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Full-Text Articles in Law
House Of Wisdom Or A House Of Cards? Why Teaching Islam In U.S. Foreign Detention Facilities Violates The Establishment Clause, Scott Thompson
House Of Wisdom Or A House Of Cards? Why Teaching Islam In U.S. Foreign Detention Facilities Violates The Establishment Clause, Scott Thompson
Publications
In an attempt to erase Islamic-fundamentalist sentiments held by detainees apprehended in the course of the "war on terror," the United States government began teaching and preaching a more moderate version of the Qur'an and Islam to detainees in Iraq. One such detention program in Iraq was dubbed the House of Wisdom. But the wisdom of such a practice is highly suspect--both because it likely runs afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and because it may be doing more harm than good to the American effort to defuse Islamic-extremism and anti-American sentiment. This Article examines the practice …
Religious Establishment And Autonomy, Andrew Koppelman
Religious Establishment And Autonomy, Andrew Koppelman
Faculty Working Papers
Kent Greenawalt claims that one rationale for nonestablishment of religion is personal autonomy. If, however, the law is barred from manipulating people in religious directions (and thus violating their autonomy), while it remains free to manipulate them in nonreligious directions (and thus violate their autonomy in exactly the same way), autonomy as such is not what is being protected. The most promising alternative is to understand religion as a distinctive human good that is being protected from government interference.