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Haddad on the Challenges Facing Muslims in America

This month, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Professor of, among other subjects, history of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University, publishes Becoming American? The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity in Pluralist America (Baylor).  While Muslims face many unfortunate difficulties arriving in this nation—ugliness post 9/11 which I could elaborate on for hours—their arrival, in essence, forces those already here to examine who they are, to question what America—and being an American—means.  The publisher’s description is below.

Countless generations of Arabs and Muslims have called the United States “home.” Yet while diversity and pluralism continue to define contemporary America, many Muslims are viewed by their neighbors as painful reminders of conflict and violence. In this concise volume, renowned historian Yvonne Haddad argues that American Muslim identity is as uniquely American it is for as any other race, nationality, or religion.

Becoming American? first traces the history of Arab and Muslim immigration into Western society during the 19th and 20th centuries, revealing a two-fold disconnect between the cultures—America’s unwillingness to accept these new communities at home and the activities of radical Islam abroad. Urging America to reconsider its tenets of religious pluralism, Haddad reveals that the public square has more than enough room to accommodate those values and ideals inherent in the moderate Islam flourishing throughout the country. In all, in remarkable, succinct fashion, Haddad prods readers to ask what it means to be truly American and paves the way forward for not only increased understanding but for forming a Muslim message that is capable of uplifting American society.

—DRS, CLR Fellow

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More on Lund and Anti-Catholicism Redux

As my colleague, Andrew Hamilton notes below, Christopher C. Lund of Wayne State University School of Law will soon publish The New Victims of the Old Anti-Catholicism in the Connecticut Law Review.  Having read Prof. Lund’s paper, I would like to complement Andrew’s post by detailing Lund’s claims.

Lund links the attitude underlying 21st-century, religious-freedom jurisprudence with the both popular and legal anti-Catholic prejudice that pervaded the United States in the 19th-century—yet he does so without examining any recent case brought by a Catholic.

Nevertheless, in the four cases Lund examines, the plaintiffs’ status as members of a religious minority—or an a-religious one—and their struggle for legal recognition bridge this apparent divide.  In other words, like 19th-century Catholics, all of the cases involve plaintiffs in a religious minority seeking recognition of their beliefs and practices as legal rights under the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses.  Thus, Lund connects a present-day American Wiccan, Muslim, Evangelical Protestant, and Atheist to Catholics in America one-hundred-fifty-years ago.  More poignantly, in each contemporary case the plaintiff lost—outcomes that erode the idealistic notion that American legal and popular tolerance of minority religions expands with time.

For a description of each of the four cases Lund examines—and their significance—please follow the jump. Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Legal Indictments and Indictments of Other Kinds

When someone is indicted in criminal law, the meaning of the indictment is that a grand jury has found that it is more probable than not that the accused has committed a specific criminal offense.  An indictment is an accusation by the government.  The accused cannot be brought to trial without it.  One ought to take note of an indictment, but one ought also to recognize that different standards of proof govern indictments than criminal trials and that little in the way of evidence is often needed to obtain an indictment.  Lastly, there is generally no opportunity to present exculpatory evidence or make any pre-trial motions in the indictment process.  The indictment is the prosecutor’s instrument alone.  I know that many readers will know this, but I thought it might be useful to clarify the specific and limited quality of a legal indictment since Bishop Finn was indicted under a Missouri statute.  I believe, but am not sure, that the statute is section 210.115.1 of the Missouri Code, which states:

When any . . .  minister . . . has reasonable cause to suspect that a child has been or may be subjected to abuse or neglect or observes a child being subjected to conditions or circumstances which would reasonably result in abuse or neglect, that person shall immediately report or cause a report to be made to the division in accordance with the provisions of sections 210.109 to 210.183 . . . .

One of the reasons that I think it important to emphasize the particular and somewhat arcane legal meaning of an indictment is because of columns like this one by Anthea Butler, a professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania, who titles her piece, “Bishop Finn-dicted For Protecting Pedophile Priest.”

Professor Butler properly notes the fact of Bishop Finn’s indictment, but then makes some statements which, at least from a legal perspective, are not sound.  She claims, for example, that “the indictment is another warning shot aimed at the enclave of the Vatican.”  The expression of symbolic minatory messages is not the purpose of a legal indictment.  She connects the indictment to “[c]hanges to the liturgy” which she believes “have many up in arms[.]”  Again, liturgical preferences have nothing at all to do with this indictment.  She claims that “Cardinals and Bishops like Philadelphia’s Bishop Chaput can only whine about how terrible the press is, without being accountable for the actions that have caused the press to scrutinize the church so intensely.”  If this is a reference to the indictment of Bishop Finn, I’m afraid it is misplaced.  “Cardinals and Bishops like Philadelphia’s Bishop Chaput” had no legal duty to report child abuse under the Missouri statute.

And Professor Butler concludes with this: “The church does not need another plan; what’s needed is action and more indictments to get the attention of an institution that has sacrificed children to protect its rotten hierarchy. I for one cannot wait for the real purge of tainted clerics to happen.”  Once again, Professor Butler’s excitement for the coming purge and the issuance of “more indictments” has nothing to do with the legal indictment of Bishop Finn.

Obviously Professor Butler is interested in indictments of other kinds — political, social, cultural, religious — but these are not legal indictments, and I think it important to keep the difference clearly in view.  — MOD

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Political Sermons of the American Founding Era (Sandoz ed.)

The eighteenth and early nineteenth century political sermons of New England preachers are windows on the world of church-state relations in early America, and ones which only a few scholars of religious liberty have taken the time to look through.  They are particularly valuable, in my view, for what they suggest about the manner in which founding-era Americans understood the meaning of establishment and disestablishment, and of the connections between religion and government.    

Many of these sermons are collected in the two-volume set, The Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, published by the excellent Liberty Fund in 1991 and edited by Ellis Sandoz (LSU).  They can be downloaded and enjoyed for free from the Liberty Fund site.  — MOD

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Munir on Taliq and the Pakistani 1961 Family Law

Muhammad Munir (International Islamic University Islamabad) has posted Talaq and the Muslim Family Law Ordinance, 1961 in Pakistan: An Analysis. The abstract follows. – ARH

Divorcing one’s wife is considered as one of the most hated but legal acts by God, yet divorces do happen among married couples. Muslims attach tremendous significance to issues involving Talaq. Unfortunately, Pakistani law on Talaq is one of the most controversial and confusing and its interpretation by our superior judiciary has made it even more confusing. The current law is not only against the injunctions of Islam, it has also been misinterpreted by the judiciary.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Establishment Clause Discussion at SCOTUSblog

Today’s discussion at the extremely valuable SCOTUSblog concerns the Establishment Clause. SCOTUSblog has invited CLR Forum readers to participate. The description is below. Have fun!– MLM

Today’s discussion involves the Establishment Clause.  The Court has pending before it two petitions (here and here) – which it has relisted three times – involving a Utah program that posts crosses at the locations where highway patrol officers are killed.  Recent decisions involving the Establishment Clause include cases addressing the Mojave Cross and the Summum religion.  Please contribute your thoughts on the Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence, and on these cases specifically.

 

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Liveblogging Forum 2000: Religious and Secular Law

(UPDATE: A video of the panel discussion, “Religious and Secular Law,” can be viewed in the player below.  This post was originally posted on October 11, 2011 – ARH)  

I just participated in Forum 2000’s final law-and-religion panel, “Religious and Secular Law.”  The panel was chaired by Anna Teresa Arco, the Chief Feature Writer for the Catholic Herald, who opened the panel with an erudite introduction to the topic.  In my remarks, I argued that the relationship between secular and religious law will be a crucial issue in the years ahead. Religion is resurging around the world, and there will likely be many occasions of conflict between secular and religious law. I discussed two doctrinal examples from the United States: the ministerial exception, currently before the Court in Hosanna-Tabor, and restrictions on religious practice under Employment Division v. Smith.  Czech Judge Ivana Hrdličková followed with a discussion of the interaction between Islamic and secular law in Europe, especially with regard to family law.  Professor Luboš Krobáček, a scholar of Islamic civilization at Charles University in Prague, closed the panel with an overview of the different schools of Islamic law.  – MLM

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Lund on The New Victims of the Old Anti-Catholicism

Christopher C. Lund (Wayne State University Law School) has posted The New Victims of the Old Anti-Catholicism.  The abstract follows. – ARH

This short piece examines four modern church-state cases which span the First Amendment spectrum. The plaintiffs are religiously diverse — one is a Wiccan, one is a Muslim, one is an evangelical Protestant, and one is an atheist. Unsurprisingly, their claims find support in very different political communities. But the plaintiffs in these cases all have certain things in common. They are all, in their own ways, religious minorities. All of their legal cases were ultimately lost. And most importantly for our purposes, each of their cases connects deeply with the nineteenth century history of anti-Catholicism in this country.

In various ways, Catholics of that century were mistreated by the Protestant majority. The injustices they faced were sanctioned by courts as well as legislatures, and legal rules were created to render their injuries both judicially noncognizable and socially invisible. Our four modern plaintiffs are, in some ways, latter-day Catholics. They suffer some of the same injustices; indeed, they are often inhibited by the some of the very same legal doctrines created to repress the Catholic minority over a century ago. We can think of these four plaintiffs as the new Catholics — or, to put it more accurately, as the new victims of the old anti-Catholicism. As we struggle with our twenty-first century challenges of religious pluralism, it helps to realize how much our struggles have in common with earlier ones. Perhaps, armed with this knowledge, we can do a bit better now than our forefathers did then.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Religious Law and the Financial Crisis

In this recent interview in L’Express (in French), Gilles Bernheim, the Chief Rabbi of France, makes some points about the relationship between religious law, specifically Talmudic Law, and contemporary economics. Although the Talmud could not imagine today’s financial arrangements, he concedes, it did teach, in the language of its time, that individualism was the worst enemy of communal confidence. According to the Talmudic view, we should place confidence in work, solidarity, and justice, not the “audacity” of rugged individualism “that dares all without concern for others.” The Talmudic worldview, one infers, would help avert crises like the one we’re currently experiencing.

Rabbi Bernheim’s critique of market economics from a religious perspective is quite familiar; it is very similar, for example, to the critique in Catholic Social Thought (another reminder that one should not reflexively link religion with the political right). And the financial crisis we’re living through does reflect reckless behavior by people who should have known better. A sense of responsibility to the community, which a religious worldview might have imparted, might have helped to avert the crisis.

That said, we should avoid being simplistic about things. Of course individualism “that dares all without concern for others” is incompatible with a religious worldview, but egotism like that is inconsistent with sane market economics as well. And in the United States, at least, the housing bubble that led to the Panic of 2008 was caused in part by government programs that encouraged people to purchase homes they could not afford. In other words, the crisis was not caused only by rugged individualism and greed; it was also caused by a misguided egalitarian project that had terrible consequences for everyone, including its supposed beneficiaries. Anyway, the relationship among selfishness, communal solidarity, and financial collapse is a complicated one that the Chief Rabbi more or less slides by. Though perhaps one shouldn’t expect too much from a newspaper interview – or a blog post. – MLM

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Call for Papers: Religious Traditions and Business Behavior at Maryland

The Henry Kaufman Forum on Religious Traditions and Business Behavior at the University of Maryland Business School has issued a call for papers on two subjects:

First, what do the world’s major organized religious traditions – Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism – proscribe about business and financial ethics and behavior?

Second, how and why have business and financial actors seriously compromised the leading religious traditions of their cultures?

Those who are interested in the conference can find more information here.  — MOD