Boundaries of Toleration

Tariq Modood, University of Bristol:
Alfred Stepan and Charles Taylor have played a leading role in getting us to rethink the meaning of political secularism, above all to undermine the simplistic notions that secularism means an absolute separation of 'church and state,' that this is essential to democracy, and that there is only one institutional template for achieving a secular polity. In this collection of essays, they have assembled a set of contributors who look at the varied ways in which quite different societies, past and present, Western and non-Western, have tried to achieve multireligious coexistence and the role of the state in that process. This is just the kind of historical and theoretical inquiry we need as we work through the challenge of crafting a suitably multiculturalized set of secularisms.

Hans Oberdiek, Swarthmore College:
The contributors to this volume open up fertile new ground exploring problems, hypotheses, and recommendations in provocative and original ways. Readers will find the fresh thinking exhibited in these pages eye-opening and mind-expanding.