Professor Modood will explore the intersecting tensions between both liberalism and multiculturalism, and the nature of the secular state in western Europe.

While many liberals believe that the state should be neutral on matters of the good and culture, and above all on religion, multiculturalists hold that the state should not be blind to difference.

It should, instead, actively play a role in constructing and promoting a multicultural national identity in which minority identities are respectfully included. And if this includes minority religious identities then multiculturalism must be opposed to radical secularism.

Luckily for multiculturalists in western Europe, where all states support one or more version of Christianity, radical secularism is not the dominant mode of political secularism.