Excerpt:
I think the biggest challenge for the future of Europe is to develop ways and forms of coexistence among the culturally and religiously diverse populations living on the continent. Instead of declaring multiculturalism dead, Europeans have to reinvent it.
For a start, they should stop imagining Europe as a historically and culturally Christian continent. Such an endeavor will open up cultural space to accommodate a non-Christian social presence in Europe.
In a brilliant article published in the January 2012 issue of Insight Turkey, titled "Myth of a Christian Europe and the Massacre in Norway," Dr. Şener Aktürk from Koç University challenges the view that Europe is a Christian continent. Many mainstream conservative politicians and intellectuals, as well as extremists in Europe, are of the belief that "Europe exclusively belonged, belongs, and will belong to, Christians, not necessarily to religious, practicing Christians, but to people of Christian origins."