Sri Aurobindo Ghose , the Indian Nationalist and yogi, developed in the period of his life at Pondicherry in Southeast India a system of thought, practice and experience which he called ‘Integral Yoga’. The title indicated, he said, that ‘it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogas — its newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method’. In the development of Integral Yoga Aurobindo believed he was speaking and acting as a ‘realized (...) yogi’ or, better still, a yogi who was in the process of realization. He had not attained a final experience of jñāna , but he believed he had experienced levels of supra-mental consciousness which would lead to the higher level of Supermind itself. (shrink)

Henry Nelson Wieman’s most distinctive philosophical contributions are his identification of creative interchange as the ultimate process in human experience through which people and their institutions are able to create, sustain, improve, and cor­rect their value perspectives and, equally important, his description of creative inter­change in psychological, sociological, histor­ical, religious, and institutional contexts as subject inquiry and the experimental test of consequences. This massive collection, thirty-three orig­inal essays with an appendix and index, rep­resents the first formal attempt to consider (...) fully the interdisciplinary implications of creative interchange. Following an introduc­tion, the book is structured into six sections, beginning with historical studies on the de­velopment of Wieman’s philosophy of creativity. With this information as a base the subsequent five sections treat: _ _his metaphysics and theory of knowledge; _ _his the­ory of value; _ _creative interchange in the context of rhetoric and literary criticism; _ _creative interchange as a guide for social phi­losophy; and creative interchange as re­lated to current philosophic trends. The essayists include prominent philosophers, such as Charles Hartshorne, Lewis E._ _Hahn, and S. Morris Eames, as well as emerging scholars who have responded to Wieman’s conception of creative interchange. (shrink)

The comparative study of Romanian and Hungarian Neopagan organizations with an ethnocentric or "Ethno-pagan" ideology is an exploratory research aimed at mapping the similarities and the differences between these religious minorities, with a highlight on their level of institutionalization, their core values and degree of political mobilization. Zalmoxian groups and organizations promote the revival of Romanian spirituality through a process of reconnection to its ancient, supposedly Dacian and Thracian roots; by the same token, Hungarian Shamanist movements are aimed (...) at recovering a supposedly lost spirituality, built-in into the deepest layers of Hungarian language and cultural practices. A web rhetoric analysis of these organizations is carried out in order to assess audience involvement, communication style and the use of multimedia tools to convey their messages. (shrink)

This article asks how state formation processes informed the normative frameworks of late-Medieval and early-Modern Latin European and Muslim Middle Eastern regimes. The question at hand is not why pre-Modern regimes discriminated against religious minorities (as well as other groups) during the pre-Modern period, but why Western European states consistently engaged in mass expulsions of their non-Christian subjects from the late thirteenth century onward and the neighboring states of the Middle East did not. Rather than addressing these peculiar (...) policies as a function of religion, culture, or law the article adopts a comparative, contextual method. With the aid of Charles Tilly’s theoretical perspectives it isolates critical variables in pre-Modern Middle Eastern state formation. These variables are then used to shed light on the circumstances and relationships that led to Latin Europe’s mass expulsions of Jews and Muslims between 1290 and 1614. (shrink)

This study aims at chronicling current aspects and transformations in the relationship between the Jehovah's Witnesses religious minority and the Romanian state (1989-2010), focusing on this religious group's changing official status. Considering both previous contributions and debates on the relations between state and religion, and the distinction between the concepts of denomination versus sect, the present work analyzes the key issues of the long-lasting conflict between the state and this particular religious minority, as well as the factors (...) influencing these relations in Post-Communist Romania. It will be argued that the latest improvements concerning the recognition of religious freedom (Jehovah's Witnesses were officially recognized as a religious denomination in 2003) owes less to internal factors than to an external influence, namely the pressure exerted by the international community at the time of Romania's accession to both NATO and the EU. Furthermore, the study concludes that the evolution of the relation between the state and the Jehovah's Witnesses has influenced the background on which this relation has evolved, as well as the internal evolution of the religious minority. (shrink)

The present study focuses on the religious minority arising from the implementation of the Gregorian calendar in Romania. Christian religious community of the Old Style is defined both historically and through psycho-social elements that caused the secession of belivers together with clerics from the Romanian Orthodox Church. Special attention is given to magical-religious beliefs observed with ethnological research tools, including: magical perception of time and especially of the agrarian calendar, faith in miraculous natural signs, survivals of animist (...) religion. The study of this religious community provides information on internal mechanisms for the appearance and development of minority phenomenon. The research is conducted beyond the issue of minority ethnic differentiations that has dominated multiculturalism studies. On the contrary, the existence of this religious minority in the third millennium, that is intra-ethnic developed and defined by ethno-cultural values eminently conservative, may explain a specific paradox of the strong Romanian religiosity which is essentially a rural and traditionalist one. (shrink)

Scholarship on the hybrid and interrelated nature of religion and secularism among religious minorities is still scarce. This study explores how young adult religious minority students in Israel, Muslims and Druze, integrate their religious worldviews within modernity, separately for each group and comparatively for both, with special attention to their conflictual position as minorities. The research data were collected as part of a mixed-methods research project—Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective (YARG), which used (...) the Faith Q-Sort method (version b)—and through semi-structured interviews. The findings reflect the multiple ways in which modernization processes can shape the religious worldviews of minority students and confirm previous findings on the multifaceted manifestations of religiosity and secularization. Furthermore, the study highlights the indirect manner through which the position of “religious/ ethnic minority” might promote secularization. (shrink)

Problems with religion have always been and remain one of the most important in the context of organization of state and public life.And today for Ukraine the issues of guaranteeing, full protection, protection of the right to freedom of conscience, religion, activities of religious organizations, including religious minorities are very relevant.This is due, above all, to those historical scales, the processes that have taken place during the last decade in all spheres of social life, including in the (...) spiritual, religious-ideological plane of it. (shrink)

This is the last of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. One of the tasks of the book is to separate out different kinds of affiliation and the extent to which the arguments made about cultural recognition can be extended to (...) other objects of affiliation. Mark Halstead’s chapter on schooling and cultural maintenance for religious minorities in the liberal state provides a catalogue of the different types of groups that are to be found in liberal societies, and the different kinds of cultural and educational claims that are typically attached to each of them. His definition of minority group is useful in conceptualizing many of the papers in the volume. The chapter falls into three sections: Section 10.1, which looks at four types of disadvantaged minorities, attempts to distinguish non-Western fundamentalist religious minorities living in the West from other minorities that may experience disadvantage of various kinds in liberal societies; Section 10.2, on religious minorities in the liberal state, explores some of the educational and other difficulties encountered by such religious minorities in more detail, and typical liberal responses; Section 10.3, on rethinking the liberal response, contains some proposals that are designed to meet the educational needs of both the liberal state and the religious minorities at the same time. (shrink)

This paper introduces views both hostile to and supportive of the ideas of secularism and religious neutrality in the jurisprudence of Muslim minorities (fiqh al-aqalliyyat).

This paper employs Critical Discourse Analysis to examine resistance discourses as created by the Ahmadiyya followers – a self-defined sect of Islam – to argue against negative discourses undermining them in Indonesia. In some legal proclamations and statements delivered by state officials and the representatives of majority Muslims in the country, the followers of the sect, especially those affiliated to the JAI (Jemaat Ahmadiyya Indonesia) are excluded from Islamic community. By using Van Dijk’s ideological square, this study aims at identifying (...) resistance discourses created by the JAI followers as the defence strategies to oppose negative discourses presenting them as the non-believers of Islam. The resistance discourses are apparent in both written and spoken texts, such as books, articles, speeches, and public debates created by the sect. The finding reveals that the JAI followers create discourses of victim, defender of Islam, imperialism, illegitimacy, and discourse of public deception using various discourse strategies namely victimization, scare tactics, positive attribution, quotation, power delegitimising and negative portraits of misbehaving. (shrink)

This article explores the policies of discrimination and oppression towards Protestant communities in interwar Italy exercised by the state authorities and often incited by the Catholic Church. In particular, the circumstances in the multi-ethnic north-eastern region, the Julian March, are analysed in the context of so-called Border Fascism. The Protestant Churches had had in the past a prevalently ethnic character, but with the annexation to Italy, their background had been in several cases either concealed or, through migrations, Italians eventually became (...) majorities. Another significant characteristic is that Slovene and Croatian minorities only rarely adhered to Protestantism, other than the relatively few Seventh-day Adventists and ‘Fratelli’. Based on the archival documents, oppressive actions of the Fascist authorities against Adventists in Trieste as a response to a complaint by the Catholic curia accusing them of proselytism are reconstructed. The investigations and harassments of Adventists show all basic similarities to the episodes of oppression against certain Protestant minorities in other parts of Italy, while the nationality of their members was a crucial factor in determining why of all minority religions, aside from the Jewish, it was this community which experienced the most oppressive police treatment in the Julian March region. (shrink)

In today's conditions of Ukraine's development, strengthening its legal foundation and establishing a democratic civil society is an urgent problem of the person's ability to exercise the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution and other legislative acts. Recently, in the world, cases of human rights violations in connection with religious, racial, linguistic and other differences have become more frequent and more frequent in the world. The ambiguity, the antagonistic nature of the definitions and the relation between the concepts (...) of various social groups, such as the national, religious minority, etc., often leads to speculation and aggravation of the ethnopolitical situation. This explains the relevance of this study. (shrink)

Religious conversion is a phenomenon that has frequently occurred in human history. As part of religious life, religious conversion reflects fluctuations and changes in social existence, especially changes in the economic, cultural, social, religious factors and one‟s own subjective religious convictions. Religious conversions are taking place in the ethnic communities in Southern Vietnam, but in a context that is space and time specific. So the process of evolution, the nature, dynamics and characteristics of the (...) case of religious conversion here is different and unique. Currently, the study of religious conversion in Vietnam in general and the South in particular, is modest. There have not been many studies regarding case specific religious conversion of people and no studies have done a full assessment of the nature and characteristics of religious conversion on social life in Southern Vietnam as well as forecasted the evolution and impact of the same. This article is intended to present and describe three cases of religious conversion in the south of Vietnam. These are the conversion to Protestantism of ethnic communities Khmer. (shrink)

This article explores how scholarship can be put to work by specialists penning evidence-based policies seeking peaceful resolutions to long-standing, complex, and so-far intractable conflict in the Malay-Muslim dominated provinces of South Thailand. I contend that more is required than mere empirical data, and that the existing analysis of this conflict often lacks theoretical ballast and overlooks the wider historical context in which Bangkok pursued policies impacting its ethnolinguistically, and ethnoreligiously diverse citizens. I demonstrate the utility of both interacting with (...) what social theorists have written about what “religion” and language do—and do not—have in common, and the relative importance of both in sub-national conflicts, and comparative historical analysis. The case studies that this article critically introduces compare chapters of ethnolinguistic and ethnoreligious chauvinism against a range of minorities, including Malay-Muslim citizens concentrated in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. These include Buddhist ethnolinguistic minorities in Thailand’s Northeast, and Catholic communities during the second world war widely referred to as the high tide of Thai ethno-nationalism. I argue that these revealing aspects of the southern Malay experience need to be contextualized—even de-exceptionalized. (shrink)

Mission hospitals founded by American Board missionaries in the late Ottoman period set an unusual example within the broader framework of Ottoman provincial healthcare services. These hospitals provided free health services to many poor and needy patients irrespective of their ethnic and religious origins: most importantly, they had access to Muslims, unlike typical Catholic and Protestant missionary institutions which were only able to operate among the non-Muslim population of the empire. By these means, mission hospitals managed to gain the (...) sympathy of both the local population and Ottoman local officials. This study will focus on the historiography of mission hospitals and the fundamental debates surrounding these institutions under the rubric of two main headings. First, the study will set out a short historiography of mission hospitals, their typical modus operandi and the audiences they reached out to in technical terms. Then, from a theoretical perspective, the study will shed light on the underlying motivations of these mission hospitals along with Ottoman governmental attitudes toward these institutions. (shrink)

This article reviewed the influence of pre-Islamic religions such as Mithraism and Zoroastrianism on decorative elements of ancient Persian rugs. The article then evaluated the effect of the Islamic religion on Persian rugs. This was examined through extant evidence from pre–Islamic empire artefacts and publications in Persian carpet history, iconography and religious studies. Using spiritual motifs on some ancient rugs results from the important position of rugs in ancient Iranians’ lives. Believing the existence of religious motifs on Persian (...) carpets is because the first carpet in history (Pazyryk) was attributed to the ancient Achaemenians, decorated with symbolic motifs from Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. Pazyryk shows how rug-weaving evolved during the Achaemenids, and it represented spiritual foundations through visual concepts. This article reviewed the symbolic Persian rug motifs from ancient religions through Pazyryk, with support from museum collections. With the emergence of religions, these effects are seen in all aspects of life, including the production of rug design. Contribution: The main contribution of this research was that it investigated the effects of religion on Persian art focusing on the Persian rug. The findings showed that religion had directly influenced the decorative motifs of the Persian rug among high-class families that might have cascaded into visual elements found on commoners’ rugs. (shrink)

This article reviewed the influence of pre-Islamic religions such as Mithraism and Zoroastrianism on decorative elements of ancient Persian rugs. The article then evaluated the effect of the Islamic religion on Persian rugs. This was examined through extant evidence from pre–Islamic empire artefacts and publications in Persian carpet history, iconography and religious studies. Using spiritual motifs on some ancient rugs results from the important position of rugs in ancient Iranians’ lives. Believing the existence of religious motifs on Persian (...) carpets is because the first carpet in history (Pazyryk) was attributed to the ancient Achaemenians, decorated with symbolic motifs from Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. Pazyryk shows how rug-weaving evolved during the Achaemenids, and it represented spiritual foundations through visual concepts. This article reviewed the symbolic Persian rug motifs from ancient religions through Pazyryk, with support from museum collections. With the emergence of religions, these effects are seen in all aspects of life, including the production of rug design.Contribution: The main contribution of this research was that it investigated the effects of religion on Persian art focusing on the Persian rug. The findings showed that religion had directly influenced the decorative motifs of the Persian rug among high-class families that might have cascaded into visual elements found on commoners’ rugs. (shrink)

Mark Halstead; Voluntary Apartheid? Problems of Schooling for Religious and Other Minorities in Democratic Societies, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume.

The presence of increasing percentages of immigrants in the European social landscape is not only a quantitative fact, with consequences on several social and cultural dynamics and indicators. It produces an important qualitative change. From being a pathology, plurality is becoming physiology. Religion is a key factor in this process. There is a synchronic pluralization going on: the level of pluralization of the religious and cultural offer is increasing, making society a kaleidoscope of cultures, whose pieces are in constant (...) movement. Islam – and in particular Islam in Europe – is often considered the most problematic and ‘problematized’ expression of this process. It is what we could call exceptionalism: the tendency to see Islam and Muslims as an exceptional rather than standard case. Even the mediatic perception of Islam in conflictual terms can be considered a form of exceptionalism and conflict a specific way of understanding Islam. Islamophobia is part of this phenomenon. Exceptionalism explains why Islam has become a discursive substitute of the main transformation, which is the much higher degree of cultural and religious pluralization of European societies. (shrink)

The ancient practice of metzitzah b'peh, direct oral suction, is still practiced by ultra-Orthodox Jews as part of the religious rite of male newborn circumcision. Between 2000 and 2011, 11 children have died in New York and New Jersey, following infection by herpes simplex virus, presumably from infected practitioners. The City responded by requiring signed parental consent before oral suction, with parents being warned of the dangers of the practice. This essay argues that informed consent is not an appropriate (...) response to this problem. An outright ban would a better response to a practice that is dangerous to children, but might prove unconstitutional under New York State law. (shrink)

Muslims in the U.S. are increasingly looking to integrate into its society while trying not to lose their identity as Muslims. They find themselves in a dilemma when it comes to the issue of congratulating and even partaking in the festivals of non-Muslims in the U.S. This issue has gained prominence and momentum after the event of 9-11, in which the Muslims wanted to show and prove their tolerance and acceptance towards others while trying to hold onto and maintain the (...) core principles of Islam. For this reason, this topic is a hotly debated issue in the U.S. and the West in general and a cause of division and confusion amongst Muslims. However, in order to justify their position and feel that they are following the teachings of Islam, they turned to the Islamic scholars, both in the West and the Muslim world, regarding the permissibility or prohibition of congratulating and partaking in non-Muslim festivals. This paper employs a qualitative methodology to analyse the fatāwā of permissibility and its effects on the Muslims living as minorities in the U.S. This qualitative method will give readers an insight, through a questionnaire that was conducted by the researchers, into how the Muslims in the U.S. perceive the issue of congratulating and/or partaking in the religious festivals of the non-Muslims. (shrink)

Recently, the Supreme Court of Nigeria in Tega Esabunor v Faweya & Ors (2019) LPELR 46961 (SC) dismissed an appeal seeking to quash the order of a magistrate court for the transfusion of blood to a baby. The appellants contended that the court had no jurisdiction to make theorder. The crux of the case was whether the parents’ right to consent to the child’s treatment based on religious beliefs supersedes the child’s right to live, thus reflecting the tension between (...) a parent’s right to give consent to the choice of treatment for their child, and the court’s power to override such rights through the inherent parens patriae jurisdiction of the state. The case also reflects the tension between the freedom of a parent to practise their religion and the right of a child to live, in the medical context. This article examines the findings of the Supreme Court in Tega Esabunor’s case, considering whether the court’s decision is in line with the generally accepted practice on when the state can intervene if persons with parental responsibility refuse medical treatment for an incompetent child because of religious beliefs.Cases from other jurisdictions are analysed to ascertain the position of foreign courts. It is submitted that the Supreme Court’s judgmentreflects accepted international practice regarding parental refusal of consent for medical treatment of a child. (shrink)

DECLARATION CONCERNING THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS RELATED TO NATIONAL OR ETHNIC, RELIGIOUS OR LEGAL MINORITIES Resolution 47/135 of the General Assembly of the United Nations of 18.12.1992.

An important church body complementing the religious face of Slovakia is the Lutheran Church. It is the second largest church according to the 2001 census, a community with intensive intergenerational secularisation of its adherents. Ageing and a significant overall decline in believers during socialism are the most typical signs of this church. This paper briefly describes these typical signs with geographical nuances, a comparison with surrounding countries and with the largest church body in Slovakia - Roman Catholics. At the (...) beginning of the new millennium, the Lutheran Church of Slovakia had reached its peak in the stabile period considering the slight renewal of church life after 1990. Due to known processes, new times will bring a progressive decrease in adherents. And Lutherans, as the first church in Slovakia, seem to approach and adopt western patterns of churches succumbing to secularisation. (shrink)

Theories of how religion shapes business tend to focus on dominant religious institutions. What happens in the case of minority religions, where the alignment of religion with other dominant institutions may be weak at best? To answer this question, I first develop an emergentist account of religion, explaining how macro-level conditioning shapes meso- and micro-level interactions in religious contexts, leading to either structural change or stasis in business contexts. I illustrate this account by examining how Roman Catholicism as (...) a minority religion shapes corporate capitalism in two cities: Bangalore, India, and Dubai, UAE. Drawing on in-depth interviews (N=200) and 12 months of participant observation, I show how countervailing mechanisms create both assets and liabilities for Catholic professionals’ success in workplaces, contributing to morphostasis rather than change. I argue that such processes cannot be adequately understood without specifying their “macrofoundations,” and identify corresponding macro-level influences at global and local levels. By specifying such macro-micro linkages, this article improves our understanding of how religion shapes business. (shrink)

The article discusses the rights of minorities in the system of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It establishes a conceptual distinction between universal rights, specific rights of minorities in general and specific rights of particular minorities. Universal rights correspond to all individuals (e,g,, “no one shall be subjected to torture”) or all groups of a certain class (e.g., “all families are entitled to protection”). Minority groups and their members are entitled to these rights in (...) the same way as any other individual or group. Specific rights of minorities in general are granted to minority groups (e.g., “minority groups have the right to speak their own language”) or their members (e.g., “persons belonging to a minority group have the right to speak the language of the group”). Finally, specific rights of particular minorities are granted to specific groups identified by their characteristics (e.g., “the linguistic minority X has the right to speak the X language”) or their members (e.g., “any member of the linguistic minority X has the right to speak the X language”). Treaties and international declarations often refer to universal rights and specific rights of minorities in general. However, these rights are usually recognised in broad terms, and their implementation may lead to the recognition of specific rights in favour of particular minorities or their members. Protection of minorities (in the broad sense of the expression) is based on two pillars: on the one hand, the protection against discrimination; on the other hand, the protection of minorities in the strict sense. The first pillar is an aspect of the general principle of nondiscrimination and requires respect for both formal and substantive equalities. The protection of minorities in the strict sense involves the preservation of their particular identity. The purpose of the equality in a formal sense is achieved through universal rights, to the extent that these are granted to minority groups and their members. On the contrary, to achieve equality in a substantive sense, it could be necessary to implement positive measures. The implementation of these measures will usually lead to the recognition of specific rights of minority groups or their members. Finally, the protection of the distinctive characteristics of the minorities will also be done through specific rights. Thus, on the one hand, there are rights, which are intended to protect the minority forms of life (i.e. to protect differences), and, on the other hand, those that are intended to allow minorities equal access to different uniform social goods (i.e. to protect equality). Whereas the former ones seek to protect and promote the particularities of the minority culture (e.g., the right to receive education in their own language), the latter ones are recognised to overcome the disadvantages that minority groups and their members face and are not intended to promote peculiarities, but rather to permit equal access to resources and social opportunities. Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights enshrines specific rights of minorities intended to protect and promote their own forms of life. Although economic rights are not mentioned (the article refers to the rights “to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, [and] to use their own language”), they may stem from the explicitly recognised rights. The rights recognised by the Covenant are not collective, but individual rights (“in those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right [...]”). The rights recognised in the Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities are of the same nature. The principle of equality and non-discrimination is contained in Articles 2.1 and 26 of the Covenant. This principle forbids direct and indirect discrimination, be it de iure or de facto. As this is a universal right, minorities can also benefit from it. According to the Human Rights Committee, Article 27 imposes on States the adoption of positive measures that exceed an attitude of mere abstention. In the same way, positive measures may be necessary to make the principle of equality and non-discrimination effective. Although neither Article 27 nor Articles 2.1 and 26 refer to individuals belonging to a specific minority, the concrete implementation of these articles through positive measures may produce specific rights for persons belonging to particular minority groups. (shrink)

Fifty years ago, on 12 September, 1963, the association agreement between the European Economic Community (EEC) and Turkey was signed in Ankara. However, in contrast to many other countries who applied later on, Turkey has not yet become a member of the EU. Nevertheless, Turkey’s candidacy to join the EU is still one of the most considerable and controversial topics within the European political arena. Within the accession negotiations, apart from human rights and the Kurdish and the Cypriot issues, one (...) of the greatest challenges to Turkey’s successful candidacy is the issue of respect for and protection of minorities. It might indeed represent an unsolvable problem, which will ultimately block Turkey joining the EU. Neither the EU nor Turkey has really come to terms or dealt with what the EU sees as an “unsatisfactory” protection of minorities in Turkey. What lies at the root of this disagreement is what the term “minority” actually means. Due to Turkey’s own nation state concept as being a united and undivided country and to the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923, which defined Turkey as a nation, the country only recognises non-Muslim minorities. Moreover, contrary to the wording of the minority protection clauses in the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey restricts its recognition of non-Muslim minorities only to the Greek, Armenian and Jewish religious populations. Although being a non-Muslim group as well, the Assyrians are excluded from the Turkish concept of minorities and, therefore, also from minority protection. In contrast to that, the EU’s concept of minority includes ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, which means that according to the EU’s concept of minorities, also ethnic minorities like the Kurds, linguistic minorities like the Laz and religious minorities like the Alevis are included in the term “minority” and, therefore, these minorities should benefit from specific minority protection rights. To find a common basis for discussing the unsatisfactory issue of minority rights in Turkey, the concept of “ethnic groups” is introduced by the author as the most promising approach to deal with this unreconciled conceptual difference. According to this concept, ethnic groups could form a sub-identity of Turkishness and help build a legal basis to the treatment of minority groups founded on human rights, which would be compatible with both Turkish and EU Law. (shrink)

The social acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) is recently widely debated. Although some Western countries have taken a more favourable course towards these minority groups, we still see a certain level of resistance to same sex marriage and discrimination against LGBT even in normally regarded liberal societies. Islam, which is often believed to clash with so-called Western values, regards LGBT as abhorrent and even apostate. However, we see a new endeavour of LGBT people in the most Muslim populous (...) country in the world, Indonesia. This paper explores the treatment of these minorities in Islam, including the possibility of co-existence of all humans in a future. For this purpose, we consider the activities of this Islamic school in Indonesia and the life history of the students. We also examine both the pro and con of the religious standpoint of the ulamas. We especially pay attention to some of the ulama’s attempts to create a new fiqh (a legal standard for religious rituals and obligations) to accept LGBT. (shrink)

In Western political philosophy, democracy is generally the dominant view regarding what the best form of government is, and this holds even in respect to promoting minority rights. However, I argue that there is a better theory for satisfying minority interests and rights. I amass numerous studies from the social sciences demonstrating how democracy does poorly in accounting for minority interests. I then contend that a particular hybrid view that fuses a meritocracy with democracy can do a better job than (...) democracy in accounting for minority interests and in having more equal rights and fair policies coming from the legislative and executive branches. Finally, I defend this thesis from numerous counters. (shrink)