Religion & Law Seminar Series

The issue of religion is re-emerging as one of the key controversial issues of our time: from veiling cases occupying centre stage in human rights debates, to concerns over the erosion of free speech, for example, during the Danish cartoons affair and most recently Catholic Adoption agencies refusing to place children in lesbian and gay families in contravention of the forthcoming Equalities Act. Despite these developments, the recent increase in recognition and protection of religion in law and policy, has not received the fresh critique or interrogation that perhaps it warrants. Certainly very little discussion emerges outside or beyond the polarised positions of the secular humanists (including some feminists) on the one hand and the ‘religious freedom’ lobby on the other.

It is towards addressing this gap that the idea of a Religion and Law seminar series was born. The aim is to bring together scholars working on these issues to contribute towards filling the space between the two polarised positions and to tackle crucial questions on the proper place of religion in law from a new critical perspective grounded in current socio-political developments. The seminar series will run over two years leading up to the Lambeth conference which is scheduled to take place at the University of Kent in summer 2008.

As much of the current debates and media attention on religion has been focused on Muslims and Islam the theme of the first workshop was ‘Islam and it’s Feminisms’ which took place on Wednesday 7th February at the University of Kent. The speakers were Qudsia Mirza from the University of East London on 'Interrogating Islamic Equality' and Samia Bano from University of Reading on ‘Islamic Arbitration and the Privatisation of Family Law: Justice under the 'shadow' of law?’. Stewart Motha from the University of Kent acted as discussant facilitating a lively discussion. The next event will be a panel at the Gender Unbound conference at the University of Keele, 7-9th July.

If you have any questions about the seminar series please contact Suhraiya Jivraj, the convenor of the seminar series: S.jivraj@kent.ac.uk