All states must make choices in how they govern religious diversity. In the worst cases, states will actively perpetuate inequalities or oppression through these choices. But even in the best cases, it is inevitable that compromises will be made and successes can only be partial. It is therefore essential that we not only seek to understand how states navigate the challenge of religious diversity, but that we do so in comparative perspective. Then mutual learning across imperfect choices becomes possible.
This special issue of Religion, State & Society presents findings from a major new project (2018–2022), Radicalisation, Secularism, and the Governance of Religion (GREASE). GREASE compares approaches to the governance of religious diversity in 23 countries across five world regions: the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), South and Southeast Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Southern and Southeastern Europe, and Western Europe, with Australia added to this final European ‘region’ as a complementary case.
We have been delighted to invite Professor Tariq Modood and Dr Thomas Sealy as guest editors of this special issue entitled The Governance of Religious Diversity: Global Comparative Perspectives. Tariq Modood is Professor of Sociology, Politics, and Public Policy at Bristol University and the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship. Thomas Sealy is Lecturer in Ethnicity and Race at Bristol University where he is also an active contributor to the intellectual life of the Ethnicity Centre. Our two guest editors led the Bristol team that was one of ten partners in this EU Horizon 2020-funded global institutional consortium.
The current special issue continues conversations on the pages of this journal from our previous issue with an urban focus, Governing Religious Diversity in Cities: Critical Perspectives (2019), bringing the GREASE project’s unprecedented global scope to the study of religion and diversity. It begins with an introductory article that proposes a framework with new conceptual tools for understanding the governance of religious diversity, incorporates a focused article on each of the five world regions, and, finally, concludes with a contribution that compares the regions and cases. In a world in which religious freedoms, restrictions, and appropriate levels of state intervention remain hotly contested topics, this special issue makes many important empirical and normative contributions.