Image by Bassel Zaki from Pixabay. I spent the last six years studying the politics of intellectuals, broadly understood as people of knowledge. While I mainly focused on some leading Egyptian religious Muslim jurists’ stances on the 2011 Arab Revolutions, I have also observed intellectuals adhering to other traditions at different politically charged moments. As…
Photo of Ohio, USA by Robert Conklin on Unsplash. This article is part of our virtual symposium and essay series, “Masking Religious Freedom Violations.” Read more here. How does one protect a faith that most people would not even recognize as a religion? How can religious freedom be guaranteed when the public struggles to separate…
Photo titled “Ghosts, Spooky” from Pixabay (License). As anyone with cable or streaming television in the United States knows, it’s a scary world out there! Talking to dead people, hunting the forests for bigfoots, searching the skies for UFOs—it’s a big paranormal world that’s become big programming and entertainment. Maybe it’s because I recently stayed…
Trinity Church on Broadway and Wall Street, New York City. Photo by TLM1995 (CC BY-SA 4.0). In the relationship between law and religion, one side is in trouble. Historically, their ties were deep and meaningful. In the recent past, they dealt with many contentious issues, though none caused separation or divorce. The legacy of old…
The Internet, devised for the purpose of interconnecting diverse computer networks of research and educational communities, has become a global communication system that joins together widely disparate populaces with different ethical codes. The World Wide Web (WWW), hosted by the Internet, serves both to propagate existing ethe and to undermine them. Communities of the WWW, as…
“Together” Almas Shaikh Medium: Water and Acrylic Colors on a 300 GSM PaperDate: March 2022Artist’s Note: I painted this in early March while awaiting the verdict in the Hijab ban case we had argued before the Karnataka High Court. The court upheld the ban and the same was later challenged in the Supreme Court. This…
Baianas de Acarajé / October 18, 2007 / Wikimedia Commons This article is part of our “Clothed in Religion: Law and Religious Attire/Garb” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The government of Brazil has widely recognized and protected acarajé — a food that originates from Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian religion), as…
Picture by Jez Timms on Unsplash. Meatless Fridays were once one of the most visible markers of Catholic identity. For most of the American faithful, they are now observed only in the special liturgical season of Lent. US bishops should impose it as a weekly matter once again. The pastoral hopes that caused them to…
Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Televisionby Paul Kaplan and Daniel LaChance No reality television program about crime and punishment satisfied a hunger to see inmates as redeemable more than the A&E network’s most watched show, Dog the Bounty Hunter. Over the course of 246 episodes that aired from 2004 to 2012, the show…
Parliament House in Canberra, Australia by Thannicke (CC BY-SA 4.0) Social media forms part of the fabric of 21st century global life. A form of speech, social media allows communication with a potentially vast audience. Unsurprisingly, many people use it to disseminate religious views or ideas. While such proselytising (as part of a broad freedom…