Conclusion

Abstract

In all the chapters we have seen the fundamental role of religion as a mobilising and often popular force against what Westerners would generally regard as modernity and progress. Especially for the Left the Uyghur (Islam) mobilisation against the ‘rational economic’ policies of the Chinese Communist State poses a classic example of this. Equally, the claims of Lebanese Muslims to reject the essentially civil equality reforms of the new divorce laws as Western Christian interference in their Islamic world (Ummah) pose problems vis-à-vis the right to dissent and respect for others’ religion and multicultural toleration. This latter example also has important implications for Northern Ireland’s inter-religious relations, officially based on multicultural relations and ‘parity of esteem’. This parity is the official policy in Northern Ireland since the Belfast Agreement (1998) as it is in Lebanon.