Religious expression

Coming to grips with the influence of religion in secular affairs is not a uniquely American issue. As this story in The Economist points out, the rise of Islam in Europe is upending long-standing privileges enjoyed by Christians.

What has upset the old equilibrium, say law pundits in several countries, is the emergence all over the world of Muslim minorities who, regardless of what they actually want, are suspected by the rest of society of preparing to establish a “state within a state” in which the writ of secular legislation hardly runs at all. The very word sharia—which at its broadest can imply a sort of divine ideal about how society should be organised, but can also refer to specific forms of corporal and capital punishment—is now political dynamite.