Joachim Küpper

Introduction

In the present socio-cultural milieu, characterized, as it is, by somewhat persistent schisms in popular and etatiste perceptions of R/religion/s and religio-spiritual identity constructions, it is challenging, to say the least, to configure a trajectory of academic inquiry into the vexed issue of the interaction between “Religion and Society in the 21^st Century”. There are multiple issues of theoretical provenance, methodological choices, sample/target area selections and thematic differentiations that need to be grappled with before a serious project can be envisaged that seeks to delve into inter-religious interactions and conflicts, through the prism of the role of the State within the framework of the post-Enlightenment democratic polity. What needs to be ascertained, at the outset, is whether one wants to concentrate on theological issues and/or religious polemic – be it in the modern socio-political context or not – or investigate and interrogate concerns of “deep pluralism”, “constitutional patriotism”, “Gottesbezug als Freiheitsimpuls” (reference to God as a stimulus for freedom) and “Wertegemeinschaft” (community of shared values) that entail an exhaustingly interdisciplinary noetic focus. In the contemporaneous European context in particular, and in the world-situation in general, one needs to remember that in the post-9/11 and Al-Qaida paradigm a marked radicalization of thought and attitudes has appeared on all sides of the multiple religious fault lines that have opened up or widened. It will, perhaps, be somewhat superficial to solely lay the blame for this at the foot of either the so-called “Revolt of Islam” (Shelley 1903) or the Huntingtonian construct of a “clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1996); there can be little doubt, however, that the charged climate prevailing in the present-day inter-religious dialogue has roots in the prehistory of religious conflict in the past.

Thus, in studying what seems to be a contested discursive socio-religious register even with the benefit of post-secular analytical methodologies, there appears to be a certain conflict of interest between academic institutes and individuals located in post-secular societies, and the engaged pursuit of a holistic yet, when necessary, particularistic study of religion in post-modern society. One needs to be especially careful not to allow the top-down presumptions of teleological secularity to color academic investigations of religious maneuvering in the public-private matrices of the discourses of immigration and integration – and the latter especially in the German and other Western European contexts. One should refrain, as far as possible, from being drawn into scoring ideologically nuanced debating points, while remaining open and receptive to innovative arguments, born from lateral thinking, and to creative solutions that seek to accommodate differential communal aspirations and identity formations within the broad framework of constitutional democracy.

It is in this spirit that the Dahlem Humanities Center organized the three-day “Concept Laboratory” on “Religion and Society in the 21^st Century”, which, with the help of an innovatively structured discursive format, dwelt upon the multifaceted possibilities and challenges of inter-religious coexistence and conflict. The participants included eminent scholars of religious studies, sociology, politics, history, theology, comparative literature, anthropology, philosophy and Islamic studies, with varied interdisciplinary orientations and from various universities in Germany, Israel, Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2011, from May 4 to 6, there were intensive theoretical-methodological discussions in small groups, with a special address by Professor Annette Schavan, the German Federal Minister for Education and Research at the time, and a panel discussion on the theme “Religions Today: Clash or Coexistence”. Some of the questions raised involved the following issues: the capacities of different post-secular societies for handling religious plurality, the so-called inevitability of religious frictions, the configuration of creative “strategies for peaceful coexistence”, among other things. In this context, the presentations and questions also touched upon the characteristics that a religion must have (or not have), so as to enable it to coexist in peace and even harmony with other faiths. One major discursive focus was the universal referentiality that a religion must demonstrate within a given social collectivity, so as to contribute meaningfully towards the exalted goal of world peace. Furthermore, the dogmatic, polemical or theological content of the different religions and belief systems, which could aid the achievement of this aim, were discussed and opened up to intellectual, and often critical scrutiny; various forms of “paradoxical knowledge”, as brought up by differential theological interpretations of key scriptural tenets, were held up to scrutiny after having passed through a rigorous examination by academic processes.

As noted by Annette Schavan in her lecture (the essence of which is documented in her preamble to this volume), one available methodological trajectory that can ascertain the suitability of aggressive manifestations of religious/secular conviction – as seen, for instance, in the headscarf controversy in France especially, and in Western Europe generally – is the approach suggested by José Casanova (2008) in his essay on the balance of religious freedom/s. As he opines, human rights and, most importantly, the right to freedom of religious practice, are currently undergoing a conceptual globalization. However, the gradual evolution of religious freedom into a universal aspiration does not necessarily ensure that it has similar connotations all over the world. What may, for example, constitute such a freedom in various Islamic communities, namely the enveloping of the female body in protective covering, can be – and apparently is – the denial of individuality in a Euro-American context. Thus, it may have various connotations in various locales, and many of them may contradict and even conflict with each other; similarly, the otherwise well-intentioned policy measures that seek to globalize unifocal frameworks of religious freedom and toleration, may run aground on alternative cultural constructions of the same, leading to resistance and even aggressive counter-mobilizations, as well as the possibility of a resultant violent radicalization.

Another controversial trope is the complex and convoluted relationship between religion and secularism and post-secular atheism, given the new manifestations of an aggressive denial of religiosity coming, according to Richard Schröder (2008), from the “West”; this is said to be a counter-blast to the so-called “Wiederkehr des Religiösen” (return/rehabilitation of religion), after the collapse of state Communism worldwide, and a new alignment of post-Cold War global geopolitics. Until the penultimate decade of the last century, the aggressively materialist influence of a so-called “scientific and progressive” atheism came from the East; after the end of the Cold War, however, this influence dwindled due to the collapse of a dehumanizing totalitarian system. Recently, it seems to be returning with renewed fervor and refurbished “old arguments” from the West: religious belief is dangerous and delusional and the so-called “scientific temper” may not accommodate it. The illusory nature of Godhood, the narrowness of religious education, and the linking of Catholic priesthood with child abuse are (only) some of the latest anti-religion ideas that are bandied about. According to Richard Dawkins (1989, p. 198), “[t]he meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry”. However, what scholars like Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, the so-called “Four Horsemen of New Atheism” tend to overlook, and all too conveniently so, is their (often brazen) treatment of “scientific” postulates and axiomatic statements as infallible truths. One merely has to read the zoologist Dawkins’ rather brash forays into popular philosophy, despite his barely concealed contempt for “the subjects known as ‘humanities’[, which] are still taught almost as if Darwin had never lived” (Dawkins 1989, p. 1) to grasp the amount of rhetorical belief in many supposedly scientific truth claims. This new dictatorship of reason, however, is not sans its own problematization of polemic – to wit, the eminently readable one-liners and assertions of finality by Dawkins and Dennett – and it ignores, quite blithely, the fact that (in Alan Wolfe’s words) “[r]eligion can lead people out of cycles of poverty and dependency just as it led Moses out of Egypt” (Wolfe 2003, p. 139). It is in this context that scholars like Richard Schröder are demanding arguments, background and consequences of this often one-sided debate from such fierce critics of “religion”. Many questions, apparently answered, continue to trouble our conscience: what are the results of raising evolutionary biology to the level of a belief? What are the multifaceted connotations of religion apropos thought, culture, the individual and society? There is an urgent need to reintroduce rationality to the science-religion debate in a socio-political context, and the present volume, which follows from the Concept Laboratory in Berlin, seeks to address that intellectual lacuna.

One of the high points of this academic event was Annette Schavan’s talk on “Reference to God as a Stimulus for Freedom: On the Liberating Power of Religion in Modern Societies”. With academic rigor, this lecture aimed to explore myriad issues and paradigms apropos the religiosity/secularity struggle and the German constitutional guarantees against faith-based discrimination; the immediate context was the integration debate that has been going on in Germany for the last few years, but the broader scope of the talk dovetailed with the academic study of religions within the Humanities. In certain twentieth century political dispensations, it had been deemed “unscientific” and “non-academic” to propose any scientific study of religion within the noetic spaces of universities and research institutes, due to the decades-old preponderance of certain ideological predispositions in academic power elites; hence it was all the more refreshing and reassuring to hear, from none other than the Minister, that a twenty-first-century academic power structure is interested in, and committed to, a rational debate between various theological and societal positions. In fact, she mentioned that the German government has been setting up four new Chairs in Islamic theology in the country’s universities; and this will be in addition to the substantial investments for augmenting knowledge through academic research, which have already been made by the Bundesregierung.

Professor Schavan traced the academic self-configurations of comparative theology through the various vicissitudes of Europe’s intellectual history, the rise of secularizing movements through scientific and technological progress, the intra-Christianity struggles and the rise of what has been termed “secular fundamentalism”; quoting the late Pope John Paul II – “a modern state cannot make atheism or religion one of its political ordinances” (Bakalar/Balkin [Eds.] 2001, p. 3) – she sought to locate the post-WWII Bundesrepublik in an arc of essentially Christian belief, in rejection of the “atheist totalitarianisms” that had plagued Germany, and was to continue to do so until the fall of the Berlin Wall, while emphasizing the rootedness of the Grundgesetz (Constitution) in the idea of tolerance and the consequent liberation of individual beliefs and values. She raised the problematic question of Islamic thresholds of tolerance and inclusivity towards other religious communities, and wondered whether European Muslim societies could field the challenge of developing an “Islamic theology in Europe”; at least in Germany, she hoped, this would have an emancipatory effect upon the often-vexed relationship between Islam and the State, precisely through dialogue. In this context, she referred to the somewhat controversial thesis of the Egyptian-German political scientist and Islamwissenschaftler (scholar of Islam) Hamed Abdel-Samad about the cultural decline of Islamic societies; according to Abdel-Samad’s latest book, Der Untergang der islamischen Welt (The Decline of the Islamic World 2010), the so-called “Islamic world” (as a socio-political construct) will go into a downward cultural spiral, having overdrawn its cultural-civilizational account and reneged on the promise of ijtihād or pragmatic, progressive thought. The 38-year-old, held as one of the most eminent Muslim intellectuals in the German-speaking world, was invited to the Deutsche Islam Konferenz (German Islam Conference) in 2010–11 by the Federal Minister of the Interior at the time, Dr. Thomas de Maizière. Schavan, however, expressed the hope that, in the interest of “social cohesion” and the normative democratic “duty to tolerate”, as called for by the German Supreme Court in 1995, Islamic communities will accept the right of non-Islamic entities to the emancipatory effects of mutual toleration as a democratic norm.

Volkhard Krech’s paper, “The Religious between Self-Referential Religious Communication, Communication on Religion, and Sacralization”, may be, perhaps, the most challenging one contained in this volume. Basing his argument on a plethora of sociological data, Krech problematizes the rather widespread view of a “return of religion” by arguing that the assumption of a previous vanishing or evaporation of religion may be misleading not only for countries like Poland and the United States, but also for a country like Germany. In a longue durée perspective, the alternative proffered between “secularization (understood as the decline of religion’s significance) and the return of religion (understood as its rising relevance)” seems to be all too schematic. Krech opines, through his interpretation of empirical statistical findings, that the often-claimed chasm between religiosity and modernity does not hold, that more than half of the German population “have theistic or non-theistic beliefs, and roughly a third seems to switch between belief and doubts”, that secularization seems to be characterized differently when notions of religious ritual, e.g., communion, come into play, and that there is a remarkable growth in the publication and readership of popular books on (often esoteric) religious themes. He also finds exogenous factors to be the strongest basis for religious fundamentalism, with a “centrality of religion” and an allegiance to a monotheistic faith being the strongest religious basis thereof. Political fundamentalism, he writes, is separate from its religious variant if influenced by faith-based perspectives, being “an expression of political religion”, an amalgam of political and religious assertions; however, countries like Zimbabwe, the United States, Poland, Nigeria, Egypt and Iraq demonstrate the heady confluence of general and often messianic religiosity, faith-impacted political beliefs and a heightened sense of national self-configuration. There seems to be a clear stress on faith as an identity marker amongst migrants, though this may be the result of stressing religious differences in the context of self-labeling and local and meta-local societal-cultural conflicts. Krech concludes that, due to the operation of secularization and the resultant issues apropos the application and connectivity of “self-referential religious communication”, the process of sacralization of nonreligious contexts and disciplines is heightened; this, in turn, could connote that religion and its niche in modernity might become a comment on the latter.

A section of three papers contained in this volume shed a sharply – and, at times, shockingly – different light on the possibilities of the coexistence of different religions. It may be nothing but a fortunate coincidence that two of these papers present scenarios of a serene coexistence while the third gives a most unembellished picture of a society that is religiously divided, while being simultaneously pervaded by religious precepts in almost every sphere of civil life, and that seems to culminate in a situation of constantly imminent civil war.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, in his paper “Pluralism, Liberalism and Constitutional Patriotism: A Normative Theory from the Indian Constitution”, takes a rather optimistic view of the myriad possibilities through which a “constitutional dispensation [could] be effective in acknowledging pluralist requirements within a liberal framework”, while foregrounding “the normative vision of the Indian Constitution”; he suggests that “the Indian Constitution that was designed between 1946–50 mediates between liberalism and pluralism” and lends itself to the provision of a meta-theoretical perspective upon the international challenges of constructions of belonging and their socio-political negotiations. This civilizational ability to inscribe pluralism outside histories of “competing essentialist identities” has always, in the case of India, been characterized by a “contestation of, and engagement across, shared mental, ritual, cultural, social and political spaces”, which cut across the sectarian divides between Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and other Indian faith-systems. He makes a paradigmatic point when he states that the Indian Constitution attempts to collectivize the expression of certain formulations of individual rights, as in the ability of the State to “impose reasonable restrictions on the freedom of movement, residence and settlement”, in the interest of effecting a balance between the liberal and pluralistic modes of constitutional ideation. In order to guarantee the inescapability of the nation-state mechanism, while furnishing modes of pluralistic normativity that facilitate the interrogation and challenging of nationalistic inevitability, his “key contention is that the Fundamental Rights show that the citizen is taken to be an individual locus of liberty”. He suggests that Habermas’ formulations of constitutional patriotism are inscribed in the “requirement of neutrality towards a plurality of collectives [that] is remarkably similar to the Indian notion of secularism”. This, he opines, is in keeping with the Indic/Hindu thought tradition, which is essentially pluralist and is geared to attract Indians to “syncretism and blurred boundaries between collective identities”. The Indic Wertegemeinschaft had neither an option nor the civilizational context to develop into anything other than a pluralistic socio-cultural system. There are very tolerant characterizations of what constitutes majorities and minorities as, for instance, in the case of the Bene-Israel, who had come to India after leaving Galilee because of persecutions by Antiochus Epiphanes (175–163 BCE), and had become a kind of permanent minority; this is mirrored in the lack, within the Indian Constitution, of anything “substantive about the notion of a majority”. Thus, given the constitution of the Indian nation-state by multiple minorities, dissent in India is radically different from that in the West, given that it originates in “the historically deep pluralism of ‘India’”. India’s historical negotiation/s with the ideals of Euro-American modernity may thus provide a possible model apropos the quest for suitable theoretical structures that will help to succor and sustain the increasing multiculturalism of public-private global spaces and the negotiations within them.

Paula Montero, in her paper “The Formation of the Nation-State, Religious Pluralism, and the Public Sphere in Brazil”, posits that the way various societies deal with religions is primarily connected to the historical process(es) through which the corresponding nation-states were created. In Brazil, with Catholicism having been the political idiom of the colonial and imperial regimes, a religious syncretism that could flourish due to the vastness of the territory and the scarcity of ecclesiastical-political administrators was always sought to be stamped out; hence it became the duty of the contemporary Brazilian State, through the 1988 Constitution, to secure religious and societal multiculturalism as a guarantee of the rights of the marginalized and the impoverished, precisely through the infusion of cultural authenticity in democratic governance. The picture that Montero gives of religious practices in contemporary Brazil is, indeed, a most interesting one if considered from the perspective of societies torn between different competing religions, as, for instance, in continental Europe. In Brazil, there seems to be a relatively easy coexistence of Catholicism, evangelical (Pentecostal) Protestantism and of indigenous or Afro-American cults. What is more: this coexistence does not only concern religious belief at the level of communities, it may impinge upon the individual, as well. Taking communion (according to either Catholic or Protestant rites) in the morning and attending a cultic event of a non-Christian dispensation in the afternoon is not at all uncommon in Brazil, as to Montero . The zone of mediation between different beliefs, according to her, is ritualistic practice, as in symbolic “cleansing” or purificatory rites, for example. Is it, properly speaking, the discursivisation of religion: is it theology that makes religious coexistence such a difficult thing?

Asonzeh Ukah’s paper brings us from the idyllic plane of peaceful coexistence between divergent belief-systems to the reality of Nigeria, Africa’s biggest nation in demographic terms, its potentially wealthiest country, and a polity divided between a Muslim north and a Christian south that has been stuck for decades in a rather more or less veiled civil war. Ukah, looking at the role of religion and religious inflection in political maneuvering in Nigeria, in his paper “The Midwife or the Handmaid? Religion in Political Advertising in Nigeria” ponders the alternatives of religion as a “midwife, creatively bringing about a form of democracy in tune with the local depths of religiosity, a sort of indigenized democracy”, and of a “handmaid”, who supports and furthers prevalent political dispensations. The picture, presented by Ukah, of the pervasive presence of religious issues, images, stereotypes and motifs within the political discourse, is amazing. In his analysis, religion in present-day Nigeria acts only as a handmaid while totally missing out on its potential to act as a midwife. If Voltaire or Marx were still alive they would not be able to find a scenario better suited to illustrate their theses concerning the devastating influence of religion on society than present-day Nigeria. Although Ukah carefully avoids making any concrete claims, the picture he draws may be read as a powerful pitch for the “privatization” of religions as a prerequisite for their coexistence, at least within societies dominated by proselytizing religions in direct competition with one another for a rich harvest of souls.

Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi’s paper, “Sacrificial Space: The Hebrew Imagination ‘Comes Home’”, brings us to a polity where the standard Occidental solution to the problem of the interaction of the State and religions, namely secularization, is not viable, since it would call into question the very existence of the State. The raison d’être for Israel is to establish a safe haven for a religious community that has gone through the bitter experience of realizing that no secular Euro-American State was ready to protect its members against a politics of systematic extermination. As such, the State of Israel evinces that “secularization” cannot be the one and only, the universal answer to the question of religions’ role in a global society of the twenty-first century. This, one might speculate, could be the underlying reason for the constant polemical campaigning of Western secularists, including some of Jewish origin, against Israel. If one takes the link between religion and society as a matter of fact, however, there is, as Ezrahi shows, one very serious problem that emerges. It is the continuation of, in her words referring to Yerushalmi (2005), “the recycling of the biblical topoi as characteristic of collective Jewish memory” in the two millennia of Exile, in the present-day political reality, or, to universalize it as an abstraction, the dialectic between tradition and progress. In one example, Ezrahi paints an impressive picture of the dangers involved in conflating the political and the religious, while cautiously suggesting possible solutions. The sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, as narrated in Genesis 22, has, in the Jewish tradition, become “a prototype of Jewish martyrdom”, a sort of religion-based legitimization of the readiness to send one’s sons to death in the interest of the greater body of believers. Ezrahi stresses that the Biblical account ends by the substitution of the son by a ram, a substitution executed not by Abraham, but by Yahwe himself. Thus, the story may be interpreted as a stylization of Yahwe’s prerogative regarding the lives of his people’s sons – whether or not He will countenance symbolic substitution – or as an interpretative account of the definitive end of human sacrifice within the Abrahamic tradition; this, by the way, is the current interpretation of the story both within religious studies, as well as in Christian theology. The second device to isolate the scriptural pathways to which Israel’s identity discourse is inextricably bound is the transference of the corresponding patterns to the sphere of literary discourse. Since poetry and fiction are free from the pretence to literal truth, they may playfully explore potential variants of the biblical original, or even deconstruct it. These two different interpretative or re-/ de-constructive ways of dealing with the tradition hold, according to Ezrahi, immense significance for the present-day coexistence of Israel with her Arab neighbors and Jews with non-Jews, through a gradual inversion of the ultra-Orthodox characterizations of Judaism’s public-private interactions and an opening-up of the channels of local institutional authority to non-religious secular humanists, in the context of Israel and the rest of the world.

The last two papers in this volume address the situation in present-day Germany. Schirin Amir-Moazami’s paper, “Religion under Liberal-Secular Governance: Dialoguing with Muslims in Germany”, does that in a most direct way, while Martin Riesebrodt, who taught in the United States for decades, reminds his German fellow countrymen not to skip over the solution to the question of religious pluralism as devised in the United States.

Amir-Moazami does not conceal her deep discomfort with the German government’s attempt to foster the Muslim communities’ integration into German society by way of a state-sponsored “dialogue”. She feels that, by “enact[ing] a structured conversation with Muslims”, the State determines the agenda and, therefore, if it is its goal to focus on Jürgen Habermas’ “dialogue model, with its emphasis on the consensus of rational, ethnically and ideologically neutralized citizens in non-hegemonic areas of public life”, it should not choose its dialogue partner as, however, it has done by setting up the Deutsche Islam Konferenz (DIK). In addition, she critiques what she sees as the discursive enforcement of an extraconstitutional patriotism, a sort of Grundgesetz-Plus; the latter, she claims, is based on a meta-legal notion of the “Deutsche Wertegemeinschaft” and is symbolic of the State going beyond its brief in promoting its notion of German values. In her opinion, the DIK “does not represent ‘true’ dialogue [with Muslims], but is primarily a means for the government to exercise power […]”; hence, it has been reduced to aiming for the reconfiguration of Islamic communities in tune with liberal-secular normativities. The State, she opines, resents the fact that Muslims have used the Constitution to acquire advanced socio-cultural and political rights that the framers of the Constitution had not envisaged for religious or other minorities; in building upon this notion, she discusses the concepts of post-Islamism, constitutional patriotism and “atavistic democracy”, while stressing that religious speech acts have to be translated properly. She refutes the notion that the State, as opposed to civil society, which can be “neutral and inclusive”, can be a neutral sphere, as it is the outcome of the ethical and value-based impregnation of the Constitution. From her perspective, equivalences given to or imposed upon Muslims, in terms of the theater of the dialogic space, are structured and initiated through the performance of top-down dialogue. In this process, a clear difference appears between structural and cultural integration, the latter seeking to grapple with issues like Islamophobia, the so-called clash of values and the public/private spatial dichotomy.

Although initially not conceived as a continuation of Amir-Moazami’s critical observations regarding instruments like the Deutsche Islam-Konferenz, Martin Riesebrodt’s somewhat skeptical view of the capacity of religions to alleviate societal tensions and, thus, “actively contribute to global peace”, as expressed in his paper “Concepts of Religion and Their Political Implications”, could be read as a more abstract exposition of positions underlying the argument of the preceding paper. He characterizes the central business of religions as the intercession, to divine entities, for blessings and salvation for their adherents, hence finding religions unsuited for the task of promoting political emancipation and furthering intercultural understanding, which bring up issues of legitimacy and authority. Quoting the example of the Catholic Church’s position on contraception, he questions the ability even of highly organized religions to enforce moral compliance, without creating maverick representatives who lack internal legitimacy. He argues that the State should perceive religious communities from a vantage point of serene indifference. The State should not be involved in the business of conferring a “higher” sense and meaning upon the existence of its citizenry but should leave that function to the religious communities. Riesebrodt opines that it should not pressure them to take an active role in secular matters. Civil peace, harmony and social welfare are the tasks of the State, the intercession with supernatural powers that of religions.

In conclusion, one feels that the Concept Laboratory raised more issues than could possibly be dwelt upon within the framework of a single academic event, given the gravity of the issues concerned, and the significance they hold for global peace and harmony; the various normative guarantees of constitutional tolerance, as, for example, in the German Constitution – Article 4.2 states that “the undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed” – will only work effectively if different individuals and communities go beyond mere tolerance and engage in understanding other forms of religious expression than their own. That, one can safely say, is one underlying thread connecting the different presentations in this multi-focal academic volume.

As for those papers, which suggest there might be a solution to the problems we are facing, one would need to discuss more, and in depth, the occasionally enunciated and, at times, hidden presuppositions of the arguments expounded. In India there is, indeed, a somewhat serene, if precarious, coexistence of a multitude of religions, including the three Abrahamic ones; but present-day India’s history does not just start with independence but the painful partition into two States in 1947: its religious pacification is a process that began only after the violent separation of a Muslim India nowadays called Pakistan (and Bangladesh) from the “rest” of the country. – The relatively irenic picture of a country formerly dominated by Catholicism, but now open to multi-religious syncretism (as presented here apropos Brazil) refers to a situation that has a history of roughly only two decades as of now – decades characterized not only by religious pluralization and an increasing tolerance, but also, as in India, by a breathtaking economic boom and the concomitant cooling down of intra-societal conflicts concerning material resources. It is, perhaps, not that unreasonable to reserve judgment on the applicability of both of these models of multicultural syncretism to the problems of a Europe that is in economic decline, where the challenges of a diversifying socio-cultural ethos follow on the heels of an apparently irreversible loss of the ability to project politico-economic power globally. – The playful deconstruction of religious frameworks and pathways as inscribed in sacral texts by literary texts, in order to render flexible the impact of a dominant religious tradition, might be a suitable interpretative strategy with those “religions of the book” that consider the concrete wording of their holy books as being mediated by humans; but it may be difficult to apply in the case of religions that consider their book the direct articulation of God’s own voice. – The appeal to let religious communities go about their business without persuading them to make a meaningful contribution to the aims of societies at large, to just tolerate and protect them, is qualified by a seemingly minute formula that would need further elaboration: religions have a right to freely pursue their goals, “within the limits of the law”. What, however, if the commandments of a given religion require something that is in contradiction to the law? And what if a specific religion considers it imperative not only to go about its own business, but rather to control the world and political speakers through religion as well? And is the law, a category rather skipped over in the paper on the Grundgesetz-Plus, a neutral entity or actor? Or do our norms of the lawful derive from specific religious traditions? Are “human rights” a universal norm? Or are they rather contingent upon the assumption of a Hellenized sect of Judaism – which flourished and goes on to flourish under the name of Christianity – namely that every human being is endowed with a Godlike “soul” at the moment of their coming into existence? Finally, is the rather widespread positive resonance of this concept the proof of its objective universality, or is it a phenomenon concomitant to the Westernization, in ways both peaceful and violent, of global socio-political, economic and even cultural mores over the last five centuries?

It seems there is still a lot to discuss, and the main realization arrived at in the conference might be that, the serious political problems at issue notwithstanding, scholars should not hesitate to err on the side of audacity in their interpretations and reflections as well as in their concrete articulations. Diplomatic resolutions to thorny issues are not one of the primary tasks of academic enquiry, though diplomats and politicians need nuanced and objectively inflected scholarly work as the groundwork for their endeavors. One can only handle the “other’s” susceptibilities in a caring and respectful way if one knows what these susceptibilities are in the first place, and where their origins lie.