'Human Rights and Reformist Islam' critiques traditional Islamic approaches to the question of compatibility between human rights and Islam, and argues instead for their reconciliation from the perspective of a reformist Islam. The book focuses on six controversial case studies: religious discrimination; gender discrimination; slavery; freedom of religion; punishment of apostasy; and arbitrary or harsh punishments. Explaining the strengths of structural ijtihad, Mohsen Kadivar's draws on the rational classification of Islamic teachings as temporal or permanent on the one hand, and four criteria of being Islamic on the other: reasonableness, justice, morality and efficiency. He rejects all of the problematic verses and Hadith according to these criteria. The result is a powerful, solutions-based argument based on reformist Islam - providing a scholarly bridge between modernity and Islamic tradition in relation to human rights.

Indonesia's military government collapsed in 1998, igniting fears that economic, religious, and political conflicts would complicate any democratic transition. Yet in every year since 2006, the world's most populous Muslim country has received high marks from international democracy-ranking organizations. In this volume, political scientists, religious scholars, legal theorists, and anthropologists examine the theory and practice of Indonesia's democratic transition and its ability to serve as a model for other Muslim countries. They compare the Indonesian example with similar scenarios in Chile, Spain, India, and Tunisia, as well as with the failed transitions of Yugoslavia, Egypt, and Iran. Essays explore the relationship between religion and politics and the ways in which Muslims became supportive of democracy even before change occurred, and they describe how innovative policies prevented dissident military groups, violent religious activists, and secessionists from disrupting Indonesia's democratic evolution. The collection concludes with a discussion of Indonesia's emerging "legal pluralism" and of which of its forms are rights-eroding and rights-protecting.

Case studies of women exercising religious authority in Shi?i Islam from the classical period to the present Islamic religious authority is conventionally understood to be an exclusively male purview. Yet when dissected into its various manifestations leading prayer, preaching, issuing fatwas, transmitting hadith, judging in court, teaching law, theology, and other Islamic sciences and, generally shaping the Islamic scholarly tradition nuances emerge that hint at the presence of women in the performance of some of these functions. This collection of case studies, covering the period from classical Islam to the present, and taken from across the Shi?i Islamic world, reflects on the roles that women have played in exercising religious authority across time and space. Comparative reflection on the case studies allows for the formulation of hypotheses regarding the conditions and developments whether theological, jurisprudential, social, economic or political that enhanced or stifled the flourishing of female religious authority in Shi?i Islam.

Indonesia's military government collapsed in 1998, igniting fears that economic, religious, and political conflicts would complicate any democratic transition. Yet in every year since 2006, the world's most populous Muslim country has received high marks from international democracy-ranking organizations. In this volume, political scientists, religious scholars, legal theorists, and anthropologists examine the theory and practice of Indonesia's democratic transition and its ability to serve as a model for other Muslim countries. They compare the Indonesian example with similar scenarios in Chile, Spain, India, and Tunisia, as well as with the failed transitions of Yugoslavia, Egypt, and Iran. Essays explore the relationship between religion and politics and the ways in which Muslims became supportive of democracy even before change occurred, and they describe how innovative policies prevented dissident military groups, violent religious activists, and secessionists from disrupting Indonesia's democratic evolution. The collection concludes with a discussion of Indonesia's emerging "legal pluralism" and of which of its forms are rights-eroding and rights-protecting.

Ernst-Wolfgang Boeckenfoerde (b. 1930, d. 2019) is one of Europe's foremost legal scholars and political thinkers. As a scholar of constitutional law and a judge on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (December 1983 - May 1996), Boeckenfoerde has been a major contributor to contemporary debates in legal and political theory, to the conceptual framework of the modern state and its presuppositions, and to contested political issues such as the rights of the enemies of the state, the constitutional status of the state of emergency, citizenship rights, and challenges of European integration. His writings have shaped not only academic but also wider public debates from the 1950s to the present, to an extent that few European scholars can match. As a federal constitutional judge and thus holder of one the most important and most trusted public offices, Boeckenfoerde has influenced the way in which academics and citizens think about law and politics. During his tenure as a member of the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court, several path-breaking decisions for the Federal Republic of Germany were handed down, including decisions pertaining to the deployment of missiles, the law on political parties, the regulation of abortion, and the process of European integration. In the first representative edition in English of Boeckenfoerde's writings, this volume brings together his essays on constitutional and political theory. The volume is organized in four sections, focusing respectively on (I) the political theory of the state; (II) constitutional theory; (III) constitutional norms and fundamental rights; and (IV) the relation between state, citizenship, and political autonomy. Each of these feature introductions to the articles as well as a running editorial commentary to the work. A second volume will follow this collection, focusing on the relation between religion, law, and democracy. A companion volume entitled Religion, Law, and Democracy is also being published.

Ernst-Wolfgang Boeckenfoerde (b. 1930) is one of Europe's foremost legal scholars and political thinkers. As a scholar of constitutional law and a judge on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (December 1983 - May 1996), Boeckenfoerde has been a major contributor to contemporary debates in legal and political theory, to the conceptual framework of the modern state and its presuppositions, and to contested political issues such as the rights of the enemies of the state, the constitutional status of the state of emergency, citizenship rights, and challenges of European integration. His writings have shaped not only academic but also wider public debates from the 1950s to the present, to an extent that few European scholars can match. As a federal constitutional judge and thus holder of one the most important and most trusted public offices, Boeckenfoerde has influenced the way in which academics and citizens think about law and politics. During his tenure as a member of the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court, several path-breaking decisions for the Federal Republic of Germany were handed down, including decisions pertaining to the deployment of missiles, the law on political parties, the regulation of abortion, and the process of European integration. In the first representative edition in English of Boeckenfoerde's writings, this volume brings together his essays on constitutional and political theory. The volume is organized in four sections, focusing respectively on (I) the political theory of the state; (II) constitutional theory; (III) constitutional norms and fundamental rights; and (IV) the relation between state, citizenship, and political autonomy. Each of these feature introductions to the articles as well as a running editorial commentary to the work. A second volume will follow this collection, focusing on the relation between religion, law, and democracy.

This book traces religion and secularity in eleven countries not shaped by Western Christianity (Japan, China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco), and how they parallel or diverge from Charles Taylor's grand narrative of the North Atlantic world, A Secular Age (2007). In all eleven cases, the state - enhanced by post-colonial and post-imperial legacies - highly determines religious experience, by variably regulating religious belief, practice, property, education and/or law. Taylor's core condition of secularity - namely, legal permissibility and social acceptance of open religious unbelief (Secularity III) - is largely absent in these societies. The areas affected by state regulation, however, differ greatly. In India, Israel and most Muslim countries, questions of religious law are central to state regulation. But it is religious education and organization in China, and church property and public practice in Russia that bear the brunt. This book explains these differences using the concept of 'differential burdening'.

This book traces religion and secularity in eleven countries not shaped by Western Christianity (Japan, China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco), and how they parallel or diverge from Charles Taylor's grand narrative of the North Atlantic world, A Secular Age (2007). In all eleven cases, the state - enhanced by post-colonial and post-imperial legacies - highly determines religious experience, by variably regulating religious belief, practice, property, education and/or law. Taylor's core condition of secularity - namely, legal permissibility and social acceptance of open religious unbelief (Secularity III) - is largely absent in these societies. The areas affected by state regulation, however, differ greatly. In India, Israel and most Muslim countries, questions of religious law are central to state regulation. But it is religious education and organization in China, and church property and public practice in Russia that bear the brunt. This book explains these differences using the concept of 'differential burdening'.

Ernst-Wolfgang Boeckenfoerde (1930-2019) was one of Europe's foremost legal scholars and political thinkers. As a scholar of constitutional law and a judge on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (1983-1996), Boeckenfoerde was a major contributor to contemporary debates in legal and political theory, to the conceptual framework of the modern state and its presuppositions, and to contested political issues such as the constitutional status of the state of emergency, citizenship rights, bioethical politics, and the challenges of European integration. His writings have shaped not only academic but also wider public debates from the 1950s to the present, to an extent that few European scholars can match. As a federal constitutional judge and holder of a trusted public office, Boeckenfoerde has influenced the way academics and citizens think about law and politics. During his tenure on the Court, several path-breaking decisions for the Federal Republic of Germany were handed down, including decisions on the deployment of missiles, the law on political parties, the regulation of abortion, and the process of European integration. This second volume in the first representative edition in English of Boeckenfoerde's writings brings together his essays on religion, law, and democracy. The volume is organized in five sections: I. the Catholic Church and Political Order; II. State and Secularity; III. the Theology of Law and its Relation to Political Theory; IV. Norms and the Principle of Human Dignity; and V. Excerpts from a biographical interview. Sections I, II, III, and IV are preceded by an editors' introduction to the articles as well as running editorial commentary to the work.