3. Liberal Egalitarianism And The State Neutrality Puzzle

2017 ◽  
pp. 69-110
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Liberal Egalitarianism ◽  
State Neutrality

The Neutral State: Optional or Necessary?: A Triangular Analysis of State–Religion Relationships, Democratisation and Human Rights Compliance

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Temperman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Detrimental Effect ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Religious Denomination ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
Full Compliance ◽  
State Neutrality

AbstractThis article suggests a signicant correlation between the notions of state neutrality and religious freedom. The absence of a considerable degree of state neutrality has a detrimental effect on human rights compliance. Under states which identify themselves strongly with a single religious denomination as well as under states which identify themselves negatively in relation to religion, there is no scope for human rights compliance. Both extreme types of state–religion identication are characterised by repression of all beliefs and manifestations thereof which do not correspond with the state sanctioned view on belief. This may be either the upholding of a specic religious denomination or of militant ideological secularism. Consequently, discrimination and marginalisation rather than compliance with the norms of freedom of religion and the promotion of non-discrimination comprise policy and practice under these regimes. Intermediate forms of state–religion afliation, i.e. types of identication in which the state is not drenched with the excluding ideals of a single denomination or with anti-religious sentiments, allow for a degree of democratic inclusion of religious difference and of religious tolerance. The most substantial scope for full compliance, however, lies in the combination of democratic inclusion of people from different religions and the indispensable political commitment characterised as state neutrality with respect to all people. State neutrality refers to a regime of state–religion identi cation that can best be understood as 'accommodative non-partisanship'.

scholarly journals Liberalni odgovori na problem uskraćivanja zdravstvene skrbi djeci i maloljetnicima iz religijskih razloga

JAHR ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Ivan Cerovac ◽  
Maša Dunatov
Keyword(s):  
Medical Care ◽  
The State ◽  
Children's Health ◽  
Medical Treatments ◽  
Liberal Feminism ◽  
Liberal Egalitarianism ◽  
The World ◽  
Liberal Multiculturalism ◽  
State Interventions ◽  
Religious Reasons

Medical experts, both in Croatia and in the world, are facing nowadays an increasing number of cases where the parents refuse, because of certain religious reasons, medical care and certain medical treatments for their children, even though those treatments could preserve the children’s health or even save their lives. The parents are convinced that they are acting with good intentions and in child’s favour, which leads to certain problems regarding the regulation of these cases, as well as to disagreements regarding the rights of parents and their children, or the legitimacy of state interventions in this sphere. This paper puts forward four possible liberal solutions to the above described problem (liberal archipelago, liberal multiculturalism, liberal egalitarianism and liberal feminism), specifies the scope of legitimate interventions by the state that these theories allow, and reviews the advantages of each position, as well as the most important objections directed toward each.

Maynooth, the ‘Godless colleges’ and liberal imperial thought in the 1840s

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (161) ◽  
pp. 26-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Biel
Keyword(s):  
Prison Population ◽  
The State ◽  
Spiritual Guidance ◽  
Religious Instruction ◽  
State Neutrality ◽  
Religious Subject ◽  
University Level ◽  
Voluntary Organisations

AbstractIn 1845, parliament passed an act establishing the three Queen’s Colleges in Ireland – Belfast, Galway and Cork – with the stipulation that ‘religious’ instruction in the colleges would have to be sponsored by voluntary organisations, not the state. Prior to 1845, parliament’s approach to providing spiritual guidance in state-run institutions had been one of ‘parallel patronage’, assuring that wherever there were individuals representing different denominational backgrounds, religious specialists from each denomination would be appointed to work in the institution. For example, the Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1826 required that Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican chaplains serve their respective portions of the prison population in each gaol that housed any of their co-denominationalists. But in 1845, parliament took an ostensibly different tack, implying that denominations would have to sponsor their young men’s study of theology or any other ‘religious’ subject at university level. However, this article argues that the Irish colleges bill gained assent from the liberal wing of parliamentary opinion precisely because it seemed, to early Victorian liberals, to instantiate the logic of parallel patronage. Using Thomas Wyse, Charles Buller, and T. B. Macaulay as cases in point, this article reveals that the logic behind this vision of state ‘neutrality’ as simultaneous support for each denominational interest was steeped in a working knowledge of colonialism.

Secularism, State Neutrality, and Islam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullah Saeed
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
Western World ◽  
State Neutrality ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Basic Issue ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The Church

This chapter explores how Muslims understand secularism and respond to the idea of separating religion from the state. For many Muslims, secularism has negative connotations, as they understand it to be against religion, equivalent to irreligion or antireligion. Due to these preconceptions, a Muslim who calls for secularism to be accepted may face significant resistance in many Muslim-majority countries. Various historical, social, and political reasons account for why much of the Western world has moved to separate religion or the church from the state, even while religion has remained, in several instances, an explicit part of the state. There is ample room in Islamic thought to explore the basic issue of state neutrality vis--vis religion, but the language of political discourse must shift toward more neutral terms. The term “state neutrality” is more acceptable. Muslims can come to accept state neutrality, despite their negative historical experiences associated with secularism.

Lautsi v. Italy: An Initial Appraisal

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-244
Author(s):  
Malcolm D. Evans
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
State Neutrality ◽  
Margin Of Appreciation ◽  
Grand Chamber

The Grand Chamber Decision in Lautsi accords the State a considerable margin of appreciation to legitimate the display of religious symbols in classrooms on grounds of tradition. In doing so, however, it opens up new questions concerning the scope of state neutrality which remain to be resolved.

Is Modern Sectarianism a Product of Secularisation?

2021 ◽  
pp. 299-328
Author(s):  
Azmi Bishara
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
State Neutrality ◽  
State Domination ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the relationship between modern sectarianism and secularization. It argues that neither the Arab nor the Islamic World more generally was exempt historically from secularization as a process of differentiation. It observes that in the Arab Mashreq, secularization has been imposed from above via the state, and has been interpreted as an abandonment of, or assault on, the religious culture of the majority. It has taken the form of state domination of religion without a struggle over state neutrality in the religious sphere. This chapter also presents how the secularization process in modernity has played a complex role. Sometimes it has been given expression by an expanding state power with no need for religious legitimacy and the shrinking social significance of religion. In other times, top-down secularization coupled with the failure to build a nation on the basis of citizenship can trigger both political religiosity and political sectarianism.

The Myth of the Neutral State: The relationship between state and religion in the face of new challenges

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl-Heinz Ladeur ◽  
Ino Augsberg
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Western World ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
State Neutrality ◽  
Federal Constitutional ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Political Act

On a global level, we are witnessing a revitalisation of religion, which also includes a re-politisation of religion, particularly within contemporary Islam. Religion has become, once again, a political topos. The secularised western world is thus facing a new challenge, for which it appears to be inadequately prepared. The idea of freedom of religion, guaranteed as a fundamental right, obliges western democratic states to respect the religious activities of their citizens and to secure their free development. Therefore, the state is principally neither allowed to favour nor to discriminate against certain professions of faith. This concept of equidistance is known as the principle of state neutrality: it commits the state to generally withdraw from religious issues, especially the political act of defining what can legitimately be classified as religion and religious behaviour. The leeway given to the self-conception of religious groups by the German Federal Constitutional Court and its wide understanding of what kind of behaviour has a direct relationship to faith and therefore deserves protection by the freedom of religion, is to be understood against the context of this general principle. However, with regard to the new challenges mentioned above, the neutrality principle increasingly serves yet another purpose. The courts use it as an exit-option in order to avoid addressing problems which appear to be too complex for the law relegating religion to sociological study. In this context, state neutrality merely functions as a chiffre for indifference. But this strategy of avoidance, though understandable in the light of the complexity of religious pluralism, undermines the law's function of conflict resolution. Furthermore, it neither corresponds to the historical development nor to the functional aspects of the idea of religious freedom.

The Absolute State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Mechanical State ◽  
State Neutrality ◽  
Total State ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Legitimate State

Chapter 3 analyzes Schmitt’s state theory. It begins with Schmitt’s criticism of “the mechanical state,” a conception of the state that he associated with positivism. Schmitt denied that the state was only machine-like and that it should merely execute whatever commands were fed into it. Instead, drawing on his interpretation of Hobbes, he argued that a legitimate state must make an absolute commitment to some substantive value, some political commitment, if it was to overcome the state of nature. Schmitt insisted that the state could not allow this commitment to be compromised by challenges from “indirect powers” without leading to instability and civil war. This chapter also discusses Schmitt’s typology of state neutrality: the state as a neutral power mediating social forces and the state as a neutralizing power preventing internal politicization. It concludes by discussing Schmitt’s interpretation of Hobbes’ total state and how that maps onto his own state theory.

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