Security forces break into your house in the middle of the night. They confiscate your cell phones, photos, and religious books. They interrogate you, and maybe even have you beaten and jailed. You will be deprived of your business and education. Your crime, in the eyes of the Islamic Republic, is your religious identity—and the authorities will do all they can to break it. Many members of religious minorities who have not surrendered to the will of the regime and its de-identification policies …

In the shadow of the rise of the far-right, ultra-conservative Christian denominations and groups in Europe are joining forces and overcoming long-held dogmas. These new interdenominational and international networks could profit from processes of social politicisation and radicalisation. The unthinkable has happened in the last decades: Ideas affiliated with the far-right, have become mainstream and have been normalised by conservative parties. Pushed by the so-called "refugee crisis“, popul…

Will COVID-19 lead to increased nationalist exclusionary and defensive attitudes among the religious, or might it be the cure that leads to radical social reorientation with a new emphasis on collective solidarity?1 Around the world, religion has come into focus as a central point of controversy and praise during the COVID-19 pandemic. Strict social distancing policies have raised thorny religious freedom issues and religious communities have faced criticism for noncompliance to the lockdown. At…

Banning a religious practice of a minority religious group that is considered abhorrent to the doctrine of the majority religion is a classic form of religious discrimination, one that violates modern Western liberal values.1 Religious freedom means non-interference in religious institutions and practices except under the most extraordinary circumstances. Yet this type of religious freedom violation is occurring in societies in which secular values justify this type of interference in religious …

Salvaging Israeli Secular Culture Erica Weiss, Tel Aviv University In 1970, Jacob Gruber coined the term “salvage anthropology” to describe the practice of 19th century ethnographers documenting the languages and cultures of those peoples threatened by extinction due to European and American colonialism. And so, it is somewhat ironic that this practice of recording vanishing cultures is just what jumps to my mind as I read Stacey Gutkowski’s account of modern secular Israelis. This is hyperbol…