Around the Web This Week

Some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:

Omer, “When Peace is Not Enough”

9780226008103This May, University of Chicago Press published When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks About Religion, Nationalism, and Justice by Atalia Omer (Notre Dame). The publisher’s description follows.

The state of Israel is often spoken of as a haven for the Jewish people, a place rooted in the story of a nation dispersed, wandering the earth in search of their homeland. Born in adversity but purportedly nurtured by liberal ideals, Israel has never known peace, experiencing instead a state of constant war that has divided its population along the stark and seemingly unbreachable lines of dissent around the relationship between unrestricted citizenship and Jewish identity.

By focusing on the perceptions and histories of Israel’s most marginalized stakeholders—Palestinian Israelis, Arab Jews, and non-Israeli Jews—Atalia Omer cuts to the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict, demonstrating how these voices provide urgently needed resources for conflict analysis and peacebuilding. Navigating a complex set of arguments about ethnicity, boundaries, and peace, and offering a different approach to the renegotiation and reimagination of national identity and citizenship, Omer pushes the conversation beyond the bounds of the single narrative and toward a new and dynamic concept of justice—one that offers the prospect of building a lasting peace.

Bayat (ed.), “Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam”

9780199766079This June, Oxford University Press will publish Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam edited by Asef Bayat (Leiden University). The publisher’s description follows.

At least since the Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran, political Islam or Islamism has been the focus of attention among scholars, policymakers, and the general public. Much has been said about Islamism as a political and moral/ethical trend, but scant attention is paid to its ongoing development. There is now a growing acknowledgment within the scholarly and policy communities that Islamism is in the throes of transformation, but little is known about the nature and direction of these changes. The essays of Post-Islamism bring together young and established scholars and activists from different parts of the Muslim World and the West to discuss their research on the changing discourses and practices of Islamist movements and Islamic states largely in the Muslim majority countries. The changes in these movements can be termed ‘post-Islamism,’ defined both as a condition and a project characterized by the fusion of religiosity and rights, faith and freedom, Islam and liberty. Post-Islamism emphasizes rights rather than merely obligation, plurality instead of singular authoritative voice, historicity rather than fixed scriptures, and the future instead of the past.

Call for Papers: “The New Cosmopolitanism”

The Contending Modernities Global Migration Working Group has issued a call for papers for a conference to take place in London in October, “The new cosmopolitanism: Global migration and the building of a common life”:

The global expansion of migration, within and between the global north and south, and the global resurgence and “publicization” of religion – have combined to bring religious and secular models of citizenship and civic education to the fore.  Nonetheless, there is surprisingly little consensus among religious leaders, educators, and policy makers as to what framework might allow people from different religious and ethical backgrounds to live together tolerantly and inclusively.  The lack of consensus is all the more vexing in that migration and religious revitalization today have created multicultural and multi-ethical landscapes all over the globe.  The question of the place of religion in modern multicultural societies is not an academic one, then, but one of the most pressing ethical challenges of our age.

Details are here.

Thanks, Dan, and Welcome, Claudia

Thanks so much to Dan Crane, who has blogged with us for the past few weeks. Dan’s posts were thoughtful and provocative, in the best sense of that word: they provoked reflection. We’ve greatly enjoyed having you with us, Dan, and hope you’ll come back soon.

In June, our guest will be Claudia Haupt, an Associate in Law at Columbia. She has a law degree and a PhD from the University of Cologne and an American LLM from George Washington, where she also served as Professional Lecturer in Law and International and Comparative Law Fellow. Her book, Religion-State Relations in the United States and Germany: The Quest for Neutrality, was published by Cambridge in 2012. Welcome, Claudia!