History and International Studies

Principlist modes of reasoning in bioethics -with autonomy at the coreresonate strongly with a legalism that dominates Muslim ethics, including the understanding of the shari'a. From abortion and organ donation/transplant to end-of-life decisions, both secular and Muslim bioethics generally apply ''cardinal'' principles in ways felt to be relatively objective and certain, though they may produce different outcomes. This article builds on recent critiques, notably that of virtue ethics, in drawing attention to the cost in sensitivity to context and the individual. The Aristotelian basis of virtue ethics has a venerable place in Islamic traditions -as does maslaha, the public good, which has long played a critical role in tempering formalism in the shari'a. In conjunction with the agent-and context-centred reasoning of virtue ethics, maslaha can contribute vitally to negotiating competing bioethical claims. It is also more inclusive than principlist legalism, given the latter's traditionalist and patriarchal moorings. The shift is urgent amid the growing interface of religious and secular approaches to problems raised by biomedical technologies, and to biosocial issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and honour killings.

An insistent focus on extremism and radicalization with regard to current Islamist trends masks the failures of pluralist citizenship, amid a larger crisis of identity. Whether in Muslim-majority societies or in the Euro-North American diaspo-ra, " Islam " and " politics " are touted as explaining patterns of severe violence by state/non-state actors. Neither category accounts more than superficially for the complexities at hand, which revolve around exclusionary models of identity, faith and civil society. Successful narratives of inclusive citizenship depend on key markers outside of modernist secular orthodoxy. Theologies of inclusion are vital in fostering pluralist civic identities, mindful of the ascendance of puritanical -legalist theologies of exclusion as a salient facet of public cultures. Multiple surveys reveal the depth of exclusivist conservatism in diverse Muslim societies. These stances not only undermine civil society as a locus for engendering plu-ralist identities, but also undergird the militant trends that dominate the headlines. Targeting militants is often essen-tial—yet is frequently accompanied by the willful alienation of Muslim citizens even within liberal democracies, and a growing " official " sectarianism among Muslim-majority polities. Convergent pluralisms of faith and civic identity are a vital antidote to the fog that obscures the roots as well as the implications of today's extremist trends.

The ambivalent role of religion in modern citizenship is hardly new, whether in terms of the "hardware" (legal-political institutions and processes) or "software" (public attitudes and habits). Faith narratives can vigorously contest liberal claims of civil belonging and freedom, such as on gender and secularism. Yet liberal citizenship also benefits from justice claims anchored in interpretations of religion, ranging from equality and solidarity to nonviolence and reconciliation. Identity politics is a formative part of liberal citizenship, with a dominant tribal discourse legitimated by the accommodation of minority ethno-religious claims to equity and equality. Nativist populism aggravates an already adversarial relationship between faith and liberal citizenship, notably for minority religions. This paper argues for symbiosis between liberal citizenship and diverse religious identities-a political theology that takes pluralism seriously. While liberalism purports to minimize expectations of individual virtue, civic pluralism calls for the inclusion of collective and individual ethical commitments, beyond ruptures of secular and sacred that shape a jurisprudence on the "burdens of accommodation." Evidence from Canada, among other liberal settings, suggests that the alternative is civic fragmentation that favours majoritarian tribalism. Résumé Le rôle ambivalent de la religion dans la citoyenneté moderne n'est guère nouveau, que ce soit en termes de «matériel» (institutions et processus juridico-politiques) ou de «logiciel» (attitudes et habitudes du public). Les récits de foi peuvent contester vigoureusement les revendications libérales d'appartenance civile et de liberté, telles que le genre et la laïcité. Pourtant, la citoyenneté libérale bénéficie également de revendications de justice ancrées dans les interprétations de la religion, allant de l'égalité et de la solidarité à la non-violence et à la réconciliation. La politique identitaire est une partie formatrice de la citoyenneté libérale, avec un discours tribal dominant légitimé par l'accommodement des revendications ethno-religieuses des minorités à l'équité et à l'égalité. Le populisme nativiste aggrave une relation déjà conflictuelle entre la foi et la citoyenneté libérale, notamment pour les religions minoritaires. Cet article préconise la symbiose entre la citoyenneté libérale et diverses identités religieuses-une théologie politique qui prend le pluralisme au sérieux. Alors que le libéralisme vise à minimiser les attentes de vertu individuelle, le pluralisme civique appelle à l'inclusion d'engagements éthiques collectifs et individuels, au-delà des ruptures laïques et sacrées qui façonnent une jurisprudence sur les «fardeaux de l'accommodement». Des données provenant du Canada, entre autres milieux libéraux, suggèrent que l'alternative est la fragmentation civique qui favorise le tribalisme majoritaire.

The magistrate ought always to be very careful that he does not misuse his authority to the oppression of any Church, under pretense of public good."-John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1685), 415 In Law's Religion (2015), Benjamin Berger identified three markers of how Canadian courts have come to regard "religion" in constitutional terms. These are "(1) religion is essentially individual, (2) religion as centrally addressed to autonomy and choice, and (3) religion as private." While they are interlocking rather than discrete features, Berger notes, they furnish a "cohesive and particular theory of religion." [p. 66] The framework from which they emerge is the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This liberal view of religious freedom is rooted in John Locke's influential critique: experience of faith, oppression and tolerance are mutually informing. The dynamism of social practice-notably human suffering, minority status, and dominant ideologies-ought to shape liberalism's approach to freedom of religion. Recent decisions by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), however, suggest that an assertive reading of secular ideology, akin to French laicite, trumps any claim to understanding religious practice against a prevailing social reality. Since the events of September 11, 2001, the hardening of this version of secularism appears to be a conspicuous pattern in judicial reasoning-reinforcing national trends in Belgium, France, Germany, and beyond. Berger's post-Lockean account of religion is increasingly removed from the current European trend. No faith tradition is more entangled in this pattern today than Islam, notably with regard to veiling (hijabi) Muslim women. Reverberations in the Canadian province of Quebec[1] suggest that the Lockian legacy is at odds with laicite as a key informant of how Islam is framed.

A man walks past a mural created by two groups 'Bad Asian' and 'Civic Walls' advocating for the BLM movement and an end to Asian hate near Krog Street Tunnel in Atlanta, Georgia 30 March 2021. EFE/EPA/ERIK S. LESSER *Note: This article is a response to a recent article in OGR by Nicolas Agostini. "We agree about the rights, but on condition that no one asks us why." Jacques Maritain, on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) "Cancel culture" and "woke" are trendy mudpacks in today's semantic and political combat over the global state of human rights. As civil society comes to embrace hitherto marginal actors, from Black Lives Matter to First Nations and sexual minority groups, the old guard sheds tears over the "loss of the universal." No surprise there, if the old guard were simply far-right haters who find all equality claims to be problematic. But what about traditional left-leaning folks who lament "excessive identity politics?" Nicolas Agostini, for example, decries the obsession with "identity, subjectivity and lived experience" at the expense of "objectivity and empiricism" that undergird universal human rights.

Among the public rituals of liberal democracy, what can match the grace and prowess of a citizenship ceremony? Behold the invocation of the nation's founding narrative, its pledge of equality and the rule of law, and the keen partaking by a diverse slice of the population… that is, subject to the odd attempt to exclude women with religious face-coverings (secular masks being kosher, if not de rigueur). 1 That citizenship is so valued by newcomers who actually consent to the proffered social contract-as opposed to the homegrown masses whose consent is implied-surely speaks to its potency. Not so, argues the constitutional scholar Dimitry Kochenov, for whom its symbolism elides "an abstract status" that is utterly "totalitarian in nature" (38). Indeed, he regards most citizenships outside his privileged European zone, coupled with the United States and Canada, as outright liabilities. Human rights and personhood are the true prizes in Kochenov's provocative account-distinct from citizenship, which is everywhere a "glorified" idea whose only purpose is to make states "better governable by promoting servility and complacency" (239). How has it come to this, when from Aristotle down to the liberal age we have been told otherwise, most famously in T. H. Marshall's critique of "social citizenship?" Are the raging civic struggles for what racialized minorities and Indigenous people deem to be claims to full citizenship missing the point? Is the global movement for ethically responsible citizenship on climate change, including radical legal reform, simply naïve? Kochenov's case for the prosecution of citizenship, past and present, is pitched under four rubrics: Status, Rights, Duties, and Politics. These add up ultimately to a "legal fiction devoid of moral and ethical contenu," he avers at the outset, poised to punish "critics of the inequitable in the world it has evolved to perpetuate" (3). Kochenov is surely on solid ground when he stresses the dominance of a statist ascription of one's legal status as overriding other aspects of where or how one belongs to a national territory. The coherence that citizens bring to what Benedict Anderson called the "imagined community" of modern nationhood is subject to the

An insistent focus on extremism and radicalization with regard to current Islamist trends masks the failures of pluralist citizenship, amid a larger crisis of identity. Whether in Muslim-majority societies or in the Euro-North American diaspora, “Islam” and “politics” are touted as explaining patterns of severe violence by state/non-state actors. Neither category accounts more than superficially for the complexities at hand, which revolve around exclusionary models of identity, faith and civil society. Successful narratives of inclusive citizenship depend on key markers outside of modernist secular orthodoxy. Theologies of inclusion are vital in fostering pluralist civic identities, mindful of the ascendance of puritanical-legalist theologies of exclusion as a salient facet of public cultures. Multiple surveys reveal the depth of exclusivist conservatism in diverse Muslim societies. These stances not only undermine civil society as a locus for engendering pluralist identities, but a...

The ambivalent role of religion in modern citizenship is hardly new, whether in terms of the “hardware” (legal-political institutions and processes) or “software” (public attitudes and habits). Faith narratives can vigorously contest liberal claims of civil belonging and freedom, such as on gender and secularism. Yet liberal citizenship also benefits from justice claims anchored in interpretations of religion, ranging from equality and solidarity to nonviolence and reconciliation. Identity politics is a formative part of liberal citizenship, with a dominant tribal discourse legitimated by the accommodation of minority ethno-religious claims to equity and equality. Nativist populism aggravates an already adversarial relationship between faith and liberal citizenship, notably for minority religions. This paper argues for symbiosis between liberal citizenship and diverse religious identities—a political theology that takes pluralism seriously. While liberalism purports to minimize expe...

In Mohsin Hamid's celebrated novel, Exit West, 1 a young couple flees violent conflict in South Central Asia, trekking through magical doors to Europe and North America. The interiority of refugee experience is excavated, seared by familial, emotional, and spiritual wounds. "Encampment" as the reality of refugees adrift-finding only transient shelter across continents-shreds any claims to meaningful legal status. The scale of this reality raises grave ethical questions about the gap between what is owed to forced migrants and what part of this obligation societies will honour. Serena Parekh, a political philosopher at Boston University, is certainly concerned, in No Refuge, about doors turning into walls. But this is located within a crisis engendered by the "structural injustice" of a post-World War II system of dealing with displacement enacted by liberal western states. Her essential premise is that "refugees around the world are largely unable to get refuge, that is, they are unable to access the minimum conditions of human dignity while they wait for a more permanent solution" (p. 3). Most of the estimated thirty-three million people seeking protection across borders (as part of the over 103 million forcibly displaced worldwide) 2 will subsist in badly resourced camps or unaided internationally, in urban centres, in the global south. The overwhelming majority stay in limbo, indefinitely. From Myanmar's Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh and Somalis crossing the border to Kenya's Dadaab refugee complex, to millions of Syrians who have spent a decade in Lebanon and Turkey, and many more millions of Palestinians generationally living in sites across the Middle East, an "age of encampment" prevails. 3 The numbers would be worse still if internally displaced people (IDPs) and those wanting to flee severe repression, such as in Xinjiang (China), crossed borders. Asylum being a fundamental human right, what are forced migrants to do if the barriers are insuperable? Parekh's answer is human smuggling. It's the "price we

This paper will attempt to recover the early beginnings of Christianity on the peninsula while demonstrating that the form of Christianity  planted there was doomed to disappear with the arrival of Islam; a consciousness that gave the Arab peoples of the region not merely a different world view or religious belief, but a new sense of common identity and nationhood.