Politicized Religion and the Reframing of Fundamental Rights

This book provides a systematic account of how recent politicization of religion has been used by proponents of illiberal nationalism and populism to reframe constitutional and human rights in exclusionary anti-pluralist ways. Mostly, this reframing enhances the rights of those who belong to the majority religion or are steeped in its culture at the expense of the rights of women, sexual minorities, and adherents to minority religions. Drawing on history, political and constitutional theory, Part I of the book examines the ideal of ”institutional secularism” (and its imperfect implementation in six constitutional models) meant to provide an areligious means to separate the state from religion to safeguard pluralism and to prevent imposition of one religion’s metaphysical truth on those who contest it. Illiberal nationalists and populists attack institutional secularism as anti-religious and tend to equate it with “ideological secularism”, a conception of the good that rejects transcendence. Drawing on comparative constitutional analysis, Part II of the book focuses on the various ways in which fundamental rights have been illiberally reframed throughout a vast array of different jurisdictions ranging from Europe to Russia, the United States, India, Turkey and several African states. Special emphasis is also placed on the increasing role of transnational NGOs in spreading and coordinating such illiberal reframing.