Product Description: Almost everyone today affirms the importance and merit of religious liberty. But religious liberty is being challenged by new questions (for example, use of the niqab or church adoption services for same-sex couples) and new forces (such as globalization and Islamism)...read more

Product Description: This volume focuses on issues that have only recently come to the forefront of the discipline such as freedom from religion, ordination of homosexuals, apostasy, security and fundamentalism, issues that are linked to the common themes of secularism and globalization...read more

Product Description: Although many books on terrorism and religious extremism have been published in the years since 9/11, none of them written by Western authors call for the curtailment of religious freedom and freedom of expression for the sake of greater security...read more

Product Description: The essays and articles selected for this volume analyze what is generally understood by freedom of religion and belief in todaya (TM)s world. The different aspects of this fundamental right are considered from the contents of freedom of religion, to the possible limitations of this freedom; and from the freedom of, or freedom from, conundrum to the question of the collective or individual right...read more

Exploring the relationship between religion and the state Focusing on the intersection of religion, law, and politics in contemporary liberal democracies, Blackford considers the concept of the secular state, revising and updating enlightenment views for the present day. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State offers a comprehensive analysis, with a global focus, of the subject of religious freedom from a legal as well as historical and philosophical viewpoint. It makes an original contribution to current debates about freedom of religion, and addresses a whole range of hot-button issues that involve the relationship between religion and the state, including the teaching of evolution in schools, what to do about the burqa, and so on.

* Exposes the intermingling of politics and religion in Tibetan Buddhism worldwide. • Reveals the Dalai Lama behind the public mask and the detrimental effect politics has on pure Buddhist doctrine. A courageous and compelling account of Tibetan history and the activities of the current Dalai Lama that stand in stark contrast to popular perceptions of a “holy” politician. With an extensive compilation of news stories, documents, personal accounts, and chronologies, a tangle of religion and politics is revealed that plays out in Tibetan exile communities and across the international stage, embodied in the person of the 14th Dalai Lama. The aims of this book are religious—to end an illegal ban on a mainstream Buddhist practice that the Dalai Lama has personally rejected and maligned. However, to get to the heart of this human rights issue and to gain the support of those who can affect its resolution, the book endeavors to follow knotted threads of political ambitions, deception, greed, and betrayal to unravel the popular mythology that surrounds the iconic Dalai Lama of Tibet. (20101216)

Product Description: What is the place assigned to religion in the constitutions of contemporary States? What role is religion expected to perform in the fields that are the object of constitutional regulation? Is separation of religion and politics a necessary precondition for democracy and the rule of law? These questions are addressed in this book through an analysis of the constitutional texts that are in force in different parts of the world...read more

Product Description: In a remarkably short period of time, the realization of religious freedom has achieved broad consensus as an indispensable condition for peace. Faced with widespread reports of religious persecution, public and private actors around the world have responded with laws and policies designed to promote freedom of religion...read more