Minority Religions in Europe and the Middle East by Chryssides, George D.;

Short description:

Bringing together debates concerning the social and political issues facing new religions in Europe and the Middle East, this collection extends its focus to Middle Eastern minority faiths, enabling exposition of spiritual movements such as the Gülen Movement, Paganism in Israel, and the Zoroastrians in Tehran.

Long description:

Minority religions, not only New Religious Movements, are explored in this innovative book including the predicament of ancient religions such as Zoroastrianism, ‘old new’ religions such as Baha’i, and traditional religions that are minorities elsewhere. The book is divided into two parts: the gathering of data on religious minorities ("mapping"), and the ways in which governments and interest groups respond to them ("monitoring"). The international group examine which new religions exist in particular countries, what their uptake is, and how allegiance can be ascertained. They explore a range of issues faced by minority religions, encompassing official state recognition and registration, unequal treatment in comparison with a dominant religion, how changes in government can affect how they fare, the extent to which members are free to practise their faith, how they sometimes seek to influence politics, and how they can be affected by harassment and persecution.

Bringing together debates concerning the social and political issues facing new religions in Europe and the Middle East, this collection extends its focus to Middle Eastern minority faiths, enabling exposition of spiritual movements such as the Gülen Movement, Paganism in Israel, and the Zoroastrians in Tehran.

Table of Contents:

1 Religious Minorities: Setting the Scenes  Part 1: Mapping the minority religions  2 What do the censuses tell about minority religions? Some reflections on Estonia  3 Religious Minorities in Geneva: Reconsidering the Category  4 Minority Religions in Contemporary Lithuania: On the Margins of the Field of Religion?  5 Spiritual movements in times of crisis: An anthropological account of alternative spirituality in Portugal and Greece  6 Sacred Homeland, Glorious Ancestors and Old-time Language: Ethnic Elements in the Identity of the Zoroastrian Religious Minority in Modern Tehran  7 Jehovah's Witnesses and the Middle East  Part 2: Monitoring, regulation and opposition  8 New Religious Movements in France: The Legal Situation  9 Religious minorities in democratic Spain: rekindling the past and considering the future  10 What do we talk about when we talk about legitimate religion? Failure and success in the registration of two Pagan communities in Finland  11 Religious Liberty in the Russian Federation after 1997  12 The Church of Scientology in Hungary: A ‘Religious Multinationals’ Case Study  13 Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Shaping of a Community-Building Discourse among Israeli Pagans, 1998-2012  14 The Gülen movement  15 Religion, social change and responding to persecution – the case of the Bahá’í community in Iran  16 The Bektashi-Alevi Spectrum from the Balkans to Iran: Sufi Minorities and Politics  17 Key Data on Religions by Country