Educating for a World out of Joint : Challenging Orders and Borders for Religious Diversity in Liberal Education

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1 Educating for a World out of Joint : Challenging Orders and Borders for Religious Diversity in Liberal Education Lovisa Bergdahl This paper begins with both optimism and disappointment in the way religious diversity in education is handled. The optimism contains the hope that education is, or perhaps should be, about making meaning of life and that its framework holds the possibility to reflect on the human condition. The disappointment is rooted in what has become of this possibility. Current public debates on education seem to bring to the fore some sort of sacredness inherent in Western democracies. A current example is the media attention given to Muslim girls and women s dress in schools where the headscarf 1 - interpreted as a visible sign of difference - apparently challenges the borders between the public and private spheres. Such debates make it quite clear that religious diversity is a pressing issue within the European Union today especially, one might claim, after 11 September 2001 and consequently the expectations assigned to policy makers and teachers within education to handle 2 the difficulties related to religious diversity, are extremely high. The concern of this paper is thus rooted in what I see as an inability within liberal education to relate to religious difference and I will discuss three areas which might help us think differently about these issues in education. As a background to my argument I will introduce a few aspects on how European self-identity is construed through the creation of borders in policy documents on education from the Council of Europe, particularly in relation to religious diversity. Thereafter, I will challenge the essentialist notion of religion which comes to the fore in these documents 3. Drawing on Talal Asad s work on secularization and religion I will suggest that what secularization is understood to be is derived from what it excludes, namely something religious, asking instead how Europe constructs its own self-understanding in its talk about religious diversity. The aim of this paper is rather to put difference at the centre of reflection in order to open up for a more plural understanding of education and democracy. Secondly, I will explore the border between the public and private through the work of Hannah Arendt since it is, it seems to me, precisely the border between these spheres that is challenged in the above mentioned debates which turns the prevalent distinction between the public and private on its head. I will argue that it is not the public/private distinction itself that is the problem but how we think about borders between these spaces that is at stake. Thirdly, I will claim that identities are always construed in a friend/enemy or in a we/they relationship but instead of seeing this as problematic I will, following Chantal Mouffe, suggest an approach to the political that keeps itself open to passions and antagonism and helps us think differently about education and democracy than trying to eliminate differences. I suggest that the notion of the ordered society with clear definitions of and borders between religious/secular and private/public is seductive but dangerous since we know all too well what such politics of purity might lead to. Mark J. Halstead has written extensively and very insightfully about differences between Islamic and liberal ways of understanding education. Halstead emphasizes the need for respectful dialogue between groups that hold diametrically opposed beliefs and values and warns for the risk of exercising cultural domination if Muslims were made to accept Western attitudes towards, for example, sexuality (1997). I support Halstead s adherence to dialogue but I would like to suggest an approach to democracy which finds ways to channel dissenting voices without necessarily seeking rational solutions to conflict. 1

2 Religion and European Identity Construction in Policies on Education In an age of globalization, the world is paradoxically both expanding and coming closer. One might of course question how new this phenomenon is since Immanuel Kant claimed already 1795 in his essay Perpetual Peace that a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere (1991, p ). Despite the rise of the network society, however, and the seemingly increased communication between states and peoples in the global world order, the debate about European identity is enforced, it seems to me, every time Europe is put under constrain due either to an enlargement of its borders or to threats to its cultural characteristics. Religious issues were explicitly brought to the fore by the Council of Europe in caused by the need felt by member states to address issues of religious diversity (Batelaan, 2003, p. 2). Before 2001 religion was mainly discussed within the master discourse of culture in European policies on education (Hansen, 2000, p ) but due to the events of 11 September 2001, which, according to the Council, served as a catalyst to overcome the reluctance to interfere in the private domain the tide has turned (Batelaan, 2003, p. 2). The border between the private and public is no longer distinct and [p]ublic discourse is full of arguments calling for intervention particularly in those countries that have a large number of immigrants (Batelaan, 2003, p. 2). European identity is first construed as an indigenous population explicitly constituted by Christians, Humanists and atheists ; whereas the other group is Muslims living in Europe (Batelaan, 2003, p. 5). Furthermore, Muslims no longer belong to the domain of foreign policy but have become a matter of domestic policy (Batelaan, 2003, p. 2-3). The blurred borders between the public and the private derive, according to the Council, from the non- Europeans since for the immigrants, the separation of state and church is not as self-evident as for the indigenous population (Batelaan, 2003, p. 2). Secondly, the reference to time and a shared history is used to create a homogeneous past. The indigenous population shares a history of enlightenment, democratization, and secularization, and [u]ntil recently, various religions occupied their own geographical areas (Batelaan, 2003, p. 2). An indigenous European identity is thus constructed by what it excludes, namely Muslims and borrowing Peo Hansen s words we are provided with an illustration of how dependent any definition of a core identity for Europe and the European Union is on the simultaneous exclusion and designation of the non-european other (Hansen, 2000, p ). Thirdly, the Council constructs an image of itself as truthful. In its ambition to provide clarity it makes it no secret that religious diversity has become a euphemism for problems (Batelaan, 2003, p. 4). The greater problem to the Council however is that political correctness often forces policy makers and researchers to talk about challenges instead of problems (Batelaan, 2003, p. 4) and the reason why the issue of religious diversity has emerged in Europe as a political and an educational issue arises from the emphasis on differences in values and traditions with respect to externals such as clothing (chador), family relations, and gender roles (Batelaan, 2003, p. 4). Religious diversity is thus a problem which arises from the emphasis on differences. The task for education in this problematic situation is to promote dialogue and mutual understanding which, according to the Council, is a condition for living peacefully together (Batelaan, 2003, p. 6). When dilemmas arise between respecting freedom of expression and 2

3 conscience rights (typical Western values) versus rights relating to equality and the respect for minorities (also Western values) (Batelaan, 2003, p. 6) the main task for education is to help students analyze these cases by making clear that there is a difference between the public and the private domain (Batelaan, 2003, p. 6). I will come back to the task for education as well as the construction of the public/private and the categorizations of indigenous/immigrant, but first I would like to explore the notion of secularization and the separation of state and church expressed here since it forms the basis for the latter distinctions. Secularization and its Dis-Contents in Education Secularization is a widely discussed issue but for the purpose of this paper I will turn to the Muslim anthropologist Talal Asad (1993, 1999) who, inspired by Nietzsche and Foucault, uses genealogical method to question unexamined and unquestioned thinking. Unlike many other secularization theorists Asad challenges the view that religion is declining in the West claiming instead that it is a particular kind of religion that is declining. One of his main arguments is to criticize any universal definition of religion, firstly, because the constituents of religions are historically specific and secondly, because such a definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes (p. 29). Asad aims at identifying the historical shifts that have produced the conceptual construction we call religion in modern society and asks whether the idea of secularization is really worth saving. Asad (1993) locates the modern understanding of religion to the seventeenth century when the unity of the Roman Church collapsed and European principalities were torn apart by confessional wars (p. 40). At this point the notion of Natural Religion became a solution that is, a set of beliefs that everyone could give assent to and which could be judged and compared despite differences in source (p ). The purpose was to overcome religious differences and put an end to confessional wars but the separation between practiced and believed religion came into being and turned religion into a devout but marginalized concern for the individual believer, independent of other aspects of human life (p. 46). It is, however, preeminently the Christian church that has preoccupied itself with this verbalized inner condition of true religion, an inwardness that has contributed to the prevalent view in the West that religion is foremost an individual and private concern. An important contribution to secularization theory comes from the sociologist José Casanova who claims that whether the deprivatization of religion threatens modernity or not depends on how religion becomes public (Asad, 1999, p. 179). So what Asad tries to explore is what kind of religion thinkers like Casanova see as compatible with modernity. His conclusion is that Casanova, like Habermas, singles out those religions that are able and willing to enter the public sphere for the purpose of rational debate religions that have accepted the assumptions of liberal moral and political discourse are being commended (ibid. p. 179). Since the domain of free speech is always shaped by preestablished limits, Asad s criticizes both Casanova and Habermas for not acknowledging that the public sphere is not open to everyone. Free speech and the possibility to be heard are both presupposed in liberal democracies but the question Asad raises is whether liberal society is prepared to let religious people enter the public sphere on their own conditions, acknowledging that this can hardly be done without disrupting existing assumptions. He also raises the question as to why 3

4 secularists are so alarmed at the thought that religion should invade the domain of our personal choices when the whole point about free speech and listening to others is that we should open up to change (Asad, 1999, p. 181). So, far from being a source that can enrich public life, deprivatized religion becomes a site of conflict and raises the need to separate religion from politics; the argument being based on the fear of endangering the freedom of the self since the public practices of religion are founded on authority and moral constraint, and involves both faith and passions. The parallel movement to the privatization of religion is the rise of nationalism and the modern nation-state a phenomenon which, like religion, is not given by nature. One might even say that the nation-state replaces religion in European history and that we therefore might understand nationalism as a kind of religion since it defines the past of a people, their future or salvation and the sacrifices necessary (van der Veer, 1999, p. 9). Liberal democracies (and liberal education) are in this sense bearers of religion since they, through defining themselves as secular, tend to include what they exclude, namely something religious, and nevertheless incorporate some binding force between their citizens; be it nationalism, common values, culture, or any distinct notion of what it means to belong to a particular society. Asad s and van der Veer s main point is that every simplified way of looking at religion, secularization or nationalism must be avoided since essentialized definitions do not recognize the historical emergence of the concept. The modern view of religion came into being through the creation of the nation-state, and the need to separate the religious from the secular and the emergence of the social as an organized secular space in the nineteenth century made this possible (Asad, 1999, p ). What I have tried to illustrate by the above discussion is that the Enlightenment ambition to essentialize religion in order to make it manageable is reappearing in the discourse about religious diversity in European education and that the need to define a core European identity comes to the fore in times of instability. The Council of Europe s talk about religious diversity can also be read, however, as a masking over for secularity and a talk against religion since the differences that arise out of religious practices are first and foremost problematic. I have further suggested, drawing on Asad, that the border we attempt to maintain between the religious and the secular is historically contingent. Since the problem of difference arises from externals such as the veil (the chador) and since education is given the task to clarify the difference between the public and the private spheres, I now turn to Hannah Arndt for a further exploration of the private and public because it is precisely this distinction, it seems to me, that is challenged in the discussion about the Muslim girls and women s dress in schools. The Private, Public and Social as Borders of Negotiation The issue of religious signs in public spaces burns brighter by the day. The niqab is now officially on the political agenda as an act of willful social self-exclusion Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times, Oct For Hannah Arendt (1958/1998) the distinction between the private and public realms equals the distinction between things that should be shown and things that should be hidden (p. 72). The public space i.e. the space where things should be shown - the common world - comes into being wherever men are together in the manner of speech and action (p. 199) whereas living an entirely private life originally meant to be deprived of things essential to a truly human life (p. 58). Following Arendt s distinctions it seems reasonable to claim that 4

5 Muslim women and girls are acting publicly (and politically) when they draw a line between what they expose of themselves in the household and what they expose in public. The question is how we might understand that this act in the public space is suddenly labeled by politicians, for instance, as an act of willful self-exclusion (Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times, Oct , quoting MP Jack Straw) that makes other people outside community uncomfortable (Tony Blair, The Sunday Times, Oct ). It appears to me that Muslim girls have trespassed a border which reveals what is possible and what is impossible in the public sphere and I will now try to explore the double edge between the public/private distinction which wearing the veil (niqab) sheds light upon. The phrase willful self exclusion in the above quote is ambiguous because it signifies on the one hand that the woman herself is to blame for where this public act puts her, paradoxically enough, outside the public sphere. On the other hand, it reveals a doubt in the same, rather implying that the niqab is not willfully worn and that the Muslim woman is a victim of oppression. The voices that come to the fore in the media debate illustrate this paradox well enough - the Muslim woman is both a victim (she needs to be saved from oppression) and a threat (she represents a fundamentalist understanding of religion). What I am trying to think through here, however, are not the reason behind the wearing of the veil but rather what this debate reveals about European self-understanding. I suggest that it asks us to seriously consider two things. First, the possibility that some European citizens might actually want to approach their participation in public life differently than what liberal democratic society accepts and secondly, that we need to think more openly about public participation remembering that the way society is constructed might not, or perhaps should not, be equal to the way society could be constructed given the historical situatedness of the present order. The present societal order has its roots in the ancient distinction between the household and the polis which corresponds to the private and public. But according to Arendt the emergence of the social realm, which is neither private nor public and which coincides with the emergence of the modern nation-state, has blurred the ancient distinction (1958/1998, p. 28). The social sphere is transgressing the two other spheres in modern life and we tend to see the political body in the image of a family whose everyday affairs have to be taken care of by a gigantic, nation-wide administration of housekeeping (p. 28) and consequently all matters pertaining formerly to the private sphere of the family have become a collective concern (p. 33). This housekeeping, which Arendt calls society, has not only blurred the borders but has also changed the meaning of the terms. What we call private today refers to a sphere of intimacy (privacy) which was quite unknown to any period prior to the modern age (p. 38) and in ancient times privacy implied that one was literally deprived of something and not fully human, just like the slave (or the woman), was not allowed to enter the public space. Since the beginning of history to our own time the bodily part of human existence needed to be hidden in privacy (Arendt, 1958/1998, p. 72). Seen from such a viewpoint of body politics it is quite clear that the (female) body is a place where negotiations between the private and the public takes place. It goes without saying then that the question is not if the body should be shown in public but how and which parts. This is an important distinction since if the veil (niqab) is seen as a way to shelter what is intimate and the intimate stands in contrast to the social, not the political (p. 38) then it is quite evident that the niqab is not to be interpreted as opposed to political action. Since the social sphere is growing at the expense of the private and the political spheres, wearing the niqab might rather be interpreted as the condition which enables women to act politically and not, as we have seen above, as an act of willful exclusion. I suggest, therefore, that wearing the niqab might perhaps be a willful act of 5

6 participation and that we risk depriving women of their humanness if they, like in the ancient times, are denied access to the public sphere. In sum, if the niqab in many Muslim contexts is meaningless in the private sphere (it is rarely used at home) and functions as a shelter for the intimate which is precisely what makes political action and shared life with others possible, then the question becomes what is done to these Muslim women if the niqab is seen as a religious sign of self-exclusion. I suggest that women wearing the niqab should not be considered outside the democratic struggle but inside. Taking part in democracy demands necessarily drawing a specific line between the private and the public which the current liberal debate so heavily draws upon. When the political, as action and speech, dissolves into the realm of the social it excludes the possibility of action [and] expects from each of its members a certain kind of behavior all of which tend to normalize its members, to make them behave (Arendt, 1958/1998, p. 40). Through the rise of mass society various groups have suffered absorption into conformist behavior with the consequence that distinction and difference have become private matters of the individual (ibid. p. 41). The public reaction towards the veil (niqab) can in this sense be interpreted as a reaction to unacceptable behavior in mass society and a sign of difference which needs to be extinguished in public life. This raises not only the question about which religious differences are accepted in secular public spaces but also whether the talk about religious difference is only possible in abstract policy documents and impossible in concrete life. Looking at the media debate mentioned above it seems to me that difference in liberal democratic societies too often is turned into sameness. Arendt also raises the question about what it means to live together in the world and she takes her point of departure in a radical adherence to plurality as the human condition per se (1958/1998, p. 7). Human plurality has the character of both equality and distinction (ibid. p. 175) because without being equal to one another understanding would be impossible and without being distinguished from one another understanding would be unnecessary. Without plurality we would have eliminated the need for both action and speech. In relation to the issue of religious diversity in education this implies that we can not educate for equality without also giving adherence to human distinctiveness. To live together for Arendt is therefore not about a search for dialogue and rational consensus in a Habermasian sense but rather to recognize difference in all its richness. The world of things that is between us, the common world, is not a problem to eliminate but that which relates and separates men at the same time [and] prevents our falling over each other (ibid. p ). If we no longer have anything that separates us we would not have anything tangible that relates us. Gathered around the world we have in common, then, everyone will have different locations in it, and the location of one can no more coincide with the location of another than the location of two objects everybody sees and hears from a different position. This is the meaning of public life (ibid. p. 57). What Arendt makes us understand about life in mass society is that the space between us has vanished and thus what we have left is neither a power that gathers us together nor a power that separates us. This disconnectedness from the other and the loss of a space where relations can be negotiated is exactly, it seems to me, what the debates about religious diversity in Europe and the wearing of the veil are illustrating. Thus far I have suggested that what is understood as the essence of religion today is historically situated and produced and that secularization can not do away with the religious since it is inevitably construed by what it excludes. I have further suggested that the social 6

7 sphere in mass society is conquering and blurring the public and private distinction which in turn threatens our understanding of plurality as fundamental to political action. I have also suggested that the veil could, or perhaps should, be interpreted as an act of participation in public life. The final issue I would like to explore more thoroughly is the task for education and suggest an approach to the political that might help teachers and policymakers in education to think differently about the private/public as well as the seemingly inevitable we/they distinction, i.e. the distinction between a we (the indigenous European) and a they (the religious other) in education. What I would like to suggest, following Mouffe, is that the task for democracy is to transform the possible antagonism between different groups into agonism, recognizing the legitimacy of the other and that there might not be a rational solution to the conflict in question. While in conflict, one might rather claim that the indigenous European and the religious other share a common space within which democratic negotiations take place. Education and the Fallacy of the Ordered Society Basically we are always educating for a world that is or is becoming out of joint, for this is the basic human situation, in which the world is created by mortal hands to serve mortals for a limited time as home To preserve the world against the mortality of its creators and inhabitants it must be constantly set right anew. (Arendt, 1954/1993, p. 192) Does the challenge that education seemingly faces in relation to religious diversity have its roots in a dream of unity and consensus or in a nightmare of plurality and antagonism? In this last part of the paper I attempt to explore these imaginations, their basis and their consequences, in relation to education s task to educate for democracy. If Muslim women are negotiating access to public space in order to act politically when they draw a line between what they expose of themselves at home or in schools, then why is this so problematic for education in liberal democracies? Why are these women and girls denied access to education and teaching when education in Europe is praised as an emancipatory breeding-ground? Given the fact that European educational policy states that education for democratic citizenship should be seen as enabling an individual to act throughout his or her life as an active and responsible citizen (Council of Europe, 2002/12) this is even more puzzling. And furthermore, why is the wearing of the veil seen is an act of social selfexclusion and against western ways of communicating (Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times, Oct , quoting rabbi Romain) whereas wearing a low-cut dress (which might in fact also hinder communication) is not interpreted the same way? I suggest that this has at least somewhat to do with the secular religion of liberal democracies, namely the belief in rational agreement and consensus expressed in an almost sacred trust in the role of dialogue in conflict resolution. Dialogue seems to have become a cure-all for everything problematic both in education and politics and the underlying assumption in the policy documents from the Council is that conflicts stand in the way for democracy and that the purpose of education is to work on conflict prevention (Leclercq, 2002, p. 7). 7

8 This is not to say that I think dialogue is unnecessary. It is rather to say that I am doubtful about the enormous trust we put in dialogue as if all differences and conflicts in education today are rooted in rational misunderstandings, as if the world is only temporarily out of joint, and as if more dialogue in education would solve all problems. This is not to say that I applaud conflict - that would be an arrogant thing to do in an academic setting. But instead of thinking about conflict as something to be avoided, often at the cost of evening out differences, I agree with Chantal Mouffe when she claims that the task for democratic theorists and politicians is to envisage the creation of a vibrant agonistic public sphere of contestation where different hegemonic political projects can be confronted (2005, p. 3). In other words, what is there to dialogue about in a consensus situation? What is the meaning of such words in the political field, if no choice is at hand and if the participants in the discussion are not able to decide between clearly differentiated alternatives? (Mouffe, 2005, p. 3) It seems to me that the driving force behind the discussion about Muslim dress in schools is precisely the fear of disagreement, but then again, is not disagreement the whole point of dialogue implying that there would be no need for dialogue if agreement were attained? Arendt s words, that we are always educating for a world out of joint summarizes the point of the discussion more eloquently than I ever could, raising the question whether democracy and education is fundamentally a task to get on with when all conflicts are settled or if the conflicted situation itself constitutes the very condition for democracy and thus is precisely where education might come into being? Liberal democracies are built on an optimistic notion of human beings and according to Mouffe few attempts have been made to elaborate the democratic project on an anthropology which acknowledges the ambivalent character of human sociability and the fact that reciprocity and hostility can not be dissociated (2005, p. 3). An optimistic notion of the subject coupled with the above mentioned fear of disagreement rhymes well with the consensual approach to dialogue and democracy but this approach does not provide any democratic way to transform antagonism and hostility into agonism which is exactly why dissenting voices in liberal societies tend to take violent forms (p. 21). The we/they distinction is thus the very condition for forming political identities and it is, for Mouffe, an illusion to believe in the advent of a society from which antagonism would have been eradicated (p. 16). According to radical democracy we consequently need to live with what liberals try to avoid, namely that the we/they distinction can always become the locus of an antagonism (p. 16). So, if the problem is not the we/they distinction as such, Mouffe s concern is rather to find ways to envisage a third type of relationship beyond the friend/enemy distinction that realizes that there might not always be rational solutions to conflicts but which nevertheless recognizes the legitimacy of the opponent. What is problematic in the above Council of Europe documents, therefore, is not the constructing of the indigenous/immigrant distinction but rather how this distinction is presented and the meaning that is assigned to it. Since meaning is made, not found, it is problematic that European policy documents on education construct a notion of religious difference that does not recognize the legitimacy of the other but tries to eradicate difference. What I am proposing here, however, is not a relativistic or an extremely individualistic view of citizenship (for example claiming that there would be as many ways to be a citizen as there are individuals in a society). What I want to draw our attention to, following Mouffe (1992), is rather that the universalist definition of the public (the realm of the common) as opposed to the private (the realm of difference) has played an important role in the subordination of women since the private has been identified with the domestic (p. 237). The question we might need to ask ourselves it whether this subordination is not being reinforced today when a 8

9 Muslim woman is denied access to the public sphere because she does not act according to liberal societies universal standards for participation and communication? I hope it is clear from the above that I do not suggest that the private/public distinction should be abandoned but neither do I merely suggest its reformulation. What I am proposing is that the distinction between the public and private needs to be kept open for continuous negotiation and that its borders can never be settled once and for all. The point is that the private needs the public (just as the secular needs the religious and we need them and vice versa) which means that every situation is an encounter between the private and the public no situation is the one to the exclusion of the other (Mouffe, 1992, p. 237). As far as citizenship in European societies is concerned, this implies that dreams and nightmares need to live together in an undecided struggle and that any attempt to bring about a perfect harmony, to realize a true democracy can only lead to its destruction. This is why a project of radical and plural democracy recognizes the impossibility of the complete realization of democracy knowing that it is a never-ending process (ibid. p. 238). This also means that we might need to visualize how equality and distinction could inform democratic action in all situations and in all areas of social life since no sphere is immune to those concerns. In this paper I have tried to argue that teachers and European policy makers on education might need to rethink the modern understanding of religion as mainly a private concern if education is going to hold the possibility to embody human plurality in its fullness. I have suggested that our understanding of secularization and religion has its roots in a particular historicity and is produced by negotiations (just like nations and European Unions). This implies that the present societal order has not always been, and does not need to be, the only order there is. Rather than seeing negotiations of borders as inadequate pre-stages to future democratic practices (as if conflicts need to be settled before democracy can take place) I have suggested that negotiations about where borders are drawn between the public and the private is precisely the process where politics and democracy takes place. I would like to believe that education holds the possibility to become a place where humans come into being through political action. For that to become possible, however, I have suggested that education needs to open up for a notion of democracy which is more concerned about the possibilities of difference than the threats of disorder. Notes 1 There are many different terms used in this debate; the hijab, the niqab, the veil, the headscarf etc. In the most recent debate in the UK the niqab was used meaning the covering of all body parts except for the eyes. 2 The term is frequently used in the European policy documents on education. 3 The empirical material looked at in this paper is mainly a document from The Council of Europe s Steering Committee for Education; Intercultural Education and the Challenge of Religious Diversity and Dialogue in Europe. The document is a conceptual discussion paper for the project group by the same name and it introduces one of two projects on religious diversity and education within the Council of Europe. 4 The document in focus is introduced by the Steering Committee for Education as a Conceptual Framework Discussion Paper for the project Intercultural Education and the Challenge of Religious Diversity in Europe, Pieter Batelaan, Steering Committee for Education (CD-ED), Strasbourg, March

10 Lovisa Bergdahl Stockholm Institute of Education Konradsbergsgatan 24A 100, 26 Stockholm, Sweden Tel lovisa.bergdahl@lhs.se References Arendt, Hannah (1954/1993). Between Past and Future. London: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah (1958/1998). The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Asad, Talal (1993). Genealogies of Religion. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press Asad, Talal (1999). Religion, Nation-State, Secularism in Van der Veer, Peter & Lehman, Hartmut (ed.) Nations and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Halstead, Mark J. (1997). Muslims and Sex Education, Journal of Moral Education, v26 n3. Hansen, Peo (2000). Europeans Only? Essays on identity politics and the European Union. Umeå University: Department of Political Science Kant, Immanuel (1795/1991). Perpetual Peace in H.S. Reiss (ed.) Political Writings. Princeton: Princeton University Press Mouffe, Chantal (1992). Democratic Citizenship and the Political Community in Chantal Mouffe (ed.) Dimensions of Radical Democracy; Pluralism, Citizenship, Community. London: Verso. Mouffe, Chantal (1993/2005). The Return of the Political. London: Verso. Mouffe, Chantal (2005). On the Political. Abingdon: Routledge. Van der Veer, Peter & Hartmut, Lehman (1999). Nations and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia. New Jersey: Princeton University Press Council of Europe, Recommendation Rec (2002)12 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on education for democratic citizenship. 812 th meeting of the Minister s Deputies. Jean-Michel Leclercq, Steering Committee for Education (CD-ED), The Lessons of Thirty Years of European Co-operation for Intercultural Education. Strasbourg, September Pieter Batelaan, Steering Committee for Education (CD-ED), Intercultural Education and the Challenge of Religious Diversity and Dialogue in Europe. Strasbourg, March