Political secularism in Western Europe has been destabilised by the triple contingency of the arrival and settlement of a significant number of Muslims; a multiculturalist sensibility which respects ‘difference’; and a moderate secularism, namely that the historical compromises between the state and a church or churches in relation to public recognition and accommodation are still in place to some extent. Radical secularism or laicite seems to be struggling to cope but the dominant version of secularism offers a resource – suitably multiculturalised –for accommodating the new religious plurality of the region. The ‘crisis of secularism’, then, is really the challenge of multiculturalism.