Thinking multicultural education ‘otherwise’ – from a secularist construction towards a plurality of epistemologies and worldviews

AbstractThis article examines educational, political and philosophical perspectives on the concepts of worldview and religion in the context of multicultural education. Using a postcolonial and post-structural approach combined with theories that analyse the politics of secularism, we attempt to pinpoint key perspectives in the recognition of worldviews in the current discourse on liberal multiculturalism. We suggest that the liberal-secular foundation of multicultural education is blind to practices, which, while supposedly based on political neutrality, are discriminating and 'Othering' towards religions and non-Western worldviews. Through theoretical and contextual analysis, we aim to deconstruct the 'Otherness' of religious worldviews at the epistemic level.Keywords: worldviewreligionmulticultural educationpostcolonialismpost-structuralismepistemological pluralism'Otherness' Notes1. In this article, 'Western' refers to Western modernity, which contains the idea that development and progress in time is inherently constructed against the colonial 'Other'. Mignolo (Citation2009) talks about two different layers of modernity. The first layer of Modernity started with Christian colonisation of the Americas in the sixteenth century. This stage, in turn, formed the basis for the emergence of the second stage of Modernity, which began in the eighteenth century with the Reformation and Enlightenment and lead to an idea of secularity that was still based on Christianity.2. In Protestant countries especially, churches played a significant role in creating national identity and political and cultural uniformity. The Christian faith and way of life were combined with romantic nationalism and the secular tradition of the Enlightenment (Asad Citation2003, 174).3. What is meant by secularism differs greatly from country to country. Indian secularism is by no means the same as French or American secularism (Casanova Citation1994, 25; Modood Citation2007, 72–78). Furthermore, European and American religious-secular landscapes cannot be placed into a single 'Western' category. Due to historical, philosophical, social and political reasons, secularism is understood very differently in different contexts. Kuru (Citation2009, 11) divides secularism into 'passive' and 'assertive' secularism, depending on whether a state tolerates the public visibility of religion or attempts to hinder the public role of religion in society. In a similar manner, Parekh (Citation2006, 322) categorises European secularism into weak and strong forms, where weak secularism refers to the formal separation of state and religion and strong secularism to the idea that religion is a purely private matter. Davies (Citation2014) introduces a third category, dynamic secularism, which guarantees equality under the law to all citizens regardless of their worldview. In a dynamic secularist state, no religion organisation or group enjoys privileged status, but religious reasoning and religious practitioners are permitted in the public sphere.