France has recently carried out discriminatory raids and house arrests against Muslims under its sweeping new state of emergency law. As these and other policies and social norms across Europe have created economic hardship, stigmatized those targeted, and traumatized children, voices that bring these issues to the forefront are more necessary than ever.
Rim-Sarah Alouane is an international human rights jurist and a Ph.D. candidate in Public Law at the University Toulouse-Capitole in France. Her research focuses on religious freedom, civil liberties, constitutional law and human rights in Europe and North America.
Rim-Sarah’s expertise is sought by international conferences, scholarly journals, and major media outlets with respect to the challenges facing religious minorities in the West. A holder of a Master’s degree in Comparative Law, Rim-Sarah’s doctoral thesis explores the practice of Western judges acting as so-called “jurislators” with regard to the recognition and protection of religious specificities, citing current events involving the integration of religious minorities.
Rim-Sarah continues to explore contemporary religious freedom issues and has been a guest lecturer at several institutions, including the Faculty of Law of Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest (Hungary) and at the University dell’Insubria in Como (Italy). She has presented her findings before peers at the Harvard-Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum at Harvard Law School (2013), the World Congress of the International Association of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy at Georgetown Law School (2015) and other leading universities (KU Leuven-Belgium, University of Oslo-Norway, and the University of Algiers-Algeria). In 2015, she gave a presentation at the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University on how French cultural norms distort freedom of religion.
Her publications appear in leading law and social sciences journals, including “God, the Pencil, and the Judge: Exploring the Paradoxes Regarding Protection of Freedom of Religion and Expression in France,” Religion and Human Rights (2016), “Freedom of Religion and the Transformation of Public Order in France,” The Review of Faith and International Affairs, volume 13, Issue 1 (2015), and “Re-evaluating Laïcité in Light of France’s Historical Treatment of Muslims,” Ethnicities, (2015).
In addition to her scholarly work, she blogs regularly about human rights and diversity, and actively participates in related discourse on Twitter (@rimsarah) and other social media. She can be reached at rim@rimsarah.com.
Topics of Expertise:
- Religious freedom
- Civil liberties
- Constitutional law and human rights in Europe and North America
- Discrimination
