February 17, 2017 - LAW AND RELIGION FORUM

Posted on February 17, 2017February 17, 2017 by Liam Ray

Around the Web This Week

Here are some interesting stories involving law and religion from this past week:

A mosque will open in Athens, Greece for the first time since the Ottoman Empire was driven from the city in 1833.
The sitting governor of Jakarta, Indonesia, a Christian, faces accusations of blasphemy from some Muslims as an election draws closer.
Morocco’s High Religious Committee, which has the authority to issue fatwas, has ruled that Muslims may change their religion without facing the death penalty for doing so.
A federal court in Virginia issued a temporary injunction against the Trump Administration’s travel ban on the ground that it violates the Establishment Clause.
The Washington Supreme Court ruled that a florist who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding violated an anti-discrimination law. The florist has indicated her intention to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- In Florida, an administrative law judge decided that a bakery which refused to make a cake with an anti-gay message on it for a Christian man did not discriminate against him for his religion.
Two large churches are seeking to leave the United Methodist denomination because of concerns about the denomination’s intensifying internal debate on homosexuality.
Marco Rubio attacked the Chinese government for its crackdown on religious freedom, citing the cases of two Christian attorneys who have allegedly been jailed for political reasons.

Posted on February 17, 2017February 17, 2017 by Liam Ray

Coope, “The Most Noble of People”

In April, the University of Michigan Press will release The Most Noble of People: Religious, Ethnic, and Gender Identity in Muslim Spain by Jessica A. Coope (University of Nebraska). The publisher’s description follows:

The Most Noble of People presents a nuanced look at questions of identity in Muslim Spain under the Umayyads, an Arab dynasty that ruled from 756 to 1031. With a social historical emphasis on relations among different religious and ethnic groups, and between men and women, Jessica A. Coope considers the ways in which personal and cultural identity in al-Andalus could be alternately fluid and contentious.

The opening chapters define Arab and Muslim identity as those categories were understood in Muslim Spain, highlighting the unique aspects of this society as well as its similarities with other parts of the medieval Islamic world.The book goes on to discuss what it meant to be a Jew or Christian in Spain under Islamic rule, and the degree to which non-Muslims were full participants in society. Following this is a consideration of gender identity as defined by Islamic law and by less normative sources like literature and mystical texts. It concludes by focusing on internal rebellions against the government of Muslim Spain, particularly the conflicts between Muslims who were ethnically Arab and those who were Berber or native Iberian, pointing to the limits of Muslim solidarity.

Drawn from an unusually broad array of sources—including legal texts, religious polemic, chronicles, mystical texts, prose literature, and poetry, in both Arabic and Latin—many of Coope’s illustrations of life in al-Andalus also reflect something of the larger medieval world. Further, some key questions about gender, ethnicity, and religious identity that concerned people in Muslim Spain—for example, women’s status under Islamic law, or what it means to be a Muslim in different contexts and societies around the world—remain relevant today.

Posted on February 17, 2017 by Liam Ray

Belloc, “Characters of the Reformation”

In April, Ignatius Press will release a new paperback edition of Characters of the Reformation by Hilaire Belloc. The publisher’s description follows:

characters-of-the-reformation One of the most fascinating books ever written by the great Catholic historian Belloc, he presents in bold colors the 23 principal characters of the Protestant Reformation, focusing primarily on those figures concerned with the events in England, analyzing their strengths, mistakes, motives and deeds which changed the course of history.

Among the characters he examines are Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I, St. Thomas More, Mary Tudor, Thomas Cromwell, William Cecil, Mary Stuart, Cardinal Richelieu and many more. Belloc illustrates how the motives of the Protestant leaders were rarely religious in nature, but usually political or economic. He underscores the fact that European Christendom was once a single united entity, under the authority of the Catholic Church, each country viewing itself as a single “province” of the whole.

Many of Europe’s Princes resented the power that the Bishop of Rome held in their own lands. The Reformation, aided by the rise of Nationalism, was a means for the nobles of Europe to shake off Papal authority and rule their territory independently. It also gave European monarchs control over the Church and all of its property in their realm, including the taxes that would normally be sent to Rome.

The nobles grew rich by confiscating the wealth of the Church, and resisted reconciliation if that meant returning the wealth to its rightful owner. In subsequent generations, the fear of this possibility gave the noble classes an incentive to remain in the Protestant camp. Belloc warns that this breakup of Christendom may still destroy our Christian civilization.

Even those who think they do not like history will be unable to put this book down as it brings history vividly to life. As usual, Belloc’s historical perspective offers timeless wisdom and insight rarely seen in modern times.