Accommodation Of Religious Practices Research Articles

Does Institutionalising Reasonable Accommodation Increase Conscientious Objections of Medical Professionals?

"In January 2020, the Council of Europe has rejected a resolution that recommends reasonable accommodation of employee’s religious practices in the workplace. The concept of reasonable accommodation emerged in the United States and in Canada to allow some flexibility in the application of laws to achieve substantial equality for all, as uniform application of seemingly neutral laws can cause disadvantages to ethnic or religious minorities, and people with disability. However, reasonable accommodation of religious practices in the workplace such as hospitals is often criticised in two ways; first, it makes it easier for the doctors to register a conscientious objection against providing abortion or reproductive treatment and thus harms women’s reproductive rights. Second, in the same manner, medical professionals may use reasonable accommodation as an excuse to refrain from providing certain medical care to sexual minorities. The purpose of this paper is to indicate that such secularist criticisms of reasonable accommodation are implausible. To show this, this paper first reviews the idea of reasonable accommodation in North America and Europe. Then, the reasonable accommodation debate occurred in Québec, Canada and the report by Bouchard-Taylor Commission (2007-2008) are examined in light of theories of deliberative democracy to illustrate the asymmetry of power between the majority and the minority groups in the negotiation process. Lastly, this paper argues that reasonable accommodation as a means to negotiate the demands for accommodation of religious practices is limited. Thus it is unlikely to undermine the fundamental liberal values of the majority. "

Covid-19, Congregational Worship, and Contestation over 'Correct' Islam in South Africa

In response to the global Coronavirus pandemic, South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national lockdown on March 26, 2020, which suspended, among other things, congregational worship. A group of Muslims made an urgent court application for permission to pray in mosques, which was dismissed on April 30, 2020, with the judiciary weighing in on the side of the public health good. This struggle over congregational prayers brought into the open, differences among Muslims in South Africa that have been simmering for several decades and raised questions as to how to balance the post-apartheid Constitution's accommodation of religious practices with the needs of a secular state1. Conversely, what should Muslims do when they are required to follow the secular rules of a non-Muslim country that contradict their obligations to the tenets of their faith? The court case underlined the deep divides amongst Muslims and the changing structures of authority. In the absence of a central doctrinal authority the Ulama terrain is highly competitive and fraught with antagonistic doctrinal differences. It remains to be seen whether these divisions will boil over into physical confrontation among Muslims, and, with trust in the state dissipating, how Muslims will manage their relationship with the secular state.

Accommodation of Islamic Religious Practices and Democracy in the Post-Communist Muslim Republics

AbstractThe literature on state accommodation of Muslim religious practices has focused on the regional context of Western Europe and North America. In this project, I identify and compare state policies toward Islamic religious practices using a sample of 22 former communist Muslim republics of Eurasia. For this purpose, I construct an original dataset collected from a variety of sources. Employing the number of mosques functioning in each post-communist Muslim republic as the measure of state accommodation of religious practices I find that among all factors the level of democracy is the single most important variable in explaining variation in accommodation of Islamic religious practices. To further demonstrate significance of these results I trace the process of democratic influence on state accommodation of religious policies examining in-depth the case of Tatars both in the pre-communist Imperial and revolutionary Russia and the contemporary republic of Tatarstan.

Sharia Law in Catholic Italy: A Non-Agnostic Model of Accommodation

The Italian Constitution and its interpretation by the Constitutional Court have led to the development of a model of accommodation of religious practices that seeks to balance a commitment to promoting religious pluralism whilst, at the same time, maintaining the neutrality of state institutions. What is distinctive about this quasi-neutral constitutional stance is the commitment to reduce the discrepancies between the legal and religious effects of key life decisions. I call this stance ‘positive secularism.’ In this essay, I would like to show that, thus far, positive secularism has been particularly effective in accommodating the demands of Muslim immigrants. For instance, some aspects of the Shari’a law, such as marriage and divorce (including some effects of unilateral divorce), are already recognized by Italian international private law. The second stage for the accommodation of Shari’a law in Italy is likely to be the recognition of Islam as one of Italy’s official religions.

Judges and Religious-Based Reasoning: A Response to Ginn and Blaikie

The Canadian jurisprudence on freedom of religion has tended to focus on the accommodation of religious practices rather than exploring the constitutionality of judicial reliance on religious-based reasoning. A recent article by Diana Ginn and David Blaikie seeks to argue that, in certain circumstances and under certain conditions, it would be acceptable for judges to rely on religious-based reasons in their judgments. Ginn and Blaikie see their recent article as being a continuation of sorts to their earlier piece, "Religious Discourse in the Public Square." While I found their earlier piece to be a persuasive defence of the use of religious-based reasoning in the public sphere, I have serious doubts over the constitutionality and applicability of their argument with regard to judges. It is the purpose of this paper to refute Ginn and Blaikie’s argument and to show that, in Canada, the use of religious-based reasons by judges is likely precluded by decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Cultural Discrimination: The Reasonable Accommodation of Religion in the Workplace

Reasonable accommodation of religious practices continues to be a problem in the workplace. Recent Supreme Court decisions have enabled employers to exclude employees from the decision-making process of what constitutes a reasonable accommodation of their religious beliefs through the de minimis standard. In this article it is argued that, in most cases, the reason employers have been allowed to discriminate against these employees is the contentious nature of minority religious beliefs with the mainstream religious culture. Because judges view discrimination based on religious beliefs as distinct from the other reasons for discriminatory practices, such as race, sex, or national origin, it appears unlikely that adherents to minority faiths will face any abatement of discrimination in the workplace.