Tahir Rashid

This course is available on the MSc in Comparative Politics, MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe, MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe (LSE & Columbia), MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe (LSE & Sciences Po), MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in European and International Politics and Policy, MSc in European and International Politics and Policy (LSE and Bocconi), MSc in European and International Politics and Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in European and International Public Policy (LSE and Bocconi), MSc in European and International Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in History of International Relations, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in Political Science (Conflict Studies and Comparative Politics), MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World) and MSc in Theory and History of International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically very high. Priority is given to students from the European Institute, so students from outside this programme may not get a place.

In recent years religion has emerged as one of the most important factors in shaping domestic and European politics. This represents a remarkable shift in understanding when a generation earlier sociologist, historians and even some theologians were confidently predicting the irreversible collapse of organised European religion. How does the purported return of religion affect the secular self-understanding of Europe? What are the consequences of this shift for the future of secular Europe? This module aims to introduce the categories of secularisation, secularism, secular and religion with a view of understanding their impact on European society, politics, and culture. It hopes to incorporate a broad range of disciplinary perspectives to shed light how Europe’s contemporary secular identity has come to be challenged by religion but also to reveal how far this identity has been irrevocably shaped by a history that cannot be fully articulated without some reference to religion.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 25 hours across Winter Term. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

1 x 1200 word essay

1 x presentation 

• Taylor Charles. A Secular Age, 2007
• Smith Graeme. A Short History of Secularism, 2007
• Calhoun Craig, Juergensmeyer Mark, VanAntwerpen Jonathan. Rethinking Secularism 2011;
• Casanova José. Copson Andrew, Secularism: A Very Short Introduction, 2019; Public Religions in the Modern World 1994
• Asad Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, 2003
• Asad Talal, Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam 1993
• Zuckerman Phil and Shook John. The Oxford Handbook of Secularism, 2017
• Rawls John, Political Liberalism 1993
• Habermas Jurgen, Religion in the Public Sphere, 2006
• Brahm Levey Geoffrey and Tariq Madood, Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citzenship 2008
• Bowen John, Can Islam be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State
• D’Costa Gavin, Evans Malcom, Madood Tariq, Rivers Julian. Religion in a Liberal State, 2014
• www.secularism.org.uk
• www.humanists.uk

Online assessment (100%) in the ST.

The online assessment for this course will be administered via Moodle. Questions will be made available at a set date/time and students will be given a set period in the ST to complete the answers to questions and upload their responses back into Moodle.