The 16th-century Peace of Westphalia, ending the Hundred Years War, is considered a milestone on the road to removing sectarian conflicts from the arenas of war and politics in Western Europe. Now that the Muslim population in Western Europe exceeds five percent, is rapidly rising, and is concentrated in a relatively small number of urban areas, new sets of challenges ... Read moreto church-state relations—long thought dormant—are reemerging. Hafez’s careful comparisons of the legal, political, cultural, and intellectual challenges flowing from these demographic changes show just how unsettled these issues are. His in-depth analyses of France, Germany, and the UK, in particular, show surprising variations both in public attitudes and legal approaches to mosque/state issues. Blatant prejudice against Muslims, Hafez shows, is characteristic not just of some of the more virulent rightist parties but is also found in the mainstream media, in centrist politics, and in academia. . . .[H]is case for a reexamination of the true nature of multicultural liberalism, secularism, and religious tolerance is timely and on point. This is an important book, raising important questions about challenging issues. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections.
CHOICE
Hafez’s well-documented argument and theoretically founded reflections reach far beyond the usual critique of Islamophobia.
Internationale Politik
Kai Hafez gets to the bottom of the most essential questions of our time.
Wiener Zeitung
Kai Hafez’s book offers a theoretical and systematic basis for one of the key questions of European migratory society—the integration of Islam.
Klaus J. Bade, University of Osnabrück, Germany Show Less