"Is religious identity special?" This is a question Amy Gutman poses in her excellent new-ish book, Identity in Democracy. And of course it's a question many people have been asking themselves recently.
Gutman is not only concerned with religion in this book, but more generally with the "uneasy place" that "identity groups" of different kinds occupy in democracies. In her view, political organisation on the basis of identity is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad. It follows from this that "fair-minded scrutiny" of identity groups is not necessarily harmful. Now, one of the questions that has arisen from the current scrutiny of one identity group in particular -viz. Muslims in Western democracies- is whether that scrutiny is always fair-minded. And it strikes me that some of the criticism of those who scrutinise, in the name of liberal values, Muslim group identity, especially the politicized "Islamist" variety, has failed to allow that there is a difference between fair-minded scrutiny and demonisation. This failure to distinguish between the two typically issues in a denunciation of "Islamophobia". Of course, the converse is true as well: too often, that "liberal" scrutiny is jejune and indiscriminate.
Gutman, I take it, would want to say that this reflects the precarious position of identity groups in (liberal) democracies. On the one hand, she observes, "identity groups are an inevitable byproduct of according individuals freedom of association". The problem is that such groups act in ways that "both support and threaten basic principles of democratic justice". (That's a very succinct summary, by the way, of what David Goodhart of Prospect magazine last year called the "liberal dilemma" - and for which he was unfairly denounced by Trevor Phillips.)
As far as specifically religious identity groups are concerned, Gutman's view is that they should not be treated with special consideration. However, and this is very important, she takes seriously, as some liberals do not, the reasons why it is argued that religion should be given such consideration. The best argument for according religion special consideration in democracies, in Gutman's view and mine, is that the "ultimate ethical commitments of individuals -which may be religious or secular in their source- are an especially valued and valuable part of individual identity". But, she goes on, a "degree of deference does not mean that conscience [another name for those ultimate ethical commitments, JD] trumps legitimate laws". Moreover, conscience is special but religious identity is not, because religious identity is not the "only source of binding ethical commitment".