Collective Religious Identity Research Articles

The protection of the Islamic minority beyond religious freedom: legal pluralism and reasonable accommodation in Europe

ABSTRACT: In Europe's diverse societal landscape, the Islamic minority, or a significant portion thereof, seeks to navigate life under Sharia law, especially concerning family matters. Despite the fact that the application of Sharia law, where permitted, has demonstrated its ability to adapt to the legal context, as in the case of Islamic arbitration, in the case of family law, the perception of an irreducible contrast with the values of Western countries appears particularly strong producing an inevitable paradox in relation with freedom of religion that may be restricted by the legal system. The core paradox lies in the potential infringement on religious freedom if Muslims were asked to forsake religious tenets or practices that align with the foundational principles of the legal system. Modern legal frameworks are thus challenged to find methods to harmonize the identity assertions of Islamic communities with the safeguarding of individual rights within these communities. With no specific safeguards for religious minorities, this study scrutinizes jurisprudence on family law from selected European courts. The objective is to unearth effective legal tools that respect the Islamic community's minority religious identity while upholding the essential tenets of the legal system, fostering a balance between collective religious identity and individual rights protection in a multicultural Europe. SUMMARY: 1 - Religious minorities between cultural identity and religious freedom: preliminary remarks - 2. Legal Pluralism and Religious Pluralism: Protection tools for religious minorities - 3. Muslims of Europe - 4.- The Interaction Between Sharia and the Legal System of the State: Techniques of Reasonable Accommodation and Islamic Family Law - 5. The protection of the Islamic minority beyond religious freedom: concluding remarks.

The politics of street names: Reconstructing Iran’s collective identity

AbstractWith the radical political change in 1979, Iran's revolutionary state assumed the responsibility of re‐rewriting the past history to forge a new sense of belonging, a particularly collective religious (Shia) identity. It launched a complex process of forgetting and remembering to first eliminate the national (Persian), non‐religious memories and heritage, associated and celebrated by the previous regime and then establish a sense of continuity with the country's Shia past; a feeling markedly engendered with a distinguishing symbolic reservoir of Shia traditions and memories, presented in history books, literature, the media, and everyday culture.This paper seeks to examine the role of street names in this process of reconstructing a new religious (Shia) collective memory and identity with particular reference to Tehran, Iran, during the 1979‐2019 period. It seeks to analyze changes in the city's street names and analyze the widespread renaming of streets and public spaces in the city as one means of both ‘de‐commemorating’ the pre‐revolutionary regime and marking the Shia legacy and memories as the signifiers of a widespread political maneuver to articulate a new version of the past and narrative of identity since the 1979 revolution.

Coming of Age in Faith: The Rite of Confirmation after the English Reformation

This article explores confirmation as a ritual of Christian initiation in the context of the English Reformation. It examines how this rite of passage, which was demoted from its traditional status as a sacrament, survived and evolved in the wake of the theological, liturgical and ecclesiological changes associated with the advent of Protestantism. It traces the permutations of the practice of laying on of hands that both united and fractured people within the Church of England and its evangelical outer rings between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It also considers the social history of a ritual that increasingly coincided with the transition from childhood to puberty, and its capacity to shed light on the formation of collective religious identity, bodily habitus and lived experience. Finally, it briefly discusses the Counter-Reformation of confirmation and its transformation into a marker of the confessional militancy of a minority faith.

Race, Religion, and Global Solidarities: W. E. B. Du Bois and “The Black Church” as a Contested Category

AbstractW.E.B. Du Bois was thoroughly ambivalent about the political significance of American Black churches regarding their role in challenging racial inequality. He saw them as integral to Black social life, but also as failing to live up to their potential as drivers of liberation. And, while he focused primarily on Black churches within the United States, Du Bois was also committed to Black liberation on a global level. This suggests great potential for applying DuBois’ analyses of Black religion to the question of transnational religious and racial solidarities and the global political salience of “the Black Church” as a category. In this context, this article explores the significance of DuBois’ work for analyzing the category of “the Black Church.” It does so through a comparative case study of African American Christian engagement with the issue of Israel and Palestine, with four case studies ranging from African American Christian Zionists to Palestinian solidarity activists. Across these cases, the analysis highlights the ways that the history, identity, and mission of “the Black Church” are invoked in the context of Palestine and Israel. It argues that “the Black Church” is best understood as a contested category of collective religious and racial identity.

Pengarusutamaan Moderasi Beragama Generasi Milenial melalui Gerakan Siswa Moderat di Kabupaten Lumajang

This article examines the model for mainstreaming religious moderation for the millennial generation that is vulnerable to the movement for religious exclusivity. The religious spirit of the millennial generation has been coloured by extreme legal-formal thoughts and views that have implications for the existential destruction of religious moderation values and the growth of intolerance. This article focuses on studying Gerakan Siswa Moderat (GSM)/ the Moderate Student Movement initiated by the Ministry of Religious Affairs of Lumajang Regency to create religious moderation activators among madrasah students. Retrieval of field data used a qualitative model. Data collection was carried out using observation techniques and presented in descriptive writing to describe the phenomena, situations and conditions that took place during the launch of the GSM program. The research results show that although madrasah students are vulnerable to exposure to radicalism and tolerance due to natural factors that are part of the digital age, those who are members of GSM become agents as well as ambassadors for driving religious moderation in three actions at once, i.e. linking past and present religious awareness, being an adhesive for collective religious identity, and being a communicator of narratives and religious messages that are intact, tolerant and peaceful. The strengthening was conducted through a moderation school program and interfaith dialogue.

The Religious Political Identity of Kaum Sayid in the Ziarah Kubra Tradition in Palembang

Ziarah Kubra is a religious tradition that developed in Palembang in an atmosphere of the revival of the spirit of Islamic diversity in Indonesia in the millennial period. The Ziarah Kubra tradition began to be popularized in 2003 by the Kaum Sayid in Palembang. The Kaum Sayid or Sayids is a community descended from the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), who traveled worldwide, including Palembang.This article discusses the Ziarah Kubra tradition's phenomenon towards constructing the Kaum Sayid's religious identity in Palembang. The research study in this article uses qualitative research methods with a phenomenological approach to the Ziarah Kubra tradition in Palembang. The Ziarah Kubra was originally a local religious practice of the Kaum Sayid in Palembang, which continued to develop into the collective religious identity of Islamic civilization in Indonesia. The construction of the religious-political identity of the Kaum Sayid in Palembang was formed, along with the acceptance and recognition of other communities and local elites to the religious authority of the Kaum Sayid in Palembang in the Ziarah Kubra tradition. This article shows that a religious tradition can be an institution of a local community's religious-political identity.

Religion and Literature, Identity and Individual: Resetting the Muslim-Christian Encounter

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century inter-faith encounters have become a casualty of a paradigm shift in the thinking about the global order from the political-ideological bi-polar worldview of the Cold War era to a multipolar world marred by the prospect of culture wars along civilisational fault lines shaped by religiously-informed identity politics. On the back of 9/11 and other atrocities perpetrated by violent extremists from Muslim backgrounds, in particular relations with Muslims and the Islamic world are coined in binary terms of us-versus-them. Drawing on earlier research on cosmopolitanism, cultural hybridity and liminality, this article examines counter narratives to such modes of dichotomous thinking. It also seeks to shift away from the abstractions of collective religious identity formations to an appreciation of individual interpretations of religion. For that purpose, the article interrogates the notions of cultural schizophrenia, double genealogy and west-eastern affinities developed by philosophers and creative writers, such as Daryush Shayegan, Abdelwahab Meddeb, and Navid Kermani.

Translation in a Multilingual Context: The Mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil Languages in Medieval South Indian Śrīvaiṣṇava Religious Tradition

Abstract In this paper, I investigate South Asian multilinguality by focusing on the medieval South Indian Śrīvaiṣṇava religious tradition (originated in the tenth century CE), which employ Sanskrit, Tamil, and Maṇipravāḷa, a hybrid language comprising both Sanskrit and Tamil, in their composition. Through the lens of translation and hybridity, I propose to complicate the recent scholarship on the Sanskrit and vernacular languages (e.g., Pollock and interlocutors) and also respond to the scholarly call for research that addresses the distinctive history of South Asian multilinguality. In particular, it explores the use of multiple linguistic media by one of the most significant Śrīvaiṣṇava theologians, Vedāntadeśika (c. 1268–1369 CE), in his Rahasyatrayasāra. The Rahasyatrayasāra which deals with soteriological and ritual aspects of the Śrīvaiṣṇavas was composed in Maṇipravāḷa and furnished with Sanskrit and Tamil opening and concluding verses. Through the investigation of the Maṇipravāḷa content in relation to the verses in the Rahasyatrayasāra, I argue that Maṇipravāḷa can be considered translation as it brings the Sanskrit and Tamil streams of the tradition together into a single context that can accommodate both. For a multilingual community like the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, Maṇipravāḷa, which represents translation into a hybrid, makes possible the collective religious identity.

The Creation of a Latin American Catholic Church: Vatican Authority and Political Imagination, 1854–1899

The principal aim of this article is to analyse the rise of a Latin American Catholic identity during the mid- to late nineteenth century. It examines the institutionalisation of this collective project via the foundation of the Latin American College in Rome in 1858 and the initiatives that led to the Latin American Plenary Council in 1899. This article also explores how this collective religious identity was imagined and how its limits were drawn. In doing so a new insight into how religions contributed to the imagining and defining of geographical spaces is offered.

AKTIVISME GERAKAN KEAGAMAAN DALAM KONTEKS KEBUDAYAAN : Antara Penegakan Syariat dan Anomali

This academic work discusses about an activism of the religious movement recently emerging as a response against Liberal Islam in Indonesia. The rise of such movement is interesting to be studied so as to gain deeper understanding on the relationship between expression of religious piety and culture in the context of Indonesia. This article focuses on the case of enforced closure on transgender Islamic school (Pesantren Waria) and rejection of Easter celebration conducted by Religious forum in Yogyakarta. The incompatibility of cultural products and dominant religious (Islamic) values is the major reason underlying the movement’s action, which tends to exert renunciation radically. Furthermore, such act of rejection in some cases resulted deprivation of freedom and rights of individuals in assembling and holding a religious belief based on their faith, even inflicted a violation to certain group of people. The religious movement activism makes the dilemma, on the one side a form of enforcement of the Shari'ah, but on the other side creates anomalies that depriving expression rights.The analysis of the article’s identified problems are explained into three forms of conclusion; First, the phenomenon of religious movement activism is understood as deviant subculture through which they set a standard of conduct derived from their own conception of truth. There is reaction-formation pattern found, where this subculture constitutes values and norms from the key culture. They reject other values and considering their delinquent norms are the correct ones, which subsequently enact those as the standard of behavior. Second, there is construction of collective religious identity integrated with ethnic identity. Third, such religious identity construct is increasingly established as moral legitimacy in existing social order. As consequence, the movement perceives that the society no longer needs a set of values derived from external circumstances such as egalitarianism, humanity, gender justice, and others.

La questione della liceità della circoncisione “rituale” tra tutela dell’identità religiosa del gruppo e salvaguardia del diritto individuale alla integrità fisica

SOMMARIO: 1. Notazioni introduttive - 2. La circoncisione “terapeutica” e quella “profilattica” - 3. La circoncisione “tradizionale” e quella (propriamente) “rituale” - 4. L’orientamento che giudica la pratica contraria ai diritti fondamentali del minore - 5. La circoncisione rituale ebraica e la legge 8 marzo 1989, n. 101 - 6. La circoncisione rituale tra liberta religiosa, diritto alla salute e diritto all’integrita fisica - 7. Osservazioni conclusive.The issue of lawfulness of “ritual” circumcision: protection of collective religious identity versus violation of individual’s right to physical integrityABSTRACT: The present essay deals with the issue regarding the lawfulness of male “ritual” circumcision, that is performed for non-therapeutic reasons. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is considered as a violation of human rights in the Western world; on the contrary, male circumcision for non-therapeutic reasons is currently tolerated. However, in many Countries experts hightlighted the permanent effect of circumcision on bodily integrity and the special importance of the right to self-determination. The Author stresses problems that the circumcision poses in the Italian legal system, considering special legislation related to Jewis (law No. 101/1989) and case law that assesses the practice lawful in case it is performed with the parents’ consent and according to the rules of medical art.

Muslim–Christian Conversion in Modern Russia and the Idea of Russia as a Eurasian Islamo-Christian Space

Abstract This article examines conversion between Islam and Russian Orthodoxy in contemporary Russia. The author tests the idea that Russia historically constituted an Islamo-Christian Eurasian space, and that this reality has now been revived in the hermeneutic self-perception of government rhetoric as well as in the self-understanding of converts from both religious communities. He concludes that this “hermeneutic space” is real (though not exclusive), and is expressed both in the syncretistic practice of individuals and within communities. However, instead of seeing the Eurasian space as essentialist, the author gives “Eurasianism” a philosophical reconstruction, viewing it as an inter-subjective mental hermeneutic that nonetheless has reality and causality in shaping individual and collective religious identity in Russia today.

‘Everyone who wants to, can be a Körtti’: how young people negotiate the religious space of a revivalist movement

ABSTRACT19th century Protestant revivalist movements have played an important role in Nordic societies at large. In this article, I explore young people’s socio-spatial construction of the Awakening movement, one of the largest traditional yet vibrant revivalist movements under the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. In doing so, I aim to reveal how youths define their collective religious identity in a time when non-institutional and private emphasis on religion prevails. In addition, vague membership, ritual-centred participation, and the significance of the annual gathering raise topical questions regarding belonging. I build my analysis on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of social space. The research data consist of interviews with young people (aged 14–18) and the narratives the young people wrote themselves. These data are complemented with my observations from the movement’s summer gathering. The findings reveal the agency of the young people as ‘inhabitants’ (Lefebvre) of tradition-based religious space.

Divine Development: Transnational Indian Religious Organizations in the United States and India

This article examines how Indian Americans’ religious organizations send not only financial remittances to India, but also social remittances that shape development ideologies. Comparing Indian-American Hindu and Muslim organizations, I find both groups draw from their socioeconomic experiences in India and use their position as elite immigrants in the United States to identify and empower their respective religious constituencies in India and overturn different social relations (not just religious practices). Hindu Americans draw from their majority status in India to overturn India's lower position in the world system and support poverty alleviation efforts within a neoliberal development framework. Indian-American Muslims draw from their poor status in India to overturn economic inequities within India by shifting India's development rhetoric from identity to class. Collective religious identities (expressed through organizations) not only affect the intensity of immigrants’ development efforts, but also their content and ideology. These findings urge us to fold transnational religious organizations into contemporary discussions on migration and development.

Religious agency, identity, and communication: reflections on history and theory of religion

This paper discusses the applicability of recent theories of religion to the problem of describing and explaining religious transformation in the period between the final Bronze Age and Late Antiquity. Instead of evolutionist and cognitive approaches, it proposes a model of religion that tries to analyze religion in terms of its making by starting from the individual's appropriation and creation of religious tradition. Religion is understood as a strategy to attribute agency to agents that do not appear immediately plausible. Recent scholarly discussions on human agency suggest categorizing human religious agency into the three subsets, namely: (1) acting religiously with regards to past, present, and future; (2) collective religious identity; and (3) religious communication. These subsets are shown to produce fruitful questions for research on historical sources. Against this backdrop, religion is explained as a precarious cultural resource articulated through the agency of individuals and allowing changed attributions of individual agency.

God is “color-blind”: The problem of race in a diverse Christian fraternity

The following case study utilizes in-depth qualitative interviews and participant observation data in order to examine how color-blindness operates in a diverse Christian fraternity. The color-blind ideology functions in two distinct ways: to authenticate the fraternity’s collective religious identity as an inclusive Christian community and to obscure within-group racial inequalities reproduced through tokenizing racist jokes aimed at its non-white members. Color-blind statements allow members to attribute their organization’s racial diversity to their accepting religious doctrine, while also making problems of race within the organization difficult to address. This article provides a theoretical contribution by highlighting the dire implications of ignoring race in diverse religious groups, particularly problematic within the “edgy” joking subculture of Christian fraternities.

Blasphemy Laws and Incitement to Religious Hatred: Italian Legal Standards and Social Developments

Focusing on the Italian legal system, this article aims to explore old and new legal remedies applicable to cases of religious hatred. Traditionally, institutional religions are granted legal protection through criminal sanctions of blasphemy. Included in the Criminal Code since 1889 and revised in 2006, norms regarding blasphemy are conceived to protect religious feelings, which are considered as part of the inner conscience of the faithful as well as an element of collective religious identity. However, social developments and an increasingly multicultural and multi-religious society reveal questions and issues that need to be legally addressed. One of the most controversial of these is the intertwining of race and religion as grounds for hate discourse, which must be tackled through specific legal instruments, banning racial, ethnic and religious hate speech and intolerance.

Testing the Limits of Free Exercise and Establishment: Collective Religious Identity in South Carolina

The tenuous relationship between religion and public schooling illuminates the dangers presented to the democratic, pluralist state when collective religious identity trumps democratic and pluralist commitments and indeed violates the time-tested protections of the First Amendment. In this article, the authors provide a brief overview of the religion clauses in the First Amendment and explore 2 examples of how collective religious identity challenges the boundaries of free exercise and establishment. Exploring the impact of collective religious identity in relation to the religion clauses of the First Amendment should allow the reader to see how the prioritization of religious goals over civic obligations by school leaders can undermine legitimate purposes of public education, especially the aim of cultivating citizens capable of thriving in a pluralist state.

The Fuzzy Boundaries: Julaha Weavers’ Identity Formation in Early Twentieth Century United Provinces

This article addresses the fluid, changeable and ambiguous character of religious and cultural identities, held by Julahas; claiming different local and sectarian backgrounds. The Barelvi, Wahabi and Deobandi schools of Indian Islam provided a polarising platform to the Julaha identity discourse from the late nineteenth century onwards, leading to a wider ‘shift’ towards supra-caste, supra-locally-based concepts of community and collective religious identity, yet this ‘shift’ did not ‘replace’ other forms of collective identities along sectarian, caste, community and regional lines. These ‘blurred boundaries’ in the Julaha Ansari identity discourse defy their concrete positioning within the framework of India’s Islamic landscape. The challenges triggered by a stagnant capitalist transformation under the colonial state and the official records reinforce a static image of the Julaha community, ascribing to it innate conservatism, recalcitrant to change fostered by the ‘modernising impulse’ of the colonial government. The self image of the community was no doubt deeply affected by this ascription by the powerful ‘other’ but nevertheless remained distinct. This process was accompanied by renewed efforts at setting up community institutions such as panchayats and by constructing community mosques. Societal changes like the simultaneous formation as well as breakup of communities along with the communal pooling of labour were part of the larger development. The article further locates and scrutinises the influence of this sort of polarisation on the mind of Muslim weavers and Hindu merchants.

Forbidden intimacies: Christian–Muslim intermarriage in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

ABSTRACTAs a disadvantaged minority, Dayaks have turned to Christianity as a way to maintain their ethnic identity in the face of threats from their Muslim neighbors. Given Indonesian state policies' compelling conversion in the case of interfaith marriage, most anthropological analyses would attribute the anguish Christian Dayaks experience over such marriages to the threat it poses to their community‐building efforts. But Dayaks themselves anchor their concerns about intermarriage in religious and familial obligations, not in the maintenance of collective religious and ethnic identities. Drawing on the work of Fredrik Barth, I argue that understanding the nature of interfaith marriage and the fears it arouses requires anthropologists to consider not only the macrolevel of state policies and the median level of collective identities but also the more intimate emotional and experiential level of the family and the individual. [marriage, Indonesia, Islam, Christianity, ethnicity]