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- Title
Deconstructing ‘Legal’ Religion in Strasbourg.
- Authors
Peroni, Lourdes
- Abstract
This article challenges the conception of religion that the European Court of Human Rights has implicitly articulated in its freedom of religion case law. The Court legally imagines religion in terms of a binary opposition between belief and practice, privileging the former over the latter. In the process, it valorizes disembodied, autonomous, and private forms of religiosity, while sidelining embodied, habitual, and public forms. Incorporating insights from religious studies and applying deconstruction analysis, the article argues against this dichotomous way of reasoning because of the inegalitarian risks it carries with it. The article moreover proposes that the relationship between belief and practice be reconceived in more interconnected ways. The thrust of the argument is that, by considering belief and practice interrelatedly, the Court may avoid producing inegalitarian relations between the religions associated with one or the other side of the dichotomy. In other words, the Court needs to reject dichotomization in order to construct a more inclusive account of ‘legal’ religion in Strasbourg.
- Subjects
STRASBOURG (France); HUMAN rights; FREEDOM of religion; RELIGIOUSNESS; EUROPEAN Court of Human Rights
- Publication
Oxford Journal of Law & Religion, 2014, Vol 3, Issue 2, p235
- ISSN
2047-0770
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/ojlr/rwt047