Do Muslims pray even when they are not required to by “shari’a”? Or is being a Muslim a matter of performing exclusively compulsory religious acts, punctually and “to a T,” lest one get punished by the dreaded, bearded, and scowling “shari’a”? For reasons that we need not review here, outside of Muslim countries, we read…
“France’s New Marriage Laws Could Trigger Islamophobic Abuses“ Matthew P. Cavedon France is enacting sweeping legislation targeting Islamist extremism. Its new “separatism law” aims to ensure that Muslims integrate into the secular community. A number of its provisions, including restrictions on publishing information about public employees and limits on homeschooling, have raised the ire of…
Human Struggle: Christian and Muslim PerspectivesMona Siddiqui In this section from chapter two of Human Struggle: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, Professor Siddiqui compares how Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and Rainer Maria Rilke wrote ‘letters’ to a younger student in which both men express their intellectual restlessness and search for faith, meaning and salvation. Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali…
The study of religion has a long history of service to Western imperial ambitions. Recent decades have seen religious scholars wrestle with the implications of this colonial legacy for the future of the field. This essay, divided into two parts, will explore the connections between religion and colonialism. First, I will give a brief history…
US Center Chapel, located at the Geographic Center of the Lower 48 States in Lebanon, Kansas / Flickr Jimmy Emerson, DVM CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 During the Super Bowl, Jeep ran an ad that featured singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen in a chapel. Not at a political rally, not at a demonstration, but in a tiny chapel in…
“Denmark’s Provincial Bias against Foreign Religious Languages“ Matthew P. Cavedon Denmark has proposed a new law regulating religion. Under it, all sermons and homilies must be translated into Danish. This is being billed as a national security measure. It is also being attacked as a burden on small religious communities, an affront to linguistic minorities…
An EU Law on Religion – A Recent DevelopmentEmma Ahlm The following post is a reworking of the conclusions drawn in Emma Ahlm’s dissertation, EU Law and Religion – A Study of How the Court of Justice has Adjudicated on Religious Matters in EU Law at Uppsala University. ‘Would you tell me, please, which way…
No one has heard a peep from this chorister in nearly a year. Trained in law, religion, and the law of religious freedom, there was a time early in the pandemic when I wondered whether the social distancing mandates being adopted by state and, in some cases, municipal governments would be experienced by some as…
Three weeks ago, in the case of South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, the United States Supreme Court stayed the enforcement of California’s occupancy limits on worship services during the pandemic. At some level, there is nothing new here, as the Court had done the same in a New York case only a few…
“‘A Noble Alchemy’: Benefit of Clergy and the Early History of Leniency” Matthew P. Cavedon Criminal justice reform efforts have recently focused on the consequences of having a record. There is a growing sense that society needs to show mercy to those who pay the consequences for doing wrong and amend their lives, rather than…