Some interesting law and religion news stories from around the web this week:
- A federal judge found that Kim Davis has not disobeyed a court order by removing her name from the marriage licenses issued by her deputies.
- A suit to legalize same-sex marriage was filed in the predominantly Orthodox Christian nation of Georgia.
- The mayor of a town in Utah accused of denying housing, water services, and police protection to people who aren’t members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints testified that he never discriminated based on religion.
- Seven new Qadis (judges) were appointed to Israel’s Islamic courts.
- A California church filed suit in state court against the California Department of Managed Health Care challenging a state requirement that all health insurance policies sold in California cover elective abortions.
- A proposed Pakistani law to give legal status to Hindu marriages has passed committee and will move to the National Assembly.
- An imam suspected of having links to Islamic extremists in Nigeria was arrested at a Quranic school in Senegal.
- The National Federation of the Blind settled a religious discrimination suit against it for $25,000 and equitable relief. It had been sued for failing to provide accommodations to an employee who refused to work on Saturday due to religious reasons.
- More than 70 people were killed in a double suicide attack, believed to be the work of Boko Haram, at a camp for internally displaced people in northeast Nigeria.
- Sikh American actor, Waris Ahluwalia, who was not allowed to board an airplane in Mexico City because he refused to remove his turban during a security check, flew home to the US, ending a two-day standoff with Aeroméxico.
spheres. Consequently, the political and legal spheres have each attempted to enforce differing versions of the concepts of equality and neutrality. A cross-cultural and cross-national survey of judicial decisions and legislative action in these countries demonstrates how each is balancing individual rights and communal bonds, and adhering to or retreating from previously accepted human rights norms for women and religious practices.
This new political history of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire explains why Orthodoxy became the subject of acute political competition between the Great Powers during the mid 19th century. It also explores how such rivalries led, paradoxically, both to secularizing reforms and to Europe’s last great war of religion – the Crimean War.