The restrictions and penalties against homosexuality in Nigerian culture is often reflected in the preaching and teaching of the burgeoning Pentecostal churches in that country, but a new breed of congregations are providing a refuge from these strict attitudes, even if they don’t directly challenge the anti-gay laws or embrace LGBTQ identities, writes Nelson C.J., in The New York Times (January 26, 2020).
The looting of antiquities has proven to be an attractive source of income for radical Islamic groups in a country with a long and rich cultural legacy such as Syria, as it had been for some civilian, military and government actors earlier. These groups’ religious views also influence how they deal with objects belonging to Pagan and Christian cultures, writes historian Olivier Moos (Religioscope Institute) in a newly released report on Salafists and antiquities trafficking
in Syria by Religioscope (February 2020). The report focuses on Idleb Governorate (North-West Syria), where the Salafist armed group Hayat Tahrir as-Sham (HTS) has been heavily involved in the looting of cultural assets.
There are “growing ties between the far right in India and Europe, a connection that is rooted primarily in a shared hostility toward immigrants and Muslims, and couched in similar overarching nationalistic visions,” writes Eviane Ledig in Foreign Policy.com (January 21, 2020). The article notes that these links have predated the rise of Europe’s nationalist wave when Hindu nationalists collaborated with fascists in Italy and Nazi Germany, with Hindu right pioneer V.D. Savarkar seeing the Nazi’s solution in dealing with the “Jewish problem” as a model for India’s approach with its “Muslim problem.”
Despite the eradication of ISIS’s caliphate across Syria and Iraq in 2017, the group remains active, while 96 other Islamist extremist groups were tracked in 2018 by the annual Global Extremism Monitor (GEM). The authors of this detailed report released by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (January 15) also includes developments monitored during the following year, such as the April 2019 attacks in Sri Lanka.
Study of the Talmud, long confined to men, especially in orthodox circles, is finding new interest and participation among orthodox Jewish women, reports the New York Times (January 5). The conclusion of an intensive international marathon of daily Talmud study in Jerusalem but streamed to an international audience showed a growing number of women who have joined the effort.
There has been a growth of Catholic traditionalism in Latin America as seen by the spread of the celebration of Latin Masses, reports Julie Gomes in the conservative web site, The Church Militant (December 25). Latin Masses are mushrooming in the main South American dioceses of Rio, São Paolo, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Lima and Santiago, often attended by youth and young families. The website cites a frontpage article in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, which reported on the spurt in the Catholic traditionalist movement in Latin America: “Right-leaning blogs are multiplying, animated by young and very young people, with millions of followers.
Faced with a loss of innocence in the West after the controversies regarding the abuses by some spiritual masters, Buddhism must also deal with key questions about finding a balance between preserving ancient teachings and finding its European way, writes the former head of the unit for interreligious dialogue of the Archdiocese of Vienna (Austria), Werner Höbsch, in a contribution written for an issue on Buddhism in the West in the series Weltanschauungen – Texte zur religiösen Vielfalt (No. 113).
Meditation practices inspired from Sufism are gaining popularity in the Egyptian capital Cairo as people are looking for alternatives to rigid religious practices, writes Egyptian journalist Dalia Chams on the French website Orient XXI (January 9). This is a recent phenomenon, acknowledges 46-year-old Sonia Hassan, an American Egyptian-born meditation teacher who was trained at the US-based University of Spiritual Healing & Sufism and claims to have been the first to have associated Sufism with Zen meditation in Egypt in the years after the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
Celebrity among evangelical women, especially the wives of prominent pastors, has helped them to circumvent the obstacles to female leadership in evangelicalism, giving them disproportionate influence in the movement, according to historian Kate Bowler, the author of a recent book on pastors’ wives and other prominent Christian women. In an interview in Christian Century magazine (December 4), Bowler, author of The Preacher’s Wife, said she was surprised to find that, without any theological education or supportive structures, the wives of well-known evangelical leaders and pastors exercised important leadership roles in churches and organizations usually barring women from playing such roles.
President Donald Trump’s appointment of Paula White as head of the White House’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, a unit in the Office of Public Liaison tasked with outreach to religious groups, suggests that the mainstreaming of Pentecostal Christians within the Christian right is about complete, writes Daniel Hummel in the e-newsletter Sightings (November 7). There
