US and UK courts define religion as a belief system dealing with existential concerns, which is separable from politics, and need not be theistic. Where does this concept of religion come from? Some scholars trace it to the advent of the Protestant Reformation when religion became a matter of competing theological propositions. My analysis of both John Calvin and Roger Williams shows that those Protestant thinkers emphasized the view that religion is essentially a belief system. However, Protestantism cannot explain all of the features of the US and UK concept of religion. It is because of the liberal belief in individual rights and in popular sovereignty that early liberals like Roger Williams and contemporary courts embrace the separability of religion from politics. These courts also reject the view that religion is necessarily theistic given their liberal commitment to treating citizens that subscribe to certain non-theistic ideologies as equal citizens to citizens with theistic ideologies.

Of all the principles in classical Jewish law that stand out from a comparative legal perspective perhaps none is more notable than the ban on self-incrimination in criminal procedures. Contrary to the most basic evidentiary assumptions of other ancient legal systems, this principle differs fundamentally from the right to remain silent that is part of both early modern and modern legal systems. Only rabbinic jurisprudence incorporates an outright exclusion of criminal confessions. Despite receiving much scholarly attention over the centuries, this principle’s fundamental justification relating to the rule of law and the public pursuit of justice has gone unnoticed. This article explores this salient jurisprudential perspective, and sheds new light on this principle by contrasting the Jewish legal approach with the primary modes of criminal adjudication that were adopted in the West. What emerges from this comparative analysis is that this seemingly anomalous principle actually reveals much about the core commitments and values of Jewish law. These, in turn, have substantial implications for certain contemporary legal practices and dilemmas.

Expressivist theories of law focus not only on what legal arrangements do but also what they communicate. The expressivist view has gained special currency in the context of religious establishment. Even when governmental involvement with religion is not coercive or does not materially violate anyone’s rights, it may nevertheless be undesirable by virtue of expressing a preference for a certain religion or a privileged status for certain religious groups over others. The existing literature, however, lacks an equivalent expressivist analysis of the related but distinct domain of free exercise of religion. What is expressed when a religious individual or group is granted special relief from the legal requirements that would otherwise apply to them? I argue that just like religious establishments, religious exemptions not only implicate rights and material interests but also have important expressive dimensions that both help account for their value and impose limits on their desirability.

This article is a response to Christians in public and private life who favor policies, employ rhetoric, and view migrants in ways that contravene their faith traditions. Speaking primarily from the perspective of Christian migrant-serving, faith-based organizations in the United States, the author examines their challenges, sources of consolation, and understanding of migrants in light of their work and religious touchstones in an era of political polarization and unprecedented forced displacement. He outlines an inclusive path forward, rooted in a commitment to the common good, to solidarity with the displaced, and to a deeper understanding of the hopes, aspirations, and gifts of migrants.

This article foregrounds the Western Apache fight to save the sacred site of Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, or Oak Flat, which at this writing is threatened by a proposed copper mine. Like many other Native peoples, Western Apaches have historically resisted colonial suppression by reconfiguring ancestral traditions to make them legible to authorities as religion. In their current struggle, Western Apaches are restoring and repairing their relationships with the sacred landscapes of their ancestral homelands. The controversy over Oak Flat also demonstrates how US religious freedom law continues to impose an implicitly Christian model for religion and how Western Apaches today are pushing back against that model even as they necessarily use it to claim the protected status that religion enjoys in the United States. Chi’chil Biłdagoteel thus illuminates the ongoing paradoxes of US religious freedom law, the privileges that Christianity still holds within this legal regime, and the ongoing vibrancy of living Apache religion.

The Muslims of South Asia are more than five hundred million people, distributed between Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, and there are more Muslims in South Asia than in any other region in the world. After Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in the world, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are the second, third, and fourth largest Muslim countries, respectively. Although the prevalent approach in the study of Islam is to consider its so-called Arab character as central, the Muslims in pre-Partition India constituted the largest body of Muslims in the world, and the vast political and intellectual influence exerted by South Asian Muslims on the wider Muslim world is often neglected. Many of the most important political, intellectual, and spiritual developments within Islam have had their origins, or have flourished, in South Asia, and Muslims from the region have played important roles in the global history of Islam, including during the colonial period, in resistance to colonial rule, and in intellectual responses to and dialogue with Western thought. Pakistan was specifically created to provide a homeland for South Asia’s Muslim population and its trials and tribulations over the past seventy-five years have been carefully watched by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Muslims constitute India’s largest minority, with an often uneasy—to say the least—relationship to the majority. In the context of the three books under discussion, I explore issues, such as secularism, modernity, and religion, and their impacts on the conception of the nation-state that was promoted during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an expression of political modernity.