Religion Law Commons^™

Law, Society, And Religion: Islam And The West, Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

Law and religion are present in almost every society, where the predominance of one over the other can greatly vary, and, in some cases, they both contend for authority over the citizenry. From a historical standpoint, this resulted in a constant change in the relationship between law and religion. Globalization also had a role in this regard. In some instances, globalization exacerbates differences between religions instead of encouraging mediation; it seeks to fill the gap left by the diminishing role of religion in the West. Globalization also competes with religion; both are looking for ways to regulate conduct and push …

Understanding An American Paradox: An Overview Of The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Spearit

Articles

In The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Sahar Aziz unveils a mechanism that perpetuates the persecution of religion. While the book’s title suggests a problem that engulfs Muslims, it is not a new problem, but instead a recurring theme in American history. Aziz constructs a model that demonstrates how racialization of a religious group imposes racial characteristics on that group, imbuing it with racial stereotypes that effectively treat the group as a racial rather than religious group deserving of religious liberty.

In identifying a racialization process that effectively veils religious discrimination, Aziz’s book points to several important …

Muslim Prisoner Litigation: An Unsung American Tradition (Introduction), Spearit

Book Chapters

For most Americans, “prison jihad” may sound frightening and conjure images of religious militants, bearded, turbaned, and under the spell of foreign radical networks…. While this may be the immediate impression, there is nothing like that happening in American prisons. However, there has been a different type of jihad taking place, one that is real and identifiable. This is not the sensational jihad of headline media; rather, this jihad is uneventful and quiet by comparison and has persisted since the 1960s with hardly any public notice.

Despite little attention and recognition, Muslims in prison occupy a unique spot in the …

9/11 Impacts On Muslims In Prison, Spearit

Articles

This essay is part of a volume that reflects on the 20-year anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. The work examines the impacts this event had on the management of Muslims in prison. Soon after the attacks, the culture war against Muslims in the United States began to seep into prisons, where Muslims faced heightened levels of Islamophobia, which cut across several areas of existence: the ability to access religious literature, religious leaders, and paraphernalia, in addition to the federal creation of Communication Management Units. There was also heightened hysteria about the idea of Muslim radicalization in prison, …

State Regulation Of Religion: The Effect Of Religious Freedom On Muslims' Religiosity, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Substantial scholarship argues that regulation of religion suppresses religiosity in a community by reducing individuals’ satisfaction with their religious experience. To date this research has assumed that regulations are enforced on and affect religious communities uniformly. It has also focused heavily on Western Christian populations and aggregated national data. We suggest that state regulation of religious communities and behaviours impacts citizens differently based on their affiliation. Using individual-level assessments of freedom and religiosity from Muslim-majority countries, we show that, at the individual level, restricting freedom suppresses religious belief and behaviour. Restrictions on religious minorities, however, can increase religiosity. As such, …

From The Ulama To The Legislature: Hermeneutics & Morocco’S Family Code, Rachel Olick-Gibson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examines the role that Islamic law has played thus far in reforming the Moroccan Family Code, also known as the Moudawana. When King Mohammed VI reformed this law in 2004, Morocco received immediate international praise for its liberal strides towards gender equality. Through this study I investigated the hermeneutical tools and methods of ijtihad employed both by the drafters of the Moudawana and by activists leading up to the 2004 reforms. I then investigate impediments to the implementation of this Code in providing substantive legal rights to Moroccan women and the role that interpretation of Islamic law plays …

The Role Of Personal Laws In Creating A “Second Sex”, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Indira Jaising

All Faculty Scholarship

The cultural construction of gender determines the role of women and girls within the family in many societies. Gendered notions of power in the family are often shrouded in religion and custom and find their deepest expression in Personal Laws. This essay examines the international law framework as it relates to personal laws and the commonality of narratives of litigators and plaintiffs in the cases from the three different personal law systems in India.

In God We Trust, Andrew C. Nosti

SURGE

Almost everywhere I turn I can hear someone saying, “America is a Christian nation!” likely yelled or grumbled with impressive, and sometimes concerning, aggression. I can’t go through a week without this phrase popping up, usually closely accompanied by the notion that America’s founding has roots in Christian principles. [excerpt]

Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Spearit

Articles

This essay examines hip hop music as a form of legal criticism. It focuses on the music as critical resistance and “new terrain” for understanding the law, and more specifically, focuses on what prisons mean to Muslim hip hop artists. Losing friends, family, and loved ones to the proverbial belly of the beast has inspired criticism of criminal justice from the earliest days of hip hop culture. In the music, prisons are known by a host of names like “pen,” “bing,” and “clink,” terms that are invoked throughout the lyrics. The most extreme expressions offer violent fantasies of revolution and …

The Impossible, Highly Desired Islamic Bank, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

The purpose of this Article is to explore, and explain the stubborn persistence of, a central paradox that is endemic to the retail Islamic bank as it operates in the United States. The paradox is that retail Islamic banking in the United States is impossible, and yet it remains highly desired. It is impossible because the principles that are supposed to underlie the practice of Islamic finance deal with the trading of assets and the equitable sharing of risks, profits and losses among bank, depositor and portfolio investment. It is true that much of this can be, and is, circumvented …

The Arabs In The (Inter)National, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

This essay is a commentary on an article submitted by Professor Lama Abu-Odeh as part of a special symposium edition contained in Volume 10 of the Santa Clara Journal of International Law. In her piece, Professor Abu-Odeh builds on her earlier work respecting Islamic law but adds a new target to her sites, that of the study of national security. That is, we already knew Professor Abu-Odeh’s view of the typical Islamic law scholar. He is one who is focused either on the resurrection of the shari’a in some sort of reconstructed form or involved in a thoroughly misguided search …

Religion As Rehabilitation? Reflections On Islam In The Correctional Setting, Spearit

Articles

This essay is the keynote lecture from the Muslims in the United States and Beyond symposium at Whittier Law School. The work reflects on the state of research into Islam in prison, including the religion's historic role in supporting inmate rehabilitation and providing a means for coping with life as a prisoner and on the outside.

Norming "Moderation" In An "Iconic Target": Public Policy And The Regulation Of Religious Anxieties In Singapore, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The maintenance of a “moderate mainstream” Muslim community as a bulwark against the fraying of harmonious ethnic relations has become a key governance concern post-September 11. In light of the global concern—and often paranoia—with diasporic Islam, Islamic religious institutions and civil society have been portrayed in the popular media as hotbeds of radicalism, promoters of hatred, and recruiters for a “conflict of civilization” between the Muslim world and the modern world. Having declared itself a terrorist's “iconic target,” Singapore has taken a broad-based community approach in advancing inter-religious tolerance, including a subtle initiative to include the “Muslim civil society” in …

Norming "Moderation'' In An "Iconic Target'': Public Policy And The Regulation Of Religious Anxieties In Singapore, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The proposed research will examine Singapore’s response to terrorism post September 11, in particular the maintenance of a “moderate mainstream” Muslim community as a bulwark against the fraying of harmonious ethnic relations. In light of the global concern—and often paranoia—with diasporic Islam, Islamic religious institutions and civil society have been portrayed in the popular media as hotbeds of radicalism, promoters of hatred, and recruiters for a ‘conflict of civilization’ between the Muslim world and the modern world. Islamist attacks in Madrid and London have since brought increased urgency to the question of how to contain or moderate Islamic radicalism among …

Law And Religion In Israel And Iran: How The Integration Of Secular And Spiritual Laws Affects Human Rights And The Potential For Violence, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

Because law and religion are by themselves complex cultural and historical issues, any study of the interaction between the two will be at least as complicated. If one is to understand both a State's current re­ligio-legal regime and what reform measures are most likely to succeed there, it is necessary to understand at least a little of the nation's history and majority religion. Therefore, Part I of this article provides a brief sketch of the principles of the two majority religions at issue in this dis­cussion and an overview of the history of both Israel and Iran. It explains why …