Religious diversity in europe and John Rawls' political liberalism

This study discusses the problems of ordinary Muslims within the contemporary multicultural and multi religious liberal democratic societies of Europe. The problems arising from the religious and cultural differences of Muslims still set the agenda in Europe. And this thesis searches for a solution by relying on John Rawls' understanding of justice and citizenship ideal as developed in his Political Liberalism and The Law of Peoples. Although benefiting from empirical facts in discussing the problem of diversities, it mainly refers to political philosophy in proposing a solution. It takes the current conditions and problems of Muslims in Europe as realities and interprets them by referring to the conceptual tools in Rawls' Political Liberalism and The Law of Peoples. In this context, it particularly focuses on the most fundamental concepts of Political Liberalism such as public reason, overlapping consensus and reasonableness and discusses the ways Muslims are able to realize the conditions of stability and reasonableness arising from public reason and overlapping consensus. To conclude, it analyses the arguments of certain European Muslim intellectuals and scholars as well as the practices of European Muslims within the public sphere. By doing so, it underlines proper religious interpretations in terms of political liberalism and indicates how European Muslims try to show a proper public life in terms of the conditions of political liberalism. By seeing the fundamental problem as the insufficiency of a common public standard for critique and the lack of a sentiment of mutual trust, this thesis argues that truly embracing the proposals of political liberalism in practical terms would end the artificial problems of diversity.