Introduction: Dilemmas of Diversity

The underlying theme of this discussion of positions of knowledge and the capacity to understand other cultures and other religions is that conflicts of positions can only emerge in a world that is in a context of what we might called ‘contested diversity’. The question of a person’s position would not hypothetically emerge in a stale monocultural environment. If issues of position did emerge, they could in all probability be easily resolved. That modern societies are diverse is a pointless truism, but the consequences are real. The position of classical sociology, from Comte to Simmel, is now challenged from the perspective of post-colonialism (Bhambra and Holmwood 2021) and post-modernism (Susen 2015). Because of an expanding social and cultural diversity that is related to globalisation, positionality has become a political issue, and not just in the academy but among the wider public. We are also living in an environment of ‘fake news’ and cyber attacks. Liberal secular societies in the West officially celebrate diversity and multiculturalism, including religious difference, but typically encounter a limit when confronted by the veil, female genital mutilation or underage brides. How can we resolve these conflicts in the public domain? In the absence of shared values, finding agreement over basic ethical issues is deeply problematic (MacIntyre 2007). The liberal quest for ‘an overlapping consensus’ (Rawls 1987) in the civil sphere appears to be remote. Ironically, the overlapping beliefs between Muslims and Christians – their family resemblances – may render achieving a broad basis for a productive harmony more, rather than less, difficult.

Susan Buck-Morss (2006), whose politics are no doubt very different from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s political outlook, writing soon after 9/11 in Thinking Past Terror, pleaded with the American public to go beyond the futile conflict of terror and counter-terror. She believed that a conversation could take place in a public sphere in what she called the ‘cosmopolitanism of the world of letters’. In the preface to the paperback edition, she argued that her central proposal is that we consider Islamism as a political discourse along with critical theory as critiques of modernity. Her work contains the hope for a productive conversation and presupposes a cosmopolitan context, namely a cosmopolitan world of letters.