Religious Freedom Under Attack: The Rise of Anti-Mosque Activities in New York State

In the summer of 2010, national media attention turned to a plan to build a Muslim community center, to be called "Park51," a few blocks away from ground zero. Although the plan was first reported in late 2009, with a quote from the project's religious leader at the time stating that its goal was to "push back against the extremists," the proposal did not receive much media attention until May 2010.This report discusses the legal and cultural background against which these controversies are playing out, and details some of the recent attacks on Muslim communities in New York. It also offers recommendations for how our government and our communities can work to increase intercultural understanding of Muslim New Yorkers and reduce anti-Muslim sentiment in New York State

The End of Law: The ISIL Case Study for a Comprehensive Theory of Lawlessness

This Article has five parts. Part I sets out and adopts the basic premises of the jurisprudential perspective championed by Professor Reisman and sketches his argument that legal solutions can always be fashioned in a meaningful and realistic manner. Part II discusses the development of ISIL in the Middle East. Part III analyzes the lawlessness problem created by ISIL for the affected local communities and explains how loss of control, left unattended, transforms into a loss of authority of prescription by destroying the social fabric needed for legal processes to have meaning. Part IV develops how municipal lawlessness has a contagion effect on the international plane through what this Article calls the transnational transference of lawlessness by comparing international legal reactions to ISIL’s putative establishment of a caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Part V sketches how the contagion effect can be stopped by means of the diagnostic tools developed in Parts III and IV. The Article demonstrates that both public debate and scholarly engagement so far have focused on the wrong question: whether or how to use force to wrest control of territory from ISIL. Given the progression of lawlessness from loss of control to loss of authority mapped in Part III of the Article, this incorrect focus is understandable. But to be effective, the debate instead must focus directly on how authoritative decision-making processes can be rekindled and protected in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. These structures were degraded not just by ISIL, which may well be a symptom of failing authority structures rather than its proximate cause; in fact, these structures were sabotaged by Western and Ottoman colonial powers long before ISIL sought its opportunity on Arabian soil. Perhaps counter-intuitively, use of force that does not also address and re-strengthen the social fabric in the region could well be worse long-term than no use of force at all. Given the human toll in the region—and the role as other than an innocent bystander of Western powers—the normative end of law should inspire us towards more effective—and more authoritative—forms of intervention

A sortie into the archaeology of the Moravian mission station, Genadendal

Bibliography: pages 128-143.In the 1980s Tony Humphreys suggested the archaeology of the Moravian Mission at Genadendal as a possible avenue through which the archaeological 'void' regarding the Khoekhoen, post 1652, could be addressed. Building on this suggestion, the primary aim of this research was to find evidence of the Khoekhoen who lived at the mission during the 18th and early 19th century and to explore the ways in which Khoekhoe communities interacted with mission establishments as a means of reinventing themselves in a changing world. Material evidence of both the Khoekhoen and the mission itself (excluding the architecture) during this period proved to be elusive, in contrast to the wealth of documentary records. The reasons for this elusive material expression of the 18th and early 19th century mission, missionaries and Khoekhoe converts at Genadendal has been sought in the archaeological elusiveness of the Khoekhoen themselves and the nature of their material cultural base, as well as in the nature of the exchange and supply of European manufactured commodities in the Overberg

Shakespeare in South Africa: Alpha and ‘Omega’

[Author's note]: This piece offers a discursive foray into some leading features of South African Shakespeare, framed between two symbolic ‘book-ends’: the first authenticated Shakespearean production which took place in Cape Town in 1801 (‘Alpha’), and a recent groundbreaking, multilingual version of Julius Caesar which premiered in 2001(“‘Omega’”). Focusing mainly on acts of translation, literal and cultural, the article follows a trajectory from colonial origins to explore some of the adaptive travail experienced by the Shakespeare text as it infiltrates, contests, melds into and sometimes illuminates a South African culture both potentially (and actually) very different from the colonial culture of, say, Australia or New Zealand. The article includes a brief prospectus for the future

spotlight europe #2013/02-February 2012. Syria: from rebellion to all-out war

The situation in Syria at the beginning of 2013 could hardly be worse. Dead, wounded, refugees, a humanitarian disaster. President Assad is destroying his country and waging war against his own people. Russia and Iran back the regime. The West wants regime change without intervening militarily. The political opposition is now more united but overwhelmed with the situation at hand. The armed resistance, partially dominated by Jihadists, is difficult to size up

Antjie Krog. Skinned.

Dr. Marisa Botha is the youngest appointed Research Associate at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Prior to the position, she was a SA National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Language and Literature at NMMU. Her research focuses on autobiography, memory and trauma. in 2004 attended the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands as a student and in 2012 she was invited to the University of Pennsylvania as a visiting scholar. Dr. Botha has delivered papers at international conferences and published ten articles in accredited journals, six of which were based on her Masters dissertation. She reviews articles and books for academic journals, and in 2013 she was guest co-editor of an issue of the accredited South African journal, Stilet