, which is our focus here, freedom of religion generates demands of positive assistance in pursuing those activities. This means that, when adjudicating such claims, it must be decided which claim correctly expresses the values underpinning the general principle. Even though they do not explicitly draw on Taylor’s earlier writings, Taylor and MacLure are open about the need to make “strong evaluations” about the values that freedom of religion is supposed to protect. This confirms the long-standing Taylorian view that rights protect substantive values: we care about rights because of the good that they protect, which cannot be reduced to individual freedom of choice. So our authors do not shy away from openly perfectionist evaluations, setting “trivial” against “central” commitments, and “mere preferences” against “core convictions.” Such perfectionist discriminations, it seems to me, are inherent to any serious reflection about the value of freedom of religion. Perhaps this is an obvious point, but it is one that contemporary liberals—punctiliously attached to an ideal of neutrality towards the good—have not fully come to terms with.

Who, then, is to make the strong evaluations required to distinguish between meaning-giving and trivial commitments? Taylor and MacLure’s empathic response to this is: the individual claimant herself. Here they anticipate the charge—often levelled at Taylor’s conception of positive liberty—that the idea of “strong evaluation” could give the state the authority arbitrarily to discriminate between better and worse ways to exercise one’s freedoms. Instead, Taylor and MacLure assert that “the special status of religious beliefs is derived from the role they play in people’s moral lives, rather than from an assessment of their intrinsic validity.” They defend what they call a subjective conception of freedom of religion, according to which only individuals—not the state, nor religious authorities—are in a position to explain which particular beliefs and commitments are key to their sense of moral integrity. Judges only have to assess whether such claims are made with sincerity (so as to rule out, when possible, fraudulent or pretextual claims). Yet ultimately, the subjective conception of freedom points to the sovereignty of private strong evaluations.

There is much to recommend in this account, to which I am very sympathetic. But I’d like to draw attention to two difficulties.

First, Taylor and MacLure effectively collapse religion into conscience, and implicitly assume that the latter category is more inclusive than the former. But we may wonder whether this is the case, or whether anything is lost in the re-description of freedom of religion as freedom of conscience. Assume I am a devout Muslim. I observe Ramadan, say my prayers every day, wear the hijab, give zakat, and send my children to Quranic school. Or assume I am a practicing Catholic. I observe Lent, try not to eat meat on Fridays, celebrate Easter, go to church every Sunday, have my children baptized and confirmed. For many Catholics and Muslims (but also other Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists) the religious experience is fundamentally about exhibiting the virtues of the good believer, living in community with others, and shaping one’s daily life in accordance with the rituals of the faith. Those rituals are meaning-giving and connected to believers’ sense of their moral integrity. Yet they are not duties of conscience—though they are often re-described as such. The good religious life is a life of constant, difficult, ritual affirmation of the faith against the corrupting influences of the secular world. It is not often one in which one single obligation (say, wearing a particular dress, going to mass) is so stringent as to promise eternal damnation if it is not fulfilled. Taylor and MacLure tend to re-interpret acts of habitual, collective, “embodied practices” of religious devotion as Protestantized duties of conscience. While such a description tallies with the individualization and subjectification of religious experience in contemporary societies, it also has two unanticipated consequences. First, it perversely encourages the most fundamentalist and rigid interpretations of religious dogma. It rewards those Christians who present their objection to homosexuality as a matter of conscience (“here I stand and I can do no other”) over and above those habitual believers who seek to accommodate their religious life to a secularizing world, often with considerable unease and forbearance. So here’s another paradox: in insisting that only beliefs that are intensely held, and experienced as categorical duties, should be candidates for “reasonable” accommodation, Taylor and MacLure accommodate those with the least “reasonable” beliefs.

The second unexpected consequence of the reduction of religion to conscience is that it seems to deny protection to the cultural, habitual, embodied, and collective dimensions of religion. Consider the following practices, which currently generate rights to exemption from general laws on religious freedom grounds in various countries: accommodations of religious dress in the workplace, the consumption of hallucinogenic drugs such as peyote in Native American ceremonies, church autonomy in the appointment of its leaders, tax exemptions for religious charities.

None of these activities are properly described as conscientious activities, and therefore it is unclear whether they would be entitled to accommodations under Taylor and MacLure’s theory. Furthermore, in a Canadian context, where cultural identities often feature as the archetypical meaning-giving, integrity-constituting commitments, Taylor and MacLure’s lack of reference to culture is perhaps surprising. They seem to underestimate the communal, cultural dimensions of religion itself and betray an (unexpected) Protestant bias in the interpretation of where the good of religion is located. Whether such a bias is compatible with the egalitarian impulse of the theory is open to question. Here is a heretical thought. Perhaps the ideal of conscience is not a thin, uncontroversial, neutral, liberal conception of the good. In line with the “social thesis” Taylor himself puts forward as a critique of Rawlsian liberalism, and of which a complex version appears in A Secular Age, perhaps our ideals of individualism and conscience are not what remains (but was always there) once the obscure, mystifying debris of traditional community and religion have crumbled away. Instead, we have become individuals—of a particular kind—through a contingent Christian and post-Christian trajectory. If that is the case, how suitable is this particular conception of individual conscience in the pluralistic secular age?

There is a second, connected difficulty with Taylor and MacLure’s subjective notion of freedom of religion. While they only consider examples of morally admirable commitments (pacifism, caring for the sick, protecting animal rights) it is not difficult to think of a range of conscientious actions that may be morally trivial, morally wrong, or morally bad. In those cases, should individual strong evaluations be supreme, or are different standards called for? One issue is how to distinguish trivial from morally significant beliefs. Taylor and MacLure assume there is a shared understanding of the difference between a morally trivial and a morally significant act. Yet, under conditions of deep moral pluralism, it is precisely those kinds of strong evaluations that are likely to be contested. Consider the standard defense of the smoking of peyote—an otherwise illegal drug—by US courts (post-Smith). While injecting drugs merely to “get high” would count as a trivial, frivolous purpose, injecting drugs for spiritual purposes, as practiced within some Native American groups, rightly fall under the category of a morally significant act deserving of protection. But what if individuals not belonging to a religion sincerely claim that they are also using drugs for spiritual purposes? Does “spiritual purpose” extend to dealing with depression, seeking higher truths through controlled intoxication, or coming to terms with existential pain? How far exactly is moral life in the immanent frame pregnant with spiritual purposes?

The other issue is whether freedom of conscience should permit individuals to do bad or unjust things. Taylor and MacLure avoid the difficult question of whether freedom of conscience positively protects a right to do wrong. One very preliminary hypothesis: In the philosophical tradition of thinking about conscience—whether Greek, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, or Kantian tradition, to name just a few—conscience is respectable and admirable, not only as a subjective individual faculty to live in conformity with one’s own good; it is, more deeply, respected as the faculty to live in conformity with what one sincerely perceives to be the demands of the good (which is why Antigone’s dilemma is so poignant). In the natural law tradition, conscience is the faculty with which individuals exercise practical judgement about how to apply a general objective moral law to concrete cases. Individuals are fallible, and consciences may err. But conscience is admirable because it is a sincere, though fallible, attempt to find the good. Conscience, therefore, cannot demand us to do evil, inhuman, or outrageous things, even though it can mislead us about the good. But if there is a deep (if complicated) connection between respect for conscience and a non-subjectivist assessment of its content, then individual strong evaluations will likely be an unreliable guide about what conscience really requires of them.

Where does this leave us? To conclude, I see Taylor and MacLure’s succinct but densely argued chapter as the most promising attempt to articulate the morally admirable human faculties traditionally protected by freedom of religion, in ways that respect the deep pluralism of the secular age. I have pointed to some problems, which are not so much fatal flaws as unavoidable tensions within the politico-legal philosophy of religious exemptions.

The suspicion is that liberal neutrality about religion ultimately “piggy-backs” on ideas, conceptions, and values that originally made sense in a world comprehensively structured by a broadly Christian ethics. In that world, where early liberal ideas of toleration and freedom of religion were articulated, Christian ethics provided the moral framework within which “strong evaluations”—between good and evil, significant and trivial, etc—were taken for granted. Then it could be coherently assumed that “religion” was a good thing; that any activity pursued under the aegis of religion was therefore also good, and that churches were alternative, self-standing sources of normativity to that of the state. Religion on that view operated as a normative “black box,” the content of which the state could try to ignore. It is when this box is thrown open by the egalitarian impulse of the secular age that the need for new “strong evaluations” re-appears. Yet those strong evaluations are inherently problematic in a world where there is no publicly validated religious or moral faith, and where the state is expected not to take sides between different ways of conceiving and living the good life.

Egalitarian liberals have struggled to define, in a way that is suitably non-sectarian and evaluatively neutral, the morally admirable faculties that traditional freedom of religion can be said to protect. Taylor and MacLure rightly seek to locate those human faculties in the moral predicaments thrown up by ordinary lives, and in the strong evaluations that individuals make in the process. Yet the emphasis on conscience tends to favor a Protestant understanding of what a religion is, as well as being parasitic on an implicit, unarticulated theory of the good. All of this only illustrates one of Taylor’s most profound contributions to political philosophy, pointing to the complex ambiguities that beset the liberal ideal of neutrality towards the good life. And I have sought to provide the sketch of a Taylorian critique of Taylor—a modest testimony of the astonishing fecundity of Taylor’s thought.

A version of this text was presented at “Charles Taylor at 80: An International Conference,” held in Montreal on March 31, 2012.—Ed.

Evaluating the resulting history in any sort of objective manner is perplexingly difficult, for the history of toleration, like toleration itself, is a deeply partisan phenomenon. Far from being a stable category or experience, toleration is fundamentally a relationship, and inherently an ongoing, ever-evolving relationship, the content of which varies significantly depending on the parties involved. For example, one can say that there was toleration in the Ottoman Empire as well as the British Empire, but one bolstered a form of rule dominated by Muslims, while the latter did the same for Anglicans. Each group lived in a situation of tolerance, but would have found itself living in very altered circumstances in the other’s system. Does that make one or the other less tolerant?

The tendency to see toleration in singular fashion—as “the idea of toleration” (for example in Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration came to the West) or a distinguishing feature of, say, Dutch, British, or American history—obscures the partisan dimension of toleration. We continue to take a single manifestation or interpretation of toleration (most popularly, in theories of liberalism, that of John Locke) as representative of the whole rather than as what it is: merely one manifestation among many. In the case of Locke and the Anglo-American world it is, of course, a highly influential version of toleration. However, to assume that it is then a universal model by which all others, past and present, can and should be evaluated is to confuse the general with the particular: the main problem with the history of toleration I am highlighting here.

Another indication of the partisan dynamic unwittingly preserved in the history of toleration is the tendency to look for a person or place that best embodies the ideal of toleration. Here too, one’s answer depends on one’s predilections. Was it the era of convivencia in Medieval Spain? The Dutch Republic? Sixteenth-century Poland-Lithuania? France under the Edict of Nantes? Britain after the Glorious Revolution? Pennsylvania? Mughal India? Roger Williams? Sebastien Castellio? Erasmus? Pierre Bayle? Baruch Spinoza? The predominance of early modern European history and Protestant thinkers in the scholarship on the history of toleration betrays its close alliance to the history of the rise of Protestantism as well as the rise to global dominance of Europe and the United States. Indeed, into the twentieth century many thinkers made little distinction between the two.

Traditionally, Roman Catholicism has played the role of great antagonist in such histories of toleration. Indeed, many of the earliest histories of the rise of toleration were crafted as denunciatory histories of the Inquisition. Roman Catholics have tended to embrace the cause of religious toleration (or, nowadays, religious freedom) only when they have been a minority faith: Elizabethan England, for example, or colonial Maryland. One need not hold this as a reproach against Catholics, for many of the great advocates of religious toleration have been belonged to a minority faith agitating for greater rights and recognition: Jews and Quakers in Cromwellian England; Lutherans in the Dutch Republic; Baptists most anywhere before the nineteenth century.

One of the great transitions between the early modern and the modern period is the role that toleration, or religious freedom, has come to play in various groups’ battles for wider recognition, acceptance, or power. In the earlier period, it was rare for someone to argue in favor of toleration or religious liberty per se, without attaching it to the cause of a particular group. At the same time, when an individual did do so, such as Baptists or Separatists who regularly spoke in favor of toleration of Jews, Muslims, and a variety of Christians, it clearly fit their partisan needs as members of a group that either had given up pretensions towards universal appeal or, in the case of the early Quakers, were convinced of the persuasive power of their message in any situation free of constraint. Likewise, when members of a Protestant establishment, such as Hugo Grotius or William Chillingworth, spoke up in favor of tolerating a variety of opinions, it was also with the assumption that eventually the variety of opinions would coalesce around the truth, which they never doubted resided more in their official church than any other.

Ever since the Age of Revolutions in the late eighteenth century, figures have increasingly spoken out in favor of religious tolerance and freedom per se. However, here too one can easily detect a partisan dimension. American Protestants did not fervently advocate religious freedom in the nineteenth century because they anticipated the flourishing of Buddhism in the United States but rather because it helped to justify the predominance of Protestants in a nation without an established church and a growing Roman Catholic minority. Likewise, Roman Catholics have not now embraced the cause of religious freedom because they believe it will diminish their position within the United States. None of this is pointed out in an effort to discredit or demean the various advocates of religious liberty. It is simply to point out that they are not all advancing the same cause, their use of similar terminology notwithstanding. The struggle over religious freedom today has significantly different connotations than it did in 1780s Virginia or 1650s England or 1520s Saxony.

By treating toleration as a distinct, identifiable phenomenon rather than a problem that needs to be explained, we are in danger of depriving toleration of any analytical power while preserving it as the polemical tool that it has always been. My point is not to say that others have it wrong and I (or some particular philosopher) have “it” right. Rather, it is to just emphasize how unstable a category toleration is. And that should not be surprising given the relational nature of toleration. I doubt if there ever can be a situation in which what is really at stake is an abstract quality that stands above the constituent parties. That would simply be a different twist to the relationship (like the self-proclaimed secular state in India or Turkey or France). To deploy the term tolerance without specifying the context and make-up of the toleration in question is simply to adopt and champion a particular partisan stance, often one with deep roots in European history. It is not to employ a powerful, never mind objective, category of analysis.

The partisan dimension of religious tolerance need not be read as a sign of hypocrisy or a fatal flaw in thinking. Rather, it should be accepted as inherent in the topic of toleration itself. For toleration, however described, whether as an ideal state of being, or religious freedom, religious liberty, secularism, or pluralism, is not an objective status or transcendent condition. Toleration is a relationship—and a deeply, inescapably partisan one, for it involves a relationship between two or more different parties, none of whom will all be equally satisfied with whatever their particular relationship happens to be at a given moment. It is extremely difficult if not downright impossible to write a history of toleration that is not partisan. The least we can do, I would suggest, is be honest and open about this difficulty.

There is, of course, a history of toleration out there. Anyone can immediately conjure up certain associations and images when that phrase is invoked. However, exactly what comes to mind would, I am certain, vary significantly depending on the mind in question. Is it the struggle of Jews for recognition in Pieter Stuyvesant’s New Amsterdam? Of Catholics in Ireland? Of Mennonites in Switzerland? Remonstrants in the Dutch Republic? Greek Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire? Episcopalians in Scotland? Muslims in English Tangiers? Hindus in Portuguese Goa? Or Dutch Protestants in Japan? And so on. Is it really our job to champion one narrative over the other?

Rather than evaluate the relations (some more fraught than others) between different religious groups along a presumed universal scale of tolerance, we should focus on the specifics of the situation at hand. Once we can appreciate how the “rise” of tolerance in a particular place, such as Ireland, would affect the relationship between the various groups involved (in this case, a demographic majority of Roman Catholics versus smaller populations of various Protestants, including Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and the Church of Ireland—but not, before the nineteenth century, Jews, Muslims, or other non-Christians), then we can embark on a fuller discussion of what it is we are talking about when we talk about religious freedom (as Saba Mahmood suggests with regard to the Middle East).

The challenge for today’s world, in which global awareness and implications are unavoidable in a way they were not in the sixteenth century, is to come up with a method to approach the history of toleration that can capture its perpetual, ongoing, and, I would say, never-ending nature. However widespread and powerful religious unity and conformity was in medieval Europe, one can still find exceptions—bits of diversity that kept questions of toleration alive long before the appearance of Protestants. And if one goes back further, to the late Antique period, then one returns to a world of religious diversity in which the Roman Catholic Church was but one of many contenders (indeed for the fervently Christian Roger Williams everything went downhill once the emperor Constantine converted and fused his church with his empire). Toleration in some form or another has been around for a long time. It will not go away, though it will change. We need to move away from models of rise and fall, progress and decline, and towards a way to capture the perpetual motion machine that tolerance really is. Only then will the ideas of long-gone Protestants retain relevance in a world where it is now Catholics who are taking the lead as advocates of religious freedom.