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Abstract:
This Article advocates an innovative contextual approach to assessing the international legality of bans in public schools on modest garments claimed by some to be required by religious beliefs for Muslim women. Too often this has been considered solely a question of religious freedom. This paper advocates the re-insertion of gender equality into the heart of the debate. To obtain the results most conducive to reconciling the human right to religious freedom and the human right to gender equality, it examines restrictions on headscarves and veils in a novel matrix of factors, including pressures on individual women to wear or not wear such gear, the impact on other female students, fundamentalist organizing targeting education, Islamophobia, and the multiple meanings of veiling. Applying the contextual approach, this Article argues that the European Court of Human Rights ruled correctly in Sahin v. Turkey when it upheld Istanbul University's ban on headscarves in context. The Article rebuts the sharp criticism of this decision from some human rights groups and asserts that secularism is vital for the implementation of women's human rights.

human rights, headscarves, women's human rights, fundamentalism, secularism, separation of church and state

Abstract:
In the face of terrorism, human rights law's requirement that states "respect and ensure" rights necessitates that states take active steps to safeguard their populations from violent attack, but in so doing do not violate rights. Security experts usually emphasize the aspect of ensuring rights while human rights advocates largely focus on respecting rights. The trick, which neither side in the debate has adequately referenced, is that states have to do both at the same time. In contrast to these largely one-sided approaches, adopting a radical universalist stance, this Article argues that both contemporary human rights and security discourses on terrorism must be broadened and renewed. This renewal must be informed by the understanding that international human rights law protects the individual both from terrorism and the excesses of counter-terrorism, like torture. To develop this thesis, the Article explores the philosophical overlap between both terrorism and torture and their normative prohibitions. By postulating new discourses around the paradigm of terror/torture, it begins the project of creating a new human rights approach to terrorism.

Human rights, terrorism, torture, security, human security, armed conflict, religious extremism, fundamentalism, United Nations, international law, women's human rights, Non-Governmental Organizations, NGOs, non-state actors, universality

Abstract:
"The Law of the Republic versus the 'Law of the Brothers'" aims to complicate the human rights narrative about the 2004 French law banning religious symbols in public schools, and to place this issue firmly within the context of contemporary struggles over and with religious fundamentalisms. This human rights law story is based on field research conducted in France, and features interviews with women's rights activists, journalists, religious figures and scholars of Muslim, Arab or North African heritage living in France who support the law. Their voices have been mostly left out of the Anglophone debate on this topic. For many of them, the 2004 law may be understood as a way to counter the parallel, informal "law" of brothers, fathers and neighbors - and fundamentalist groups - who sometimes seek to impose the headscarf and constrain women's choices about dress. Finding the right balance for addressing the issue of headscarves in school in the contemporary moment is admittedly difficult. However, the concerns raised by those interviewed in this chapter need to be considered in formulating any human rights account of the 2004 Law.

human rights, women's rights, fundamentalism, religious extremism, French law, headscarves, international law