xbn .

Tag: Law

Freedom of Religion, the American Way

I will explore the covenantal relationship between statehood and religion and its implications for freedom of religion for religious institutions unaffiliated with white Christian Nationalism.

The Montage of Privation: Islam and the Architecture of Sinicization in China

Islam in China is going through a period of architectural amputation called Sinicization. The result is a haunting landscape where dome-less and minaret-less mosques visualize deficiency as a definition of what it means to be Muslim in China today.

The Politics of Gratitude: When the Marginalised Speak

Luke’s account thus presses towards a re-imagining of community. Belonging is not guaranteed by purity or boundary maintenance but by practices of compassionate recognition.

Sovereignty, the Exception, and the Question of Palestine

Whether through suits before the International Court of Justice, pro bono suits in American courts, appeals to the United Nations, or student-led civil disobedience movements on campuses all over the democratic world, Palestinians and their supporters are attempting to cause a miraculous rupture in the realm of positive law, not to further the arbitrary ends of power, but to further the just and lawful ends of Palestinian freedom.

Critical Race Theory

CRT is a framework or an approach to understanding the way racism is foundational to systems of judicial, political, social, cultural, religious, and theological power.

Law and Order Catholicism in the Vietnam War

This post considers how the purportedly “secular” state strategically deployed “Catholicism” in its imperial actions abroad and how those reverberated at home. The Central Intelligence Agency found Catholicism to be a useful ideological ally in the struggle against communism during the Cold War, raising up anticommunist, conservative, and largely white US Catholics as ideal citizens at home to support their use of Vietnamese Catholics as anticommunist allies abroad.

The Multiplicity of the Premodern Islamic Tradition

The school of Talal Asad has identified virtue ethics as the primary model constituting the continuity of premodern Muslim thought with movements of the modern period. But is this model really the most characteristic common denominator of premodern Islamic thought?

The Middle Place

We must re-imagine what it is to be human together. That is both a religious and a legal project, in my view.

Law, Religion, and Reality Fiction

Sullivan’s scholarship reminds us that without the collective work of reimagining, to seek justice through law alone is to succumb to legal fiction.

Manufacturing Dissent:  The DC Insurrection and the Cycle of Law-Preserving and Law-Making Violence

We are shocked. Morally outraged. How could a US president tout “law and order” to incite a blatant attack on “American democracy” and “the rule of law,” encouraging his supporters to storm the US capitol? Commentators decry such hypocrisy, stating the obvious contradiction between US constitutional law and violent coups. My contention in this essay is that no such contradiction exists.