Secular Power Europe and Islam

Secular Power Europe and Islam argues that secularism is not the central principle of international relations but should be considered as one belief system that influences international politics. Through an exploration of Europe’s secular identity, an identity that is seen erroneously as normative, author Sarah Wolff shows how Islam confronts the EU’s existential anxieties about its security and its secular identity. Islam disrupts Eurocentric assumptions about democracy and revolution and human rights. Through three case studies, Wolff encourages the reader to unpack secularism as a bedrock principle of IR and diplomacy. This book argues that the EU’s interest and diplomacy activities in relation to religion, and to Islam specifically, is shaped by the insistence on a European secular identity, which should be reconsidered in areas of religion and foreign policy.

Praise / Awards

• “This highly innovative work studies the often neglected role of the religious and the secular in EU foreign policy, rooted in a well-researched substantive empirical base. While taking account of the latest theoretical evolution in the field of IR, it contributes to it through a very original non-Eurocentric approach. ”

  —Daniela Huber, Head of the Mediterranean and Middle East Programme, Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome

• “This is a highly innovative monograph which stimulates policy debates and advances knowledge on religion and foreign policy in contemporary Europe.”

  —Lucian N. Leustean