Framework

There seem to be theories according to which two straight lines, in infinity, can be found. We live in time abundant in "cross-lines”, in which interferences in one another's discourses and practices do not constitute dialogues but rather attempts to eliminate diversity, pluralism, hospitality as a political principle in democracies. We are thinking, in particular, of the burkini, of the vertiginous rise of populism and of the growth of extreme right-wing political movements demanding Europe isolation in itself, or of the religious arguments handed down by supporters of the President of Brazil's dismissal as forms of maintaining identity and security. One of the elements invoked for this closure is religious: on the one hand, secularism is invoked, howbeit, a secularism that is intended to present itself as secularity.

Indeed, while secularism seeks to dissolve the religious matter by denying the possibility of multiple public expressions of religions in the public space, secularism recognizes the public space as a forum where citizens with religious and non-religious options participate by building a common house. Indeed, by reducing certain matters to a “religious issue”, what seems to be at stake is, in actuality, the will or repulse of the very possibility of building a common house, masked consciously or unconsciously as a debate over “religion” of all those who are “the others”.

In fact, the ability to construct dialogues in which one recognizes that everyone speaks from a given place, from their “home”, of their “house”, in their “language”, from a position from which one sees the world, lies at stake.  The construction of the possibility of dialogues is only possible if one does not confuse the place from which one speaks with the place of normativity to which those “entering a house” (whatever it is), previously configured, must “obey”, and not be inclined to receive guests or even pay consideration to those who have long since been guests, but who continue to be considered as “not part of the household”.

Is intercultural dialogue and, with it, interreligious dialogue, between different people who recognize each other as equal partners, albeit arduous and disturbing of dogmatic thoughts, the future? 
Debate series within the  Observatory on Religion in Public Space (POLICREDOS)

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