- Charlemagne and the Spanish have less success at pushing Muslims out of France/Spain
I feel like Europe would just be redefined not to include Iberia if it remained Muslim. The borders of Europe are fairly arbitrary and mostly just cultural.
- Charlemagne and the Spanish have less success at pushing Muslims out of France/Spain
Why would we want religious pluralism in Europe?
A shared cultural foundation facilitates political cooperation. Given the global nature of the challenges of our century, most prominently slowing down global warming, the common culture facilitating cooperation might be something rather positive, might it not?
Shared cultural foundation =/= religious hegemony per say.I agree with what most people have said here so far.
I´ll just ask one question, playing the advocatus diaboli:
Why would we want religious pluralism in Europe?
A shared cultural foundation facilitates political cooperation. Given the global nature of the challenges of our century, most prominently slowing down global warming, the common culture facilitating cooperation might be something rather positive, might it not?
I quite agree here - but at least if such a process achieves a synthesis comparable to the "Hindu synthesis", then we no longer really have "religious pluralism in Europe", at least not to a greater degree than the different brands of CHristianity we have today.Well, I may be mistaken, but old paganism also allowed a rather large degree of syncretism i.e in the first century A.D and forward we had : roman-greek, roman-persian, greek-egyptian, and at some point roman-greek-persian-egyptian-super-combo...
Again, I agree. But religion is one important dimension of culture. Of course, other dimensions can provide the shared cultural common ground, too, e.g. philosophy, language, political mores, socioeconomic structures. But that doesn`t mean that a shared religion doesn`t corroborate the common foundation.Shared cultural foundation =/= religious hegemony per say.
I quite agree here - but at least if such a process achieves a synthesis comparable to the "Hindu synthesis", then we no longer really have "religious pluralism in Europe", at least not to a greater degree than the different brands of CHristianity we have today.
I´m saying this as an atheist, who is totally glad that present-day Europe is no longer strictly dominated by churches and Christian "values" - I´m just throwing it in to see why exactly people seem to favour "religious plurality" over "religious unformity".