Religion Watch Archives

Monitoring Trends in Religion - From February 1990 to January 2016

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Fringe groups find fertile ground in Quebec Catholicism

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While classical Catholic traditionalism in the line of the late Archbishop Lefebvre has not developed very strongly in Quebec, a variety of very specific Catholic groups originating in Quebec itself have found fertile ground there. Some of them have been undergoing changes and realignment in recent years, either attempting to remain within the sphere of […]

Western followers bring changes to the Ni’matullahi Sufi Order

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Based only in Iran until the 1970s, one branch of the Ni’matullahi Sufi Order came to the West after its head, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh (d. 2008), emigrated following the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The past 30 years have brought radical changes to the group, reported Eliza Tasbihi (Concordia University, Montreal) at the November conference of […]

New Sanctuary movement—less sanctuary and more identity problems

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While the New Sanctuary movement has revived activist hopes of a revived national church movement for immigrant rights, the current move to protect undocumented immigrants is more locally based, less mobile, and has found recruitment and building a common identity more difficult than the pioneering movement of the 1980s, according to a recent study. The […]

New models of guru–disciple relationships

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In the American context, the traditional model of guru has frequently given way to a new type of spiritual masters having a non-exclusive relationship with their disciples, Lola L. Williamson (Millsapas College) explained at the Montreal conference of the American Academy of Religion (Nov. 7–10), which RW attended. During what Williamson described as “phase one,” […]

Hindu extremists target Nepal’s Christian institutions

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Christian institutions in Nepal are getting regular threats from Hindu extremist groups since the May bomb attack against a Roman Catholic church, which killed three people and severely wounded 15 others, reports Eglises d’Asie (Sept. 1). This represents a case of non-Muslim terrorist activities claiming a religious background. A number of prominent Hindu leaders, including […]

Hizbut Tahrir movement makes progress in Malaysia

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The Islamic Liberation Party, Hizbut Tahrir (HT), is becoming increasingly prominent in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, reports Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (July). The article focuses especially on HT in Malaysia, a country where it had never been researched before. A truly transnational […]

Sufi orders an unlikely alternative to political Islam in North Africa

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In Morocco and Algeria, Sufism is increasingly seen as an alternative to political Islam, either because it plays that card, such as the Alawiyya in Algeria, or because Sufi orders are politically instrumentalized by the regimes in power, as it is by the Moroccan monarchy and the Bushishiya order. But such hopes could prove to […]

Denmark’s “late modern” form of Theosophy draws seekers

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After decades of quasi-hibernation, the Theosophical Society (TS) in Denmark has started growing again. The number of its members quadrupled over the past twenty years, from 300 to nearly 1,200, writes René Dybdal Pedersen (University of Aarhus, Denmark) in the latest issue of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism (9(2), 2009). Many TS […]

Portugal’s Catholic way of secularization

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While Portugal shows signs of secularization, the pattern of religious decline is far from uniform, with the Catholic Church enjoying greater social and media influence, according to Steffen Dix. Throughout its history, the trajectory of secularization in Portugal has been anything but unidirectional, according to Dix, who presented a paper at the ASR conference in […]