ABSTRACT
The public-private distinction is crucial to the contemporary discussion of equal citizenship, and particularly to the challenge to an earlier liberal position. It relates primarily to acts of violence but also in relation to amendments to the section of the Public Order Act 1986 that deals with threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour. There is no prospect at present of religious equality catching up with the importance that employers and other organizations give to sex or race. In their case, however, they come into conflict with an additional fourth dimension of liberal citizenship that we can refer to as secularism: the view that religion is a feature, perhaps uniquely, of private and not public identity. Hence a programme of racial and multicultural equality is not possible today without a discussion of the merits and limits of secularism. Multicultural equality, then, when applied to religious groups means that secularism simpliciter appears to be an obstacle to pluralistic integration and equality.
