scholarly journals Religious Freedom in the Time of the Pandemic

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Piotr Mazurkiewicz

The subject of the paper is the issue of restrictions on religious freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic imposed by European countries. The period under examination covers the interval from March to December 2020. The issue is analyzed from the point of view of respecting human rights in a situation of conflict between the values of public health and religious freedom. In this context, the perception of importance and urgency regarding the values that should be protected and the concept of “essential goods”, which are understood differently in secular and religious perspectives, are of particular importance. Another essential issue is not only the scope but also the “depth” of state intervention in the life of religious communities. In Europe, there was a wide variety of national approaches to restricting religious freedom in order to ensure public health. Some of them pursued a very restrictive policy in this area, others moderate, and others very soft. One also could observe the difference in decisions made by most countries during the first and the second waves of the pandemic. A significant element enabling a possible evaluation of the applied solutions is the matter of their duration. Are the introduced limitations only temporary, implemented due to the extraordinary situation, or should they be view as a part of a “radical political experiment”, as a result of which the very understanding of religious freedom and its place in the hierarchy of human rights will change. The arguments of a philosophical, theological, legal and sociological nature are analyzed issuing methods appropriate to each of these disciplines.

Author(s):  
Hjalti Hugason

In this article and another which follows the author analyses the discourse about the separation of the state and the national church in Iceland over the period 1915–1995 — called “the short 20th century”. In this first article it will be dealt with the arguments for separation. In the second one views against separation will be discussed. Various ecclesiastical, theological or religious arguments were presented for separation. First it was pointed out that the liberal theology had made a schism within the national church which according to the constitution of Iceland should be evangelical-Lutheran. Therefore, it would be best to separate the church from the state as soon as possible so that the liberal ones and the conservatives could go their own ways in the future. Later it was stated that the separation between the state and the national church increased the freedom of church in fulfilling its vocation. It was also argued for separation from the ecumenical point of view and stated that the religious communities in the country should stand on equal footing in spite of various size. Many advocated for separation on the basis of human rights views. Some of them stated that the national church system effectively prevented the constitutional religious freedom of the people. It was also pointed out that the national church enjoyed a multitude of direct and indirect economical support from the state. In this way, all Icelanders indirectly participated in the cost of churchwork regardless of their church membership and religious beliefs. Finally, some recommended separation of financial reasons. They pointed out that the state invested large sums in the church, which, however, had few formal roles in the society.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-53
Author(s):  
Kaushik Paul

In recent years, the wearing of Islamic dress in public spaces and elsewhere has generated widespread controversy all over Europe. The wearing of the hijab and other Islamic veils has been the subject of adjudication before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on many occasions. The most recent case before the ECtHR as to the prohibition on wearing the hijab is Lachiri v Belgium. In this case, the ECtHR held that a prohibition on wearing the hijab in the courtroom constitutes an infringement of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantees the right to freedom of religion or belief. From the perspective of religious freedom, the ruling of the Strasbourg Court in Lachiri is very significant for many reasons. The purpose of this comment is critically to analyse the ECtHR's decision in Lachiri from the standpoint of religious liberty.


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Barbara Aniela Bonar

In this paper, I explain the problem of the dreamer in the Zhuangzi. I aim to show that no difference exists between dreaming states and waking states because we have a fluctual relationship with these two stages. In both, “we are dreaming.” Put another way, from a psychoanalytical point of view, one stage penetrates the other and vice versa. The difference between dreaming and non-dreaming disappears because dreaming is a structural process. Also, from a psychoanalytical perspective, all confirmations and negations about dreams and non-dreams leads to one point: the being, or rather the becoming, of the subject. How does this solve the problem of the True Person/True Human Being (zhenren真人)? Does such a person have dreams or not? Does the True Person sleep without dreams, as we find in the Zhuangzi? From a psychoanalytic perspective, this is not possible. To prove this, I will present few passages from the Zhuangzi and offer a psychoanalytic explanation of them based on Jacques Lacan’s theory of the fantasy and desire.


1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 701-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Czeresnia

In this article the author presents a point of view which she considers central to understanding the difference between prevention - associated with the traditional discourse of public health - and health promotion, an idea in connection with which proposals are now being presented for rethinking and redirecting public health practices. This perspective relates to the limits of the health and disease concepts in relation to the concrete experiences of health and illness. On the one hand, practical awareness of this limit implies far-reaching changes in the way scientific knowledge is related to (and used in) the formulation and organization of health practices; on the other, health promotion projects also avail themselves of the concepts guiding the discourse of prevention. This leads to certain difficulties that appear as inconsistencies or gray areas in the operationalization of promotion projects, which do not always succeed in asserting their nature as distinct from traditional preventive practices.


1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.P. Fourie

It is increasingly realized that hypnosis may be seen from an interpersonal point of view, meaning that it forms part of the relationship between the hypnotist and the subject. From this premise it follows that what goes on in the relationship prior to hypnosis probably has an influence on the hypnosis. Certain of these prior occurences can then be seen as waking suggestionns (however implicitly given) that the subject should behave in a certain way with regard to the subsequent hypnosis. A study was conducted to test the hypothesis that waking suggestions regarding post-hypnotic amnesia are effective. Eighteen female subjects were randomly divided into two groups. The groups listened to a tape-recorded talk on hypnosis in which for the one group amnesia for the subsequent hypnotic experience and for the other group no such amnesia was suggested. Thereafter the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale was administered to all subjects. Only the interrogation part of the amnesia item of the scale was administered. The subjects to whom post-hypnotic amnesia was suggested tended to score lower on the amnesia item than the other subjects, as was expected, but the difference between the mean amnesia scores of the two groups was not significant.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Nathanael Bagas Setyawan ◽  
Ridwan Arifin

Activities to religion are generally carried out by all religious communities in the world without limiting an activity in the process, because it can disrupt the worship process. But in its implementation, especially in Indonesia, the public is less aware of the importance of tolerating religious freedom in order to prevent religious conflicts in the concept of Human Rights. Historically, religious problems are a social problem because they involve the lives of people who cannot be separated from the study of social sciences. Therefore, the religious sciences are essentially parts of Sociology, Psychology and Anthropology. Whereas the issue of religious intolerance in Indonesia is a crucial problem, because these problems can divide the Indonesian people, even though religious problems are a problem that does not need to be exaggerated because in essence every religion teaches good things so that the issue of religious freedom of others is in vain. So from that a country needs to have a law to regulate the existing government system, one of which is to regulate religion in Indonesia. Religion in Indonesia itself has been regulated in chapter XI of Religion in Article 29 paragraph (2) where the State guarantees the independence of each resident to embrace their respective religion and to worship according to that belief. Not only about religious freedom, the context of violations concerning religion in Indonesia has also been regulated in law, but the public still underestimates the law because they themselves are also taboo on the laws that apply in Indonesia. Problems concerning religious intolerance can be prevented through counseling on vulnerable areas that will cause religious commotion, so that the pillars of nationality contained in the Pancasila can still survive and run as they should. This study analyzes the Protection of Religious Freedom in Indonesia in the perspective of Human Rights in Indonesia.  Keywords : Agama, intoleransi, konflik, kebebasan, perlindungan hukum.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 89-89
Author(s):  
Sabine Hauser ◽  
◽  
Rouven Porz ◽  
Maria Aluaș ◽  
◽  
...  

"In March 2020, many countries in commissions and medical societies moved very quickly to draft fair and transparent triage guidelines; this in order to plan ahead for possible resource bottlenecks in the treatment of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units. There are a lot of consciously chosen (but also less reflected) ethical values in these guidelines. Our presentation compares the values of eight of such guidelines, but first shows how to read such values in the first place. Many health professionals are hardly aware of the explicit presentation of ethical-philosophical values. From a methodological point of view, this presentation is based on a hermeneutic-ethical approach. The guidelines are interpreted, an interpretation aid is developed, and the values of the guidelines are reconsidered in comparison. On a meta-level, we could identify different types of values, besides medical and ethical values, the guidelines were also filled with procedural, structural and legal-political values. On a content level, the unreflective handling of the value of autonomy, which often competes with the value of public health, is particularly evident. This competition is little reflected. Another point of divergence between the guidelines is the degree of precision or the difference between long-term and short-term medical prognosis. We believe that with our analysis we can contribute to making value discussions in health care more open and explicit. We would like to present these conclusions for discussion at this year’s EACME conference in Cluj. "


1964 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 1178-1189 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. K. F. Bussemaker

Abstract The expressions tack, tackiness, and stickiness have been in use since the beginning of the rubber industry. During the years their meaning has changed considerably. The first occasion where tackiness was mentioned was in the case of crude natural rubber. The surface of the rubber became tacky or sticky during storage. This phenomenon has been thoroughly discussed in the literature. As a general conclusion it was accepted that both oxidation and depolymerisation occurred. Three factors were reported to be the cause of these processes: light, traces of copper, and manganese. From our point of view we would call this effect stickiness, as we are only interested in the building tack of rubber. In the period when the only rubber was natural rubber and high loadings of highly active fillers were not generally used in compounds, building tack was no problem. Building tack was first mentioned in a publication by Griffith and Jones in 1928. They started their experiments by measuring tack in their search for methods to prevent cotton liners from sticking to unvulcanized rubber. One would have expected much work on the measurement and improvement of tack in Germany and Russia during the development of synthetic rubbers. However, this only proved to be the case in Russia. The first publication available was the translation of an article by Voyutskii and Margolina in 1957. From Voyutskii's work we were able to trace the first article in 1935 by Zhukov and Talmud, who studied the adhesive power of synthetic rubber. In the USA the first theoretical approach to the subject was by Josefowitz and Mark in 1942, who at that time did not realize the difference between stickiness and tack. This difference became clear when lack of tack became the big problem in the use of synthetic rubber. In many cases it was found that addition of resins and softeners gave a very sticky compound which had no building tack at all. The tack problem was first discussed at the ASTM symposium on the application of synthetic rubbers in 1944 by Juve who gave a definition of building tack. From that time, the problem has been studied regularly, especially from the practical side, to find ways and means to improve the building tack of synthetic rubbers.


1967 ◽  
Vol 167 (1007) ◽  
pp. 128-133 ◽  

Most of the research on the effects of pesticides on wildlife has been done in order to reduce harmful side effects, that is by scientists interested in conservation. Since the approach of conservation ecologists is conditioned by the aims of their work these should be mentioned, for, unlike the aims of agriculture and preventive medicine, they cannot be taken for granted. This is unfortunate because conservation is, I believe, an important and probably an essential activity of modern man. Essentially the aim of conservation is to hand on biological diversity to future generations. The reasons for this are : 1. We never know when a particular species may not become of particular value to man in the future; once a species becomes extinct it is lost for ever. 2. Biological diversity produces stability; and in a general sense a stable total environment is better for mankind than an unstable one. The important corollary from the point of view of today’s discussion is that conservationists are primarily concerned with the survival of species. In this their approach is radically different from that of medical and veterinary experts who are primarily concerned with the survival of individuals. One of the main practical results of the difference is this—for medical purposes, toxicological data provide a reasonable basis for predicting the hazards of pesticides; but for the conservationist they are inadequate unless supplemented by data obtained in the field. The concern of the conservationist with populations conditions his whole approach to the problem of pesticides; but I believe it forces him into looking at it fundamentally, for the essential pesticide problems are ones of population ecology. In this paper I shall describe the nature of the subject in ecological terms before briefly summarizing research which is being done to elucidate some of the wildlife problems.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-66
Author(s):  
Michał Rynkowski

The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on religious freedom is well known and is the subject of frequent comment. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of a particular aspect, where the ECtHR had to consider a dispute in which a religious court was involved at an earlier stage. In these cases, nolens volens, the ECtHR had to adjudicate upon the competence and procedure of these courts and tribunals. To date, there have only been nine such cases, of which only three have led to a judgment. Yet, from the remaining six which were declared inadmissible or manifestly ill-founded, there is something to be learned about the approach of the ECtHR to religious courts.


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