Work
Language of data  |   French   ·  English

Religious minorities, integration and the State

Editorial director

Tolan, John Victor, 1959‒

Jaspert, Nikolas, 1962‒

Jablonka, Ivan, 1973‒

Schreiber, Jean-Philippe, 1961‒

Date of creation
  • 2016   Gregorian
      
Preferred title

Religious minorities, integration and the State   English  

Variant title work
  • État, minorités religieuses et intégration   French  
Work type Single work
Non-literary work Discursive work
Work manifested Monograph
Work genre Textual work
Audience

Adult, serious

Summary

Judaïsme, christianisme, islam ont en Europe une histoire millénaire. Ces monothéismes se différencient par leur poids respectif, par les moments de leur inscription sur le continent et par leurs inégaux rapports avec le pouvoir : le christianisme a été adopté par un très grand nombre d’habitants et est devenu – avec d’importantes variations selon les lieux et les époques – une religion officielle, faisant face, dès lors, à des religions minoritaires. La structuration du continent en États et la division du christianisme lui-même, entre le Moyen Age et le XVIe siècle, ont placé les minorités dans une situation souvent instable et douloureuse. Ainsi s’expliquent, pour partie, la lutte contre les « hérésies », les guerres de religion, l’expulsion des juifs de plusieurs royaumes européens (et aussi l’expulsion de Musulmans de la Sicile et de la péninsule ibérique), la « question juive » au XIXe siècle et jusqu’à la Shoah. C’est ce passé que réveille, depuis la fin du XXe siècle, le débat sur la place de l’islam et les manières de manifester sa foi dans l’espace public.

Summary

Judaism, Christianity and Islam have coexisted in Europe for over 1300 years. The three monotheistic faiths differ in demography, in the moment of their arrival on the continent and in the unequal relations they maintain with power: Christianity was chosen by a large number of inhabitants and became — in spite of important differences according to place and time —a religion of state. The organization of the continent into states and the divisions within Christianity often placed minorities in an unstable and at times painful situation. This partially explains the fight against "heresies", the wars of religions, the expulsion of Jews from several European kingdoms (as well as the expulsion of Muslims from Sicily and the Iberian peninsula), the "Jewish question" in the 19th century up until the Holocaust. Since the 20th century, the debates concerning Islam and concerning public expression of religion are shaped in part by this past.

The 13 studies gathered in this volume explore the ways in which states have treated their religious minorities. We study various policies — repression, supervision, integration, tolerance, secularization, indifference — as well as the many ways in which minorities have accommodated the majority’s demands. The relation is by no means one-sided: on the contrary, state policies have created resistance, negotiation (on the legal, political, and cultural fronts) or compromise. Through these precise and original examples, we can see how the protagonists (states, religious institutions, the elite, the faithful) interact, try to convince or influence each other in order to transform practices, invent and implement common norms and grounds, all the while knowing the confessional dimension of "religious" majority and minority does not fully embrace the identity of each citizen in full.

Webography

Diamond   W 226034

Created at 09-07-2018 by Dalal Adib (IDEO)

Updated at 13-12-2018 by Dalal Adib (IDEO)