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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Solliz v. Knox County, Tennessee, a Muslim woman filed suit after she was required by a Knox County sheriff to remove her hijab for a booking photo following her arrest. The complaint alleged violations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the Tennessee Preservation of Religious Freedom Act.
  • A Ukrainian court has extended the detention of an Orthodox bishop for two months after he was arrested for allegedly revealing army positions to the public in a sermon, having mentioned the presence of a road block that prevented access to a local monastery. The bishop was denied the possibility of posting bail, and the checkpoints in question were removed prior to the publication of his sermon online.
  • A petition for certiorari was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, after the Supreme Court of Oklahoma declared the certification of a Catholic-sponsored charter school violative of the state’s constitution and the Establishment Clause. The petition states that the exclusion of religious schools from the state’s charter program violates the Free Exercise Clause, and that the mere funding of religious schools by the state does not constitute state action.
  • The recently-passed Abortion Services Act in Scotland threatens prosecution against anyone praying within a 200-meter radius of an abortion facility, including within their own homes, if they can be seen or heard within the zone, and act in an intentional or reckless manner. Guidance provided by the government to facilitate compliance lists silent vigils and religious preaching as potentially actionable offenses, if conducted intentionally and recklessly.
  • The University of California has continued to deny wrongdoing following a California federal court’s order mandating a variety of measures to prevent the exclusion of Jewish students from parts of campus. The University claims responsibility lies with actors unaffiliated with the school, whereas the plaintiffs maintain the school’s complicity via its failure to act in the face of clear religious discrimination against its students.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Ending Persecution?

Readers of this blog and listeners to Legal Spirits will know that I’m skeptical that international human rights law can do much on its own to end religious persecution. Everything depends on state enforcement–and states, including the US, only get involved when their interests suggest they should. Even then, there is typically little the “international community” can do when local actors really want to punish a religious minority, other than offer asylum–collective action problems always seem to get in the way, and the international community typically loses interest in time. It’s a very sad fact. But I know that other people think this view is too pessimistic. For a more optimistic view on what international human rights law can do, here is a new book from the University of Notre Dame Press, Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom, by longtime human rights lawyer Knox Thames. The publisher’s description follows:

Building on his extensive experience in the U.S. government and as an international human rights lawyer, H. Knox Thames provides fresh, decisive strategies to advance religious freedom for all.

Today, a scourge of religious persecution is impacting every faith community around the globe. In Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom, author H. Knox Thames takes readers to some of the world’s most repressive countries in the Middle East and Asia, exposing the harsh reality of religious repression. Thames breaks down the devastating litany of human rights abuses faced by religious groups in these countries into four major types of persecution: terrorism in the Middle East, government-sponsored genocides in China and Burma, cultural changes due to extremism in Pakistan, and tyrannical democracy in Nepal and India.

Ending Persecution recounts the range of tools and policies that the U.S. government has used to encourage reform in repressive governments, leverage U.S. influence for the oppressed, and to reflect the best of American values of diversity, minority rights, and religious freedom. To help the persecuted in the twenty-first century, Thames argues, the United States must revitalize its approach and recommit to ending oppression by supporting coalition building and interfaith tolerance.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Book on Religious Freedom in the Middle East

I’m delighted to report that last month Brill released a new book by a great friend of the Mattone Center (and mine!) for many years, Professor Andrea Pin. Andrea, who teaches law at the University of Padua, has an encyclopedic knowledge of comparative law, especially the comparative law of church and state, and he has devoted much of his career to studying how law and religion interact in the Middle East. His new book, Religious Freedom without the Rule of Law: The Constitutional Odysseys of Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iraq and the Fate of the Middle East, addresses that interaction. Highly recommended! Here is the description from the publisher’s website:

The volume compares the efforts to instil the values and practices of the rule of law in the Middle East in the early twenty-first century with their disappointing performances in terms of safety, human rights, and, especially, religious freedom. It zooms in on Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iraq to argue that international interventions and local initiatives underestimated the ethno-religious mosaic of these countries and their political and constitutional culture.

The standard notion of the rule of law values individualism, equality, rights, and courts, which hardly fit the makeup of the Middle East. Securing stability and protecting religious freedom in the region requires compromising on the rule of law; the consociational model of constitutionalism would have better chances of achieving them.

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Hope Community Church v. Warner, a federal district court held that a provision in West Virginia’s constitution, which bars churches from being incorporated, is unconstitutional.
  • Several Christians in India were arrested for distributing “religious materials” within government schools, and were charged with propagating religion in an illegal manner.
  • The Supreme Court of the United States is considering a queue of church-and-state related cases, including a Florida synagogue fighting to advertise religious celebrations on public transportation.
  • A Christian woman in Iran was arrested and has been imprisoned for weeks without charges; her family believes officials are subjecting her to brutal interrogation regarding other Christian community members.
  • A school assistant in England, who was fired because of Christian beliefs she expressed on social media, will have her case heard in the Court of Appeal after the initial tribunal held her dismissal lawful.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

The Rule of Law in Iran

Iran is one of the world’s few true theocracies. But that doesn’t mean the country lacks the rule of law. Iran doesn’t have the rule of law in a liberal, Western sense. But courts and judges exist, as do bodies of law that govern commerce, family disputes, and other matters. A new collection of essays from Cambridge, The Rule of Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Power, Institutions, and the Limits of Reform explores how the rule of law operates in Iran. The editors are Hadi Enayat of Aga Khan University and Mirjam Kunkler of the Institute for Advanced Legal Study. Here’s the description from the Cambridge website:

After Iran’s 1979 Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini denounced the secular legal system of the Pahlavis and pledged his commitment to distinctly Islamic conceptions of law and justice: the application of both the shariʿa and the rule of law (hākemiyat-e qānun) became major ideological pillars of the Islamic Republic. This precipitated the Islamization of the legal system, the judiciary and the courts, a process which still continues today and is the subject of intense ideological and political contestation. The Rule of Law in Iran is the first comprehensive analysis of judicial and legal institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran in their social, political and historical contexts. Scholars and practitioners of law, many with experience of working in Iran, shed light on how the rule of law has fared across a variety of areas, from criminal law to labour law, family law, minority rights, policing, the legal profession, the visual and performing arts, trade law, and medicine.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Reading Group to Discuss John Winthrop

Photo: Partnership of Historic Bostons

Later this month, the Mattone Center Reading Group will meet at St. John’s to discuss one of the most famous essays in American history, John Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop wrote the essay on the ship Arbella in 1630, while he and other Puritan colonists were on their way to Massachusetts. The essay is the source of the much quoted metaphor–itself a Biblical reference–of America as a “city upon a hill.” But what did Winthrop mean, exactly? And how do his words apply today, in a very different America than he could have imagined. Please join us (registration required)! Details below.

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Gaddy v. Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the 10th Circuit heard oral arguments in a class action lawsuit accusing the LDS Church of fraudulently misrepresenting its founding and the use of tithing funds. A Utah federal court had previously dismissed the case, which was brought by former members claiming the Church’s leaders did not sincerely believe in the foundational narrative.
  • In Catholic Benefits Association v. Burrows, a federal district court in North Dakota blocked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from enforcing rules that would compel a Catholic organization to accommodate employee’s abortions and infertility treatments in violation of the organization’s religious teachings. The court ruled that such mandates would infringe on religious freedom.
  • In In re Calvary Chapel Iowa, an Iowa Administrative Law Judge ruled that the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act shields churches from taxpayer lawsuits challenging their property tax exemptions. The court held that such lawsuits impose a substantial burden on religious exercise, and that tax enforcement is better handled by the state, not individuals, to avoid retaliatory actions against religious organizations.
  • Jewish students filed a lawsuit against Haverford College alleging the college violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to enforce its nondiscrimination policy and protect Jewish students from harassment over their pro-Israel views. The complaint also includes a breach of contract claim, accusing the college of fostering a hostile environment where Jewish students feel unsafe expressing support for Israel.
  • Ukraine signed a new law, No. 3894-IX, effective August 24, banning the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) for justifying and supporting Russia’s invasion, and introducing legal procedures to dissolve Ukrainian religious organizations connected to the ROC. The law specifically targets the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by prohibiting affiliations with any Russian religious groups involved in supporting the war.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Treatise on Islamic Contract Law

This month, Oxford University Press publishes what purports to be the first comprehensive treatise in the English language on Islamic contract law, titled, appropriately enough, Islamic Contract Law. The treatise is directed at non-experts and looks very helpful. The authors are Ilias Bantekas (Hamad bin Khalifa University),Jonathan G. Ercanbrack (SOAS University of London), Umar A. Oseni (International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation), and Ikram Ullah (International Islamic University Islamabad). Here is the description from the Oxford website:

The first comprehensive treatment of Islamic contract law in the English language, Islamic Contract Law serves as both a reference work and an authoritative statement of the law and the Fiqh underlying it.

The book’s structure draws from the tradition of western contract law books to enable non-expert readers to easily navigate its structure, sources, and application. It covers the complete spectrum of Islamic contract regulation, and includes chapters on the formation of contracts, the sources of Islamic contract law, the role of intention, legal capacity, the importance of the subject matter, as well as the prohibited elements of contracts. Further chapters discuss validity and defects, contractual terms, bilateral agreements, equity-based partnership contracts, ancillary and unilateral contracts, termination and damages, and the role of third parties. Finally, a chapter is devoted to the application of Islamic law in contemporary Muslim-majority legal systems.

This is a key work for understanding the contract underpinnings of Islamic finance instruments and is a must-read for scholars, legal professionals, and students with an interest in contracts governed by Islamic Law.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian at ICLARS Next Month

I’m greatly looking forward to participating in next month’s ICLARS conference at Notre Dame Law School. I’ll be on a panel, “Status, Conduct, and Message,” along with Steven Collis of the University of Texas and Amy Sepinwall of the University of Pennsylvania. We’ll try to make sense of some of the Court’s recent religious freedom cases. Details in the conference program, below. Friends of the Mattone Center, please stop by and say hello!

ICLARS 2024 Program with logos first draft for print (JMT 20092024) (1)Download
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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Jarrard v. Sheriff of Polk County, the Eleventh Circuit held that Georgia jail officials violated the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment when they dismissed and continually denied the reapplication of a volunteer jail minister. The court found that the jail officials engaged in viewpoint discrimination based primarily on their theological disagreement with the petitioner’s beliefs on baptism and that even if they were concerned about inmate well-being and potential problems for jail administration, the jail did not pursue the least restrictive means to preserve petitioner’s right to express his beliefs.
  • In Case of Pindo Mulla v. Spain, the European Court of Human Rights held that a Spanish court had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by authorizing a blood transfusion for a critically bleeding woman who had refused blood transfusions due to her beliefs as a Jehovah’s Witness.
  • Amid current controversies relating over the sale of the “Cow’s Garden,” Armenian Christians strive to maintain their centuries-long presence in Jerusalem’s Old City.
  • The United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has recently come under criticism for his blog post stating that Azerbaijan has been able to “liberate” the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan conducted an ethnic cleansing of the region’s 120,000 Christian Armenians in violation of an order from the International Court of Justice.