The Protections for Religious Rights: Law and Practice.

• Author: Bahcecik, Serif Onur
• Position: Book review

The Protections for Religious Rights: Law and Practice

By Sir James Dingemans, Can Yeginsu, Tom Cross and Hafsah Masood

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 555 pages, [pounds sterling]132.50, ISBN: 9780199660964

In the last decade, discussions around religious rights, particularly the rights of Muslim migrant populations in the West, have occupied considerable space in the media, academia and political life. These discussions often revolve around the notion of 'Islamophobia' and only very recently has the matter been approached from a rights and human rights angle. This volume represents an important example in this direction. It presents a fairly comprehensive assessment of the legal protection of religious rights and has an international perspective, although it is mainly written with England and Wales in mind.

One can analytically divide the volume into three parts. The first part provides an overview of international and European standards and protections available for religious rights. The second part, which is not written by the book's authors themselves, looks at the protection of religious rights in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. The third part deals with 'domestic protections' for religious rights in the United Kingdom. As such, the book brings together in a single volume a monograph dealing with the protection of religious rights at the domestic and international levels and an edited book dealing with different legal systems from around the world.

Readers should not expect to find much argumentative material in the volume. The topics are considered in a quite matter-of-fact style. While this improves the authoritative status of the book it may make it somewhat unattractive for those who are looking to understand the broader European and global tendencies that give rise to the enhanced significance of religious rights. The authors point out that the problem of religious rights is due to two main developments, both of which are legal: "new laws promoting self-determination," and "new equality laws" (p. 2). As they put it, as the laws become more 'permissive' they create situations where religiously observant people 'become party' to other's conduct. For instance, as same-sex marriages are legalized, public officers who are required to register them may find themselves torn between their professional duties and their religious...