Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores how human rights institutions themselves adhere to secularism and increasingly so: while the right to religious expression in the immediate post-war period was an absolute right, it has now become a qualified right. It looks at the wave of cosmopolitan optimism which emerged in social theory in response to the 1989–1992 revolutions. The book outlines a parallel development in theories of citizenship and the invention of a range of new forms of citizenship including post-national, de-nationalized, disaggregated and cosmopolitan. It also examines how post-national and cosmopolitan theory used the human rights activism among Europe's Muslims as a principal litmus test for their theories. The book sets out how Europe constructed an image of itself as a protector of migrant rights and guardian against racial discrimination.