In March, Hart Publishing released the second edition of Religious Freedom, Religious Discrimination and the Workplace by Lucy Vickers (Oxford Brookes University). The publisher’s description follows:
This book considers the extent to which religious interests are protected at work, with particular reference to the protection against religious discrimination provided by the Equality Act 2010. It establishes a principled basis for determining the proper scope of religious freedom at work, and considers the interaction of freedom of religion with the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of religion and belief. The book locates the debates surrounding religion and belief equality within a philosophical and theoretical framework in which the importance of freedom of religion and its role within the workplace are fully debated.This second edition is fully revised and updated in the light of recent case law from the UK and the European Court of Human Rights, which deals with religious discrimination and freedom of religion.
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.
the religious character of a state? And what kind of constitutional solutions might reconcile democracy with the type of religious demands raised in contemporary democratising or democratic states? Tensions over religion-state relations are gaining increasing salience in constitution writing and rewriting around the world. This book explores the challenge of crafting a democratic constitution under conditions of deep disagreement over a state’s religious or secular identity. It draws on a broad range of relevant case studies of past and current constitutional debates in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and offers valuable lessons for societies soon to embark on constitution drafting or amendment processes where religion is an issue of contention.
The public debate on Shariʿa councils in Britain has been heavily influenced by the assumption that the councils exist as religious authorities and that those who use them exercise their right to religious freedom. In Shariʿa Councils and Muslim Women in Britain Tanya Walker draws on extensive fieldwork from over 100 cases to argue for a radically different understanding of the setting and dynamics of the Shariʿa councils. The analysis highlights the pragmatic manoeuvrings of Muslim women, in pursuit of defined objectives, within limited space – holding in tension both the constraints of particular frameworks of power, and the realities of women’s agency. Despite this needed nuance in a polarised debate however, important questions about the rights of Muslim women remain.
citizens of Ukraine gathered on Kyiv’s central square (Maidan) to protest against a government that had reneged on its promise to sign a trade agreement with Europe. The Euromaidan protest included members of various Christian churches in Ukraine, who stood together and demanded government accountability and closer ties with Europe. In response, state forces massacred over one hundred unarmed civilians. The atrocity precipitated a rapid sequence of events: the president fled the country, a provisional government was put in place, and Russia annexed Crimea and intervened militarily in eastern Ukraine. An examination of Ukrainian churches’ involvement in this protest and the fall-out that it inspired opens up other questions and discussions about the churches’ identity and role in the country’s culture and its social and political history. Volume contributors examine Ukrainian churches’ historical development and singularity; their quest for autonomy; their active involvement in identity formation; their interpretations of the war and its causes; and the paths they have charted toward peace and unity.
supports only the groups which have the legal status of public law corporations, while, in a secular state, it seems that any privilege for some Churches should be abolished, or at least reduced so as not to hinder the equality in the freedom of all religions.
both formal and more subtle political strategies aimed at regulating civil society. Political authorities have a vested interest in keeping social and religious movements under control, which limits the opportunities religious leaders have to diminish violent conflicts between religious groups. This volume offers empirical examples of these connections in Ethiopia, Kenya, Zanzibar and Tanzania. It is valuable resource for both scholars and development practitioners interested in how politics and religion become conflated when religious actors engage to build peace.
Mexico, and Peru. Further, it includes theoretical and empirical analyses that identify the connections between religion and politics that characterize Latin American countries in general.
In Argentina, Pentecostalism had a breakthrough in the early 1980s, and today more than 10 per cent of the population are Pentecostals. The revival coincided with a socio-political transformation of Argentinean society. After half a century of dictatorships and Perónism, democracy was restored, and structural changes paved the way for an autonomisation of the political, economic, scientific and religious spheres. The “new” form of society that developed resembles what in this study is called a Western model, which to a large degree has been, and still is, spread on a global scale. In this book, Aasmundsen examines the religious sphere and how Pentecostals relate to society at large, and the political and judicial spheres in particular.
court, against a fellow Jew, to benefit a gentile – for breach of a duty of loyalty to a fellow Jew. Through close textual analysis, Saul Berman explores how Jewish jurists responded when this virtue of loyalty conflicted with values such as Justice, avoidance of desecration of God’s Name, deterrence of crime, defence of self, protection of Jewish community, and the duty to adhere to Law of the Land. Essential for scholars and graduate students in Talmud, Jewish law and comparative law, this key volume details the nature of these loyalties as values within the Jewish legal system, and how the resolution of these conflicts was handled. Berman additionally explores why this issue has intensified in contemporary times and how the related area of ‘Mesirah’ has wrongfully come to be prominently associated with this law regulating testimony.