ABSTRACT
The current debate on freedom of religion and belief in Europe has to be placed within a larger picture. At its center, there is a challenge that has not been faced yet. Europe has to come to terms with the end of its universal dream, the belief that only Western philosophy, and consequently Western law, is able to create really universal categories. 1 This persuasion, which dates back at least to the Enlightenment and has been powerfully fueled by the colonial experience, is falling apart under the political, military, demographic and economic decline of Europe. 2
As far as religion and freedom of religion or belief are concerned, the universal dream of Europe has a name: secular state. When I speak of secular state, I do not have in mind a specific system of Church-State relations, like the French one, for example. What I mean is a state where the enjoyment on equal footing of civil and political rights is independent from the religion or more generally from the conception of life and world upheld by a citizen; 3 where the most important events of human life – birth, marriage, death and so on – can be solemnized in a purely secular way; 4 and where religious rules are not directly included among its sources of law. 5 From this point of view, not only France, but also England, Denmark and Poland are secular states. Conversely, Israel or India cannot be defined as secular states. 6 According to the European dream, the secular state was going to become the universal model to regulate relations between state and religion.
