Majorities, Minorities, and Tolerance

This chapter discusses the concepts of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ and their relationship to victimhood and tolerance. The chapter argues that one of the most important features of sectarianism is that it promotes a culture of victimhood in any group that it touches. Constant evocations of past injustices are intended to produce symbolic capital for the modern ta’ifa and emphasize its continuity with this past (its identity). This chapter also notes that the conflation of sectarian minority and majority with democratic minority and majority is one of the greatest obstacles to true democracy today. The chapter suggests that tolerance is originally a religious discourse but can be adopted to promote religious coexistence by a state with an official religion. However, it is an insufficient basis on which to establish democratic pluralism.

Biographies of a Reformation

This monograph investigates how religious coexistence functioned in six towns in the multiconfessional region of Upper Lusatia in Western Bohemia. Lutherans and Catholics found a feasible modus vivendi through written agreements and regular negotiations. This meant that the Habsburg kings of Bohemia ruled over a Lutheran region. Lutherans and Catholics in Upper Lusatia shared spaces, objects, and rituals. Catholics adopted elements previously seen as a firm part of a Lutheran confessional culture. Lutherans, too, were willing to incorporate Catholic elements into their religiosity. Some of these overlaps were subconscious, while others were a conscious choice. This monograph provides a new narrative of the Reformation and shows that the concept of the ‘urban Reformation’, where towns are seen as centres of Lutheranism has to be reassessed, particularly in towns in former East Germany, where much work remains to be done. It shows that in a region like Upper Lusatia, which did not have a political centre and underwent a complex Reformation with many different actors, there was no clear confessionalization. By approaching the Upper Lusatian Reformation through important individuals, this monograph shows how they had to negotiate their religiosity, resulting in cross-confessional exchange and syncretism.

The Omani Experience of Multi-religious Coexistence and Dialogue: A Historical Approach to the Omani Principles and its Luminous Examples

In a world that is increasingly hostile towards religious minorities, this paper tries to set a modern-day, successful example of multi-religious coexistence and interfaith dialogue. The paper examines historical examples derived from Omani history and explores Omani characteristics by surveying Western reports written by missionaries, visitors, and travellers of different religions in Oman. This is meant to demonstrate the hypothesis that the multi-religious coexistence and interfaith dialogue enjoyed today by the nearly fourmillion Omani population is a natural result of a long history of commitment to ‘Omani values’ and principles, practised by Oman’s Ibāḍī population with their fellow nonMuslims. The paper concludes that there is a strong correlation between the ‘Omani values’ recorded by the Western writers and the ongoing deeply rooted Omani experience of peaceful religious coexistence and interfaith dialogue. These ‘Omani values’ include the principles of tolerance, social justice, mutual respect, friendliness, hospitality, and simplicity. Finally, owing to the increasingly rising tensions between adherents of different religions, the paper recommends that such successful Omani experiences should be exported to other countries in the Muslim world and elsewhere.

„In dem Dome zu Corduva“

Heinrich Heine (born in Düsseldorf in 1797 – died in Paris in 1856) had not only many places of residence during his years in Germany, but he also made numerous journeys throughout Europe. Thus, during his time in France, he got to know the country substantially better and furthermore he would have liked to undertake a detour to Spain. Since his student days, Spain was for him as a German Jew the epitome of a Jewish- Christian-Islamic symbiosis despite many differences and difficulties. He slipped into the role of the Moors to express his own outsider role within the German Christian majority society. Heine admired the great Jewish achievements and remained critical of Christian claims, although he had become a Protestant after being baptized at the end of his law studies. His tragedy Almansor (1823), poems from the Buch der Lieder (1827), texts in prose and epic poems from the Parisian years as well as in his literary bequest and above all the last collection of poems called Romanzero (1851) with their moving “Spanish” texts, namely the stories about Jews, Christians and Muslims, are the most important poetic evidences of religious coexistence and its problems.

The Many Shapes of Interreligious Relations in Contemporary Spain

The idea of interreligious dialogue has gained worldwide traction in the last decades and has been promoted as a key component for religious peace. The aim of the article is to examine how interreligious aspirations and practices crystallize in different settings – namely diplomacy, governance and activism – and are shaped by the particular historical and political dynamics of each of these settings. The article explains how the plasticity of the idea of interreligious dialogue contributes to foster its popularity across different domains while serving to convey a wide range of meanings and expectations regarding interreligious pasts, presents and futures. Geographically, the article focuses on Spain and is based on qualitative fieldwork. The article shows that there have been considerable efforts to promote interreligious initiatives and that the global interreligious narrative has been re-fashioned locally, by including the idea of Al-Andalus as a lighthouse. However, the image of Spain and its history, as a foundational space for interreligious dialogue and multi-religious coexistence is contested by the current growth of extreme-right movements, and parties re-claiming the Christian foundational narrative of the country put this kind of initiative in peril.

Religion: The Final Frontier of the Rainbow Nation

This article assesses the ways in which religious diversity and religious pluralism are asserted and negotiated within the context of contemporary South Africa through scrutinising the Christian Friendly Products campaign which advocates against the ubiquity of the halaal food symbol and halaal food in South Africa. Halaal is an Islamic term, which refers to food products that are ritually permissible for consumption by Muslims. The campaign claims that the visible presence of halaal food in public spaces undermines the rights of Christian consumers, is an affront to the beliefs of Christians, and is a presage to the impending Islamisation of South Africa. In claiming that religion is the final frontier of the rainbow nation, this article argues that the myth of rainbowism, once wielded as a peacemaking gesture and nation building tool, has projected inaccurate representations of religious coexistence and difference in South Africa that obscure and minimise growing religious conflict and tension.

‘Idle minds’ and ‘empty stomachs’: youth, violence and religious diversity in coastal Kenya

This article analyses how concerns about youth and violence intersect with the politics of managing religious coexistence in the coastal Kenyan town of Malindi. During extensive ethnographic research, I noticed that Muslim, Christian and ‘Traditionalist’ leaders, politicians and NGO officials often fear that the ‘idleness’ of young people leaves them susceptible to various immoralities, including political violence and ‘violent extremism’, that threaten peaceful ethnic and religious coexistence. The article explores how these concerns motivate leaders’ attempts to incorporate youth in development and peace projects, and how youth respond to these interventions. These projects are funded by Western donors, who often see ‘radical’ religiosity, especially among Muslim youth, as a security threat. Yet, leaders in Malindi accommodate donor policies to the (coastal) Kenyan context, and tend to understand immoralities and violence as resulting from a lack of religiosity among youth. The article argues that perceptions of ‘idle youth’ as potentially violent threats to peaceful religious coexistence and morality allow leaders to develop a ‘moral religiosity’ that is shared across religious divides. However, the ways in which youth strategically resist or comply with interventions to pacify them demonstrate that they do not necessarily agree with dominant moral and political constellations.