'I do not have enough religion to change it' Race and Religion after assimilationism and colonialism

Modood and Sealy plead for multicultural secularisms that are articulated towards the specific national contexts they analysed. They acknowledge that realising such context-sensitive secularisms is difficult because majoritarian nationalisms are getting stronger worldwide. They think the conservation of current forms of secular governance, even if these do not live up to standards of multicultural justice, may be all that is possible in the current moment. This review argues that the authors do not take enough account of the rich literatures on the legacies of colonialism and assimilationism, nor of the interaction between religion and race characterizing those legacies. A reflection on how religion and secularity are articulated with race, assimilationism and coloniality, could have led them to normative ideas oriented towards a broad conception of social justice, rather than towards equal religious freedoms and multicultural equality understood in terms of secular governance alone. Such proposals could be helpful in the current global context of majoritarian nationalisms and fascism.