The belief that the U.S. and France have radically different approaches to secularism and the separation of church and state is now widespread, deeply entrenched—and wrong. In fact, the source of this dispute emerged relatively recently, and it represented a significant shift in the emphasis of French laïcité: the headscarf law of 2004.
Religious Minorities
In this ongoing series of interviews and articles, WPR is examining the experiences of religious minorities in relation to the politics of various countries around the world.
Bollywood has long played a significant nation-building role in India. But over the past decade, both onscreen and off, it has increasingly fed into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s particular brand of nation-building, by both reinforcing anti-Muslim sentiment and engaging in Hindu-nationalist revisionist history.
Despite denials of a clampdown on press freedoms from the Hindu nationalist government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a growing number of journalists face harassment and threats of violence. Nowhere is this more evident than among the reporters who cover religion and communal violence, which is on the rise in India today.