A two day conference on Religion and Power was recently held on 13-14 January at Hong Kong University (HKU). It also included an evening discussion on 13 January for the wider Hong Kong community to attend.

The dialogue entitled: Religion in Politics: Power and Empowerment, was co-organised by Bridging Gaps, CCPL Centre for Comparative and Public Law, Faith and Global Engagement Initiative at the Rayson Huang Theatre, HKU.

The interfaith gathering explored the relationship between spiritual ethos and power in a number of world religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The forum addressed how religious engagement with political, legal and economic issues can have beneficial and decrimental consequences in society.

This is the third year that an interfaith gathering event has been held at HKU. The event started with three guest speakers making presentations on the topics. Dr. Jamal Badawi, Professor Emeritus, St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, spoke about “Religion & Politics, a normal Islamic perspective”. Professor Michael A. Helfand, Associate Professor at the Pepperdine University School of Law, gave a talk on “Why we need to embrace Religious Law: A tale of two sovereigns.”

The presentation provided an interesting insight into the rise in recent years on attacks on religious law especially antisharia law in Europe, in France and the US Professor Helfand also explained the difficulties of Jewish law when it comes to granting a divorce by the Jewish courts Beth Din – known as A get, according to Jewish law must be presented by a husband to his wife to effect their divorce and how in the US both the secular and Jewish law co-exist in the various positive examples.