Secular Rights Research Articles

Transgender Rights and Religiosities in India

This article argues that religious mythologies and cultural narratives about the timelessness of gender diversity in South Asia frame the formation of the transgender subject of rights in India. The authors interrogate a verdict issued by the Supreme Court of India in 2014 and the Transgender Person Bill of Rights (2018) to ascertain the frames of recognition accorded diverse transgender communities in India. This is followed by an analysis of the category of eunuch created and criminalized by British colonizers and the present-day category of transgender based on self-affirmation of gender. The conflating of religious mythologies into deliberations about transgender constitutional rights reveals how the supposedly secular rights – based claims of and for transgender communities are mediated through a predominantly Hindu Brahmanical imagination of the rights-bearing transgender subject. The authors examine autobiographical narratives by three prominent transgender rights activists in India: Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, Living Smile Vidya, and A. Revathi, who provide conflicting visions about the role of religion and state recognition of transgender identities. The authors argue the need for theorizing transgender subjectivities from non-Brahman, Dalit, transmasculine, and non – North Indian perspectives. Such theorizations reveal the potential of coalitional transgender activisms that seek to disrupt Hindu-nationalist hailing of the transgender subject of rights in contemporary India. The authors offer new directions in transgender studies by showing how religious narratives, ritual and performance lie at the heart of transgender subject formation while gesturing toward how such formation risks subsuming transgender identities within (Hindu) nationalist projects.

How could religious liberty be a human right?: A reply to Andrew Koppelman

In his article How could religious liberty be a human right? Andrew Koppelman argues that there is a unique and distinct human right to religious liberty which cannot be reduced to or derived from other existing human rights such as the rights to conscience, equality, or integrity. According to Koppelman, religion is a hypergood and an object of strong evaluation, and since it combines multiple goods, some of which are hard to pin down, religion should serve as a proxy for these goods, and the right to religious liberty should protect all that is religion. In my response I critique Koppelman's proxy approach and claim that its theoretical weaknesses and practical deficiencies are more extensive than Koppelman is willing to concede. Religious freedom, especially of majorities, is already unfairly privileged over other rights such as conscience and equality. Defining it as broadly as Koppelman suggests and deliberately disconnecting it from secular rights such as conscience, association, and equality only further exacerbates this problem. Making religion sui generis in the way Koppelman suggests further strengthens the already too expansive protection of majority religions, does not necessarily enhance the protection of special features of minority religions that Koppelman may wish to protect, and harms non-religious minorities such as women and homosexuals.

Conscientious objectors and the marrying kind: rights and rites in Dutch public discourse on marriage registrars with conscientious objections against conducting same-sex weddings

ABSTRACTWhen civil marriage in the Netherlands was opened up to same-sex couples in 2001, the Dutch government allowed civil marriage registrars with conscientious objections to opt out. This exemption became controversial in 2007, when it was reemphasized by a new government coalition that comprised two faith-based parties. Through critical discourse analysis this article discusses the construction of religion and homosexuality in public discourses on the weigerambtenaar (lit. ‘refusing civil servant’) between 2007 and 2014. It looks at the effects of the weigerambtenaar as a term, a character and a social problem, and shows how particular oppositions between homosexuals and Christians were created of reinforced. Moreover, it argues that, although the issue was framed in terms of certain secular rights, some contributions also pointed to the importance of (quasi)religious rites in the civil wedding ceremony. Therefore, it also shows how marriage was conceptualized in terms of religion and (homo)sexuality.

Os pretos devotos do Rosário no espaço público da paróquia, Vila Rica, nas Minas Gerais

Resumo Este artigo aborda a espacialização das devoções negras e escravas, no enquadramento territorial das paróquias fronteiriças do termo de Vila Rica. Da dimensão pessoal da devoção, nas situações aflitivas do cotidiano, à corporação coletiva de classificação dos pretos da irmandade de Nossa Senhora do Rosário, examina-se o significado do espaço público para a representação social negra, ancorada na devoção do compromisso, mas realmente constituída na fluidez e no dinamismo político-religioso. A invocação basilar do culto público dos pretos, africanos escravos (e ainda libertos), contribuindo para dispor as divisões socioculturais, desdobrou-se num devocionário especificamente negro que incluiu outras santidades como, principalmente, Mercês e Santa Efigênia. Articula-se essa mobilidade da fé nos mediadores santos à configuração paroquial (efeito do embate de direitos eclesiásticos e seculares entre a matriz e as capelas), à urbanização difusa do território minerário e ao confronto das representações negras e mestiças sob a égide de patronos católicos.

Human Dignity and Human Justice: Thinking with Calvin About the Imago Dei

This article explores Calvin’s theological treatment of the Biblical doctrine of humankind’s creation in and restoration to ‘the image of God’, and draws out the critical implications of his treatment for the contemporary elaboration of an ‘inherent human dignity’ in terms of ‘human (subjective) rights’ as the moral foundation of a public justice of secular, egalitarian rights. The argument is that Calvin locates the created and restored ‘image’ in active Trinitarian and Christological relations of divine and human knowing and loving, and not in any immanent or self-standing human structure, quality, or capacity, and in so doing renders theologically problematic an elaboration of ‘inherent human dignity’ in terms of subjective rights. Moreover, his account of public justice, being rooted in, ordered to, and limited by these divine-human relationships, is incompatible with a secular rights polity.

Du « religieux » à « l’utilité publique » ; droit canonique et sécularisation du xvie au xxe siècle

Without ignoring the historical research on law that focuses on the canonical origins of multiple institutions, this article aims to show how religious nature and public utility are all but two facets of numerous realities, as is understood by canon law as well as secular rights, in the modern era and the 19th through the 20th century. The religious concomitance and public utility regarding the status of individuals, including their marital status or heretical prosecution, are taken into account, especially blasphemy and sacrilege. A comparison is made between the same two ranges with respect to property, sources of wealth and buildings and objects used directly for worship. If the existence of a general movement of secularization is obvious, it is then necessary to analyze this evolution, taking into account the space constantly afforded by canon law. This is in regard not only to the public utility and the general interest, but also to the sacred and holy notions regularly conveyed by secular rights.

Radicalism and political reform in the Islamic and Western worlds

Kai Hafez. Radicalism and Political Reform in the Islamic and Western Worlds Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 320 pages. Paperback $30.99In the West, misreading Islam is the norm. In fact, academics and journalists thrive on pillorying Muslims. Popular culture is only marginally worse. Illiteracy and chauvinism drive this habit. It enables Westerners to locate and assert their superiority. Even Pope Benedict XVI succumbed to it. In a university lecture in 2006, he slyly damned Islam as violent and irrational. He was silent on the destruction of a major state (Iraq) by Bush and Blair. Indeed, he oversaw Blair's conversion to Catholicism after the war. Since 9/11, killing Muslims and invading Muslim nations has been the new normal. Obama's military incursions and drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are exemplary instances. The Western projects evince a passion to eviscerate Islam and erase Muslims. It is misguided to call this Islamophobia since fear is not the problem. What we are privy to here is the foreign policy of Mus limicide, the commitment to gutting and superseding the faith of Islam. It is no accident that Muslim cultures and peoples are under attack.In a series of superb apercus and incisive analysis, Kai Hafez offers a massive corrective to this incessant, illiterate and racist white noise. He tackles the anti-Islam philippics which drive Western and thus global discourse on Muslims. A German-bom professor of Media and Communication studies at the University of Erfurt, he is very well versed in Islam, political theory and social science. Hafez lucidly critiques the fallacies of the Western discourse on Islam and Muslim. His principal thematic foci are modernity, democracy and political violence. On this canvas, he comparatively lists the successes and limitations of Islam and the West. In particular, Hafez methodically exposes the illiteracy about Islamism, fundamentalism and political Islam, evident in Western scholarship and journalism.That fact is that anti-modernism is alien to Islam. So is the claim that secularism is un-Muslim. In fact, Western modernity was structured on the Islamic reconciliation of faith and reason. The intimate relationship between Arab and Western traditions of thought (17) was the achievement of the Arab/ Iranian, Shiite/Sunni, philosophers of Islam: Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and Al-Ghazali. In Muslim history, furthermore, secularism has co-existed with the faith since the birth of Islam. As consultation and as equal access to rulers, the ideal of democracy was intrinsic to Islam prior to Western colonization. But it was never a commitment to liberal individualist ethic or possessive individualism. In Egypt and Iran, the democracy in place is non-liberal, communitarian; it is authentic democracy within the bounds of Islam. It will evolve and accommodate versions of liberal freedoms in time. Intervention by the West in Muslim affairs has undercut this possibility.As Hafez shows in detail,,fundamentalism comes in different forms with distinct cultural and political reform schemas. Liberal Islamic reformers want the kind of modernity and human rights congenial to the Muslim sensibility. Yet they neither reject Islam nor insist on absolute secular rights. They realize that pure secularism is not available in the West either. Conservative Islamic reformers like Tariq Ramadan prize community. They want Quranic law to be the benchmark moral code. Thus in the Islamic context, fundamentalism is neither rigid nor closed to scrutiny and amendment. In both Egypt and Iran, it has long challenged tyrannical mies and practice in the name of Islam. As Hafez notes, such ethical spiritual acumen is ill-understood in the West.In the Western mind, political Islam and Islamism function as medieval manifestations of pure evil, pure terror. …

L’Église impériale dans la tradition franque. Le temps des Ottoniens et des premiers Saliens

The image of an «imperial church system» of the Ottonians and Salians, created by Otto the Great after the failed rebolt by his son Liudolf (953-954) in order to serve as a counterweight to the lay nobility, is now judged out of date. Contemporary historians prefer to talk of the ‘policy’ rather than of the ‘system’ of the imperial church of the Ottonians and Salians. From the 10th century, the church of the German kingdom obtained more and more secular rights; even counties were conferred on it. The monarch expected the church to use and manage them more effectively than the lay nobility did. In doing this, the Ottonians did not create a new system, but followed a development which had begun in the western Frankish kingdom, where church prelates had succeeded much earlier in securing secular rights. Given that in Germany, bishops were mainly recruted from the high aristocracy, they were never an effective counterweight to the lay nobility. Even when the king could influence the nomination of bishops and abbots, and had the right to invest them, he often had to take local power configurations into account. It was only Henry II, crowned king in 1002, who placed the entire church under his control. Subsequently, the church obtained ever more secular rights, and in return had to render more services to the Empire. Consequently, during the first half of the 11th century, the structure of the Empire was based on a close community of interests between the king and the church. Since it was contrary to the principles of the Gregorian reform, this relationship ultimately made the conflict between Gregory VII and Henry IV inevitable.

Beyond the ‘Awkward Embrace’: Disability Rights, Dialogue and ‘Law, Love and Language’ Revisited

AbstractDespite the perceived ‘human rights revolution’ within Church teaching since Vatican II, a measure of dissonance survives between secular rights theory and practice on the one hand and, on the other, ethical thinking informed by the natural law tradition. This article examines some recent developments in that secular theory and practice for signs of possible rapprochement. In particular, it considers the way in which the emergence of ‘disability’ as a rights issue, for example in the recently ratified United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, has contributed to the transformation of equality and human rights law and so has helped shape a broader transformation of rights theory and practice. Central to that transformation has been the ambition of establishing human rights as the basis of a progressive political programme, as witnessed for example by the work of Sandra Fredman and by the Hamlyn Lectures of Conor Gearty, whose Catholic provenance makes his approach especially salient. The article concludes by considering Herbert McCabe's interpretation of Aquinas’ ethics, especially in his Law, Love and Language, and proposes some potentially fruitful points of contact between McCabe's approach and the identified developments in secular rights theory.

Secular and Theological Education: Interaction or Confrontation?

If we analyze our legislation in detail, we can see that there are so-called “legal scissors”. On the one hand, the law guarantees freedom by equalizing the rights of all citizens of the state (Article 24 of the Constitution), and on the other - leaves believers outside the legal field (Article 35 of the Constitution and Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious organizations ") declaring separation from the church. It should be noted that even the Law on Education does not guarantee the right to receive alternative (not secular) education for children of believers, regardless of their affiliation with a religious organization, in educational institutions. It should also be noted that even in the years of Ukraine's independence, the issue of granting theological education a proper status that would equate it to secular rights has not yet been resolved. Again, the principle is the separation of the school and the church. Here are some questions.

“I Cannot See the Day They Will Make a New Chief”: Historically Created Uncertainties about Sacred, Kingly, Populist and Secular Values in Lau, Fiji

In Fiji, Lauan paramount chiefs have always been sacred – kingly and populist – but through time they also became secular chiefs – representatives of the colonial power and later politicians and statesmen. For some, the status of sacred chief had to consolidate their secular status, for others, their status of secular chief received the illusion of sacredness through title manipulation. The latter were even subject to territorial expansion. Chiefs themselves, whether secular, sacred or both, maintained a confusion between sacred and secular rights and duties. Recent fieldwork reveals grumbling and frustration among the Lauans, as these facts created a multitude of points of view they increasingly expressed because of the absence of a paramount chief for 13 years. This made them less respectful toward the title and resulted in the feeling of being able to do without a paramount chief. At the same time, however, the contradictory idea that a chief is the only person who can restore the value of respect and order into the community is still vivid.