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Khan, “Islamic Banking in Pakistan”

In November, Routledge will release “Islamic Banking in Pakistan: Shariah-Compliant Finance and the Quest to make Pakistan more Islamic” by Feisal Khan (Hobart and William Smith Colleges). The publisher’s description follows:

Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) has become a growing force over the past three decades, with Pakistan being one of the IBF pioneers by converting to an ‘interest-free’ banking system in 1985. However, since independence in 1947, there has been continual tension over Pakistan’s essential character, between Islamic Minimalists, who favour a Modernist interpretation of Islam, and those who favour an Islamic Maximalist interpretation that sees Pakistan as a model Islamic state.

This book analyses the push to Islamize Pakistan and its financial system by Islamic revivalists, following the early 1947 debates in the original Constituent Assembly to the final 2002 ruling on IBF of the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court. It examines the practice and theory behind contemporary Islamic, “Shariah-compliant”, banking. It offers extensive interviews with Pakistani Islamic bankers on the state of their industry and how they see it developing, and provides analysis on how the Islamic banks’ customers differ from those of conventional ones.

Presenting a critical analysis of Pakistan’s IBF experience and offering a new insight into Pakistan’s banking industry that illustrates broader political and social trends in the country, this book will be of interest to specialists on Islam, South Asia and International Economics.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Huleatt on Obergefell

John Huleatt, an alumnus of St. John’s Law School and General Counsel for the Bruderhof Community, a Christian group with roots in the Anabaptist tradition, has posted an interesting reflection on the Obergefell decision and the implications for religious liberty. Here’s a sample:

Accordingly, the state exceeds its legitimate authority when it lends its authoritarian power to either side in this debate. Protecting gays from discrimination in nonreligious matters is an appropriate concern for government and believers alike. But if the government requires believers to act in violation of their conscience in the name of so-called anti-discrimination, it is going too far. The United States, more than most other countries, has a long history of successfully accommodating competing rights. For this to continue, the state and proponents of gay marriage need to understand that no compromise for believers is possible where conscience is at stake. Thus free exercise of religion must be protected just as much as other civil rights. Religious dissent does not lose protection merely by being labeled discrimination. If the American public and the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government fail to recognize this, many people who are (in Justice Kennedy’s words) “reasonable and sincere” will have no choice but to resort to civil disobedience.

You can read Huleatt’s essay here.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Scheid, “The Gods, the State, and the Individual”

In November, the University of Pennsylvania Press will release “The Gods, the State, and the Individual: Reflections on Civic Religion in Rome,” by John Scheid (Collège de France).  The publisher’s description follows:

Roman religion has long presented a number of challenges to historians approaching the subject from a perspective framed by the three Abrahamic religions. The Romans had no sacred text that espoused its creed or offered a portrait of its foundational myth. They described relations with the divine using technical terms widely employed to describe relations with other humans. Indeed, there was not even a word in classical Latin that corresponds to the English word religion.

In The Gods, the State, and the Individual, John Scheid confronts these and other challenges directly. If Roman religious practice has long been dismissed as a cynical or naïve system of borrowed structures unmarked by any true piety, Scheid contends that this is the result of a misplaced expectation that the basis of religion lies in an individual’s personal and revelatory relationship with his or her god. He argues that when viewed in the light of secular history as opposed to Christian theology, Roman religion emerges as a legitimate phenomenon in which rituals, both public and private, enforced a sense of communal, civic, and state identity.

Since the 1970s, Scheid has been one of the most influential figures reshaping scholarly understanding of ancient Roman religion. The Gods, the State, and the Individual presents a translation of Scheid’s work that chronicles the development of his field-changing scholarship.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Gutterman and Murphy, “Political Religion and Religious Politics”

In November, Routledge will release “Political Religion and Religious Politics: Navigating Identities in the United States,” by David S. Gutterman (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) and Andrew R. Murphy (Willamette University).  The publisher’s description follows:

Profound demographic and cultural changes in American society over the last half century have unsettled conventional understandings of the relationship between religious and political identity. The “Protestant mainline” continues to shrink in numbers, as well as in cultural and political influence. The growing population of American Muslims seek both acceptance and a firmer footing within the nation’s cultural and political imagination. Debates over contraception, same-sex relationships, and “prosperity” preaching continue to roil the waters of American cultural politics. Perhaps most remarkably, the fastest-rising religious demographic in most public opinion surveys is “none,” giving rise to a new demographic that Gutterman and Murphy name “Religious Independents.” Even the evangelical movement, which powerfully re-entered American politics during the 1970s and 1980s and retains a strong foothold in the Republican Party, has undergone generational turnover and no longer represents a monolithic political bloc.

Political Religion and Religious Politics: Navigating Identities in the United States explores the multifaceted implications of these developments by examining a series of contentious issues in contemporary American politics. Gutterman and Murphy take up the controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque,” the political and legal battles over the contraception mandate in the Affordable Health Care Act and the ensuing Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, the national response to the Great Recession and the rise in economic inequality, and battles over the public school curricula, seizing on these divisive challenges as opportunities to illuminate the changing role of religion in American public life.

Placing the current moment into historical perspective, and reflecting on the possible future of religion, politics, and cultural conflict in the United States, Gutterman and Murphy explore the cultural and political dynamics of evolving notions of national and religious identity. They argue that questions of religion are questions of identity — personal, social, and political identity — and that they function in many of the same ways as race, sex, gender, and ethnicity in the construction of personal meaning, the fostering of solidarity with others, and the conflict they can occasion in the political arena.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Around the Web This Week

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

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Hamid, “Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Ground of British Islamic Activism”

In December, I.B.Tauris Publishers will release “Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Ground of British Islamic Activism” by Sadek Hamid (Liverpool Hope University, U.K.). The publisher’s description follows:

British Muslim activism has evolved constantly in recent decades. What have been its main groups and how do their leaders compete to attract followers? Which social and religious ideas from abroad are most influential? In this groundbreaking study, Sadek Hamid traces the evolution of Sufi, Salafi and Islamist activist groups in Britain, including The Young Muslims UK, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Salafi JIMAS organisation and Traditional Islam Network. With reference to second-generation British Muslims especially, he explains how these groups gain and lose support, embrace and reject foreign ideologies, and succeed and fail to provide youth with compelling models of British Muslim identity. Analyzing historical and firsthand community research, Hamid gives a compelling account of the complexity that underlies reductionist media narratives of Islamic activism in Britain.

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Izbicki, “The Eucharist in Medieval Canon Law”

This month, Cambridge University Press releases “The Eucharist in Medieval Canon Law” by Thomas Izbicki (Rutgers University). The publisher’s description follows:

Thomas Izbicki presents a new examination of the relationship between the adoration of the sacrament and canon law from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. The medieval Church believed Christ’s glorified body was present in the Eucharist, the most central of the seven sacraments, and the Real Presence became explained as transubstantiation by university-trained theologians. Expressions of this belief included the drama of the elevated host and chalice, as well as processions with a host in an elaborate monstrance on the Feast of Corpus Christi. These affirmations of doctrine were governed by canon law, promulgated by popes and councils; and liturgical regulations were enforced by popes, bishops, archdeacons and inquisitors. Drawing on canon law collections and commentaries, synodal enactments, legal manuals and books about ecclesiastical offices, Izbicki presents the first systematic analysis of the Church’s teaching about the regulation of the practice of the Eucharist.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Justice Story (and Montesquieu) on “The People of the North and the People of the South”

On another errand, I came across this wonderful tract from Justice Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution  (section 1867) concerning religion and the First Amendment, and in particular religion’s relationship to republican government. I wonder (as, of course, a person of the south ostensibly living among people of the north): are we, as a nation today, more like the people of the north or of the south?

Indeed, in a republic, there would seem to be a peculiar propriety in viewing the Christian religion, as the great basis, on which it must rest for its support and permanence, if it be, what it has ever been deemed by its truest friends to be, the religion of liberty. Montesquieu has remarked, that the Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage, with which a prince punishes his subjects, and exercises himself in cruelty. He has gone even further, and affirmed, that the Protestant religion is far more congenial with the spirit of political freedom, than the Catholic. “When,” says he, “the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became unhappily, divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the north embraced the Protestant, and those of the south still adhered to the Catholic. The reason is plain. The people of the north have, and will ever have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which the people of the south have not. And, therefore, a religion, which has no visible head, is more agreeable to the independency of climate, than that, which has one.” Without stopping to inquire, whether this remark be well founded, it is certainly true, that the parent country has acted upon it with a severe and vigilant zeal; and in most of the colonies the same rigid jealousy has been maintained almost down to our own times.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

“Democracy, Culture, Catholicism” (Schuck and Crowley-Buck eds.)

In November, the Fordham University Press will release “Democracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents,” edited by Michael J. Schuck (Loyola University of Chicago) and John Crowley-Buck (Loyola University of Chicago).  The publisher’s description follows:

Compiling scholarly essays from a unique three-year Democracy, Culture and Catholicism International Research Project, Democracy, Culture, Catholicism richly articulates the diverse and dynamic interplay of democracy, culture, and Catholicism in the contemporary world. The twenty-five essays from four extremely diverse cultures—those of Indonesia, Lithuania, Peru, and the United States—explore the relationship between democracy and Catholicism from several perspectives, including historical and cultural analysis, political theory and conflict resolution, social movements and Catholic social thought.

Posted on by Christina Vlahos

“Religious Citizenships and Islamophobia” (eds. Andre and Pratt)

In November, Routledge will release “Religious Citizenships and Islamophobia,” edited by Virginie Andre (Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, Burwood, Australia) and Douglas Pratt (University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand).  The publisher’s description follows:

The attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015 once again brought to the fore the place of Islam in Western secular democracies, and the questioning of Muslim citizenship. The hyper-mediatisation of jihadist terrorism and its subsequent conflation with Muslim communities in general, has led to both an increase in widespread popular fear of Islam and its followers, and the further marginalization and stigmatization of Muslim communities living in Western societies.

This book brings together a range of studies and reflections pertinent to the contemporary issues surrounding religious citizenship and Islamophobia. Sentiments of insecurity and uncertainty, which far-right populist movements focus on, are increasingly finding resonance among ordinary citizens. Some traditional political parties are now flirting with demagogic discourse with respect to matters Islamic to the point where there is a hardening within Western democracies, manifested in the adoption of illiberal policies, the narrowing of the conception of secularity, and the alienation of a younger generation of Muslims. Yet there can still be found both glimmers of hope and slivers of sanity. This book was originally published as a special issue of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.