Current Issues in Law and Religion

Volume IV

Rinaldo Cristofori, Silvio Ferrari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351570275
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This volume focuses on issues that have only recently come to the forefront of the discipline such as freedom from religion, ordination of homosexuals, apostasy, security and fundamentalism, issues that are linked to the common themes of secularism and globalization. Although these subjects are not new to the academic debate, they have become prominent in law and religion circles as a result of recent and rapid changes in society. The essays in this volume present multiple points of view, facilitate scholars in understanding this evolving discipline and act as a stimulus for further research.This collection gives the reader a sense of the key topics and current debates in law and religion and is of interest to law, politics, human rights, and religion scholars.

Part I
Why Religion, Why Now? Political and Legal Perspectives

[1]
Religious Revivals as a Product and Tool of Globalization

Olivier Roy

OLIVIER ROY is Profpssor rit the European University institute, Florence and author of Holy Ignorance.

The debate on the role of religions in international relations tends to revolve around the clash or dialogue alternative. Religion is seen either as a part of an ethno-national culture or as a supra national factor that could threaten existing nation-states. The same religion may be perceived under both paradigms: tor instance, the Catholic church could be seen as a pillar of Irish or Polish national identity, and conversely, for some Protestant or secularist countries, as a foreign, supra-national entity, which could unduly call for citizens’ loyalty against the state (for instance among US and Swiss political elites in the 19^th century there was a creeping critic against the Church not to speak about the secular French Republic). As an ethno-national factor, religion could turn into a driving political force either for mobilizing large segments of the domestic population (the Christian right in the US for example) or for enlisting foreign forces in support of a given foreign policy (for instance both Israel and some Arab states try to stir up support among Jews or Muslims living abroad, while the Iranian Islamic revolution tried to enlist the support of Shi’a minorities abroad). In this perspective migrants who keep their identity and faith are seen as a possible fifth column of foreign countries (this was true for the Japanese in the US during the second world war, as well as for Muslim migrants in contemporary Europe). Many Mediterranean countries (such as Morocco and even “secular” Turkey) present themselves as legitimate mediators for organizing the religious life of second generation migrants in Europe. Conversely, the West considers to be its duty to protect (or claim to protect) Christian minorities in the Muslim world.

Religion, in terms of international relations, is connected to the minority issue here: the possible instrumentalization of a domestic minority by foreign forces. It is worth reminding the reader that toleration of religious minorities in the West is not so much connected with the spread of enlightenment as with the development of international law through treaties, starting from the 17^th century. The Westphalian state was certainly not a tolerant state and was based on the concept of cuius regio, eius religio, which means that subjects had to share their ruler’s religion; toleration of religious minorities occurred only when such minorities were protected by an international treaty following a military conquest or annexation (French Protestants from Alsace were protected by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and thus not affected by the abolition of the Edict of toleration in 1685), similarly Christian Greeks in contemporary Turkey, as well as Muslims in Northern Greece, are protected by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), and both minorities are in consequence seen more or less as “foreign” by the dominant public opinion. In the Ottoman empire, although the status of “protected minorities” (dhimmis) derived from Islamic jurisprudence, this has been slowly converted into a system of international protection since the establishment of the capitulations system in the early 16^th century.

But religion may also be the base of a supranational institution and/or community. The Catholic Church and the Muslim ummah have been or are still referred to as would-be political entities (the Emperor versus the Pope in the Middle Ages, or Muslims’ nostalgia for the Caliphate): the creation of the Vatican as a sovereign state was a legacy of this confusion. To counter such a perceived agenda, states are usually eager to nationalize, territorialize and contain this supra-national movement, either through some sort of concordat or by encouraging “national” churches; it is no coincidence that the French tradition of royal gallicanism (the king being in charge of religion in his kingdom) has been revived, whatever the constitutional regime: Napoleon instituting a central body of the “Jewish Faith” and Nicolas Sarkozy, as Minister of the Interior, encouraging the creation of the French Council of the Muslim Faith. Even in liberal countries where the state has no right to interfere with religion, “foreign” religions tend to adapt to the local patterns in order to be accepted (the “Americanist” movement among US bishops took place in the 19^th century, despite Vatican reservations, the Reform Judaism movement was born in the US, and nowadays many local mosques there tend to adopt the congregational model with a professional imam).

In international relations theory, religion is seen as a sort of aggravating element which strengthens other factors (nationalism, separatism, social protest, imperial expansionism) by giving them new impetus and providing better incentives to fight and die (salvation). In this perspective, converts are ignored or seen as a lunatic fringe, possibly as traitors or moles working for a foreign group. When religious groups act as disruptive actors in the public sphere, they are always credited with a “classical” political agenda where the stakes are political power and territorial control. Bin Laden is said to be driven by nostalgia for a Caliphate as a territorial entity, and evangelical preachers in Latin America and West Africa are often accused of preparing the ground for a greater US influence. If they cannot be credited with such an agenda, they are dismissed as “fanatics” as crazy or as historical dinosaurs, expressing nostalgia for a lost culture.

To sum up, the debate on religion is framed in the clash/dialogue of civilization paradigm, which considers that religion, culture and territorial power are intrinsically associated, whatever conclusions can be drawn in terms of policy implication. A recent growing trend is reinforcing this cultural perception of religion: namely the impact of the religious factor in the debate on universal values (human rights). Religious actors, with the support of some states (China, Egypt, Singapore and Saudi Arabia) tend to deny the universality of the human rights as defined by Enlightenment and the UN Charter. Tension between human rights and religious freedom pervades the debate on the right to wear a veil or burqa, on the limits of freedom of expression, on same sex marriage and women’s emancipation. This debate tends to reduce the universality of human rights to a recent specificity of the Western culture. Although religions such as Islam and Catholicism tend by definition to be universalist, they do contribute in their own way to associate themselves with a given culture and to ascribe other religions to other cultures.

The debate on religion is framed in the Clash/dialogue of civilization paradigm, which considers that religion, culture and territorial power are intrinsically associated

However, from my point of view, the so-called “return of the sacred” or the more assertive role of religion as a political and strategic factor, is not a return of traditional, culturally embedded religions; on the contrary, it marks a break with this culturalist perception of religion. Political actors, and many states, face a growing problem of handling religious issues because they are confronted with new paradigms: those religions which are successful on the “global market” are disconnected with traditional cultures and specific territories. They are both a product and a tool of globalization, and not the expression of existing political forces. Instead of providing new impetus to national and ethnic identities, they tend to bypass these identities and are thus more difficult to deal with through the traditional political and diplomatic tools of constraints and incentives.

In fact, religious dynamics have nothing to do with traditional competition between civilizations, such as Christianity and Islam. It is not Islam per se which is spreading or Christianity per se which is receding; on both sides there are specific shifts towards new forms of religiosity, at the expense of culturally-embedded traditional forms of religion. The fastest growing religious movement in the world is Christian Pentecostalism, along with Mormonism, but the former has hundreds of millions of believers. New Protestant movements have been adopted by a third of the Haitian and Brazilian populations, thus altering these countries’ traditional identification with Catholicism. The spread of Islam has been linked to the growth of Muslim populations rather than to a conversion trend, however Muslim population growth is experiencing a sudden slowdown as almost all Muslim societies are currently going through a demographic transition which places them on a par with European fertility levels, or even below them. Tunisia, for instance, has a lower rate of fertility than France (roughly 1.7% compared with 1.9%); second generation Muslims in Europe tend to align themselves to their host-country’s fertility rate (meaning that the “Eurabia” concept of Europe having a demographic Muslim majority in around 2050 is sheer fantasy). The dynamism of Islam is no more demographic, but potentially linked with the success of salafism, a militant scripturalist and anti-culturalist brand of Islam.

We are witnessing a shift in the traditional forms of religious practice - Catholicism, Hanafi Islam, classic Protestant denominations such as Anglicanism and Methodism - towards more fundamentalist and charismatic forms of religiosity (Evangelism, Pentecostalism, Salafism, Tablighi Jamaat, neo-Sufism, Lubavich). But these movements are relatively recent. Salafism derives from Wahhabism, which was founded at the end of the 18^th century. The Hasidim and Haredim were born in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The various evangelisms belong to the tradition of Protestant “awakenings” which began during the 18^th century, while Pentecostalism dates from the early 20^th century. Similarly, the forms of Buddhism and Hinduism that recruit followers and export themselves are recent reformulations, from the late 19^th to the late 20^th century (Soka Gakkai, Falun Gong and Hare Krishna, as well as the political Hinduism of the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Sri Lankan theravada Buddhism). Those movements which the French call sects and the Americans cults, or more academically “NRMs” (New Religious Movements), are thriving: the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, which also began in the 19^th century, had expanded hugely worldwide by the close of the 20^th century.

In this sense, religious “revival” is merely an optical illusion: it would be more appropriate to speak of transformation. Religion is both more visible and at the same time frequently in decline. Rather than a reformulation of religion, we are witnessing a return to ancestral practices abandoned during the secularist hiatus. These tendencies go hand in hand with a desire for greater visibility in the public sphere, and even an ostensible break with mainstream practices and cultures. Religion exhibits itself as such, and refuses to be reduced to one symbolic system among others.

Rather than a reformulation of religion, we are witnessing a return to ancestral practices abandoned during the Secularist hiatus

It is the relationship between religion and the public sphere that is changing, for religious revival in the public sphere no longer takes on the form of cultural visibility but has become a display of religious “purity” or of reconstructed traditions. Religious conversions in all directions are a sign of this muddying of the link between culture and religion. But one thing is clear: in all cases it is the so-called “fundamentalist” or “charismatic” forms of religions that have seen the most spectacular growth, be it Protestant Evangelism or Muslim Salafìsm. There has been a similar increase in hard-line orthodoxy in the Catholic Church and Judaism, and even in Hinduism. Fundamentalism is the religious form that is most suited to globalization, because it accepts its own deculturation and makes it the instrument of its claim to universality.

Thus the traditional link between a religion and a culture has been eroded: an Algerian is no longer necessarily Muslim, a Russian Orthodox or a Pole Catholic. Choices that were once unimaginable have become conceivable, if not easy. A typical example is Christian proselytism in a Muslim milieu. Why were there so few conversions to Christianity in the days of colonialism, when conversion was encouraged by the authorities? The secular French Republic supported the missionary activities of the White Fathers. It is no coincidence that the founder of the White Fathers, Cardinal Lavigerie, was also the rallying force who sought to reconcile the Catholic Church with the Republic. In Algeria, a French territory, applicants were not required to abandon the Muslim religion in itself in order to obtain French citizenship, but as conversion to Christianity involved the renunciation of personal status, it is clear that it facilitated assimilation so there was a strong incentive to convert. The results were very disappointing, however. Apart from a few families of Kabyle intellectuals (Amrouche, Regghi), the White Fathers’ proselytizing activities were astonishingly ineffectual. The Catholic Church gradually abandoned its attempts to convert Muslims and settled for “witnessing” instead (e.g. the monastery of Tibehrine in Algeria); Father Christian Delorme recently went so far as to declare that they should not convert the Algerians because Islam was integral to the Algerian identity¹.

However, in February 2006, the Algerian Parliament passed a law banning religious proselytism. Why? Previously, such a law would have been pointless as instances were rare. But now, conversions to Christianity are affecting men - and especially women - in the street, without pressure from the machinery of domination. In 2008, several converts to Christianity went on trial². Explanations in terms of acculturation or of political supremacy do not hold water in this case. Nor is it because religious freedom was suddenly combined with an abundant supply of religions. On the contrary, most societies, like most governments, are hostile to missionary activities. This is primarily true of authoritarian Muslim countries, but in different circumstances many states are hostile to proselytism. In Russia and India for example, laws to curb conversions were introduced in the first decade of the twenty-first century (in 2006 in the state of Rajasthan): the Hinduists are targeting conversions of the lower castes, either to evangelism or to Buddhism in particular. In France, the Miviludes, a parliamentary mission, is explicitly monitoring all NRMs. Paradoxically, the proliferation of laws and anti-conversion campaigns demonstrates the success of the new missions.

Much has been written about conversions of Christians to Islam in recent decades. These conversions swell the ranks of fundamentalist tendencies (Salafism, Tablighi) and Sufi movements. But it is not as well known that Al Qaida is the “Islamic” organization which counts the highest number of converts (10-20% for the group’s internationalists) and is the only one which gives them responsibilities (so converts are far from being a mere backup force to dupe security checks and stymie “profiling”). Both Islam and Protestantism are making inroads among North America’s Latino immigrants³. Islam is gaining a strong foothold among Black Americans, illustrated in 2006 by the election of Keith Ellison, a convert, as the first Muslim American to Congress. As a matter of fact, it has been observed that conversions in all directions affect the same social milieus: second-generation immigrants, the destabilized working classes, “visible minorities” (defined by skin-color), and rebellious youths in search of a cause. In France, there is an 80% overlap between the map of mosques and that of new evangelist churches (Northern Fr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction by Rinaldo Cristofori
• Part I Why Religion, Why Now? Political And Legal Perspectives
• Part II Law, Religion and Social Conflicts
• Part III Legal Responses to Religious Issues
• Part IV Law, Religion and Gender Issues
• Part V Human Rights Within Religious Organizations?
• Name Index