Forcing the First Amendment

Islam ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 168-194
Author(s):  
Nadia Marzouki

The fifth chapter looks at how the treatment of Islam as a matter of foreign policy reveals less clear distinctions than those observed in domestic quarrels between moral registers, law, and security. The policy of exporting the principle of international religious freedom is founded mostly on a culturalist approach that opposes an intolerant Muslim world to a persecuted Christian world.

2019 ◽  
pp. 228-242
Author(s):  
Daniel Philpott

This concluding chapter offers six recommendations for increasing the sphere of religious freedom in the Muslim-majority world and in the globe in general. These are drawn from the book’s foregoing analysis. The chapter calls for a “gestalt” shift by which religious freedom is recognized as a universal principle, not a Western value; for a recognition of Islam’s capacity for religious freedom; for a rejection of negative secularism; and for an expansion of religious freedom in the Muslim world. Then, the chapter turns its attention to the rise of religious freedom in the foreign policy of the United States and other Western states, recommending that these states “mainstream” religious freedom in their foreign policies. It also recommends building transnational networks involving religious freedom constituencies.


Author(s):  
Daniel Philpott

Is Islam hospitable to religious freedom? The question is at the heart of a public controversy over Islam that has raged in the West over the past decade-and-a-half. Religious freedom is important because it promotes democracy and peace and reduces ills like civil war, terrorism, and violence. Religious freedom also is simply a matter of justice—not an exclusively Western principle but rather a universal human right rooted in human nature. The heart of the book confronts the question of Islam and religious freedom through an empirical examination of Muslim-majority countries. From a satellite view, looking at these countries in the aggregate, the book finds that the Muslim world is far less free than the rest of the world. Zooming in more closely on Muslim-majority countries, though, the picture looks more diverse. Some one-fourth of Muslim-majority countries are in fact religiously free. Among the unfree, 40% are repressive because they are governed by a hostile secularism imported from the West, and the other 60% are Islamist. The emergent picture is both honest and hopeful. Amplifying hope are two chapters that identify “seeds of freedom” in the Islamic tradition and that present the Catholic Church’s long road to religious freedom as a promising model for Islam. Another chapter looks at the Arab Uprisings of 2011, arguing that religious freedom explains much about both their broad failure and their isolated success. The book closes with lessons for expanding religious freedom in the Muslim world and the world at large.


Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
William E. Thro

Rejecting the Obama Administration’s argument that the First Amendment requires identical treatment for religious organizations and secular organizations, the Supreme Court held such a “result is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.” (Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 189). This “special solicitude” guarantees religious freedom from the government in all aspects of society, but particularly on public university campuses. At a minimum, religious expression and religious organizations must have equal rights with secular expression and secular organizations. In some instances, religious expression and religious expression may have greater rights. The Court’s 2020 decisions in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, reinforce and expand the “special solicitude” of religion. Indeed, Espinoza and Our Lady have profound implications for student religious groups at America’s public campuses. This article examines religious freedom at America’s public universities. This article has three parts. First, it offers an overview of religious freedom prior to Espinoza and Our Lady. Second, it briefly discusses those two cases. Third, it explores the implications of those decisions on America’s public campuses.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sachin S. Pandya ◽  
Marcia McCormick

This paper reviews the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020). There, the Court held that by barring employer discrimination against any individual “because of such individual’s . . . sex,” Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also bars employment discrimination because an individual is gay or transgender. The paper then speculates about how much Bostock will affect how likely lower court judges will read other “sex” discrimination prohibitions in the U.S. Code in the same way, in part based on a canvass of the text of about 150 of those prohibitions. The paper also discusses the religion-based defenses that defendants may raise in response under Title VII itself, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.


Author(s):  
Gregorio Bettiza

Since the end of the Cold War religion has increasingly become an organized subject and object of American foreign policy. This has been notable with the emergence of four religious foreign policy regimes—International Religious Freedom, Faith-Based Foreign Aid, Muslim and Islamic Interventions, and Religious Engagement—which together constitute an American foreign policy regime complex on religion. The introduction poses the book’s three guiding questions. First, why and how did these different, yet closely related, religious foreign policy regimes emerge? Second, have the boundaries between religion and state been redefined by these regimes, and if so, how? Third, what are the global effects of the growing entanglement between faith and American foreign policy? The chapter introduces the concepts and arguments that are central to answering these questions. It also highlights the contributions made to the existing literature, discusses some definitional and methodological issues, and presents the plan of the book.


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