Islam is a growing presence practically everywhere in Europe. In Italy, however, Islam has met a unique model of state neutrality, religious freedom and church and state collaboration. This book gives a detailed description of the legal treatment of Muslims in Italy, contrasting it with other European states and jurisprudence, and with wider global tendencies that characterize the treatment of Islam. Through focusing on a series of case studies, the author argues that the relationship between church and state in Italy, and more broadly in Europe, should be reconsidered both to secure religious freedom and general welfare. Working on the concepts of religious freedom, state neutrality, and relationship between church and state, Andrea Pin develops a theoretical framework that combines the state level with the supranational level in the form of the European Convention of Human Rights, which ultimately shapes a unitary but flexible understanding of pluralism. This approach should better accommodate not just Muslims' needs, but religious needs in general in Italy and elsewhere.

Faith-based organizations play a major role in providing a host of health, educational, and social services to the public. Nearly all these efforts, however, have been accompanied by intense debate and numerous legal challenges. The right of faith-based organizations to hire based on religion, the presence of religious symbols and icons in rooms where government-subsidized services are provided, and the enforcement of gay civil rights to which some faith-based organizations object all continue to be subjects of intense debate and numerous court cases. In Pluralism and Freedom, Stephen V. Monsma explores the question of how much autonomy should faith-based organizations retain when they enter the public realm? He contends that pluralism and freedom demand their religious freedom be respected, but that freedom of all religious traditions and of the general public and secular groups be equally respected, ideals that neither the left nor the right live up to. In response, Monsma argues that democratic pluralism requires a genuine, authenticOCobut also a limitedOCoautonomy for faith-based organizations providing public services, and offers practical, concrete public policy applications of this framework in practice.

The response of states to demands for free exercise of religion or belief varies greatly across the world. In some places, religions come as close as imaginable to autonomous existences with little interference from government. In other cases religion finds itself grinding out a meagre living, if at all, under the jealously watchful eye of the state. This book provides a legal and normative overview of the variety of responses to minority religions available to states. Exploring case studies ranging from Islamic regions such as Indonesia, Pakistan, and the wider Middle East, to Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China, Russia, Canada, and the Baltics, contributors include international scholars and experts in law, sociology, religious studies, and political science. This book offers invaluable perspectives on how minority religions are currently being received, reviewed, challenged, or ignored in different parts of the world.

The response of states to demands for free exercise of religion or belief varies greatly across the world. In some places, religions come as close as imaginable to autonomous existences with little interference from government. In other cases religion finds itself grinding out a meagre living, if at all, under the jealously watchful eye of the state. This book provides a legal and normative overview of the variety of responses to minority religions available to states. Exploring case studies ranging from Islamic regions such as Indonesia, Pakistan, and the wider Middle East, to Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China, Russia, Canada, and the Baltics, contributors include international scholars and experts in law, sociology, religious studies, and political science. This book offers invaluable perspectives on how minority religions are currently being received, reviewed, challenged, or ignored in different parts of the world.

Advocacy for religious freedom has become a global project while religion, and the management of religion, has become of increasing interest to scholars across a wider range of disciplines. Rather than adopting the common assumption that religious freedom is simply incompletely realized, the authors in this book suggest that the starting point for understanding religion in public life today should be religious establishment. In the hyper-globalized world of the politics of religious freedom today, a focus on establishments brings into view the cultural assumptions, cosmologies, anthropologies, and institutions which structure religion and religious diversity. Leading international scholars from a diverse range of disciplines explore how countries today live with religious difference and consider how considering establishments reveals the limitations of universal, multicultural, and interfaith models of religious freedom. Examining the various forms religion takes in Tunisia, Canada, Taiwan, South Africa, and the USA, amongst others, this book argues that legal protections for religious freedom can only be understood in a context of socially and culturally specific constraints.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution begins: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Taken as a whole, this statement has the aim of separating church and state, but tensions can emerge between its two elements-the so-called Nonestablishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause-and the values that lie beneath them. If the government controls (or is controlled by) a single church and suppresses other religions, the dominant church's "establishment" interferes with free exercise. In this respect, the First Amendment's clauses coalesce to protect freedom of religion. But Kent Greenawalt sets out a variety of situations in which the clauses seem to point in opposite directions. Are ceremonial prayers in government offices a matter of free exercise or a form of establishment? Should the state provide assistance to religious private schools? Should parole boards take prisoners' religious convictions into account? Should officials act on public reason alone, leaving religious beliefs out of political decisions? In circumstances like these, what counts as appropriate treatment of religion, and what is misguided? When Free Exercise and Nonestablishment Conflict offers an accessible but sophisticated exploration of these conflicts. It explains how disputes have been adjudicated to date and suggests how they might be better resolved in the future. Not only does Greenawalt consider what courts should decide but also how officials and citizens should take the First Amendment's conflicting values into account.

With religion at centre stage in conflicts worldwide, and in social, ethical and geo-political debates, this book takes a timely look at relations between law and religion. To what extent can religion play a role in secular legal systems? How do peoples of various faiths live successfully by both secular laws as well as their religious laws? Are there limits to freedom of religion? These questions are related to legal deliberations and broader discussions around secularism, multiculturalism, immigration, settlement and security. The book is unique in bringing together leading scholars and respected religious leaders to examine legal, theoretical, historical and religious aspects of the most pressing social issues of our time. In addressing each other's concerns, the authors ensure accessibility to interdisciplinary and non-specialist audiences: scholars and students in social sciences, human rights, theology and law, as well as a broader audience engaged in social, political and religious affairs. Five of the book's thirteen chapters address specific contemporary issues in Australia, one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world and a pioneer of multicultural policies. Australia is a revealing site for contemporary studies in a world afraid of immigration and terrorism. The other chapters deal with political, legal and ethical issues of global significance. In conclusion, the editors propose increasing dialogue with and between religions. Law may intervene in or guide such dialogue by defending the free exchange of religious ideas, by adjudicating disputes over them, or by promoting a civil society that negotiates, rather than litigates.

With religion at centre stage in conflicts worldwide, and in social, ethical and geo-political debates, this book takes a timely look at relations between law and religion. To what extent can religion play a role in secular legal systems? How do peoples of various faiths live successfully by both secular laws as well as their religious laws? Are there limits to freedom of religion? These questions are related to legal deliberations and broader discussions around secularism, multiculturalism, immigration, settlement and security.

The book is unique in bringing together leading scholars and respected religious leaders to examine legal, theoretical, historical and religious aspects of the most pressing social issues of our time. In addressing each other's concerns, the authors ensure accessibility to interdisciplinary and non-specialist audiences: scholars and students in social sciences, human rights, theology and law, as well as a broader audience engaged in social, political and religious affairs. Five of the book's thirteen chapters address specific contemporary issues in Australia, one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world and a pioneer of multicultural policies. Australia is a revealing site for contemporary studies in a world afraid of immigration and terrorism. The other chapters deal with political, legal and ethical issues of global significance. In conclusion, the editors propose increasing dialogue with and between religions. Law may intervene in or guide such dialogue by defending the free exchange of religious ideas, by adjudicating disputes over them, or by promoting a civil society that negotiates, rather than litigates.

This book analyses the right to religious freedom within international law. Analysing legal structures in a variety of both Western and non-Western jurisdictions, the book sets out a topography of the different constitutional structures of religion within the state and their compliance with international human rights law. The book also considers the position of women's religious freedom vis a vis community claims of religious freedom. Taking a rigorous approach to the right, Anat Scolnicov argues that the interpretation and application of religious freedom must be understood as a conflict between individual and group claims of rights, and argues for an individualistic interpretation of this right.

The narratives of slaves, wives, and servants who resisted social and domestic violence in the nineteenth century In the early nineteenth century, Peter Wheeler, a slave to Gideon Morehouse in New York, protested, “Master, I won’t stand this,” after Morehouse beat Wheeler’s hands with a whip. Wheeler ran for safety, but Morehouse followed him with a shotgun and fired several times. Wheeler sought help from people in the town, but his eventual escape from slavery was the only way to fully secure his safety. Everyday Crimes tells the story of legally and socially dependent people like Wheeler—free and enslaved African Americans, married white women, and servants—who resisted violence in Massachusetts and New York despite lacking formal protection through the legal system. These “dependents” found ways to fight back against their abusers through various resistance strategies. Individuals made it clear that they wouldn’t stand the abuse. Developing relationships with neighbors and justices of the peace, making their complaints known within their communities, and, occasionally, resorting to violence, were among their tactics. In bearing their scars and telling their stories, these victims of abuse put a human face on the civil rights issues related to legal and social dependency, and claimed the rights of individuals to live without fear of violence.

This book informs a renewed movement for fair lending and fair housing. Leading advocates and specialists examine strategic initiatives to realize objectives of the federal Fair Housing Act as well as state and local laws Well-known fair housing and fair lending activists and organizers examine the implications of the new wave of fair housing activism generated by Occupy Wall Street protests and the many successes achieved in fair housing and fair lending over the years. The book reveals the limitations of advocacy efforts and the challenges that remain. Best directions for future action are brought to light by staff of fair housing organizations, fair housing attorneys, community and labor organizers, and scholars who have researched social justice organizing and advocacy movements. The book is written for general interest and academic audiences. Contributors address the foreclosure crisis, access to credit in a changing marketplace, and the immoral hazards of big banks. They examine opportunities in collective bargaining available to homeowners and how low-income and minority households were denied access to historically low home prices and interest rates. Authors question the effectiveness of litigation to uphold the Fair Housing Act's promise of nondiscriminatory home loans and ask how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is assuring fair lending. They also look at where immigrants stand, housing as a human right, and methods for building a movement.

Although human rights belong to all persons on the basis of their humanity, this book demonstrates that in the practice of international human rights law, the freedom to be non-religious or atheist does not receive the same protection as the freedom to be religious. Despite the claimed universality of freedom of religion and belief contained in article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the key assertion made is that there is a hierarchy of religion and belief, with followers of major established religions enjoying high protection and low regulation at the top, and atheists and non-believers enduring high persecution and weaker protection at the bottom. The existence of this hierarchy is proven and critiqued through three case study chapters that respectively explore the extent to which non-religious and atheist rights-holders enjoy freedom from proselytism, freedom from hate and freedom from the religions of their parents.

In the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, leading planers and social scientists examine public space today and freedom of assembly. The Occupy Wall Street movement has challenged the physical manifestation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly. Where and how can people congregate today? Forty social scientists, planners, architects, and civil liberties experts explore the definition, use, role, and importance of public space for the exercise of our democratic rights to free expression. The book also discusses whose voice is heard and what factors limit the participation of minorities in Occupy activities. This foundational work puts issues of democracy and civic engagement back into the center of dialogue about the built environment. Beyond Zuccotti Park is a collaborative effort of Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, City College of New York School of Architecture, New Village Press and its parent organization, Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. The book is part of an open civic inquiry on the part of these organizations. The project was seeded by a series of free public forums, Freedom of Assembly: Public Space Today, held at the Center for Architecture in response to the forced clearance of Occupy activities from Zuccotti Park and public plazas throughout the country. The first two recorded programs took place on December 17, 2011 and February 4, 2012.

This book examines the origins of Australia's constitutional religious freedom provision. It explores, on the one hand, the political activities and motives of religious leaders seeking to give the Australian Constitution a religious character and, on the other, the political activities and motives of a religious minority seeking to prevent the Australian Constitution having a religious character. The book also interrogates the argument advanced at the Federal Convention in favour of section 116, dealing with separation of religion and government, and argues that until now scholars and courts have misunderstood that argument. The book casts new light to show how the origins of the provision lead to section 116 being conceptualised as a safeguard against religious intolerance on the part of the Commonwealth. Written in an accessible style, the work has potential to influence the development of constitutional doctrine by the High Court through its challenge of historical assumptions on which the High Court's current doctrine is based. Given the ongoing political debates concerning the interaction of discrimination law and religious freedom, the book will be of interest to academics and policy-makers working in the areas of law and religion, constitutional law and comparative law.

This book analyzes the promotion and protection of freedom of religion in the international arena with a particular focus on the role and influence of the US International Religious Freedom Act, 1998. It also investigates the impact of the IRFA on the legislation and policies of third countries and the EU. The book develops the story of the protection of religious freedom through foreign policy by showing how religious laws affect and shape a more communitarian dimension of the notion of freedom of religion which stands in contrast with a traditionally Western individualistic understanding of the right. It is argued that it is still possible to defend the unstable category of freedom of religion or belief especially when major violations are at stake. The book presents a balanced contribution to the academic debate on the promotion and protection of religious freedom. The comparative approach and interdisciplinary methodology make it a valuable resource for academics, students and policy-makers in Law, International Relations and Strategic Studies.

Kaing Guek Eav was an ordinary man growing up in Cambodia in the mid-twentieth century. But then, adopting the alias "Duch," he joined the Khmer Rouge and took charge of S-21, the infamous secret security center where in less than four years at least 14,000 "enemies" were interrogated, tortured, and executed. After the government's collapse, Duch fled to the Cambodian frontier, where he lived in anonymity until he was finally unmasked and sentenced to life in prison for his crimes. With remarkable and chilling precision, Duch describes firsthand the Khmer Rouge movement and his own role in the paranoid irrationality of the regime. An introduction and epilogue delve unflinchingly into Duch's character and motivations, our common humanity, and the sometimes uncomfortable implications of global justice.

In this Element, I introduce the socio-legal study of politics of rights as the theoretical framework to understand rights in the culturally and politically diverse region of Southeast Asia. The politics of rights framework is empirically grounded and treats rights as social practices whereby rights' meanings and implications emerge from being put into action or mobilised. I elaborate on the concepts underlying politics of rights and develop an analysis of rights in Southeast Asia using this framework. The analysis focusses on: what are the structural conditions that influence the emergence of rights mobilisation? How do people mobilise rights and what forms does rights mobilisation take? What are the consequences of rights mobilisation and how do we assess them? I hope that this view of politics of rights - from a Global South region and from the ground - can encourage more astute evaluations of the power of rights.

The question of to what extent, manifestations of religious beliefs should be permitted in the European public sphere has become a salient and controversial topic in recent years. Despite the increasing interest however, debates have rarely questioned the conventional wisdom that an increase in the range of security measures employed by a government inevitably leads to a decrease in the human rights enjoyed by individuals. This book analyses the relationship between state security regime changes and the right to religious freedom in the EU. It presents a comparative analysis of the impact these regime changes have had on the politics, policies and protections of religious freedom across the EU member states in the post-2001 environment. The book provides a timely investigation into the role of national legislation, the European Court of Human Rights, and societal trends in the protection of religious freedom, and in so doing demonstrates why the relationship between state security and religious freedom is one of the most socially significant challenges facing policymakers and jurists in Europe at the present time.

Religious discrimination is the norm in many countries around the world, and the rate is rising. Nearly every country which discriminates does so unequally, singling out some religious minorities for more discrimination than others. Religious tradition does not explain this complex issue. For example, Muslim majority states include both the most discriminatory and tolerant states in the world, as is also the case with Christian majority states. Religious ideologies, nationalism, regime, culture, security issues, and political issues are also all part of the answer. In The Unfree Exercise of Religion Jonathan Fox examines how we understand concepts like religious discrimination and religious freedom, and why countries discriminate. He makes a study of religious discrimination against 597 religious minorities in 177 countries between 1990 and 2008. While 29 types of discrimination are discussed in this book, the most common include restrictions in places of worship, proselytizing, and religious education.

Drawing on the critical and theoretical concepts of sovereignty, biopolitics, and necropolitics, this book examines how a normative liberal and secular understanding of India s religious identity is translatable by Hindu nationalists into discrimination and violence against minoritized religious communities. Extending these concepts to an analysis of historical, political and legal genealogies of conversion, the author demonstrates how a concern for sovereignty links past and present anti-conversion campaigns and laws.

The book illustrates how sovereignty informs the making of secularism as well as religious difference. The focus on sovereignty sheds light on the manner in which religious difference becomes a point of reference for the religio-secular idioms of Bombay cinema, for legal judgements on communal violence, for human rights organizations, and those seeking justice for communal violence. This wide-ranging examination and discussion of the trajectories of (anti) conversion politics through historical, legal, philosophical, popular cultural, archival and ethnographic material offers a cogent argument for shifting the stakes and rethinking the relationship between sovereignty and religious freedom. The book is a timely contribution to broader theoretical and political discussions of (post) secularism and human rights, and is of interest to students and scholars of postcolonial studies, cultural studies, law, and religious studies.

This is the first global examination of the historical relationship between Christianity and human rights in the twentieth century. Leading historians, anthropologists, political theorists, legal scholars, and scholars of religion develop fresh approaches to issues such as human dignity, personalism, religious freedom, the role of ecumenical and transatlantic networks, and the relationship between Christian and liberal rights theories. In doing so they move well beyond the temporal and geographical limits of the existing scholarship, exploring the connection between Christianity and human rights, not only in Europe and the United States, but also in Africa, Latin America, and China. They offer alternative chronologies and bring to light overlooked aspects of this history, including the role of race, gender, decolonization, and interreligious dialogue. Above all, these essays foreground the complicated relationship between global rights discourses - whether Christian, liberal, or otherwise - and the local contexts in which they are developed and implemented.

Click here to see a video interview with Emelio Betances. Click here to access the tables referenced in the book. Since the 1960s, the Catholic Church has acted as a mediator during social and political change in many Latin American countries, especially the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Although the Catholic clergy was called in during political crises in all five countries, the situation in the Dominican Republic was especially notable because the Church's role as mediator was eventually institutionalized. Because the Dominican state was persistently weak, the Church was able to secure the support of the Balaguer regime (1966 1978) and ensure social and political cohesion and stability. Emelio Betances analyzes the particular circumstances that allowed the Church in the Dominican Republic to accommodate the political and social establishment; the Church offered non-partisan political mediation, rebuilt its ties with the lower echelons of society, and responded to the challenges of the evangelical movement. The author's historical examination of church-state relations in the Dominican Republic leads to important regional comparisons that broaden our understanding of the Catholic Church in the whole of Latin America."

Through its close, critical reading of the political treatises and polemical literature produced in France in the sixteenth century, this book offers a valuable new contribution to the intellectual history of the Early Modern era. Sophie Nicholls analyses the political thought of the theologians and jurists in the Holy League as they pursued their crusade against heresy in the French kingdom, during the wars of religion (1562-1629). Contemporaries portrayed the Leaguers as rebellious anarchists, who harboured dangerously democratic ideas. In contrast, Nicholls demonstrates that the intellectuals in the movement were devoted royalists, who had more in common with their moderate counterparts, the 'politiques'. In paying close attention to the conceptual language of politics in this era, this book shows how jurists and theologians in the League presented visions of sovereignty that subtly replenished medieval ideas of kingship and priesthood, and endeavoured to replace them with a new synthesis of intellectual tradition and political power. In a period when 'the state' was still emerging as an idea, analysing League thought in the context of Jesuit and Second Scholastic sources positions the Leaguers in relation to innovative attempts in European Catholic circles to re-think the nature of belonging to a political community.

Emma Goldman's Supreme Court appeal occurred during a transitional point for First Amendment law, as justices began incorporating arguments related to free expression into decisions on espionage and sedition cases. This project analyzes the communications that led to her arrest-writings in Mother Earth, a mass-mailed manifesto, and speeches related to compulsory military service during World War I-as well as the ensuing legal proceedings and media coverage. The authors place Goldman's Supreme Court appeal in the context of the more famous Schenck and Abrams trials to demonstrate her place in First Amendment history while providing insight into wartime censorship and the attitude of the mainstream press toward radical speech.

An introduction to antiracism, a powerful tradition crucial for energizing American democracy On August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a rally of white nationalists and white supremacists culminated in the death of a woman murdered in the street. Those events made clear that racism is alive and well in the United States of America. However, they also brought into sharp relief another American tradition: antiracism. While racists marched and chanted in the streets, they were met and matched by even larger numbers of protesters calling for racism's end. Racism is America's original and most enduring sin, with well-known historic and contemporary markers: slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, police brutality. But racism has always been challenged by an opposing political theory and practice. Alex Zamalin's Antiracism tells the story of that opposition. The most theoretically generative and politically valuable source of antiracist thought has been the black American intellectual tradition. While other forms of racial oppression-for example, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Latino racism-have been and continue to be present in American life, antiblack racism has always been the primary focus of American antiracist movements. From antislavery abolition to the antilynching movement, black socialism to feminism, the long Civil Rights movement to the contemporary Movement for Black Lives, Antiracism examines the way the black antiracist tradition has thought about domination, exclusion, and power, as well as freedom, equality, justice, struggle, and political hope in dark times. Antiracism is an accessible introduction to the political theory of black American antiracism, through a study of the major figures, texts, and political movements across US history. Zamalin argues that antiracism is a powerful tradition that is crucial for energizing American democracy.