Rights, Religious Pluralism and the Recognition of Difference : Off the Scales of Justice

In legal discourses on rights, freedom of religion occupies a pivotal position, receiving increasing attention from legal bodies. This book critically evaluates the emerging legal principles and standards that are applied to religious freedom in Europe. Focusing on religious pluralism as an interpretational principle stemming from attempts to define the boundaries of freedom of religion, it examines the expansion of religious pluralism as an underlying principle of different rights regimes and constitutional traditions. It is, however, the static and liberal shape this principle has assumed that is taken up critically here, to reconstruct the possibility of a true religious pluralism.

Human rights and their principles of interpretation are the leading legal paradigms of our time. Freedom of religion occupies a pivotal position in rights discourses, and the principles supporting its interpretation receive increasing attention from courts and legislative bodies. This book critically evaluates religious pluralism as an emerging legal principle arising from attempts to define the boundaries of  freedom of religion. It examines religious pluralism as an underlying aspect of different human rights regimes and constitutional traditions. It is, however, the static and liberal shape religious pluralism has assumed that is taken up critically here. In order to address how difference is vulnerable to elimination, rather than recognition, the book takes up a contemporary ethics of alterity. More generally, and through its reconstruction of a more difference-friendly vision of religious pluralism, it tackles the problem of the role of rights in the era of diverse narratives of  emancipation.