Posted on by JCPW

Around the Web This Week

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

Posted on by JCPW

Bergen & Tiedemann (eds.), “Talibanistan”

Talibanistan2This past December, Oxford University Press published Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics, and Religion edited by Peter Bergen (National Security Analyst at CNN) and Katherine Tiedemann (deputy editor of AfPak Channel). The publisher’s description follows.

The longest war the United States has ever fought is the ongoing war in Afghanistan. But when we speak of “Afghanistan,” we really mean a conflict that straddles the border with Pakistan–and the reality of Islamic militancy on that border is enormously complicated.

In Talibanistan, an unparalleled group of experts offer a nuanced understanding of this critical region. Edited by Peter Bergen, author of the bestselling books The Longest War and The Osama Bin Laden I Know, and Katherine Tiedemann, these essays examine in detail the embattled territory from Kandahar in Afghanistan to Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas. They pull apart the distinctions between the Taliban and al Qaeda–and the fractures within each movement; assess the effectiveness of American and Pakistani counterinsurgency campaigns; and explore the pipeline of militants into and out of the war zone. Throughout, these scrupulously researched studies challenge convenient orthodoxies. Counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman criticizes the customary distinction between an Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as being too neat to describe their fragmented reality. Hassan Abbas paints a subtle portrait of the political and religious forces shaping the insurgency in the Northwest Frontier Province, uncovering poor governance, economic distress, and resentment of foreign troops in nearby Afghanistan. And Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann try to identify the real numbers of drone strikes and victims, both militants and civilians, while disputing claims for their strategic effectiveness.

These and other essays provide profound new insight into this troubled region. They are required reading for anyone seeking a fresh understanding of a central strategic challenge facing the United States today.

Posted on by JCPW

Around the Web This Week

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

Posted on by JCPW

Sayeed, “Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam”

SayeedThis April, Cambridge University Press will publish Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam by Asma Sayeed (University of California, Los Angeles). The publisher’s description follows.

Asma Sayeed’s book explores the history of women as religious scholars from the first decades of Islam through the early Ottoman period (seventh to the seventeenth centuries). Focusing on women’s engagement with ḥadīth, this book analyzes dramatic chronological patterns in women’s ḥadīth participation in terms of developments in Muslim social, intellectual, and legal history. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, this work uncovers the historical forces that shaped Muslim women’s public participation in religious learning. In the process, it challenges two opposing views: that Muslim women have been historically marginalized in religious education, and alternately that they have been consistently empowered thanks to early role models such as ‘Ā’isha bint Abī Bakr, the wife of the Prophet Muḥammad. This book is a must-read for those interested in the history of Muslim women as well as in debates about their rights in the modern world. The intersections of this history with topics in Muslim education, the development of Sunnī orthodoxies, Islamic law, and ḥadīth studies make this work an important contribution to Muslim social and intellectual history of the early and classical eras.

Posted on by JCPW

Brownstein on the Religious Liberty of Religious Institutions

Alan E. Brownstein (University of California, Davis – School of Law) has posted Protecting the Religious Liberty of Religious Institutions. The abstract follows.

This article is a preliminary inquiry into the question of whether the freedom of the Church, as a distinct religious institution, can be justified from an American legal perspective. The first part of the article identifies respect for the individual dignity and autonomy of the person as a primary justification for providing distinctive legal protection to religious liberty. It goes on to discuss whether distinctive religious liberty protection for religious institutions can be derived from the dignitary interests of the institution’s members – and if so, whether there is some limit beyond which institutional religious liberty claims cannot be grounded in the individual dignitary interests of congregants or constituents.

The second and longer part of the Article examines whether an argument for protecting and accommodating the autonomy of religious institutions can be grounded in American history during the 1700’s and early 1800’s. The history of this period includes multiple cross currents of values and interests that very by time and region – making it difficult to reach more than tentative conclusions. However, the Protestant commitment by religious liberty proponents to the belief that each man must judge for himself on matters relating to religion, the virulent anti-Catholicism of the period, at least some of which may be attributed to fear of and antipathy toward top down ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the prevalence of anti-clerical attitudes suggest some limits to the American commitment to the freedom of the Church as an institution. Clearly, a sphere of religious liberty extended to the local congregation and to a considerable extent to democratically created and accountable ecclesiastical decision-making bodies. It may be argued, however, that Americans of this period viewed non-democratic, hierarchical religious institutional structures – that challenged the intrinsic right of individual conscience in matters of faith – to be much less deserving of respect and protection.

Posted on by JCPW

Around the Web This Week

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

Posted on by JCPW

Gauthier & Martikainen (eds.),”Religion in the Neoliberal Age”

ReligioninNeoliberalAgeThis January, Ashgate Publishing published Religion in the Neoliberal Age: Political Economy and Modes of Governance edited by François Gauthier (University of Fribourg) and Tuomas Martikainen (University of Helsinki). The publisher’s description follows.

This book, together with a complementary volume ‘Religion in Consumer Society’, focuses on religion, neoliberalism and consumer society; offering an overview of an emerging field of research in the study of contemporary religion. Claiming that we are entering a new phase of state-religion relations, the editors examine how this is historically anchored in modernity but affected by neoliberalization and globalization of society and social life. Seemingly distant developments, such as marketization and commoditization of religion as well as legalization and securitization of social conflicts, are transforming historical expressions of ‘religion’ and ‘religiosity’ yet these changes are seldom if ever understood as forming a coherent, structured and systemic ensemble.

‘Religion in the Neoliberal Age’ includes an extensive introduction framing the research area, and linking it to existing scholarship, before looking at four key issues: 1. How changes in state structures have empowered new modes of religious activity in welfare production and the delivery of a range of state services; 2. How are religion-state relations transforming under the pressures of globalization and neoliberalism; 3. How historical churches and their administrations are undergoing change due to structural changes in society, and what new forms of religious body are emerging; 4. How have law and security become new areas for solving religious conflicts. Outlining changes in both the political-institutional and cultural spheres, the contributors offer an international overview of developments in different countries and state of the art representation of religion in the new global political economy.

Posted on by JCPW

Cohen-Almagor on Religious, Hateful, and Racist Speech in Israel

Raphael Cohen-Almagor (University of Hull) has posted Religious, Hateful, and Racist Speech in Israel. The abstract follows.

This essay is a study in politics and law. The first section of the paper explains Israel’s vulnerability as a Jewish, multicultural democracy in a hostile region, with significant schisms that divide the nation. Given Israel’s tenuous conditions, this paper is set to observe how Israel has coped with destabilizing expressions that aim to increase the rifts in society and to promote hatred against the other, whoever the other might be. This essay is largely concerned with Israel’s policy on hate speech and racial expressions as they have come into expression by religious authorities, and in that sense this study supplements similar studies conducted in the past. Those expressions have stemmed from the ideologically motivated religious authorities against two groups of people: those who aimed to give away parts of Israel’s territory, and Palestinian Arabs.

The paper presents the State Attorney’s stance regarding extreme statements made in the context of the disengagement from Gaza. Following that presentation, the paper continues by addressing the issue of religious incitement by Jewish and Moslem sages. What is suggested about fighting bigotry emanating from Jewish religious teaching is true also for hatred emanating from Islam. The argument is made that the State cannot sit idly by while senior officials incite racism and undermine the State’s democratic values. Such officials should be discharged of all responsibilities. The State ought to weigh the costs of allowing hate speech, as well as the risks involved, and balance these against the costs and risks to democracy and free speech associated with censorship. Israel needs to protect its citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish, as well as to protect itself as a Jewish democracy. In doing so, Israel should not unnecessarily infringe on free expression or create discriminatory situations. It is not a small feat to achieve both. A balance needs to be struck between competing social interests. Freedom of expression is important as is the protection of vulnerable minorities.

Posted on by JCPW

Around the Web This Week

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

Posted on by JCPW

Barzilai on Law, Politics, and the Adjudication of Religious Issues

Gad Barzilai (University of Washington – Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies) has posted Law is Politics. The abstract follows.

In his essay, “Law or Politics: Israeli Constitutional Adjudication as a Case Study,” Gideon Sapir is coping with some problems concerning adjudication of religious issues. He presumes that there is a certain dichotomy that differentiates “law” from “politics,” since the first deals with norms and the second with regulating and balancing political branches. Sapir’s article, in my opinion, proves that law is politics in a sense that law generates and embodies political and socioeconomic interests, identities, and consciousness. I argue below that politics cannot be differentiated from law, and therefore cannot respond to Sapir’s aspiration to de-politicize adjudication and to monitor and hamper the effects of personal backgrounds and worldviews on judicial rulings. I analyze some of Sapir’s findings and arguments from a critical perspective that law is politics.

The subject matter of religious justices in supreme courts are particularly relevant in countries where almost no institutional and constitutional separation between state and religion prevails. In countries like Israel that have not separated state from religion, and have used religion as part of state nationality and legal ideology, the background of the justices and their basic worldviews will most often be a reflection and articulation of interactions between religion, state power foci, and state ideology. The Israeli Jewish political elite has used Orthodox religion to legitimize the state, and hence has used the non-separation of nationality and religion embedded in Zionism, for political purposes.