Reasonable Accommodation: Managing Religious Diversity ed. by Lori G. Beaman (review)

“Reasonable accommodation” is ubiquitous in public debates about religion and multiculturalism in Canada. The question posed at the outset of Lori G. Beaman’s book on the subject is whether the phrase undermines such debates at their outset. The thematic arc of the book argues that “the subtle work that accommodation and tolerance do to create an us/them binary should not be underestimated, and it is for this reason that we have called it into question in this volume.”

Deepening the binary’s significance is the fact that religion and women’s decisions about how to be religious stand at the centre of several of the court cases and public debates over accommodation. Building in particular on the contributions in the volume by Solange Lefebvre (“Religion in Court, Between a Subjective and Objective Definition”), Natasha Bakht (“Veiled Objections: Facing Public Opposition to the Niqab”), and Heather Shipley (“One of These Things Is Not like the Other: Sexual Diversity and Accommodation”), Beaman argues that “in many circles strong religious commitment draws into question one’s ability to reason. Thus in this logic ‘reasonableness’ is something outside the purview or assessment capabilities of the religious practitioner.” A woman’s choice to wear the niqab, for example, can illustrate the irrationality of both religion and women’s practice of their religion. What results is that other authorities, be they law courts or public opinion, must therefore determine the reasonableness of an appropriate accommodation. This issue is given systematic exploration by Ole Riis in “Religion as Multicultural Marker in Advanced Modern Society.”

The subversion of confidence that the high-sounding phrase “reasonable accommodation” can be of use in liberal democracies is an international concern. Beaman’s volume incorporates scholarship dealing with the conversation in Britain, France, Australia, and Canada. Each state is working through the complexities of building a democratic society that incorporates very different strategies of recognition of religious and ethnic diversity. James Beckford’s “Public Responses to Religious Diversity in Britain and France,” for example, compares the social frameworks of French laicization and British multiculturalism with respect to their policies on diversity among prison populations.

Peter Beyer’s essay, with the elusive title “Religion and Immigration in a Changing Canada: The Reasonable Accommodation of ‘Reasonable Accommodation’?,” sets out the problem. First, Beyer outlines the long history of accommodation and diversity in Canada from its colonial days forward. Further, building on his research on second-generation Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, Beyer finds that among those cohorts, recognition of religious diversity is pretty much taken for granted. So, he asks, what is the source of the problem? It is to be found, he argues, in widely shared and deeply limiting understandings of religions that, taken together, lend support to anti-religiousness, prejudice, Islamophobia, and gender inequality arising from the perception that religion is inherently patriarchal. If the complexity of religion is not understood, how can judgments about religion be either reasonable or accommodating?

Discussions of identity dominate the essays in the book. Solange Lefebvre focuses on the paradox of individualism and freedom of choice when, contrary to secular expectation, the individual opts for an orthodox religious practice. Avigail Eisenberg argues that understanding such choices requires in-depth examination of the content of belief and practice as a condition for any consideration of accommodations. Natasha Bahkt explores ten responses to a Muslim woman’s choice to be in public wearing the niqab. How do those reactions perpetuate both a failure to understand such a choice and the image of the benign superiority of the elusive outsider discussed by Beyer who claims the right to judge the social appropriateness of religious practices?

In “Beyond Reasonable Accommodation: The Case of Australia,” Greg Bouma notes that the language of reasonable accommodation has not played a significant role in either legal or public debates there, but the complex issues noted by all of the authors are ubiquitous. Bouma’s essay sets the stage for Beaman’s concluding argument that religious and ethnic pluralism...