Suchergebnisse

The religion of Kaka'I has been an under-researched religion in the Middle East but recent interest in Iraq has changed this situation marginally. A new discourse in the contemporary social and political world has brought back the notion of religion and the appropriation of religious thought to the forefront of social polemics. Following continuous murders, displacements and threats by the militant Islamic group, the Islamic State (IS), as well as their marginalization in Iraq, Kaka'i declared themselves to be Muslims. They sought improvement in the quality of systems existing in region, the creation of democratic secular regimes that believe in democracy and rights of other peoples and religions, as well as the application of human rights principles in the constitutions of states in which they reside. In addition, Kaka'i are motivated to gain official recognition of their civil statutes and identity and they want to end the situation in which they are considered as a religious minority. Kaka'i and Islam are incompatible as religions. Such actions bring to mind the historical and modern perspectives that form the basis of religion with regard to the development of this religious minority under the pressure of their environment.

Apart from pluralism as a common political good or minimum shared agreement, recognition of differences needs to be reckoned with. Concepts of nationalism and liberalism have not fully developed to consider each individual as unit. Further, the community should be treated as unit of analysis rather that of individual as unit. Muslims in multicultural Indian society should be treated as community as such. Recognition is important within the multiplex of differences. Muslims in India is not only a minority, but most importantly religious minority in the faces of Hindu nationalism. They are congeneric in nature, but in few cases they are frustrated and distinctive ethnicity has cropped up among them.

A religious minority of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, the Pomaks now live dispersed in five Balkan countries: Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Albania and Turkey. A living legacy of the complexities of Balkan history, the Pomaks represent a perfect case to study interstate political intricacies around the unsettled identity of small inter-communal groups. An examination of this community should enrich the knowledge about the nature of Balkan Islam that stands on the periphery of the Arab-Iranian-Turkic Islamic heartland, the three peoples who carried the major burden of Islamic history.

Religious minority groups have historically been positioned as the trigger for religious and social disharmony. This paper aims to explore the millennial Muslims' basis for their positioning towards minority groups in Indonesia. The data collected through questionnaires, interviews, and document studies were analyzed and then converted into narrative form, tables, diagrams, and charts. The findings show that there are two millennial Muslim responses towards religious minority groups. First, some are responding with acceptance of non-Islamic affiliated minority groups. Of the 412 surveyed respondents, 280 or 67, 96% stated their acceptance based on the juridical-constitutional reason that every citizen has the same rights and obligations, including the rights to live and obey the law. Representing the second millennial response, most respondents also rejected Islamic-affiliated minority groups. 383 respondents (93%) stated this rejection noting that they believe in the existence of these groups damaging Islam's image. The different forms of response are based on theological, juridical, and cultural reasons that can be found in religious arguments, legislation, and values of the local wisdom of the Indonesians. This study proposes the need of building better understanding among millennial Muslims regarding social diversity in Indonesia, and finding common ground for these differences that can be applied to avoid religious conflicts in the future.

Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, and Muslims in this country live in a pluralistic society harmoniously in their daily life. The absence of any reference to Islam in the Constitution shows that Indonesia is open to all religions besides Islam. The harmony of relationship among religious followers is preserved in the Indonesian constitution that acknowledges all of citizens have the religious freedom, which the state has to respect, protect and fulfill. The general idea of preserving the rights of religious freedom lies in the history of protecting religious minorities, and it is universally acceptable as one of the foundations of a democratic society. Therefore, ideally, a law which limits civil rights should never threaten the freedom of thought, conscience and religion, or impose limitations to those rights solely on the grounds of religious, political or other views. If the notion of protecting rights is as such, then the question arises is what mechanism can protect human rights as constitutional rights of citizens? The best legal mechanism in this context is to challenge the state and constitutional issues through the courts by means of the judicial review. This paper examines whether the judicial review as one of the best mechanisms to protect constitutional rights of citizens can be a concrete way to deal with human rights protection by challenging the state through the court. This paper concludes that the judicial review of executive acts and legislative power is very likely to be able to protect religious minority rights in Indonesia

The paper explores the relationship between the religious identity and the ethnic and national identities of Old Believer youth in Latvia. This case is of particular interest in providing an in-depth insight into the intersection of ethnicity, nationality and religion, as the Old Believers are an ethnic and religious minority living in Latvia. Applying the concepts of multiple identities, this article explores the role of religion played in the integration of identity among young people belonging to the Old Believer religious community: their self-understanding as a composition of intersecting identities that influence each other; the manifestations of the intersection of various identities; the relationship of identity integration to religion. The analysis is based on the findings of ethnographic research conducted in the Old Believer youth group in Daugavpils (Latvia) within a framework of the international project "Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe's Future", funded from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Grant Agreement No. 770464. The author has highlighted that today's rapid changes are leading to identity crisis: an individual faces difficulty in shaping and maintaining a stable identity, since economic life is becoming increasingly unpredictable and communities are becoming fragmented. The identity of Latvian Old Believer youth forms and develops in a local cultural context, and is affected by the social change. The qualitative data collected during the fieldwork provided a useful resource for an analysis of belonging, the crucial factor in the formation of identity for Old Believer youth. As the voices of young people in this study reveal, three types of belonging characterize Old Believer youth: their ethnicity, which interacts with national belonging in a complex way; the local belonging, which is stronger than the global one; the European belonging, which conflicts with national belonging and ethnicity.

Abstract
This paper employs Critical Discourse Analysis to examine resistance discourses as created by the Ahmadiyya followers – a self-defined sect of Islam – to argue against negative discourses undermining them in Indonesia. In some legal proclamations and statements delivered by state officials and the representatives of majority Muslims in the country, the followers of the sect, especially those affiliated to the JAI (Jemaat Ahmadiyya Indonesia) are excluded from Islamic community. By using Van Dijk's ideological square, this study aims at identifying resistance discourses created by the JAI followers as the defence strategies to oppose negative discourses presenting them as the non-believers of Islam. The resistance discourses are apparent in both written and spoken texts, such as books, articles, speeches, and public debates created by the sect. The finding reveals that the JAI followers create discourses of victim, defender of Islam, imperialism, illegitimacy, and discourse of public deception using various discourse strategies namely victimization, scare tactics, positive attribution, quotation, power delegitimising and negative portraits of misbehaving.