Religion in secularized tradition: Jewish and Muslim circumcisions in Germany - Lena Salaymeh

The Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law and the Edinburgh Centre for Legal Theory present

Religion in secularized tradition: Jewish and Muslim circumcisions in Germany

Prof Lena Salaymeh, British Academy Global Professor in the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (University of Oxford) and Professor in the Section des Sciences Religieuses of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris Sciences et Lettres).

 

About the seminar
This presentation is based on an article that demonstrates that the legal reasoning dominant in modern states secularises traditions by converting them into ‘religions’. Using a case study on Germany’s recent regulation of male circumcision, we illustrate that religions have (at least) three dimensions: religiosity (private belief, individual right and autonomous choice); religious law (a divinely ordained legal code); and religious groups (public threat). When states restrict traditions within these three dimensions, they construct ‘religions’ within a secularisation triangle. Our theoretical model of a secularisation triangle illuminates that, in many Western states, there is a three-way relationship between a post-Christian state and both its Jewish and Muslim minorities. Our two theoretical proposals—the secularisation triangle and the trilateral relationship—contribute to a re-examination of religious freedom from the perspective of minority traditions and minority communities. Salaymeh, Lena, and Shai Lavi. "Religion Is Secularized Tradition: Jewish and Muslim Circumcisions in Germany." Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 41, no. 2 (2021): 431-58.

Read the article on the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies

 

About the speaker
Lena Salaymeh is British Academy Global Professor in the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (University of Oxford) and Professor in the Section des Sciences Religieuses of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris Sciences et Lettres). She is also Co-Organizer of the Decolonial Comparative Law Project at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private International Law (Hamburg). Salaymeh is a scholar of law and history, with specializations in Islamic jurisprudence, Jewish jurisprudence, and critical theory. Her scholarship on law and religion brings together legal history and critiques of secularism. She received a Guggenheim fellowship and her first book, *The Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions*, received the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the category of Textual Studies.

 

This event is free and open to all.

 

To attend the event IN PERSON please register through Eventbrite HERE

To aatend the event VIRTUALLY please email the Legal Theory Group HERE