Court Orders New Election In California Buddhist Temple

Yesterday's San Jose (CA) Mercury News reports on the impact on the Oakland Buddhist Society Temple of efforts by the Massachusetts-based International Community of Khmer Buddhist Monks Center to form a national organization by taking over local Cambodian Buddhist Temples. In 2005, the Massachusetts group took control of the Oakland temple and its assets in an election that local members of the temple claim was illegal. Now after three years of litigation, an Alameda County Superior Court judge last week ordered that a new vote, under supervision of a special master, be held. Only members of the Oakland temple before its merger with the national organization can vote. The members will elect new directors who, in turn, will decide who will get control of the Temple's assets. The Temple's attorney however fears that some $100,000 in cash transferred from the Temple has already been spent by the national group.

Nigerian Sharia Court Arraigns Man With 86 Wives For Insulting Religion

In Nigeria on Monday, an Upper Sharia Court in Minna arraigned 84-year old Mallam Abubakar Bello Masaba on charges of insulting or inciting to contempt of religious creed, deceitfully inducing belief of lawful marriage, and marriage ceremony without lawful marriage. Masaba has 86 wives and between 170 and 190 children. According to reports this week by Reuters and Lagos' Vanguard, chiefs and Muslim leaders in Masaba's home town of Bida ordered him, on threat of banishment, to divorce 82 of his wives so he would have only four as permitted by Islamic law. Masaba responded by filing suit in the Federal High Court in Abuja and obtaining an order restraining local officials from infringing his rights. The Minna court on Monday rejected Masaba's request for release on bail after his arraignment, despite his attorney's plea that his client "is an old man ... and has a very large family and a lot of responsibilities ... and based on this, the man cannot run away." The denial of bail has been appealed to the Federal High Court.

UPDATE: Friday's issue of This Day reports that some 80 family members of Mallam Mesaba, along with some Islamic clerics, showed up at the state Ministry of Justice in Minna to protest Mesaba's arraignment and continued detention.

Florida Supreme Court Issues Opinion On Exclusion of Ballot Issues

As previously reported, earlier this month the Florida Supreme Court enjoined state officials from including on the November ballot two proposed state constitutional amendments-- one that would have eliminated Florida's Blaine Amendment and assured equal participation in public programs by religious organizations, the other that would have reversed the state's ban on school vouchers. Yesterday the court released its opinion explaining its order. In Ford v. Browning, (FL Sup. Ct., Sept. 15, 2008), the court held that the language of Art. XI, Sec. 6 of the Florida constitution granting the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission the power to propose constitutional amendments "dealing with taxation or the state budgetary process" is not broad enough to authorize the two amendments at issue. The court held:

TBRC’s jurisdiction to propose constitutional amendments does not extend to a subject solely because the State will expend funds on that subject or because it could affect the State’s expenditures. TBRC’s authority to propose constitutional amendments directly to the voters is constitutionally limited to two scenarios: if the proposal addresses taxation or the process by which the State’s budget is procedurally composed and considered by the Legislature.

[Thanks to Melissa Rogers for the lead.]

Church Sues Wisconsin School District Over Facility Rental Policy

In Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, the Open Door Church filed suit in federal court last week against the Sun Prairie Area School District (full text of complaint) challenging its policy on charging fees for use of school facilities for after-school religious activities. The Church was charged rent to use space for its AWANA club for children. District policy allows nonprofit groups to use school facilities for activities benefiting children and the community, but in order to obtain a waiver of rental fees, the group must be non-religious and not discriminate in membership on the basis of religious affiliation. Even with the payment of rent, religious activities can only be for a limited time not exceeding one semester. The suit alleges that the Church is being denied equal access to a designated public forum, and claims violations of speech, free exercise, equal protection, due process and Establishment clause provisions of the 1st and 14th Amendments. A Sept. 11 Alliance Defense Fund release announced filing of the law suit.

Experts' Conference Rejects New Speech Limits To Protect Religions

The 10th conference of the International Religious Liberty Group of Experts met in Bucharest, Romania, September 8-10. A report yesterday from Adventist News Network says that the conference focused on efforts around the world to ban hate speech and enact defamation of religion laws. Several speakers warned that proposed defamation of religion laws will increase religious intolerance and are destructive of free speech. The conference concluded that "no specific legislation should be voted but hate speech should be limited according to the already existing human rights law."

Preacher's Campus Activities In Designated Public Forum Upheld

In Davis v. Stratton, (ND NY, Sept. 9, 2008), a New York federal district court held that the Quad area at Schenectady County (NY) Community College is a "designated public forum" that is open to both students and non-students as a place for expressive activities. Baptist preacher Gregory Davis was preaching the Gospel and handing out religious tracts on the Quad when he was arrested for trespass. Davis was also videotaping his activities so he would have evidence to use in case he was accused of wrongdoing. The court held that not only was Davis' preaching and leafleting protected by the First Amendment, but so was his video taping since the photos were used on Davis's website to spread the Gospel. The court held that concern about privacy of students and administrators did not justify a ban on video taping. The court enjoined application of New York's trespass statute to Davis' activity on campus. Alliance Defense Fund issued a release on the decision.

9th Circuit Faults Immigration Judge For Assumptions About Religious Group

In Cosa v. Mukasey, (9th Cir., Sept. 15, 2008), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated an adverse credibility finding by an Immigration Judge and remanded for further proceedings an asylum petition by a woman who claimed she suffered religious persecution in Romania. Petitioner Adriana Cosa claimed she suffered persecution because she practiced the Millenist faith. The immigration judge, unfamiliar with Millenism, did her own research on the religion. The Court of Appeals said that the immigration judge then wrongly "discounted Cosa's credibility based on the IJ’s conjectural view of how a Millenist should act and think." KPIX-TV reported on the decision yesterday.

Anglican Break-Away Churches In Canada Sue Over Property Ownership

In Canada earlier this month, three break-away Anglican parishes in the Vancouver (BC) metro area, along with their clergy and lay leaders, filed suit against the Diocese of New Westminster in British Columbia's Supreme Court. Anglican Journal reported yesterday on the dispute. In February, the parishes voted to affiliate with the more conservative Anglican Network in Canada. Four clergy from these parishes placed themselves under the jurisdiction of a bishop reporting to the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone. The diocese took formal action against two of the parishes-- St. Matthew’s, Abbotsford, and of St. Matthias and St. Luke, Vancouver. It dismissed the trustees who support the break-away clergy and asked the clergy to vacate the parishes. In a lawsuit filed Sept. 9, plaintiffs asked the court invalidate the dismissal of the trustees, and to declare that the parish corporations or their trustees, not the diocese, are entitled to hold the parish property in trust.

Evangelist Sues Challenging Florida City's Speech Permit Law

A travelling Christian evangelist, Martin Mikhail, yesterday filed suit in federal district court against the City of Lake Worth, Florida, challenging the city's ordinance that requires application to be made 60 days in advance for a special event permit in order to speak on public streets. The complaint (full text) alleges that in September 2007, a city police officer threatened Mikhail with arrest because he was preaching on a city sidewalk. The officer allegedly told Mikhail that his Bible is "nothing but a bunch of fiction to me". The lawsuit alleges that the permit ordinance violates the First amendment's speech and free exercise protections, and that its vagueness and lack of objective standards violate the due process clause. The complaint also alleges that the city interprets its breach of the peace ordinance as barring speech whose content offends bystanders and police. Alliance Defense Fund issued a release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.

Church Cannot Raise Exempt Status As Defense In Tax Case

In Grace Memorial Baptist Church v. Harris County, (TX Ct. App., Aug. 28, 2008), a Texas Court of Appeals held that a church that had failed to follow the proper procedures to apply for a property tax exemption could not raise its alleged exempt status as a defense in a suit to collect delinquent taxes from it.

Controversial DVD On Radical Islam Distributed As Newspaper Insert

Jews on First reported yesterday that a recently formed group called Clarion Fund is spending millions of dollars distributing the DVD Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West as an insert in some 70 national and major city newspapers, particularly in swing states in the Presidential election. Clarion also distributed copies at the recent Republican and Democratic national conventions. The DVD has been criticized as anti-Muslim. An op-ed last February by Jason Leopold reviews the debate over the video. (See prior related posting.)

Yemeni Women React To Vice and Virtue Committee and Parliamentary Quotas

In Yemen in July, religious and tribal leaders announced the formation of a Vice and Virtue Committee to report violations of Islamic law to police, and to oppose the government's plan to encourage political participation by women. (BBC News).One of the Committee's first actions was to issue a fatwa (legal pronouncement) against the government's planned quota system that would allocate 15% of the seats in Parliament to women. Currently only one woman sits in Parliament. (Yemen Observer). This month, the Yemen Observer has published a three part series interviewing Yemeni women with differing views about the Committee and its opposition to the planned women's quota. Part I featured an interview with Hooria Mashoor, Deputy Chairperson of the Women National Committee. Part II featured a conversation with Ramzia al-Eryani, Chairwoman of the Yemen Women Union. Part III, published last Saturday, featured Tawkkol A. Karman, member of the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Assembly).

Islamic Panels In Britain Operating Under Arbitration Act

Under Britain's Arbitration Act 1996, a High Court may enforce an award made by an arbitration tribunal pursuant to an arbitration agreement. Yesterday's Daily Mail reports that lawyer Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi has set up Muslim Arbitration Panels in five cities-- London, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham and Nuneaton. Additional Panels are planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Panels decide cases pursuant to Sharia (Islamic law) in cases in which both parties agree to be bound by the decision. So far the panels have handled some 100 cases involving divorce, inheritance, nuisance and domestic violence. In the domestic violence cases, husbands have been ordered to take anger management courses and be mentored by community elders-- and the women involved have then withdrawn their police complaints. Critics fear that Muslim women will be pressured into agreeing to the jurisdiction of these panels in which they often fare worse than they would in a civil court. (See prior related posting.) [Thanks to Scott Smith for the lead.]

Tribe Says Use Permit Requirement For Powwow Violates Religious Freedom

Yesterday's NWF Daily News (Ft. Walton, FL) reports that the ACLU is challenging a decision by Santa Rosa County (FL) requiring the state's Echota Cherokee Indian Tribe to obtain a permit to hold a powwow on private property. In a letter to the county division of zoning and planning, the ACLU said that the powwow is a seasonal outdoor ceremony during which participants sing, dance, worship the creator, and strengthen tribal bonds. The ACLU says requiring a use permit violates the religious freedom of the Indian tribe, and that nothing in the county zoning law calls for their obtaining a permit. However county officials say that the powwow is partly commercial. It draws 2000 people and includes commercial food, art and craft vendors. As a compromise, the county is looking at the possibility of creating a special events permit to deal with gatherings such as this.

Recent Articles of Interest

From SSRN:

• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Book Review: Orientalism and 'The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State', (Middle East Law and Governance: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, Sept. 10, 2008).


• Robert A. Kahn, Are Muslims the New Catholics? Europe's Headscarf Laws in Comparative Historical Perspective, (U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-26, Sept. 2, 2008).


• Patrick Macklem, Minority Rights in International Law, (July 1, 2008).


• Christopher C. Lund, Equal Liberty and Religious Exemptions: A Response to Eisgruber and Sager, (September 4, 2008).


• Frederic Megret, Canada Leading the Way? Reasonable Accommodation from the Standpoint of International Human Rights Law ('Le Canada a la pointe de la tolerance? L'accommodement raisonnable a l'aune du droit international des droits de la personne', (in LA RELIGION, LE DROIT ET LE RAISONNABLE, Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens, ed., Themis, Montreal, 2008.)


• Deborah Cantrell, Love of Neighbor as a Lawyerly Practice: Insights from Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist Traditions, (U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-21, Aug. 28, 2008).


• Frederic Megret, Frederic, A Cautionary Tale from the Crusades? War and Prisoners in Conditions of Normative Incommensurability , (Prisoners in War, in Sibylle Scheipers, (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2008.)

Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 (2007-08) has recently been published. (Table of Contents).

From SmartCILP:

• Robert Petit, Stuart Ford & Neha Jain, Exploring Critical Issues In Religious Genocide: Case Studies of Violence In Tibet, Iraq and Gujarat, 40 Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 163-214 (2008).
• Mark D. Yochum, On Ledewitz (Reviewing Bruce Ledewitz, American Religious Democracy), 46 Duquesne Law Review 311-321 (2008).

Falklands Legislature Debates Religion Provisions In Draft Constitution

The Falkland Islands is in the process of debating and adopting a new Constitution. A special meeting of the Legislative Council was held on Sept. 12 to debate the draft document. A transcript of the debate published by the South Atlantic Remote Territories Media Association reveals extensive discussion on clauses relating to freedom of conscience and religious instruction of children in schools. After a lengthy debate by several other members over a hypothetical relating to child's right to refuse religious education offered in a Christian school, the Honourable John Birmingham interjected:

I can't be the only one that is slightly confused here. I would have brought a packed lunch if I had known we have a long way to go. I'm not even sure if we can define our present schools as being Christian schools. I just thought I'd throw that in.

Camboida Will Permit Muslim Students To Wear Headscarves

The Phnom Penh Post reported yesterday that Cambodia's Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth has decided that Khmer Muslim students will be permitted to deviate from school uniform rules and wear their traditional clothing, including headscarves, to school when classes begin next month. Apparently some Muslim girls had stopped going to school because they could not wear their traditional headscarves.

Recently Available Prisoner Free Exercise Cases

In Thaxton v. Strode, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68588 (WD KY, Sept. 9, 2008), a Kentucky federal district court upheld a prison's policy of permitting non-Muslim inmates to attend Muslim religious sevices only after attending an inmate-run Muslim familiarization program. The policy was challenged by an African-American inmate who listed his religion as Jewish.

In Soder v. Williamson, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68513 (MD PA, Aug. 7, 2008), a Pennsylvania federal district court held that neither the 1st Amendment nor RLUIPA were violated when an inmate's religious objections to taking a TB test were accommodate by giving him a chest X-ray after holding him in segregated confinement for 24 days.

In Hankins v. NYS Department of Correctional Services, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68978 (ND NY, March 10, 2008), a New York federal magistrate judge recommended dismissal of a Muslim prisoner's complaint that on one occasion authorities erroneously refused to allow him to take a "purification" shower and then participate in a weekly Muslim religious service.

Pope Addresses French Intellectuals On Theology and European Culture

On Friday on the first day of his visit to France, Pope Benedict XVI addressed "650 intellectuals, artists and scientists" at the College des Bernardins. (M&C). America Magazine assessed the address:

The Pope in Paris yesterday gave a speech which will be remembered as one of his most significant, not just because of its content – which has recast the current European thinking about freedom and faith – but because of its historic context. It was made just a few hours after a twice-divorced, lapsed Catholic president came together with a pope to tell the French people that the mindset behind the 1905 laws disestablishing religion and banning it from schools is, well, passé; and that secularism should stop shouting at religion and start listening to it.

In his address (full text in English translation), the Pope said that he would focus on the origins of western theology and the roots of European culture. In concluding his lengthy remarks, he said:

A purely positivistic culture which tried to drive the question concerning God into the subjective realm, as being unscientific, would be the capitulation of reason, the renunciation of its highest possibilities, and hence a disaster for humanity, with very grave consequences. What gave Europe’s culture its foundation – the search for God and the readiness to listen to him – remains today the basis of any genuine culture.

According to Whispers in the Loggia, representatives of the French Muslim community attended the Pope's address. Before the session, the Pope met briefly with leaders of the local Jewish community. (Apparently this was in lieu of their attending his address, which took place after the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath). Benedict said that the church "feels obligated to respect the covenant made by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," and he wished those in attendance "Shabbat Shalom". (See prior related posting.)

Settlement Reached In Suit By Interfaith Group Feeding Homeless In California Park

KNBC News reported today that a settlement has been reached in the lawsuit brought by Interfaith Needs Network challenging the constitutionality of California's limits on public assemblies and demonstrations in state parks. The group was told they needed a permit to hold an event to feed the homeless at Donehy State Park. (See prior posting.) In the settlement, which will apply to all California state parks, the state agreed it will not enforce the rule barring unlawful assemblies in parks against those feeding the homeless, so long as the group complies with other rules such as hours of operation, orderly conduct and clean-up.