Blasphemy, secularisation and multiculturalism : a study of the Rushdie affair, the Theo van Gogh affair and the Mohammad caricature crisis

Abstract

This thesis examines secularisation theories and explores the question of their capability to capture and explain contemporary conflicts in Europe centred on the space and role for, primarily Muslims, religion in the public sphere. From the 1980s onwards, the "resurrection of religion” has reigned as the paradigm for the development of religion in the modern world, substituting the otherwise prevailing prediction that religion would “die out” as the inevitable effect of modernity. The prediction of revitalising religious vitality was motivated by the Iranian Revolution and a general worldwide rise in what broadly came to be labelled as 'religious fundamentalism'. Subsequently, this was fuelled by incidents such as the Rushdie affair, the 9/11 terror attacks, the Madrid and London bombings, the murder of Theo van Gogh and the Mohammed caricature crisis. Besides causing somewhat of a Kuhnian shift within secularisation theory and the social sciences more generally, these incidents, among many others, have also aroused a secular retort in Europe responding to what is perceived to be an inappropriate increasing religious vitality in otherwise modern and secularised societies.