The roots of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws can be traced back to the British colonial rule in India, but their harsher clauses were added to the Pakistan Penal Code during a wave of intense Islamization in the 1980s. Everyone in Pakistan is threatened by the misuse of these laws, even Muslims; however a disproportionate number of victims targeted by these laws have come from two minority groups, the Ahmadis and Christians. Dr Qaiser Julius focuses on how these two groups have been affected by Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, their different reactions to these laws, and more specifically, why they are responding differently despite living under the same circumstances. In this well-structured and understandable study, Julius provides a valuable tool for Christians to understand what it means to be a minority in a hostile culture. This thorough analysis presents a way forward for the Christian church in Pakistan, providing hope amidst the discrimination and persecution.

In this book, Mashal Saif explores how contemporary 'ulama, the guardians of religious knowledge and law, engage with the world's most populated Islamic nation-state: Pakistan. In mapping these engagements, she weds rigorous textual analysis with fieldwork and offers insight into some of the most significant and politically charged issues in recent Pakistani history. These include debates over the rights of women; the country's notorious blasphemy laws; the legitimacy of religiously mandated insurrection against the state; sectarian violence; and the place of Shi'as within the Sunni majority nation. These diverse case studies are knit together by the project's most significant contribution: a theoretical framework that understands the 'ulama's complex engagements with their state as a process of both contestation and cultivation of the Islamic Republic by citizen-subjects. This framework provides a new way of assessing state - 'ulama relations not only in contemporary Pakistan but also across the Muslim world.

A data-driven explanation of when successful religious parties reduce the civil liberties of their citizens in Muslim-majority countries and when they don't. Religious parties are increasingly common across the world. More and more, they participate in elections, win legislative seats, and join governments, particularly in Muslim-majority countries. Since they are often founded on orthodox principles that are inconsistent with liberal democracy, their rise potentially holds consequences for the prospects of liberal democratic values and practices-and this risk has inspired much heated debate. In Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties, the award-winning political science scholar Vineeta Yadav considers a question that has been central to the discussion: Will the success of religious parties lead to declines in the civil liberties of their citizens? Yadav summarizes the popular and academic sides of the conversation and addresses the weaknesses of both by presenting an original empirical analysis of religious parties' actual relationship to civil liberties. Many believe that if religious parties come to power, they will curb civil liberties in order to realize their religious visions. Academic research on religious parties, however, claims that the need to compete in elections incentivizes religious parties to moderate their behaviors and policies, including on civil liberties. Neither of these assertions has been systematically tested until now. With this book, Yadav adjudicates the debate using systematic data that covers all Muslim-majority countries for a period of almost forty years. She highlights the role that religious lobbies play in this issue and goes on to identify the specific conditions under which religious parties do or don't curb civil liberties. A sweeping comparative account that combines large-N analysis with focused studies of Turkey and Pakistan, this book will reshape our understanding of the relationship between religious party strength and the preservation of civil liberties.

How can we make religious equality a reality for those on the margins of society and politics? This book is about the individual and collective struggles of the religiously marginalised to be recognised and their inequalities, religious or otherwise, redressed. It is also about the efforts of civil society, governments, multilateral actors, and scholars to promote freedom of religion or belief whatever shape they take. The actors and contexts that feature in this book are as diverse as health workers in Israel, local education authorities in Nigeria, indigenous movements in India, Uganda, or South Africa, and multilateral actors such as the Islamic Development Bank in Sudan and the World Bank in Pakistan. Some of the case studies engage with development discourses and narratives or are undertaken by development actors, while other cases operate completely outside the international development paradigm. These case studies present some important insights, which while highly relevant for their contexts also draw out important insights for academics, practitioners, activists, and others who have an interest in redressing religious inequalities for socioeconomically marginalised populations.

This volume examines both historical developments and contemporary expressions of blasphemy across the world. The transgression of religious boundaries incurs more or less severe sanctions in various religious traditions. This book looks at how religious and political authorities use ideas about blasphemy as a means of control. In a globalised world where people of different faiths interact more than ever before and world-views are an increasingly important part of identity politics, religious boundaries are a source of controversy. The book goes beyond many others in this field by widening its scope beyond the legal aspects of freedom of expression. Approaching blasphemy as effective speech, the chapters in this book focus on real-life situations and ask the following questions: who are the blasphemers, who are their accusers and what does blasphemy accomplish? Utilising case studies from Europe, the Middle East and Asia that encompass a wide variety of faith traditions, the book guides readers to a more nuanced appreciation of the historical roots, political implications and religious rationale of attitudes towards blasphemy. Incorporating historical and contemporary approaches to blasphemy, this book will be of great use to academics in Religious Studies and the Sociology of Religion as well as Political Science, Media Studies, History.

“A global journey revealing multiple expressions of the Islamic faith... We no longer have any excuse to train others to reach all Muslims in the same way.”—J. D. Payne What do you do when “Islam” does not adequately describe the Muslims you know? Margins of Islam brings together a stellar collection of experienced missionary scholar-practitioners who explain their own approaches to a diversity of Muslims across the world. Each chapter grapples with a context that is significantly different from the way Islam is traditionally presented in mission texts. These crucial differences may be theological, socio-political, ethnic, or a specific variation of Islam in a context— but they all shape the way we do mission. This book will help you discover Islam as a lived experience in various settings and equip you to engage Muslims in any context, including your own.