Ethnic Pluralism or Melting Pot?: The Dilemma of Rabbinical Adjudication in Israeli Family Law

1983 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 348-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Zion Eliash
Keyword(s):  
Family Law ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Exclusive Jurisdiction ◽  
Ethnic Pluralism ◽  
Ecclesiastical Courts ◽  
Personal Law ◽  
The 19Th Century

Israeli family law is essentially governed by the personal law of the parties concerned since the religious affiliation of the litigants forms the basis for determination of the applicable personal law. This phenomenon is historically rooted in themilet(religious communities) system practised in the Ottoman Empire, which included Palestine until 1917. Ottoman law, regarding itself as an integral part of Moslem law, adopted the fundamental Islamic notion that its law applied to the “faithful” alone. Hence the judicial autonomy extended to “non-believers”, especially the Jewish and Christian communities. These were subject to their own ecclesiastical courts, administered and supervised by their respective religious heads and authorities. In the second half of the 19th century, with the development of contemporary legal systems, the Ottoman legal system underwent a transition from a personal law to a uniform territorial law in most legal fields. The jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, Moslem as well as Jewish and Christian, was restricted to purely religious and family matters. The British Mandate, which in 1917 replaced the Ottoman rule in Palestine, principally retained the existing legal order under which the ecclesiastical courts of the respective religious communities were invested with exclusive jurisdiction in matters of marriage and divorce as well as other matters of personal status.

Religious Tribunals in Democratic States: Lessons from the Israeli Rabbinical Courts

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daphna Hacker
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Cultural Survival ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Personal Law

In democratic countries where the law might be influenced by religious communities, family law cases can present one of the most sensitive and complex challenges. Religious laws governing personal status and the supervision of family relations are vital components of many religions and, in some cases, crucial to the cultural survival of the religious community. However, the family laws of some religions are discriminatory towards women, same-sex couples, people of other religions, and other groups. Currently, there is heated political and scholarly debate about the tension between the norms of multiculturalism, which dictate that religious communities be allowed to preserve their values and culture, including through autonomy over family law, and liberal norms prohibiting the discrimination that religious family law can perpetrate.One of the best known liberal advocates for restricting discriminatory cultural practices of minority groups was Susan Moller Okin. Okin maintained that many cultural minorities are more patriarchal than the surrounding culture and that the female members of the patriarchal culture might be much better off were the culture into which they were born to become extinct, if, that is, it could not be altered so as to uphold women's equality. She pointed to religious personal law as one example of a sphere in which patriarchal cultures strive to maintain autonomy at the cost of women's and girls' freedom and basic rights. Consistent with her view, nation states should not give legal autonomy over family matters to patriarchal minorities unless these minorities reform their religious laws so as not to discriminate against or impair the rights of women and girls.

scholarly journals Towards the Uniform Civil Code and Personal Laws in India: Gender Equality Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Alim
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Legal Issue ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
National Integration ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Personal Law

Family life and personal law in India express together a complex blend of historical, philosophical and political aspects. Family law is setting out a framework for thinking about how personal life affects the most profound aspects of our lives and communities. But the political issues are facing problematic as politician are not in favor of this because fear of losing their vote bank. There is not only political issue but also legal issue. Again, in the matters of personal law segment pertaining to marriage, dowry, divorce, adoption, legitimacy, wills, and inheritance each individual of different backgrounds must appeal to their respective religious laws for guidance or rulings. In a modern secular India, balancing the claims of religious communities in secular nature has caused some difficult problems as a nation. The author will scrutinize how personal laws in secular India provides an inclusive look into the issues and challenges and what extent State can interfere in the matters of religion so as to remove the hindrance in the governance. This article will also analyze the basis of national integration by removing disparate reliability on law which has conflicting ideologies of gender equality.

Religious Affiliation in Israeli Interreligious Law

1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pinhas Shifman
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Personal Status ◽  
Major Factors ◽  
Substantive Law ◽  
Personal Law

Religious or communal affiliation is one of the major factors in the choice of law and jurisdiction in matters of personal status. First, a religious court has jurisdiction only if all parties belong to the religion or community of that court. Where the parties involved in a matter of personal status belong to different religious communities, only the President of the Supreme Court is entitled to confer jurisdiction upon a particular religious court. Secondly, religious affiliation determines the bond between a person and the substantive law which will apply to any matter of his personal status. The importance of such affiliation is declining as legislation fixing unified, territorial norms applicable to all religions and communities increases. However, because personal law continues to play a major role in our legal system, religious affiliation, too, continues to be a focal point of interreligious disputes. Here the lack of a consistent, unified system for regulation of these inter-religious disputes is particularly noticeable, and the solutions proposed are remarkable for their pragmatism and their evasion of the basic problems.

scholarly journals Orthodox Christian Bulgarians Coping with Natural Disasters in the Pre-Modern Ottoman Balkans

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 367
Author(s):  
Raymond Detrez
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
World View ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Secondary Importance ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Ottoman Balkans

Premodern Ottoman society consisted of four major religious communities—Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians, and Jews; the Muslim and Christian communities also included various ethnic groups, as did Muslim Arabs and Turks, Orthodox Christian Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs who identified, in the first place, with their religious community and considered ethnic identity of secondary importance. Having lived together, albeit segregated within the borders of the Ottoman Empire, for centuries, Bulgarians and Turks to a large extent shared the same world view and moral value system and tended to react in a like manner to various events. The Bulgarian attitudes to natural disasters, on which this contribution focuses, apparently did not differ essentially from that of their Turkish neighbors. Both proceeded from the basic idea of God’s providence lying behind these disasters. In spite of the (overwhelmingly Western) perception of Muslims being passive and fatalistic, the problem whether it was permitted to attempt to escape “God’s wrath” was coped with in a similar way as well. However, in addition to a comparable religious mental make-up, social circumstances and administrative measures determining equally the life conditions of both religious communities seem to provide a more plausible explanation for these similarities than cross-cultural influences.

“Old Civilized Asian States”: the Perception of Eurasian Space by Russian Public Figures and Publicists at the End of the 19th and Beginning of the 20th Centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 267-276
Author(s):  
Alexander Yu. Polunov
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Russian Foreign Policy ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Public Leaders

The article analyzes the issue of conceptualization by Russian public leaders and publicists of the causes and goals of the turn of Russian foreign policy to the East at the end of the 19th century. In those years there took shape the idea of specific eastern mission of Russia that influenced later the configuring of Eurasian ideology. At the same time the ideological constructions of the publicists at the end of the 19th century were rather peculiar. In contrast to the Eurasians those authors paid special attention to the “old civilized states in Asia”, like Persia and China. The necessity to support the Celestial Empire and the Christian communities in Persia was determined, according to those publicists, by Russia’s duty to protect the weak. Besides, China was viewed as the state with established autocracy concept that was very important for Russia. At the beginning of the 20th century the ideas of the “orientalists” and other publicists contemplating Russia’s special mission in Asia, lost their former influence. Their distant echo can be found in the program of the prominent White movement leader baron R.F. Ungern, who brought forward the idea of establishing a Pan-Asian monarchy relying on China during Civil War.

Religion in the Mirror of Law

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
State Law ◽  
International Conference ◽  
Religious Law ◽  
Religious Coexistence ◽  
Theory Of Law

This volume has as its subject reflections on religious affiliation in the theory of law, political constitutions and the reality of law in Eastern Europe. How did parliamentary representations, religious communities, scholars and writers imagine an ethnically as well as religiously heterogenous society? How did changes in power affect the life and the institutions of the various religious communities? On which levels did religious law, enlightened reason and state law compete against each other? How was ethnic and religious coexistence conceived theoretically and enacted locally? The contributions to this volume, presenting the outcome of an international conference held in Lviv, discuss these questions from the perspectives of historical, anthropological, legal and literary sciences.

North India

2019 ◽  
pp. 119-130
Author(s):  
Leonard Fernando SJ
Keyword(s):  
North India ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Constitutional Protection ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Nicobar Islands ◽  
Missionary Societies ◽  
Christian Population ◽  
The Church

The Christian population in North India is varied, from less than 1% (in most North Indian states) to 22% in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Many fix its emergence in the 16th century, when Jesuits were invited by the Muslim Emperor Akbar the Great. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, many Protestant missionary societies were established in India. Six churches in India united in 1970, forming the Church of North India (CNI). Recently, Christians have been attacked as a threat to the hierarchical social system and threatened by radical Hindu fundamentalism. Amidst the persecutions, Christianity has continued in unique paradigms: whether in the adoption ashram life to promote the mystical traditions of Christianity as well as Hinduism, in translations of the Bible into tribal languages; or in the faculties of philosophy and theology in North India preparing men and women for ministry. Religious communities and NGOs in North India have served those at the peripheries. Lack of growth of Christian communities can be attributed to hostility against Dalit Christians who risk losing constitutional protection given to other Dalits. In fact, the collaboration of lay Christians is on the increase through different associations, basic Christian communities and Charismatic movements.

Writing African Christianity

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 275-312
Author(s):  
Elias Kifon Bongmba
Keyword(s):  
Religious Communities ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Disciplinary Practices ◽  
African Identity ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cultural Movements ◽  
Material Conditions

In this overview of the historiography of Christianity in Africa a number of desiderata and considerations for future research are reviewed. The first issue considered relates to the practice of historiography. The second issue relates to African identity/-ies and its relationship to global cultural movements. The third desideratum is the pursuit of new disciplinary practices in the study of African Christianity, especially interdisciplinarity as scholarly ethos. Finally, a number of themes that should become foci in historiography of African Christianity are explored, among these are: concentration on local and regional narratives, the gendered character of Christianity in Africa, attention to the material conditions and needs of African religious communities and the various cultural innovations adopted to cope with these conditions, as well as the role of Christian communities in development in Africa and the wider encompassing question of ethics and morality.

Christians, Muslims and the State in Twentieth-Century Egypt and Indonesia

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 412-434
Author(s):  
Brian Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Communal Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Historical Relationship

Surveys of the historical relationship between Christianity and other faiths often suggest that through a process of theological enlightenment the churches have moved from crusade to cooperation and from diatribe to dialogue. This trajectory is most marked in studies of Christian-Muslim relations, overshadowed as they are by the legacy of the Crusades. Hugh Goddard’sA History of Christian-Muslim Relationsproceeds from a focus on the frequently confrontational inter-communal relations of earlier periods to attempts by Western theologians over the last two centuries to define a more irenic stance towards Islam.1 For liberal-minded Western Christians this is an attractive thesis: who would not wish to assert that we have left bigotry and antagonism behind, and moved on to stances of mutual respect and tolerance? However laudable the concern to promote harmonious intercommunal relations today, dangers arise from trawling the oceans of history in order to catch in our nets only those episodes that will be most morally edifying for the present. What Herbert Butterfield famously labelled ‘the Whig interpretation of history’ is not irrelevant to the history of interreligious relations. In this essay I shall use the experience of Christian communities in twentieth-century Egypt and Indonesia to argue that the determinative influences on Christian-Muslim relations in the modern world have not been the progressive liberalization of stances among academic theologians but rather the changing views taken by governments in Muslim majority states towards both their majority and minority religious communities. Questions of the balance of power, and of the territorial integrity of the state, have affected Christian Muslim relations more deeply than questions of religious truth and concerns for interreligious dialogue.

scholarly journals Adventists in Montenegro—From the Atheistic Psychosis of Socialism to the Post-socialist Individuation of Adventism

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Vladimir Bakrač ◽  
Danijela Vuković-Ćalasan ◽  
Predrag Živković ◽  
Rade Šarović
Keyword(s):  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Valuable Data ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Depth Interview

The process of converting individuals to a particular religious community is one of the issues addressed by the Sociology of Religion. In the post-socialist Montenegrin society, there have been research works related to dominant religious communities, the Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Islamic, while science has shown no interest in small religious groups. The Adventist movement in Montenegro, although present for a long period of time, has failed to mobilise individuals for conversion to a greater extent. Therefore, this research aims to find out when, under what conditions and in what way the individuals in Montenegro, as a post-socialist state, chose Adventism as religious affiliation, what affected this process the most, and were there any specificities in that regard. This paper is a result of a survey conducted via an in-depth interview with 17 believers of the Adventist Church. The obtained results indicate several valuable data: most respondents accepted the Adventist movement in Montenegro in the early 1990s; they got first-hand knowledge of this religion from their friends or wider family members and relatives, a consistent interpretation of the Holy Bible is the main reason for conversion. A significant factor in the process of conversion to Adventism is early religious socialisation within a family.

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