Assertive secularism and attacks on minorities in Europe

Abstract

As compared to the concepts of “Laïcité secularism” and “Judeo-Christian secularism” that can be identified in various countries worldwide, I argue that the form of secularism present in many European states are characterized by what I term as “discriminatory secularism”. In the guise of protecting secularist principles such as animal rights, women’s rights, and children’s rights, these European countries enact legislation that make it harder for the religious minorities of Europe – predominantly Jews and Muslims – from being able to publicly practice their religion, thereby manifesting an unbalanced religious playing field. I argue that discriminatory secularism creates and maintains latent societal hostility against religious minorities which result in the encouragement of physical violence against the latter. I test this theory using a statistical analysis of European states from 2003 – 2017, finding that higher levels of discriminatory secularism do indeed correspond to greater physical violence against religious minorities. The results of this project are robust to a wide range of model specifications and statistical approaches.