Raymond Plant, the political theorist, once remarked that the liberal secular state will be willing to include religious groups – but only if they adopt the basic values of a liberal society, including  “tolerance” and “equality”. The German political sociologist Christian Joppke argues that some religious groups – particularly the “Christian Right” in the US and many Muslims in Europe – find this condition difficult to accept. Rather than adapting to the liberal secular state, they are trying  to force the state to accommodate their non-secular values. As a self-confessed liberal, Joppke is of course an enthusiastic defender of tolerance and diversity. But he is a “reactionary” liberal, in the sense that he rejec