Religious Discrimination

Religion’s effect on individual tendency to engage in political protest is influenced both by the resources available to citizens at the individual level and opportunities provided to religious groups and organizations at the country level. Combining data from last two waves of the World Values Surveys with aggregate data on religious regulation, we show that private religious beliefs reduce an individual’s protest potential while involvement in religious social networks fosters it. At the country level, we find that government regulation of religion decreases individual tendency to protest, and has an especially detrimental effect on the likelihood of religious minorities joining peaceful protest activities. These findings are in line with opportunity structure theories that stress the importance of system openness for fostering political protest.

The protection of religious interests can take two routes: religious freedom or religious discrimination. This article makes three claims. First, it argues that the differences observed in the case-law under each route do not reflect essential, but merely transient and contestable interpretative differences. Secondly, it makes a case for an alternative unifying normative basis for both religious discrimination and religious freedom routes grounded in a democratic framework, which emphasises the dual dimension of religious interests, both as negative rights protecting individual autonomy as well as positive rights of participation. Third, the article builds upon this democratic framework to suggest a novel way for looking at the relationships between religious discrimination and religious freedom.

A call for papers is now open for the forthcoming issue of JCA. Please submit your manuscript to jca@academicstudiespress.com. The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2019. All submissions are subjected to a blind peer review process. Your submission should comply with the authors’ guidelines, which may be found at https://www.academicstudiespress.com/s/InstructionsforJCAAuthors.pdf

Toleration plays a central role in debates about the accommodation of religious beliefs and practices in liberal democracies. This chapter addresses one such debate, which concerns whether liberal societies ought to tolerate discriminatory practices when, or even because, they are performed by religious associations and institutions. After briefly discussing some recently canvassed arguments in support of tolerating discrimination by religious associations, it turns to the question of how political communities might establish the limits to this form of toleration, a question so far neglected by philosophers. One reason why a tolerant state might refuse to allow religious associations to discriminate is to 1

The EU has slowly but surely developed a solid body of equality law that prohibits different facets of discrimination. While the Union had initially developed anti-discrimination norms that served only the commercial rationale of the common market, focusing on nationality (of a Member State) and gender as protected grounds, the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) supplied five additional prohibited grounds of discrimination to the EU legislative palette, in line with a much broader egalitarian rationale. In 2000, two EU Equality Directives followed, one focusing on race and ethnic origin, the other covering the remaining four grounds introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam, namely religion, sexual orientation, disabilities and age. Eighteen years after the adoption of the watershed Equality Directives, it seems timely to dedicate a book to their limits and prospects, to look at the progress made, and to revisit the rise of EU anti-discrimination law beyond gender. This volume sets out to capture the striking developments and shortcomings that have taken place in the interpretation of relevant EU secondary law. Firstly, the book unfolds an up-to-date systematic reappraisal of the five 'newer' grounds of discrimination, which have so far received mostly fragmented coverage. Secondly, and more generally, the volume captures how and to what extent the Equality Directives have enabled or, at times, prevented the Court of Justice of the European Union from developing even broader and more refined anti-discrimination jurisprudence. Thus, the book offers a glimpse into the past, present and – it is hoped – future of EU anti-discrimination law as, despite all the flaws in the Union's 'Garden of Earthly Delights', it offers one of the highest standards of protection in comparative anti-discrimination law.

Technical design can produce exclusionary and even discriminatory effects for users. A lack of discriminatory intent is insufficient to avoid discriminatory design, since implicit assumptions about users rarely include all relevant user demographics, and in some cases, designing for all relevant users is actually impossible. To minimize discriminatory effects of technical design, an actively anti-discriminatory design perspective must be adopted. This article provides examples of discriminatory user exclusion, then defining exclusionary design in terms of disaffordances and dysaffordances. Once these definitions are in place, principles of anti-discriminatory design are advanced, drawing upon a method of phenomenological variation employed in the context of standpoint epistemology.

Shi'a Muslim populations constitute a majority sectarian community in a number of nations.. Although exact population figures are difficult to ascertain, they are a majority or significant plurality in the following nations: Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Yemen and Lebanon. In addition, Shi’a Muslims are a significant minority in  several states, including such surprising areas as Albania, Senegal and Nigeria. For the purpose of this
discussion I include all branches of Shi’ism. It is noteworthy that Shi’a Muslims constitute a similar percentage of the Muslim populations of many states (10-15%) as diverse as Afghanistan, Germany, Great Britain,
India, Turkey and the United States

Achibita and Bougnaoui cases raised fundamental questions about the right to manifest one ’ s religion and belief in the workplace, particularly in light of the divergent views of the Advocates General as to the type of discrimination that occurred. This contribution will start with an analysis of the Advocates General ’ s opinions, as the very divergent approaches taken in the two opinions deserve to be highlighted. Since Achbita and Bougnaoui are the first cases raising grounds of religious discrimination in the form of a lack of reasonable accommodation under the FED, the assessment by the European Union (EU) judiciary of these cases will have an impact on thousands of women across the EU who wear headscarves as a matter of religious conviction

The question of identity has been a difficult one to answer, especially in the postmodern world. The multiplicity of being, however, seems to pose a threat to our constant need to demarcate clear boundaries – whether geographic, religious, racial, or ethnic. Any attempt to traverse them, or to declare fluidity, accept polyphony, is seen as a direct attack on a defined unitary self. This unitary self can also then be expanded to understand the Nation as an amalgamation of neatly drawn demarcations.
Taking into account the recent debate around the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state of Assam, this paper aims to look at the Bengal-origin Muslims of Assam, a community facing severely layered marginalisation and discrimination. Largely dwellers of the char chapori areas (sandbars formed in the middle of the Brahmaputra river), the Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam occupy the position of the subaltern as the religious and the linguistic minority. This paper examines the poetry written by the members of this community, broadly referred to as Miya Poetry. While ‘Miya’ in Urdu translates to ‘gentleman’, the term is a racial slur and carries a derogatory connotation in the spatial context of the state, referring to the Bengal-origin Muslims as Bangladeshis, foreigners, outsiders, or infiltrators. This forceful otherisation over the years has arguably led to xenophobic discrimination, and is now being retaliated against with the written word. The paper also attempts to examine the sudden rise in prominence and readership of Miya Poetry, owing largely to alternative online media platforms like YouTube and social media websites like Facebook that have allowed this seemingly small-scale subaltern movement to gather support, and reach and mobilise the masses.

The point of discussion of this paper is to have a detailed overview of blasphemy laws under the “Pakistan Penal Code”. This paper will begin by discussing what blasphemy is, then it will discuss the blasphemy laws in Pakistan with the historical background. It will explain the landmark blasphemy case: Mst. Asia Bibi v The State. The critical review of the Asia Bibi Case will be given in this paper at hand. This paper will briefly discuss the flaws in section 295C and how it is causing injustices in society and further discusses how it is misused against minorities and discriminate against people on the basis of their religion. Furthermore, it will be discussed how blasphemy laws are causing serious threats to society perhaps destroying the religious harmony in the society. In addition to that this paper will also discuss these laws in the light of Islam. In the end, it’ll give some recommendations to make this law compatible with society. The whole paper is supported by case laws.

We are very disappointed with the lack of time to create a complete submission.  Unlike those calling for the right to discriminate against other members of the Australian society, we are volunteers with no paid staff to research and respond to these types of submissions.

In our first submission, we did outline possible remedies to the bills.  In our 2nd submission, whilst we acknowledge there have been changes, we formed the view that the bills cannot be remedied.  This is our 3rd submission concerning these Bills, and we continue to reject these Bills.

The Bills are overly and unnecessarily complicated, depart from the usually accepted principles of anti-discrimination bills, and are not proportionate in dealing with the reduction of human rights of others by religious persons and organisations.

We are of the view that these Bills will reduce rather than enhance social cohesion in Australian society.

We call on the Government to cease the progression of these bills and engage in profound and meaningful consultation with the Australian community on a Bill of Human Rights.

Former Senator Greig was right. These proposed Bills are creating a system of religious apartheid in Australia. In addition, these bills create a system of State Sponsored Homophobia, Biphobia, Transphobia and much more in Australia, raised in the 2019 ILGA World report.

The Bills go to what Mr Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the UN's Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, has called out as in his 2019 report to the United Nations, "…impacts on their [LGBTIQ people] social inclusion and hinders their access to healthcare, education, housing, employment, political participation, personal security and freedom from violence."

Beyond the LGBTIQ Community, these Bills put women, the disabled, people of minor faith communities, and people from other races and others in the Australian society at risk

As Christians, we find this unacceptable.

When testimony about the religiosity of a victim is elicited, a jury will likely become aware of the religious affiliation of the victim.  Any revelation to a jury of the religiosity of a victim can be an aid to the jury in assessing the punishment to be given to the defendant, since being religious and talking with people about religion is deemed a communal good.  However, prescribing a harsher punishment to a defendant because of the religious affiliation of a victim is a form of religious discrimination which is unconstitutional.  In light of this inherent difficulty of evidence of religion, it is unclear whether the legal system will resort to a formal neutrality which attempts to separate religion by categorically barring its admissibility. 

Courts faced with unusual problems of law and religion typically resort to a formal neutrality and separation in part because they are unable to articulate any alternative approach.  The legal system is unable to talk about religion any other way, and it is unlikely that this will change.  Beginning such a change would require a reevaluation of liberty of conscience and the permissibility of “exercising” one’s faith in both a secular and religiously pluralistic society, but American society lacks an understanding which would provide it with the capability of acknowledging religion without immediately returning to religious discrimination.  The longer American society lacks this ability to bridge the gap between the secular and the religious, the wider the chasm grows.

- Part I. Series : Religion - State - society. Journal of beliefs and ideologies / Journal for the Study of Beliefs and Worldviews, 192 p., 29.90 EUR, br., ISBN 978-3-643-99906-1, ISSN 1438-955X

This report describes the legal framework and general religious beliefs of the population of the United Kingdom before exploring specific instances of discrimination and legal cases relating to minority religious groups. The United Kingdom could be characterized by a tolerance for religious diversity; strong expressions of intolerance or overt discrimination are rare. However, the general population has an apprehension towards forms of religion that emphasize evangelism and/or an exclusive path for salvation. The overall framework for approaching religious discrimination in the UK is adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights. Recent UK court judgments relating to the right of religious expression have emphasized the specificity of context and a need to balance the right of religious expression with other concerns, rather than seeking to make more general rulings. It is concluded that the non-discriminatory environment in the United Kingdom is due not so much to strong constitutional provisions or legislative activities as to the lack of institutional support for discrimination, as well as an anti-discriminatory ethos among significant political and social actors.
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Dieser Bericht beginnt mit einer Darstellung der rechtlichen Rahmenbedin- gungen und der allgemeinen Glaubensansichten der britischen Bevölkerung. Anschließend wird näher auf einzelne Beispiele von Diskriminierung und auf Rechtsfälle, die Minderheitsreligionen betreffen, eingegangen. Großbri- tannien gilt allgemein als tolerantes und von religiöser Vielfalt geprägtes Land; grobe Fälle von Intoleranz oder unverhohlene Diskriminierung sind eher selten. Die Mehrheitsbevölkerung hat jedoch Bedenken gegenüber reli- giösen Formen, welche die Evangelisation und/oder einen exklusiven Weg zur Erlösung betonen. Der rechtliche Maßstab für die Bewertung religiöser Diskriminierung ist die Einhaltung der Europäischen Menschenrechtskon- vention. Die Gerichte in Großbritannien haben in letzter Zeit bei Entschei- dungen zu Fragen der freien Religionsausübung großen Wert auf den spezifi- schen Kontext gelegt, sowie die Notwendigkeit eines Gleichgewichts zwi- schen dem Recht auf freie Religionsausübung und anderen Rechten betont, anstatt allgemein geltende Richtlinien festzulegen. Es wurde festgestellt, dass das nichtdiskriminierende Umfeld in Großbritannien weniger das Resultat starker Verfassungsbestimmungen oder juristischer Initiativen ist, sondern vielmehr auf der Tatsache beruht, dass diskriminierendes Verhalten kaum institutionell verankert ist und es unter den wichtigsten politischen und sozi- alen Akteuren ein starkes Ethos gibt, jede Form der Diskriminierung abzu- lehnen.

A summary of the authors' research on European Court of Human Rights' jurisprudence concerning religious symbolism, with an emphasis on the question of 'symbolic harm', i.e. the ways in which the manifestation of symbols has been understood in the case-law as possibly causing harm to other individuals. Cases discussed include Sahin v Turkey, Eweida v UK, Dahlab v Switzerland, Lautsi v Italy, Ebrahimian v France and SAS v France.

Co-written with Daniel J. Hill The uploaded file is a draft; the final published version is available via this link: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/research-handbook-on-interdisciplinary-approaches-to-law-and-religion.

In its recent ruling, Hamidović v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Strasbourg Court found that the conviction of a Muslim for his refusal to remove the taquiyah (skullcap), during a criminal proceeding where he was witness, was illegitimate. The paper analyzes the proportionality criteria applied by the European Court of Human Rights as well as by some national courts in cases where the legal restrictions to the wearing of religious clothing or symbols by privates may constitute forms of discrimination.

As the workforce is becoming more diversified in terms of culture, ethnicity, and religion, many individual values are carried over to the workplace. Now, in the post-9/11 world, employees working in religiously diverse organizations might be prone to increased interpersonal conflicts and misunderstandings because of their religious affiliation. Yet, exploring the effects of religious diversity in organizations is still in its embryonic stages. This study investigated the perceptual effects of perceived religious discrimination on employee work-related behaviors, mainly commitment and engagement. The study surveyed 548 employees working in religiously diverse organizations. The findings suggested that when workers perceive religious discrimination in their organization, their commitment and engagement are affected. It is recommended that managers in general and specifically human resource managers devise strategies and develop management interventions to mitigate the negative organizational and personal consequences of religious discrimination in the workplace. Further studies should assess the effects of employees’ perceived religious discrimination on other behavioral outcomes.

Despite a robust literature on general forms of state repression, the determinants of religious repression remain unclear. This article argues that a regime's experience with religious conflict will lead it to be more repressive of religious groups within its territory for three primary reasons. Religious conflict increases the behavioral threat posed by religious groups, lowers the cost of repressing these communities, and evokes vivid memories of past religious violence that underscore the role of the state in taming religion to maintain social order. New, cross-national data on religious conflict and repression from 1990 to 2009 show that religious conflict has a significant and positive effect on the level of religious repression for the time period under investigation, expanding the types and severity of government restrictions on religion in a country. Our findings point to the importance of studying the causes and nature of negative sanctions against religious communities, specifically.

Particular forms of persecution are, based on their scale, severity, and discriminatory motivation, so heinous that such conduct may be justifiably categorised as enumerated inhumane acts of crimes against humanity in terms of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. However, despite the persistent recognition of the crime of persecution, such an acceptance has lacked substantive and practical clarity. This ambiguity may thus be responsible, at least in part, for the international criminal justice systems’ perceived reluctance to enforce prosecution measures based on religious persecution. With this legal obstacle in mind, it is argued that greater legal certainty regarding persecution’s definitional elements would strengthen international judicial bodies’ resolve to pursue individual criminal accountability. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to unveil the legal opacity surrounding crimes against humanity of religious persecution (‘grievious religious persecution’).

However, legal semantics can never reach the inner existential dimension of a person’s conscience. Consequently, this study takes a multidisciplinary approach to contextualising ‘grievious religious persecution’. Accordingly, the exact denotation and connotation of religion and religious identity, its role in characterising a situation as ‘religious’ persecution, and the influence of the right to freedom of religion or belief on such an assessment, is discussed. It is shown that religious persecution is based on the prevalence of religious identity as the prime discriminatory basis upon which the perpetrator targeted certain victims.

The overall thesis is therefore that it is possible to convincingly conceptualise ‘grievious religious persecution’ by denoting a definitively formulated and pragmatically verified taxonomy of the legal preconditions for establishing the ICC’s subject-matter jurisdiction. In this regard, a relevant taxonomy is proposed which differentiates between different forms of persecutory conduct, discusses the mens rea requirement, establishes the intensity threshold, recommends an effective definition, and is finally applied to a relevant case study in order to analyse its practical efficiency.

By proposing a justifiable and detailed taxonomy from the perspective of religious identity and religious freedom, the legal semantics and discourse regarding ‘grievious religious persecution’ is developed, which may positively influence its substantive understanding and may potentially lessen the political unease regarding its perceived scope and application. It is argued that the taxonomy may have various implications, including to strengthen the efforts of human rights defenders in re religious freedom, and advance criminal accountability and counteract impunity for severe human rights deprivations.

Anti-discrimination claims by religious employees have constructed seemingly intractable conflicts. The United Kingdom (UK) courts have resolved these workplace disputes by diluting individual religious liberty, particularly when determining disadvantage and proportionality under indirect discrimination. This article explores an alternative UK anti-discrimination claim route for religious employees, namely an employer duty of reasonable accommodation. A comparative analysis outlines the corresponding Canadian duty. This model is applied to UK employment cases featuring indirect religious discrimination, specifically those claims which formed the recent applications in Eweida and Others v. UK. It is suggested that adoption of the Canadian model be considered: its nuanced approach to proportionality is particularly instructive. Whilst such a UK duty could prove controversial, it would cohere with both normative theory in law and religion and conceptual understanding of anti-discrimination law. Moreover, reasonable accommodation’s individualised focus should be acclaimed; it need not compromise collective notions of religious liberty.

State of implementation of Racial Equality Directive and Employment Equality Directive in Poland - legislation, case law, policy (until 31 December 2016).

The Racial Equality Directive (2000/43/EC) prohibits discrimination on the ground of racial or ethnic origin in a broad range of fields, including employment, social protection and social advantages, education, and goods and services available to the public, including housing. The Employment Equality Directive (2000/78/EC), however, is limited to the field of employment and occupation but covers the grounds of religion or belief, disability, age and sexual orientation. The adoption of the Racial Equality Directive and the Employment Equality Directive initiated a movement throughout Europe, in EU Member States and beyond, towards the adoption of national non-discrimination legislations transposing the provisions of the directives. In many Member States, this movement implied quite profound changes to the existing legislative framework, through the amendment of existing legislation or the adoption of new unprecedented laws and regulations to specifically regulate the prohibition of discrimination in accordance with the directives’ requirements.
In order to effectively promote equality and tackle discrimination in the European Union it is important to understand the effects of the EU's equal treatment and non-discrimination legislation.
The European Commission therefore set up the European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination to support its work by providing independent information and advice on relevant developments in the Member States. The network is managed by Human European Consultancy (HEC), the Migration Policy Group (MPG) and Utrecht University (UU) on behalf of the European Commission.
A primary task of the network is to provide reliable, expert information to enable the Commission to fulfil their role as guardian of the treaties. The disclosure and gathering of information on non-discrimination legislation, case law and developments at national level, that is often not easily accessible due to the specificities of national legal systems, language barriers and difficulties in finding relevant information, is therefore one of the key goals of the new network. [https://www.equalitylaw.eu]

On 14 March 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in two cases, Achbita and Bougnaoui, that centred on the question of whether an employer may dismiss an employee for wearing a headscarf due to her religious beliefs. While such issues have already arisen on numerous occasions before the European Court of Human Rights, this was the most significant opportunity for the Luxembourg Court to enter the fray.  The potential for contrasting approaches had been highlighted in 2016 when the Opinions of the two Advocates-General in these cases proposed sharply divergent readings of how EU law should be applied. This article will present the principal facts of the cases; the Opinions of the Advocates-General; and the judgments of the Court. It will identify several key themes that warrant critical reflection, including possible tensions that arise with the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights.

State of implementation of Racial Equality Directive and Employment Equality Directive in Poland - legislation, case law, policy (until 31 December 2015).

The Racial Equality Directive (2000/43/EC) prohibits discrimination on the ground of racial or ethnic origin in a broad range of fields, including employment, social protection and social advantages, education, and goods and services available to the public, including housing. The Employment Equality Directive (2000/78/EC), however, is limited to the field of employment and occupation but covers the grounds of religion or belief, disability, age and sexual orientation. The adoption of the Racial Equality Directive and the Employment Equality Directive initiated a movement throughout Europe, in EU Member States and beyond, towards the adoption of national non-discrimination legislations transposing the provisions of the directives. In many Member States, this movement implied quite profound changes to the existing legislative framework, through the amendment of existing legislation or the adoption of new unprecedented laws and regulations to specifically regulate the prohibition of discrimination in accordance with the directives’ requirements.
In order to effectively promote equality and tackle discrimination in the European Union it is important to understand the effects of the EU's equal treatment and non-discrimination legislation.
The European Commission therefore set up the European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination to support its work by providing independent information and advice on relevant developments in the Member States. The network is managed by Human European Consultancy (HEC), the Migration Policy Group (MPG) and Utrecht University (UU) on behalf of the European Commission.
A primary task of the network is to provide reliable, expert information to enable the Commission to fulfil their role as guardian of the treaties. The disclosure and gathering of information on non-discrimination legislation, case law and developments at national level, that is often not easily accessible due to the specificities of national legal systems, language barriers and difficulties in finding relevant information, is therefore one of the key goals of the new network. [https://www.equalitylaw.eu]

This study is an attempt to explore religion based discrimination in health facilities based on perceptions of women from different communities. The study reports that women accessing health facilities are discriminated on the basis of class, caste, language, region and religion. Health professionals and health systems need to recognize that women face multiple forms of discrimination based on caste, class and community and therefore take additional steps to ensure unbiased delivery of services.

The kirpan, in a Sikh American context, challenges the boundaries of multiculturalism in the United States because it directly addresses the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the
Bill of Rights. For Sikhs, the kirpan (a type of sword or knife), is an article of faith that affirms their commitment to Sikh values and honors the teaching of their gurus. Along with four other Sikh articles of faith, the kirpan were gifts of love from the divine, which the 10th Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, proclaimed as part of the Sikh physical identity.

It's now almost two decades since the Religion and State (RAS) project began collecting and analysing an impressive amount of data on government's religious policies around the world. The third round of the dataset, covering the 1990-2014 period, was released in 2017 and covers 183 states and territories with independent governments (12). While RAS uses the state as the unit of analysis for considering a wide range of issues, a separate module, Religion and State-Minorities (RASM), uses as unit religious minorities that are at least 0.2 percent of a country's population and includes 771 minorities. Jonathan Fox, founder and coordinator of the project has published extensively, along with several others scholars, over the past years drawing from the different versions and modules of the survey. In his latest book, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods before Me, Fox focuses his attention on government-based religious discriminations against minorities (GRD), in relation with societal religious discriminations (SRD), building on RASM3 dataset. The research analyses 35 types of GRD and 27 types of SRD organizing the analysis of the various countries in 5 major groups, each considered in separate chapters: the Muslim World; Western and European non-orthodox Christian-majority democracies; Orthodox, Buddhist, and Communist States; two residual groups of democracies and nondemocracies. The research moves from two principal questions: which governments are more likely to discriminate and who they discriminate more. For Fox, these are the most relevant elements in the complex web of GRD's causes along with a few other elements: the differences between different groups of countries; the cross-cutting and cross-purposes nature of discriminations; the counterintuitive differences between different state regimes. The book posits itself as a follow up to the author's previous research, especially to a book published in 2016, The unfree exercise of religion, based on round 2 of RASM, and improves previous findings by adding new variables (especially demographic), focusing on religious identities, and answering new questions like why GRD are unequal in the context of the same country. Since the book's intent is not only to deliver data and numbers but also to make some clear statement about the nature, causes, and false beliefs about government-based religious discriminations, it's interesting to single out some of the major findings that the author emphasizes throughout the book and that are worth extrapolate and analyse. The first is that both GRD and SRD increased quite consistently during the considered period (+23.6 and +29.6 percent); an increase consistent across all the countries in the world. This is an interesting and stimulating finding of this work that also explores, in theory and practice, multiple different causes for GRD related to who and how is discriminated, from religious ideologies and monopolies to hostility toward religion and forms of regulation. The second interesting finding is that most countries discriminate unequally, more toward some minorities than toward others. Consequently, using minorities as the unit analysis proves itself as a useful choice in the research. The relationship between GRD and SRD and how SRD is implicated in causing GRD is also relevant in this sense. However, the

This paper is based on a research study designed to explore how adolescents, in situations of political polarization, deploy online networks to articulate, negotiate, and enact their political and religious identities. Based on social media ethnography tracing the online engagements of 44 high school students over a period of eighteen months, and supplemented with in-depth interviews conducted in their village communities, this study explores why social media networks emerge as ideological niches frequented by students to enact their participation as members of their respective religious communities. It suggests that in situation of experienced political polarization and discrimination, students use social media affordances to replicate their offline socio-political and religious engagements onto their virtual spaces and in the process reinforce their radical religious identities.

Although there is much research about the growing ethnic and religious diversity on university campuses across the world, relatively little is known about the religious and cultural experiences of Muslim students on university campuses in Australia. We draw upon an analysis of a survey that was completed by 323 Muslim students who were studying at universities in New South Wales, Australia. While we argue that these places are post-secular, we discover that city campus tend to be more secular than regional and suburban ones. Regional campuses, on the other hand, tend to make a Muslim student more religious.

The paper provides reasoned analysis and criticism of the Ebrhaimian v. France judgement decided by the European Court of Human Rights focusing on the way in which the so called "obligation de neutralité" affects the right to work and broadly working conditions for believers.

There are numerous provisions in French legislation prohibiting discrimination on grounds of religion or belief. In 1989, the displaying of ostensive religious signs in schools was regulated and this was clearly aimed at the wearing of headscarves in the Islamic fashion (hijab) by female pupils.

Настоящая справка раскрывает историю преступления против человечности, совершенном членами латышской национал-радикальной части правящей элиты в отношении русского населения Латвийской Республики.
Справка часть иска, поданного 14.06 2017 в Международный уголовный суд

Guided by the stress process tradition, complex links between religion and mental health have received growing attention from researchers. This study gauges individuals' public and private religiosity, uses a novel measure of environmental stress—negative media portrayal of religion—and presents two divergent hypotheses: (1) religiosity as stress-exacerbating attachment to valued identities producing mental health vulnerability to threat and (2) religiosity as stress-buffering social psychological resource. To assess these hypotheses, we analyze three mental health outcomes (generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and general mental health problems) in national U.S. data from 2010 (N = 1,714). Our findings align with the stress-buffering perspective. Results show that individuals low in public and private religiosity tend to have worse mental health with greater negative media portrayal. High public or private religiosity tends to nullify the relationship between negative media portrayal and mental health.

The paper aims to present a doctrinal assessment of the ECJC case-law on the freedom to manifest one’s religious affiliation on the workplace to show internal inconsistencies among four judgments (namely  Bougnaoui v. Micropole, Achbita v. G4S Secure Solution, Vera Egenberger v. Evangeli-sches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklunge V, IR vs. JQ)
and between them and the ECtHR case law as well as fallacies in the Court legal reasoning. The analysis intends also to bring to light how both the ECJC and the ECtHR accepted a specific idea of neutrality which is in stark contrast with the very reason of the European
anti-discrimination law so embarking on a dangerous path. The paper also intends to contribute to the debate concerning the potential space allegedly opened by those judgments to reasonable accommodation of believers at the workplace.

This annual academic lecture series, hosted by the School of Religious Studies at McGill University, is in memory of my late father, Seymour David Steinman, who was a graduate of McGill University (BA 1959, BCL 1964). My father was highly interested in current events and was intrigued by the disciplines of political science, religion and history. In his later years, he had been enrolled in a Masters (MA) program at McGill in the department of Jewish Studies. He was concerned by the ongoing problem of anti-Semitism and its impact on Jewish communities worldwide.

The goal of this lecture series is to bridge together my PhD research with my father’s personal interest in social diversity and the problem of systemic discrimination that targets minority groups and vulnerable populations in the contemporary world. As a doctoral student specializing in the domain of Religion, Ethics and Public Policy, I believe that the subject-matter of the event is highly relevant to the present-day social climate of increasing racial, ethnic and religious discrimination in Western democracies.

This lecture series will take place on an annual basis during each Fall semester, beginning this year (2019). The event will run for FOUR (4) consecutive weeks.

Below is a scheduled list of the lecture dates and the guest speakers assigned to each night:


THURSDAY OCTOBER 24, 2019

W.Y. Alice Chan, Director & Co-Founder of the Centre for Civic & Religious Literacy (CCRL)

​Víctor Muñiz-Fraticelli, Faculty of Law & Department of Political Science, McGill University

~Moderator: Dr. André Gagné


WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 30, 2019

Dr. André Gagné, Department of Theological Studies, Concordia University

Dr. Martin Geoffroy, CÉGEP Édouard-Montpetit, Director of CEFIR

~Moderator: Dr. Daniel M. Cere


THURSDAY NOVEMBER 7, 2019

Dr. Shauna Van Praagh, Faculty of Law, McGill University

Rabbi Adam Scheier, Congregation Shaar Hashomayim

~Moderator: Lauren V. Steinman


THURSDAY NOVEMBER 14, 2019

Dr. Nathan B. Oman, William & Mary Law School

Dr. Morton Weinfeld, Department of Sociology, McGill University

~Moderator: Dr. Eric Jarvis

The lectures will take place from 7:00 – 9:30 pm in the Chapel of the McGill School of Religious Studies Birks Building, located at 3520 University Street. A question and discussion period will follow, as well as a reception in the Senior Common Room. There will be two guest speakers presenting separate lectures on each night. The lectures will be on a specific theme related to questions of hate, discrimination, extremism and violence that targets religious communities as well as other minority groups. Lectures will examine issues concerning Christian fundamentalism and extremism, Neo-Nazism and white supremacy, Islamophobia, Bill 21 and Quebec society, secularism, religious freedom, religious visibility in the public sphere, hate speech, religious/ethnic minority rights in democratic societies, Anti-Semitism, LGBTQ rights, and movements of Jewish fundamentalism extremism.

The central aim of this annual lecture series symposium is to bring people together to honour my father’s memory in the pursuit of knowledge of a topic that is highly pertinent to today’s increasingly fragmented world. Ultimately, my hope is to stimulate dialogue between Professors, students and other members of the public who are interested in a topic that is of great relevance to the domains of politics, sociology, public policy, and religion more generally.

**For More Information on the Lecture Series, Please Visit: https://steinmanmemoriallectures.weebly.com/

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**N.B. All lectures are FREE and open to the public. If you are interested in attending, please register by visiting the EVENTBRITE page. Please click the "Select a Date" button to the right-hand side of the page, and you will be asked to choose the lecture(s) date(s) you wish to attend.

This Article challenges the criticisms of religious freedom that have emerged among recent academics and politicians, and the growing subordination of religious freedom to sexual freedom claims. In particular, we analyze recent critical scholarship that claims that religious liberty was not important to the American founders and that calls for the removal of special religious exemptions and accommodations because they are said to threaten other fundamental rights and to privilege religion unfairly. These critical arguments we find historically false, philosophically misguided, sociologically one-sided, and increasingly dangerous given the perilous state of religious freedom around the world today. We call for a return to the founders' insights that religion deserves special constitutional protection and that religious freedom must be open to all forms of religion and belief. We also call for a proper balancing of the enduring principles of freedom of conscience, free exercise of religion, religious pluralism, religious equality, separation of church and state, and disestablishment of religion, which together have helped forge the unique protection of religious freedom that America holds out to all its citizens, and to the world.

The purpose of this Cumberland Lodge Briefing is to outline the legal implications for freedom of religion or belief, with a focus on four key areas, which are by no means exhaustive but rather designed to offer an insight into the range of ways that the right intersects with legal norms, processes and conventions. The four selected topics are:

1. Freedom of religion or belief and blasphemy laws
2. Religious discrimination in the workplace
3. The religious and moral education of children
4. Religious profiling in the context of national security.

When examining the legal dimensions of freedom of religion or belief, a key question inevitably arises as to their limitations. Hence, this brief will also consider when, and under what conditions, freedom of religion or belief can be legitimately limited and by whom.

This report was prepared in October 2017 and aimed to describe facts of human rights violations in the criminal prosecution of Sunni Muslims, especially followers of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi in Russian Federation for their religious beliefs, expressed in peaceful lawful ways, such as conducting religious ceremonies, teaching religion and sharing religious literature. The violations include systematic discrimination of Muslims in religious and civic freedoms and wrongful accusations of Muslims as participants in extremist activities without any evidence of violence or physical harm. 43 cases of wrongful convictions and 65 cases of wrongful restriction of religious literature are described, 8 of it are communicated by European Court of Human Rights. A=A recommends that government of Russian Federation reconsider legislation and legal proceedings in the field of fighting extremism to ensure strong protection of human rights, especially civic and religious freedoms, personal autonomy in cultural rights, and take measures to retract wrongful restrictions on peaceful writings of Risale-i Nur Collection and to compensate damages for wrongful conviction of Muslims, accused in extremism just for peaceful worship.

The article forms an analysis of the religious discrimination discourse in Polish public schools, with special attention paid to the culturally specific, Polish understanding of the notion of religious discrimination. The introductory part presents the concept of religious discrimination as present in anti-discriminatory policies. The following part outlines the Polish system of religious education and its relation to the religious discrimination. Studies on religious discrimination in Poland are presented and discussed. Important context is supplied by a presentation of two recent cases of religious discrimination in Polish public schools, and the actions undertaken by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Authors of the article point out the important influence of cultural context on the perception of religious discrimination. The attention is drawn to the seemingly homogenous environment of the Polish school and of the discriminative discourse used in political and social debates. The analysis shows that the presence of religion as a subject in Polish schools remains a cause of conflict between the religious and atheist citizens, a conflict in which concepts of religious discrimination and religious freedom are used as arguments by both sides.

The context of the Roman Empire, in addition to fostering the tradition of writing about the ‘barbarian’ groups outside the empire, proved to be a fertile ground ethnographical or ‘ethnographicising’ accounts about the provincial groups and their past. But why was the religious past of the provincial groups still ‘good to think with’ in the second or third centuries of the empire? What were the primary aims for writers in a wide variety of genres and registers as they referred to the religious practices and antiquities of provincial – essentially subaltern – groups in an ‘ethnicising’ fashion? What difference did the spread of Christianity, with its strong and exclusionary religion-based but occasionally ‘ethnicised’ identity, make?
My paper will focus upon the Roman discourse that sought to portray the provincial groups as ‘remembering’ their pre-Roman pasts even in the context of the High and Late Empire. Memory of the past cults and heroes could, on occasion, be portrayed as a holding of grudge towards the Romans, and some uprisings in the provinces seem to have been imagined to have strong religious, even millenarian, motivations. Generally, however, the empire of peoples, regions, and practices was much more useful for rhetorical or knowledge-ordering purposes if its varietas could be maintained – but for this purpose, it was necessary to relegate the provincials to their ‘ethnic’ roles, about which centuries-earlier material could still be circulated. Such a mind-set is essentially colonial, and thus amenable to readings informed by Subaltern Studies, but it can usefully be studied from the point of view of the Greco-Roman tradition of religious ethnography – or perhaps more aptly ‘ethnographicising outgroup religiosities’. This is the particular ‘relocation of religion’ that my paper explores.
The portrayal of what provincials ‘remember’ about their past displays even broader linkages when bearing in mind that during the second and third centuries the concept of religious communities as an ethnos became a more widespread notion – partly through the increasing Judeo-Christian influence, as well as the recirculation of originally Hellenistic ideas about ‘barbarian wise men’. Both inside and outside the empire, peoples’ religious practices and antiquities were suspended in a rhetorical state of ahistoricity, while the only religious change imaginable was the inexorable progress of Christianity’s linear time. For the pagan writers, on the other hand, exploration of the religious traditions of their own past or those of the far-away foreign groups’ supposed present (as in the case of the Brahmans) appeared as an attractive, prestige-building option.

Interstate conflicts involving religion are commonly argued to be more severe and more protracted than other forms of conflict. Although various arguments have sought to explain religion's apparent contributions to global violence, few consider the foreign policy goals over which religious actors actually fight. This article does so by examining whether religiously-exclusive states tend to militarize interstate territorial disputes (MIDs) over issues of strategic material or identity salience. Insofar as religiously-exclusive states seek to “defend the faith” against internal and external challengers, identity-salient disputes should be a particularly attractive target for militarization. We however find the opposite. Although religiously-exclusive states do initiate territorial MIDs more frequently than their secular counterparts, they are significantly more likely to do so owing to disputed territories' strategic rather than symbolic value. These results challenge accepted...