Search Results (7)

Culture and media transform each other through mediatization. Mediatization interacts between culture and media through artifacts of material and visual culture to convey its messages to as many people as possible. Religion is an important component of culture, so it may be interesting to analyze the influence of mediatization on specific religious practices such as rites, particularly the rite of marriage. The processes of mediatization in marriage rites act performatively on physical and cultural space, and they are reshaping religious values and norms. Starting from the relationship between the ritual form of marriage and the physical shape of the architecture designed to host them, this article analyzes the relationship between mediatization and interfaith marriage rites. The objective is to show how the condition of inter-religiousness can demonstrate the presence of invariants in the structure of marriage rites and the architectural characterof the spaces where they take place. This article aims to demonstrate that the performative dimension of the space of marriage rites is based on these invariants, which are becoming one of the main tools through which mediatization is acting. Full article

This study investigates Indonesian students’ viewpoints on interfaith marriages in East Nusa Tenggara. A total of 819 students from 52 universities and colleges participated in the poll, and their answers were improved through focus groups and interviews with various student and non-student groups. The findings show that the students are quite open to interfaith relationships and exhibit reasonable reasoning. Interfaith dating is common in academic environments, which encourage acceptance of interfaith unions. In an effort to foster tolerance, students are advocating for legislative changes that would facilitate interfaith marriages. However, there are several challenges on the path to interfaith marriages. The rigid restrictions of family, culture, and religion that dictate marriage decisions regularly clash with the idealism of students. Decisions about marriage are not just driven by personal preferences, but they are heavily influenced by religious, cultural, familial, and customary norms. Religious differences are still thought to be potential triggers for family conflicts, effects on social status, inheritance issues, and challenges in passing along knowledge to future generations. As a result, many students believe that religious conversion is a better option than interfaith marriage. Students’ views on interfaith dating and marriage may seem idealistic in light of the current social, cultural, religious, and political circumstances. Full article

Names symbolize an individual’s identity, highlighting their unique attributes and representing their religious and cultural background. Names often serve as initial indicators of individuals’ cultural identities and beliefs. In the context of interfaith marriages, the names given to children can offer symbolic insights; however, a comprehensive exploration of the religious, national, and cultural factors underlying such naming choices is required. In many cases, the social environment of interfaith couples exerts pressure on the couple to choose a name aligning with their religion and identity, whether willingly or unwillingly. Antalya, a Turkish province that initially attracted a substantial Slavic population for tourism but subsequently witnessed a significant influx of permanent residents due to the ample employment prospects in the tourism sector, is notably distinguished by its increased Slavic demographic relative to other Turkish urban centers. In this context, Antalya garners notice because of the prevalence of interfaith marriages. This study investigates the preferences of Orthodox (Slavic) and Muslim (Turkish) couples within the region in terms of how they name their children and the factors influencing their preferences. This study systematically gathers and assesses the factors influencing the naming choices of children of these interfaith couples, particularly their correlation with religiosity. To accomplish this, a semi-structured interview prepared by the researchers was employed for data collection, and the data were subsequently analyzed using document analysis. Full article

In Islamic tradition, both Muslim men and women are prohibited from marrying mushriks and are required to marry only other believers. However, Muslim scholars’ definitions of ‘believers’ and ‘mushriks’ differ for men and women. Whereas kitabī (Jewish and Christian) women are accepted as believers, not mushriks; kitabī men, who believe in the same religion as kitabī women, are not accepted as believers. Thus, there is a prohibition of Muslim women marrying men of different faiths in Islam. This prohibition is mainly based on the consensus of scholars, which is mostly derived from the cultural and social understanding of marriage and gender roles in the family rather than strictly from religious sources of reference. The aim of this article is to discuss how classical and contemporary Muslim scholars have approached the question of Muslim women’s interfaith marriages in Islam. Classical Muslim scholars did not consider the changing circumstances in their society and reconsider the religious rule regarding Muslim women’s interfaith marriages, as they did for Muslim men’s interfaith marriages. On the other hand, some contemporary Muslim scholars argue that the absence of any explicit prohibition in the Qurʾān indicates that Islam leaves the decision regarding whom to marry up to the Muslim woman and that she should consider her conditions and her prospective husband’s attitude toward her religious faith before making the decision for herself. Full article

This paper sets out to critically examine the “forced” conversion narrative circulating across the Sikh diaspora. The “forced” conversion narrative tells the story of Muslim men allegedly deceiving and tricking “vulnerable” Sikh females into Islam. The paper explores the parallels between the “forced” conversion narrative and the discourse on “love jihad” propagated by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as well as drawing out its particularities within the Sikh community. The paper is informed by new empirical data generated by a series of qualitative interviews with Sikhs in the UK, US, and Canada, and captures the complexities and nuances of my respondents in their interpretations of, and challenges to, the “forced” conversions narrative. The paper adopts a decolonial Sikh studies theoretical framework to critically unpack the logics of the discourse. In doing so, it reveals a wider politics at play, centred upon the regulation of Sikh female bodies, fears of the preservation of community, and wider anxieties around interfaith marriage. These aspects come together to display Sikh Islamophobia, whereby the figure of the “predatory” Muslim male is represented as an existential threat to Sikh being. Full article

Interfaith relationships offer particular potential for creating religious coexistence; they also play out very differently in domestic space than in public and civic spaces, with the result that interfaith marriage becomes an important, yet unique, site of religious cooperation, co-existence, and conflict. The article argues that examinations of interfaith families must take three factors into account, each of which involves careful attention to the particular power dynamics of the family in question. First, scholars must think about the broader context in which the interfaith family has come to exist. Second, scholars must consider that the emotional and power dynamics of domestic space often have little in common with the compromises and power dynamics of public space. Lastly, while gender is not generally a key category of analysis for thinking about interfaith encounters in public space, gender, both as it shapes power dynamics and as it drives assumptions about childrearing and domestic labor, shapes interfaith family life and requires attendant scholarly attention. Full article

Motivated by increasing religious intolerance, we study the socio-economic covariates of individual-level religious intolerance in Indonesia, the largest Muslim democracy in the world. We use panel data from 2007 and 2014 of more than 20,000 adult individuals (representing 83% of the population) and apply fixed-effect regression analysis to identify relevant socio-economic characteristics that are highly associated with religious intolerance at the individual level. We utilize survey questions on willingness to accept someone with different faith living in the same village, living in the same neighborhood, renting a house, marrying relatives or children, and building a place of worship in the neighborhood as our measures of religious intolerance. We find that higher individual income and educational attainment are positively correlated with the tolerance level. At the same time, a higher level of self-declared religiosity is negatively correlated with a tolerant attitude. For location-specific characteristics, higher income inequality and extent of poverty in the location where an individual resides are associated with a higher level of religious intolerance. These patterns are generally robust across different measures of religious intolerance, although there is heterogeneity in the magnitudes of the correlations, where these covariates have the smallest correlations with the willingness to accept interfaith marriage in the family. Full article