November—December, 2009 (Vol. 25, No. 1-2)

While Shiite assertiveness gives rise to concerns and nervousness among Sunni regimes, observers should be careful not to explain all developments and attitudes through religion and also be aware of the significance of political dimensions and alliances.

This was the implicit message in several papers presented at the international conference on Sunni–Shia relations organized by the Catholic University of Louvain and several academic partners that took place in Brussels from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, which RW attended. A discourse on the threat of “Shiitization” or “Shiite penetration” can be heard in Palestine, developed both by Salafi groups and members of the Palestinian State Authority, but the reality on the ground gives very little evidence of conversions to Shiism.

The discourse on the “Shiite threat” serves mostly opponents of the Islamic movement Hamas, due to some cooperation of the latter with Iran, explained Jean-François Legrain (National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS, France). But such discourse ignores competition between Lebanese and Iranian Shiite channels of influence, as well as the fact that Hamas is an independent actor that makes political alliances in accordance with its interest. There are common interests between Hamas and Iran, but Hamas does not follow Iranian orders, summarized Azzam Tamimi (Institute for Islamic Political Thought, London).

The impact of an anti-Shia discourse has much more severe consequences in areas where there is a significant Shia population, such as Pakistan (which has a 15– 20 percent Shiite population). Until the 1970s, religious differences generally played little role in Pakistan, but Shiite assertion (with Iranian support until the mid-1990s) and the development of radical Islamist, anti-Shia groups changed this situation. Currently, Pakistani Taliban attempt to exploit sectarian differences in order to expand their operational space, reported Mariam Abou Zahab (Center for International Studies and Research, CERI, France)—and not only Shia have become targets, but all other minorities too (Christians, Hindus, Sikhs).

On the border with Pakistan, though in Iran itself, Sunni-dominated Baluchistan is less the peripheral region that it used to be, stressed Stéphane Dudoignon (CNRS). Following the suppression of Baluchi elites during the pre-revolutionary period in this area of Iran, religious leaders have come to play a stronger role. The Iranian Revolution and the emphasis upon the Shia nature of the country has led to an awareness of this region’s Sunni religious identity. Especially during the last four years, tensions have been growing, including attacks by Sunni militants, no longer targeting only police posts, but also Shiite institutions.

However, explained Dudoignon, Sunni–Shia relations in Iran cannot be reduced to tensions: there is also interaction, which one should keep in mind in order to have the whole picture. In Syria, a country that has good relations with Iran, irritations have been felt in recent years following increasingly visible Shiite activities during the past three decades, reported Thomas Pierret (Catholic University of Louvain)—and this despite a very modest Shia statistical presence (less than one percent of the population). Since the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Iranian tourists/ pilgrims have come to visit Shia holy places in Syria.

This created some resentment in Syrian Sunni circles, which has been reinforced by the arrival of Iraqi refugees. The performance of Shiite rituals in public space also contributed to such feelings. Since 2006, there has been an upsurge of anti-Shia rumors and accusations of Shiite proselytism. In Saudi Arabia, where the Shia minority has often experienced repression, there have been efforts by the state to start a rapprochement with its Shia population following the changes that have taken place in Iraq, explained Laurence Louër (Sciences Po, Paris). What Saudi authorities primarily want is stability: for this reason, they will not tolerate attacks against Shiites, such as those taking place in Pakistan, although anti-Shia feelings remain strong.

Religious groups and leaders may represent the strongest challenge to President Ahmadinejad’s leadership since the popular uprisings of last summer went underground after government crackdowns, reports The Tablet magazine (Oct.17).

Ahmadinejad’s increasingly authoritarian rule is helping to “forge an unlikely but powerful alliance between orthodox mullahs and secular democrats,” writes Edward Stourton. There is increasing concern among Iran’s clerics and theologians about Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic beliefs involving the return of the “hidden imam,” a messiah-type figure in Shia Islam who, in the president’s view, could return after a period of world turmoil. The president’s millennialism has a strong anticlerical edge: the proportion of clerics in jail today is higher than the proportion from any other social category. While these tensions have been simmering for a while, behind much of the concerns is a more fundamental questioning of the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic itself.

Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini founded the Islamic state, mainstream Shia theologians have questioned whether it is permitted to set up a theocracy without the Hidden Imam doing so himself. It is a similar argument to ultraOrthodox anti-Zionist Jews arguing that only the Messiah can create the Jewish state of Israel. This view’s “high-profile adherents include no less a figure than the Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Sistani, generally seen as the leading Shia religious authority.”

This concern, taken together with the clerics’ fear that Ahmadinejad’s suppression of the democratic movement last summer is tarnishing the image of Islam, could solidify the new alliance between the clerics and the secular democratic movement. Stourton concludes that there are in fact already signs “that it is beginning to take shape.”

(The Tablet, 1 King Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0QZ UK)

Addressing a large audience at the Montreal conference of the American Academy of Religion—attended by RW—Tariq Ramadan (Oxford University) summarized his message of the need for a radical reform within Islam while remaining faithful to the sacred text.

According to the influential Swiss Muslim thinker, this will be made possible by contextualization. Indeed, not only the text, but also the context can become a source of religious law, since there are issues on which the text is silent. But over time, more importance has been given to scholars of the text, a situation that today needs to be redressed. At the same time, Ramadan warns that those who deny the text will not be able to change anything. Ramadan emphasized that there are different types of reform.

A reform that just adapts to a new environment would be misguided, since the call of religion is not to adapt to the status quo, but to aspire to transform the world. Thus a transformational reform is needed that would not transform Islam itself, but rather Muslim minds and interpretations. The experience of Muslims in the West will have a tremendous impact, but Western observers should not ignore vibrant debates currently taking place in non-Western Muslim societies. Such a transformational reform requires an ability to project into the future. And the complexity of science makes it impossible for just one person to give an answer on all possible topics. Currently, according to Ramadan, the best results have been reached in the field of medical science.

In countries such as Kuwait, interaction between religious scholars and medical experts have resulted in fatwas (religious edicts) that deal with issues such as cloning or contraception. In contrast, until now, in the field of the economy or ecology, Ramadan finds results to be unconvincing: regarding the economy, Muslims have only been following global trends, he says, being satisfied, for instance, with just creating a small window of religiously permissible financial practices within the wider global economic system.

For a long time, Buddhism was too much associated with “funeral Buddhism” in the minds of most Japanese to pay attention to other, new forms of “engaged Buddhism,” said Ranjana Mukhopadhyaya (University of Delhi) at a session of the Japanese Religions Group at the Montreal conference of the American Academy of Religion.

But a number of books have now been devoted to this topic since the 1990s, and an accompanying decline in temple attendance has pushed some Buddhists to find new ways to reach a wider Japanese population, according to other scholars. According to those publications, as summarized by Mukhopadhyaya, one can observe developments such as networking beyond sectarian boundaries (Buddhist federations), involvement in welfare activities (partly as a reaction to Christian charities, but also prompted by new social and economic environments), the formation of Buddhist NGOs, transnational engagement in voluntary and relief activities, and peace movements (assistance to Cambodian refugees has provided a major impetus for relief activities by Japanese Buddhists).

However, according to Inaba Keishin (Kobe University), only 35 percent of Japanese are aware of social work conducted by religious groups. Japanese people are no longer necessarily looking at religious institutions for direction today, according to John Nelson (University of San Francisco). Greater personal agency leads to weaker relationships to temples, leading to a decline in their financial resources. Moreover, people have become more suspicious toward religion, and this is not only a consequence of the Aum Shinrikyo case in 1995.

It is not sufficient that Buddhist priests engage new technologies to counter this trend, however—many priests write blogs, but few of them get comments from visitors. As a response, a number of attempts have been launched seeking to promote “experimental Buddhism.” For instance, Nelson presented the cases of a storefront outreach (with a Buddhist priest available for people who want to speak), which attempts to help people in their daily lives—with Buddhist traditions being seen here as resources for action rather than blueprints for beliefs.

One can also mention efforts by Pure Land Buddhism to restore vitality to this organization; some priests are thus developing relationships based on social concerns rather than religious traditions, making temples into community centers.

While Internet penetration remains lower on the African continent than in other places around the globe, new religious movements born in Africa have been appropriating new media technologies, reported Afe Adogame (University of Edinburgh) at the conference of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal.

Use of media is not a new feature among African religions, but deliberate efforts by these groups to make themselves known on the Internet is also related to new social realities, such as their presence in Western countries, leading them to consider new strategies. In the Western world, the use of personal contacts for evangelizing is more difficult: it cannot be done as easily on the street or in marketplaces, as it would be in Africa. Such challenges have encouraged the creation of websites; originally, nearly all websites were developed in the diaspora, although they are now starting in Africa too.

Online strategies serve various purposes, including recruitment strategy (whether they are successful is another question, however) and maintaining links with members transnationally, but also expressing a group’s global nature. There are now even African groups offering online transactions for the payment of tithes and offerings. Adogame thinks the Internet should be considered as a complementary vehicle, not as a replacement for other media or church attendance, serving to reinforce commitment in religious groups.

Unitarianism is growing relatively rapidly in Africa, surprising even American Unitarians who discourage missionaries and even support of overseas congregations. The official magazine of the Unitarian-Universalist Association, UU World (Summer), reports that whereas a decade ago, Africa counted only a handful of UU congregations—mainly in South Africa—today the continent boasts of churches in Uganda, Burundi, Republic of the Congo, Uganda and, most notably, Kenya.

Local Kenyan leaders report that over 100 congregations have sprouted in the Kisii Province, and in Nairobi and central Kenya. “Unitarian-Universalists do not have [the] tradition of proselytizing mission work, but UU principles have make their way into Africa nonetheless. On a continent where Internet access is growing quickly, people in remote areas are discovering Unitarianism in Google-powered spiritual journeys,” writes Scott Kraft. One African Unitarian leader, Patrick Magra, researched Unitarianism on the Internet after meeting some American UUs, and subsequently left the Seventh Day Adventists, impressed by the Unitarian message of freedom and tolerance.

He eventually brought fellow evangelical ministers with him to the UU, and claims that there are now 68 congregations with several thousand members in the Kisii district among poor tribal groups in western Kenya. While Magra’s estimates were impossible to verify, international UU officials verified at least several dozen congregations in this region. In addition, these churches have started pre-schools, schools and an orphanage. Near Nairobi, another cluster of churches have been started that are more ethnically and socio-economically diverse. In such areas, UU teachings are used to stress how congregations should welcome all ethnic groups.

While UU’s tolerance of multiple marriages (in contrast to other denominations) appeals to many converts, African Unitarians’ opposition to gay rights and abortion is far from the social liberalism of their counterparts in the West. Yet the Africans want more assistance from American UUs— something that Western Unitarians are ambivalent about, preferring a more egalitarian “partnership model” instead.

(UU World, 25 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02108-2892)

Gangs in Central America are showing a new respect for evangelical churches and those ex-members who convert to them, but those “backsliding” from the church may face a good deal of danger, according to researcher Robert Brenneman of Notre Dame University, who presented a paper on the topic at the SSSR meeting.

In conducting research among gangs and former gang members in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Brenneman found this practice of “evangelical exemption” fairly common. As long as departing members of a gang claimed a conversion and went to an evangelical (usually Pentecostal) church, they were considered exempt from the punishment that a usual gang deserter would face, which could mean death. Part of the reason for the lenient attitude toward evangelical converts is that gang members believe that these converts have special divine protection and if they harm them they might incur a curse against the gang.

Another reason for the hands-off approach is that former members who adopt an evangelical lifestyle are unlikely to move to another gang and thus share secrets and compete against their former gang. The fact that evangelicals are seen as adopting non-violence and an attitude of “turn the other cheek” insures against vengeance of former gang members.

But the problems start when former gang members who have converted backslide and stop attending church. In this case, the exemption is lifted and such backsliders can be targeted, since they are now a source of competition for the former gang. Murders of such evangelical defectors are not infrequent. To ensure that former members stay on the evangelical straight and narrow, gangs will actually monitor these converts, according to Brenneman.

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 the Roman Catholic Church or going their own ways.

The role played by female leaders or figures has been prominent in several of them. These were some of the main observations derived from a session of the New Religious Movements Group devoted to religious groups inside, outside or parallel to the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec at the American Academy of Religion in Montreal. In his presentation, Paul Gareau (Concordia University) looked at the Army of Mary, a group that defines itself as strongly Catholic, but was nevertheless excommunicated in 2007 for heresy.

Its key figure, Marie-Paule Giguère (b. 1921), occupies a very special role in the elaborate doctrine of the Army—a new understanding of the Trinity as a Quinternity encompassing God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, along with Mary the Immaculate Conception and Giguère herself as the Lady of All Peoples and the daughter of God. In 2007, the Army of Mary initiated the “Church of John” with its new pope, Padre Jean-Pierre, as a transmutation of the Church of Peter. Gareau discussed in his paper how a group that consisted of conservative Catholics could reconcile itself with excommunication from the church. He explained that this was primarily a matter of resilience: the members put the emphasis on their unique position in salvation history and see themselves as a divinely ordained continuation of the Roman Catholic Church, not negating its normative structures, but elaborating on them.

More generally, Gareau sees the Army as an assertion of feminine symbols that characterize popular devotion, which a male hierarchy attempts to keep under control. Thus the members of the Army of Mary manage to avoid a crisis of cognitive dissonance—and might actually illustrate wider trends beyond their own case for understanding the psychology of schism. However, the evolution of conservative Catholic groups can follow a quite different pattern, as evidenced by a paper presented by Martin Geoffroy (Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities) about the Pilgrims of St. Michael (their official name since 1963), more commonly known as the “White Berets”, because of their distinctive headwear.

While critical of modernist trends within Roman Catholicism, the White Berets were originally primarily a political group of devout Catholics, advocating the ideals of “Social Credit” for a total reform of society (an economic theory elaborated in 1917 by a Scottish engineer and economist, Major Clifford Hugh Douglas).

Initially a political movement entering (with limited success) into electoral competitions, it then transformed itself more into a pressure group and, from the 1960s, at the same time that Quebec was undergoing rapid secularization, it became increasingly religious—aspiring to create a Christian world, as opposed to a modern world under Satan’s rule.

While the White Berets have failed to convince the Catholic Church to adopt the ideas of Social Credit and have been very critical of modern developments in the Church, they have managed to avoid schism—a fact that might partly be due, Geoffroy suggests, to the fact that they steer away from thorny theological issues and are “doctrinally and pragmatically oriented towards long-established traditional socio-economic ideas and practices rather than towards new religious revelations and messages transmitted by their leaders as coming directly from heaven.”

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 the American Academy of Religion. Many of the Order’s members are now Westerners, but Iranian followers remain a significant minority, especially conspicuous in the organization of social events. Along with the expansion of the Order to other parts of the world, including the creation of centers in the West and in Africa, the order has undergone other changes.

While Nurbakhsh had stated in his earlier writings that being a Muslim was a requirement for practicing Sufism, this has ceased to be emphasized. He brought about a major shift in his teachings through using a universal language and actually detaching Sufism from an exclusive association with Islam. Conversion to Islam is no longer a requirement today for those who want to join the Order. In addition, the Order does not want to equate Sufism with an orientation toward seclusion and has put an emphasis on charity work and engagement with scholarly work, including international conferences. Another development is gender equality, manifested by the fact that men and women sit together while practicing silent meditation and that women are not required to cover their heads.

Some changes may have also partly been motivated by the small size of the groups; for instance, originally, initiates and non-initiates were supposed to sit in separate rooms, but this did not seem to make sense with only a small number of participants. The change has not affected the groups in Iran, however. Moreover, not only do the other branches of the Ni’matullahi Sufi Order not follow such adaptations, but a number of members within the branch under the leadership of the late Dr Nurbakhsh have not accepted them, and have seceded to create separate centers. Among Iranians in the West, some people with no involvement in traditional Muslim religious life feel attracted to the new, inclusive approach. It is too early to say how the Order will now evolve under its new leader following the death of Nurbakhsh.

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 study, presented by Grace Yukich of New York University at the October meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) in Denver, laid out the most basic difference between the two sanctuary movements: there is no physical “sanctuary” today. The movement does not seek to shelter immigrants, but rather forms partnerships between immigrant families and congregations, which seek to assist them in various ways. Yukich, who interviewed 70 New Sanctuary movement activists and their allies in New York and Los Angeles, said that the more-stringent immigrant laws today have meant that immigrants arrive more for economic than for political reasons.

Among activists, she found some ambiguity and confusion about the sanctuary concept itself and weak identification with the national movement. This has led to difficulty in recruiting people, especially as activists are divided between the goals of political advocacy and directly helping families. Yukich also found that some quarters of the movement are more overtly religious than others, making it difficult for it to build a collective identity, which has also hindered ongoing recruitment of volunteers and activists, she concluded.

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,” one could see charismatic gurus with a well-defined lineage and community; these still exist, but more and more we are experiencing “phase two”, i.e. American gurus, disciples of Indian gurus, who can share the same stage with other gurus on a non-exclusive basis. Two, three or more gurus teaming up together to offer a retreat is a new phenomenon in America. This is related to wider trends: the idea of devoting oneself for a lifetime to one guru is waning in North America.

In phase one, everybody had read Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, which shaped the image of the guru. In the meantime, in addition to developments in secular society, guru scandals may have changed the image of the guru. Having serial gurus is expected in phase two, and such a phenomenon fits the North American context well. Retreat sites have come to replace pilgrimage sites in the phase two environment.

Some ashrams today look like health spas, with a small nucleus of permanent residents and American teachers drawing from a variety of both spiritual and secular sources (Hindu and Zen masters, modern scientists, etc.).