Episode 408: What a Mess! Religion & Law
Transcript!
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Shownotes
(because citations are political)
THE HISTORY OF WORLD (RELIGIONS), PART I continues with WHAT A MESS! RELIGION & LAW. Because face it: you need a hands-on learning moment, where we think and learn about how the world religions paradigm we loathe so very much has extremely real consequences in the world.
The 101:
(where we did the professor-work)
Why law?
In part, because it’s nice for us to talk about how the world religions model doesn’t work, and it’s important that we keep hammering home that this model has real world effects—but unless we show you what those real-world effects are, no one is gonna care or remember. And legal spaces—court rooms, prisons, and the like—HAVE to define religion (for all sorts of reasons, including implementation of laws, discrimination, tax collection, and [allegedly] to ensure freedoms). Legal systems define religion, which makes them good places to see that religion isn’t done with us, even if we’re done with religion.
Since we live in a world of nation-states, we can literally find laws pertaining to religion every single place in the world. But in this episode, we chose to focus on China, in part because it teaches well in our classes, and in part because we spend a lot of time in the US and South Asia, and wanted to set a research challenge for ourselves. In an unending pandemic, in a moment where we’re both overextended. Like dopes. Smart dopes, we think. But dopes.
Since everyone is overextended, this is an episode without guest experts. It’s retro!
In this episode, we talked primarily about how Chinese laws define, structure, and allow religion to function (or not). If you are curious about other legal-heavy episodes, high recommend E102 and E106, Cults and Nationalism from SmartGrrlSummer. We talk about laws often, frankly.
Today, our lesson plan was relatively but deceptively simple: how can we see the world religions model playing out IRL? Why is law a good way to do it? And how does law and religion work specifically in China?.
Legal systems that regulate and/or protect religious practices and belonging require definitions of religion. The world religions paradigm, as you damn well know, has ALSO historically been deeply invested in defining religions (mostly so white European Christian dudes with pens could use those definitions to explain why white European Christianity is the best one). So our case study today—religion(s) in/and China—is a great space to think about how “world religions” falls really short of how complicated lived religion gets in legal spaces, with references to this global system of definition but in a location that is decidedly beyond European borders.
We talked about how China has legally-defined official religions, what that means for Chinese citizens, and what happens when people fall beyond those definitions. We also talked about how, legally, the government of the People’s Republic of China controls religion—tune in to hear details, but the tl;dr: the government approves religious texts, pamphlets, publications, and who can lead religious communities. See what we mean when we say that laws and definitions matter?
We talked about Uighurs, and the religious, ethnic persecution they are facing is all about laws. We talked about how some kinds of Christian practices are legally visible, and others are not, which means some Christian practices are dangerous. We talked about how Confucianism is always in a world religions textbook, but the PRC doesn’t think it is a religion.
And more, of course.
TL;DR: this episode did the following
World religions is problematic AF—and it is a global system that has been interpreted in meaningful ways, legally.
Chinese religions are extremely complicated and complex, like religions anywhere. Government regulations just points out how definitions alter what people do.
Laws about religion are omnipresent.
Little Bit, Leave It
(the segment where we leave you with a little bit to remember)
Ilyse wants everyone to remember that we live in nation-states. And when we live in nation-states, we exist in spaces of national identity. Which also means we are subject to nationalisms. And religion is right there in the core of this experience. Religions are regulated, sometimes heavily, in nations. Which means how we do religion--if we can safely do religion--has as much to do with where and when we live as anything else, and it has everything to do with how states function. Claiming religion shouldn’t be in politics? Stupid.
Megan wants to encourage our nerds to reflect on how legal cases help us understand that we both NEED to be thinking religion AND that thinking religion isn’t enough. If we leave economics, governmentality, ethnicity, and regionality out of the equation, we cannot understand Chinese attitudes toward Uighurs—or frankly even toward Daoists, who are much more accepted in PRC even as religion itself remains, uh, frowned upon.
If you dont know, now you know
(the segment where we get one factoid)
Megan talked about how Confucianism isn’t a religion in China but it is in every. single. textbook. What does that tell us?!
Ilyse didn’t understand the assignment and talked about India, CAA and NRC laws, and basically tried to encourage our listeners to hear religion & law as a global problem (even though we focused on China this episode).
Homework!
(that’s right, nerds, there’s always more to learn)
Megan did the right thing and suggested you all read what our guest experts wrote. She recommends:
the Berkeley Forum’s great collection of resources on “Regulating Religion in China.” Especially these two:
Patriot Act on Chinese Censorship and Last Week Tonight on China and Uighurs
For folks looking for a pop culture angle: this piece explains why Disney took so much heat for its live action version of Mulan, and especially for filming in the Xinjiang province, where so many Uighurs are being denied basic human rights by the People’s Republic of China.
Ilyse wants you to check out:
Her own recent stuff that is exactly about religion & law:
Morgenstein Fuerst, Ilyse R. “Minoritization, Racialization, and Islam in Asia,” in Routledge Handbook of Islan in Asia, ed. Chiara Formichi (London and New York: Routledge, 2021): 16-30.
Morgenstein Fuerst, Ilyse R. “Gender, Muslims, Islam, and Colonial India,” in Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender, ed. Justine Howe (London and New York: Routledge, 2020): 241-255.
Top recs on Uighurs:
Sean Robert’s The War on the Uyghurs: China’s INternal Campaign against a Muslim Minority
Rian Thum, THe Sacred Routes of Uyghur HIstory
Kelly Hammond’s China’s Muslims and Japan’s Empire
and Hammond’s explainer on China and Islam
Kristian Petersen, "How 9/11 helped China wage its own false ‘war on terror’”
Dhondup T. Rekjong in the WSJ on Beijing wants future lamas and monks to learn the faith only in Mandarin—paving the way for Tibetan to be erased
Nerds of the Week!
Thanks for listening, rating and reviewing. This week’s nerd is superfan and super friend Dr. Sajida Jalalzai, who made us KI101 ART.
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