ABSTRACT
In this book I have argued that public schools in liberal democratic states can best facilitate the pluralistic integration of religious migrant students through adopting policies of recognition and accommodation that are not only reasonable in the light of normative liberal democratic principles, but also informed in terms of what we understand regarding the natural role religion often plays in acculturation. We must come to acknowledge that the world continues to be a highly religious place, and that the secularization hypothesis, while perhaps “true” in some corners of the world, has turned out to be neither as global nor as comprehensive as once thought. In fact, what we have seen is that modernization processes have had a much more ambivalent role with respect to religion. Mark Juergensmeyer (1995) makes this evident with respect to resurgent Islam. Juergensmeyer writes that the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center was, in a sense, indicative of a “religious war.” The enemy however was not another religion per se, but rather “the secular values of the West, along with the aggressive military and economic pressure of modern societies” (p. 135) and moderate Muslim states that bin Laden had regarded as America’s puppets. Yet the actors behind the September 11th attacks were themselves quite modernized. They were, as Juergensmeyer notes, often highly sophisticated and technically skilled professionals, and extremely adept at using modern means of global communication. Their target was thus not modernity nor modernization generally, but rather a distinctly Western-style modernity that they felt secular globalization was thrusting on them.
