Very few studies explicitly, let alone quantitatively, examine gaps in religious intolerance among individual Muslims based on affiliation with major Muslim organizations in Indonesia. Most... Show moreVery few studies explicitly, let alone quantitatively, examine gaps in religious intolerance among individual Muslims based on affiliation with major Muslim organizations in Indonesia. Most existing studies either focus on a single organization (non-comparative), are at the organizational policy level (not examining individual attitudes), or use a limited number of samples in their analysis. Against this backdrop, this study compares Indonesian Muslims’ levels of religious intolerance based on their affiliation with Muslim organizations or traditions: Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Muhammadiyah, and other organizations. We utilize a large-scale household survey, the 2014 Indonesia Family Life Survey-5, and run an ordinal logistic regression to identify organizations’ rank on the religious intolerance scale. We find that Muslims without any affiliation with a Muslim organization (some 18 percent of Indonesian Muslims) are the most tolerant. Against this reference group, we find that NU followers are generally the most tolerant, followed by those affiliated with Muhammadiyah, and those affiliated with other Muslim organizations. This finding adds a stock of knowledge to our understanding of religion and society, especially regarding interfaith relations in Indonesia and in the Muslim world in general. Methodologically, this study also shows the benefit and feasibility of identifying the dynamic of religious intolerance using a quantitative approach at a micro level. Show less
This thesis uses a language perspective to examine the complex relationship between Muslims and Christians in post-Soviet Russia, as well as their attitudes vis-à-vis the state. An important... Show moreThis thesis uses a language perspective to examine the complex relationship between Muslims and Christians in post-Soviet Russia, as well as their attitudes vis-à-vis the state. An important conclusion of this thesis is that a religious language variant does not only signal a speaker's religious identity. By opting for a particular language, by using or avoiding specific religious vocabulary, speakers also aim to secure their belonging to desired ethnic, national and political groups. Therefore, along with Orthodox Christians, also Russia’s Muslims instrumentalise the religious variant of the Russian language to gain political influence and social recognition. This process, in turn, affects the prestige of Islamic vernaculars spoken in the country, as the thesis demonstrates through the example of the Tatar language. These sociolinguistic changes, in fact, reflect significant developments within Russia's Islam and Orthodox Christianity. The study reveals that the official institutions of these two religions undergo the process of convergence. Namely, they develop similar views on Russia’s domestic and foreign politics, as well as comparable doctrinal lines of defence against the challenges of modernity, and both of them interpret and protect societal moral norms along the same conservative principles. Show less
This article provides an ethnographic exploration of a new religious movement in Nigeria that often goes by the name ‘Chrislam’. With a particular focus on the Ogbomoso Society of Chrislam, the... Show moreThis article provides an ethnographic exploration of a new religious movement in Nigeria that often goes by the name ‘Chrislam’. With a particular focus on the Ogbomoso Society of Chrislam, the article documents the group’s origins and practices, as well as its public reception. Founded on a claimed vision from God in 2005, the group teaches that Christianity, Islam and African Indigenous Religions come from the same source and should be reunited into a single religious movement. Core to their understanding is what they call ‘a spirit of accommodation’, which provides a divine directive to exceed mere tolerance or coexistence and combine these religions under one roof. With their mission of pursuing unity and commonality while dispelling differences, the group manages to creatively embed multiple complex religious traditions into their belief structures, liturgical practices and ritual ceremonies, in what can be described as a religious bricolage. Despite the group’s intention to promote peace and unity and act as a counterpoint to violent movements such as Boko Haram, the Ogbomoso Society of Chrislam finds itself at the centre of an ongoing debate about the politics of religious bricolage and the resulting cultural limits of acceptable forms of religious entanglements. Show less
This dissertation explores the causation of mass conversions to Islam in Bolaang-Mongondow and to Protestant Christianity in Sangir-Talaud and Minahasa (North Sulawesi, Indonesia) in the eighteenth... Show moreThis dissertation explores the causation of mass conversions to Islam in Bolaang-Mongondow and to Protestant Christianity in Sangir-Talaud and Minahasa (North Sulawesi, Indonesia) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It demonstrates that despite deviations in particularities, the mass conversions to world religions in these regions broadly shared similar causations. It places emphasis on particular periods in the nineteenth-century when the Dutch colonial state centralized political authority and imposed census-based monetary taxation with the aim of commercializing the economy. It points to these reforms as the immediate triggers that enabled both Dutch apical rulers and especially indigenous apical rulers to weaken the authority of subaltern chiefs. It illustrates that these reforms were weaved into the religious conversion agenda of rulers as a strategy to further consolidate authority by depriving the subaltern chiefs of their functionally undifferentiated and socially embedded authority. As such, this dissertation shows that the apical rulers could expand their political and economic reach while paving the way for their claimed subjects to access prestigious religious identities, which had hitherto been exclusive to the ruling elite. Show less
This study focuses on the issue of a “moral crisis” which was a widely discussed topic among the Ottoman intelligentsia. Moving on from the common view that the “moral crisis” reached a peak... Show moreThis study focuses on the issue of a “moral crisis” which was a widely discussed topic among the Ottoman intelligentsia. Moving on from the common view that the “moral crisis” reached a peak during the First World War, this study investigates how morality was related to the war and the preconditions that created the perception of a crisis in morality. The study argues that morality was a contested space among the intellectuals and explains how rival ideologies set forth their political positions depending on differing understandings of morality. For the state, on the other hand, moral decline became a matter of national security during the war. The study demonstrates how wartime rivalries were reflected in the cultural sphere through morality discourses. In public opinion and political circles, immorality was generally considered a social problem that had been imported from European countries. At the social level, the study focuses on family, women, and morality related crimes with an emphasis on the impact of war on traditional family order. The dissertation sheds a light on the place of morality in lawmaking processes, the ideas of reform and progress, and plans for a new society. Show less
Al sinds de oprichting in 1988 is het islamitisch basisonderwijs in Nederland een bron van discussie. De ontwikkeling ervan heeft de afgelopen dertig jaar niet stilgestaan en geeft aanleiding tot... Show moreAl sinds de oprichting in 1988 is het islamitisch basisonderwijs in Nederland een bron van discussie. De ontwikkeling ervan heeft de afgelopen dertig jaar niet stilgestaan en geeft aanleiding tot nieuwe inzichten. Toch worden in de discussie al jarenlang dezelfde argumenten gebruikt.Hoe geven de verschillende islamitische basisscholen vandaag de dag vorm aan hun identiteit? En hoe wegen zij de verschillende maatschappelijkedebatten over de islam daarin af?Dit boek laat – met een focus op de identiteitsvorming - de leerkrachten en directieleden zelf aan het woord en probeert de verschillen in waarden, normen en gewoonten van binnenuit te duiden.Islamitische basisscholen blijken steeds meer aandacht te hebben voor de maatschappelijke context. Ook wordt inzichtelijk dat islamitische basisscholen zich van andere basisscholen onderscheiden vanwege hun interne diversiteit en de continue dialoog met die maatschappelijke context.Dit boek is een pleidooi voor genuanceerder denken over en handelen rond het islamitisch basisonderwijs in Nederland. Show less
Against what is perceived as a tacit agreement between Russia’s ‘traditional’ religions (Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism) not to engage in missionary work among each other’s faith... Show moreAgainst what is perceived as a tacit agreement between Russia’s ‘traditional’ religions (Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism) not to engage in missionary work among each other’s faith communities, Priest Daniil Sysoev (1974–2009) conducted assertive evangelism among Muslims. This article analyses Sysoev’s confrontational discourse on Islam, and his strategies for missionary work. The most important of these strategies were his use of Islamic vernaculars for Orthodox Christian preaching among Muslims, and his active engagement of Islamic authorities in public theological debates. The article argues that, in these strategies, he followed the model of the Kazan Theological Seminary in the nineteenth century, which conducted missionary work among Muslim Tatars; and, also like the Kazan missionaries, Sysoev developed a focus on the Kriashens (Christian Tatars), and even played a role in the elaboration of Tatar Christian terminologies. Sysoev’s assassination in 2009 raises many questions, including how far he was aiming at becoming a martyr. While his parish continues to call for Sysoev’s canonization, the official Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has been ambiguous about his rigorous and confrontational mission, although the sweeping political Orthodox activism of Sysoev’s followers seems to converge with the ROC’s aim to strengthen its position in Russian society. Show less
In central sudanic Africa, the seventeenth century was a period of upheaval and major social change. Relations of power shifted, as did trade-routes and the meaning of Islam for ruling elites.... Show moreIn central sudanic Africa, the seventeenth century was a period of upheaval and major social change. Relations of power shifted, as did trade-routes and the meaning of Islam for ruling elites. Islam spread from royal courts to rural communities, leading to new identities, new boundaries and new tasks for experts of the religion. In theology two movements stand out: one that gave priority to a return to scriptural sources and the verification of knowledge, another of the increasing importance in the region of Sufism. In this context, the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī acquired an exceptional reputation because his work addressed issues that were apparently important to his audience. Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the other. It shows that scholars like al-Wālī, on the geographical margins of the Muslim world, participated in the theological debates in the metropolitan centres of Muslim learning of the time, but did so on their own terms. At the same time, al-Wālī’s work sheds additional light on a century in the Islamic history of West Africa that has received little scholarly attention. Show less
