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Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (BRIIFS)

In order to revise the traditional push-and-pull model of migration, as well as the concept of delimited ethnic groups, the first part of this essay applies theories of acculturation and of transnational lives and identities to migrants in Canada who have selected options in the frame of family economies. In the second part, I evaluate societal/structural constraints in both the societies of origin and the receiving societies. I argue that structure and agency influence each other on a meso-level of regions. The relationship between migrants and the macro-level of state government or national economies is tenuous, at best, while the micro-level is not one of individualism (US paradigm) but of neighbourhood and kinship relations. I discuss the reach of this approach in terms of free and forced migrations.

This study compares the different ways Indian Hindu and Korean Christian immigrants in the United States preserve their ethnicity through religion. Hinduism is an Indian native religion and thus Indian dialects, food, holidays and other cultural elements are embedded within the faith. As a result, Indian Hindu immigrants can and do maintain their cultural and subcultural traditions and identity by practicing their religious values and rituals at home without actively participating in a religious congregation. In contrast, both Korean Protestantism and Catholicism are ‘Western religions’ that have been popularized only recently. Since the Christian religious faith and rituals are not directly related to Koreans’ language, values, food and holidays, they cannot maintain their ethnicity simply by practicing the faith and rituals. Instead, they try to preserve their ethnicity by increasing their social networks and practicing Korean Confucian cultural traditions through their active participation in a Korean congregation. Despite their far more active participation in a congregation, Korean Christians have disadvantages compared to Indian Hindus in preserving their ethnicity through religion because of the incongruence between their religion and ethnic culture. The literature on religion and ethnicity in the United States is largely based on turn-of-the-century, Judeo-Christian, congregation-oriented immigrant groups. Consequently, it has emphasized participation in an ethnic congregation as the main source of ethnicity and neglected to pay attention to the nativity of a religion as significantly contributing to preserving ethnic culture and identity.

This paper explores the ambiguous position and identity of Arab migrants in Australia in the era of globalization. It argues that while migration readily confers Australian citizenship rights it does not signify cultural equality as espoused in the rhetoric of multiculturalism. The paper examines the way Arab cultural identities are articulated with respect to the multicultural identities of the city, ‘white’ Australian national identity and transnational diasporic and religious identities. It argues that Arab ethnic and diasporic identities have become inextricably tied up with globally-mediated events and images and with transnational discourses on difference and danger. The paper argues that the Australian Arab migrant experience provides insights into the more general Arab diasporic experience.

This paper focuses on the causes and consequences of host hostility toward Iranian immigrants in the United States. It is a sociological truism that external hostility encourages in-group solidarity. Host hostility strengthens ethnicity and even translates into ethnic solidarity. The Iranian experience, however, challenges this causal relationship. Since the ‘Iranian Hostage Crisis’ in 1980— and perhaps even longer—Iranian immigrants have been periodically subjected to discrimination and prejudice in the US. Although the anti-Iranian sentiments initially expressed have subsided with time, they flare up again whenever the Iranian regime allegedly engages in an anti-American activity. Instead of reactive solidarity, however, some Iranians have opted to disassociate themselves from their nationality. This is especially the case for religious minorities from Iran (such as Christian Armenians, Baha is and Jews) who may identify more strongly with their religio-ethnic backgrounds than with their Iranian origin. Muslim Iranian immigrants do not have this option because they are, by and large, secular and nationalistic. Moreover, there are many negative stereotypes associated with being a Muslim in the US. Class resources (English proficiency, high levels of education), as well as professional and entrepreneurial occupations, have enabled Iranians as a whole to avoid conflict with Americans. At the same time these factors have reduced dependence on co-ethnics, thereby reducing the potential for ethnic solidarity. Any attachment to Iranian culture, language or national pride may be more closely associated with exile status than with host hostility.

Isṭifan al-Duwayhi, patriarch of the Maronite church (1670-1704) and a graduate of Maronite College in Rome, stands out as the leading historian of Syria in his time. A man of the Arab East, intimately familiar with the tribal ways of his native land, Duwayhi also enjoyed the advantages of a Western education of the highest quality; these two sides to the man are reflected in the content and tone of his historical writing. His chronicle, Tarikh al-azmina, treats the history of his own Maronite community within the context of the general history of Syria, while treating the history of Syria for the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as part and parcel of a broader Ottoman history. Furthermore, Duwayhi was the first ‘Lebanese’ historian to present Druze and Maronite history as two aspects of the same historical process; it is in this context that Duwayhi made conscious use of history for political ends, resorting, at times, to conscious omissions and creative reinterpretations.

In early 1988, the Egyptian press was inundated with articles and editorials about the controversial book al-Islam al-siyasi (Political Islam), published in Cairo in December of 1987 by Judge Muḥammad Saʿid al-ʿAshmawi. Only in the last two centuries has Islam been so available for redefinition, for repossession, for claims and counter-claims. The critical reception, both public and published, of al-ʿAshmawi’s al-Islam al-siyasi placed in relief this modern phenomenon, this terrifying and leveling conception of Islam as ‘up for grabs’. This article analyses a representative sampling of the most revealing and highly charged reviews by eminent scholars and journalists, including Jad al-Ḥaqq ʿAli Jad al-Ḥaqq (Shaykh al-Azhar), Fahmi Huwaydi, Faraj Foda, ʿAli al-Dali, and ʿAbd al-ʿAẓim Ramaḍan. Al-ʿAshmawi’s claim that Islam is not, never has been, and was never intended by God to be a religion dictating the political and legal infrastructure of Muslim society runs counter to centuries of Islamic thought and raises the stakes in the modern battle over the custody of Islam. What is so threatening about this book for some? For others, what is so welcome about it? In what ways does the critical response to this book reflect changing Egyptian attitudes about Islam? This article attempts to answer these questions and situates the key players in the debate around al-ʿAshmawi’s book within the wider debate over rethinking Islam in the modern world.

The Florentine Dominican Riccoldo da Monte Croce was a thirteenth-century missionary and apologist to Eastern Christianity and Islam, who travelled throughout the Middle East during a period in which the Latin Church was in ferment, challenged by the internal danger of heresy, and external threats from Mongols and Muslims. Yet, this essay places Riccoldo, whose life has been the subject of little extended study, particularly in English, at the end of a thirtyyear period of optimism and anti-crusade feroour in the West. Not only was Europe rediscovering Eastern Christianity, but there was hope of the possible conversion of both Mongols and Arabs to the Latin rite, or at least political alliances with the Mongols against the Muslim empires. The first part of Riccoldo’s journey was a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where his faith and sense of mission were renewed. During the second, and longer part of his journey, Riccoldo encountered many people of different races—Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Mongols—and religions—Christians of all persuasions, Buddhists, and both Shiʿi and Sunni Muslims. While his initial impression of Muslim spirituality and ritual was positive, it is radically changed when, while in Baghdad, he witnessed the display of prisoners and booty resultins from the fall of Acre in 1291. Riccoldo’s subsequent crisis of faith called into question his belief in the providence of God, and would radically colour his understanding of the place of Islam in what he had heretofore perceived as ‘Christian history’. For Riccoldo, the fall of Acre would have to be answered from a Christian theological perspective, with lasting significance for the history of Muslim-Christian relations.

Ancient South Arabian civilization has been largely ignored by anthropologists in their comparative study of complex cultures. This omission of South Arabia from the catalogue of civilizations is difficult to explain considering that during the first millennium BC this region gave rise to an economy based on long-distance trade in luxury goods and a complex division of labour which supported an urban culture and mature state politics manifest in a social structure based on class, a developed ritual life, and a military organization which conducted full-scale warfare with other regional civilizations. This paper deals with the evolution of the state in South Arabia and distinguishes the key factors which define a specifically South Arabian political culture. Besides the monopoly on the incense and spice trade between the Indian East and the Mediterranean region, South Arabian civilization was characterized by a dynamic tribe-state relationship; this dialectic promoted the rise and fall of numerous polities, as well as competition between ritual centres and peripheries. Overall, South Arabian political culture provided a rich and complicated background to the rise Of monotheism in the peninsula, an inter-civilizational competition for control over the Red Sea shipping lanes, and the appearance of Islam.

Japan has often been acknowledged as a major example of successful cultural, in particular religious, syncretism and has, in modern times, projected this positive self-image to the outside world. In a long process of mutual accommodation, several religious and value systems from China have permeated Japanese culture to be amalgamated with indigenous ritual practices and idea systems. This has led to the coexistence of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and a plethora of New Religions, as well as folk-religious practices. Each of these has been allocated a specific position in the life-trajectory of the individual, as well as a niche in the social domain of different forms of community organization. By testing some hypotheses about the historical trajectory of religious coexistence against the present-day example of the New Religions, the paper explores some of the preconditions for such coexistence in the future. It also examines the different forms which the syncretistic mixing of ritual practices may take, and the correlates in the value-system—and in the type of community—the diverse religious forms seem to engender or attempt to satisfy. The Japanese case seems to raise some important theoretical questions as to the distinction between syncretism and pluralism in the framework of exclusioity and inclustity for processes of cultural diffusion. Therefore, the paper concludes with some general observations on the reflexive dimensions of self-identity and otherness in Japanese discourse and their relevance for post-modern theories of cultural hybridity.

Once a mountain kingdom lying between the Moghul empire and the Tibetan state, Ladakh is today the third part of the political conglomerate of Kashmir. Since Indian independence, the Buddhist Ladakhis have sought greater autonomy from the Muslim-dominated Kashmiri state government, and recently the national government in Delhi has partially answered this demand. It remains to be seen whether this device will solve outstanding issues. Historical analysis shows that the Sunni members of the Muslim minority came to settle in Ladakh due to conflict-resolving treaties and invitations to take sophisticated roles in government while Shias came from Baltistan to farm. All settled residents played significant roles in the economy, and there was little strife between local Muslims and Buddhists. Communal antagonism arose in this century largely because of external influence, in particular the post-independence dominance of the pro-Muslim state government over the region. The onset of international tourism intensified competition between the communities finally leading to conflict and a politically-driven Buddhist boycott of Muslims only recently resolved by the new dispensation. But the present situation remains problematic, with the continuing right of the Kashmir government to oversee development and control funding, and new divisions emerging in the body politic which both reduce the bipolar tensions of earlier communalism and cause new questions to arise. Indian politicians have often shown skill in accommodating the variety of social identities frequently found in the many multicultural regions of India. While this history of skilled political management suggests that progress might occur without strife, the recalcitrance of the Jammu and Kashmir state government continues to block effective advance, and its violent rejection is in the cards.