Religious Disputes Research Articles

RESEARCH ON THE DISPUTE RESOLUTION MECHANISM OF THE HUI COMMUNITY IN NORTHWEST CHINA

The dispute resolution mechanism of the Muslim community in Northwest China, which is dominated by religious mediation, is greatly influenced by Islamic law. The author takes two disputes in Muslim community as examples to explore the characteristics and influencing factors of the dispute resolution mechanism under the background of Hui Chineseethnic minority culture. The study of the relationship between the informal path of religious mediation and the formal path of official dispute resolution mechanism brings us a new perspective to understand the religious dispute resolution mechanism of the Hui Muslim communities in Northwest China. In addition, what are the problems existing in the dispute settlement mechanism of the northwest Hui community? Why? This series of challenges and tests also belong to the research scope of this paper. Key words: Dispute Resolution; Mediation; Hui; Islamic Law; Northwest China.

The monastic genealogy of Hoḫʷärwa monastery – a unique witness of Betä Ǝsraʾel historiography

During the course of a study of the manuscript tradition of the Betä Ǝsraʾel (Ethiopian Jews), the manuscript Jerusalem, National Library, Ms. Or. 87 came to light. This codex is a unique manuscript with several important elements that contribute to our knowledge of the history of the Betä Ǝsraʾel. Its by far most important feature are two short additional notes that I have come to call the Hoḫwärwa genealogy. This genealogy is the second piece of original pre-twentieth century Betä Ǝsraʾel historiography ever discovered, next to the text published by Leslau in 1946-47 as ‘A Falasha Religious Dispute.’ Taking the manuscript as a starting point, this article aims to cover topics such as the Betä Ǝsraʾel scribal tradition and aspects of their literature, their monasticism, the history of Hoḫwärwa monastery, and the history of the manuscript itself.

Time, Power, and Religion

Abstract The main argument of this paper is that the sacred time and space of the nation has displaced the meaning of sacredness of the religious sites, and legitimized the national community. By comparing the Temple Mount and Ayodhya disputes, the paper exposes the tensions between two polarities, sacred/profane and religious/political, which helps explain the influence of national identities on the contested sacredness of religious sites. The competition over the Temple Mount is nested within a “thicker” context of conflicting political claims over Jerusalem and national territory between Jewish groups on one hand and between Jews and Muslims on the other. The Ayodhya disagreement is related to the political tensions between the dominant and the minority religions, which have turned the religious dispute over a holy site into a debate on the sacredness of the national community.

Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo. “Riddles in Ancient Indian and Iranian Religious Disputes”

Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo. “Riddles in Ancient Indian and Iranian Religious Disputes”

Kościół, Cerkiew i kwestia ukraińska. Spór na forum polskiego parlamentu w 1938 r.

The subject of this article is the parliamentary discussion of 1938 concerning the religious dispute in the south-eastern borderlands of the Second Polish Republic. The disputes concerned, among other things, the political role of the Greek Catholic Church, which was strongly involved in the Ukrainian national movement. In 1938 a revindication action took place in the Chełm region, as a result of which the Polish authorities liquidated over one hundred Orthodox churches. These actions were the subject of a stormy debate in the Parliament between Polish and Ukrainian MPs. The arguments of the Polish side concerned, above all, the protection of the security of the Polish state threatened by intervention from both the East (USSR) and the West (Germany).

ПОТЕРЯННЫЙ В ПЕРЕВОДЕ: МАТТЕО РИПА И ЕГО РОЛЬ В СПОРЕ О КИТАЙСКИХ РИТУАЛАХ

The activity of the Catholic missionary Matteo Ripa is placed here in the context of the Chinese rites controversy (CRC), a religious dispute regarding Christian tolerance of Chinese ancestral worship rituals. I trace the distortions in the literature by analyzing three versions of Ripa’s memoirs entitled Giornale. Contrary to a widespread view, Ripa was neither a Jesuit nor a professional artist. Ripa took an active part in the CRC and opposed the members of the Jesuit Order. Ripa’s memoirs, written upon his return from China, have become a truly real weapon in the struggle between Catholic organizations. The Jesuits prepared the first publication of Ripa’s Giornale (1832) that started shaping the image of Ripa. The editors removed all criticisms of the Jesuit activity in China. Additional distortions arise from the simplified and accessible English-language edition of Giornale (1844) that introduces Ripa as a traveling artist. I study the discrepancies between the versions of Giornale to conclude that misrepresentations of Ripa activity and position are related to his role in the CRC. Suggestion is drawn that the main reason for the distorted image of Matteo Ripa in academic literature was not Jesuit’s desire to change the text and the Ripa’s role in the CRC, as the interest of readers in a shortened and more exciting version of the Giornale of 1844. And the well-publicized activities of the Jesuits in the East contributed to the association of Ripa with this order.

Madmen and a Melancholic: Allusions to Health and the Anointing of the Sick in Polemics of the Hussite Period

Madmen and a Melancholic: Allusions to Health and the Anointing of the Sick in Polemics of the Hussite Period Hussitism regarded as heresy was perceived in terms of a disease in the healthy body of the Church. In particular, raids by Hussite troops were interpreted in the category of madness, as furor Hussitarum. However, the Hussite side also saw controversies regarding health issues. John of Borotín, a physician and Utraquist, made a long-distance diagnosis of the psychiatric condition of his Hussite adversary, John of Capistrano. Reformist radicals considered the principles of the Anointing of the Sick and pondered whether the rite was a sacrament or not. Although medical and health allusions were not the main rhetorical tool used in the religious disputes, such examples can be found there.

Winning the Battle of Authorities: The Muslim Disputes Over the Covid-19 Pandemic Plague in Contemporary Indonesia

<p>Scholarly works on the way Indonesian Muslims perceive and respond to a pandemic—including Covid-19—have left an untouched theoretical gap. Works on pandemics or plagues mostly consist of sporadic and preliminary brief reflective pieces. This article endeavors to fill the academic gap concerning this theme. This article seeks to portray the dynamics of the religious disputes among Indonesian Muslims about the Covid-19 pandemic that affects the entire world. Using a qualitative method of analysis based on data derived from various sources - such as social and non-social media like newspapers and such - the paper argues that the public sphere serves as an open stage to contest ideas among society members where ideas based on sacred and scientific texts are publicly tested. While the majority of Muslims comply with the official disease prevention protocol, others resist it on the grounds that the protocol might undermine the spirit of Islam and the quality of the faith. Their resistance to some degree indicates the dominance of the deductive paradigm that religious authority is endangered in the public sphere.</p>

Roma, Vienna e l’Oriente

Abstract They never met. But the ‚friendship by correspondence‘ (1628–1634) between the traveller Pietro Della Valle and the desk-bound librarian of the imperial library in Vienna, Sebastian Tengnagel, was built on a solid foundation: their shared passion for the Christian and Muslim East, its languages and its books was an „iron bond“ that gave rise to a close and immediate understanding between two men, despite their huge differences of temperament and experience. However, these letters (kept at the Vatican Archives and the Austrian National Library) do not just bear witness to the growing knowledge of the East in the first half of the 17th century. They also show that early Catholic Orientalism had its roots in a highly stratified terrain, in which military conflict, irenic tensions, missionary propaganda, philological investigation, religious disputes, a rejection of book censorship, and theories on sovereignty were layered and interwoven. But how, and why, would anyone choose to become an orientalist, and what did it entail? Rome and Vienna, the cities from which the letters were written, were both normative centres with universalist ambitions; both were engaged in a profound rethinking and redefinition of secular and religious power. The pages written by Tengnagel and Della Valle reflect the writers’ love of and interest in books. But reading carefully between the lines you can also hear the ‚noises off‘ of the cities in which they were penned.

Rethinking the Rites Controversy: Kilian Stumpf'sActa Pekinensiaand the Historical Dimensions of a Religious Quarrel

The Chinese rites controversy (c.1582–1742) is typically characterized as a religious quarrel between different Catholic orders over whether it was permissible for Chinese converts to observe traditional rites and use the termstianandshangdito refer to the Christian God. As such, it is often argued that the conflict was shaped predominantly by the divergent theological attitudes between the rites-supporting Jesuits and their anti-rites opponents towards “accommodation.” By examining the Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf'sActa Pekinensia—a detailed chronicle of the papal legate Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon's 1705–6 investigation into the controversy in Beijing—this article proposes that ostensibly religious disputes between Catholic orders consisted primarily of disagreements over ancient Chinese history. Stumpf's text shows that missionaries’ understandings of antiquity were constructed through their interpretations of ancient Chinese books and their interactions with the Kangxi Emperor. The article suggests that the historiographical characterization of the controversy as “religious” has its roots in the Vatican suppression of the rites, which served to erase the historical nature of the conflict exposed in theActa Pekinensia.

Concordata Vaticano e Moçambique (2012): laicidade, liberdade religiosa e educação

O presente artigo aborda a complexidade da laicidade na educação da sociedade moçambicana, tendo especial atenção na análise da Concordata firmada entre os Estados de Moçambique e Vaticano, 2012. Este acordo contém a autorização para que o “Ensino Religioso Católico” (ERC) ligado à Igreja Católica seja realizado em qualquer unidade escolar moçambicana. O tema exige aprofundamento e investigação sociológica por se tratar de uma tensão existente entre a noção de laicidade que o recente Estado laico de direito democrático, também baseado no “respeito e na garantia dos direitos e liberdades fundamentais”, exprime em sua carta Magna e, a Concordata que disponibiliza o Sistema Nacional de Educação para ações de cunho proselitistas inserido em um sistema confessional oferecido à população. A problemática possibilita refletir sobre a estratégia católica internacional junto aos países lusófonos, bem como, relacionar a adoção do ERC nas escolas/unidades que prestam serviços de educação contratados pelo governo moçambicano à população em geral. Tendo em vista a pluralidade religiosa local e a imposição do ERC nas respectivas escolas. A pesquisa foi realizada de forma bibliográfica, eletrônica e documental (May, 2004) sob a perspectiva qualitativa com a base teórica das Ciências Sociais e Sociologia das Religiões. Logo, a oferta confessional, estabelecida da Concordata Internacional entre o Vaticano e Moçambique, e as dinâmicas decorrentes, além de contribuírem para o enfraquecimento da pluralidade religiosa e, portanto, da democracia, tornam a educação um campo de disputas também religiosas no país.

Anti-Splinter Brotherhood of Saint Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov in the Fight Against the Old Believers in the Tomsk Diocese

he question of the missionary activity of the antisplinter Brotherhood of St. Demetrius, Metropolitan of Rostov in the fight against the Old Believers in the territory of the Tomsk Diocese is considered. The author has studied a complex of rich and diverse archival sources, as well as activity reports of both the Brotherhood itself and its individual members, presented in official provincial and diocesan publications. Based on this, it was possible to recreate the overall «picture» of the Brotherhood and show its regional specificity. In particular, the purpose, composition of the Brotherhood, as well as the main directions of its missionary "anti-splinter" activity were determined. In order to combat the «schism» and the so-called «prevention of the avoidance of the schism», the brothers actively held religious disputes and interviews, both with the Old Believers themselves and the parishioners of the official Orthodox Church. Another missionary way to solve the tasks of the anti-splinter Brotherhood was to create and develop a network of «anti-splinter libraries» and parish schools. In general, despite the specific and concrete results of their anti-Old Believer missionary activities, the Brotherhood was not able to achieve its goals, including due to the regional specifics of the diocese.

COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

AbstractWhen adjudicating religious disputes, constitutional courts often resort to a particular discursive register. The notions ‘tolerance’ and ‘respect’ are an integral part of this religion-specific constitutional register. But what do judges mean when they deploy the language of tolerance and respect? And what substantive role, if any, do both notions play in the constitutional interpretation of religious freedom? This article seeks to answer these conceptual and substantive questions by comparing constitutional case law on religious freedom from India, Israel and the United States. It also provides linkages to ongoing processes of (alleged) constitutional retrogression in the three jurisdictions.

The revival of the Name-Glorifiers debate in post-Soviet Russia

ABSTRACT Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy has witnessed a revival of a century old religious dispute over the veneration of the divine names (imiaslavie). Debate over the issue has raged on the internet and in print across both the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and non-canonical churches claiming to be the ‘true’ Orthodox. Yet unlike many issues in contemporary Russian Orthodoxy (monarchism, ecumenism, and so on), advocacy for and opposition to the veneration of the divine names divides both those within the Moscow Patriarchate and within dissenting groups. It also cuts unpredictably across the usual divide between ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ currents within the Church and ‘traditionalist’ or ‘fundamentalist’ currents. This contribution seeks to challenge binary interpretations of Russian Orthodoxy both from ‘within’ by those religious actors who seek to assert that one or another version of Orthodoxy is the ‘true’ one as well as from ‘without’ by observers who underestimate the complexity of diverse currents within it.

Making and Meaning-Making: The Antwerp Altarpiece in Ringsaker (c. 1530) across the Reformation

Abstract Antwerp altarpieces produced between c. 1500–1540 could be remarkably similar and have often been regarded as epitomising the shift from bespoke commissions to standardized objects made to be sold on an open market. The only (preserved) Antwerp altarpiece imported to Norway was commissioned by the priest Ansten Jonsson Skonk and put on display in the parish church of Ringsaker shortly before the Reformation was introduced in Denmark-Norway in 1537. Unique in Norway, the altarpiece is of uncommon character even within the larger body of preserved Antwerp pieces. When analysing the many idiosyncrasies of the Ringsaker altarpiece, it comes across as a deliberately versatile product: on the one hand it carefully reflects altarpieces and devotional practices known to Skonk; on the other, it also reflects contemporary religious disputes of northern Europe more broadly, substantiating the claim that (some) Antwerp workshops intentionally created “multi-confessional” artworks – seemingly to suit the patron(s) in question once installed.

Dialectics, Rhetoric, and Functional Issues in Early Modern Hungarian Religious Disputes. Polemics Research in a Long Reformation Perspective

The study deals with 16th and 17th century Hungarian printed polemical works considering religious disputes a typical form of communication in the age of Reformation and Catholic renewal. Its conceptual framework is the paradigm or research method of the long Reformation as an efficient assistance to the discovery and appreciation of early modern theological-religious diversity. The analysis examines several kinds of communication which occurs in the (religious) dispute, and explores the rules and conventions along which the (verbal) fighting takes place. Research shows that the opponents repeatedly refer to the rules of dialectics refuting each other’s standpoints accusing them of faulty argumentation, i.e., the wrong use of syllogisms. Dialectics is, namely, in this context not the ars with the help of which truth is found but with which evident truth is checked and justified in a way that the opponents can also be educated to follow the right direction.

Beyond Prophecy: Native Visionaries in American Religious Studies - Más allá de la profecía: Los visionarios nativos en los estudios de la religión americanos

This three-part article traces the use of the word “prophet” to describe Native actors such as Neolin and Handsome Lake in colonial North America and the early United States; details the category's perpetuation and effects in work by ethnologists, anthropologists, historians, and scholars of religious studies; and, finally, proposes a focus on visionary media, including wampum and maps, as articulations of Native peoplehood—a concept borrowed from Native American and Indigenous Studies. The goal is to show how “prophet” classifications emerged within a context of colonization and religious dispute. Continued use reinforces narratives of Native disappearance, if not excuses anti-Native violence, in American religious studies. In response, I call on scholars to decolonize their writing and teaching about Native visionaries by focusing on their media as evidence of the futures they projected for their people.

The teaching of Кalam in the history of Islamic philosophy

This article reveals the importance of Islam in the formation and development of the Arab Caliphate. The wars of conquest of the Arab state were fought under the banner of Islam. All those who converted to Islam began to be called Muslims (Muslim - devotee, obedient to God). Having emerged at the beginning of the seventh century, in Western Arabia, in Mecca, by the end of the noted century, Islam spread to the territory of Iran and Central Asia. At the initial stage of the existence of the new Muslim state, spread over such a vast territory, the primary task was to adapt the Quranic precepts to the new realities. The art of interpreting the Qur'an and collecting hadiths were cultivated. The political struggle in the Arab Caliphate was conducted in the form of philosophical and religious disputes. The debaters in discussions on theological and philosophical topics pursued completely earthly goals. Ethnic diversity and confessional pluralism that developed in the empire also did not help stabilize the situation. A characteristic feature of Islamic philosophy is its polemical orientation; this is the logic of its development. Dissatisfaction with the decisions of previous schools on fundamental philosophical issues gave rise to the need for the emergence of new schools and teachings. As a result of the ideological struggle, a line of speculative religious philosophy arose known as kalam.

Irreducible Plurality, Indivisible Unity: Singapore Relational Constitutionalism and Cultivating Harmony Through Constructing a Constitutional Civil Religion

AbstractThis Article seeks to explore the nature, function, source, and content of a constitutional civil religion (CCR) within Singapore’s constitutional experiment in managing the diversity of race and religion and promoting solidarity. CCR is constructed as a strategy to secure social harmony within the world’s most religiously diverse polity, through recognizing an irreducible plurality in ethnic and religious terms, while maintaining an indivisible unity through nurturing bonds of citizen solidarity. This dovetails with the function of the constitution as an instrument of social integration, involving the articulation and regular affirmation of shared community values and aspirations, as well as process and practices—or public rituals—which regulate dispute resolution or conflict management during instances or crises where racial and religious harmony is threatened. A functional approach is taken towards the idea of a civil religion, and the tasks of integration, legitimation, and inspiration it may play within a constitutional order. The nature of civil religion in general, and the sources of CCR in Singapore, as well as its expression as a public ritual in managing religious disharmony disputes is discussed.

Father Clement, the Religious Novel, and the Form of Protestant-Catholic Controversy

Grace Kennedy’s anti-Catholic novelFather Clement: A Roman Catholic Story(1823) stands almost alone in the nineteenth century when it comes to evidence not only for its reception, but also its use and success, or lack thereof, as a proselytization and devotional tool. The novel’s form and polemical strategies exerted a powerful influence on both Catholic and Protestant writers, popularizing the controversial novel across denominations. In particular,Father Clement’s celebration of prooftexting rooted insola scripturaas the best method of religious disputation helped end the earlier nineteenth-century “polite” novel’s emphasis on non-confrontational, genteel sociability. But as its Protestant and Catholic reception histories suggest, the novel’s ambivalent treatment of its title character, along with its overt didacticism, led to appropriations that Kennedy could not have predicted.Father Clementcatalyzed resistance amongst Catholic readers and novelists, some of whom were inspired by the title character to creatively reinterpret the novel as a brief for Catholicism, others of whom turned to Biblical quotation as a means of undoingsola scripturaaltogether. Thus, if the novel predictably generated Protestant imitations, it also led Catholics to new experiments in controversial rhetoric and fiction.