Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

UPDATE: Revised Conference Agenda– “International Religious Freedom and the Global Clash of Values”

Here is the updated schedule for our upcoming conference, International Religious Freedom and the Global Clash of Values, in Rome, Italy on June 20-21. If you happen to be in Rome, it would be great to have you!

The Center for International and Comparative Law and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s School of Law, and the Department of Law at the Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta, are pleased to present an academic conference:

International Religious Freedom and the Global Clash of Values

Taking place in Rome on Friday, June 20, 2014, and Saturday, June 21, 2014, the conference will bring together American and European scholars and policymakers to discuss the place of religious freedom in international law and politics. Speakers will address a variety of perspectives. Proceedings will be in English and Italian with simultaneous translation.

Revised Conference Agenda

Friday, June 20, 2014

1:30 – 2:30 p.m.
Lunch

2:30 – 2:45 p.m.
Welcome

2:45 – 4 p.m.
Keynote Panel
Religious Freedom in International Law, Yesterday and Today
Thomas Farr (Georgetown University)
John Witte, Jr. (Emory University)
Moderator: Marc DeGirolami (St. John’s University)

4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
Panel 1: The Politics of International Religious Freedom
Pasquale Annicchino (European University Institute)
Heiner Bielefeldt (UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief)
Hon. Ken Hackett (US Ambassador to the Holy See)
Moderator: Margaret E. McGuinness (St. John’s University)

Saturday, June 21, 2014

8:30 – 9 a.m.
Coffee

9 – 10:15 a.m.
Panel 2: Comparative Perspectives on International Religious Freedom
Francisca Pérez-Madrid (University of Barcelona)
Marco Ventura (Catholic University Leuven and University of Siena)
Roberto Zaccaria (University of Florence)
Moderator: Monica Lugato (LUMSA)

10:15 – 10:30 a.m.
Coffee

10:30 – 11:45 a.m.
Panel 3: Christian and Muslim Perspectives on International Religious Freedom
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (Emory University)
Olivier Roy (European University Institute)
Nina Shea (Hudson Institute)
Moderator: Mark L. Movsesian (St. John’s University)

Noon – 12:30 p.m.
Conference Conclusions
Giuseppe Dalla Torre
LUMSA

Location
LUMSA, Complesso del Giubileo
via di Porta Castello, 44 – Roma

Registration
Please register to attend the conference by June 9 at: eventi@lumsa.it

More Information
Monica Lugato | LUMSA Department of Law | monicalugato@lumsa.it
Mark L. Movsesian | St. John’s School of Law |Mark.Movsesian@stjohns.edu

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Langer, “Religious Offence and Human Rights: The Implications of Defamation of Religions”

In July, Cambridge University Press will publish Religious Offence and Human Rights: The Implications of Defamation of Religions by Lorenz Langer (University of Zurich). The publisher’s description follows.

Should international law be concerned with offence to religions and their followers? Even before the 2005 publication of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, Muslim States have endeavoured to establish some reputational protection for religions on the international level by pushing for recognition of the novel concept of ‘defamation of religions’. This study recounts these efforts as well as the opposition they aroused, particularly by proponents of free speech. It also addresses the more fundamental issue of how religion and international law may relate to each other. Historically, enforcing divine commands has been the primary task of legal systems, and it still is in numerous municipal jurisdictions. By analysing religious restrictions of blasphemy and sacrilege as well as international and national norms on free speech and freedom of religion, Lorenz Langer argues that, on the international level at least, religion does not provide a suitable rationale for legal norms.

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Howell, “Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past”

In August, Oxford University Press will publish Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past by Sally Howell (University of Michigan-Dearborn). The publisher’s description follows.

Across North America, Islam is portrayed as a religion of immigrants, converts, and cultural outsiders. Yet Muslims have been part of American society for much longer than most people realize. This book documents the history of Islam in Detroit, a city that is home to several of the nation’s oldest, most diverse Muslim communities. In the early 1900s, there were thousands of Muslims in Detroit. Most came from Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and British India. In 1921, they built the nation’s first mosque in Highland Park. By the 1930s, new Islam-oriented social movements were taking root among African Americans in Detroit. By the 1950s, Albanians, Arabs, African Americans, and South Asians all had mosques and religious associations in the city, and they were confident that Islam could be, and had already become, an American religion. When immigration laws were liberalized in 1965, new immigrants and new African American converts rapidly became the majority of U.S. Muslims. For them, Detroit’s old Muslims and their mosques seemed oddly Americanized, even unorthodox.

Old Islam in Detroit explores the rise of Detroit’s earliest Muslim communities. It documents the culture wars and doctrinal debates that ensued as these populations confronted Muslim newcomers who did not understand their manner of worship or the American identities they had created. Looking closely at this historical encounter, Old Islam in Detroit provides a new interpretation of the possibilities and limits of Muslim incorporation in American life. It shows how Islam has become American in the past and how the anxieties many new Muslim Americans and non-Muslims feel about the place of Islam in American society today are not inevitable, but are part of a dynamic process of political and religious change that is still unfolding.