The US Fish and Wildlife Service this month granted a permit to the Northern Arapaho Tribe to capture and kill two wild bald eagles a year for use in religious ceremonies. Although some conservation and animal-rights groups question the need for killing, suggesting the tribe use the carcasses of eagles killed accidentally instead, the tribe maintains that wild birds are necessary. The tribe had filed a lawsuit against the Service to force the grant of the permit, but the Service says its decision was unrelated to the pending litigation. Federal law protects bald and golden eagles, but the government has granted permits for killing eagles in religious ceremonies to several Native American tribes.
Sharia’h and the Exploitation of Natural Resources
Via Professor Howard Friedman: Nima Mersadi Tabari, Ph.D. candidate at the University of London’s Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, has timely posted The Sharia’h Dimension of the Persian Gulf’s Hydrocarbon Resources. Tabari illustrates how Islamic law governs extraction of Middle Eastern oil, financing oil operations, and sale of this indispensable and all consuming resource. Such a study promises to illuminate the originating motives of the global oil politics that permeate American domestic policy (consider the congressional Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling dispute, which remains active after decades [NYT, Feb. 3]) and its foreign concerns (the Iranian threat to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, and naval buildup there, is a frightening tinderbox [NYT, Feb. 13]. Please find Tabari’s abstract after the jump. Read more