International Conference: Religion and Nationality

	Event Date(s): 6/18/2011 - 6/19/2011
	Date Published: 5/15/2011	Last Updated: 1/29/2012
	Category: Events

Worshippers draped in Israeli flags at the Western Wall

On Sunday and Monday, June 19–20, 2011, IDI hosted an international conference that explored questions of religion and state in Israel, the Middle East, and Western culture. The conference was conducted under the auspices of IDI's Nation State project, headed by IDI Senior Fellow and Israel Prize laureate Prof. Anita Shapira. The full program of this event, which was conducted largely in English, can be found below.

This event was broadcast live on the IDI website. Watch it on the IDI Youtube channel.

Read the English abstracts of the papers presented at this conference

IDI's International Conference on Religion and Nationality was made possible
through the generous support of The Goldhirsh Foundation.

Full Program

International Conference on Religion and Nationality

June 19–20, 2011

Sunday, June 19, 2011
09:30	Greetings
09:45 – 10:00	Opening remarks: Prof. (Emerita) Anita Shapira, Senior Fellow, Israel Democracy Institute; Department of Jewish History,Tel Aviv University
10:00 – 13:30	SESSION 1: RELIGION AND STATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST Chairperson: Prof. Ofra Bengio, Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University Religion and the Nation State in the Middle East: A Reassessment [English] Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University *The Islamic Republic of Iran: Between Ideological Constraints and the Needs of the Modern State* [Hebrew] Prof. Meir Litvak, Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Director of the Center for Iranian Studies, Tel Aviv University Respondent: Mr. Mohanad Mustafa, The College for Academic Studies – Or Yehuda [Hebrew] Watch this session.
11:30 – 11:45	Break
11:45 – 13:30	Continuation of Session 1 *The Turkish Predicament: Neo-Islam against the Nation State?* [English] Prof. Ehud R. Toledano, Chair for Ottoman and Turkish Studies, Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University *The Syrian State: Between Syranism, Arabism and Islam* [Hebrew] Prof. Eyal Zisser, Dean, Faculty of the Humanities, The Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair of Contemporary Middle Eastern History, Tel Aviv University *Sunni Sectarian Agitation as a Means of Contesting the Nation-State in Pakistan: Implications for Islam and Liberal Democracy in a Religious Nationalist State* [English] Dr. Micha’el M. Tanchum, Department of Middle East and Islamic Studies, Department of Government, Law and Diplomacy, The Shalem Center Respondent: Qadi Iyad Zahalka, Qadi in the Sharia Court of Haifa [Hebrew] Watch this session.
13:30 – 14:30	Lunch
14:30 – 17:00	SESSION 2: RELIGION AND STATE IN ISRAEL Chairperson: Prof. (Emerita) Anita Shapira, Senior Fellow, Israel Democracy Institute; Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University *A Robust Form of the Multicultural Predicament and the Need for Feeble Measures for Its Elevation: The Case of the Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel* [English] Professor Michael Karayanni, Bruce W. Wayne Chair in International Law; Director, The Harry and Michael Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law, Faculty of Law Hebrew University of Jerusalem Civil Rights and Human Distress in a Jewish and Democratic State [Hebrew] Prof. Shahar Lifshitz, Senior Research Fellow, Israel Democracy Institute; Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University *Religion and Nationalism among the Mizrahi Ultra-Orthodox* [Hebrew] Dr. Nissim Leon, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University Respondent: Prof. Frances Raday, Chair, Concord Research Center for Integration of International Law in Israel, The Haim Striks School of Law, COLMAN; Member, UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Discrimination against Women [English] Watch this session.

Monday, June 20, 2011
09:30 – 11:00	SESSION 3: RELIGION AND STATE IN WESTERN CULTURE Chairperson: Prof. Shulamit Volkov, Department of History, Tel Aviv University *Church and State in a Bi-National, Multicultural Society: The Case of Canada* [English] Prof. David Cameron, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto Read the draft of this paper Jews, the State and the End of the Christian Nation: The American Case [English] Prof. Pierre Birnbaum, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and History, University of Paris I (Sorbonne) Respondent: Prof. Eyal Naveh, Department of History, Tel Aviv University Watch this session.
11:00-11:15	Break
11:15 – 13:00	Continuation of Session 3 *Transformations in French Secularism* [English] Prof. Philippe Portier, Professor of Political Science at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris-Sorbonne), Head of the “ Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités” (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) *Family, Religion, and Modern Nationalism in Eastern Europe: A Theory and a Polish-Ukrainian Case* [English] Prof. Timothy Snyder, Department of History, Yale University Respondent: Dr. Alexander Yakobson, Department of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem [English] Watch this session.
13:00 – 13:45	Lunch
13:45 – 15:15	SESSION 4: RELIGION AND STATE IN ISRAEL Chairperson: Dr. Nabil Khattab, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Senior Researcher, Israel Democracy Institute *Transcending Right and Left: Political Uses of the Hebrew Bible in Current Israeli Discourse* [English] Prof. Fania Oz-Salzberger, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa; Chair of Modern Israel Studies, Monash University *Religion within the IDF: The Defense Force of a Jewish and Democratic State* [Hebrew] Prof. Asa Kasher, Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University Respondent: Professor Stuart Cohen, Department of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University Watch this session.
15:15 – 15:30	Break
15:30 – 17:30	Continuation of Session 4 *God in Modern Democratic Constitutions* [English] Dr. Alexander Yakobson, Department of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem *Dilemmas in the Jewish Nation State: Between Religious and Civil Law[Hebrew] Prof. Yedidia Stern, Vice President, Israel Democracy Institute; Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University “To Be or Not to Be(lieve)?”: Judaism and Zionist Existential Uncertainty* [Hebrew] Dr. Uriel Abulof, Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University Respondent: Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, Vice President, Israel Democracy Institute; Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem [Hebrew] Watch this session.
17:30 – 18:00	Closing remarks