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

Human rights and inclusion are the leading legal paradigms of our time and are considered to be the cornerstone of democracy. 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: in order to address how difference is vulnerable to elimination rather than recognition; and – through the lens of a contemporary ethics of alterity – to reconstruct the possibility of a true religious pluralism.