Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Elver, “The Headscarf Controversy”

Related to Ms. Hummel’s post below, a new book, The Headscarf Controversy: Secularism and Freedom of Religion (OUP 2012) by Hilal Elver (UC Santa Barbara) is scheduled to be released next month and treats subjects of great interest to CLR Forum readers from what I think is an unusually ambitious cross-cultural perspective.  The publisher’s description follows.

Hilal Elver offers an in-depth study of the escalating controversy over the right of Muslim women to wear headscarves. Examining legal and political debates in Turkey, several European countries including France and Germany, and the United States, Elver shows the troubling exclusion of pious Muslim women from the public sphere in the name of secularism, democracy, liberalism, and women’s rights.

After evaluating political actions and court decisions from the national level of individual governments to the international sphere of the European Court of Human Rights, Elver concludes that judges and legislators are increasingly influenced by social pressures concerning immigration and multiculturalism, and by issues such as Islamophobia, the “war on terror,” and security concerns. She shows how these influences have resulted in a failure on the part of many Western governments to recognize and protect essential individual freedoms.

Employing a critical legal theory perspective to the headscarf controversy, Elver argues that law can be used to change underlying social conditions shaping the role of religion, and also the position of women in modern society. The Headscarf Controversy demonstrates how changes in law across nations can be used to restore state commitments to human rights.

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Enright on Ireland and the Hijab

Máiréad Enright (University of Kent, Canterbury) has posted Girl Interrupted: Citizenship and the Irish Hijab Debate. The abstract follows.

This article discusses the case of Shekinah Egan, an Irish Muslim girl who asked to be allowed to wear the hijab to school. It traces the media and government response to her demand, and frames that demand as a citizenship claim. It focuses in particular on a peculiarity of the Irish response; that the government was disinclined to legislate for the headscarf in the classroom. It argues that – perhaps counter-intuitively – the refusal to make law around the hijab operated to silence the citizenship claims at the heart of the Egan case. To this extent, it was a very particular instance of a broader and ongoing pattern of exclusion of the children of migrants from the Irish public sphere.

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Nasab and Meghdadi on Human Rights Education in Muslim Societies

Ahmad Erfani Nasab (Mofid University Legal Clinic) and Mohammad Mahdi Meghdadi (Mofid University) have posted Muslim Clerics and Leadership in Human Rights Education in Muslim Societies. The abstract follows.

Several human rights instruments have declared that human rights education is a fundamental right for all. However, human rights education in Muslim societies is still facing serious challenges most of which arise from lack of effective educational methods. Our research shows that Muslim clerics can be considered as leaders of human rights education in Muslim societies, playing an important role in addressing and dealing with most of the challenges and enhancing universal culture of human rights. The findings indicate that in an effective human rights education method resulting in flexible, accessible, acceptable and sustainable human rights, Muslim clerics can be considered to play an active role. In addition, the results highlight that this educational method can promote, localize and institutionalize human rights in such societies and can help prevent and resolve the possible conflicts between religious and human rights discourses.

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Huq on Private Religious Discrimination and the First Amendment

Aziz Z. Huq (University of Chicago Law School) has posted Private Religious Discrimination, National Security, and the First Amendment. The abstract follows.

This essay identifies a negative feedback loop between private discrimination directed at American Muslims and security against terrorism. The first part of the loop is familiar: Concerns about terrorism animate greater antipathy toward outsiders. The second part is novel: social discrimination corrodes trust in the police and makes cooperation with police less likely. Insecurity thus creates discrimination, which deepens insecurity. The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, now greatly weakened, still provide one tool to break this negative feedback loop.

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DeGroff on Parental Rights and Public Education

The article, Parental Rights and Public School Curricula: Revisiting Mozert after 20 years, by Professor Eric A. DeGroff of Regent University School of Law, has been reposted to SSRN.  Originally published in 2009, Prof. DeGroff’s article revisits the jurisprudence of balancing parents’ recognized right to direct their childrens’ education and upbringing under the Due Process and Free Exercise clauses against states’ interest in compelling school attendance and determining their own curricula.  See Mozert v. Hawkins County Bd. Educ., 827 F.2d 1058 (6th Cir. 1987).  See also Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).  Detailing recent circuit inconsistency on the issue, DeGroff argues that courts should exercise heightened judicial scrutiny when state curricular requirements conflict with parental rights.

Please see the abstract after the jump. Read more

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Mormons, Evangelicals, and the Republican Primaries

The New York Times reported recently that the budding Republican primaries have sparked Evangelical unease toward Mormonism (an unease reminiscent of the 2008 Republican primary fight).  According to Correspondent Laurie Goodstein, Mitt Romney’s lead after the New Hampshire Primary might flag as the primaries move from the Northeast into South Carolina and Florida—favoring, possibly, Rick Santorum, who is popular among Evangelicals.  Ms. Goodstein cites the anti-Mormon preaching of the Rev. R. Philip Roberts, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  Rev. Roberts advances a view apparently shared by a certain coterie of Evangelicals that Mormonism is a threatening, apostatical religion.  According to Rev. Roberts, a Romney presidency would legitimize Mormonism and pave the way for an increase in Mormon proselytism, something he and like-minded believers fear.

The term “Evangelical” encompasses a broad range of beliefs and attitudes, so any generalization about them is suspect.  But the Pew Forum reports that 15% of white Evangelical Republicans would not vote for Romney simply because of Romney’s Mormonism—a relatively small proportion  in a general election but one more decisive in a primary.  Thus, Ms. Goodstein’s article illustrates just how much a candidate’s religion alone may deter voters, notwithstanding the candidate’s political views.

Update (Jan. 20):  HarperCollins recently released a new biography of Mitt Romney, The Real Romney, by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman that explores the Romney family’s ties to the early Latter Day Saints Movement.

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Writings from the Trento Conference

In December, 2011, Orbis Books published Catholic Theological Ethics, Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference.  The volume, edited by James F. Keenan, S.J.—Jesuit priest and professor in theology at Boston College—, collects works arising out of the Trento Conference, convened in Trento, Italy in July, 2010.  (Significantly, Trento was the location of the sixteenth century Council of Trent that launched the Catholic Counter-Reformation.)

The Trento Conference was a massive effort—featuring hundreds of presenters— focused on the encounter between moral theology and issues of contemporary global social policy.  The Conference took a dialogic methodological approach—that is, an approach not drawing strict lines between Catholic orthodoxy and unorthodoxy—to these contemporary social issues, which included “sexuality, authority, . . . gender, sustainability, health, econom[ics], . . . the right to food, [and] family.”  See generally James F. Keenan, S.J., What Happened at Trento 2010?, 72 Theol. Stud. 131, 140, 146 (2011) (interestingly, Theological Studies is a Jesuit journal focused on theological ethics founded in 1940 and edited by the Jesuit scholar and Catholic social thinker, Fr. John Courtney Murray, S.J., from 1942 until his death in 1967).

The contributions in Fr. Keenan’s volume aspire to develop a Catholic moral theology for the twenty first century.  They examine Catholic moral theology’s history, review theological ethics as they exist today, and propose directions Catholic theological ethics might—or should—take in the years to come.  Of particular social policy interest are its explorations of inter-religious dialogue and harmonic co-existence; perspectives from socially, economically, and globally marginalized and/or silenced communities; and ethics in politics.

For Orbis Books’ description of the volume, please follow the jump. Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Sweden Recognizes File Sharing As a Religion

Earlier this month, Sweden’s Legal, Financial, and Administrative Services Agency, the Kammarkollegiet, recognized a new religious organization, the Missionary Church of Kopimism. Kopimism – the word derives from “copy me” – is, according to the church’s website, a comprehensive philosophy of life “animated by the desire to be copied and copy.” Its spiritual leader is 20-year old philosophy student Isak Gerson. Kopimism is non-theistic, but it has “priests” and axioms of faith, including the belief that file sharing is “sacred” and the internet “holy.” Followers are called to live their lives according to Kopimist values, encapsulated in this basic creed: “From all to one and from one to all – and then back again – exchange without beginning and without end.” (Kopimism is not big on copyright laws). The fact that it is now a registered religion means that Kopimism can apply for government subsidies and permission to conduct marriage ceremonies.

Western legal systems, including the American, have had a notoriously hard time coming up with a workable definition of “religion,” one  comprehensive enough to cover the variety of human religious experience but narrow enough to be meaningful. Judges have used substantive, functional, and analogical tests. I’m not sure which the Kammarkollegiet uses. Frankly, though, it’s hard for me to see how Kopimism would qualify as a religion under any of these approaches. The Kopimists themselves seem to endorse the analogical approach: although many Swedish Christians condemn Kopimism as a joke, they say, Kopimism actually resembles traditional Christianity, whose monks understood the value of copying and disseminating information. No word yet whether Kopimism’s American branch will seek a religious exemption from SOPA, the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Mazzacano on Puritanism and Godliness in the 17th Century

Peter Mazzacano (Osgoode Hall Law School — York University) has posted, “Puritanism, Godliness, and Political Development in Boston and the General Court (1630-1640).”  The abstract follows.

The goal of this article is to examine the degree to which Puritanism influenced early American political culture. That is, how did Puritan values and practices facilitate the development of an exceptional political culture during the formative years of Massachusetts Bay? Utilizing a case-study method of analysis, this article examines the political developments in the General Court and the town of Boston during the decade 1630 to 1640. The research methods used are primarily the writings of leading Puritans, and concomitant town, church, and colonial records. The main finding is that the Puritans paid little heed to notions of democracy, theocracy, oligarchy, or British political traditions; instead, Puritan institutions and practices were based on the primary Puritan ideal of godliness. However, the formative influence of the godly ideal inadvertently reinforced democratic and republican ideals. The conclusion is that the focus on godliness provides a comprehensive and multiple explanations for the course of political developments in early Massachusetts Bay.