Law and Religion… Again

I missed this last summer: TimesOnline reported that China passed regulations forbidding Tibetan Bodhisattvas (i.e. living Buddhas) from reincarnating without permission from the Chinese government. This joins the Malaysian prohibition on Christian use of the word Allah in the “implacable force meets immovable object” category of demolition derby.

Of course, as I said when I blogged about Malaysia, without the text of the regulation it’s hard to say how sensible or silly the prohibition actually is. TimesOnline does at least throw quotes around a small portion of text, suggesting that this is how the law reads, in translation at least:

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.

Trouble is, this doesn’t parse well in English. I guess that it’s not so much the metempsychosis (nifty word, hey?) that’s prohibited as it is the recognition of that shifting of souls.