Samenvatting

Ideas about the purport and value of religious liberty differ from place to place and can change over time. Over the past fifty years, the trend of secularization has laid the social foundations for a reassessment of religious liberty in the Netherlands. Prompted by the confrontation with Islam, the process of reassessment has gained urgency from, but is also hampered by, terrorist attacks and the migration crisis. However that may be, the result is a prioritization of individual autonomy above freedom of conscience in religious matters. This is borne out by an analysis of parliamentary debates in the Netherlands since 2000 and is explained as part of a broader shift from conscience-based to autonomy-based interpretations of liberalism in Dutch society.