Interreligious Dialogue and the Global Norm of Freedom of Religion

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Helmut Breitmeier
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Empirical Social Research ; Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 277651392

To what extent, how and under what conditions do global or transnational interreligious dialogues between representatives of Christians and Muslims contribute to the understanding about the norm of the freedom of religion? With this question the project devotes itself to an uninvestigated topic in the German-speaking political scientific research. The uppermost objective is to find out which influence originates from interreligious dialogues, under which causal mechanisms and action logics they work and whether they contribute at all to the understanding about argumentative norm contents. The authoritative point for the content regulation of the norm of the freedom of religion show the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the legal instruments (e. g., the Civil Pact of 1966) which were developed in the United Nations and different declarations and resolutions which concretize the positive and negative religious freedom. The project examines in which appearances and functionalities interreligious dialogues at global level are given and whether it comes to understanding- or rhetorical-oriented discourses. Besides, it investigates how relevant interreligious dialogues are for the possible development of a common norm understanding. In a causal-analytic perspective it is asked under which conducive or limitative conditions the interreligious dialogue contributes to the understanding of the norm and how this contribution is to be valued from a normative perspective. It also becomes a critically question whether interreligious dialogues can generate generally an understanding. It is not excluded that the supposed dialogue effects are very limited, appear only with relatively big temporal delay or are even partly conflict-aggravating. The project goes back to discourse-theoretical, cognitive and institutionalist approaches and, in addition, considers approaches of softer forms of political steering. It is based on a deductive research design which rests on hypotheses about supposed effects of the dialogue to interreligious settlement (e. g., deliberation, trust / reconciliation, interreligious learning). The main focus of the empirical analysis lies at the level of transnational dialogue initiatives.The hypotheses structure the systematic comparison of 4 case studies to interreligious dialogue initiatives: i) UN Alliance of Civilizations (AoC), ii) A Common Word (ACW), iii) Religions for Peace (RfP), and iv) Internationally association for Religious Freedom (IARF). The empirical case study research is based among other things on the analysis of documents of secondary literature and on qualitative interviews with representatives of interreligious dialogue initiatives and chosen dialogue parties.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants