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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Syncretist & eclectic religions & belief systems > General
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.
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