Iraq’s Christians are following in the pattern of other Middle Eastern Christians as they seek emigration to the West, partly due to a new wave of Islamic growth, reports the World Press Review (January). Iraqi Christians, numbering abut 500,000 (and comprising 2-3 percent of the population), have long been protected by the secular government, but as Sadaam […]

Weblogs, or “blogging,” are public online diaries that are providing free space for discussion among Muslim women who are restricted in their own societies, reports Utne magazine (January/February). The magazine reports that a small but growing number of “blogs” (already in the thousands) are maintained by and for women in the Muslim world — for […]

A prophesy by Muhammad that Rome and Europe will be conquered for Islam is being revived and popularized by Muslim clerics, according to a Dec. 6 report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Muslim Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, one of the most influential Sunni clerics, recently wrote that according to Islamic prophesy, Islam will […]

For several decades, Ukrainian Greek Catholics have cultivated the dream of getting their own Patriarchate, a status enjoyed by six other Eastern Churches in union with Rome. This goal has often been expressed in diaspora communities and in Ukraine itself as soon as the Ukrainian Greek Catholics emerged from their clandestine existence in late 1989. […]

A new religious phenomenon based around a select group of gurus proclaiming instant enlightenment has emerged in several Western countries. In the journal Nova Religio (October) Liselotte Frisk writes that by the end of the 1990s, a group of Westerners claiming to have reached enlightenment were touring Asia and the West holding meetings to help others make […]

The question of whether Islamic groups should accept aid from Saudi Arabia is raising debate and divisions in the American Muslim community, reports the Los Angeles Times (Dec. 1). Since Saudi Arabia is increasingly seen as the importer of the militant “Wahhabi” branch of Islam, both the U.S. government and American Muslim groups themselves debating the consequences […]

Although Sept. 11 still reverberated across the American landscape, religious trends emerged from several unexpected places in 2002. As is customary, the following review looks at the trends unfolding from last year’s news that are likely to carry some impact in 2003 and beyond. Some of the trends have received fuller treatment in previous issues […]

Evangelical missionaries s in Central Asia are having a modest rate of success and facing fewer restrictions in some states, according to recent research conducted by French scholar Sébastien Peyrouse. At the conference of the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) in Anchorage, Alaska in early November, which RW attended, Peyrouse presented research from his recently […]