Some interesting law and religion news stories from around the web this week:
- The German government outlawed an organization that distributes German-language copies of the Quran this week, citing the group’s recruitment of jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq.
- AP: A Mexican immigrant who had been living in Philadelphia has relocated to a church, where he is now seeking sanctuary from deportation by federal authorities.
- This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his support for a bill that would authorize the government to ban the use of loudspeakers by mosques and other houses of worship across Israel.
- A British trial court recently held that segregating classes by sex in an Islamic school did not constitution a violation of the Equality Act 2010.
- The Women of the Wall marched through an ultra-Orthodox area of Jerusalem’s Old City again this week. They are expected to initiate more legal battles over women’s rights.
- Reuters: Muslim clerics in Mauritania are urging the authorities to execute a blogger who has been sentenced to death for apostasy after writing a blog post on Islam and racial discrimination.
- The Greek government has recently agreed to build the first state-funded mosque in Athens since the end of Ottoman rule in the 1800s.
- In the aftermath of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Orthodox Coptic Christians are facing intensified discrimination, marginalization, and violent attacks.
- In Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country, Hindu temples and homes have suffered vandalism and arson in response to a Facebook post published by a Hindu youth, depicting a Hindu god at a Muslim holy site in Mecca.
- The Guardian: The Christian governor of Jakarta, the capital of the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, has been named a suspect in a case of alleged blasphemy, Indonesian police announced on Wednesday.
gruesome war for independence against the majoritarian Sinhalese government of Sri Lanka. Even as the government fought LTTE on the battlefield, it also pursued a legal war through the enactment of counterterrorism laws that permitted indefinite detention and the use of confessions as sole evidence. This book applies theoretical insights from the work of philosophers such as Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and Michel Foucault to the Sri Lankan context to examine the conflicting narratives relating to these laws produced by both sides in the conflict.