Introduction: Diagnosis, Proposals and Actions related to Religious Diversity in Africa and Asia

Overview & Synopsis

Sixty five years after the World War II, fifty five years after Bandung Asian-African Conference 1955 and twenty years after the Cold War, wars and violent conflicts still take place in Africa and Asia. And religions are a potential source if not a real cause of social conflicts and wars between and inside the Nation-States. The victims are the people themselves who lose their religious freedom or who have to live under the domination of other religious group. In other words, religious diversity is threatened in Africa and Asia. So, the question is in what way religious diversity is threatened? In what way their agents of development (States, governments, religious authorities, civil society organisations) deal with the problem? On the other hand, Europe, known for a long time as homogenous in term of ‘race’ (white skin people) and religion (Christianity), has been in the process of profound societal transformation due to the continuous inflow of migrants from Africa and Asia, especially since the 60s. So, the question is how does Europe deal with the increasing heterogeneity of religion in its territory? Is it in a peaceful way? Is it in favour of religious diversity? Twenty papers have been proposed to feed our knowledge on the issue. Nineteen of them deal with Africa and Asia while the remaining one concerns Europe. This article is an introduction to those papers.