English – Page 11 – Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (BRIIFS)

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

Florentine Dominican, Riccoldo da Monte Croce, was a thirteenth-century missionary and apologist to Islam who travelled throughout the Middle East during a time of ferment in the Latin Church. While his initial impressions and observations of Muslim spirituality and devotion were largely positive, they altered radically when he observed, in Baghdad, a parade of booty resulting from the fall of Acre to the Mamluk Turks in 1291. Thrown into a theological and spiritual crisis, he searched for a theodicy by which this seeming triumph of Islam over Christianity might be made comprehensible. Upon his return to Florence, he wrote his great work, the Contra legem Sarracenorum (CIS), which was not intended to be constructive but, as he put it, “to expose what is deficient in the teachings of the Saracens” for the benefit of future missionaries from his and other Christian orders. Thus, while Riccoldo’s pre-1291 writings are marked by an open and respectful attitude toward Islam, the CIS represents a systematic and vitriolic attack against it. In the CIS, he takes up the questions of God’s essence and Muhammad’s prophethood and compares Christ with Muhammad and the gospels with the Qurʾan. In the centuries to follow, both Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther relied heavily on Riccoldo’s influential work.

This paper examines conversion from animism to Christianity or Islam in Borneo and from Lutheranism to other denominations in South Australia in an attempt to discern the implications for identity among Kadazan and among Australians of German origin. Taking an historical as well as a micro-anthropological perspective allows us to examine the effect of external hegemony on local religious discourse and the negotiation of religious conversion by individuals-attitudes which are affected by external processes. Belief often has tenuous links to the assumed ‘universal’ doctrines of a faith and it is misleading to expect them to be stronger. Some believers may indeed depend on ‘orthodox’ content and boundaries, while others find doctrinal details interfere with religion as social identity. Conversion for the latter may be more a matter of changing friends and food than of changing ideology. Conversion discourses couched in religious terms may thus be a way of talking about quite different issues, which may be political, economic, or personal in nature. Tension arises from the linkages between the individual, the local group and the state with regard to religious identity. A comparative approach to this process requires an examination of the parameters of the society and state within which the person acts, as well as the actual parameters of the particular belief.‬

This statement on ‘Sociology and Demography’ is introduced by some personal remarks on how, for some time in his early academic career, the author felt that he was in a no-man’s-land between sociology and demography. Next, it is asked how the relationship between sociology and demography can be described and interpreted. It seems that a few demographers still regard sociology as a somewhat dubious enterprise, which lacks, for instance, the precision which mathematical demographic models claim to possess and precise definitions of its central variables. On the other hand, there are (also only a few) sociologists who do not consider demography to be a real science, but rather a kind of accountancy: population bookkeeping. In the view of these sociologists, demography is neither a social science nor any kind of science at all, because it does not have explanatory theories. One might even maintain that demography is, in fact, ultimately unable to explain population processes, nor prognosticate such processes, beyond solely empirically-based extrapolations. However, an open-minded sociologist cannot overlook the fact that demography has many virtues which will also be referred to in detail here. This statement concludes with a presentation of the results of a quantitative content analysis of articles that appeared in four demographic journals between 1997 and 1999. This content analysis has been carried out in order to give an empirically-based answer to the question regarding the relationship between sociology and demography.

International migration between countries lying to the south and north of the Mediterranean has always been an issue of major importance. But, although these exchanges of population have continually taken place, their political significance has increased dramatically due to the different demographic circumstances on either side of the Mediterranean, the challenge migration presents to the maintenance of political equilibrium between states and the implications of cross-cultural transfers. However, any intelligent discussion of migration and culture contact first requires an assessment of the number of people involved. This helps us to ascertain what the current trends are and how they are changing in order to try to hypothesize what the future may hold. Despite the poor reliability of the data and the difficulty in comparing these data in space and time, it seems that some clear preferences are reflected in recent migration flows, with new countries gaining prominence as sending countries or receiving coun tries. Furthermore, there is evidence that the total number of migrations from south to north is decreasing, while return migrations from north to south are becoming more common.

The Netherlands and Germany, two countries quite similar with respect to religion, socio-economic development and political system, have reacted quite differently to immigration. Whereas the Netherlands, after some initial problems, developed a consistent multiculturalist policy approach, in Germany, immigration became a subject of bitter party conflict which affected the immigration atmosphere in a detrimental manner. Yet, when comparing policy outcomes with respect to education and job quality, we find that better results have been obtained in Germany than in the Netherlands. The conclusion is that integration processes can be very specific and that multicultural programs can carry powerful messages of exclusion.

Like Other European countries, the Netherlands is witnessing an increasing ‘irregularization’ of immigration. Concerns about lack of control have stimulated new legislation, particularly during the last decade. The most comprehenSive new law, the so-called Koppelingswet, or ‘Linking Act’, was enacted in 1998. The aim of this new law is to exclude undocumented immigrants from public services such as social benefits, insurance, health care, education and public housing. Building on the concept of ‘mixed embeddedness’, this paper asks the extent to which illegal immigrants are capable of incorporating themselves into the host society and the reactions of the welfare state’s gatekeepers to their presence. The Study is based on empirical research in the Netherlands’ four largest cities. ‬

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.