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Notes
1. Religion, Law and Culture Consultation, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, 24 November 2003. On the complexities, ambiguities, and mysteries of defining religion in the legal context, see especially Gunn (Citation2003).
2. Our introductory remarks are heavy with citation, both to illustrate the complexity of this conversation and to introduce readers individually to the many and varied approaches to these questions.
3. She does, however, note legal scholar Abdullahi An-Na'im's much more nuanced, thoughtful and integrative approach to understanding the interrelationship of culture and human rights (An-Na'im Citation1992, Citation2002). See also Mamdani (Citation2000).
4. A good example of this is the 1990s ‘Asian values’ debate. Its proponents argued that the communitarianism, authoritarianism, and emphasis on economic development in Asian societies is antithetical to Western liberal conceptions of human rights (see, for example, Bauer and Bell 1999; De Bary 1998). For a middle ground approach, see (Bell 2000).
5. See, for example, Malory Nye's case study of Krishna Consciousness' (ISKCON) battle with local English authorities over the use of Bhaktivedanta Manor (Nye Citation2001).
6. Cf., also, the work of Kay Warren on Mayan spirituality in Guatemala (Warren Citation1998) and Nokuzola Mndende on indigenous South African religions (Mndende Citation1998).
7. See the 2003 interim report by the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on freedom of religion and belief, Abdelfattah Amor, who observes that many states are now using anti-terrorism measures to clamp down on minority religious groups (see www.hrwf.net, 3 October 2003 [accessed 13 November 2003]). The work of sociologist of religion and legal scholar, James Richardson, is paradigmatic in this regard, namely his analysis of state management of religious pluralities and minorities in a number of locations. See, for example, Richardson (Citation1995, Citation2000, Citation2004).
8. See http:\\www.state.gov\www\global\human_rights\drl_religion.html. As a result of this law there is now an Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, an office in the State Department, an Advisory Commission, and annual report on the state of religious freedom worldwide; in addition, the President is required to resort to a range of actions against countries that are major violators of religious freedom (Danchin Citation2002–2003; Gunn Citation2000, Citation2002/2003; Hackett et al. Citation2000).
9. For a good example of the secular versus religious debate over the ‘ownership’ of human rights, see Henkin (1999) and Stackhouse (1999).
10. Arvind Sharma questions the univocality of the term ‘universal’ (Sharma 2000). He suggests that Eastern religions have a more accepting understanding of the term in contrast to the Western formulation that privileges the missionary religion and yet manages to posit its parochialism as universal.
11. Related to this is Michal Buchowski's (2003) helpful overview of the debates surrounding the feasibility of establishing universal standards of rationality, particularly in connection with the study of religion. He himself opts for a via media, which he terms ‘relativized rationality’ (Bukowski 2003, 41).