Articles

Deep Purple: Religious Shades of Family Law By Naomi Cahn & June Carbone

An article from the Fall 2007 symposium issue of the West Virginia Law Review, Volume 110, on “The Religion Clauses in the 21st Century.” The symposium was convened by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and the West Virginia University College of Law on October April 12 and 13, 2007. As part of the series of papers from the symposium panel “Religion and Politics,” Naomi Cahn, John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School and June Carbone, Edward A. Smith/Missouri Chair of Law, the Constitution and Society at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, wrote “Deep Purple: Religious Shades of Family Law.” Cahn and Carbone “explore the influence of religious belief on the regulation of sexuality in general and on abstinence-only sex education in particular. They document the ways in which the much-discussed gap between “blue states” and “red states” tends also to track degrees of religious affiliation and different attitudes toward sex and its regulation by the government. Cahn and Carbone argue that government policies requiring abstinence-only sex education represent an unhealthy melding of religion and politics, for the available evidence suggests that abstinence-only education is ineffective in preventing teenage pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.” - From Introduction by William P. Marshall, Vivian E. Hamilton and John E. Taylor.

Books

Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law By Nonie Darwish

Cruel and Usual Punishment is a wake up call to the Western world. Nonie Darwish presents an insider's look at Sharia and examines how radical Muslim laws are destroying the Western world from within. Living under Sharia law for the first thirty years of her life,a virtual slave to Islamic law, Darwish never questioned or challenged her rights--or dared to even think about the validity of Sharia laws. She didn't try to examine what Sharia was, how it came about or why she followed it. "This is Allah's law," she was told, and she knew what awaited those who questioned Allah's law. But she doesn't believe the lies anymore, and now she wants to share her experiences with the Western world. Cruel and Usual Punishment is an insider's look at how Muslims sacrifice their basic human rights to obey the archaic and brutal laws handed down to their prophet centuries ago. Heed this warning: Sharia Law is attempting to infiltrate Western culture and destroy democracy.

A world survey of religion and the state By Jonathan Fox

This book delves into the extent of government involvement in religion (GIR) between 1990 and 2002 using both quantitative and qualitative methodology. The study is based on the Religion and State dataset (RAS), which includes 175 governments across the globe, all of which are addressed individually in this book. The forms of GIR examined in this study include whether the government has an official religion, whether some religions are given preferential treatment, religious discrimination against minority religion, government regulation of the majority religion, and religious legislation. The study shows that GIR is ubiquitous, that GIR increased significantly during this period, and that only a minority of states, including a minority of democracies, have separation of religion and state. These findings contradict the predictions of religion's reduced public significance found in modernization and secularization theory. The findings also demonstrate that state religious monopolies are linked to reduced religious participation.