The Challenge of Religious Pluralism and Integration of Immigrants in the Western Post-secularism: A Comparative Study of Immigrants Living in Oslo and Minnesota
Abstract
In the recent decades, the issue of immigration and religion has become the most controversial topic in the political agendas of western world. The dramatic growth of human migration in the contemporary post-secularism has also transformed the religious, sociocultural, socioeconomics and sociopolitical landscape of the host countries. In addition, the arrival of new immigrants in western countries has created a pressure that generates the concept of multiculturalism, political liberalism and religious pluralism. These diversifications initiated the formation of policies for the integration of immigrants into the domestic society. The researcher has thus emphasized integration of immigrants in Oslo and Minnesota in order to answer the principal question of this project. In this project, a qualitative approach was used to investigate the effect of religion on integration of immigrants in these respective host communities. Religion has a significant impartation on academic, cultural, economic and sociopolitical integration immigrants. In the researcher’s point of view, integration involves bilateral communications, mutual contributions and participations of the two parties, namely the immigrants and host society, in order to enhance accommodation, respect and tolerance in their midst.