Negotiating the Sacred : Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society

The Body in Grief: Death Investigations, Objections to Autopsy, and the Religious and Cultural ‘Other’

“…It is perhaps not surprising that the pathologists in this study stand in opposition to what they perceive as this recent impost on the process of a death investigation-wedded as they are to science as the point of access for the truth of the death [35]. However, positioning religious beliefs as superstitious not only ignores the historical relation between community standards and Christian values [12] but also the social and historical construction of their own medical claims to truth. What may be more curious is the diametrically opposed position of police and Coroners to the introduction of familial beliefs-who are both legal officers of the court and yet who offer either resentment or respect to the idea.…”

“…Despite the similarities between Judaism and Islam in terms of Coronial understanding of the religious legitimacy of their objection, the differences between the situation of Jewish advocacy and that of Muslin suspicion and visibility is stark and speaks to the different space that the Jewish community occupy in Australian society [12,13]. Part of the reason for this, according to Stratton [14] is that the 'Jew' is understood as a socially constructed 'gentile, Western Other', homogenized and othered in much the same way as the 'Asian', but not to the same extent because the Jew is also white, European and Western.…”

Negotiating the sacred: the lived religion of Eritrean newcomers and their process of integration in the Netherlands

“…The negotiation of the sacred is a common phenomenon under religious minorities living in multi-cultural societies (Coleman and White 2006). This re-examination of certain religious protocols, often results in a better understanding of the way both worlds can intertwine.…”

Secularism as Proto-Multiculturalism: The Case of Australia

“…While some still do so, these laws have long been 'dead letters'. The only Australian prosecution for blasphemous libel occurred in New South Wales in 1871, while the last attempted crown prosecution for it was in Victoria in 1919 (Coleman and White 2010). More vital examples of accommodation include exemptions from standing law.…”