Refugee Crisis and Religion

Dr Luca Mavelli is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, UK. He is the author of Europe’s Encounter with Islam: The Secular and the Postsecular (Routledge 2012), and the coeditor of The Postsecular in International Relations (2012 Special Issue of the Review of International Studies) and of Towards a Postsecular International Politics: New Forms of Community, Identity, and Power (Palgrave, 2014). His articles have appeared in the European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, International Politics, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Journal of Religion in Europe, and Teaching in Higher Education.Dr Erin K. Wilson is the Director of the Centre for Religion, Conflict and the Public Domain at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen since January 2012. She has published on religion and global justice, globalization, active citizenship and the politics of asylum in International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Refugee Studies, Global Society, Globalizations and Politics, Religion, Ideology. Her books include After Secularism: Rethinking Religion in Global Politics, and Justice Globalism: Ideology, Crises, Policy, co-authored with Manfred B. Steger and James Goodman (Palgrave, 2014).

• 1. Religion and the Global Migration Crisis: Secularism, Security and Solidarity in Question, Erin Wilson and Luca Mavelli / 2. Refugees, Migrants, and World Order, Richard Falk / Part I: Questioning the secular/religious divide / 3. Challenging the discourse on religion, secularism and displacement, Alastair Ager and Joey Ager / 4. Praxis Community Projects: a secular organisation? Exploring the boundaries between religious and secular in migration support, Bethan Lant / 5. How religion and secularism (don't) matter in the refugee crisis, Renee Wagenvoorde / Part II: Constructing and deconstructing the Muslim refugee / 6. No Mosque, No Refugees: Some Reflections on Syrian Refugees and the Construction of Religion in Canada, Lori G. Beaman, Jennifer A. Selby, and Amélie Barras / 7. Muslims and others: The politics of religion in the refugee crisis, Elizabeth Shakman-Hurd / 8. Sharing Stories, ‘Gabriel’ with Vicki Squire / 9. Spiritual response to the suffering of Kosovar refugees, Elzbieta Gozdziak / Part III: Beyond the Nation-state / 10. Pilgrim City or Belonging beyond the State: St. Augustine, Pope Francis and the Refugee Crisis, Mariano Barbato / 11. The refugee experience as existential exile: Hospitality as a spiritual and political response, Jean-Marie Carriere / 12. A right to neighbourhood: re-thinking Islamic narratives and practices of hospitality in a sedentarist world, Tahir Zaman / 13. The limits of hospitality: finding space for faith, Sadia Kidwai / 14. Religious Justifications for an Overlapping Consensus on Palestinian Refugees’ Human Rights / Claudia Baumgart-Ochse / Part IV: At the intersection of faith, gender, sexuality and asylum / 15: The Faith-Gender-Asylum Nexus: An intersectionalist analysis of representations of the ‘Refugee Crisis’, Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh / 16. Loving God vs. Wrathful God: Religion and LGBT Forced Migration, Siobhan McGuirk and Max Niedzwiecki

The theoretical framework of post-secularism as elaborated here is a useful resource for that—with the premise to take greater account for “religion and rights”—as the universal Kantian principle of right that has been fundamental to the thought of Habermas. Secular right and religious motivation should not oppose, but support each other in order to control anger and to raise awareness.