Rights, Religious Pluralism and the Recognition of Difference: Off the Scales of Justice

Human rights and principles of their interpretation are the leading legal paradigms of our time.

Freedom of religion occupies a pivotal position in rights discourses and principles supporting its interpretation receive increasing attention of courts and legislative bodies.

This book critically evaluates religious pluralism as an emerging legal principle arising from attempts to define the boundaries of freedom of religion. It examines the emergence and expansion of religious pluralism as an underlying principle of different human rights regimes and constitutional traditions. It is, however, the static and liberal shape this principle has assumed that is taken up critically here. In order to address how difference is vulnerable to elimination rather than recognition; and – through the lens of contemporary ethics of alterity – the book reconstructs a more pluralistic vision of religious pluralism and tackles the problematic of the role of rights in the era of diverse narratives of emancipation.