Religious Confessions Research Articles

Evolución del régimen fiscal de las confesiones religiosas. Especial referencia a las últimas modificaciones legislativas

The economic and fiscal regime of religious confessions is characterized by their submission to regulations that are not valid indefinitely, because in most cases they are enacted either for a specific period of time, or for specific situations that occur. Subsequently its extinction, or even depend on the political and economic situations of each country, and in this case on Church-State relations. Throughout this study, the aim is to analyze the recent legislative developments produced around the alleged normative equality between the Catholic Church, the confessions with a cooperation agreement and those that have recognized the well-known roots, and the application to all of them of the tax regime provided for non-profit entities.

Navigating Gender and Sectarian Affiliation: An Analysis of Young Voters’ Bias Against Female Politicians in Lebanon

In May 2018, a record-breaking number of 86 women candidates ran for parliamentary elections in Lebanon, a country with a power-sharing, consociational, sect-based system that guarantees the representation of 18 legally recognized sects (i.e. religious confessions). Yet, only six women were elected. This article explores whether and how sectarianism trumps gender and support for female candidates in general in vote intention. In doing so, it addresses the interaction between sectarian/ethnic and gender voting in contexts where both identities intersect. This intersection emerges when vote intention is influenced by factors that stem from the patriarchal nature of society and structures of sectarianism, creating interdependent systems of disadvantage. Building on a countrywide pre-electoral survey on the attitudes of young voters in Lebanon, I test ethnic voting and gender-affinity theories and develop fine-grained conceptual links between gender and the wider norms of inclusion and exclusion under sectarian-based political systems in post-conflict countries.

The evolution of marriage in Spain from the francoist dictatorship to the present day

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to present a brief summary about the evolution of marriage in Spain: from Catholic marriage during the years of the Francoist dictatorship (1939-1975), going through the democratic transition and the recognition of the right to marriage in the Constitution of 1978, until the necessity for legislative intervention to interpret the constitutional precept more broadly in order to recognise homosexual marriage. Moreover, we will observe what has been and continues to be the impact of non-catholic confessions in the Spanish marriage system.
 KEYWORDS: marriage, religious confessions, homosexual marriage.

Religion and the Protest Movement

This article analyzes the position of the Christian churches on the protests in Belarus in 2020. This study contributes to the research on the state-society relationship in autocratic regimes by nuancing the thesis that civil society is either marginalized or fully co-opted by the authoritarian state. The protest wave showed that the initiatives of religious groups fostered collective action in a state system that is punitive of any dissent. The article identifies churches as an ambivalent space: one where the state can exercise social control, but where potential resistance to the repressive state might also occur since they enjoy a greater degree of freedom than other organizations in authoritarian Belarus. Moreover, our study argues that religion can be seen as a privileged arena of protest within existing legal frameworks of the “contract” between the state and the church. By looking at the societal engagement of different religious confessions campaigning for their rights and promoting their visions of desirable political development on the grassroots level, this article addresses a range of opportunities to engage in civic activism in Belarus.

Fundamental Information About the Russian State by Lin Zexu in 19th-Century China

This paper is about a unique 19th-century Chinese manuscript Fundamental Information about the Russian State (Eluosiguo Jiyao 俄羅斯國紀要), which was written by the eminent Qing scholar-official Lin Zexu 林則徐 (1785–1850) on the basis of translations made from foreign sources. This and Lin’s other writings were a result of his pursuit to expand the horizons of China’s views about the outside world. One of the main tasks of Lin Zexu’s work was to show the contemporary power of Russia and investigate its origin. As a whole, the manuscript gives a brief description of the Russian empire divided into regions with inner and outer borders, the number of military forces within each region, climate-specific features, religious confessions, local crafts, the customs of the inhabitants, and some historical issues. The present paper provides commentaries on Lin Zexu’s work, which was published in China and wholly devoted to Russia. At the same time, it could be used to investigate the information about and image of Russia that existed in China. The author also discusses the historical role of Qing scholar-officials of the first half of the nineteenth century and their impact upon social thought in China.

Self-Cultivation and Inwardness: How to Establish the Confucian Identity in Korean Neo-Confucianism

The main goals of this essay are to describe and make clear the philosophical implications of self-cultivation concerning the concept of inwardness and examine how it contributes to the formation of the Confucian identity. In two representative Korean Neo-Confucian debates, the Debate on Supreme Polarity between Yi Ǒnjŏk and Cho Hanbo and one of the issues in the Horak Debate about the original substance of the tranquil state (mibal) of the mind, we can see that self-cultivation plays a crucial role in establishing the Confucian identity. For example, the debate between Yi and Cho shows how to teach people to achieve an ideal Confucian character by interpreting “learning human affairs below (hahag-insa)” and “reaching the heavenly principle above (sangdal-chŏlli)” differently. The concept of inwardness is significant as well as problematic in understanding the sense of rivalry against Buddhism earlier and the Yangming School later in the intellectual history of Korean neo-Confucianism. Those who think of themselves as true followers of Confucius and Zhu Xi criticize that a subjective way of experiencing inwardness is close to Buddhism and misleads one in the pursuit of some lofty metaphysical entity without any practical concerns. Despite such a criticism, some Neo-Confucian scholars have emphasized that the original substance of the mind is the tranquility of inwardness. In this vein, we will investigate what kind of philosophical identity most Korean Neo-Confucians have embraced as their own. Their consistent argument for keeping the balance between honoring the virtues and inquiring about learning leads to the claim that the achievement of self-cultivation should contribute to making the world peaceful. Thus, the matter of inwardness often described as deliberate solitude is not so much a subjective realm like religious confession, but vivid experiences of daily life that have never been separated from the manifestation of the Way (dao). In conclusion, the core issue of the Neo-Confucian identity having a sense of rivalry against heresy aims at the matter of practice, i.e., how actively and properly one participates in transforming the world.

Theatres of Belief: Music and Conversion in the Early Modern City ed. by Marie-Alexis Colin, Iain Fenlon, and Matthew Laube

Reviewed by: Theatres of Belief: Music and Conversion in the Early Modern City ed. by Marie-Alexis Colin, Iain Fenlon, and Matthew Laube Paul G. Feller-Simmons Theatres of Belief: Music and Conversion in the Early Modern City. Edited by Marie-Alexis Colin, Iain Fenlon, and Matthew Laube. (Collection "Épitome musical.") Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. [ 312 p. ISBN 9782503598871 (paperback), €70; ISBN 9782503598888 (e-book), €55.] Music examples, tables, illustrations, index. The essay collection Theatres of Belief is the result of a collaborative project between a transnational group of musicologists who share interest in the convergence of religion, sound, and early modern urban spaces. Eleven chapters by different authors provide multiple case studies drawn from cities located in Europe and the Americas between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. These studies showcase a variety of approaches to religious confession, conversion, and soundscape. A leading thread of this volume is interactions between sound and confessionalization in the early modern world. In this regard, the authors' tendency to eschew the overarching narratives that have conflated local experience with universal developments related to religious change is a potentially generative model. Many chapters demonstrate how confessionalization traversed dynamic and distinctly localized trajectories. For instance, Philip Hahn considers the incremental introduction of Lutheran music culture in Ulm following its Reformation in 1531. The chapter advances that the city became an exemplary case of a long, acoustic Reformation. Lutheran theologians tried to introduce church [End Page 395] musical practices in a way that conflicted with Ulm's Zwinglian history and thus repeatedly found resistance. Hahn then challenges a unidirectional model for the cultural development of the Reformation that has tended to sideline the realities of sacred music in many regions of central Europe. In discussing the distinction between opposition to musical performance in urban and rural areas surrounding Ulm, Hahn addresses issues of sonic conversion between social boundaries. In a state of pluriform religious cultures, sacred music served to "experience and express religious belonging" (p. 169). Alexander Fisher also explores the role that sound and music played in the strategies of conversion of confessional spaces in southern Germany. Fisher focuses on sonic conversions within worship spaces and the reconfiguration of space particularly delimited by bell signals, processions, and popular singing. Whereas Protestants demarcated confessional boundaries through the sounding of sermons in the vernacular and congregational singing, Catholics responded by producing orthodox songs for the laity and reconfiguring church architecture. As Hahn shows to be the case in Ulm, Fisher demonstrates that polemics surrounding the control of the soundscape were rooted in confessional politics that functioned as markers of social identity. For example, while processions in Catholic locations such as Munich sacralized the public space, they could also serve as a medium of religious confrontation and negotiation. The sonic conversion of physical structures and the interdependence of landscape and soundscape features most strongly in Iain Fenlon's contribution. He provides a chronological exposition of the Christianization of Cordova, Spain, through architectural, ritual, and musical conversions between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the wake of the reconquista, the construction of a cathedral and royal chapel on the site of the old mosque and the reorganization of the liturgy and music chapel forcefully changed the urban soundscape. Echoing ideas developed by Hahn and Fisher, Fenlon proposes that public music and ritual were functional to displaying Catholic identity and monarchical loyalty in Cordova. In this instance, polyphony performed by the musical forces of the cathedral's chapel gained growing importance in processions throughout the sixteenth century. This "spectacular display of civic and religious belief" (p. 60) thus provided a sonified distinguishability to Catholic devotional identity. Emilio Ros-Fábregas also illustrates how sonic practices identify a Catholic community, albeit in the form of networks interconnected through devotional practices. His chapter focuses on a 1661 publication of Jesuit spiritual exercises dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament based on the traditions of Perpignan and Barcelona. The source provides details about the music that accompanied these exercises and includes an unexpected reference to Juan de Palafox y Mendoza that leads Ros-Fábregas to propose a further connection to Madrid. The chapter frames the source as a key to understanding the extent of the international...

Confessional pluralism in Central and Eastern Europe: A GIS approach

In this recent study, we analyse the religious diversity of Central and Eastern Europe, from the Balkans up to the Baltic region. This region has many religious confessions, without claiming completeness, Roman Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Orthodox, Islam, Hussite and many people without any religion. The recent spatial distribution of the religious confessions has been shaped by different drivers across Central and Eastern Europe. We chose a quantitative method to visually interpret the pluralism of the religious confessions and we selected diversity indices. We calculated the diversity of the religious confessions and ethnicities in a very detailed resolution, at municipality level of each country, based on population census data of 2011. We found statistically significant relationship between the diversity of religious confessions and the diversity of ethnicities. We have also shown that near the national borders, the religious pluralism is higher than in another areas. There is statistically significant connection between the former national borders (1900s and 1930s) and the religiously plural areas. The results of this study provide the evidence of the spatial distribution of borderline syndrome and serves as a good basis for further research (theoretical and statistical) of the religion pluralism in Central-Eastern Europe.

General Opinions and Beliefes about the Romanian Roma People’s Religious Confessions during the 1920s and 1930s

Există o multitudine de mituri, legende, stereotipuri și percepţii eronate despre cultura, originea și religia minorităţii rome din România. Unele publicaţii și ziare editate în special în anii 1920 și 1930, cum ar fi Revista de Sociologie Românească, Ilustraţiunea Română, Ziarul Călătoriilor, au publicat unele articole încercând să descrie și să analizeze originile și practicile religioase ale romilor. Studiul de faţă își propune să aducă în atenţie diferitele percepţii și convingeri despre viaţa religioasă a comunităţii rome, identificate cu precădere în presa naţională. Plecând de la istoriografia subiectului și sursele primare ale epocii, articolul își propune să exploreze cum practicile și politicile societale au influenţat viaţa și confesiunile religioase ale comunităţii rome.

კახეთის მოსახლეობა: დინამიკა და ეთნოსტრუქტურა

For the development and implementation of a rational demographic policy, it is of great importance to reveal the regularities of the transformation of the number and structure of the population of Georgia. The object of our research is the population of the Kakheti region, which has undergone significant changes over the past centuries. The article discusses the main trends of population size and ethno-structural changes – issues of the ratio of the Georgian population and diasporas of Georgia, annexed by the Russian Empire, the Soviet Republic and the post-Soviet Kakheti region. During the considered period, the specific weight of the diasporas in the entire population continuously increased due to the permanent implementation of the intensive immigration policy in Georgia, which was under imperial rule. The same situation was in the population of the Kakheti region, where the contingent of national minorities increased. With active immigration policy, the number of Russian population increased rapidly. In 1926-1939 it became 7.2% of the population of Kakheti. A relatively fast numerical increase of the Armenian diaspora was noted in the 19th century, of the Ossetians - at the beginning of the 20th century. The most stable increase is characterized by the Muslim population. Thanks to its traditions of high natural increase, the number of Azerbaijanis and Kists increased from 6.4 thousand to 37.5 thousand in 1884-1989, by 2014 their share in the population of Kakheti region became 11.8%. In the post-Soviet period, significant changes took place in the number and ethnic structure of the population of the Kakheti region. In the period between the population censuses of 1989-2014, it decreased significantly. Both the number of the entire population and diasporas: Armenians 3 times, Russians - 7 times, Ossetians - 4.9 times, Ukrainians - 9.4 times. Diasporas of Muslim Azeris and Kists remained relative stability. In the conditions of a rapid decrease in the number of the population, the tendency of the transition from a poly-ethnic to a bi-ethnic structure was evident in the Kakheti region. The main reason for the decrease in the number of diasporas is the intensification of emigration processes. It was caused by the collapse of the Georgian economy in the post-Soviet period, ethno-political conflicts and the unprecedented deterioration of living conditions, unemployment, and the deepening of poverty. In addition to this, the intensity of emigration of national minorities was influenced by the fact that a significant part of the diaspora did not know the state language – Georgian and chose to return to their historical and cultural environment, to their homeland. Some emigrated to countries where the standard of living was much higher than in Georgia. The reduction of diasporas was partly caused by their integration into the Georgian population. In the conditions of long-term coexistence, nationalities culturally close to Georgians: Ossetians, Armenians integrated into the Georgian ethnos. Among them, inter-ethnic marriages were common. There were no inter-ethnic confrontations and ethnic conflicts in the Kakheti region. According to the 2014 census in the Kakheti region, it was revealed that in terms of religious confession, Christian Orthodoxy (85.7%) and Muslims (12.1%) dominate. The absolute majority of Muslims are Azerbaijanis, Kists, Hundzis and representatives of the older generation of eco-immigrant Georgian Adjarians. An important task of the government is to ensure decent socio-cultural development of national minorities in the region of Kakheti, characterized by tolerance; to establish an exemplary respect of the population for their customs; in Case of desire to help them in their civic integration, to create an exemplary environment for humane coexistence of nations. Keywords: Georgia, diaspora, Kakheti, national minority, ethnic structure, population. JEL Codes: Q56, R20, R23

Democracy, Economy, Progress and the Rule of Law. Special Reference to the Tax Regime for Religious Denominations

The purpose of this article is twofold: on the one hand, to relate the fiscal and financial model to the Social and Democratic Rule of Law, on the other one, to transfer Spanish experiences that may be of interest to Poland, as both countries began their democratic experience and integration into the European Union a few decades ago. From a multidisciplinary perspective, the contributions that law could make to the field of political economy can be of capital importance for the consolidation of our democratic systems, public order, and social peace, analyzing the role of religious confessions. Methodology. To achieve this purpose, the analytical-comparative-interdisciplinary method was chosen as it was considered the most appropriate one in view of the close connections between economics, law, progress and social peace. The result of the research. The work shows that democracies, although they are the most effective models for achieving the highest standards of progress, and even though in the Polish and Spanish cases, they have the advantage of having served to bring dictatorial periods to an end, there is a need for effective control mechanisms. Democracies absolutely cannot degenerate into corrupt and ineffective systems under the control of large political and partisan oligarchies. The independence of the judiciary is, in this sense, an essential and inalienable element in guaranteeing the correct functioning of other state institutions. It is necessary to insist on the importance of the legal norm as an instrument of political control and its impact on macroeconomics, and the consolidation of democratic regimes, even more in the context initiated with the respective integration processes in the European Union. On the other hand, the aim is to show how beneficial tax treatment for religious denominations has a powerful effect on the achievement of the common good and social peace. In addition, it is about relating importance that has the budgetary balance and mechanisms for controlling public expenditure for the maintenance of progress and social justice in a sustainable model.

The City of Polonne in the Early Modern Period: Socio-Economic and Demographic Aspects

Despite the fact that in recent times the studies in urbanization processes in Ukrainian lands have undergone great advancements, the history of Ukrainian cities especially in the early modern period has not yet been sufficiently delved into. Therefore, studies in regional and local history remain topical for the Ukrainian historiography. The article looks at the history of the city of Polonne in the early modern period and is based on the Inventory of the division of the estates of Prince Oleksandr Ostrogski among his heirs in 1620. This study sheds light on how the city, which was known since the Old Rus times, was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later into the domain of the Ostrozki princely family. On the basis of the Inventory’s description, the spatial organization of the city, its internal arrangement, the system and special features of the buildings were studied. Such socio-topographical parts of the city as Zamok, Peredhoroddia, Stare Polonne, Nove Polonne, Luka and Zagroddia were identified. The article analyses the city socio-demographic situation, in particular, it gives numbers of settled households and within them the numbers of family structures and separate families. The ethnic composition, religious confessions of the city and its self-government on the basis of the Magdeburg law are described as well. With regard to the city’s economic life, it was found out that there had been at least 196 craftsmen and tradesmen in 46 fields. The duties of the citizens were also identified as well as their involvement in agriculture. The article proves that at the beginning of the 17th century the city was an important socio-cultural organism with a well-developed guild organization of crafts and a system of town self-government based on the Magdeburg law. The role of the owners of the city of Polonne – the princes of the House of Ostrogski – in its development in the early modern times is emphasized.

Review: Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds: Studies in Honour of Erica Cruikshank Dodd, edited by Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop

Review: <i>Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds: Studies in Honour of Erica Cruikshank Dodd</i>, edited by Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop

Review: Religious Confession and Evidential Privilege in the 21st Century, edited by Mark Hill QC and A. Keith Thompson

This book of essays investigates legislative and judicial trends toward abrogating the confidentiality of religious confession in Australia, Europe, and the United States. The larger issues, of course, are freedom of conscience and the limits the state may try to impose upon religious groups, most particularly in cases of child abuse. The three essays in Part I criticize the recommendations of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which advised states to remove legal protections for confessions made within a religious setting. Part II considers examples from Europe, where, given the establishment of religion, canon law was part of state codes. Confessional privilege there was largely sacrosanct until the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Part III examines the situation in the United States. Clergy sexual misconduct has driven state legislatures to remove confessional protections, and led to a general decline of religious freedom in that nation.Of particular interest to readers of Nova Religio may be the final essay in the book, which argues that the Church of Scientology has a legitimate claim of confidentiality to shield communications between parishioners and ministers. Since Scientology auditors perform the traditional role of ministers, learning private and personal information in the process of aiding self-realization or problem-solving, auditing meets all the requirements for constitutional protection.The contributors to this volume all view the erosion of confessional privilege as an attack on the free exercise of religion. The editors decry the West’s “growing disinterest in freedom of conscience and religion” and point to its neglect of “Uighur Muslims in China, Rohinga Muslims in Myanmar, Bahais in Iran, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia and Christians in general in Iraq” (15). Readers interested in issues of religion and law and the protection of religious rights will want to read this book.

Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, Scoundrel

Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, Scoundrel

The Relationship Between the Dimensions of Religiousness and Militarist Political Culture Within the Citizens of Serbia

The authors use data obtained through empirical study of the relationship between different types of religiosity and militarist political culture. The three concepts of religiosity are: religious belief, attitude to religious confession, and personalised religiosity. Given the content of each dimension, religious belief and attitude to religious confession can be defined as forms of classical religiosity, while personalised religiosity could be defined as secular religiosity. The aim of the paper is to investigate the relationship between the religiosity of citizens in Serbia and the country’s militarist political culture. Secondary data analysis of the European Value Study (EVS) was used. The highest degree of support for the militaristic form of political culture is contained within the secular form of religiosity – personalised religiosity (which can be varied, from belief in objects to para-religious and religious beliefs). This connection stems from the need to find security.

Religious Confession and Evidential Privilege in the 21st Century Edited by Mark Hill QC and Keith Thompson Connor Court Publishing, Cleveland, Australia, 2021, 320 pp (paperback A$40), ISBN: 978-1-922449-92-4

Religious Confession and Evidential Privilege in the 21st Century Edited by Mark Hill QC and Keith Thompson Connor Court Publishing, Cleveland, Australia, 2021, 320 pp (paperback A$40), ISBN: 978-1-922449-92-4 - Volume 24 Issue 3

RECEPTION OF TRYPILLIA HERITAGE IN NATIVE FAITH MOVEMENT OF UKRAINE IN THE CONTEXT OF ETHNO-CONFESSIONAL IDENTITY

One of the topical issues in modern religious studies, requiring a proper coverage, is the study of the Trypillia spiritual heritage perception by representatives of modern neo-pagan religious organizations (usually called in Ukraine as native faith or native beliefs, originally "ridnovirski" from the Ukrainian words "native" and "believe" that identification clearly indicating the autochthonous characteristics of beliefs, customs and rites represented by a particular confession). Today in Ukraine there exist a number of different religious confessions and several communities, which differ significantly from each other in their beliefs and religious practices. Despite the fact that the vast majority of native faith communities in Ukraine are patriotic and nationally oriented, historically there is a certain "chronological paradox", in that the first mention of the name "Ukraine" appears in the Kyiv chronicle in 1187, while officially the process of Ukrainian lands (that time called "Rus") christianization began in 988. Such dissonance naturally actualizes the issue of searching for an alternative ethno-confessional identity in the native faith environment, as the vector of modern native believers religious activity targets at reviving autochthonous pre-Christian beliefs and spiritual values, that is, towards an older chronological retrospective, among which objects quite often there appear the Trypillia spiritual heritage. Trypillia culture (also called Cucuteni-Trypillya) – is a Neolithic–Eneolithic archaeological culture, whose name comes from the name of the village of Trypillya in Kyiv region, it flourished between 5500 and 2750 BCE, was located between the Carpathians and the Dnieper in modern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania (Trypilian culture). The novelty of this work is that for the first time in this research perspective, the issues of both the reception of the spiritual heritage of ancient Trypillia by modern natives of Ukraine and the problem of ethno-confessional identity in the Ukrainian native movement are considered. The methodological basis of our study relays upon the conceptual work of the French philosopher Vincent Decombe (Decombe, 2015, 281 р.). In particular, the concept of "ethno-confessional identity" is a component of the collective identities concept developed by the researcher, i.e. those that formulate answers to the question: "Who are we?". At the same time, this term represents the situation of ethnic and confessional identities integration, which in the context of understanding the religious processes of the native-faith movement in Ukraine do appear as an actual phenomenon of religious life in its inseparable integrity. The research publication highlights the problem through the prism of the most prominent religious confessions and communities in the religious field of Ukraine, which render certain visions regarding their own reception of the ancient Trypillians spiritual heritage.

Interrelation of religious identity and tolerance in interpersonal relations of young Kazakhstanis

The relevance of the problem of studying the relationship between religious identity and tolerance in interpersonal relations of young Kazakhstanis, due to the growing tension in the interpersonal sphere on the basis of interethnic and religious conflicts. The purpose of the study is to identify and substantiate the relationship between the religious identity of the individual and tolerance in interpersonal relation- ships of young Kazakhstanis. The article analyzes the structure of religious identity of young Kazakh- stanis, describes the features of the types and components of tolerance and their interrelationships. The peculiarities of the development of religious identity and tolerance among Kazakh youth are considered through the prism of harmony/disharmony of relations. The study used a new questionnaire for the study of religious identity “Measurement of individual and social components of religious identity” by D. Van Kamp, adaptation by V.A.Shorokhova. The study shows that the religious identity of young Kazakhstanis develops heterochronously, has a social orientation. Young Kazakhstanis are characterized by a high level of tolerance. As a trait, tolerance has a personal orientation. The index of disharmony of relations shows that young Kazakhstanis are characterized by quite harmonious relationships. The results of the correlation analysis show that for the development of tolerance and religious identity, their identification with the reference group is important for young Kazakhstanis. There is a unity of mutual influence of per- sonal and social factors, with some advantage of the influence of personal factors. The obtained research&nbsp;results can be used by practical psychologists to carry out further work with representatives of various religious confessions, to form a comfortable ethno-cultural environment, contributing to the preservation and development of ethno-cultural and religious diversity of the peoples of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Key words: religious identity, types of tolerance, components of tolerance, relationships.

The Myth of Immobility: Women and Travel in the British Imperial Indian Ocean

For decades, historians have argued that the networks of Indian Ocean travel and commerce were a “man’s game.” Men ranged widely across the sea in search of wealth and employment while women stayed at home. This article presents evidence that demonstrates such an understanding of female immobility is greatly overstated. Using the Aden records of the Indian Office Library, this essay first challenges the common assumption that women, of any religious confession, were rarely participants in the networks of movement that shaped Britain’s Indian Ocean realm. Second, it calls into question the widely held notion that female believers had little legal agency under the double yoke of British colonial authority and Islamic law. As such, this article illustrates the dynamic role of women within the milieu of the modern Indian Ocean and their place as active agents in the construction of transregional communities.