Human Rights Law Commons^™

Islam & International Criminal Law: A Brief (In) Compatibility Study, Michael J. Kelly

Pace International Law Review Online Companion

This paper explores why that incompatibility between Islam and international criminal law persists and considers recommendations for mitigating that dynamic. Why is this important? Primarily because the Western-influenced international criminal law apparatus and the Muslim world are likely to collide more often in the future. If a war crimes tribunal is established in Afghanistan, or if the trial of Syrian agents for the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister goes forward, it is imperative that Islamic societies touched by those processes feel a sense of “buy-in” or participation that is meaningful for them. Otherwise, it becomes the same old story …

Defaming Muhammad: Dignity, Harm, And Incitement To Religious Hatred, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

The Danish cartoons controversy has generated a torrent of commentary seeking to define and defend competing conceptions of the normative implications of the affair. This Article addresses the question of how liberal democratic states ought to respond to visible manifestations of hatred, especially speech that constitutes incitement to religious hatred. Taking the publication of the Danish cartoons as its point of departure, the Article interrogates the complex historical and normative relationship between free speech and freedom of religion in the liberal democratic order and discusses the two critical questions of whether the cartoons give rise to a genuine conflict of …

Elusive Equality: The Armenian Genocide And The Failure Of Ottoman Legal Reform, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to deliver some remarks this morning. By way of background, I am not a historian or genocide scholar, but a law professor with an interest in comparative law and religion. Comparative law and religion is a relatively new field. It explores how different legal regimes reflect, and influence, the relationships that religious communities have with the state and with each other. My recent work compares Islamic and Christian conceptions of law, a subject that has engaged Muslims and Christians since their first encounters in the seventh century.

When I approach …