Reasonable Accommodation—Managing Religious Diversity

With the concept of "reasonable accommodation" increasingly heard in Canada's public discourse about the treatment of religious minority practices, the eight papers presented here by Beaman (classics and religious studies, U. of Ottawa, Canada) consider the language of "reasonable accommodation" as measured against the principle of equality rights and in light of power relations implicit in giving and receiving of rights in Canada and in other countries. Topics include the ways in which the very foundation of "reasonable accommodation" fails scrutiny as boundaries between majority and minority become blurred and as the idea that it is newcomers that need to be accommodated is undermined by discrimination against native minorities, the tensions between liberal individualism and religious freedom that allows for adherence to illiberal religious commitments, the hostility towards Muslim women wearing the Niqab in western countries, issues of religious diversity and practice in prisons in France and England, the general contours of the management of religious diversity in Australia, and the ways in which religiously based normative standards are implicated in court decisions in Canada. Distributed in the US by the U. of Washington Press and in Canada by the U. of Toronto Press. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lori G. Beaman is Canada Research Chair in theContextualization of Religion in a Diverse Canada, director of the Religion and Diversity Project and a professor in theDepartment of Classics and Religious Studies at the University ofOttawa.Contributors: Natasha Bakht, James A. Beckford, Peter Beyer, Gary D. Bouma, Avigail Eisenberg, Solange Lefebvre,Ole Riis, and Heather Shipley.