It is a view widely held amongst psychologists that human beings have a basic need to create a positive social identity for themselves, either as individuals or as members of a group. In this regard, choice of dress is likely to be particularly important. A person's clothes can reveal much about their identity, in relation to their gender, class, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs. Yet what an individual wears can also attract great controversy, as evidenced by the fact that, in Europe of late, there have been few issues more controversial than that of religious dress.

Today in towns and cities across Europe a significant proportion of Muslims—in particular Muslim females—have eschewed conventional western clothes in favor of garments (such as veils and headscarves) traditionally associated with Islam. With a new generation of “European Muslims” keen to cultivate a distinct identity for themselves as members of the continent's second largest religion, Islamic dress often has an “emblematic status” as a “powerful and overdetermined marker of difference.” Yet the right to wear religious dress varies significantly in Europe. In some countries there are clear restrictions on what can (or cannot) be worn in public (e.g., France and Turkey), whereas in other parts of the continent (e.g., the U.K.) young people are relatively free to wear the religious dress of their choice. Mindful of this state of affairs, the European Court of Human Rights has chosen to tread warily, letting governments retain considerable discretion in the field of religious dress. Consequently, states enjoy a wide “margin of appreciation” when determining whether their curbs on religious symbols or related garments are compatible with Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Natural law has made a comeback in legal philosophy. The revival of natural law thinking in the legal academy began about thirty years ago and has managed to gain a seat at the table in current jurisprudential discussions. Defining natural law, Brian Bix declares that it “claims that there are fundamental and evaluative connections between the universe, human nature, and morality.” These connections need not have a Christian or even a theistic foundation. A belief in moral realism, that is, the propositions that “(1) there is an objective reality, (2) human beings can know something about it, and (3) there are some things that everyone can, and some things that everyone ought to, do in response to what they know,” ties together theistic and non-theistic versions of natural law. Yet many prominent contemporary natural law theorists—J. Budziszewski, John Finnis, Robert George, and Russell Hittinger —are Roman Catholic. Despite the fact that Finnis and George develop their natural law arguments without reference to any metaphysical states of affairs or transcendent truth claims, natural law continues to be associated with Thomas Aquinas and the subsequent scholastic tradition. Thus, even standards that Finnis and George derive from the internal rationality of law strike some as disguised theology.

“[T]he estate of marriage has fallen into awful disrepute,” Martin Luther declared in 1522.

There are many pagan books which treat of nothing but the depravity of womankind and the unhappiness of the estate of marriage. … Every day one encounters parents who forget their former misery because, like the mouse, they have now had their fill. They deter their children from marriage and entice them into priesthood and nunnery, citing the trials and troubles of married life. Thus do they bring their own children home to the devil, as we daily observe; they provide them with ease for the body and hell for the soul.

Furthermore,

the shameful confusion wrought by the accursed papal law has occasioned so much distress, and the lax authority of both the spirituai and the temporal swords has given rise to so many dreadful abuses and false situations that I would much prefer neither to look into the matter nor to hear of it. But timidity is no help in an emergency.

I have received your letter and the accompanying photograph, which you identified as that of a section of the frieze in the Supreme Courtroom, located in the capital, Washington, D.C. The frieze (tunf) portrays images of eighteen of the greatest leaders in human history who played a role in either establishing or enforcing laws or Shara'i. One of these images purports to represent the Prophet Muhammad (SAAS). The artist placed the Qur'an in one hand of this image, thus symbolically recognizing it as the source of Islamic legislation. In his other hand, the figure holds a sword symbolizing the power of the state. This second symbol is in recognition of the fact that the Prophet was also a leader of his community.

Much that is intriguing about medieval modes of proof lies in the tension that existed within them. In the practices of the ordeals, compurgation or wager of law and judicial duel, faith mingled with superstition, justice with mercy, divine providence with human manipulation. When history was conceived as “wholly a uniform drift towards better things,” these practices were proclaimed as undoubtedly barbaric, irrational, and “the most extravagant and preposterous.” Later historians offered functionalist interpretations; they showed how medieval institutions of proof reflected the living conditions of the time or served legitimate socio-political functions. Suitable as their creed is the charitable dictum of Baron Bramwell that “because the world gets wiser as it gets older, … it was [not therefore] foolish before.” A related body of scholarship evaluates the methods of proof as means of fact-finding, and supports the conclusion that they were not as ineffective as they may seem. Their epistemic function, as we will see, has been defended along different naturalistic lines.

The fundamental changes that have taken place in our legal institutions during the past two generations are part of a transformation of the entire Western legal tradition, marked particularly by its disconnection from the religious foundations upon which it was built. For over eight hundred years, from the late eleventh to the early twentieth century, law in the West was supported by, and in many respects based on, religious beliefs, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. In the twentieth century the intimate connection between the Western legal tradition and the Western religious tradition has been substantially broken.

Sixty to seventy years ago, the connection between law and religion in the West was so intimate that it was usually taken for granted. Even in the United States, where religious diversity was far greater than in most other Western countries, and where agnosticism and atheism were more tolerated, it was generally accepted that the legal system was rooted in Judaic and Christian religious and ethical beliefs. “We are a religious people,” wrote Justice William O. Douglas as recently as 1951, speaking for a majority of the United States Supreme Court, “whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” Not only law and legality in general, but many specific legal standards, principles and rules were widely thought to be derived ultimately from the Bible, from the history of the church, and from what the Declaration of Independence called “the laws of Nature and Nature's God.”

This article examines the cases of children born out of wedlock and adopted children with the aim of depicting the mechanisms through which the concepts of biological fatherhood, derived from the human-rights framework, and adoption, derived from the customary law framework, have been adopted into Indonesian Islamic family law. We argue that the introduction of external concepts into family law pertaining to Muslims requires an adaptation process in which the relation between these external concepts and core Islamic family law concepts is determined. In the case of children born out of wedlock, this adaptation to core Islamic norms means that biological fatherhood does not lead to a full legal father-child relationship, despite a 2012 Constitutional Court ruling establishing that children born out of wedlock have a civil relationship with their biological father. In the case of adoption, it means that there is no full adoption, despite recognition of customary adoptions under Indonesian law. We argue that in a context of strong support for a religion-based family law, reforms tend to take the form of conditions or exceptions to core religious concepts, as replacing these concepts altogether would be perceived as jeopardizing the religious character of the law. While attempts to replace core Islamic family law concepts will inevitably meet strong resistance, there is much more tolerance for introducing family law reforms that aim at changing the way that Islamic concepts are applied in practice.

The language and ideas of “international human rights” have become seemingly ubiquitous in modern times. Indeed, within the United States, even many prominent evangelical Christian churches and leaders have sparingly started to use the language of human rights despite earlier misgivings. While there has been important academic discussion concerning the foundational role of Christian theology for the modern human rights regime, and literature discussing the acceptance of human rights within Catholic, mainline Protestant, and even Orthodox Christian circles, gaps remain in the literature concerning the relationship between general human rights norms, language, and culture and evangelical Christian theology.

This Article suggests that evangelical Christians have a greater connection to human rights than is often acknowledged (and greater than they often acknowledge themselves). But, it ultimately appears doubtful whether modern evangelical theology is amenable to a robust and deep understanding of human rights. Nonetheless, the recent rise in the number of evangelical non-governmental organizations and the attendant rise in awareness of human rights within evangelical discourse potentially serve as signposts that the uncomfortable dance of evangelicals and the human rights movement may become slightly less awkward over the coming years.

The Holocaust remains imprinted on western consciousness as the epitome of a crime “which no human justice can eradicate.” Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, knew this well. The tragedy of the Holocaust is that the cry “never again,” which came in its wake, has failed to control human evil. Stories of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burundi, apartheid South Africa and elsewhere remind us of the capacity of humankind to commit the kind of heinous crimes that no amount of human justice nor reparation can assuage. This tragic reality motivates Carlos Nino in Radical Evil on Trial to pose the all-important question: “How shall we live with evil? How shall we respond to massive human rights violations committed either by State actors or by others with the consent and tolerance of their governments?”

The norms that the official legal systems of North American and European states apply do not derive directly from any religion. While some of those norms, such as some of the norms governing marriage, do originate, historically, in religion and religious law, no norms are today enforced by those legal systems because the norms are part of a specific religious legal order. And yet, adjudication according to religious norms is commonplace. In North America and Europe, the legal systems applying norms associated with specific religions to adherents of those religions are principally nonstate community tribunals. Outside this Northwestern world, state legal systems, particularly those of Muslim-majority jurisdictions, often permit religious normative materials to be applied to adherents of the relevant religions as a matter of state law. Both situations are examples of legal pluralism.

The popularity of the application of religious norms by state legal systems throughout much of the contemporary world raises a challenge for the Western assumption that state-enforced legality and expressly religious norms should stay apart. Can a modern state provide its citizens, residents and others subject to its power with a just and stable legal order by referring them to norms associated with their several religions and enforced by state courts?

On September 11, 2001, did American Muslims become America's newest race? This essay offers preliminary observations regarding that question.

Using the word “race” in America is like waving a red flag before a bull. You are likely to get a spirited response. In the context of a national calamity like the September 11, 2001 tragedy, discussing race becomes an even more delicate venture. Accordingly, to reduce prospects of confusion later, this essay begins by briefly addressing some initial concerns about even using the term “race.” The essay acknowledges that race is a complex, multilayered phenomenon. In these circumstances, do not expect these comments to provide definitive insights into the nature of “race.” Rather, because racial worldviews are so pervasive, the essay limits itself to merely attempting to give a sense of how the term “race” is used here.

After briefly dealing with some concerns about race, the essay outlines evidence that, based on what at best can be called racial stereotypes, American Muslims have been singled out for particularly egregious treatment following the September 11 tragedy. For illustrative purposes, the essay draws comparisons between the response of public officials to the September 11 and Oklahoma City bombing catastrophes. The essay then puts these matters in a slightly broader historical perspective by considering several cases which the United States Supreme Court decided in the 1930s and 1940s before and after another calamitous day in American history: December 7, 1941, when the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor. To round out the historical outline, two contrasting cases involving the jurisdiction of military commissions to try American civilians are briefly evaluated.

Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, usually referred to as al-Shabaab (the youth), is known primarily as a Somali terrorist group. But since the end of 2008, it has functioned as a state power in large parts of Southern and Central Somalia. In this article, I analyze the main legal body of the group: the qāḍī court. In order to establish law and order in their territories, al-Shabaab has applied their own version of sharī'a. The article reveals that al-Shabaab's application of criminal law follows the inherent logic of classical Islamic legal doctrines on several points. However, the al-Shabaab courts tend to overlook many of the strict requirements regarding evidence and procedure that were outlined by the medieval Muslim scholars in order to humanize Islamic law. Therefore, the legal reality of al-Shabaab's regime is far more brutal than that of most other Islamic-inspired regimes in the contemporary Muslim world. Al-Shabaab's practice of Islamic criminal law may be seen not only as a means to exercise control through fear but also as an effective way of filling the vacuum of insecurity and instability that has followed twenty years of violence and the absence of state institutions in its territories. I argue that, in order to understand al-Shabaab's current practice of criminal law, one has to take into consideration the group's jihadi-Salafi affiliation. According to Salafi notions, sharī'a is not only a means to an end, but an end in itself. As such, sharī'a (i.e., God's divine law) is the visual symbol of an Islamic state. Consequently, the application of Islamic criminal law, and especially of the ḥudūd punishments, provides al-Shabaab with political-religious legitimacy.

In this essay, Archbishop Tutu explains how Christianity understands the inherent freedom, dignity, and human rights of each person to be a consequence of being created in the image of God. This idea contains radical liberative potential to challenge oppression and create structures for human flourishing. While Christianity has not always lived up to the liberative potential of its teachings, and too often has contributed to hatred, oppression, and violence, Archbishop Tutu argues, the power of religious voices remains essential in the struggle against oppression and for the protection of human dignity.

This article presents a comparative anthropological approach to studying the bureaucratization of Islam in contemporary Southeast Asia. In line with this approach, the article understands the bureaucratization of Islam not simply as a formalization, expansion, and diversification of Islamic institutions and legal frameworks; rather, bureaucratization is investigated as a social phenomenon that transcends its organizational boundaries and informs dynamics of socio-legal change alongside transformations of the meaning(s) of Islam in state and society. The article centers the state's “classificatory power” and its societal coproduction and contestation, and it takes both functional and hermeneutic modes of analysis into consideration. While the bureaucratization of Islam is always embedded in and shaped by power-political constellations, it simultaneously produces social and doctrinal meanings that are unique to its locally specific discursive arenas. Therefore, more conventional functional perspectives on bureaucratic Islam can be beneficially enriched by a more hermeneutically oriented anthropological analysis, as the article illustrates, based on ethnographic data gathered in Brunei and Singapore.

The article first introduces the anthropology of bureaucracy and elaborates on the absence of such studies on state-Islam relations in Southeast Asia, as well as the potential of bringing these streams of scholarship into a fruitful dialogue. Second, it presents the Bruneian case study, focusing on postcolonial Islamization policies, the bureaucratization of a national ideology, legal reforms, and their workings on the microlevel. Third, it moves on to a regional comparison, by illustrating how Islamic knowledge and meaning-production inherent to the bureaucratization of Islam unfolds quite differently in Singapore, despite partly overlapping functional patterns. While anchored in Brunei and Singapore, the article offers a conceptual framework and analytic vocabulary for a wider study across and potentially beyond the region.

This paper shows that the laws of ancient Israel found in the Old Testament significantly restricted economic transactions and limited the possibility of economic growth. The paper begins by examining the production function in light of Hebraic teaching, demonstrating that theological principles can be translated into economic regulations. The paper then describes the various laws regarding land, labor, capital, and technology and analyzes the probable economic effects of such laws during approximately the fourth century B.C.

Recent writings have uncovered a robust interaction between the spheres and sciences of law and religion. Law and religion are conceptually related. They embrace closely analogous concepts of sin and crime, covenant and contract, righteousness and justice. Law and religion are formally related. They both have patterns of liturgy and ritual, concepts of tradition and precedent, sources of authority and power. Law and religion are methodologically related. They maintain analogous hermeneutical methods of interpreting texts, casuistic and rhetorical methods of argument and instruction, systematic methods of organizing their doctrines. Law and religion are professionally related. They both have officials charged with the formulation, implementation, and demonstration of the norms and habits of their respective fields. Law and religion are institutionally related, through the multiple relations between political and ecclesiastical officials and institutions.

The increased visibility of same-sex relationships and the call for same-sex marriages have been particular challenges to the traditional marriage system in Africa in the contemporary period. While some critics have argued, erroneously, that same-sex relationships were completely unknown to the African continent until the advent of Western modernity, others have suggested that the practices speak to a greater malaise confronting African societies. Nigeria is not an exception in this case. In light of these trends, this article examines the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which was promulgated by the Nigerian government in 2014 and has since led to infractions upon the human rights of citizens in same-sex relationships. The article examines these developments around same-sex relationships in the context of wider social and economic challenges to the traditional marriage institution in Nigeria.

Across medieval Western Europe, those who committed serious wrongs, such as homicide, arson, treason, and rape were subject to a wide range of capital punishments that were seemingly brutal, frequently bloody, and at times spectacular. Grisly images of an executioner dismembering a condemned's limbs from his torso, smashing his chest cavity, gouging his eyes, or piercing his body with hot pokers are the common stuff of scaffold art in the high Middle Ages. Such images attest to the critical role of pain in medieval capital punishment. Whereas in our day all attempts are made to render penal death painless, in the high and late Middle Ages, the tie between pain and death is not only tolerated but, at times, purposefully exacerbated.

Ironically, certain contemporary international human rights norms appear to place governments in an adversary relationship to certain peoples, such as Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, whose attempted destruction provided the impetus for modern human rights law. This raises the paradoxical spectre of human rights law being used as a tool of cultural genocide.

This conflict is, of course, not confined to Hasidic and Orthodox Jews; indeed, it appears that the majority of people on the earth are identified with a people-group whose cultural/religious practices violate certain international human rights norms. While it is common to use Islam as an example, this paper initially concentrates on traditional Judaism because of the special place of the Holocaust as a catalyst for the modern international human rights movement.

In this article, I set forth conceptions of happiness (sa‘ada) from the Islamic tradition, and against this background, I discuss the failure to attain happiness in the modern age. The cumulative Islamic tradition attests to the importance of happiness to faith in God, and to the importance of faith to happiness. While the themes of knowledge, enlightenment, balance, peace, and knowing the other are central to the Islamic theology of happiness, the failure of happiness is embodied by the idea of jahiliyya (a state of ignorance). I argue that a crucial issue in considering happiness and the failure of happiness is how one understands submission to God, and that submission to God is not simply obedience or servitude to God; rather, submission to God means aspiring to and seeking the goodness of God, and liberating one's soul and being from a state of godlessness, or ignorance (jahiliyya), in order to attain a state of Godliness. To grow into and with God's love is the epitome of fulfillment, goodness, and happiness. However, when submission becomes a formulaic relationship based on generalized stereotypes about history, societies, and people, or on a stereotyped understanding of one's self dealing with a stereotypical understanding of an omnipotent but inaccessible God, unhappiness becomes the norm. Drawing on this analysis, I argue that in the modern age, the modalities of thought in puritanical movements have had a consistently demoralizing and dehumanizing effect that persistently undermines the possibilities for social and moral happiness, and thus, undermines the very purpose of the Islamic faith.