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The key problem addressed in the paper is that of the legal pluralism, more specifically the pluralism of legal systems within one state that pursues the accommodation of religious freedom claims. In its controversial Refah decisions the Strasbourg Court held that the prohibition of the Turkish Welfare Party was “necessary in a democratic society” because its plan to set up a plurality of legal systems was not “compatible with fundamental democratic principles”[1]. This paper tries to inquire into the notion of legal pluralism, tries to test normative assumptions made by the Court in its regard and argues that a “no plurality” approach would be overly simplistic and that a liberal approach would require different degrees of pluralization (some of which already exist to accommodate differences and diversity within a society) to be extended to religion, without however endangering constitutional democracy. <br />It is necessary to point out at least two major theoretical contexts in which this problem should be considered. One is undoubtedly the issue of ‘militant’ democracy: once we assume that constitutional democracy and legal pluralism are incompatible, we give a (part of) definition of democracy, which entitles us to reject any changes proposed to it while retaining the claim to be democratic. If we know what is democracy in a substantive sense, which values it is designed to protect (e.g. secularism or fundamental rights) we can legitimately reject any changes to that vision as a measure protective of such values[2]. <br />Another context that is relevant is the issue of universality and cultural relativism. It first appears when we attempt to define democracy as a substantive notion, which necessarily assumes a value judgement. It also becomes relevant if we mind that the rationale of legal pluralism is the necessity to recognize, respect and tolerate different views and visions of ‘happiness’. In its pure form the idea of relativism and legal pluralism is represented in the classical version of state-centered international law system, where states posses equal and unlimited internal sovereignty[3]. However even within the State any kind and instance of legal pluralism is about the respect and tolerance of the different normative values and views. Only straightforward consensus on all the rules and values as universal can justify total rejection of legal pluralism. <br />The paper will start by an attempt to clarify the understandings of legal pluralism in social sciences and law. The second part will try to construe a liberal argument in favor of advancing legal pluralism to a certain degree, basing on the individual right to freedom of religion and conscience. Instead of relying on the ‘collective rights’ argument, it rather believes that individual rights provide a sufficient basis for this claim, as far as religious life and consciousness are deemed an important part of individual personality and self-determination. The third part tries to balance the claims of legal pluralism by considering arguments against such a model of society. <br /><br clear="all" /> <br /> <br />[1] Case Of Refah Partisi (The Welfare Party) And Others v. Turkey, <em>(Applications nos. 41340/98, 41342/98, 41343/98 and 41344/98) </em>Judgment, 31 July 2001 [hereinafter <em>Refah (1)</em>] paras 70-71;<em>See also </em>Case of Refah Partisi (the Welfare Party) and Others v. Turkey <em>(Applications nos. 41340/98, 41342/98, 41343/98 and 41344/98), </em>judgment, 13 February 2003, [hereinafter <em>Refah(2)</em>] paras 98 and 119. <br /> <br /> <br />[2] See <em>infra</em>, text accompanying notes 35-39. <br /> <br /> <br />[3] See <em>infra</em>, note 8, text for the note 25 and page 14.

Freedom of religion in the sense of freedom of belief and of religious manifestations; in teaching, practice, worship and observance is one of the basic human rights laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, art. 18. Freedom of religion in this sense is considered to be an important right and to play an important role in keeping up social peace in society. Germany, being a secular state with a historical connection to Christian religion, has anchored this right of religious freedom in is constitution in Article 4.According to Art. 7/3 religious education in state- run schools is accomplished in accordance with the religious communities. This religious education is normally provided for by the Catholic and Protestant Churches, but also by the Jewish community.  There are 3,2 Mio Muslims in Germany , especially from Turkey, but also from the Arab countries and Iran. Most of these Muslims do not plan to return to their native countries and will remain in Germany.They do enjoy freedom of religion in the above-mentioned sense. In my paper I will deal with the question of how religious manifestations of the Muslims in Germany “in teaching, practice, worship and observance “is accomplished. <br />I shall focus on their religious education and endeavor to answer the following questions: What does Islamic education mean in Germany, in a secular state? Who provides for it and how? How does it differ from religious education in Islamic countries? How is it seen by the German society? I will deal with these questions on two levels (1) on the national level and (2) on the local level. On the national level a clear effort of the German state can be seen to integrate the Muslim minority as a religious group into the German state. <br />For this reason the German Minister Wolfgang Schäuble convened in 2006 the so called “Islamkonferenz inviting jurists, scholars of Islamic studies and representatives of the different Muslim communities as well as independent persons to talk about the situation of Muslims in Germany. The unsolved question still is: how the different Islamic groups comprising Muslims from different social, political and religious backgrounds and from different countries as Turkey, Arab states, Iran, Afghanistan with different national Islamic traditions could find a common platform of religious Islamic belief in a secular state. By establishing the Coordinating Council (Koordinierungsrat) of Muslims in Germany in April 2007, some larger Islamic organizations tried to create a common structure for the representation of all Muslims. So far this organization has not been recognized by the German state as the official representative of all Muslims, but the discussions at the “Islamkonferenz” are not yet finished and are still going on. <br />One of the main aims of the Muslim Organizations is to gain the right to give Islamic religious lessons at German state-run schools. Whereas on the national level the integration of Islam as a religion within the secular system is discussed, on the local level religious teaching is currently taking place within different projects in many selected state schools in Germany as well as in local mosques. Religious teaching at mosques will be discussed by taking the example of mosques in Goettingen, a small university town in Central Germany. There are two main mosques in Goettingen: one belonging to the Turkish community (Ditib) and the other being an Arab mosque. <br />I shall sketch the concept of religious education given in this Arab mosque with regard to its content and the way it is taught to the children, whether it corresponds to the classical Islamic education and which concepts, beliefs, rituals and cultic acts are being considered important for children growing up in a completely secular context? <br />Finally, I shall compare this approach at the local level with the efforts made on the national level and discuss how these different efforts are judged by the German society. 

Peaceful co-existence is a universal but elusive aspiration. Despite the search for tools to create a peaceful world, conflict remains between nations and within nations. The fostering of peace is a question to which scholars, religious leaders and politicians put their minds, but despite this attention the paradox remains that there is little evidence that local and global conflict have subsided. Ideally the key to providing solutions can be found in the tenets of the world’s major religions and cultural traditions and in the musing of some of the great philosophy voices of past and modern times. Regrettably these tenets are often absent in education systems where there are limited endeavours to encourage young people to think locally and globally about social justice, peace and human rights. Many of the current ways of imparting knowledge of human rights and peace are limited, with the emphasis on the legal aspect alone and on international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Although the UDHR is an inspiring document given that its creation stemmed from a commitment to all humanity, its uncritical acceptance negates the critiques about western dominance. Arguably, unless humankind can find a way to grapple with the tension between universal and relativist approaches to human rights by acknowledging diversity, the search for peace and social justice will be limited. This paper contemplates the creation of human rights understandings beyond legal constructs to explore how human rights concepts can be invoked through education to reduce ignorance, prejudice, religious intolerance and fear that detracts from the goal of peaceful co-existence. It explores the question of responsibility to ‘the other’, a form of responsibility that is not apparent in the clash of cultures and the conflict between nations. The paper suggests a schema for human rights understandings based on philosophical, political, historical, anthropological, legal and practical approaches to human rights. This includes forging the connection between theory and practice; engaging in critical pedagogy through a process of collaborative dialogue and inquiry; being familiar with the historical origins of human rights and their application; and understanding that concepts of human rights are found in every cultural and religious tradition.  In advocating such a schema it draws on examples that present barriers and prospects and in so doing outlines the endeavours that take place in the inter-disciplinary Master of Human Rights program at Curtin University in Australia as a model that may be adaptable to other contexts. The paper concludes by suggesting practical ways in which the schema could be enacted including through a lifetime educational commitment to human rights through historical and philosophical understandings, inter-faith dialogue and cultural exchanges.

The Enlightenment's distinction between positive and natural religion furnishes a useful point of departure for thinking about the relationship, in today's world, between religion and human rights.  According to eighteenth century rationalism, natural religion consists in the simplest form of those beliefs that reason can admit to without contradiction, such as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul (Voltaire); whereas positive religions are merely the multitude of diverging institutions, dogmas, ceremonies and beliefs that human beings have created for themselves during the course of history.  In natural religion, consciousness finds divinity within itself, and thus is co-responsible for the laws that it constructs and obeys; in positive religion, God imposes His commands from without.  Despite their differences, however, both forms of religion rely on the same conception of temporality to make their claims understood:  they conceive of time as a pure linear sequence (t1, t2, t3, etc.) that is divided into the tripartite form of past, present, and future.  For positive religion, this structure supports the existence of a well-formed past-time during which sacred grounds for respecting human rights were first revealed to a privileged founder; the record of this past-time, in the form of holy writ, then becomes a stable meaning which is thought to ground (and require) any subsequent action that aspires to be righteous.  And while natural religion, for its part, attempts to avoid dogmatism by permitting practical reason to deduce right action from the God-given moral law within, the very concept of deduction in general entails the same tripartite structure of time:  that is, rational people can lay down the law for themselves only in a past-time which, even if it is very recent, must always precede (and hence pre-authorize) the rightness of all right action. According to positive religion, God gives people moral laws; according to natural religion, God gives them a faculty (reason) that allows them to produce valid moral laws for themselves.  Just like the conventional idea of positive law in general, both forms of religion display a kind of pre-rational "faith," so to speak, in what can and should happen after the moral law comes into being.  That is, law, natural religion, and positive religion all adhere to the proposition that the past in general—and appropriately sanctioned human rights norms, in particular—can provide a secure foundation for right action, both in the present and in the future. <br />But of course philosophers are hardly ever univocal when it comes to this or any other topic.  Against the foregoing conventional interpretation of time, Western thought has also delivered us an altogether different concept of temporality, one that supplants sequential time's staid historiography of dates, laws and eras with the notion of "historical" time (Heidegger).  The latter is characterized by the sheer persistence of a unitary spatial-temporal milieu that ceaselessly reproduces itself.  Although this unity supports all modes of becoming, it provides no stable pause, or platform, on which a secure foundation for action could ever be established definitively, once and for all (Nietzsche).  To paraphrase Walter Benjamin, the concept of this sort of temporality holds that the true site of history is not homogeneous, empty time, but rather time filled by the presence of the now (Die Jetztzeit).  From this point of view, time does not "pass"; rather, human beings are seen as living their entire lives in (or as) a now-time in which they are caught, inescapably, between the warring forces of past and future.  Franz Kafka's extraordinary parable, He, paints an image that vividly illustrates this concept of time: <br />  <br />He has two antagonists:  the first presses him from behind, from the origin.  The second blocks the road ahead.  He gives battle to both.  To be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back.  But it is only theoretically so.  For it is not only the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions?  His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded momentCand this would require a night darker than any night has ever been yetChe will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other. <br />Kafka's man is a figure for human freedom:  the fateful "place," as it were, where the struggle between past and future eternally transpires.  But this human freedom should not be confused with the kind in which reason lays down or acknowledges universal laws that then warrant the rightness of future actions (Kant), or even with the kind of Hegelian freedom that permits the individual to recognize and identify with the rational universal that is immanent within the institutions of his time and place.  Nor is this a non-rational, religious, sort of freedom, founded on grace or revelation, by means of which one can let oneself become a vehicle for accomplishing God's will (Meister Eckhart).  Rather, the kind of freedom that besets the man in Kafka's parable is tragic, in the precise Greek sense that it betrays itself as un-free and self-defeating whatever it does.  This is why the man dreams, impossibly, of escaping from the fighting line, for having to constantly experience oneself as the living site of a tragic confrontation between past and future is far less comforting than resting on the self-certain knowledge that one's actions are grounded on an absolute and indubitable foundation. <br />The difference between historiographical time and historical time corresponds to the differences between subservience and freedom, thought and action, and determinacy and indeterminacy.  Linear time attempts to reconcile reason and history by giving human rights a proper ground; but as Goethe says, in the beginning was the deed, not the word.  Unitary time is history by providing a site for the inherently groundless enactment of human rights; but as Kant says, intuitions without concepts are blind.  This essay elucidates the rich contrast between these two modes of temporality, and meditates on their significance for the task of thinking about the relationship between religion and human rights.

It is widely accepted that the freedom to practice one's religion, and to live according to one's religious beliefs, is a basic human right, and the key to peaceful coexistence among religious communities and among nations. In my paper I will focus on the problems that arise when sincerely held religious beliefs come into conflict with the rights of others. Recently in the United States, two such situations have received widespread attention. One case involves pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, because they believe that the use of certain kinds of contraception violates their Christian religious beliefs. The other case involves Muslim taxicab drivers who refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol for similar reasons. In response to such conflicts, religious tolerance is often embraced as a solution. In western society, the ideal of religious tolerance can be traced back at least to John Locke, and received considerable attention in the work of political philosopher John Rawls. In recent years, tolerance has been embraced as a public value through programs that teach tolerance in public schools. But the ideal of tolerance has also come under criticism from theorists such as Wendy Brown, professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of <em>Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire</em> (Princeton University Press).  Brown argues that tolerance is “an impoverished and impoverishing framework through which domestic, civil and international conflicts and events (are) formulated... The experience of being tolerated is inevitably one of being condescended to, of being forborne. The object of tolerance is constructed as marginal, inferior, other, outside the community, in some relation of enmity with the community.” Moreover, as the legal scholar Stanley Fish has noted, the doctrine of tolerance “legitimizes, and even demands, the exercise of <em>in</em>tolerance, when the objects of intolerance are persons who, because of their over-attachment to culture, are deemed incapable of being tolerant.”  What implications do these critiques of tolerance have for how we should address real-life cases of conflict between religious beliefs and the rights of others? “Obviously” as Wendy Brown points out, “it is always better to be tolerated than not, if those are the choices.” But I believe that there are possibilities that go beyond tolerance, that are based on dialogue. The importance of dialogue has been stressed by thinkers including Mohammed Khatami, and philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University, author of <em>Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers </em>(W.W. Norton).  I will argue that productive dialogue between different cultures, or even between different segments of a culturally diverse society, requires more than just reasoned argument. Rather, it requires a deeper conversation that develops an understanding of each other’s history and everyday life and strives for a level of mutual trust and respect. In my conclusion, I will discuss the ways in which this kind of dialogue between faiths can contribute to the cause of peace.

Selective adaptation describes the process by which international legal rules are contextualized to local conditions. The institutional and cultural contexts for selective adaptation involve a process by which non-local institutional practices and organizational forms are mediated by local norms. This process can be illustrated by reference to the local implementation of international human rights regimes.<br /> Selective adaptation is made possible by ways in which governments, elites, and other interpretive communities express their own normative preferences in the course of interpretation and application of practice rules. Selective adaptation depends on a number of factors, including perception, complementarity, and legitimacy. Perception influences understanding about foreign and local norms and practices. Originally a principle of nuclear physics, complementarity describes a circumstance by which apparently contradictory phenomena can be combined in ways that preserve essential characteristics of each component and yet allow for them to operate together in a mutually reinforcing and effective manner.

There is an urgent need for methods by which people and communities of faith peacebuilding and human rights development. This paper argues for a holistic understanding of peacebuilding that includes security of life, a guarantee of subsistence, and the pursuit of other fundamental human rights. This need is especially acute in countries of rising instability or post-conflict rebuilding. More and more countries face a downward spiral of instability even though many leaders and bodies seek to reverse this trend. Sadly, even among those countries that emerge from conflict, one-half revert to conflict within five years. Hence the question this paper addresses is, “How shall people and communities of religious conviction be effectively engaged in a peacebuilding and human rights process?” <br />This people factor is too little understood, even though the role of citizens in transitional states has long been acknowledged as essential for just and sustainable change. For peace accords and international conventions, in and of themselves, do not make peace or deliver human rights. Neither does the arrival of international peacekeepers nor the speeches of clerics and political leaders. While these developments are helpful stimuli, real human peace and security derives from community-based initiatives that create a “positive deviance” for peaceable, rights-oriented living vis-à-vis governments and other forces.  <br />Thus this paper will hypothesize a methodology whereby citizens engage religious institutions, governments (local and national), and international change agents to transform conflict into promising peace and rights. It will identify common peacebuilding principles operating across sectors of human development, security, and rights-oriented work. These sectors may include at least the following: health, conservation, education, security, labor, spirituality, and corporate social responsibility. <br />This paper also seeks to hone a typology of human rights and peacebuilding challenges facing countries of instability and post-conflict rebuilding. Categories may include at least the following: stages and types of conflict, fragile and failed states, overlooked populations, ethnic and racial discrimination, transnational politics and justice, natural resource and wealth distribution, and social capital.

In American history, the ‘Black body’ has been commodified both during the slavery era and in the contemporary period whereby the private management of prisons has partly resulted to mass Black incarceration. The abolition of slavery some 150 years ago is still fairly recent compared to the 400 years it was practiced: thus some of the heinous treatments by slave owners were carried over into the criminal justice system, causing the police, jury, judges, etc., to treat Black people unequally and unfairly compared to their White counterparts. From the ‘proceedings of the rebellious negroes’ in the slavery era to the racialized media coverages of police brutality against Black people, Black protests, treatment of criminal suspects, etc., the American mass media have been identified as playing a major role in the maintenance of the deep racist structures that perpetuate mass Black incarceration. This paper links up some historical practices against Black people with the contemporary racist practices in order to show that slavery is still functionally alive in America and manifests concretely through the justice system: this paper aims at amplifying the ongoing debates toward obliterating the remnants of slavery in America.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. Martin Luther King, Jr. Abstract The following paper will present the theory and possibilities of implication of the phenomenon of civil disobedience understood as one of the most powerful and most effective tools of democratic society when it comes to implementing the necessary and indispensable changes required for the improvement of the political domain and the social public sphere.   In the first part I will present the narrow but orthodox and widely discussed definition of civil disobedience presented by John Rawls in his Theory of Justice (1971). Given such a definition, as well as the major conditions under which the actions undertaken in the name of civil disobedience can be justified, I will focus my analysis on two major aspects of the discussed notion.   Firstly, I will discuss civil disobedience, which is in its essense an unlawful act, paradoxically expresses the highest respect for the positive law by the person performing the civilly disobedient act through one’s submission to the judgment of the law which is an object of one’s protest. This way, civil disobedience presents itself as the phenomenon which, not having a legal recognition (not being legalized), holds super-legal force required to impose the changes on the unjust legal system or on the particular unjust regulation.   Secondly, I will point out that civil disobedience, as a public act performed by the people (the subjects of the particular law), expresses the will of the people and, therefore, it can not be used (by themselves) in the ways contradictory to their best self-interest but always supported by the “the commonly shared sense of justice” (Rawls). From this premise I conclude that the universal human rights, as thier supporters claim, are one of the main ends of the political activism in the recent decade and should be advocated in the civilly disobedient manner.   In the last part I will contrast the Rawlsean definition with a much broader and more relevant understanding of civil disobedience when it concerns today’s globalizing world. In this world, the nation-states cease to be the only political actors when confronted with the transnational public sphere, and, therefore, the understanding of civil disobedience as a transversal arena of public dissent presented by Roland Bleiker (2000) is more appropriate. In this definition civil disobedience becomes, not only a political instrument of particular subjects of a particular society, but it also becomes a tool for the international mobilization of means and of people in the name of presenting and imposing the respect for the universal human rights despite the national borders and societal paradigms.