Religious Minorities (religious + minority)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Christians as a Religious Minority in a Multicultural City: Modes of Interaction and Identity Formation in Early Imperial Rome , Edited by Jürgen Zangenberg and Michael Labahn

RELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2006
Fred W. Burnett
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Disciplined Litigation, Vigilant Litigation, and Deformation: Dramatic Organization Change in Jehovah's Witnesses

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 1 2001
Pauline Côté
Jehovah's Witnesses' long-term development presents an interesting case of evolution in line with the "deformation thesis," an attempt at explaining dramatic shifts in organizational forms, activities, and even beliefs in controversial religious minorities. Derived from resource mobilization tradition, this thesis assumes that radical transformations result from major defensive resource allocation mandated by negative reactions of societal institutions. This is especially the case with reference to the adoption by Jehovah's Witnesses, a millenarian group, of a "disciplined litigation"strategy in the 1940s, a pattern later to be incorporated in religious activities and beliefs of the organization. Today, disciplined litigation and its successor, "vigilant litigation," seem legitimate ways to adapt to the prevailing religious climate and structure. As such, it can be conceived as a model for defensive moves taken by "younger" controversial religious minorities and reflects the enormous influence of the law and legal systems in shaping minority religions. [source]


Legal Change and Gender Inequality: Changes in Muslim Family Law in India

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 3 2008
Narendra Subramanian
Group-specific family laws are said to provide women fewer rights and impede policy change. India's family law systems specific to religious groups underwent important gender-equalizing changes over the last generation. The changes in the laws of the religious minorities were unexpected, as conservative elites had considerable indirect influence over these laws. Policy elites changed minority law only if they found credible justification for change in group laws, group norms, and group initiatives, not only in constitutional rights and transnational human rights law. Muslim alimony and divorce laws were changed on this basis, giving women more rights without abandoning cultural accommodation. Legal mobilization and the outlook of policy makers,specifically their approach to regulating family life, their understanding of group norms, and their normative vision of family life,shaped the major changes in Indian Muslim law. More gender-equalizing legal changes are possible based on the same sources. [source]


Moderate Secularism and Multicultural Equality

POLITICS, Issue 3 2008
Sune Lægaard
Tariq Modood argues that European states are only ,moderately secular' and that this kind of secularism is compatible with public accommodation of religious groups and provides a model of Muslim integration appropriate for European states. Although attention to the fact of moderate secularism provides a response to a prominent argument against multicultural accommodation of religious minorities, what is really at stake in discussions of multiculturalism and secularism are political principles. Modood's case for accommodation of Muslims along the lines of moderate secularism presupposes a normative conception of equality, but his characterisation of multicultural equality is inadequate in several respects. [source]