Separatist movements - the peaceful route to independence?

Scotland, in the end, decided not to be independent. However, it did encourage other separatist movements, many of which supported Scottish referendum. There is evidence that Catalonians from Spain helped the ‘Yes’ vote campaign and many Kashmiris in Scotland and England supported Mr. Salmond’s Scottish National Party, not for any love for an independent Scotland but for its positive implications for Kashmir region. Despite the negative results, referendum has shown that there is no need for fighting or killing for independence in the 21st century. As Jonah Blank, senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, writes in the Foreign Policy after the Scottish referendum (See From Glasgow to Kashmir) :

Almost every modern nation has some sort of local separatist movement, and the international community views nearly all of them either with indifference or contempt. Merely to be considered a quasi-legitimate candidate for independence, a group generally has to suffer generations of brutality bordering on genocide. Even then, the odds aren't great. Just ask the Kurds.

The vote in Scotland shows what modern-day secessionism should look like. What if an ethnic group didn't have to justify its bid for a separate state through a saga of historical oppression, or seek to achieve it through a violent insurgency? What if the standard for independence were nothing more than the statement: "We want out." London agreed to take aye for an answer.

Rest of the blog can be read http://www.calgarycgc.org/blog/separatist-movements-the-peaceful-route-to-independence

Head of state must be a member of a certain religion

In a factank article, Pew Research  Center lists the countries that require their heads of states to have a specific religion (See In 30 countries heads of state must belong to a certain religion). It found thirty countries (15% of all countries) that have such a requirement. The list shows that it is mostly the Muslim-majority countries that have religion-related restrictions on the selection of their heads of state. Out of the total thirty countries with restrictions, seventeen (17) are Muslim-majority. For example, Jordan, Tunisia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Mauritania have such a restriction. The article informs that only two countries each require their heads of state to be Christian (Lebanon and Andorra) and Buddhist (Bhutan and Thailand). However, this is obviously not true as the article later explains that there are other 19 Christian-majority countries that do the same. So, the true count should have been forty-nine (49) countries with restrictions, twenty-one (21) Christian-majority and nineteen (19) Muslim-majority:

In addition to the 30 countries in this analysis, another 19 nations have religious requirements for ceremonial monarchs who serve as their heads of state. Sixteen of these, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, are members of the Commonwealth of Nations with Queen Elizabeth II – also known as the Defender of the Faith – as their head of state. The other countries in this category are Denmark, Norway and Sweden. 

Most of the world’s countries (85%) allow citizens of any religious affiliation to be head of state. In the United States, the Constitution specifically prohibits any kind of “religious test” as a qualification for holding federal or state public office. At the same time, a number of states still have laws on the books prohibiting nonbelievers from holding office. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that First Amendment’s prohibition on the establishment of religion clearly prohibits states from requiring office-holders to profess a belief in God.

Source: In 30 countries heads of state must belong to a certain religion

Several comments on the Pew's website questioned the validity of the analysis. For example, some commentators considered Pew's coding of Pancasila (nationalist philosophy of Indonesia) as a religion was considered strange. Others commented on the absence of the Vatican state from the analysis. I also found the analysis problematic and posted the following comment:

If the focus of the article is whether the position of head of state is restricted to members of a specific religion, then all countries that have such restrictions should be listed first. The distinction between the ‘ceremonial monarchs’ and other heads of state, if need be, should have been made later. The way article is organized, it gives a distorted picture. 

The headline says, ‘In 30 countries, heads of state must belong to a certain religion’ and these 30 countries are listed and shown on the graph. This gives the impression that other countries do not have such restrictions. It is only later that the author remembers that there are some other countries that also restrict head of state to a certain religion. The obvious question is why these countries are not included in the headline count or the first list? The answer is not clearly given but the implicit suggestion is that these heads of state do not have real power. 

This distinction is false as many countries included in the first list also have heads of state that do not have real power. One pertinent example is that of Malaysia. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, just like Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc. The Malaysian king (head of state) does not have real power, like the British monarch. But still Malaysia is not in the same list as Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Similarly, Pakistan’s presidency (though not a monarchy) is also a ceremonial position with no real powers but still Pakistan is in the first list. 

The issue discussed in the article was whether head of state has to be a member of a certain religion. Unfortunately, from the very start, this specificity was lost and other factors like power and type of political system influenced the choices/results of analysis.