May 2015 (Vol. 30, No. 7)

A conference on new religious expressions in Mexico and the rest of Latin America in New York finds the growth of both syncretistic and transplanted faiths. RW attended the Columbia University conference in early April where Graciela Mochkofsky, a visiting scholar at New York University, presented the case of a rising new Judaism in Latin America. In last 15 years, she finds that impoverished Christian men and women without any Jewish ancestry have converted to Judaism in Latin America. These people, in almost all cases, were born in Roman Catholic homes, and joined evangelical or Pentecostal churches and then found Judaism. Even when they were still Christians, they learned Jewish laws and customs with the help of books and Internet. Later, they sought help from rabbis and organizations from America and Israel. During the past 20 years, several hundred Latin American converts have migrated en masse to Israel. She argues that this mass conversion, mostly made up of mestizos, may shed a new light on the questions of Jewish identity and Israeli citizenship.

Renĕe de la Torre Castellanos, an anthropology professor at CIESAS Occidente in Guadalajara, Mexico, presented a paper on Neomexicanismo, a spiritual-cultural movement based on the recovery of pre-Hispanic cultures. She explained that this New Age movement is represented by two overlapping groups: 1) Reginos, which combines a holistic interpretation of the New Age movement influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, with the recovery of Mexico’s indigenous tradition 2) The rainbow tribes, which are the environmentalist hippie circuit. She claims that New Age movement in Mexico has created a series of new expressions, networks and spiritual movements that are the results of an apparent fusion and hybridizing between New Age and religious folk, and ethnic traditions of Mexico.

Claudio Lomnitz, Columbia University professor of anthropology, dealt with the problems of communitarianism and religion in the drug wars in the state of Michoacăn. He argues that La Familia Michoacana and the Knights Templar, two drug cartels, gained popular support by adopting hierarchical and familial structures when the local state no longer functioned properly and the family unit broke down. They became quasi-cults or religious groups, which protect local society and viewed themselves as members of a family that included local citizens. For example, local citizens canonized Nazario Moreno, the leader of the Knights Templar, as a saint. – By K.T. Chun, a New Jersey-based sociologist and writer.

A new variant of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, is finding mainstream recognition in Britain, writes Edward Anderson in the journal Contemporary South Asia (Vol. 23, No.1). What Anderson calls “neo-Hindutva” is different from “orthodox” Hindu nationalism, represented by the Rashtiya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in that the former is less tied to Hindu majoritarian politics and tends to propagate high-tech, virtual expressions of conservative Hinduism for a global following. The author traces this shift to two groups in England, the Hindu Forum of Britain (HFB) and the web- and protest-based group Hindu Human Rights (HHR). Both groups became more prominent after they led protests against a 2006 art exhibition in London by Indian Muslim artist M.F. Husain. Since then, the British government has recognized both groups as leading representatives of the Hindu community in its “increasingly faith-focused, multicultural ‘cohesion’ policies.”

The RSS and other Hindu nationalist groups in India and abroad are not known for their interfaith activities, and the British government avoids connections with them in fear of jeopardizing their multi-cultural policies just as they do with radical Islam. Because the HFB and HHR also tend to disassociate themselves from these more militant groups and support interfaith and ecumenical involvement, they are seen as more suitable partners for the government, Anderson writes. But more liberal Hindus in the UK particularly criticize the more activist HHR for its conservative “homogenized” (if globalized) Hinduism that often agitates—with its large Facebook following—perceived enemies to the religion, and still lead protests and boycotts against museums showing Husain’s allegedly anti-Hindu artworks. The HFB has also been active in criticizing and seeking a boycott against American Hindu scholar Wendy Doniger for her portrayal of Hinduism in her book The Hindus.

(Contemporary South Asia, http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccsa20/current)

Although numbers are in dispute in their own societies, atheism among ex-Muslims is becoming increasingly organized and political, reports Ahmed Benchemsi in The New Republic magazine (April 23). In recent months there have been publicized cases of atheists facing stiff punishments for publicly espousing atheism in such Muslim countries as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Palestine [see July 2014 RW]. Benchemsi writes that the numbers of such secularists are greatly underestimated by political authorities, with one Egyptian poll counting exactly 2,293 atheists in all Arab countries. Just in searching for Arab atheists online he found 250 Facebook pages or groups; the number of undisclosed Muslims far exceeds that number judging by polls such as Gallup, which finds that 5 percent of Saudi citizens identify as atheists—roughly the same as in the U.S. The punishments of self-declared atheists remain severe, and Benchemsi argues that more privately held doubts and even unbelief tends to be tolerated in Arab society. The most recent case involved a 21-year-old Egyptian student named Karim Al Banna who was given a three-year sentence for insulting Islam after he declared himself an atheist on Facebook, with his own father testifying against him in court.

Secularist women face more difficulties and repression, as atheism is often associated with rebellion and immorality. Benchemsi cites the recent book Arabs without God, by Brian Whitaker, which finds that secularist growth stems more from personal doubt by Muslims rather than a reaction to extremism or terrorism. But he also links the Arab Spring to the public upsurge of atheism; even if it didn’t lead to widespread democratic reform in Arab nations, the protests energized and politicized the younger generations. Just as with Western atheist groups, there is the call for ex-Muslims to go public with their disbelief. The YouTube program The Black Ducks invites atheists from the Arab world to speak their minds, and has received hundreds of thousands of views. At the same time, there has been the growth of support networks for ex-Muslims in both the West and in Muslim nations since 2007.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Central Asia has become fertile ground for Middle Eastern Islamic influences, but Muslim movements from the Indian subcontinent are also gaining inroads in this region, likely carrying its own geopolitical impact, writes Bayam Balci in the journal Religion, State and Society (Vol. 43, No. 1). For the past two decades, such countries as Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan have imported their own forms of Islam into Central Asia while the governments of its various countries created official Islamic organizations to control the religion and prevent extremism. Relative newcomers to the Islamic scene were Muslim groups from India and Pakistan—historically, the ties between Indian Islamic groups and Central Asia were very strong—the most notable being Jamat al Tabligh (JT). The movement is known for its strong pietism and missionary thrust, calling members to go door-to-door seeking recruits.

After 9/11, the JT gained some favor among Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan and Kergyzstan, because it is staunchly apolitical and non-radical. Yet since then, JT has faced an uneven reception in Central Asia—quite common in Kazakhstan and Kergyzstan but often repressed in countries with a tight control of religious expression, such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan where it is completely absent. Balci notes that JT centers in India have become sites of pilgrimages for Central Asians. He concludes that Turkish and Arabic Islamic groups have appealed to Central Asian elites, while the JT reaches the poor masses. Yet in Kergyzstan last December, a JT leader was appointed as new mufti at the top of the religious establishment. JT’s “diffusion throughout Central Asia and its proselytism of young people, could in the coming years enable it to burst out of the circle of the marginalized and introduce itself to elites. Its current non-political state does not mean that it will never be politicized in the future, especially if the socio-economic conditions continue to deteriorate.”

(Religion, State, and Society, http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/crss20/current)

Many Hindus and Sikhs have left or are considering leaving Afghanistan due to increasing discrimination by the country’s religious majority, reports Hinduism Today (April/May/June). Hindu and Muslim residents estimate that the population has declined to about 7,000 from the approximately 200,000 Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan before 1992. One issue in contention is the Hindu and Sikh custom of burning their dead, which many Afghanis sees as anti-Islamic. Attempts have been made to stop the practice by disrupting funerals, throwing stones and shouting insults. The magazine also reports that Hindu and Sikh children are subject to bullying in their schools.

(Hinduism Today, http://www.hinduismtoday.com)