A Secular Europe Law and Religion in the European Constitutional Landscape

How to accommodate diverse religious practices and laws within a secular framework is one of the most pressing and controversial problems facing contemporary European public order. In this provocative contribution to the subject, Lorenzo Zucca argues that traditional models of secularism, focusing on the relationship of state and church, are out-dated and that only by embracing a new picture of what secularism means can Europe move forward in the public reconciliation of its religious diversity. The book develops a new model of secularism suitable for Europe as a whole. The new model of secularism is concerned with the way in which modern secular states deal with the presence of diversity in the society. This new conception of secularism is more suited to the European Union whose overall aim is to promote a stable, peaceful and unified economic and political space starting from a wide range of different national experiences and perspectives. The new conception of secularism is also more suited for the Council of Europe at large, and in particular the European Court of Human Rights which faces growing demands for the recognition of freedom of religion in European states. The new model does not defend secularism as an ideological position, but aims to present secularism as our common constitutional tradition as well as the basis for our common constitutional future.

Part 1: Inferno. 1. Tolerance or Toleration?. 2. Two Conceptions of Secularism. 3. Law v Religion. Part 2: Purgatory. 4. Does the European Constitution Need Christian Values?. 5. The Marketplace of Religions. 6. Accommodating Shari'a Law in Europe. Part 3: Paradise. 7. The Classroom as a Tolerance Lab. 8. Secularism as a Worldview of Worldviews. 9. Secular Law.

Lorenzo Zucca is Reader in Jurisprudence at King's College London. He joined King's in 2007 as a Lecturer in law. He holds the degrees of Maitrise (Paris 2 Assas), DEA (Paris 1 Sorbonne), Mjur (Oxford) and PhD (EUI, Florence). Lorenzo's special interests are in jurisprudence, constitutional theory, EU constitutional law, and human rights. He is the author of Constitutional Dilemmas- Conflicts of Fundamental Legal Rights in Europe and the USA (OUP, 2007) and articles on European human rights law and theory. He is currently working on the place of religion in the European public sphere. This is a study of one of the most pressing legal social and political problems in Europe and includes issues such as the ECHR protection of religious freedom, EU policies against islamic terrorism, EU enlargement to Turkey, and a wider debate on European identity. He also publishes in the fields of legal theory and is particularly interested in theories of human rights.