In this article, we investigate the role of religious experts in criminal cases related to blasphemy in Indonesia, a country with one of the world’s largest Muslim populations. Our analysis of 106 decisions in blasphemy-related cases between 2011 and 2022 shows that expert witnesses in these cases have been much more influential than in other criminal cases, with their testimony often leading to conviction. We found that religious experts in cases of blasphemy against Islam were predominantly members of the Indonesian Ulama Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, or MUI) which has an institutionalized link to the government that provides it with funding and personal connections to senior government officials. With its great public legitimacy, MUI members are preferred by police and judges over religious experts not affiliated with it. We argue that this preference is not simply an illustration of the power of a religious authority dominated by conservative groups. Rather, a combination of the factors, including the interests of conservative groups, state narratives of public order, the selection of expert witnesses and their influence on judicial decision-making, reflect the innately political nature of blasphemy in Indonesia and its capacity to serve the interests of competing members of the political elite.

The question of the probative value of written evidence in Islamic law has been a long-standing discussion. Muslim jurists have historically been skeptical of recognizing writing as a form of proof, which was well illustrated in doctrinal books penned in premodern Islamic legal history. While previous studies have explored this skepticism or argued for a different approach, many of them lack evidence from actual legal practice. In this article, I provide a fresh perspective on the evidentiary value of written evidence in Islamic law by examining Ottoman court records from the eighteenth century. Instead of focusing on theoretical discussions, I examine how courts and central administration responded to cases of forgery. I argue that the Ottoman legal system was indifferent to forgery of documents, unless committed by state officials, for, in alignment with the doctrinal skepticism toward writing in Islamic law, they did not attribute any evidentiary value to documents. Thus, I conclude that the Ottoman legal practice closely reflected the reluctance of Muslim jurists to recognize the probative value of written evidence in the eighteenth century, showcasing the harmony between the theory and application of Islamic law.

This article examines the rise of ecclesial units in US prisons, wherein inmates are trained and certified for Christian evangelism as state-assigned inmate field ministers. Unlike general religious education programs in public prisons, these newer units, referred to within prison communities as God pods, function as ecclesial training centers for Christian ministry undertaken by matriculated state prisoners. The author contrasts the work of inmate field ministers with that of public chaplains governed by mandates of religious neutrality. Drawing from on-site and archival research, the author contends that these new programs instantiate Christian doctrine as government speech while imposing religious tests for public benefits upon state prisoners. The author profiles recent case law advancing a history-and-tradition standard for Establishment Clause cases, while noting the long-standing expectation of religious neutrality by public institutions. The author highlights recent scholarly accounts of US prisons as imbued with Christian theology amid a broader defunding of secular rehabilitation. While religious entrepreneurs have long delivered Christian programming in public prisons, new ecclesiastical units institutionalize Christian doctrine as state rehabilitation, raising urgent questions about religious liberty in the carceral sphere and the future of faith-based programming.

After the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam (al-ghaybah al-kubrā) in the fourth AH/tenth CE century, the applicability of divinely ordained punishments, ḥudūd, became a subject of theo-juridical controversies between two groups of Shiʿi jurists: pro- and anti-ḥudūd. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the establishment of a Shiʿi theocracy, Iranian theocrats supported the pro-ḥudūd Shiʿi jurists, and as a result, ḥudūd punishments were incorporated into the Islamic Penal Code and have been applied by the state ever since. Some Iranian legal reformers, recognizing the challenges in applying ḥudūd punishments, have put forward two politico-juridical mechanisms (zarfiyat): the secondary ruling and the state order. These two mechanisms, the reformers assert, may be used by the Islamic Republic of Iran to suspend ḥudūd punishments. In this article, I examine both the arguments presented by reformers and the objections to these arguments raised by conservative and Shiʿi orthodox-minded jurists. These objections pose doctrinal challenges that impede the utilization of these mechanisms, thus obstructing the suspension of ḥudūd punishments.

According to the biblical narrative, among the creatures of the Earth, human beings are uniquely God’s image-bearers, and we are also tragically prone to claim divinity for ourselves in ways that produce violence and judgment. Technology is a human good, part of our cultural mandate, but it also magnifies our worst tendencies. One of the great temptations of artificial intelligence is its mimetic capacity. AI systems mimic human creativity and judgment but lack human moral capacities. Granting a concern about mimesis, perhaps some version of non-reductive physicalism is correct and something we could call true intelligence might emerge from a future AI system. It could be that humans would owe some kind of duties toward AI as moral patients akin to what we, the stewards of creation, owe the various components of the natural world. But, from the perspective of Christian theological ethics, even if we entertain a kind of Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of emergence and causal powers that could admit this possibility, we should remember the biblical narrative concerning human uniqueness. The great chain of being retains vitality as a metaphor in that it reminds us about the role of mediation in the relationship between God and creation.

The article addresses the challenges that increasing capabilities pose to freedom of thought and conscience. The author contrasts the ongoing debate about the ability to manipulate the human mind with the deeply rooted theories and judicial treatments of freedom of thought and conscience and argues for renewed attention to the subject. Briefly noting that the issue of AI manipulation has especially preoccupied legal scholars, institutions, and societies at large for its impact on the economic market, religious extremism, and politics, the author argues that the capabilities of AI stretch well beyond these limited fields as they challenge the centuries-long notion of freedom of conscience and thought. Because AI capabilities can extract information about individuals’ thoughts and feelings, they are making obsolete the deeply held belief that what is within the human mind (forum internum) is protected from intrusion by its very nature. The author explores the notion of the extended mind to show how the frequent reliance on smart technologies reveals a need to strengthen their protection in order to protect their users. Finally, the author criticizes the widespread focus on the notion of manipulation in recent developments across a range of disciplines and argues for a stronger and more direct consideration of freedom of thought and conscience to update their legal and academic treatment.