Intersection of Law Politics and Religion

Since decolonization, many Muslim polities have struggled to reconcile their colonial legacy with their Islamic heritage in law, politics, and society. Starting from the so-called Islamic resurgence of the 1970s, Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq empowered constitutional courts to review legislation based on shariʿa (or shariʿa review). These courts are considered to have played an important role in negotiating law and religion under authoritarian as well as democratic contexts. The central question in evaluating shariʿa review is whether and to what extent constitutional doctrine articulated through shariʿa review is contingent on the ruling regime or represents lasting trends in the development of shariʿa. Using a constitutional ethnography of shariʿa review of stoning in Pakistan as a case study, I explore this question and contribute to existing theories on religion and constitutional politics, courts in authoritarian regimes, and authority in contemporary Islam. The central argument of this article is that constitutional courts are agents of the political regime and shariʿa review is a product of regime politics. The institutional structure of constitutional courts gives ruling regimes considerable control over the direction of shariʿa review. But ruling regimes often depend on religio-political forces for legitimacy. When regimes draw legitimacy from conservative religio-political movements, representatives of such movements are appointed to courts and allowed to assert traditional doctrines of shariʿa. But when regimes turn to a broader group of religio-political and intellectual forces for support, a more diverse set of judges is appointed and enabled to rethink the tradition. In this way, the long-term discursive trends in shariʿa are determined in the religio-political space and are only reflected in state law through politics. This argument is developed through an exploration of three questions about the shariʿa review of stoning in Pakistan.

The paper compares some of the writings of and about Islamic theologian Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1878-1960) with those of the Catholic Philosopher John Courtney Murray (1904-1967) so as to situate the struggle for pluralism within the two traditions and raise questions about how their approaches may assist contemporary quests for co-existent living between different traditions.  Also examined are various contemporary writings (George Grant, William Galston, Paul Kahn, the Catholic Compendium) alongside Islamic and other religious sources.

The Singapore constitution has often been described and analyzed as secular but in a qualified manner. This, I argue, is because commentators have applied the dominant paradigm of secular constitutionalism as (institutional) separation in examining Singapore's constitutional practice. Singapore defies this constitutional model because of its close entanglement with religion. In this article, I apply two different analytical models to better capture and evaluate Singapore's secular constitution. Specifically, I argue that the political discourse in Singapore has centered upon the ideal of neutrality and equal treatment of all religions. This conforms to a model that I call secular constitutionalism as equality. However, the legal jurisprudence shows a divergent approach whereby secular law, norms, and authority are prioritized, often lexically, over religious ones.

Акмаль Холматович Саидов — доктор юридических наук, профессор, Чрез)
вычайный и Полномочный посол, председатель Комитета по демократичес)
ким институтам, негосударственным организациям и органам самоуправления
граждан Законодательной Палаты Олий Мажлиса Республики Узбекистан,
директор Национального центра Республики Узбекистан по правам человека.
Автор учебников «Введение в основные правовые системы современности»
(Ташкент, 1998), «Сравнительное правоведение и юридическая география ми)
ра» (М., 1993), «Сравнительное правоведение (основные правовые системы со)
временности)» (М., 2007), «Международное право прав человека» (М., 2002),
«Общепризнанные права человека» (М., 2003), «Международное право в
схемах и определениях» (М., 2004), справочников «Межпарламентские орга)
низации мира» (М., 2004), «Национальные парламенты мира» (М., 2005) и др.
Открытая лекция Ю. А. Тихомирова представлена на Третьем международ)
ном научном семинаре «Сравнительное правоведение: современное состояние
и перспективы развития» в г. Симферополе 17–20 апреля 2008 г.

Nouvelle formation à l'ICES (Institut Catholique d'Etudes Supérieures).
Master 1 et 2 en formation initiale et en formation continue.
Formation ouverte aux actifs : les enseignements sont regroupés sur une période 12 mois et dispensés par sessions intensives de 3 jours une ou deux fois par mois.
Prochaine rentrée : janvier 2017.

Important works within History, Anthropology and Political Theory have tracked the genealogies of religion and politics (power), queried their construction as neat categories and underscored their imbrica-tion. Drawing upon such works, this essay focuses on the long and convoluted interaction of a radical religion of Orissa, eastern India, and the law, in order to highlight how religion and state power impinge upon and shape each other. Through a situated analysis of the gradual institutionalization of Mahima Dharma over the twentieth century dictated by the requirements of law, and the ascetics need to forge a bounded community with a strong centre, the essay demonstrates how the contingency and particular-ity of religion and politics enable their constant redefinition, while their imbricated interface reinforces the idea of separation. The essay thereby extends Talal Asad's enquiry into the genealogies of the religious and the secular, of religion and power, by arguing that the enmeshment and constant reshaping of power by religion and religion by power shores up the idea of their separation. This essay tracks the career of Mahima Dharma, a heterodox faith of Orissa, eastern India, over the twentieth century, in order to explore the enmeshments of religion and power as mediated by the law. My bid is to underscore the vital role played by law in the definition and classification of a radical religion, an endeavor that speeded up the institutionalization of the faith. The essay analyzes the perceptions and deployment of law by renouncers of the Dharma not only to highlight the distinct understandings and uses of state law but also to equally underscore the mutual constitution and conjoined articulation of religion and power, both understood as diffuse domains of meaning and authority accessing and exceeding the institutionalized relations of " politics " centring on the state and its subjects. 1 The essay contends that the contingency and particularity of religion and politics/power enable their constant redefinition and co-constitution. At a methodological level, it engages and extends Talal Asad's arguments that have underscored how genealogies of the religious and the secular, encoded in the separation of the two, demonstrate their rootedness in historical processes of specific (European) societies at particular (contingent) moments. Moreover, the demarcation and maintenance of the separation of the sacred and the secular are based upon abstractions, such that within these hermetically sealed off domains, the " sacred " bears a trans-cultural and ahistorical essence. 2 Taken together, recognition of such specificity and abstraction allows for a critical interrogation of the universal applicability of the doctrine of secularism as the separation of church and state or religion and politics/power. It is important to ask why the categorical division between religion and politics is held on to, even as these concepts and processes actually emerge as entirely entangled, and why, despite recognitions of the reality of enmeshments of religion and politics, this " real " is principally apprehended as tending towards the " ideal. " 3 This is to say, even those analytical endeavors that recognize the intersections between religion and politics do so by treating the two as entirely distinct domains, governed by the ideal of their separation, which are then understood as coming together.

Canadian Council of Christian Charities submits that the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society's decision to refuse the proposed Law Degree of Trinity Western University amounts to nothing less than a rejection of Canada’s jealously and expansively protected religious freedoms.  It strikes a devastating blow to the very heart of religious civil society and has the effect of reducing the rich tapestry of Canadian society to a monochromatic banner of uniformity. The long-term preservation of freedom, diversity, integrity, and Canada’s social capital requires the law to be willing to accept differences of belief and practice on such controversial issues as marriage. 

This case marks a defining moment for religious freedom in Canada.  This judicial review asks whether there is still room in Canada for religious communities to define their own culture and practices within reasonable limits, or whether such space is only available if religious beliefs and practices are in accordance with those beliefs and practices deemed uncontroversial by the legal profession.

Acheampong, Fredrick: Review of "God Bless Our Homeland Ghana: Religion and Politics in a Post-Colonial African State by J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu," in Trajectories of Religion in Africa: Essays in Honour of John S. Pobee, ed. Cephas Omenyo and Eric B Anum. YANA, no. 63, September 2014, 12-16.3

This is the newsletter # 32 of the Eurel website (sociological and legal data on religions in Europe and beyond) which is sent twice a year. The letter provides academic news concerning law and sociology of religion in many countries of Europe and Canada: references of recent books or articles, new websites, just released surveys, and coming meetings. The letter also includes information concerning the latest changes in the Eurel website.

After wrapping up a Q&A session at a public conference where I presented on the topic of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations to a largely evangelical Christian audience, an older man who was sitting in the back approached me at the podium. Rather nonchalantly, he asked, "You do know that the Constitution wasn't written for Muslims, right?" As we talked, he elaborated on his opinion that the concept of religious freedom does not apply to Islam and Muslims because, he said matter-of-factly, "Islam is not a religion." At the time, it seemed to me a fringe theory cooked up in the dark corners of the internet or in 6 am greasy-spoon breakfast meet-ups. In short, I could not really believe — given my own biases — that people could actually think that the First Amendment and its promise of religious freedom did not extend to Islam and Muslims in the U.S. However, far from fringe political theory or radical cultural posturing, this view has found its way into legal briefs, court cases, and political contexts in recent years. In fact, these legal and political perspectives are the fodder for Asma Uddin’s new book When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom.

To download, go to https://ssrn.com/abstract=3043304

This Article dissects two developments in widely separate areas of American constitutional law – the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test for the Fourth Amendment’s Search and Seizure Clause and the “endorsement” test for the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.  These two stories might seem worlds apart, and they have not previously been systematically examined together.  Nevertheless, the Article argues that they have in common at least three important symptoms of our legal culture’s deep malaise.  These three phenomena occur in other contexts too.  But they appear with special clarity and a stark cumulative force in the two stories on which the Article focuses.

The most evident of these three common threads is a shallow and distracting focus on psychological reactions and affects.  Another is the doomed effort apparent in both contexts to ground legal values in empirical facts, an effort found in other current legal strategies such as “original public meaning originalism.”  The third is the failure to see that legal techniques that can make sense to solve hard cases at the edges of doctrinal categories must sometimes be distinct from the deeper principles that motivate and shape the categories themselves.

The Article examines the doctrinal development of both the “reasonable expectation of privacy” and “endorsement” tests.  It also contemplates their possible fates as each comes under increasing practical and conceptual pressure.  At the end of the day, the Article is in some respects a plea for at least a certain sort of legal formalism – not the illusory axiomatic, determinate, legal formalism, that was the straw man of legal realists, but a more modest yet self-confident formalism that understands law’s distinctive role, in concert with other normative languages, in both framing and shaping the world in which we live.

The suspicion that religion is a fundamental source of terrorism has been broadly examined since the 9 11 attacks In fact religious motive has became an essential part of defining terrorism in many jurisdictions My chapter illustrates the difficulties in examining secular and religious motives The inclusion of religious motive as an essential element of a terrorist activity might encourage a process of religious profiling in which investigators paid undue attention to the religion of suspects or accused persons This not only put religion on trials but also encourages discriminations