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Sezgin on Women’s Rights Under Religious Law

Yuksel Sezgin (Harvard Divinity School) has posted Women’s Rights in the Triangle of State, Law, and Religion: A Comparison of Egypt and India. The abstract follows.

The main premise of this Essay is that personal status laws, whether based on Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu tradition, are men-made (implying that no females were involved in this process), socio-political constructions that have come invariably to discriminate against women and deny them equal rights in familial relations. However, women do not silently acquiesce in violation of their rights and liberties by male-dominated religious norms and institutions. On the contrary, women-led hermeneutic communities all over the world are spearheading a silent but steady revolution that redefines women’s role as rights-bearing and equal individuals in familial and public space. In doing so, women’s groups contest the scriptural monopoly of state-sanctioned religious institutions, reinterpret religious laws, and reinvent the tradition by vernacularizing international human rights and womens’ discourses. Against this background, Part I of this Essay demonstrates the implications of personal status laws on the rights and freedoms of women by looking at the Egyptian and Indian personal status systems. Part II of this Essay traces women-led reform movements emerging in the last two decades in these two countries and demonstrates how Egyptian and Indian women have claimed the rights and freedoms that current systems have denied them by forming reinterpretive hermeneutic communities.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

McCants, “Founding Gods, Inventing Nations”

Here is a fascinating book that covers a great deal of chronological territory by William F. McCants (Johns Hopkins), Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths From Antiquity to Islam (Princeton UP 2011) about the relationship between religion and cultural formation.  It looks really terrific.  The publisher’s description follows.  — MOD

From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests of the Near East, William McCants looks at the ways the conquerors and those they conquered reshaped their myths of civilization’s origins in response to the social and political consequences of empire.

The Greek and Roman conquests brought with them a learned culture that competed with that of native elites. The conquering Arabs, in contrast, had no learned culture, which led to three hundred years of Muslim competition over the cultural orientation of Islam, a contest reflected in the culture myths of that time. What we know today as Islamic culture is the product of this contest, whose protagonists drew heavily on the lore of non-Arab and pagan antiquity.

McCants argues that authors in all three periods did not write about civilization’s origins solely out of pure antiquarian interest–they also sought to address the social and political tensions of the day. The strategies they employed and the postcolonial dilemmas they confronted provide invaluable context for understanding how authors today use myth and history to locate themselves in the confusing aftermath of empire.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Classic Revisited: Witte, “God’s Joust, God’s Justice”

Today’s classic revisited is not so old, but it is already worthy of being designated a classic: John Witte’s God’s Joust, God’s Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Eerdmans 2006).  CLR Forum readers will greatly enjoy this learned historical treatment; indeed, I cannot think of a book more at the heart of the study of law and religion than Witte’s extraordinary book.  The publisher’s description follows.  — MOD

There are three things that people will die for — their faith, their freedom, and their family. This volume focuses on all three, including the interactions among them, in the Western tradition and today. Retrieving and reconstructing a wealth of material from the earliest Hebrew and Greek texts of the West to the latest machinations of the Supreme Court, John Witte explores the legal and theological foundations of authority and liberty, equality and dignity, rights and duties, marriage and family, crime and punishment, and similar topics. God’s Joust, God’s Justice is a lucid scholarly introduction to the burgeoning field of law and religion and a learned historical inquiry into the weightier matters of the law.

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Gavison on the Law of Return

Ruth E. Gavison (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) has posted The Law of Return at Sixty Years: History, Ideology, Justification. The abstract follows. – JKH

The Law of Return, passed unanimously by the Knesset with much excitement and elation in 1950 on the day commemorating Theodor Herzl, establishes the principle that ‘every Jew is entitled to come to this country as an Oleh’ and lays the foundation for the preference given to Jews in Aliyah and in the acquisition of citizenship in Israel. The law is considered one of the primary expressions of Israel as a Jewish state. In this position paper the author rejects the principal claim of the law’s opponents, that the preference given to Jews in Aliyah to Israel is either unjustified or needs to be limited in time. Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Italian Cultural Catholicism

Here’s an opinion piece from a few weeks ago in one of the leading Italian newspapers, Il Corriere Della Sera, by Ferruccio de Bortoli, titled, “The Mission of Catholics.”  The piece is a nice example of the power of cultural Catholicism as an intellectual and political force in Italy — and the demands that are being made of Catholicism in a country whose political, cultural, and economic fortunes are under threat (or, at least, are so perceived).  The piece is in Italian, so I will try to summarize. 

De Bortoli, who is a non-believer, calls on Catholics to reinvigorate the Italian political culture.  “The country needs Catholics,” he says: “Civil and moral reconstruction will not be possible without their diverse and renewed political work.”  But de Bortoli is not talking about the revival of Christian parties, let alone the failed Christian Democratic Party.  Neither does he want a return to what he calls the fractured and “bi-polar” situation in which some Catholics defended the state’s values and others searched for the core of Christianity in everyday, non-political life.

What does he want? 

It would be enough if [Catholics] set for themselves some simple but ambitious goals: reviving community spirit and the desire to participate, and to throw the seed of duty [“impegno”] to others . . . . In his essay on the Geography of Catholic Italy, Roberto Cartocci writes that ‘the Catholic tradition appears as the most ancient glue [“collante” — a binding, cohesive agent], the most solid path of continuity among the diverse components of the country.’  Not only this: it [Catholicism] is the bringer of an inclusive culture, which does not divide and destroy society.  It has the sense of the limits of political action and the presence of the state in people’s private lives.  These are important qualities.  Appreciated by everyone.  Even we non-believers.

What is interesting to me about these sentiments is not as much the substance as the turn to Catholicism itself.  De Bortoli talks about Catholicism as a conversation stimulator — a kind of conciliating interlocutor and Charlie Rose-type figure among different political/cultural traditions.  Not much more than a word in this piece (apart from the comments about the limited state) about Catholics’ substantive and policy views.  Desperate times surely call for desperate measures, and Italians do seem to be in desperate times.  But I wonder whether de Bortoli has quite taken the measure of what it is that Catholicism has to offer Italy.  — MOD

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Chinese Erastianism

An interesting post by Ian Johnson about the uses to which Daoism is being put by the Chinese government.  — MOD

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Reid on “The Devil Comes to Kansas”

Professor Charles Reid (U. St. Thomas law) has posted a fun piece, The Devil Comes to Kansas: A Story of Free Love and the Law, which discusses one of the earliest American cases in which various notions of privacy and “freedom of choice” were first raised and which, as Professor Reid says, have become watchwords of modern constitutional law.  The abstract follows.  — MOD

State v. Walker (1887) is an important but hitherto neglected landmark case in the development of the right of privacy. The case involved the “autonomistic” or “free-love” marriage of Edwin C. Walker and Lillian Harman, daughter of Moses Harman, the radical newspaperman.

Edwin and Lillian, who rejected state control over marriage, proclaimed themselves married in the fall of 1887, although they declared that their union was neither permanent or exclusive. Prosecuted for illegal cohabitation because of their refusal to obtain a marriage license, they and their defenders developed a vocabulary that would profoundly influence the future path of American law.

Their supporters in the radical press began to speak of the right of women to control their own bodies, woman’s right to reproductive autonomy, and a right of sexual privacy. Indeed, it was in the midst of this controversy that the expression “freedom of choice” was used, probably for the first time, in its modern meaning by Lillian Harman writing from prison. Read more

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Menchik on Religious Intolerance in Islamic Institutions

Jeremy M. Menchik (Stanford University; University of Wisconsin-Madison) has posted Missionaries, Modernists and the Origins of Intolerance in Islamic Institutions. The abstract follows. –JKH

 Why are some Islamic institutions more tolerant than others? This basic question has far-reaching implications. Islamic movements have considerable sway in the policies of newly democratic Egypt, Tunisia and most other Muslim-majority states. Islamic movements are likewise important for the formation of social trust; recent scholarship suggests that democratization in Muslim counties is more likely to occur when Islamic institutions are able to build networks of cooperation across religious differences, while scapegoating and sectarian polemics between religious groups increases the likelihood of violence. I answer this basic question by focusing on Islamic institutions in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country and one of the most diverse. Using archival material and newly collected survey data, I argue against the notion that theology or ideology shape interethnic relations and show that local politics during the late colonial period explains the policies of contemporary Islamic institutions.

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Sandberg on Religious Freedom and Discrimination in the UK

Russell Sandberg (Cardiff Law School) has posted The Right to Discriminate. The abstract follows. –JKH

The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed a number of controversies surrounding the interaction between law and religion in the United Kingdom. In particular, tensions have emerged between laws protecting religious freedom and those which prohibit discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. In particular, Parliament has repeatedly examined the scope and ambit of exceptions afforded to religious groups which allow them to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation when specific conditions are met.  And these exceptions have reportedly led to tensions within both the Blair and Brown cabinets and rebukes from the Vatican and the European Commission, criticising the exceptions for being too narrow and too broad respectively. The exceptions have also been challenged by way of judicial review, have been applied or commented upon in a number of high-profile cases and have attracted comment in the print and broadcast media. A number of employees have brought claims asserting that new legal requirements promoting equality on grounds of sexual orientation are incompatible with their religious beliefs. This article seeks to explore the legal changes that have occurred in the first decade of the 21st century affecting religion and sexual orientation with particular reference to how courts and tribunals have dealt with clashes between the two. It discusses the extent to which English law allows religious groups and individuals to follow their own beliefs regarding human sexuality.

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Einhorn on Family Unions in Israel

Talia Einhorn (Tel Aviv University) has posted Family Unions in Israel – The Tensions between Religious Law and Secular Law and the Quest for Coherent Law. The abstract follows. –JKH

In two decisions of the Israel Supreme Court concerning family relations, the meaning of traditional concepts has come to play a vital role in the debate. The first concerned a lesbian couple who were Israeli citizens. While residing for two years as students in Los Angeles, California, one of them gave birth following artificial insemination. The other spouse adopted the child. Both were entered in the LA civil register as the child’s parents. Upon their return to Israel, they each applied to be registered as ‘mother’ of the child (the Israeli civil register admits the registration of ‘father’ and ‘mother’ but has no neutral category of ‘parent,’ as in LA). The State authorities declined, arguing that they can enter the name of only one woman as being a child’s ‘mother’ in the civil register. Read more