Muslim Women and the Politics of Religious Identity in a (Post) Secular Society

Women’s bodies, states Benhabib (Dignity in adversity: human rights in troubled times, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011: 168), have become the site of symbolic confrontations between a re-essentialized understanding of religious and cultural differences and the forces of state power, whether in their civic-republican, liberal-democratic or multicultural form. One of the main reasons for the emergence of these confrontations or public debates, says Benhabib (2011: 169), is because of the actual location of ‘political theology’. She asserts that within the context of globalization, the concept of ‘political theology’ is complicated by its unstable location between religion and the public square; between the private and official; and between individual rights to freedom of religion versus state security and public well-being. Ultimately, therefore, the nature of the tension between religion as a political theology and the forces of state power can at best be described as a clash between identities of a collective nature (as envisaged by the nation-state) and identities of an individual nature (as manifested in different religions and cultures). Ongoing attempts to counter the ascendancy of religion, and as will be discussed in this article, specifically the ascendancy and visibility of Islamic identity as practiced by Muslim women, has brought into serious debate the notion of a (post) secular society and its implications for religious rights. What emerges from the state’s insistence that individuals not be allowed to enter the public discourse as religious beings, are, on the one hand, the constraints imposed on Muslim women by liberal democracies, and on the other hand, that Islam, as represented by Muslim women, is not constitutive of democratic citizenship. Will the inclusion and recognition of Muslim women, therefore, necessarily augment a democratic citizenship agenda, and will it lead to an alleviation of the conflict? Then, in exploring a re-articulation of an inclusive citizenship—one which is held accountable by its minimization of social inequality—what ought to be the parameters of inclusion and how should it unfold differently to what is already happening in liberal democracies?     

Religion and the Limits of Liberalism

This is the editors' preface to a special issue of Philosophia on 'Religion and Limits of Liberalism'. It begins by noting the challenges which the 'return' of religions to liberal democracies poses to the liberal commitment to respect citizens’ freedom and equality. Then, with particular reference to Rawls' theory of liberal politics, it situates the papers in relation to three different senses of liberal ‘respect’ that are challenged by contemporary religions – one understood in terms of the justification of political power, another as tolerance of diversity, and the third in terms of freedom from interference.     

Insulting the sacred in a multicultural society: the conviction of Jussi Halla-aho under the Finnish religious insult section

This article analyses the most well-known and legally important contemporary Finnish religious insult case: the case of the politician Jussi Halla-aho. Concluded in 2012, the said legal process resulted in a conviction due to Halla-aho’s blog post about Islam and its sacred figures. Using a discursive framing, the article argues that the contemporary religious insult cases can, in fact, be political struggles involving various interests in a multicultural society. Building on broadly Durkheimian theorisation of the sacred, it also argues, that besides the Islamic objects set apart as sacred in the process, ‘secular’ ideals or values, such as the public order, tolerance, equality, and freedom of religion are also constructed as such and protected by the officials. By protecting Islam, the courts, in fact, aimed to protect a ‘secular sacred order’ against societal threats.     

Teasing ‘Islam’: ‘Islam’ as the Other Side of ‘Tolerance’ in Contemporary Dutch Politics

This article deals with the role of ‘Islam’ in contemporary Dutch political discourses on tolerance. I will show how Islam is described as an ideology (and not as a religion) competing with liberal values. I argue that political disputes are not at all about Islam as a living religion, but about ‘Islam’ as a culturally presumed menace to, or negative projection of, dominant Dutch imaginaries, such as tolerance and free speech, that are taken as elementary conditions for a liberal democratic state. The first part of this article deals with the staging and development of ‘Islam’ in Dutch politics since the 1970s. Part two develops a theoretical understanding of the framing of ‘Islam’ as the opponent of ‘tolerance’ and argues that this position shows a typical modern stance.     

Needs and Rights not needs versus rights: expanding Hamilton's conception of politics to include negative rights

Abstract

Hamilton's argument for a political philosophy of needs moves from a critique of rights, more specifically the 'rights-preferences couple', as inappropriate foundation for liberal political theory and practice. While acknowledging some role for rights in a needs-based polity, Hamilton says nothing about what this role might be, and follows Geuss in criticising rights as neither philosophically special nor politically useful. This conclusion would be problematic, for certain rights, Marshall's 'rights from the state' or negative rights, are consistent with the 'state of needs' that Hamilton identifies. Moreover, rights from the s'tate' are better suited than needs to address the problem of oppressive state authority precisely because of their deontological character and legal institutionalisation. Today most politics in liberal democracies is less about conflict and more about co-operation between state and citizen, and so perhaps Hamilton is right to emphasise needs over rights, but there is still a role for a negative rights when conflict emerges. Indeed, negative rights together with needs could constitute a conceptual couple well suited to realising freedom and equality under liberal-democratic conditions.     

Freedom of Religion or Belief in the Jurisprudence of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court1

Abstract

This article discusses the evolution of the jurisprudence of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court (BCC) in the area of freedom of religion or belief by reference to its most recent judgment, which among other things considered the legality of a provision of establishment ex lege of the majority religion. While the court was unable to reach the majority needed for a decisive judgment, the elaborations of the two groups of judges illustrate two distinctive trends in BCC jurisprudence in the area of freedom of religion or belief. At one end of the spectrum the dissenting judges presented very detailed elaborations for the justification of establishment ex lege against the background of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, with notions similar to the Hartian rule of recognition, using sources such as canon law and Ottoman law as legally relevant facts for the constitution of a ‘background culture’ (via establishing the majority religion ex lege). At the other end of the spectrum dissenting judges presented a more sceptical approach to establishment ex lege through a very literal interpretation of the principles and some of the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence dealing with Article 9. While the decision was not conclusive it flagged a new dimension to the BCC's approach in the area of human rights and freedom of religion or belief – the blending of political and legal analytical philosophy with a detailed analysis of European Court of Human Rights case law.     

(Re‐)Forming Freedom: Reflections “after Veritatis splendor” on Freedom's Fate in Modernity and Protestantism's Antinomian Captivity

This essay unfolds in four steps. First, it sketches the way the fate of freedom in modernity – the freedom of the Promethean self – has set the stage for Protestantism's antinomianism as well as for the theological intervention of Veritatis Spendor. The essay focuses here on Kant, Fichte, Nietzsche. Secondly, it shows how Veritatis Spendor overcomes modernity's autonomist conception of freedom. The essay, thirdly, turns to Protestantism “after Veritatis Spendor” and argues that the encyclical's vision of freedom puts into clear relief the antinomian captivity of contemporary Protestantism. Here, the essay also offers a fresh perspective on Luther's largely unknown opposition to antinomianism. It concludes with ten theses “after the Promethean self” that point the way forward, intimating how freedom will need to be rethought theologically in order to overcome the antinomian captivity of contemporary Protestantism.     

Freedom of Expression,Laïcité and Islam in France: The Tension between Two Different (Universal) Perspectives

ABSTRACT

In France, freedom of expression is perceived as a sort of liberté matricielle, a matrix of other fundamental freedoms. As such, it is reflected in many constitutional provisions, including those referring to religion. In addition, the practical exercise of freedom of expression remains strictly linked with the principle of laïcité, which is part of the institutional, legal and intellectual history of the French Republic and has even become the basis of its founding “values.” All this, however, also implies an accentuation of individual freedom of expression, which normally takes precedence over the protection of religions, sometimes justifying caricature of divinities, rules, rites and symbols. The legal cases related to the right to satirical expression are examples of this. The article underlines the role of freedom of expression in the light of the principle of laïcité, which normally rejects the communitarian dimension of religious rights, which may explain some important aspects of, on the one hand, the evolution of legislation regarding both hate speech and blasphemy within French liberal constitutionalism and, on the other, the relationship between freedom of expression and the secular state. This approach offers a possibility of better evaluating existing French law in relation to some religious nomoi groups, specifically, Islamic organizations. These issues are particularly analysed from two perspectives: the right to criticize or challenge religions and the right to satirize. This analysis makes it possible to identify the legal limits of freedom of expression before and after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo tragedy and highlights the difficulties faced by the so-called laïcité à la française in dealing with today's multicultural societies. The need emerges for a proper balance to be struck between religious diversity and protection of human rights – not only the rights of groups to be different, but also the rights of persons within these groups, which also involves the efforts of religious denominations to articulate their claims in order to make them more compatible with constitutional rights, including those referring to freedom of expression.     

Religious or Minority? Examining the Realisation of International Standards in Relation to Religious Minorities in the Middle East

Abstract

The Middle East region has had a long, and periodically impressive, record of religious diversity, yet there is much concern regarding the contemporary standing of its religious minorities. Rather than assessing the chequered historical record of religious minorities in the Middle East, the purpose of this article is to provide an assessment of how international human rights standards may best be utilised to advance their rights. The contention of this article is that the human rights of religious minorities in the Middle East have primarily been considered under the lens of freedom of religion or belief. Relevant though this framework is to their concerns, it will be suggested that promoting the rights of the Middle East's religious minorities through the framework of minority rights may provide a more promising avenue for their protection. The purpose of the article is therefore to provide a reassessment of how best to negotiate the rights of religious minorities in the Middle East. The focus will be on formal legal and political obstacles to the enjoyment of their rights entitlements. Though a broader contextual analysis also assessing economic, cultural and sociological factors would be highly informative, it lies beyond the scope of this article. Despite the fact that minority rights provisions apply to members of minorities alongside all other human rights – among them freedom of religion or belief – the two lenses of minority rights and freedom of religion or belief highlight somewhat different provisions and protections. The two are certainly not mutually exclusive or in contradiction with one another, but a state that prioritises one set of legal and policy options over the other will arrive in different places.     

Freedom, Equality, Minarets

This paper discusses the Swiss minaret ban as a threat to equal citizenship rather than a threat to freedom of religion. The main argument of the paper is that cultural differences can threaten the fair value of equal political participation rights as well as socio-economic ones. These differences are morally troubling despite legitimate emphasis on the need for a shared (political) culture. To ensure that the state treats its citizens as equals with regard to cultural differences requires a form of liberal neutrality which consists of two elements. Equal citizenship requires, first, justificatory neutrality in deciding which matters are legitimate concerns for legislation. It requires also—as a second safeguard—institutional arrangements which ensure that in the process of implementing justificatory neutral decisions the interests of all affected citizens receive a fair hearing. This means that the factors which tend to undermine the equal standing of citizens in society should be counteracted.     

In the Name of Culture and Religion: The Political Function of Blasphemy in Islamic States

ABSTRACT

This article argues that blasphemy laws and a cultural relativist approach to human rights have a political function in authoritarian states. Islamic states use a strong cultural relativist approach to justify their dismal human rights record. The main aim of this approach, however, is survival. The article shows how Islamic countries use religion for their own political survival purposes and how blasphemy laws are often used to silence critique of political, social and religious orders that infringe on basic human rights. From this perspective, blasphemy laws are tools of oppression, not a symbol of cultural and religious difference. By highlighting how blasphemy laws and a cultural relativist approach to religion have been used as tools of oppression by authoritarian regimes, the article underscores the importance of freedom of expression for any functioning democracy.     

The Moralism of Multiculturalism

abstract Moralism is a frequent charge in politics, and especially in relation to the ‘politics of recognition’. In this essay, I identify three types of moralism — undue abstraction, unjustified moralism and impotent moralism — and then discuss each in relation to recent debates over multiculturalism in liberal political theory. Each of these forms of moralism has featured in interesting ways in recent criticisms of the political theory and public policy of multiculturalism. By ‘multiculturalism’ I mean, broadly speaking, the pursuit of group‐differentiated public policies that move beyond the protection of basic individual civil and political rights. Here the charge is not so much that moral judgments have no application in relation to the treatment of cultural and associational minorities, but that the moral claims of defenders of multiculturalism are: (a) appealed to without any sense of the practical realities on the ground (the undue abstraction charge); (b) asserted as if they were self‐evidently true (the unjustified moralism charge); which often results in (c) a stifling of reasoned criticism of the orthodoxy surrounding multiculturalism (thus engendering impotent moralism). I assess these charges in the course of defending the democratic character of the most plausible forms of multicultural accommodation in liberal democratic societies.     

Freedom and Respect in a Multicultural Society

ABSTRACT Martin Hollis, in Market Equality and Social Freedom [1], used the Dewsbury case to illustrate the tension between individual freedom and the public good. Like others engaged in the public debate on multicultural education in general, and Dewsbury in particular, Hollis avoided the main issue: “What should be the curriculum in a school attended by pupils from different cultural backgrounds?’’Rational debate in this highly controversial area requires an analysis of two fundamental concepts—multicultural education and respect. The former can take three forms, each corresponding with a distinctive curriculum model. One—the Equality option—is inimical to parental rights as guaranteed under the European Convention, but it attracts support because of a widespread failure to recognise that one can respect someone's right to hold and propagate a particular faith (or opinion) without necessarily respecting that faith (or opinion). It is shown that this failure has come about through very lax usage of ‘respect’. It is argued that by respecting persons whatever their values the potential conflict between liberty and equality can be resolved in a free society.     

Liberalism,Communitarianism and the Project of Self

Abstract

In this article the authors seek to conceptualize a dynamic and inclusive understanding of personal identity within multicultural democracies such as South Africa, which will draw on both the liberal and communitarian traditions’ respect for the project of self. A preliminary layout for such a project emerges from a literature survey of recent, primarily South African publications on identity and culture, and it suggests that selfhood depends on: a) virtues, cultivated within cooperative communities which allow for effective freedom; b) a venture into existential uncertainty, which alleviates that fear of loss of identity that is supposedly central to many multicultural conflicts; c) the hermeneutic construction of identity through narratives that allow for a plurality of voices; and d) the creative transcending and re-interpretation of values and traditions. The authors contend that such an understanding of identity goes some way towards addressing the question of the way that diverse personal and group identities are to be accommodated in South Africa’s multicultural democracy, and to rethinking the unity which underlies diversity without resorting to liberalism’s reduction of personal identity to rational autonomy.     

Belonging without believing: religion and attitudes towards gay marriage and abortion rights in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

Same-sex marriage has become a divisive issue in established western democracies. As in earlier research on abortion, there is now a growing body of studies which suggests that religious factors, such as identity, belief and practice, are the most frequent predictors of opposition towards gay marriage. Yet, what we know about the combined influence of these religious factors remains unexamined. Mindful of this omission, this study examines the relationship between regular church attendance and a belief in God on attitudes towards same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Using the recent survey data from Northern Ireland, the results suggest that not only are those who belong but do not believe distinctive in terms of their demographic makeup, but they are also significantly more likely to adopt a liberal stance in relation to both these issues – gay marriage and abortion rights – than the most religiously devout, or those who both belong and believe.     

Thoughts on the inner conflict within Islamic culture: Their existential anxieties and ours

Abstract

This paper focuses on how Islamic terrorism is primarily part of a larger internal conflict within Islamic culture. Western, liberal (largely Christian) democracies evolved over centuries of their own bloody philosophical and political struggles between religious authority and what came to be defined as a modern, civil society built on individual freedom of belief, secular authority, and law. Now, Western liberal modernity represents a deep existential threat to traditional Islamic societies around gender, family relations, and individual beliefs. A ferocious internal struggle exists between those Muslims who believe Islam can absorb those tensions – creating its own version of an open, tolerant, cultural modernity – versus political Islamists, jihadists, for whom the annihilation anxiety elicited by the threatened social change is directed both internally and in violent rage at the West.     

Pluralism in Multicultural Liberal Democracy and the Justification of Female Circumcision

This article discusses the problems that a liberal, multicultural democracy has in dealing with cultural practices, such as female circumcision, which themselves suppress the liberal values of autonomy and pluralism. In this context I have chosen the justification of female circumcision as my issue for three reasons. First, with increasing immigration, in Western multicultural and pluralistic societies this practice has recently been given a good deal of public attention; second, I believe that it is time to put this cruel and discriminatory tradition finally in the past; and third, the paradox that the victims of this practice are also often its strongest proponents well demonstrates the problems that liberal democracies have in dealing with the question of autonomy and tolerance in real-life situations. My main argument is that, without giving up tolerance, we can show that there can be no moral justification for such a tradition as female circumcision, even within a multicultural and pluralist society.
I shall first show why neither female circumcision nor any other tradition that oppresses and harms individuals and is maintained by coercion can be satisfactorily defended by liberal arguments. Then I shall discuss why 'communitarian'counter-arguments which appeal to the significance of communal values and traditions or to cultural rights also fail to give any plausible support to the maintenance of this tradition. Finally, I shall consider in more detail how the value of autonomy should be normatively understood in a modern pluralist society [1].     

Kant,Ripstein and the Circle of Freedom: A Critical Note

Much contemporary political philosophy claims to be Kant‐inspired, but its aims and method differ from Kant's own. In his recent book, Force and Freedom, Arthur Ripstein advocates a more orthodox Kantian outlook, presenting it as superior to dominant (Kant‐inspired) views. The most striking feature of this outlook is its attempt to ground the whole of political morality in one right: the right to freedom, understood as the right to be independent of others’ choices. Is Ripstein's Kantian project successful? In this research note I argue that it is not. First, I suggest that Ripstein's notion of freedom is viciously circular. It is meant to ground all rights, but in fact it presupposes an account of those rights. Second, I show that—independently of its inability to ground a whole political morality—such a moralized understanding of freedom is normatively unappealing.     

Public Reason as a Form of Normative and Political Justification: A Study on Rawls’s Idea of Public Reason and Kant’s Notion of the Use of Public Reason in What is Enlightenment?

Abstract

This article explores the historical and philosophical backgrounds that inform the appropriation of the term “public reason” in liberal theory. Particularly, it studies the differing nuances attached to public reason by Kant and Rawls. The article suggests that, while Kant viewed the public use of reason as a conditio sine qua non for Enlightenment to take place within the Prussian society, Rawls’s notion of public reason in Political Liberalism serves a different purpose in our contemporary world. Rawls sees public reason as a tool, which would enable citizens of the pluralistic liberal state to unearth tolerable bases for coexistence, despite their trenchant and often conflicting ideological, cultural and religious differences. Moreover, Rawls’s notion of public reason aims at liberal legitimacy: the normative and political justification of the legal power of the state in liberal democracy.