Another blow for Christian minorities in the Middle East: last week, Turkey’s highest court ruled against the Mor Gabriel Syriac Orthodox monastery (left), the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, in a long-running lawsuit brought by local villagers. The lawsuit accused the monastery of “anti-Turkish activities,” including the illegal occupation of land that allegedly belongs to the government. Most commentators have dismissed the merits of the lawsuit — among other things, the suit claims the monastery occupies the site of a pre-existing mosque, even though the monastery predates Islam by centuries — and the high court’s behavior during the litigation has not reassured people. At one point, for example, the court apparently “lost” the documents the monastery submitted in support of its claim. The monastery will now appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled against Turkey in a similar case involving the Greek Orthodox a while ago. The EU, meanwhile, has expressed “serious concern” about the decision.
Syria’s Threatened Christians
The authors of this New York Times op-ed discuss the threat anti-Assad forces, which include increasing numbers of Sunni jihadists, pose to Syria’s Christians. “The ousting of the Assad regime has become a global moral obligation,” they write, “but so has the duty to ensure that Syria’s future holds a place for all minorities.” A nice thought, but given the track record, can anyone seriously expect that either Western governments or the international human rights community will do very much for Syria’s Christians?
Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity
The Armenian Genocide of 1915 had many causes, but one major factor was sectarian hatred, exacerbated by Christians’ assertions of equality under Ottoman law — assertions that contradicted traditional Islamic law. Clark University historian Taner Akçam has done a new study of the Genocide, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton 2012), which highlights the event’s religious dimensions. The publisher’s description follows.
Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. Presenting these previously inaccessible documents along with expert context and analysis, Taner Akçam’s most authoritative work to date goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a “crime against humanity and civilization,” the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey’s “official history” rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that Akçam now uses to overturn the official narrative.
The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia’s 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic.
By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.
Nichols on Religion and Marriage
Joel A. Nichols (University of St. Thomas School of Law) has posted Religion, Marriage, and Pluralism. The abstract follows.
In November 2010, Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly passed the first “anti-sharia statute” as an amendment to their state constitution. Although federal courts have held the Oklahoma amendment unconstitutional, several other states continue to move toward various bans on sharia law. Such statutes would have the greatest impact in family law.
This article describes tensions faced by members of both minority Muslim and majority Christian religious communities, who view family issues as controlled both by their religious community and by the demands of the civil state. The article outlines four possible future paths for the intersection of religion and the civil state regarding marriage and divorce. Within these four alternatives, it is clear that even if states purport to disallow sharia (or any other religious beliefs) such a pronouncement will not eliminate adherence to sharia among faithful Muslims. It would mean, at most, that sharia would not be enforced by civil courts. At least for some observant Muslims, the effect will be the same as in the United Kingdom or Ontario: Islamic religious arbitrations will continue to exist outside the protection of the civillaw.
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Crouch on Criminal Trials of Religious Minorities
Melissa Crouch (Melbourne Law School) has posted Criminal (In)Justice in Indonesia: The Cikeusik Trials. The abstract follows.
This article examines the recent court trials of the twelve men who were implicated in the brutal killing of three Ahmadis, and of injuring several others, in a demonstration against Ahmadiyah in Cikeusik in 2011. It calls into question the integrity of the criminal justice system, and argues that the government must take a firm stance against the perpetrators of vigilante violence by ensuring fair and impartial trials in criminal cases concerning religious intolerance, rather than criminalising the activities of religious minorities.
Wilson on Accommodating Religion in Family Law
Robin Fretwell Wilson (Washington and Lee University – School of Law) has posted The Perils of Privatized Marriage. The abstract follows.
Governments around the world continue to struggle with how to accommodate religious minorities in an increasingly pluralistic society, and how to accommodate religion in matters of family law. Efforts to respect religious understandings in family disputes seem at first blush innocuous: they would allow religious groups to define their own norms and celebrate the rich diversity of society. However, the experience of women and children of multiple faiths across the world demonstrates that religious deference extracts an unconscionable price. As the Volume in which this Chapter appears illustrates, such proposals would confer considerable latitude in family matters not only on adherents of Islam, but on Christians, Jews, and members of other faiths.
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Nussbaum, “The New Religious Intolerance”
From Harvard University Press, a new book by Martha Nussbaum (University 
of Chicago), The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age (forthcoming 2012). The publisher’s description follows.
What impulse prompted some newspapers to attribute the murder of 77 Norwegians to Islamic extremists, until it became evident that a right-wing Norwegian terrorist was the perpetrator? Why did Switzerland, a country of four minarets, vote to ban those structures? How did a proposed Muslim cultural center in lower Manhattan ignite a fevered political debate across the United States? In The New Religious Intolerance, Martha C. Nussbaum surveys such developments and identifies the fear behind these reactions. Drawing inspiration from philosophy, history, and literature, she suggests a route past this limiting response and toward a more equitable, imaginative, and free society.
Fear, Nussbaum writes, is “more narcissistic than other emotions.” Legitimate anxieties become distorted and displaced, driving laws and policies biased against those different from us. Overcoming intolerance requires consistent application of universal principles of respect for conscience. Just as important, it requires greater understanding. Nussbaum challenges us to embrace freedom of religious observance for all, extending to others what we demand for ourselves. She encourages us to expand our capacity for empathetic imagination by cultivating our curiosity, seeking friendship across religious lines, and establishing a consistent ethic of decency and civility. With this greater understanding and respect, Nussbaum argues, we can rise above the politics of fear and toward a more open and inclusive future.
Al-Azhar’s Bill of Rights
Earlier this week, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the world’s preeminent Sunni center of learning, announced a new “Bill of Rights” for Egypt. Al-Azhar hopes that the non-binding document will guide the newly-elected parliament in preparing the new Egyptian constitution. Al-Azhar consulted Muslim and Christian intellectuals during the document’s drafting, and influential religious and political leaders have endorsed it, including Coptic Pope Shenouda and representatives of Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi Al-Nour. Observers say the announcement is one in a series of attempts by Al-Azhar to assert a “moderate” version of Islam and beat back challenges from stricter versions of the faith endorsed by the Islamists.
The Times reports that the document protects “freedom of expression and belief.” I haven’t been able to find an official translation online, but phrases like these can obscure serious underlying tensions. For example, a secular Western liberal might understand “freedom of belief” to cover, among other things, the choice to change one’s religion. In a Muslim context, though, the phrase could mean only that non-Muslims have the right to convert to Islam — Muslims still would be prohibited from converting to other faiths. Similarly, “freedom of expression” would not protect expression perceived as an insult to Islam, for example, attempts to convince Muslims that other faiths are superior. The fact that Islamist parties have signed on to the new document suggests that these narrow interpretations are at least plausible.
Public Internet Access and the Establishment Clause
In a lawsuit filed yesterday, a resident of Salem, Missouri, claims that a public library’s decision to bar her Internet access to “occult” web sites, as well as those that impart “criminal skills,” violates the Freedom of Speech and the Establishment Clause. The ACLU is spearheading the law suit (h/t Religion Clause blog).
Setting aside the Free Speech Clause, and as respects the Establishment Clause claim alone, the allegations are that the library’s screening policies block access to information about minority religions, and specifically “Native American spirituality and related spirituality” including the Wiccan Church, Druidism, Haitian Voodoo, and Neo-Paganism. These policies have no secular purpose, have the principal effect of promoting some religions over others, and endorse “particular faiths and viewpoints,” according to the complaint. This language is drawn from Lemon and the endorsement test decisions.
I am having a difficult time seeing how, even if one agrees that these tests ought to be the standard, these facts make out an Establishment Clause violation. There might be all sorts of reasons that websites about various religions are blocked by a public library: the overinclusiveness of the screening mechanism, the dangerousness of the content of the site, the links on a particular site (which themselves may go to dangerous content), and the untrustworthiness of the site (it may have viruses). There are many other possibilities. And it does not appear that web sites about other religious minorities have been blocked. Is the claim that by blocking access, the library is endorsing Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Wahhabism? That can’t be right. But if the claim is that the library is endorsing Christianity by blocking access, then how does the plaintiff account for the access that is granted to other minority religions? And as for secular purpose, protecting the public from dangerous material on the Internet seems like it might fit the bill. Consider the example of Satanism: it would be permissible for a library to block access to Satanic sites not because it was disfavoring Satanism in particular, but because of the dangerousness of Satanic practice. Of course, the defendant will need to show that public safety or some similar secular reason grounds its Internet access decisions here.
Note that saying that the policy does not seem to violate the Establishment Clause is perfectly compatible with the view that it is poorly conceived, closed-minded, obtuse, mindlessly bureaucratic, or even problematic under the Speech Clause. It may be all of those things, of course, too.
Egypt’s Copts Fear Western Support Will Backfire
An interesting piece by Reuters’s religion editor Tom Heneghan
explains why Western support for Egypt’s Coptic Christians may cause more harm than good. Although well-meaning, Western support tends to associate Copts with foreigners and make Egyptian Muslims suspicious. For example, when Pope Benedict expressed outrage at a suicide bombing that killed 23 Copts in a church in Alexandria earlier this year, the rector of the most important Islamic seminary in Egypt, Al-Alzhar, suspended interfaith dialogue with the Vatican in protest. The Copts are Egyptians, the rector complained, and not the Vatican’s concern. The idea that Christians are disloyal foreigners surfaces periodically in the history of the Muslim Middle East and has led to retaliation against them. To give just one instance, suspicion that Christian communities were collaborating with the Empire’s European rivals contributed to widespread massacres in Ottoman Turkey in the nineteenth century. Heneghan’s piece makes clear how bad things are for Copts today: even expressions of sympathy can place them in serious danger.