36 / 2012
Drago Kos

An “Indigenous” European Mosque?



ABSTRACT

The attempts to build an Islamic religious and cultural centre (mosque) in Ljubljana have posed a lot  of “glocal” theoretical as well as practical questions. Problems in implementing multiculturalism in apparently open, urban, secular societies are usually interpreted as minor temporary troubles, motivated by not yet surmounted resistance to others and otherness. Doubts in this interpretation are expressed in the text by presenting two cases which reveal that building “alien” houses of worship trigger deeply rooted archetypical fears which prove difficult to control using the rather simple (post)modernist regulative repertoire.

KEY WORDS: tolerance, modern urban society, secularization, multiculturalism