Secular Feminisms and Attitudes towards Religion in the Context of a West-European Society – Flanders, Belgium

Abstract

Ideologies and politics of humanism and secularism in Western Europe historically have a tensioned relationship with religion as well as with feminism and the women's movement. In this article, I aim to demonstrate the multiplicity and complexity of several recent secular feminist responses to increasing religious diversity and the activism of Muslim women in the context of Belgium – a society that is part of postcolonial Europe and is characterized by a specific religious–secular landscape. I argue that the diverging ways in which secular feminists approach Islam and the activism of Muslim women point at a controversy among white secular feminists about religion – that is situated within and reconfiguring the local religious–secular landscape through its (re)constructions of feminist secularities.