D'Amato, Gianni

How Foreigners Became Muslims: Switzerland’s Path to Accommodating Islam as a New Religion
2015

The relationship between the state and religious communities has followed two distinct paths in the Christian world. According to de Tocqueville, in the United States civil society mediated the differentiated religious realm, whereas the state as a neutral broker created a framework for this pluralization of beliefs. The state became a partner of religious communities, which relied on their capacity to organize themselves autonomously. The context was completely different in Europe, where the liberal state had to create its own public space, emancipating itself from the hegemony of the church. The outcome of this struggle on the Old Continent shaped a multitude of relations between the state and individual Christian communities.