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Holman, “Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights”

In February, Oxford University Press released “Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights” by Susan R. Holman (Harvard University). The publisher’s description follows:

Global health efforts today are usually shaped by two very different ideological approaches: a human rights-based approach to health and equity-often associated with public health, medicine, or economic development activities; or a religious or humanitarian “aid” approach motivated by personal beliefs about charity, philanthropy, missional dynamics, and humanitarian “mercy.” The underlying differences between these two approaches can create tensions and even outright hostility that undermines the best intentions of those involved.

In Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights, Susan R. Holman–a scholar in both religion and the history of medicine–challenges this traditional polarization by telling stories designed to help shape a new perspective on global health, one that involves a multidisciplinary integration of religion and culture with human rights and social justice. The book’s six chapters range broadly, describing pilgrimage texts in the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions; the effect of ministry and public policy on nineteenth-century health care for the poor; the story of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it shaped economic, social, and cultural rights; a “religious health assets” approach based in Southern Africa; and the complex dynamics of gift exchange in the modern faith-based focus on charity, community, and the common good. Holman’s study serves as an insightful guide for students and practitioners interested in improving and broadening the scope of global health initiatives, with an eye towards having the greatest impact possible.

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Islam, “Limits of Islamism: Jamaat-e-Islami in Contemporary India and Bangladesh”

In March, Cambridge University Press released “Limits of Islamism: Jamaat-e-Islami in Contemporary India and Bangladesh” by Maidul Islam (Presidency University, Kolkata). The publisher’s description follows:

This book focuses on Islamism as a political ideology by taking up the case study of Jamaat-e-Islami in contemporary India and Bangladesh. The book will address how, in a contemporary globalized world, Islamism constructs an antagonistic frontier and how it mobilizes people behind its political project. The book also deals with the Islamist critique of neoliberal economic policies and ‘western cultural globalization’. The book examines the dynamics from the formation of Islamist politics for the struggle for hegemony to failure to become a hegemonic force in Bangladesh. The contradiction between Islamic universalism/Islamist populism, on one hand, and a politics of Muslim particularism in India, on the other, is revealed in this study. Finally, this book traces the contemporary crisis of Islamist populism in providing an alternative to neoliberalism.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

“Weaponizing”

Rather an unfortunate metaphor in the by-line of Professor Dale Carpenter’s recent post: “What started out as a shield for minority religious practitioners like Native Americans and the Amish is in danger of being weaponized into a sword against civil rights.”

One might have thought, even relatively recently, that religious freedom was a “civil right.” But no longer: it is now said to be the enemy of “civil rights.” And I suppose that what is “weaponized” will depend on one’s perspective. From a different point of view, one might instead believe that it is the vast arsenal of antidiscrimination norms, and the staggering expansion of the state’s interest in vindicating specific sorts of dignitarian harms, that have been “weaponized.” But Professor Carpenter need not worry about one small sword in Indiana or Arkansas; the armamentarium arrayed against it is truly stunning.

Here’s how I see the situation, as described in my essay, Free Exercise By Moonlight, from which I’ll post a few selections in the coming days as it is intimately connected to these topical concerns (footnotes omitted):

The modern expansion of the reach of the state has resulted in a concomitant increase in the kinds of recognition, and validation, that it can now confer. As the ambit of state authority has expanded, the ways in which people may be negatively affected, or “harmed,” by a state-sanctioned religious accommodation have likewise expanded. Religious accommodations are now said, for example, to implicate injuries to the “dignity” of those who oppose them, the implication of which is that the state’s authority includes the power to confer individual dignity as a self-standing civic good. People want to be dignified by the state, their self-worth to be accorded official validation, and they perceive state-countenanced indignities meant for the protection of religious freedom as real injuries demanding state remediation.

Yet offenses to dignity are only the most extreme example of the overall expansion of government interests. For we are now at some considerable distance from Smith’s dystopian warnings about the threat of anarchy or governmental impotence that would result from overgenerous religious accommodations. In a society in which the government assumes an increasingly large role in the life of the citizenry, more injuries are transformed into legally (and perhaps even constitutionally) cognizable rights. The number and type of state interests that qualify as “compelling” swell to match the new dignitarian and other harms caused by permissive religious accommodations. And the protection of rights becomes a zero sum game, as every win for religious accommodation is a legally cognizable, but unvindicated, loss for somebody else.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Gigantor Takes Over Blogging at CLR Forum

GIGANTOROur good friend John McGinnis is always warning us that technology is marching relentlessly through the legal profession. So we’ve decided to be ahead of the curve. Starting today, posting at CLR Forum will be done by robot, specifically, by the robot from the old TV series, “Gigantor.” That’s a picture of him above. He hasn’t been busy since his show got canceled a few decades ago and is eager to get back to work. A pretty nice fellow, for a space-age robot, though it turns out he has rather strong feelings about religious establishments. His random-post generator program will free up our resources for other important projects, like writing mystery novels, to which Marc and I plan to apply ourselves. Let us know what you think.