Moderate Secularism and Multiculturalism

In a recent issue of this journal Sune Laegaard has raised some difficulties for what I have argued in relation to moderate secularism and multicultural equality (Laegaard, 2008). He has two sets of objections. Firstly, that my conception of moderate secularism draws attention to certain features about Western polities but distinguishes between states in a very general way (p. 161), obscures that what is at stake are not facts but normative principles and moderate secularism does not begin to do the work I set it to do without an appeal to a conception of equality. Secondly, that my conception of equality and its justification is unclear. In particular I do not specify the criteria by which to measure when equality has been achieved, and I do not justify why the concept of equality has to be sensitive to group difference.