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Eve Tignol's book, "Grief and the Shaping of Muslim Communities in North India, c. 1857–1940s," explores the emergence of new social solidarities among Muslims in north India during the final century of colonial rule. Tignol focuses on the emotion of grief and its role in creating a shared cultural experience and a sense of belonging. She analyzes poetry, newspapers, colonial records, pamphlets, and fiction to understand the shifting forms and vocabulary of grief over time. Tignol's study highlights the importance of grief as a spur to reform, political critique, and collective action among Indian Muslims. [Extracted from the article]

This article addresses the exclusivism–inclusivism debate about religious reasons in law within a justificatory liberal framework. The question of whether religious reasons have justificatory capacity for attaining public justification has increasingly been seen as a matter of how public justification is understood between two rival models: the consensus model being aligned with exclusivism, the convergence model with inclusivism. More recently, however, that alignment has been challenged with attempts to show that consensus can reach an equivalent degree of inclusivism as convergence. Against this, I contend that the purported equivalence is misplaced. First, I identify a crucial ambiguity about public justification and two corresponding domains. Upon demonstrating these to be mutually independent and severable, I conclude that the moves to equalize the models are confined within the more narrow domain while, in the more fundamental domain, the choice of model continues to prove determinative as to the exclusivist or inclusivist valence of justificatory liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

He sides with Marwan Rashed's revisionist interpretation of Razi as a moderate critic of religious extremism, but he appends this account with a perspicacious explanation of why our central source for Razi's critique of religion, Abu atim al-Razi, portrayed our Abu Bakr as an explicit denier of all prophethood, including that of Mu ammad. Having dealt with the foundation of Razi's metaphysics, Adamson turns in Chapter 6 to discuss the inflammatory question of Razi's critique of religion. Abu Bakr al-Razi (d. 313/925) is commonly recognized as a rather exceptional thinker among other major figures of the formative period of Islamic philosophy. [Extracted from the article]

Analytic theology, which utilizes analytic philosophy to understand and evaluate theological doctrines, is gaining popularity, although it is viewed with suspicion by some theologians and scholars of religion. In his book, "Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion," William Wood aims to bridge the gap between analytic theologians and non-analytic theologians. He argues that analytic theology is a valuable form of Christian theology and should be accepted in the academic study of religion. Wood also acknowledges the need for analytic theologians to be more historically informed and engaged with critical theory. [Extracted from the article]

This article draws upon and contributes to current discussions in the study of conversion, Muslims in Europe, and gender and emotion by taking media productions as an ethnographic starting point for analyzing the subject position of women who converted to Islam. In contemporary Western European contexts, the phenomenon of conversion to Islam evokes various affective responses, including bewilderment, concern, and fear. This article assesses the frames through which female converts to Islam are represented in the media and particularly explores the existing focus on mother and daughter relationships. Based upon an analysis of the emotions named and generated, this article argues that such affective framings contribute to the shaping of the subject position of female converts to Islam. It moreover demonstrates that emotions such as concern, sadness, grief, and fear are the result of, as well as constructively infuse, contemporary debates on religious and cultural diversity in the Netherlands in which Islam and Muslims are considered to pose a "problem" for Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as its starting point the well-known English effort to 'convert' Venice to Protestantism in the wake of the Venetian Interdict controversy (1606–7), this article explores the ways in which early modern conceptions of conversion varied according to context. Drawing on evidence relating to Venice, England, Ireland and the Jesuit missions to China, it traces how divergent understandings of religious change shaped – and were shaped by – confessional controversy. The idea of 'conversion' posed particular conceptual difficulties as a description of inter-confessional transfer, and this article probes the implications of these difficulties for religious and political debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the changing metaphoric logic and contextual uses of a mythical-historical popular religious account of matrilineal origins of herbal medicine women among Tuareg in northern Niger. Medicine women both reproduce and modify this origin myth's motif in their Tamajaq-speaking, Muslim, traditionally ranked, and semi-nomadic communities, where many have faced religious, socioeconomic, and political upheavals challenging local women's material wealth and symbolic/cultural capital of authoritative medico-ritual healing. How is medicine women's healing legacy evoked and re-interpreted in encounters with Qur'anic healing and western biomedicine, as impacted by recent religious debates, neoliberal structural adjustments, droughts, sedentarization, and political violence? The Tuareg data offer fresh perspectives on how religion and economy co-produce each other in some contexts, but contradict each other in others. More broadly, this article critically disrupts categories of sacred and secular, tradition and modernity, and brings mythico-histories into discussions of intertwining religious and economic idioms, practices, and infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings, the wealthy Gulf states of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates began hosting and establishing associations of influential Islamic scholars. These clerical associations, the Doha-based International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and the Abu Dhabi-based Muslim Council of Elders (MCE) and associated peace initiatives, have afforded a platform for more credibly entering into religious and political debates, for cultivating new networks of influence among Muslim publics, and engaging non-Islamic countries and organizations. Drawing upon interviews and primary resources, this study investigates this exercise in religious statecraft, comparing the discourse and policy interventions of these associations, and analysing their improbable challenge to the predominant religious terms set by the traditional heavyweight in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia. It finds that the effectiveness, or resonance, of these religious soft power projects depends upon credibility—their alignment with national religious traditions and policy directions—and positioning—the targeting of particular audiences and stakeholders. It concludes that the UAE holds certain advantages over Qatar in its soft power positioning in the current nationalist moment, as states gain ground over transnational Islamic movements and relations with powers such as India, Russia, China and Israel—all hostile to independent Islamic movements—gain in importance. Policy-makers acknowledging the surprising hard power projection of these small states through military interventions and economic leverage may benefit from this study of their new religious soft power influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under Canadian constitutional law, state neutrality acts as an implicit organizing principle for the relations between the state and religions. Neutrality, however, is a polysemic word: conceptions of neutrality vary. Competing versions of neutrality feature in the decisions of Canadian courts. This is starkly evident in decisions that originate from Quebec, where judges have harboured divergent views of neutrality on matters such as the reciting of prayers in town hall meetings or the teaching of religious diversity in schools. This article analyses how the Canadian Supreme Court has manoeuvred through competing conceptions of state religious neutrality. Initially divided, the Court seems to have eventually opted for a type of neutrality that allows the state to recognize the existence of religions in laws and policies, but that also prevents it from indoctrination and from arbitrating between competing viewpoints within religions. This view of neutrality, I argue, is consistent with the principle of multiculturalism and with the Court's characterization of a 'free and democratic society', as this notion is understood in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word إيلاف ('īlāf) in Q 106 (sūrat Quraysh) has been the subject of debate among Qur'ān commentators and scholars since the first centuries of Islam. There is uncertainty about the spelling, reading and meaning of the word. The 'bewildering variety of meanings' suggested for it include, among other things, blessing, clinging, familiarity and custom. After providing a review of the literature I argue that 'īlāf is related to the Syriac word elaf 'ship'. Consequently, the theme of the sūra seems to be simply a call to Quraysh to acknowledge God's favours in providing them with food and making safe their sea travel by which they obtain this food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Catholic Enlightenment that took place in Italy during the late 18th century, focusing on the religious debates between theologians Nicola Spedalieri and Pietro Tamburini. Other topics include the religious ideas of the Italian Jansenists, Italian historiography, and the relationship between Jansenism, the French Revolution, and the Risorgimento.

The civil wars and interregnum (1640–60) ushered in a period of religious flux and debate, with controversies pursued in fierce pamphlet wars. Equally important, but far less familiar to us, were the public disputations, which spread across England and Wales to become a significant aspect of the religious culture of the age. This article traces their antecedents in the European tradition of university disputation, in the sixteenth-century continental Reformation and in England. The civil-war disputations represented a dramatically new development, in their number and scale, in their genuinely open character, and in the participation of lay preachers, especially Baptists and Quakers. The article explores their appeal for separatist evangelists—and for the huge audiences they attracted—and the factors that could drive parish ministers, often reluctantly, to accept a radical’s challenge. About fifty disputations generated printed narratives, and often also rival accounts, which throw new light on the relationship between oral and print culture in this period. The article explores how editors shaped texts to sway reader reaction, and uses these texts for insights into debating tactics and audience participation. Disputations also offer new evidence in the ongoing debate over the emergence of the ‘public sphere’. In their formal procedures, social inclusivity and geographical spread they far surpass Habermas’s coffee-house milieu, but this was a rough public arena far removed from the world of bourgeois politeness. And with live debates often triggering new pamphlet-wars, we can identify a public sphere in which oral and print culture coalesced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Legal judgments concerning equality or human rights and religion or belief have frequently provoked controversy in Britain. This article examines why this has occurred. It does not attempt a detailed analysis of the case law; rather, it discusses how the law has been understood and invoked in public discourse. It argues that debate about religion or belief and its place in society has been unduly dominated by particular—and sometimes partial—understandings of legal judgments. It proposes that the most productive level of engagement for those who wish to advance debate, practice and understanding in relation to religion or belief is with ‘front line’ decision-makers, such as public servants and workplace managers. It ventures that in the long term an approach based on human rights principles is likely to be more satisfactory than one which is based principally on equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawn from a bigger project (Kraidy, 2009, in press), this article examines the heated debate triggered by the pan-Arab reality show Star Academy in Saudi Arabia. It examines how controversies over authenticity spawned by popular culture crystallize broader social and political struggles. The article focuses on Star Academy as a contentious media event, describing and analyzing various Saudi reactions to Star Academy, and zeroing in on what the controversy reveals about Saudi politics. The article concludes that Star Academy was so polemical in Saudi Arabia because the show subverted the religious bases of Saudi social order by promoting women's agency, featuring cultural hybridity and individuating authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses two early plays from the era of the German Reformation, the Tragedia Johannis Huss (1537), by Johannes Agricola, and Ein heimliche Gespräch vonder Tragedia Johannis Hussen (1538), by Johannes Cochlaeus. Agricola's play dramatized the trial and execution of Jan Hus, the Bohemian priest and reformer who was executed by the Council of Constance in 1415. A number of accounts of Hus's trial were published in the 1530s as part of the Lutheran campaign against the convocation of a general church council; this paper argues that Agricola's turn to drama represented a broadening of the Lutherans' use of printed and oral media in publicizing their attack on the council. Cochlaeus's play was a direct response to Agricola's, but utilized different means to undercut the potential impact of Agricola's Tragedia. Cochlaeus satirized his Lutheran opponents and their wives, thus using the comic potential of the stage to expand his own polemical arsenal against Luther and his followers. Through these two plays, this paper examines both the development of Lutheran historical arguments against church councils and the dynamics of the propagandistic interchanges between Roman and Lutheran authors in the second decade of the Reformation. It ultimately argues that these two authors' use of dramatic media exemplified efforts by both churches to reach audiences in new and potentially more effective ways in order to reify their differences and galvanize their followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the study which demonstrates how fallacious the long-standing historiographical perception concerning the life of George of Laodicea. The claimed fallacious perception states the in the January 360, George of Laodicea escaped deposition at the Council of Constantinople due to his abandonment of the homoiousians for the sake of the newly ascendant homoians. The article argues that George of Laodicea died in late 359, which is after the Council of Seleucia but prior to the Council of Constantinople. It illustrates that the named 'George' mentioned in several sources as collaborating with Acacius of Caesarea after the Council of Constantinople is not George of Laodicea only an Alexandrian namesake.

The article focuses on debates over the restriction of rights towards Muslim women in Great Britain. Particular attention is given to Muslim women wearing the niqab, which is a face veil. The article argues that despite the political conflicts caused by the "veil debate" in 2006 on the niqab, government regulation against wearing it was not predicted. The article suggests that wearing the veil is not against the law because of Britain's church and state policies as well as Article Nine of the European Commission of Human Rights.

This article explores a series of contacts between the marquis of Ormond and the Ulster Protestant forces in 1645–6, using sources that include the Carte manuscripts, parliamentary papers, pamphlet material, and other political correspondence, both manuscript and printed. It is argued that Ormond's Ulster contacts were as least as important as the concurrent negotiations with the Catholic confederates, which up to now have been prioritized by historians, and that his Ulster strategy was designed to avoid further negotiations with the Catholic Irish by regaining Protestant Ireland's support for the royalist cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the role of religious speech in the public square and the common school. It argues for more openness to political theology than many liberals are willing to grant and for an educational strategy of engagement over one of avoidance. The paper argues that the exclusion of religious debate from the public square has dysfunctional consequences. It discusses Rawls's more recent views on public reason and claims that, while they are not altogether adequate, they are consistent with engagement. The outcome of these arguments is applied to three ‘hot button’ issues in US education: creationism, an issue of gay rights, and teaching the Bible in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to explore how a local quarrel in the Grafschaft of Baden, a bi-confessional Swiss county, occasioned by efforts to install a separate font for Protestant parishioners, activated larger constitutional and confessional tensions between the Catholic and Protestant cantons of the Swiss Confederation. The article reconstructs the lengthy political negotiations caused by the rearrangement of church space since the Landfrieden of 1531: this treaty had enshrined bi-confessionalism in the Swiss Confederation and had established the duties and rights of both confessions, although to the disadvantage of the Reformed Protestants. It had also transformed the consecrated space of the church into a stage for political action by the cantons. From 1531 onwards, changes in religious belief and observance were subject to the will of the supreme governing authority. The article shows that local conflicts over the arrangement and furnishing of certain church spaces can give us fascinating insights into political practice, the establishment of social order and the handling of denominational differences within the Swiss Confederation. It attempts to contribute to our understanding of early modern political history by using concepts from cultural history and communication theory in which politics is closely linked to social and confessional processes generating meaning and order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey responded to his incarceration in 1543 for Lenten misrule with an invective against London. This article traces how the division of critical opinion over this poem is related to its rhetorical instability, especially where Surrey's perceived religious convictions have been sought or supplied. However, Surrey's related poetics of elegy, complaint and ostensible confession, tend towards an entrenched isolation of lament reflecting a conflict between the genealogies of dynastic and literary authority. Reformers were ever distrustful of the son of the Duke of Norfolk, yet Surrey's purposeful literary association with Wyatt alienated him from conservatives. His London poem—part satirical, part apocalyptic—manifests his profoundly unresolved nature, one that finally rendered him a political liability. Furthermore it asks important questions of how religious commitments are to be understood from such writing. Those who find an evangelical Surrey in his poetry appeal to his use of fervent prophetic language. The mediation of these biblical voices by Petrarch's Rime sparse has previously ignored the commentary Vellutello included in the edition that was perhaps the most influential at the Henrician court. This commentary is shown to complicate our understanding of Petrarch's moral and anti-curial, rather than proto-evangelical, exemplarity, to show the arch-humanist occupying the same ambiguous terrain of the early Reformation as the poet earl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the debate on the English Reformation triggered by the revisionist assault on the work of A. G. Dickens. It questions the narrow view of Dickens as the protagonist of a ‘rapid Reformation from below’, drawing attention to the far greater subtlety of ideas that permeated Dickens's early work. Finally, it offers an alternative framework for a new Reformation narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the September 2001 violent clashes between Muslim and Christians in Jos, Nigeria. Description of Jos; Factors influencing the religious conflict; Population of Nigeria; Reference on the events from September 7 to 12, 2001.

Looks at the debate on the fundamental differences between being Jewish in the United States and being an Israeli Jew. Institutionalized representatives of Jewish religious interests in Israel; Crucial element in the pattern of general religious party participation; Basis of the perception of the power of religious parties; Groups who differ in their view of Jewish law.

Suggests that a language of natural morality is desirable to clarify the religious quality of moral judgments. Freudian concept of totem; Religious language of rational ethics; Religious language of constitutional jurisprudence; Moral relativism.

The article presents the author's views about the painting "The Sacrifice of Isaac," by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. In this article the author studies not only the formal structures that this painting shares with others of the artist's late works, but also the ways in which its forms and meanings reflect his Protestant religious convictions. This painting provides a good measure of his Protestant aesthetics. Rembrandt's approach to antithesis differs from other contemporary artists, but his perspective is in some ways more eccentric.

Discusses Karl Barth's and George Lindbeck's proposals on the cognitive and performative aspects of truth in theological discourse. Self-involving truth of the Christian gospel; Three points on Lindbeck's proposal; Convergence and divergence in Barth's and Lindbeck's proposals.

Reports on the religious violence in India which occurred on December 1993. Hindu militants' destruction of a mosque in Ayodhya; Resurgence of the Muslim-Hindu conflict; Reaction of Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to the destruction; Religious conflict in India; Arrest of Baharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in connection with the violence; Interreligious violence in India.

Human rights – Freedom of religion or belief – Discrimination in exercise thereof – Right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions – Interference with – Religious organization restricting access to temples to selected class of worshippers – Valuation officer applying 80 per cent reduction in rating of temple in Preston, UK, in view of its use for charitable purposes but refusing full exemption available for buildings used for ‘public religious worship’ – On final appeal House of Lords ruling that full exemption available only for places of religious worship open to the public and that refusal of exemption to temple not falling within ambit of claimant’s right to freedom of religion – Whether discrimination in enjoyment of freedom of religion – Whether state action neutral exercise of legitimate power in religious domain – Whether restriction on religious organization’s freedom of religion reasonable and objective and proportionately pursuing legitimate aim – Whether appropriate and effective domestic remedy available – European Convention on Human Rights, art 9 in conjunction with art 14, art 13 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a comparison of the verbal objections about liturgy in English playwright William Shakespeare's plays "As You Like It" and "Much Ado About Nothing." The author discusses the termination of marriage ceremonies in these two plays. Particular attention is given to the marriage of Hero and Claudio in "Much Ado about Nothing" and the mock marriage between Rosalind and Orlando in "As You Like It." The author notes that these two terminated marriages both come very close to reproducing the precise wording of portions of the official marriage service that is supposed to be followed in churches.

Reports that Evangelical Christians in Chiapas State, Mexico appealed to President Ernesto Zedillo to help them in their conflict with traditionalist Catholic villagers. Length of time that there had been conflicts between the two groups; What caused the evangelicals to flee.

Focuses on the fight between Indian troops and Muslim militants in the states of Jimmu and Kashmir. Statistics on deaths at the mosque in Char-e-sharif near Sringagar; Reactions of government.

Examines the application of Mertorian theories of social group behavior on the mid-nineteenth century religious conflict among Dutch Protestant immigrants in the Middle West. Effect of lack of governmental restraints on schematics in religious pluralism; Source of religious and ideological conflicts; Prevalence of disputes during periods of accelerated social change and dislocation.