ABSTRACT
Already in the mid-1990s, a reluctant co-organizer of a major academic meeting on "multiculturalism, minorities, and citizenship" found this a trite and outspent topic. In the resultant volume, which assembled mostly liberal supporters of multiculturalism, Will Kymlicka declared that "the multiculturalists have won the day", in having "successfully redefined the terms of public debate" towards favoring difference-conscious rules and institutions. The death-sayings reached fever-pitch in late 2010 and early 2011, when the political leaders of Germany, France, and Britain spoke out "against multiculturalism", almost simultaneously and in near-identical terms. However, religion moves onto the radar of multiculturalism mostly not for internal "religious" reasons but because of its close association with an ethnic immigrant minority. The devolution of British multiculturalism was marked by two critical events, the first being the 2001 race unrests that brought the turn to "community cohesion", and the second the July 2005 domestic terror that brought British Muslims under the closer lens of counter-terrorism policy.
