The unknown diversity

What is not known is not understood, and what is not understood cannot be managed. It is taken for granted that everyone broadly knows the majority religion in our society, but the same is not true for minority religions. Religious diversity is a fact, but beyond the customs rooted in the Catholic tradition, we know nothing of the others. We have no idea what our neighbors—who, to paraphrase Joan Estruch, belong to "the other religions"—believe, how they live, and how they express their beliefs.

At school, attention to diversity has long been a central axis. At the very least, since the approval of the LOGSE, 36 years ago. It is not a trend, but an ethical and pedagogical principle governing all educational regulations and practice. Diversity is affirmed as a value, studied to understand it, and classified to be able to manage it. This evolution of the school is a reflection of the path that society as a whole has taken towards the appreciation of diversity as a democratic principle that favors coexistence. In society and at school we have advanced in the appreciation and attention to neurodivergence and functional diversity, gender and sexual orientation diversity, cultural and ethnic diversity, body diversity, diversity of family models, and diversity of lifestyles and ways of life.

I do not want to enter now into discussing whether in the current sociopolitical context this consensus is in danger. That would be the subject of another reflection. I want to focus on another issue: on a theoretical level, the consensus on the goodness of pluralism and diversity is general, but when it comes to translating these principles into the public space (schools, facilities, regulations), when diversity is not understood, it is approached as a source of resistance, prejudices, and friction. When the diverse reality that must be managed is sufficiently known, when the professionals and social agents who have to deal with it have been trained in it, this diversity can be managed. But when the diverse reality is an unknown world, or when we think we know about it, but we are not capable of going beyond four clichés, we have a problem.

This is the case of religious diversity. The sociologist Joan Gómez i Segalà, in the book Laïcitat, religions i prejudicis (Fragmenta, 2022) maintains that to truly respect diversity, it is not enough to accept it in theory. It is necessary to analyze one's own prejudices and identify when the ‘normality’ of the majority forces the assimilation of minorities. Often unintentionally, pressure is exerted on minorities to fit into homogeneous patterns that are easier to deal with. Diversity is cool, but religious diversity, because we know almost nothing about it, is experienced as a problem. At school, and in a multicultural and multireligious society, there is no majority of normal people and a minority with strange customs. Normality, as Gómez says, is that Ahmed does not eat ham, Joel does not celebrate his birthday, and Gagan Singh wears two buns on his head. But we have no idea about their reasons. In many cases, we do not even know what to call them.

For all these reasons, I received with satisfaction the news of the publication of the book Diversidad religiosa en Menorca y sus reflejos jurídicos, by the jurists Catalina Pons-Estel and Marcos González, the result of a research project funded by the Menorcan Institute of Studies. If I am not mistaken, it is the first study on religious diversity published in the Balearic Islands, beyond a few academic articles and press reports. The effort is commendable, but the result does not live up to expectations. In certain passages, starting with the presentation text, the writing has a naïve air, with tourist marketing tropes and clichés. A clearly conservative ideological bias manifests itself in arguments that contribute nothing to the analysis and, on the contrary, compromise its rigor. And the work as a whole presents shortcomings regarding the standards of an academic essay, with improper errors, such as the attribution of the agreements between the administrations and the religious denominations to the legislative sphere, rather than the executive one. It seems, moreover, that the research was basically done through internet searches and the consultation of documentation. The result is a static photograph. It lacks life, experience. There are no interviews with the protagonists of Menorcan religious pluralism. The life of their communities, their concerns, their relationship with society, remain in the shadows. Paradoxically, the greatest virtue of this work is having laid on the table everything we do not know about the religious diversity of Menorca. It is precisely what the book does not explain that should be explained. And for this reason, it would be desirable for this shortcoming to spur other researchers to take up the baton and get to work.