Religion

Intriguing Patterns in Scolbert08’s Map of Religion in Insular Southeast Asia

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Insular Southeast Asia Religion MapScolbert08 does an excellent job of mapping the religious complexity of Insular Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea. I have therefore posted a detail of his or her map of world religion that focuses on this region, both with and without my own annotations. Many interesting and important spatial patterns of religious affiliation are revealed on the map.

Scolbert08’s map does not show the presence of animism (mapped as “other”), which is widespread across the eastern portion of the region. That is to be expected, however, because animism is essentially illegal in Indonesia, as the government recognizes only six official faiths: Islam, Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Religion Insular Southeast Asia MapBuddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism. Missionaries, moreover, are active in most areas of traditional animism, resulting in widespread conversion, which can be rather superficial. The Wikipedia article on a specific variant of animism found on the island of Sumba nicely frames the situation:

The Marapu religion (also known as Marafu in Sumba) is a form of ancestral religion that is practiced mainly in the island of Sumba in Indonesia. Marapu is also practiced in many more remote areas of Sumba and Flores. Both the Christians and Muslims on these islands tend to combine their faiths with Marapu. Since Marapu, like Kaharingan of the Dayaks [Iban], is not an official religion of Indonesia, and all Indonesian citizens are required to identify as of one of a member of the sanctioned religions by law, members have chosen either Christianity or Islam to self identify.

The island of New Guinea, which is politically divided between Indonesia in the west and the independent state of Papua New Guinea on the east, has an interestingly symmetrical appearance on Scolbert08’s map, with Catholicism widespread in the northeast and southwest and Protestant Christianity prevalent in the southeast and northwest. This pattern reflects, of course, the efforts of different groups of Christian missionaries. One might be surprised that Catholic missions were so widespread and successful in eastern Indonesia, which had been colonized by the Dutch, as the Netherlands is usually considered to be an historically Protestant (Calvinist) country. But the southern Netherlands is traditionally Catholic, and as recently as 1970 some 40 percent of the Dutch professed Roman Catholicism (today the country is most irreligious, as reflected in Scolbert08’s map). Dutch and Flemish Jesuit missionaries played an important role in converting animists in many remote areas of Southeast Asia. This was the case in the highlands of northern Luzon in the Philippines, where I encountered Flemish priests in the 1980s. The Muslim majority and plurality areas in western New Guinea seen on Scolbert08’s map largely reflect recent migration from Java, a phenomenon that has generated pronounced ethnic and religious tensions. I am a bit surprised that Papua New Guinea is shown as so heavily Christian, as animism there is very widespread. Many Papuan Christians, however, are recent converts who have by no means entirely abandoned the beliefs of their ancestors.

In peninsular Malaysia, Scolbert08’s map shows a Muslim majority in the east and a Muslim plurality in the west. This pattern is to be expected, as most Malaysian of Chinese and Indian descent, the vast majority of whom are non-Muslim, live in the western half of the peninsula. But only the area around the city of Ipoh, which is 41 percent Chinese and 14 percent Indian, stands out for having a Buddhist plurality, reflecting the local Chinese imprint. Although it is barely visible on the map, the northern part of Penang, also heavily Chinese, is also colored yellow for Buddhism. The same pattern holds in the Chinese-majority city-state of Singapore.

 

In many parts of insular Southeast Asia, large numbers of people of Chinese background have been converting to Christianity. The sizable Roman Catholic area seen on the map in western Borneo reflects the conversion of both the indigenous Iban (Dyak) people and local Chinese residents. Pontianak, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, has a Chinese majority, although the province of West Kalimantan as a whole has a slight Muslim Malay majority. The Malaysian state of Sarawak in northern Borneo, on the other had, has a clear Protestant plurality, which largely reflects the conversion of the indigenous Iban people. (This Protestant zone on the map extends across the border into Indonesia, where the almost entirely Christian Kenyah people are located). Although Sarawak as a whole has historically experienced relatively little religious tension, that situation may be changing. As analyzed in a 2014 article in The Malaysian Insider:

Such changes in attitude reflect a creeping extremism that is infecting Sarawak’s Muslim community – one that is often held up as an example of tolerance and inclusivity that their brethren in the Malay peninsula should learn from. There is now a growing worry that such attitude – imported from across the South China Sea – threatens to rupture the social glue that has bound Sarawak’s diverse community. This is even while Sarawak’s Muslim leaders continue to insist that their minority community is still moderate and able to embrace its more populous non-Muslim neighbours.

Tensions between Muslims and Christian have been much more pronounced in eastern Indonesia, particularly in central Sulawesi and in the Maluku Islands, although the situation is much calmer now than it had been at the turn of the millennium. I had expected the map to show more religious mixing in these areas, but instead most areas are indicated as having either a clear Muslim or a clear Christian majority. Note, however, that the Poso region of central Sulawesi, where some of the most extreme violence occurred, is depicted as having a relatively thin Christian majority, which means that it has a substantial Muslim minority. The opposite pattern is found on the island of Seram (Ceram, formerly), which is another site of pronounced religious tension. As explained in the Wikipedia:

 

Seram has been traditionally associated with the animism of the indigenous Alfur (or Nuaulu), a West Melanesian people who reputedly retained a custom of headhunting until the 1940s. Today, however, most of the population of Seram today is either Muslim or Christian due to both conversion and immigration. Seram was affected by the violent inter-religious conflict that swept Maluku province starting in late 1998, resulting in tens of thousands of displaced persons across the province but after the Malino II Accord agreement tempers cooled. Seram has been peaceful for many years but towns like Masohi remain informally divided into de facto Christian and Muslim sections. Around 7,000 people belonging to the Manusela tribe follow Hinduism.*

 

Bangsamoro Territory MapThe Muslim majority area of the southwestern Philippines is accurately shown as relatively small on Scolbert08’s map. What is more significant, however, is the sizable area of Catholic plurality in the areas to the south and east, which indicates substantial Muslim (and animist) minorities. The province of Sultan Kudarat, as its name indicates, formerly had a Muslim majority, but it is now roughly 56 percent Catholic and 10 percent Protestant, a change that has occurred mostly because of immigration from Christian areas of the Philippines. Such changing patterns of religious affiliation help explain the religious/political violence that plagues the region. I am Basilan Religion Ethnicity Mapsurprised, however, that the map does not show a Christian zone in the north-central portion of Basilan, the northernmost island of the largely Muslim Sulu Archipelago. This area has been an issue of contention between the Philippine government and Islamist insurgents in the stalled-out negotiations over the creation of a Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in country’s Muslim-majority districts.

The largest Protestant group in Indonesia is the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP), or Batak Christian Protestant Church, which is centered in the land of the Batak people in northern Sumatra around Lake Toba. Conversion began here in the mid 1800s, owing largely to the efforts of the German Rhenish Missionary Society, which was formed from a union of Lutheran and Indonesia Sharia MapReformed (Calvinist) churches. Tensions have recently been mounting between the Christians of North Sumatra and the Muslims of Aceh (to the north), which is an autonomous region of Indonesia under strict Sharia law. As reported in a recent Tempo article:

The attack [on] Deleng Lagan Batak Protestant Church (HKBP) in Gunung Meriah, Aceh Singkil, on Tuesday (13/10) has to be condemned.

The incident once again shows that in a country with the motto ‘Bhineka Tunggal Ika’ (unity in diversity), intolerance is still fast growing.

Yet, this is not the first incident that happened in Singkil, Aceh, which share a border with North Sumatera province.

In September 2005, a church in Siompin Village, Surou Sub-District was also burned down. The attack was triggered by the same reason: local residents objected to a private house made as a place of worship.

The conflict should not have happened if the regional government and the police could take a firm and strong action.

Regency governments have indeed arranged a meeting between religious figures and the people. The meeting eventually agreed to demolish a number of ‘troubled’ churches on October 18. However, the tension was already heated up. Provocation has also been spread.

Members of the HKBP and of other Christian demonization as well have been increasingly complaining of discrimination across much of Indonesia. They have been particularly galled by the fact that the government has been shutting down existing churches and preventing the construction of new ones in Muslim majority areas, particularly in metropolitan Jakarta. According to a May, 2015 article in GlobalPost:

Although more than 85 percent of Indonesians identify as Muslim, Protestantism and Catholicism are two of the nation’s approved faiths, helping give Indonesia its reputation as a pluralistic democracy. Even so, many local governments are shutting down churches as politicians crumble under pressure from their Muslim constituents.

“They want to stop the increasing number of churches, and if possible, reduce it,” said Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch. “That’s why, in the last 10 years, 1,000 were closed.”

 

*The assertion that a small tribe on this remote island follows Hinduism is quite surprising, but unfortunately I have not been able to find much information on this matter. Here is what the Wikipedia tells us:

The Manusela [of Seram] follows the syncretic faith of Naurus, which might have come from the Aluk’ To Dolo faith. The Naurus faith is a combination of Hinduism and Animism, but in recent years they also have adopted certain Protestant principles. A few Manusela have also adopted Protestanism as well. Not much is known about their religion about them, but their religion may include worshipping of Hindu and Animist gods, with this influence coming from the Mindanao during the early periods, and presence of Hinduism is evidenced from the fact that archaeologists have found several statues of Hindu gods in Mindanao.

Religious Complexity in Northeastern South Asia

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Northeastern South Asia Religion MapNortheastern South Asia has one of the world’s most complex religious environments, and such complexity is captured nicely in Scolbert08’s amazing map of world religions. To illustrate this, I have posted a detail from this map of this region, both in annotated and non-annotated form, along with a smaller version of the same map juxtaposed with other maps of the same general area.

The strongly Christian areas of far eastern India stand out clearly on Scolbert08’s map. Protestantism, represented mostly by the Presbyterian and Baptist churches, dominates here, but the state of Meghalaya also has an area of Roman Catholic plurality. Most of India’s northeastern Northeastern South Asia Religion Map AnnotatedChristians are of tribal background, and hence were never incorporated into the Hindu world. Manipur, which has a Hindu plurality, forms a religious exception in this part of India. In the early modern period, Manipur was a strong Hindu kingdom, supported by a powerful cavalry. But Hinduism is prevalent only in the state’s central plain, which also has a small zone of Islam, whereas the uplands of Manipur are dominated by Protestant Christians. The state as a whole is 46 percent Hindu, 34 percent Christian, and 9 percent Muslim.

 

Arunachal Pradesh in the far northeast, which China claims as “South Tibet,” is strikingly heterogeneous in terms of religion, as it is in regard to language, with some 30 to 50 separate ethnolinguistic groups. Some of the people of Arunachal Pradesh have converted Northeast India Mapsto Protestant Christianity, whereas others remain animists. Buddhism, of both the Theravada and Tibetan Mahayana branches, are also well represented in the state, as is Hinduism. The 2010 India census gives the following breakdown for Arunachal Pradesh: Christian: 418,732 (30.26%); Hindu: 401,876 (29.04%); Others (mostly Donyi-Polo): 362,553 (26.2%); Buddhist: 162,815 (11.76%); Muslim: 27,045 (1.9%); Sikh: 1,865 (0.1%); Jain: 216 (<0.1%). The Donyi-Polo category is particularly interesting, as it represents an effort to retain traditional beliefs and practices by transforming them into an organized religion. As explained in the Wikipedia:

Donyi-Polo (also Donyi-Poloism) is the designation given to the indigenous religions, of animistic and shamanic type, of the Tani and other Tibeto-Burman peoples of Arunachal Pradesh, in north-eastern India. The name “Donyi-Polo” means “Sun-Moon”, and was chosen for the religion in the process of its revitalisation and institutionalisation started in the 1970s in response to the coercive proselytization of Christianity and the possibility of absorption into Hinduism.

The religion has developed a congregational system, hymns to be sung composed in the Tani ritual language of shamans, a formalised philosophy-theology and iconography of the gods and temples.

 

A similar movement is underway in the tribal belt of the Chota Nagpur Plateau in the Indian state of Jharkhand, where the new/old faith of Sarnaism is gaining strength. As explained in a different Wikipedia article:

Sarnaism or Sarna (local languages: Sarna Dhorom, meaning “Religion of the Holy Woods”) defines the indigenous religions of the Adivasi populations of the states of Central-East India, such as the Munda, the Ho, the Santali, the Khuruk, and others. During, colonial rule it was subsumed as a folk form of Hinduism, in recent decades followers have started to develop an identity, and more recently even an organisation, distinct from Hinduism, similarly to other tribal religious movements such as Donyi-Polo or Sanamahism. …

Sarnaist followers have been organising protests and petitions to have their religion recognised by the government of India in census forms.[ In 2013 Sarnaist followers have organised a protest against use of indigenous imagery by Christians in order to attract converts.

Evidently, Christians in the Chota Nagpur region have been attracting converts in recent years. As the map shows, some parts of this region have clear Roman Catholic majorities. Catholicism has a long history in this area, dating back to the actions of Flemish Jesuit missionaries in the late 1800s. According to a recent article in ACN-USA News, “Catholic beliefs and practices have been important factors in drawing tribal peoples to the Catholic Church in north-east India, where Christianity has grown phenomenally.” I would, however, like to see more solid data on this phenomenon.

 

Other interesting and important features are also evident on Scolbert08’s map. One example is the fairly solid belt of Buddhism (Theravada) in the Chittagong Hills of southeastern Bangladesh. Although Buddhism is rarely associated with Bangladesh, up to a million Bangladeshis adhere to this faith. At one time, Buddhism was common if not prevalent over the area that now constitutes Bangladesh, but the religion survived only in the more remote upland tracks of the southeast. (Throughout northeastern South Asia, upland areas correlate with religious minorities.) Bangladesh also has some Hindu majority districts in the southwest, a pattern that generates political complications. As explained in a Wikipedia article:

Despite their dwindling numbers, Hindus [in Bangladesh] still yield considerable influence because of their geographical concentration in certain regions. They form a majority of the electorate in at least two parliamentary constituencies (Khulna-1 and Gopalganj-3) and account for more than 25% in at least another twenty. For this reason, they are often the deciding factor in parliamentary elections where victory margins can be extremely narrow. It is also frequently alleged that this is a prime reason for many Hindus being prevented from voting in elections, either through intimidating actual voters, or through exclusion in voter list revisions (e.g., see Daily Star, 4 January 2006).

 

As a final point, it is noteworthy that the Rohingya Muslim area of Burma (Myanmar) along the border with Bangladesh is not evident on the map. As most Rohingya have been denied citizenship in Burma, they are evidently not counted in enumerations of religious belief.

Scolbert08’s Magnificent Map of World Religion, Part 1

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Scolbert08 Religion Map1An astoundingly detailed map of world religion has recently been published by reddit user “scolbert08.” The map is much too large for me to post in its entirely on GeoCurrents, but one can find the full-resolution map both here and at the interesting website Brilliant Maps. The level of precision found on this map is truly remarkable; over much of the world it goes down to the level of third-order administrative divisions. The map certainly has a few problems, which I will address in subsequent posts. But so too do all world religion maps, due in part to the intrinsic complexities of religious affiliation. But overall, the map is a remarkable achievement, and both it and its author deserve far more recognition than they have received. The anonymity of the cartographer, however, does present some challenges here.

 

Scolbert08 Religion Map2I get excited about maps that teach me interesting things about the word, and by this metric Scolbert08’s production scores high indeed. Let us begin by considering the map’s portrayal of Greece and the Balkan Peninsula. The map detail that I have posted here has some interesting features that I have long been aware of, such as the Roman Catholic zone in northern Albania, the Muslim area in northeastern Bulgaria (Turkish speaking), and the Muslim area in southwestern Bulgaria and some neighboring districts in northern Greece (that of the Pomaks, who speak Bulgarian). But the map also includes three features that were completely new to me.

Scolbert08 Religion Map BalkansThe first of these feature is the presence of a Roman Catholic plurality on the Greek island of Tinos, as well as a strong Catholic presence on some other islands in the Cyclades archipelago (some of these islands, such as Syros, are colored light purple on the map, indicating that Eastern Orthodoxy is the main faith but is embraced by only around half or less of the local population). As the Wikipedia describes the island of Syros:

As in the rest of Greece, Syros has Eastern Orthodox churches. … There is also an equal number of Roman Catholic churches on the island and some entirely Catholic villages; thus, it is one of the most significant places for Roman Catholicism in Greece. Syros is one of a few places where Catholics and Orthodox share a common date for Easter, which in Syros’ case, is the Orthodox date.

 

Another Wikipedia article, that on Roman Catholicism in Greece, explains the situation, which dates back to the period of Venetian and Genoese rule:

Indigenous Roman Catholic Greeks number about 50,000 and are a religious and not an ethnic minority. Most of them are either descendants of the Venetians and Genoese that ruled many Greek islands (in both the Aegean and Ionian seas) from the early 13th until the late 18th century, or descendants of the thousands of Bavarians that came to Greece in the 1830s as soldiers and civil administrators, accompanying King Otto. One very old but still common term to refer to them is Φράγκοι, or “Franks”, dating to the times of the Byzantine Empire, when medieval Greeks would use that term to describe all Catholics.

Another surprise for me is the Muslim plurality in Komotini in northeastern Greece. Most of the Muslims here are Turkish speakers. I had been under the impression that virtually all Turks were expelled from Greece in the 1920s. But as it turns out, Komotini was largely exempt. As explained by the Wikipedia:

The population [of Komotini] is quite multilingual for a city of its size and it is made up of local Greeks, Greek refugees from Asia Minor and East Thrace, Muslims of Turkish, Pomak and Romani origins, descendants of refugees who survived the Armenian Genocide, and recent refugees, including Pontic Greeks from north-eastern Anatolia and the regions of the former Soviet Union (mainly Georgia, Armenia, Russia and Kazakhstan).

The Muslim population of East Macedonia and Thrace dates to the Ottoman period, and unlike the Muslims of Macedonia and Epirus, was exempted from the 1922-23 Greek-Turkish population exchange following the Treaty of Lausanne

The most interesting surprise on the map, however, is the presence of a Roman Catholic population in the Bulgarian city and environs of Rakovski. This community was evidently composed of followers of the heterodox (or heretical, depending on one’s perspective), dualistic Paulician creed that once flourished in parts of the Byzantine Empire. The members of the final Paulician community eventually converted to Roman Catholicism rather than Eastern Orthodoxy, and in such a manner remained religiously distinctive from their neighbors. As explained in the Wikipedia:

Bulgarian Catholics live predominantly in the regions of Svishtov and Plovdiv and are mostly descendants of the heretical Christian sect of the Paulicians, which converted to Roman Catholicism in the 16th and 17th centuries. The largest Roman Catholic Bulgarian town is Rakovski in Plovdiv Province. ….

Nonetheless, Catholic missionaries renewed their interest in Bulgaria during the 16th century, after the Council of Trent, when they were aided by merchants from Dubrovnik on the Adriatic. In the next century, Vatican missionaries converted most of the Paulicians, the remainder of a once-numerous heretical Christian sect, to Catholicism. Many believed that conversion would bring aid from Western Europe in liberating Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.

 

Innovative Wikipedia Maps of World Religion

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As mentioned in the previous post, a number of innovative world maps of religion have recently appeared on the internet. Several of these are posted at the bottom of the Wikipedia article on “Major Religious Groups” in a section labeled “Maps of self-reported adherence.” Today’s post will focus on three of the maps found here.

Christianity and Islam World MapThe first map reproduced here shows only two religions, Christianity and Islam. It does so, however, in an unusual manner, mapping not merely adherents of these two faiths but also those who are neither Muslim nor Christian (whether they follow other religions or are irreligious). Unfortunately, the map has little in the way of a key and lacks explanatory notes, but it is easy to understand how it works, at least in theory. A county that is nearly 100 percent Muslim is thus depicted in bright green, a country that is nearly 100 Christian is depicted in bright red, a country that has almost no adherents of either faith is depicted in white, and a country of mixed faith is accorded a mixed color. Countries and dependencies that are not measured are portrayed in black, as is French Guiana, which should be the same color as the rest of France.

Although the idea behind this map is powerful, I am not sure that it works out as well in practice. To begin with, the color scheme does not make intuitive sense. At first glance—to me at any rate—darker green countries such as Syria, Egypt, and especially Lebanon would appear to have a higher percentage of Muslims than lighter green countries such as Algeria and Afghanistan, but the opposite is true. Countries that are fairly evenly divided between Muslims and Christians, such as Nigeria, would logically be depicted in brown, but here Nigeria looks much more green, and hence much more Muslim than Christian. The same is true for Eritrea, which according to some sources is evenly split between the two faiths, although the Pew Research Center claims that it is actually about two-thirds Christian. Only Ethiopia looks truly brown to me, but it has a clear Christian majority according to almost all sources. Bosnia, mapped in a pale green shade looks like it is divided between Muslims and people who follow neither Christianity nor Islam, but according to most sources the country is almost half Christian.

Abrahamic and Indian Religions World MapIn the end, I commend the author for making such an innovative map, but I do think that it could benefit from some major adjustments. I am more positively inclined toward another map made by the same author, that comparing the prevalence of “Abrahamic” and “Indian” religions. Most world religions can be grouped together in such a manner, although they rarely are. The most striking feature of this map is the global prevalence of the Abrahamic faiths, with those of Indian derivation mostly confined to East, South, and Mainland Southeast Asia. Bangladesh is a striking exception to this pattern. The only “orange” countries, heavily mixed between these two traditions, are the Guyanas, Malaysia, South Korea, and Mauritius, although Fiji and Trinidad & Tobago should be placed in this category as well, while French Guiana should be mapped along with the rest of France. South Korea is appropriately depicted in a light orange, as almost half of its residents profess no religious faith.

Religions of the World MapThe final map, by Arseny Khakhalin, makes a three-fold division between Islam, Christianity, and an odd and unjustifiable category of Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese religions, and indigenous religions. It also maps Judaism separately with an equal mixture of cyan and magenta, colors that are used map Islam and Christianity respectively. I find this maneuver confusing, as it would seem that a country evenly divided between Muslims and Christians, such as Nigeria, should be mapped in the same manner. The most striking feature of this map is its division of a number of large countries into their constituent units. This strategy reveals a number of important and interesting features, such as the prevalence of Islam in Kashmir and Xinjiang, and the unusual religious nature of Russia’s Republic of Kalmykia (which is heavily Buddhist). The small Christian states of eastern India also stand out, although I suspect that they should be mapped in a deeper shade of magenta, as Nagaland is reportedly 90 percent Baptist. It also seems that some countries (such as those of Scandinavia) and some regions (such as the provinces of Argentina) are depicted as too Christian, as they have high percentages of non-believers.  This  issue, however, concerns the data sources, not the cartography.

Several other world religions maps have recently been posted on-line that break many other countries down into their constituent units. I hope to put up a post about these maps later this week, although writing and grading mid-term examinations may force me to delay this until next week.

 

The Pitfalls and Promises of Mapping World Religion

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I have long been dissatisfied with world religion maps, especially those that are available on the internet. To be sure, mapping religion is an inherently difficult task. Many areas contain multiple faiths, just as different places often vary tremendously in regard religiosity itself. Changes in the religious landscape, moreover, are often difficult to capture. Most of Europe, for example, is appropriately mapped as Christian when it comes to its religious heritage, but in the 21st century such a depiction is no longer completely accurate. Over much of Europe, nonbelievers now greatly outnumber believers, and in quite a few places practicing Muslims outstrip practicing Christians. Some reports go so far as to claim that in terms of actual practice, France is now more Muslim than Christian,* although this assertion is probably exaggerated.

Religious “mixture,” moreover, can characterize not just regions but also individuals. An anthropologist friend of mine once characterized the West African country of Guinea as “90 percent Muslim and 90 percent animist,” which could well be true. But animism and so-called tribal religions more generally usually get short shrift in world religion maps. The same is true for syncretic faiths such as Candomblé, which might be the dominant faith in parts of northeastern Brazil, although only around five percent of Brazilians overall report themselves to be adherents. But such numbers are themselves suspect, as it is often difficult to enumerate religious adherents. Polling and census data are partial or non-existent over much of the world, and people often fail to be forthcoming about matters of faith when asked. As a GodWeb post argues, “To put it bluntly, when asked about religious belief and practice, ordinary citizens lie. And they lie about their faith to a greater degree then they lie about their sex life, or political activity.”

World Religion Map 1Another common problem in the mapping of religions is the inconsistent division of major faiths into their constituent branches. If Christianity is divided into its Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox branches, as it often is (see the map posted to the left), then by the same token Buddhism should be broken down into its Mahayana and Theravada forms, just as Islam should be divided into its Sunni, Shia, and Ibadi branches. Making such divisions, moreover, should be done in a rigorous manner. The so-called Oriental Orthodox Christian churches, such as the World Religion Map 3Armenian Apostolic Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, for example, should not be mapped with the Eastern Orthodox branch, as they often are (see, for example, “World Religions Map 2006” posted here) for the simple reason that they do not belong. As the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church reject Branches of Christianitythe Creed of Chalcedon that was adopted by the Christian mainstream in A.D. 451, they stand apart from Eastern Orthodoxy as well as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. But as the diagram posted here shows, this situation is complicated by a number of subsequent unions of theologically disparate Christian branches.

But if the mapping of religion is inherently problematic, that does not mean that all maps of world religions are of equal value—or lack of value. Some basic maps are, of course, much better than others. Recently, moreover, a number of highly innovative and extremely detailed world maps of religion have appeared on the internet. Several GeoCurrents posts next week will examine these maps in some detail. Before doing so, however, I cannot resist pointing out how amusingly bad World Religion Map 2maps of religion can be. I would be tempted to nominate the one posted to the left for the booby prize of the worst world map on the internet.

To begin with, the map deeply distorts basic patterns of both physical and political geography. Note the seaway between North and South America, the misplacement of New Zealand, the division of North Korea into two World Religion Map detailcountries, and so on. A detail of the map’s depiction of central southeastern Europe reveals how laughable it is. But more to the point, consider its portrayal of religion: Guatemala and Costa Rica are non-Christian; Jordan is Jewish: Armenia, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Lake Victoria are Muslim, as is Taiwan; Japan is Christian; both North Koreas are “Chinese”; and Sri Lanka is Hindu. Interestingly, the site on which it is posted, which includes some fine maps of religion, merely notes that it “is a much more generalized map of world religions.” In actuality, this map verges on intellectual malpractice.

*According to a 2012 report by the Gatestone Institute:

Although 64% of the French population (or 41.6 million of France’s 65 million inhabitants) identifies itself as Roman Catholic, only 4.5% (or 1.9 million) of those actually are practicing Catholics, according to the French Institute of Public Opinion (or Ifop, as it is usually called).

By way of comparison, 75% (or 4.5 million) of the estimated 6 million mostly ethnic North African and sub-Saharan Muslims in France identify themselves as “believers” and 41% (or 2.5 million) say they are “practicing” Muslims, according to an in-depth research report on Islam in France published by Ifop.

Taken together, the research data provides empirical evidence that Islam is well on its way to overtaking Roman Catholicism as the dominant religion in France.

In Britain, Islam has overtaken Anglicanism as the dominant religion as more people attend mosques than the Church of England. According to one survey, 930,000 Muslims attend a place of worship at least once a week, whereas only 916,000 Anglicans do the same.

 

The Ahl-e Haqq Minority Faith Fights for Its Homeland in Northern Iraq

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Daquq Google EarthEarlier this week, Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched an offensive against ISIS in the Daquq district of Iraq, some 40 kilometers south of Kirkuk. Aided by airstrikes from US-led coalition warplanes, Kurdish forces took over a number of villages. As reported in the news service Rudaw:

Hismadin said Kurdish reinforcements streamed in once the Peshmerga’s heavy fighting began. He added that members of the Kurdistan regional parliament and many volunteers were also on hand. “We will not stop until we push out ISIS,” Jaafar Mustafa, commander of the 70th Peshmerga Forces, told Rudaw.

Kirkuk area religion mapAlso participating in the offensive was the 630-strong First Kakai Battalion of the Peshmerga, whose members have been fighting “to protect their ancestral lands along the Daquq frontline” despite being woefully underequipped, as noted in another Rudaw article. The Kakai (or Kaka’i) belong to a little know-known but significant religious minority, roughly one million strong, that is concentrated in the Kurdish region of western Iran. This faith is more commonly called Ahl-e Haqq, although the term Yarsan is often encountered as well. It is sometimes more loosely grouped with the Yezidi faith and other local religions under a “Gnosticism” label. Michael Izady’s map of religion in Iraq shows a sizable area of this faith just to the south and east of Kirkuk. It does not, however, include the city of Daquq in the Kakai/Yarsan/Ahl-e Haqq area. The Wikipedia article on the town, however, claims that, “The majority of the 50,000 inhabitants are Kurds from the Kakai faith.”

 

The exact nature of the Kaka’i/Ahl-e Haqq/Yarsan sect is hotly debated. Some scholars view it as an offshoot of Shia Islam, whereas others consider it a fundamentally non-Muslim faith with a mere Islamic veneer. The latter view is found in the Wikipedia article on the group:

Among other important pillars of their belief system are that the Divine Essence has successive manifestations in human form (mazhariyyat) and the belief in transmigration of the soul (dunaduni in Kurdish). For these reasons, the members of Ahl-e Haqq faith cannot be considered as part of the religion of Islam. The Yarsani faith has no common belief with Islam other than the ghulat Shia Islamic assertion of the divinity or godhead/godhood of Ali, although it can be identified as Kurdish esoterism which emerged under the intense influence of Bātinī-Sufism during the last two centuries. ….

The Yarsani faith’s unique features include millenarism, nativism, egalitarianism, metempsychosis, angelology, divine manifestation and dualism. Many of these features are found in Yazidism, another Kurdish faith, in the faith of Zoroastrians and in Shī‘ah extremist groups; certainly, the names and religious terminology of the Yarsani are often explicitly of Muslim origin. Unlike other indigenous Persianate faiths, the Yarsani explicitly reject class, caste and rank, which sets them apart from the Yezidis and Zoroastrians.

Yet according to the scholar Jean During, “Ahl-e Haqqism” is firmly rooted in mystical Islam, and is best seen as “an offshoot of a kind of Sufism which adapted itself to Kurdish customs.”* But During’s article also makes it clear that the faith deviates strongly from all orthodox interpretations of Islam. In its theology, the “divine manifestations” encountered in world history include not only Jesus, Abraham, and a number of Muslim figures, but also Zoroaster, the Buddha, and Plato. Equally intriguing, as During explains, is the fact that:

Elitism is part of the Ahl-e Haqq culture: they have a conviction that they stand above standard Islam, and belong to a kind of avant-garde. They possess the key of understanding of historical events, which permits them to interpret all contemporary events in a sometimes paradoxical way. …. This leads them to subversion. They never fear the law nor the blame… . They often like to show themselves as provocative, professing shocking beliefs or non-conformist practices” (During p. 124).

Kurdish Languages Map 1According to most sources, most adherents of Ahl-e Haqq speak Gorani, which is also the main language of their religious writings. Although Gorani is often considered to be a Kurdish dialect, it is not interintelligible with the main Kurdish tongues, Kurmanji and Sorani. But then again, Kurmanji and Sorani are not interintelligible with each other, meaning that Kurdish is best viewed as a language group rather than a distinct language in its own right. But this expanded definition of “Kurdish” does not necessarily include Gorani, even though its speakers are counted as ethnic Kurds. As noted in the Wikipedia, “A separate group of languages, Zaza-Gorani, is also spoken by several million Kurds, but is linguistically not Kurdish.” As this quotation makes clear, Gorani is most closely related to Zaza (or Zazaki) of central-eastern Turkey, another “Kurdish” language that is closely associated with a highly heterodox Muslim sect (Alevism, in this case). As can be seen in Izady’s map of Kurdish dialects, Gorani is spoken in the Ahl-e Haqq area of Iraq just to the south of Kirkuk.

Kurdish languages map 2A relative new (posted 2014) Wikipedia map of the Kurdish languages, however greatly restricts the extent of Gorani. Instead, it maps most of the area usually depicted as Gorani-speaking under the category of “Pehlewani,” or “southern Kurdish.” The Wikipedia article on Southern Kurdish also claims, contrary to most sources, that it, rather than Gorani, is the main language of the Ahl-e Haqq: “It [Pehlewani] is also the language of the populous Kurdish Kakayî-Kakavand tribe near Kerkuk [Kirkuk] and most Yarsani Kurds in Kermanshah province [in Iran].”

 

This situation is confusing, and I can only conclude that more research is needed. Minority faiths and languages in this part of the word deserve much more attention than they have received. The Yezidis, owing to the atrocities that they have suffered, have at long last been noticed by the global media. Other groups deserve the same consideration. For those interested in the topic, I cannot recommend Gerard Russell’s Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms highly enough. I only wish that Russell could have included a chapter on the Ahl-e Haqq.

*. The quotation is from page 114 of: Jean During, 1998, “A Critical Survey on Ahl-e Haqq Studies in Europe and Iran.” In Tord Olsson, Elisabeth Ozdalga, and Catharina Raudvere, eds. Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious, and Social Perspectives. Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul Transactions, Vol. 8.

 

Dhofar: Religion, Rebellion, and Reconstruction

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Darbat Waterfalls Dhofar OmanAs mentioned in the previous post, Oman’s Dhofar region is highly distinctive in terms of both language and climate. It is also differentiated from the rest of Oman in regard to religion. Most Omanis follow Ibadi Islam, a branch that is said to predate the Sunni/Shia split, whereas most Dhofaris are Sunni Muslims. Dhofar also has a distinctive political history, and was essentially an imperial possession of Oman until 1970. From the early 1960s until the late 1970s, a major although largely forgotten Marxist revolution in Dhofar shook the foundations of the Omani state, forcing the country at long last to enter the modern world. Today Dhofar, like the rest of Oman, is generally quiet and peaceful – quite in contrast to the situation in neighboring Yemen. Yet it remains in many ways a land apart; as the Dhofari feminist blogger Nadia recently put it, “Our society in Dhofar is dismissive of outsiders, be it someone from another part of Oman or someone from another country…” (Nadia’s website, Dhofari Gucci, also has the best photo that I have seen of the region’s wet conditions during the monsoon season, reproduced here.)

Islamic Sects and Madhhabs MapMost sources claim that roughly 75 percent of the people of Oman follow Ibadi Islam, the faith of the country’s ruling establishment, although some state that the figure could be as low as 50 percent. Historically, Ibadis have often tended to stand apart from other Muslims, as those of Algeria’s M’zab oasis still do, but that is not the case in Oman. Most observers stress modern Ibadism’s unusual combination of strict orthodoxy and tolerance: as the Wikipedia article puts is, “Ibadis have been referred to as tolerant puritans or as political quietists due to their preference to solve differences through dignity and reason rather than with confrontation, as well as their tolerance for practicing Christians and Jews sharing their communities.” Dhofar at one Middle East Religion Maptime evidently had a significant Ibadi presence, but the region has long been dominated by Sunni Islam of the Shafi’i school of jurisprudence (madhhab), which extends across most of the Indian Ocean realm. The Wikipedia map of Muslim sects and school of jurisprudences posted here, although excellent overall, overlooks the non-Ibadi nature of Dhofar. Mike Izady’s map, on the other hand, does capture it, although it misses the substantial rural population of the humid upland belt located to the north of Salalah.

 

Over the course of the past few centuries, Dhofar has sometimes been Omani Empire 1856 Mapindependent and sometimes under the rule of neighboring powers, particularly those based in the Hadhrahmaut (to the west) or in northern Oman. In the ancient and medieval periods it often enjoyed marked prosperity based on the trade in aromatic resins, as it was, and is, the core area of frankincense production. Dhofar definitely came under Omani rule after 1750, when that sultanate created a remarkably powerful maritime empire. (The map of the Omani Empire posted here, however, exaggerates the extent of this realm in many areas, although it perhaps downplays the reach of Omani power in the Great Lakes region of central Africa). The website British Empire provides a useful overview:

Between the 1750s and the 1850s, Oman re-established its authority over the islands of the Strait of Hormuz, leasing them from the Persians, secured more than 100 miles of the Makran coast of Baluchistan, reasserted its claims to Dhofar and to the ports of East Africa, and even attempted to take Bahrain. The Mazrui rulers of Mombasa were repeatedly attacked and finally submitted in 1837. The Omani fleet once again became the most powerful local force in the Indian Ocean, if not throughout the East. The architect of this remarkable Omani expansion in the early nineteenth century was the Sultan Seyyid Said, who reigned from 1804 to 1856. He ordered vessels from Indian shipyards, including, for example, the 74-gun Liverpool, launched in 1826, which from 1836 became the Royal Navy Imaum. He possessed in all fifteen western-style warships, as well as a vast fleet of Arab vessels, which could be used for both commercial and military purposes. He could probably embark as many as 20,000 troops. When the Sultan arrived at Zanzibar in East Africa in 1828, his fleet consisted of one 64-gun ship, three frigates of 36 guns, two brigs of 14 guns, and 100 armed transport dhows with about 6,000 soldiers. [Emphasis added regarding Dhofar.]

By the time the Sultan moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1840 he had established a highly successful economic system there: an Omani emigrant plantocracy was cultivating cloves, successfully introduced into Zanzibar in 1828, and Indian agents and capitalists, for centuries familiar in Oman and on the East African coast, were capitalising the ivory and slaving caravans which tapped the animal and human resources of the far interior of East Africa.

 

After the mid-1800s, however, Omani power withered in the face of British expansion, and Oman itself eventually became a protectorate of the United Kingdom. It did maintain a few odd corners of its empire, however, not relinquishing the port of Gwadar in what is now Pakistan until 1958. It also held firmly on to Dhofar; Said bin Taimur, sultan from 1923 to 1970, even based his court in Salalah, the main city of Dhofar. But, as noted in the Wikipedia, “Dhofar itself was a dependency of Oman and it was subjected to severe economic exploitation. Moreover, the population of Dhofar …were subjected to even greater restrictions than other Omanis.”

The restrictions faced by Dhofaris and other residents of Oman were at the time exceptionally harsh, and the country had one of the world’s lowest levels of socio-economic development. As Chris Kutschera, writing in the Washington Post in 1970, described Oman of the 1960s:

Everything, it seemed was forbidden. The inhabitants of the coast were forbidden to travel inland, and those of the inland valleys could not go to the coast, or even from one valley to another. No one was allowed to go to Dhofar, in the extreme southwest.

There were, in all Oman and Dhofar, three primary schools and not a single secondary school. Students who wanted to pursue their studies had to leave their country illegally and start a long life of exile in the Persian Gulf or Kuwait. It was forbidden to build new houses, or to repair the old ones; forbidden to install a lavatory or a gas stove; forbidden to cultivate new land, or to buy a car without the Sultan’s permission.

No one could smoke in the streets, go to movies or beat drums; the army used to have a band, but one day the Sultan had the instruments thrown into the sea. A few foreigners opened a club: he had it shut, “probably because it was a place where one could have fun”, says one of his former victims. Three hours after sunset, the city gates were closed.

No foreigner was allowed to visit Muscat without the Sultan’s personal permission, and sailors on ships anchored at Muscat could not land. Not a single paper was printed in the country. All political life was prohibited and the prisons were full. Sultan Said was surrounded by official slaves in his palace at Salalah, where time was marked in Pavlovian fashion by a bell which rang every four hours.

Dissatisfaction in Dhofar with the rule of Sultan Said bin Taimur steadily mounted, especially among the Shehri-speaking (or Jibbali-speaking) indigenous population of the mountains. In 1962, an open rebellion broke out, aided initially by Saudi Arabia. Within a few years the sultan retreated to his palace, ordering his troops to burn villages and destroy wells in rebel-held areas. The rebellion gradually took a more leftist direction, receiving support from Nasser in Egypt and after 1967 from both the People’s Republic of China and the communist-run People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (or South Yemen, which was actually eastern Yemen in strictly geographical terms). By the end of the decade, Omani forces in Dhofar controlled little more than the city of Salalah, with the entire upland region having fallen into rebel hands.

Dhofar Rebellion1970 saw the deposition of the Sultan by his son Qaboos bin Said Al Said in a British-orchestrated palace coup. With substantial British aid, the new government immediately changed tactics, embarking on a “hearts and minds” campaign to win the support of the Dhofari people. Dhofar itself was transformed into a regular province of Oman, and appeals were made to both Islam and traditional tribal values in order to counter communist ideology. Rebels who surrendered were give cash bonuses, and some were reorganized into counter-insurgency squadrons. Oman’s newly upgraded air force was also effectively used against rebel positions. Military assistance was provided by Jordan as well as the UK, and in 1974 Iran sent a contingent of some 4000 troops. Oman also recruited troops from Baluchistan in Pakistan. The rebellion was officially defeated in 1976, although skirmishes persisted until 1979.

Operation Oman Dhofar RebellionAlthough the Dhofar Rebellion was largely forgotten in the West, memory of the struggle is now being revived through film, memoirs, and blogging. As noted in the blogsite MySecretWarDhofar :

“Only those who have been to Dhofar can fully appreciate the severity of the conditions in which the polyglot force fought and flew; at times extreme heat; at others cold, wet, permanent cloud and rugged terrain, the equal of which it would be hard to find anywhere…Those who fought there, including those who were wounded or died, did not fight in vain.”

Michael Carver – Field Marshal

 

Sultan Qaboos did far more than merely defeat the Dhofar rebellion. Using oil money he launched Oman on a crash-course modernization drive, which proved extraordinarily successful. Some Omanis no doubt chafe at their lack of freedom and worry about corruption and absolutist rule, and numerous protests broke out during the Arab Spring of 2011 and subsequently – although most were apparently focused on wages and the cost of living. But Qaboos is widely revered, and great concern surrounds the issue of succession. The sultan is ailing, allegedly from cancer, and he has not named an heir. He has no children and is widely believed to be homosexual. The future of Oman is thus quite uncertain, as is that of the country’s monarchy.

 

The mood of the country is perhaps best captured by the blogger Nadia, mentioned above, who writes at Dhofari Gucci. As she wrote on November 11, 2014:

But you must understand one thing if you are not Omani. You must understand what this man [Sultan Qaboos] means to us. He resembles the only form of true leadership we know. He is the only person we feel our country is safe with. He is the one person Omani trust. Did Oman promote diverse leadership over the past four decades? Not really. We have been dedicated to him as a leader and only him.

I’ll tell you why. People like my family will tell you why. My father was born in a cave. He lived a primitive and difficult life until he was an adult. No electricity, no running water, no warmth, living in the mountains of Dhofar sharing his shelter with animals. At times he was very hungry. There was never enough food.

Today, he has a career, a big car, several houses, children, and a very comfortable life. No matter how happy he is now, he will never forget where he came from. People will never forget what Sultan Qaboos did for them and how he led this country from the darkness to where we are today. You need to understand that. …

For 44 years this man has paved the way for our future. He had a vision. He still has a vision. The past few months have been so difficult for Omanis. We have been walking around with heavy hearts. There are no other visible leaders in Oman. There is no clear successor. We don’t want a successor. Not now. Not yet. None of us, young and old, can imagine Oman without him. None of us can even begin to comprehend our reality without this great human being in our lives.

 

Forgotten Modern Kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula, Part 1

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Stanford University’s history department recently took its old collection of instructional maps out of storage to hang on permanent display in the hallways. This was an inspired decision, as some of these maps are gems and even the more ordinary ones have some interesting and unusual features.

1923 Arabia MapA 1923 map of Asia by Denoyer Geppert Co. of Chicago, for example, is unexceptional, but its depiction of the Arabian Peninsula is intriguing (see the detail posted to the left). It shows, for example, the small, independent state of Asir in the southwest, rarely seen on maps of this sort, as well as the short-lived (1916-1925) Kingdom of Hejaz. It oddly portrays Oman as if it were a sovereign state rather than a British protectorate, and more oddly still classifies both Qatar (somewhat distorted on the map) and what is now the UAE (then the “Trucial States,” another British protectorate) as parts of the Omani polity. The most unusual feature is the pink strip of land—color-coded as British territory—just to the southwest of Qatar, in an area that now belongs to Saudi Arabia. The mapping makes it seem as if this slice of land had been a northern extension of the British colonial sphere in southwestern Arabia (Aden and the Hadhrahmaut).

 

Arabian Neutral Zones MapDespite such odd and incorrect portrayals, I rather like this map of the Arabian Peninsular, as it reminds me of the recent establishment of the region’s geopolitical framework. When I was a child, I was intrigued by the undefined boundaries in the Empty Quarter (Rub’ al Khali; “Dahna Desert” on the map here), and even more so by the existence of the stateless Saudi-Iraqi and Saudi-Kuwaiti “neutral zones.” Later on, I was slightly disappointed to see the boundaries fixed and the neutral zones partitioned into nonexistence.

 

Rashidi Emirate MapOn the map in question, Saudi Arabia does not appear, and for good reason, as it did not exist in 1925. Nedj (“Nedjed”), however, does figure prominently, and Nedj was the nucleus of a state that would be proclaimed as “Saudi Arabia” in 1932. But even the Saudi conquest of Central Arabia was an early 20th century undertaking. Up to 1921, this area had been contested with the more liberal and cosmopolitan Rashīdis of Haʾil, whose state had long overshadowed that of the Saudis. The Saudi state, based on an alliance between the House of Saud and Wahhabi religious establishment, followed up its conquest of the Rashīdi Emirate with the annexation of the Kingdom of Hejaz in 1925 and then with mopping up operations against such small states as coastal Asir (technically the Idrisid Emirate of Asir). According to some sources, Hejaz has never been fully incorporated into the Saudi state at the cultural level. As noted in the Wikipedia:

Hejaz is the most cosmopolitan region in the Arabian Peninsula. People of Hejaz have the most strongly articulated identity of any regional grouping in Saudi Arabia. Their place of origin alienates them from the Saudi state, which invokes different narratives of the history of the Arabian Peninsula. Thus, Hejazis experienced tensions with people of Najd.

 

Izady Middle East religion mapSaudi Arabia is actually the world’s last great conquest empires, one formed in the unsettled environment that emerged with the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. It is such a recent entity that it net even fully figured out the problem of royal succession, and it still faces an unsustainable dynamic in the ever-increasing size of the House of Saud. In political terms, it is something of an anachronism, a pre-modern, absolute monarchy whose very name denotes the possession of territory by a family. (This would be like the UK styling itself “Windsorian Britannia.”). Given such conditions, “Saudi” national unity remains insecure, and the country faces the possibility of unraveling along regional lines in the event of a profound political or economic crisis. As Mike Izady’s map of religion in the Middle East shows, the Wahhabi sect on which Saudi Arabia rests is deeply rooted only in the central portion of the country, and is largely foreign to the economically vital Gulf and Hejaz regions.

The recent and imperial nature of the Saudi state is rarely discussed, just as the country’s diversity of Islamic sects is generally ignored. Articles on Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign against the Zaidi Shia (Houthi) rebels in Yemen, for example, almost never mention the significant fact that most of the people in the neighboring highland region of southwestern Saudi Arabia are also Zaidi Shias (Those of neighboring Najran Region, on the other hand, are mostly Ismaili Shias.) Such historical amnesia is found the very title of the Wikipedia article on the creation of the Saudi state, “The Unification of Saudi Arabia,” which implies that the various conquered regions had some kind of preexisting and widely recognized unity that gives coherence to the current-day country.

If the Rashīdis of Haʾil or the Hashemites of Hejaz had prevailed over the House of Saud, world history would probably have taken a markedly different course from the one that led to the world of today. Speculating on how things might have developed, however, is futile exercise. But the main point remains: there was nothing inevitable about the 20th-century emergence of a state encompassing the area that now forms Saudi Arabia, much less of a state that has the religious-political complexion of the current Saudi polity.

DK Atlas Arabia 1925 MapThe same argument can be made in regard to the other contemporary countries of the Arabian Peninsula, most of which have shallow roots, at least in their current territorial configurations. Conventional historical maps of the early 20th century that depict a just a few British protectorates conceal the intricacy of the preexisting geopolitical order, one that could have yielded very different modern geopolitical formations. Compare for example, the standard map of Arabia in 1925 found in my favorite world historical atlas, the DK Atlas of World History, with the extraordinarily Arabia 1905-1923 Mapdetailed map of Arabia 1905-1923 made by Joaquín de Salas Vara de Rey. The latter map may seem to be overly elaborate, but as Yemen continues to implode, it may end up having more relevance for the future than we might imagine.

The next GeoCurrents post will examine two fascinating south Arabian political entities that did not make it onto the modern map: Mahra and Dhofar.

 

 

The Uncertain Role of Religion in Indonesia’s 2014 Presidential Election

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Indonesia 2014 Election Wikipedia mapThe on-line maps that I have found of Indonesia’s 2014 presidential election are not very helpful. That of the Wikipedia is particularly poor. To begin with, it merely shows which candidate received a majority of votes in each province, with no information provided on the margin of victory. But the returns actually varied quite significantly across the country, with the winning candidate Joko Widodo receiving more than 73 percent of the votes cast in Papua and fewer than 24 percent of those cast in West Sumatra. The color scheme used in the Wikipedia map is also poorly conceived. Crimson?Provincial victories for both candidates are marked in shades of red, although, as the caption notes, a more standard red is used for Joko Widodo, whereas “crimson” is used for Prabowo Subianto. But according to the Wikipedia’s own article on “crimson,” the shade used on the map is actually something different. To be sure, the Wikipedia does differentiate a number of shades of crimson, many of which are associated with college sports teams, but none approximates the color used on the map.

Indonesia 2014 Presidential Election MapDue to such quibbles, I have made my own map of Indonesia’s 2014 presidential election, posted here. The map shows relatively weak regional patterning overall, with both candidates taking provinces in most parts of the country. But it also shows reasonable strong voting differentiation by province, as noted above. I have tried, although perhaps not hard enough*, to find explanations for such electoral behavior, albeit without much luck. The patterns on the election map certainly do not Indonesia 2014 Election GDP Mapscorrelate well with those found on the map of GDP per capita, as can be seen in the paired maps (compare, for example, the showings of East Kalimantan and East Nusa Tenggara on the two maps.)

Indonesia 2014 election religion mapsA better, although far from perfect, correlation is found in regard to religion. As can be seen in the second set of juxtaposed maps, Muslim-minority provinces all supported Joko Widodo (Jokowi), several of them quite strongly. But then again, a number of strongly Muslim provinces also cast a high proportion of their votes for Jokowi. It is also noteworthy that Aceh in far northern Sumatra, which is the most resolutely Islamic part of Indonesia, supported the losing candidate Prabowo Subianto by a relatively thin margin.

Unfortunately, the map of religion does not indicate either degrees of religiosity or the prevalence of orthodox interpretations, both of which may also play a role. This issue is particularly significant in regard to Java, the demographic core of the country (of Indonesia’s 252 million inhabitants, 143 million live on Java). Central and Western Java have long been noted for their heterodox interpretations of the faith; until recently, a majority of people here have adhered to a form of worship sometimes called Kebatinan, which is defined by the Wikipedia as a “Javanese religious tradition, consisting of an amalgam of animistic, Buddhist, and Islamic, especially Sufi, beliefs and practices … [that is] rooted in the Javanese history and religiosity, syncretizing aspects of different Java Language Mapreligions.” Although mainstream Islam is spreading in eastern and central Java—the Javanese-speaking portions of the island—this area still remains much less conventionally devout than the Sundanese-speaking area of western Java. In the 2014 election, perhaps not coincidentally, western Java supported Prabowo, whereas the east and especially the center opted instead for Jokowi.

The best report what I have found on the role of religion in the 2014 Indonesian presidential election is found in an Al Jazeera article entitled “Religion the Dark Horse in Indonesia Election.” Published before the election was held, it argued that:

[P]rior to Jokowi’s emergence as a political figure in 2012, when he was elected governor of Jakarta, members of religious minorities tended to support a Prabowo presidency – viewing him as a forceful figure able to crack down on impunity, and noting that his brother and mother are both Christian. Now, he says, Jokowi is the favourite among religious minorities.

“In general, Prabowo has been pandering to Islamist sentiment and Jokowi has been more pluralist in his outlook,” said Gregory Fealy, an Indonesia expert at Australian National University. Accordingly, three of the four Islamist parties that won seats in parliament have joined Prabowo’s coalition; the fourth, the moderate PKB, supports Jokowi.

Prabowo has also been endorsed by the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hardline group whose members have been involved in attacks against religious minorities, bars and nightclubs.

Minangkabau MapThis explanation, however, leaves me with two perplexities. First, why would hyper-devout Aceh have given Prabowo such lukewarm support? Could it be that many Acehnese people are chafing under the region’s harsh imposition of Sharia law? More surprising still is the extremely high level of support for Prabowo in West Sumatra. West Sumatra is certainly a Muslim-dominated province, but, like central and eastern Java, it has long been characterized by a rather lax form of their faith, one that historically prioritized customary law (adat) over Sharia. Indeed, the dominant ethno-linguistic group in the province, the Minangkabau, are noted for their matrilineal system of reckoning decent and familial property, a system so engrained that the Minangkabau have been characterized (incorrectly, in my view**) as forming a “modern matriarchy.” As a result, the extremely strong showing of Prabowo in the province seems odd. If any readers have any insights into this issue, I would love to hear them.

*It is currently exam- and paper-grading season, which is taking up most of my time.

** The Wikipedia describes Minangkabau culture as “matrilineal and patriarchal, with property and land passing down from mother to daughter, while religious and political affairs are the responsibility of men.” I do not, however, think that either “matriarchy” or “patriarchy” are appropriate terms in this context.

Sexualized Dangdut Performances in Indonesia and Resulting Controversies

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As the most recent GeoCurrents post explained, heavy-metal music has been of some political importance in Indonesia, with the country’s new president, Joko Widodo, being a major fan. Although cultural tension between “metalheads” and conservative Muslim organization is an on-going issue, overt clashes have been relatively rare and restrained. Religious groups in Indonesia have, however succeeded in shutting down musical performances that they judge threatening to public morals. In 2012, for example, international news outlets widely reported the cancellation of a Lady Gaga show scheduled to be held in Jakarta. The performer reported feeling “devastated” by the news, but her Indonesian critics were highly pleased. As the BBC reported:

The Islamist FPI had threatened violence if the concert went ahead, calling Lady Gaga a “devil’s messenger” who wears only a “bra and panties”. Habib Salim Alatas, the group’s FPI Jakarta chairman, said the cancellation was “good news” for Indonesia’s Muslims. “FPI is grateful that she has decided not to come. Indonesians will be protected from sin brought about by this Mother Monster, the destroyer of morals,” he told AFP news agency. He added: “Lady Gaga fans, stop complaining. Repent and stop worshipping the devil. Do you want your lives taken away by God as infidels?”

Dangdut Jupe PhotoWith this Lady Gaga commotion in mind, many observers might conclude that overt displays of female sexuality are not allowed, or are at least are highly frowned upon, in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. But in actuality, this is not the case. For several decades, the most popular form of music across the Indonesia archipelago has been dangdut, described by the Wikipedia as a “genre of Indonesian folk and traditional popular music that is partly derived from Hindustani, Malay, and Arabic musics.” My own knowledge of popular music of obviously quite limited, as the dangdut performance that I have watched on YouTube strike me as more “techno” than folk in style. But regardless of the various influences that dangdut incorporates, the stage dancing that often accompanies the music can be extremely sexualized. Jupe, the genre’s star performer, has certainly not been shy about issue of sexuality. As reported first in the International New York Times and then in the Jakarta Post:

Julia Perez, 30, better known as Jupe (pronounced jew-peh), has quickly become one of this nation’s most sought-after celebrities and a mainstay of television gossip shows. In a society increasingly polarized between supporters of political Islam and Western-style openness, Ms. Perez has led the charge one way with her sexy shows and music videos, her celebration of female sexuality and frank talk about sex. Her best-selling album, “Kamasutra,” included a free condom, which drew the ire of Islamic organizations and got her banned from performing in several cities outside Jakarta, the capital.

Actress and dangdut singer Julia “Jupe” Perez did a pole dance at the Kuningan intersection, South Jakarta on Tuesday night, in order to fulfill a promise. In her Twitter account, Jupe had promised to do the dance if she got 1 million followers “Jupe promises to dance at a red light if [she] gets a million followers! Allah, please make it happen during this fasting month, so I can dance with my clothes on”…. Within a week, her wish came true. Donning a tight suit and a black leather jacket, Jupe moved sensually around the pole of a traffic light at the intersection.

Indonesia Religion MapAs these reports indicate, dangdut is widely disparaged by the more conservative portions of the Indonesian public, and some provinces have banned several songs for being “pornographic.” But overall, it remains the most beloved form of music in at least western Indonesia, by far the most populous and powerful half of the country. A 2012 article in the Jakarta Post reports that the popularity of dangdut has declined in eastern Indonesia (apart from Maluku), although it does not specify what is meant by the term “eastern Indonesia,” nor does it give any reasons for the drop in popularity in that region. (The terms “eastern Indonesia” and “western Indonesia” are often used, but have no formal boundaries to my knowledge; the division that I have inscribed on the map here is a mere estimation.) It is notable, however, that eastern Indonesia in general has a lower percentage of Muslims than western Indonesia, as can be seen in the map posted here.

The Jakarta Post article in question almost seems to imply that the decline of dangdut in the east is a possible threat to national unity. As the author contends:

 

When the media began promoting the music in the 1980s — and the government did the same in the 1990s — dangdut helped to provide a national narrative popular with most Indonesians. Government officials strategically used the genre to promote political messages on a national stage, often singing and dancing alongside dangdut artists, while cultural institutions used the music to create national unity. In March, an Indonesian official said the government was in the process of having dangdut promoted to the heritage list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

 

One problem with the use of dangdut, or of any other form of “traditional” music, to enhance national unity in Indonesia is the fact that most of these traditions extend across the border to include Malaysia (and, to some extent, Brunei, far southern Thailand, and other adjacent areas). In 2007, a minor diplomatic scuffle emerged over Malaysia’s use of the popular folk song Rasa Sayang in a tourism promotion campaign. As reported by The Star On-Line:

 

The call by Indonesian lawmakers for action against Malaysia for using the Rasa Sayang folk song – which Indonesia claims to be its traditional song – in its Truly Asia tourism campaign is unrealistic, said Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim. The Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister said the issue should not have arisen as the song, like other folk songs such as Jauh Di Mata, Burung Pungguk and Terang Bulan, were songs of the Malay archipelago inherited by the people from their ancestors.  “I think Indonesia or other parties will not be able to prove who the composer of the song (the Indonesian version being Rasa Sayange) was,” he told reporters at the breaking of fast organised by his ministry here on Tuesday. He was commenting on Indonesia’s House of Representatives member Hakam Naja, from the National Mandate Party, calling on his government to sue Malaysia over the use of Rasa Sayang in its tourism campaign.

 

In response, one Malaysia blogger re-wrote the song’s lyrics (in English) to showcase Malaysia. My favorite verse runs as follows:

 

Though it’s great to be Malaysian,

Not everything is perfect, you see,

Rasa Sayang is claimed to be Indonesian,

And it’s cause for controversy.

 

Malaysia’s world stance is on the rise,

We keep our image looking bright,

Our government is pretty wise,

And our people are super tight.

 

As a first take-home message from all of these controversies, I can only conclude that public values in Indonesia remain quite distinctive and far more open to displays of female sexuality than those of the Muslim areas of South Asia, or of the Middle East. I cannot imagine a Pakistani equivalent of Jupe performing a pole dance at a major intersection in Karachi while praising Allah for giving her enough Twitter fans so that she could remain clad while doing so. The second message concerns the generally successful efforts to create a strong sense of national identity across the sprawling archipelagic country of Indonesia. Here the pronounced degree of cultural commonality with Malaysia remains an obstacle, and will likely generate new controversies in the years to come.

Michael Izady’s Amazingly Detailed Map of Ethnicity in Syria (and the Syrian Armenians)

Article-Grid, Cartography, Cultural Geography, Ethnicity, Linguistic Geography, Religion, Southwest Asia and North Africa / By

Syria Simple Ethnicity MapMost maps that show the distribution of ethnic groups within particular countries are relatively simple, depicting a few discrete populations within large, contiguous blocks of territory. The distinguishing characteristics of such groups are rarely specified. A good example of such a useful yet overly simplified map is the Washington Post’s portrayal of Syria posted here. This map reduces the complex mosaic of Syria to three groups, two based on religion (Sunni and Alawite) and the other primarily on language (Kurd). But as most Syrian Kurds are Sunni Muslims, the portrayal is somewhat misleading. A better key would have labeled the tan color as indicating the distribution of Sunni Arabs, although in actuality many non-Arab (as well as non-Muslim) communities are scattered across this large swath of Syrian territory.

Syria Ethnicity Summary MapBut an internet image search of “Syria ethnicity map” returns a sizable number of far better maps that depict vastly more intricate patterns. As it turns out, most of these maps were either made by, or based on the work of, Michael Izady, the word’s most accomplished cartographer of cultural matters. On the Gulf 2000 website that features Izady’s work, one can find several superb maps of ethnicity in Syria Large Ethnicity MapSyria (and in many other countries as well). A small-format summary map shows the basic patterns, breaking down the population of Syria into thirteen groups, with demographic data provided in an accompanying chart and table. Izady’s large map of Syria’s ethnic composition provides far more information. Although impossible to tell from my reproduction here, the map is gargantuan. As a result, one can focus in on particular areas without losing resolution, as can be seen in the map details posted here. The map’s key, moreover, points to the complex blending of language and religion that form the foundation of ethnic identity in this part of the world. On the actual map itself, a brief essay on ethnicity provides a sophisticated conceptual framework as well as a bit of historical background.

Syria Ethnicity Map Detail 1A close inspection of the map shows that much of western and northern Syria are characterized by staggering ethnic complexity. That Izady has been able to accurately depict such intricacy is Syria Ethncity Map Detail 2remarkable. Small but non-negligible groups that are almost always ignored, such as Syria’s Ismailis and Twelver Shias, are mapped with precision. Separate groups that are habitually conflated, such as the Alawites and the Nusairis, are distinguished and mapped accordingly.

At first glance, Izady’s separation of the Alawites and the Nusairis left me puzzled. I had been under the impression that “Nusairi” was merely a pejorative term used by Sunni Muslims to disparage the highly heterodox offshoot of Shia Islam that is more properly known as the Alawite sect, which also happens to be the faith of the ruling core of the Syrian government. But the Nusairi group proper is indeed distinct from the Alawites, although the faiths of both groups, as Izady indicates, are partly rooted in ancient Gnosticism. The limited amount of research that I was able to conduct did not allow me to determine what specific features differentiate these two groups. Unfortunately, most of the readily accessible internet sources come from hostile Sunni Islamist website that disparage both groups and tend to lump them together. Intriguingly, the Nusairis are shown in Izady’s map as inhabiting the higher reaches of the Coastal, or Nusayriyah, Mountains, whereas the Alawites proper are concentrated in lower-elevation areas. (The term “Nusayriyah Mountains,” derives, according to the Wikipedia, from “an antiquated label for the [Alawite] community that is now considered insulting,” again conflating the two groups. )

Syria Ethnity Map Detail 4As Izady’s maps show, Armenian communities are scattered through several parts of Syria. One of the largest Armenian communities is found in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zur (alternatively Deir ez-Zor, Deir Ezzor, Deir Al-Zor, Dayr Al-Zawr, Der Ezzor), a settlement of more than 200,000 inhabitants that is noted for its oil-refineries and other industries. Deir al-Zur is particularly important in Armenian history, as it was one of the main destinations of Armenians expelled by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, a deadly process regarded by most historians of the issue as genocidal in nature. Deir al-Zur is also located near the core power-base of the so-called Islamic State (or ISIS). As a result, the Armenian communities of the region are highly threatened.

ISIS Control mapOver the past two months, I have been periodically trying to determine the situation of the Armenians of Syria and especially eastern Syria, but with little luck. Some sources indicate that half of the Armenian population has fled the country. Many maps that show the current military situation depict the key city of Deir al-Zur as an island of Syrian governmental control in an ISIS sea (such a pattern is even found on maps that maximize the ISIS zone, such as the Wikipedia map posted here, which inaccurately portrays Kobane was having fallen to Islamic State forces). Other sources indicate that intensive fighting has recently occurred in the vicinity, and that much or perhaps all of the city has been taken by Islamic State fighters, but information remains thin. The most recent information that I have found dates from October 21 and comes from a Columbian newspaper. If my translation is correct, the paper reports that, “The group Islamic State today took part of the industrial area of ​​the city of Deir al-Zur in eastern Syria, after facing the forces of Bashar al-Assad regime, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.” The sardonic humorist Ambrose Bierce once quipped that “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” But if so, help by the media is still needed in this educational initiative, and I am not convinced that they are doing an adequate job.

The city of Deir al-Zur did gain brief attention in late September after ISIS militants destroyed a prominent Armenian Church as well as an Armenian Memorial to the ethnic expulsions of the early twentieth century, prompting widespread international condemnation. Armenian sources, however, expressed disappointment that the official response from the United States “failed to either mention the very reason for this holy site’s existence, the Armenian Genocide…”

Gathering information on Deir al-Zur is complicated by the fact that its name also denotes the Syrian governorate (province) in which the city is located. Most news searches for Deir al-Zur (regardless of which spelling is used) thus return information that pertains to the larger province, not the city per se. One of the more unusual and intriguing recent articles on the province examines, “rules for journalists” that have been put forward by ISIS in the regions that it controls. As can be seen from this excerpt of an official ISIS proclamation, the groups does not hold the Qatari media giant Al Jazeera in high regard:

3 – Journalists can work directly with international news agencies (such as Reuters, AFP and AP), but they are to avoid all international and local satellite TV channels. They are forbidden to provide any exclusive material or have any contact (sound or image) with them in any capacity.

4 – Journalists are forbidden to work in any way with the TV channels placed on the blacklist of channels that fight against Islamic countries (such as Al-Arabiya, Al Jazeera and Orient). Violators will be held accountable.

 

The Extraordinary Cultural Cartography of Michael Izady, Part I

Article-Grid, Cartography, Cultural Geography, Religion, Southwest Asia and North Africa / By

Middle East Oil Religion MapTo understand the political situation of the Middle East today, it is necessary to examine the geographical relationships pertaining to political borders, the distributions of religious and linguistic groups, and the patterning of oil and gas deposits. Of particular significance is the fact that many of the largest fossil fuel deposits are found in areas that are not primarily inhabited by Sunni Arabs. Many of the major oil and gas fields are rather found in Shia (and to a lesser extent, Ibadi) regions, and in Kurdish territory. This pattern is especially significant in regard to the oilfields of eastern Saudi Arabia, which are located in a mostly Shia region of a state noted for its hostility to Shia Islam. Just last week, Saudi Arabia sentenced a prominent Shia cleric to death for supporting non-violent protests.

Several years ago, I made my own amateurish map of this issue, focused on Saudi Arabia. I later discovered an extraordinarily detailed and accurate map of the same issue covering a much larger swath of territory. This map made was made by Dr. Michael Izady, a scholar of the Middle East and a cartographer extraordinaire. Izady’s maps can be found at Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 Project, a site that I cannot recommend highly enough. To my mind, Izady is the world’s best cultural/historical cartographer. He has brought cultural mapmaking to a level never before seen, far surpassing all rivals. His map collection is substantial, he continues to produce new maps on new topics, and he continually revises his old maps. Many of his maps simultaneously show cultural and demographic patterns, mapping densely populated areas in darker shades from sparsely settled areas and leaving virtually uninhabited zones blank. Such a cartographic strategy is highly useful—and very difficult to pull off.

For the next week or so, GeoCurrents will be showcasing Izady’s maps. Today’s post is brief, but more detailed essays will follow.

Religion Arabian Peninsula MapWhenever I study one of Izady’s maps, I find patterns that I had not previously been aware of, making me want to learn more. I also use his maps extensively in preparation for teaching. This afternoon, for example, my undergraduate seminar on the history and geography of current global events will be examining the position of Shia Islam in Saudi Arabia (among other topics), and here Izady’s maps prove crucial. Most important, they show that Shi’ism in the country is by no means limited to the oil-region along the Gulf, although that is the way that the situation is generally portrayed in the media. Note, for example, the large Shia area in southwestern Saudi Arabia adjacent to the Shia portion of Yemen, which in turn has been at the core of the recent turmoil in that country. But despite the obvious importance of this issue in Yemen, the situation of the followers of Zaidi Shi’ism in adjacent areas of Saudi Arabia is almost never mentioned in the media.

Southwest Arabia Religion MapBut it gets much more complicated than that. The detail of Izady’s global map of Shia Islam posted to the left shows that the Zaidi sect is not the only branch of the Shia faith found in southwestern Saudi Arabia, as the Ismaili sect is represented as well. Izady’s map of Yemen Religion Mapreligion in Yemen shows the Ismaili areas of that country in extraordinary detail. Ismaili Islam is itself a complex branch of the faith, with numerous divisions of its own and a fascinating history (and one in which Yemen plays a major role.) If I had the time, I would now be delving into the persecuted Ismaili faith in Saudi Arabia’s Najran province. As Wikipedia notes, “In Najran city, the Khushaiwa compound, with its Mansura mosque complex, is the spiritual capital of the Sulaymani branch of the Ismaili sect…” But as it is, I must turn away from such matters and prepare for class! More later…

 

 

 

 

GeoCurrents Editorial: The Genocide of the Yezidis Begins, and the United States is Complicit

Article-Grid, Editorial, Myth of the Nation-State, Religion, Southwest Asia and North Africa, State Failure / By

(Note: GeoCurrents is still technically on summer vacation, allowing me time to catch up with other obligations that I have neglected. My recent essays on eco-modernism, written for the Breakthrough Institute, can be found here and here. I am interrupting this GeoCurrents hiatus, however, to address a highly disturbing and significant development. This post also violates the GeoCurrents policy on political editorializing. In general, this website strives to be as politically neutral as possible, but exceptions are made. One reason for my reluctance to express opinion is the fact that many of my views are somewhat extreme, although they come from the unusual position of radical centrism, one based on an equal distaste for the right and the left.)

SinjarIt is increasingly clear that the situation faced by the Yezidis of the Sinjar region in northern Iraq can only be described as genocidal. Thousands have been slaughtered and tens of thousands are facing death from starvation and thirst, if not from the bullets of the so-called Islamic State (or ISIS, as it conventionally designated), as they hide in remote reaches of Sinjar Mountain. Christians and members of other religious minorities are also at a heightened risk of extermination in the expanding ISIS-controlled territory. Thus far, the government of the United States has conducted a few humanitarian air-drops for the Yezidis, although reports are now circulating that that has begun or is at least considering military strikes against ISIS, actions that the Pentagon currently denies. But more to the point, by having previously thwarted the ability of the Kurdish Peshmerga to defend its territory and fight the militants, the government of the United States bears some responsibility for these horrific developments. Such U.S. actions and inactions stem largely from its vain insistence on trying to revive the moribund Iraqi state, which in turn is rooted in the discredited ideal of intrinsic nation-state integrity.

Melek TausMost reports on the Yezidis mention the unusual nature of their religion, but often do so in a misleading manner. The Yezidi faith is typically described as a blend of beliefs and practices stemming from ancient Persian Zoroastrianism and other distant sources. Such an assessment may be reasonable, but one could just as easily depict Christianity as mere mélange of Jewish, Zoroastrian, and neo-Platonic ideas. In actuality, Yezidism is very much its own faith, although it does have close affinities with other belief systems, such as that of the Shabak people. The specific nature of the Yezidi religion, more importantly, makes its practitioners especially vulnerable to extremist interpretations of Islamic law. The Yezidis follow what is sometimes called a “cult of angels.” To them, God is a remote entity who has entrusted creation to seven spiritual being, the most important of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. Melek Taus, however, is often identified with the fallen angel of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, Satan (or Shaytan), leading to pejorative descriptions of Yezidis as “devil worshipers.” In actuality, Yezidism has nothing to do with Satanism in any form; to followers of the faith, Melek Taus is a benevolent being who repented his refusal to submit to Adam and was hence restored to his rightful place. Yezidism is in actuality a profoundly non-dualistic and generally peaceful faith. Yezidis do not proselytize or accept converts, and they largely keep to themselves. One of the more intriguing aspects of the faith is its spiritual abhorrence of lettuce.

Yezidis mapI showcase the Yezidis when I lecture on religion in the Middle East for two reasons. First, the existence of this faith, like that of many others, demonstrates the historically deep level of religious diversity found in the area that is often called the Fertile Crescent and is sometimes deemed the Heterodox Zone. Second, it shows that the realm of Islam was in general historical terms more religiously tolerant than Christendom. I cannot imagine a group like the Yezidis having survived in late medieval or early modern Europe: crusaders and inquisitors, such as the grotesquely misnamed Pope Innocent III, would not have allowed it. But as the rampages of ISIS and related groups thoroughly demonstrate, the situation has changed drastically. Today, this same region is marked by the world’s most extreme level of religious intolerance and persecution.

ISIS MapSome reports claim that ISIS leaders have given the Yezidis the same three-fold ultimatum thrown at the Christians of Mosul: either immediate conversion to Islam, or acceptance of subordinate dhimmi status and payment of the jizya tax, or face death. The middle option, however, is hardly assured: hyper-fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic law demand dhimmi status for the “peoples of the book” (Jews, Christians, and few others), but those regarded as full-fledged idolaters, much less “devil worshippers,” are not necessarily accorded the same “respect.” But even when it comes to Christians, ISIS demands for the acceptance of dhimmi status appear to be largely pro forma, as the goal is apparently the complete cleansing from their would-be state of everyone who is not a Sunni fundamentalist.

After suffering for years, the Yezidis are at long last getting some attention. But mainstream media outlets still tend to downplay their plight, devoting vastly more attention to other far more familiar and less newsworthy matters. Other deeply persecuted Iraqi religious minorities, such as the Mandaeans who have suffered at the hands of Shia militias, receive even less attention. The destruction of Assyrian and other Christian communities gets a little more press, but it too has failed to spark widespread public outrage.

I have some difficulty understanding why such horrors are so widely disregarded. Ignorance is surely at play, but so too is partisan politics. I suspect that in the United States, many Republicans prefer to look away because the situation reflects poorly on the Bush administration’s Iraq policies, just as many Democrats do the same because it reflects equally poorly on the Obama administration. Other observers wrongly and spinelessly conclude that genocide in this region is simply none of our business. In regard to the Assyrians, several pundits have argued that they are “too Christian” for the left to care about and “too foreign” to concern the right. When it comes to the Yezidis, several sources have stressed the “tiny” size of the group, as if scant numbers somehow make persecution less objectionable. Yet in actuality the Yezidis are a substantial group, with roughly the same number of adherents as the population of Boston, Massachusetts (some 600,000-700,000). Can one imagine the dismissal of Boston on the grounds that its population is “tiny,” not even amounting to a million souls?

Unfortunately, American actions have hindered the ability of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) to protect the beleaguered minorities of northern Iraq, and the KRG is the only organization that can offer any effective protection. In the tussle between the impotent “national” Iraqi government and the Kurds, Washington has sided firmly with Baghdad, unwilling to do anything that could potentially undermine the fictional integrity of Iraq. The American government has even tried to prevent the Kurds from selling their oil on the open market, as this goes against the wishes of Nouri al-Maliki and company. Deeply strapped for money, the KRG has been unable to provision its troops defending such places as Sinjar, thus forcing it to pull back, placing hundreds of thousands of people at the risk of mass murder. The more recent rapprochement between the KRG and the Iraqi state is indeed a hopeful development, but for tens of thousands of Yezidis it is too late and too little.

In defending the territorial integrity of Iraq, the United States is trying to prop up a corpse, as the country so depicted on our maps no longer exists. As a nation, it never did. As is well known, Iraq was imposed by British colonial authorities, and the state that they created never enjoyed genuine emotional resonance with the majority of its inhabitants. Iraqi national identity has always been superficial at best, thus requiring brutal dictatorial force to ensure state coherence. When that force was removed with the ouster of Saddam Hussein and free elections were eventually held, the disintegration of the country accelerated. The notion that diplomacy, patient nation-building, another regime change, or any other imaginable political process could somehow heal the wounds and allow the reconstitution of Iraq as a functioning nation-state is little more than fantasy. Basing American policy on such wishful thinking indicates an appalling abnegation of both intellectual and moral responsibility.

American policy in Iraq does not merely threaten major populations with genocide, but also works directly against the national interest of the United States. It is no secret that the current leaders of the Baghdad government are more closely aligned with Iran than they are with the United States, or that most people of Iraq are deeply suspicious of—if not actively hostile toward—American power. But both the Kurdish Regional Government and the people of Iraqi Kurdistan remain relatively pro-American, despite the shabby treatment that they have received from Washington. It almost seems as if the U.S. administration has decided that this situation is intolerable and that a few acts of betrayal are necessary to prevent the solidification of a regime that is genuinely friendly toward the United States. It sometimes appears as if the U.S. foreign policy establishment is more comfortable with “frenemies,” such as those in power in Baghdad and Riyadh, than it is with actual friends. Meanwhile, ISIS steadily gains power, innocents are slaughtered wholesale, and the rest of the world sits by. (France, however, has called for an emergency U.N. meeting to address the crisis and has pledged aid for those fighting against ISIS.)

Such self-destructive behavior on the part of the U.S. government has all the indications of lunacy. But such madness is seldom recognized, as it is far too deeply entrenched to attract attention. The same policies, after all, have been followed by all recent Republican and Democratic administrations, just as they are relentlessly pursued by virtually every national government the world over. The world’s sovereign states form a club and hence act in a stereotypically clubbish manner. Carcass states such as Iraq and Somalia remain members in good standing despite their abject failure, while highly functional non-members, such as Iraqi Kurdistan and Somaliland, do not belong and are therefore shunned, treated as if they do not exist. In a brilliant book, Stanford political scientist Stephen Krasner refers to the resulting international system of mutually recognized sovereignty as “organized hypocrisy.” To the extent that it propels such events as the genocide of the Yezidis, it might be better described as organized psychosis.

The international diplomatic system shows symptoms of insanity because it is based on a figment of the imagination: the nation-state. A few sovereign countries do indeed approach the nation-state ideal, in which a self-conscious political community strongly identifies with a particular state across its entire territorial extent, but—as GeoCurrents has noted on numerous occasions—most fall far short of this model. Yet the fundamental premise of the international system is the permanent reality of this mere ideal across the world. To be sure, it is widely recognized that many countries have been artificially created and thus had no preexisting national integrity, but they are all supposed to have seamlessly “constructed” national solidarity through education, economic development, and political inclusion. In actuality, many never have, and quite a few never will.

The fallacy of the nation-state provides a powerful explanation for the debacle of the U.S.-led campaigns to reformulate and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s. It was widely assumed by many leading experts that Afghanistan and especially Iraq would present easy wars followed by undemanding and self-financing processes of democratic reconstruction. Both countries were assumed to be coherent nation-states that merely needed a change of regime and a little nation-building assistance to emerge as stable, self-determining U.S. allies. Although the initial battles were far less challenging than the anti-war movement had anticipated, the subsequent occupations proved vastly more difficult than what the neo-conservative war-supporters had imagined. Nation-building was doomed to fail in these cases because neither country has ever approached nation-state status.

The obsession with preserving the existing international order of ostensible nation-states derives from a concern for geopolitical stability. Abandoning the idea of the intrinsic unity of a country such as Iraq or Somalia by acknowledging instead the reality of Iraqi Kurdistan or Somaliland, such reasoning has it, would potentially destabilize the global world order. It would do so by encouraging other disgruntled ethnic, religious, or regional groups to seek their own independence, thus fostering secession, rebellion, and warfare. This argument, however, fails from the onset by assuming a degree of international stability that simply does not exist. In actuality, Iraqi Kurdistan and Somaliland are islands of relative order in seas of chaos. More fundamentally, the unwillingness to deal with such unrecognized states in deference to the established (dis)order invokes a “slippery slope” argument that can be used to justify any aspect of the status quo, regardless of how non-functional or maladaptive it has become. Iraqi Kurdistan and Somaliland deserve to be dealt with as actual states not merely because of their leaders’ desires, but rather because they have created relatively stable and reasonably representative governments with acceptable levels of human freedom out of the fractured territories of internationally recognized states that are in reality hyper-unstable and deeply repressive. As the same cannot be said for the vast majority of the world’s myriad separatist movements, no dangerous precedent would thereby be set.

Yet in actuality, just such a dangerous precedent has indeed been set by the same international community in regard to South Sudan. South Sudan was allowed to emerge as a recognized sovereign state not because its leaders had built effective institutions and demonstrated a sustained capacity for self-rule, but rather because they had waged a interminable war of independence against the Khartoum government that finally exhausted the patience of many world leaders. At the time, I fully supported the independence of South Sudan, owing largely to the atrocities that had been committed against its people by the government of Sudan. But the hideous civil war that has subsequently undermined “the world’s youngest country” calls into question the wisdom of this maneuver. Successfully fighting against a common enemy by no means ensures the ability to construct a viable state once that war dies down.

Significantly, Iraqi Kurdistan could have gone the way of South Sudan. Tensions between its Kurmanji- and Sorani-speaking areas (by linguistic criteria, Kurdish is a not a language but a group of languages) have been pronounced, contributing to a brief armed struggle between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the 1990s. But although friction remains, the Kurdish people have been able to surmount their problems and construct an effective state. Yet now the United States insists that they scale back their ambitions and instead accept subordination within the decaying geobody of Iraq. No amount of successful nation- and state-building will ever do, they are effectively told by the U.S. government, and as such they will never be granted a state of their own on such a basis. If, on the other hand, they were to reject such efforts and instead focus their attention on actively making war against the Baghdad regime, then perhaps they may follow South Sudan and eventually be awarded their own recognized state. I do not see how such a policy can be regarded as anything but delusional.

The Clinton Administration was widely accused of complicity in genocide for its lack of action as the Tutsis of Rwanda were massacred in the 1990s. Preventing this instance of genocide, however, would have been very difficult. Preventing the slaughter of the Yezidis, however, would have been very easy, as all that would have been necessary was the provisioning of a little military assistance to the Kurdish Peshmerga, a force that, quite unlike Iraq’s “national” army, is willing and eager to defend the people of the region. The Obama administration’s refusal to do so in obeisance to the illusion of Iraqi national unity is a disgrace, indicating both moral cowardice and abject unwillingness to see the world as it actually is. What really leads me to despair, however, are my doubts that any other American administration would have acted any differently, as the paralyzing delusion of the nation-state is too deeply embedded to be dislodged by mere reality, no matter how blood-drenched that reality turns out to be.

 

Religion, Caste, and Electoral Geography in the Indian State of Kerala

Article-Grid, Elections, Religion, South Asia / By

Christianity in Kerala MapAs mentioned in a previous GeoCurrents post, India’s southwestern state of Kerala, noted for its high levels of social development, exhibited markedly different patterns in the 2014 election from most other parts of the country. In Kerala, parties on the far left did quite well, as did the center-left Indian National Congress, whereas the center-right BJP performed quite poorly, as did regionalist parties. To understand the electoral geography of Kerala, it is necessary to examine religion and caste. A fascinating paper by Regina Doss, a student in a Stanford University Continuing Studies (adult education) class that Asya Pereltsvaig and I are currently teaching, recently brought these issues to my attention. As she notes, the Congress Party and its allies have traditionally found most of their support among the Syrian Christians and the Nairs (the latter being a relatively high Hindu caste, traditionally noted as warriors and landholders). Little changed in the 2014 election, despite concerted efforts by the BJP. As Regina Doss writes:

During elections the Christians are heavily courted. There had been a lot of news about the national Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wooing the Christians in Kerala for the 2014 elections. Narender Modi (BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate) shared the platform in September 2013 with Mar Thoma Syrian Church Metropolitan Philipose Mar Chrysostom when he attended the birthday celebration in Kerala of Mata Amritananandamayi, the hugging Hindu female guru, who has a global following. The influential Syrian Christian clergy that usually sides with the Indian National Congress has been making generous statements about Narender Modi. BJP [however] has yet to win a seat in Kerala.

Syrian Christian Population Kerala MapIn order to elucidate the relationship in Kerala between religious and caste groups, on the on hand, and voting behavior, on the other, I have prepared a series of maps showing the distribution of the state’s leading social groups, which can be compared with maps depicting election returns (posted below). Firm conclusions are admittedly difficult to draw from these maps, as most of these social groups are widely distributed and complexly interspersed, and hence the following analysis should be viewed as merely suggestive. In constructing these maps, I have used data found in the Wikipedia article “Religion in Kerala,” which in turn is derived from the book Dynamics of Migration in Kerala: Dimensions, Differentials, and Consequences,by Kunniparampil Curien Zachariah, Elangikal Thomas Mathew, Sebastian Irudaya Rajan (Orient Longman, 2003). Unfortunately, this information is somewhat dated, as it comes from a 1998 survey. Since that period, the Muslim population has increased relatively to the Christian and Hindu populations, due largely to a higher birthrate. It should also be noted that different sources of information provide different figures on religious adherence. A map of Christianity in Kerala posted above that Regina Doss created for her class project, using information from the 2001 census of India, shows significantly lower proportions of Christians in many districts of Kerala than do the maps that I have made. But despite these data inconsistencies, the basic geographical patterns remain relatively consistent.

Ezhavas Population Kerala MapOne pattern found on these maps is a vague association between the Ezhavas, members of a low Hindu caste, and electoral support for the far left, visible particularly in regard to Kannur district in the north. This pattern is of long-standing, persisting despite efforts since the late 1990s by the BJP to court this group as well. The Ezhavas are an unusual community in that they have historically been considered Dalits (outcastes or “untouchables”) even though their economic position has more closely resembled that of the Sudras (the largest, and lowest, of the four varna orders of Hindu society). As George Woodcock explains in his fascinating 1967 book Kerala: A Portrait of the Malabar Coast (Faber and Faber, London):

The Ezhavas, the most numerous of all the Hindu groups in Kerala, are also the most puzzling of its peoples. Subdues by centuries by the Brahmins and the Nairs, regarded as outside the four-fold caste system, they nevertheless retained a pride even in their position as the leading caste of the outcastes, and during the nineteenth century developed a great will to rise above the limitations which society had laid upon them … . The Ezhavas sought education, even established their own schools… . Fortunate Ezhavas took to business and the Congress Party: unfortunate ones to radical rebellion, for the poor Ezhavas have long formed the dedicated core of the Communist Party in Kerala.  … No group anywhere in India has so successfully, by its own efforts, removed itself from the double stigma of untouchability and ex-untouchability (pp. 62,63).

Scheduled Castes Tribes Kerala MapKerala’s more marginal groups have also tended to support the far left. The Revolutionary Socialist Party is strongest in the southern district of Kollam, where its support is concentrated among fishing communities that are generally placed in the low “scheduled caste” category. In mountainous eastern Kerala, members of Latin Christian Population Kerala Mapscheduled castes and scheduled tribes are also numerous, and some of these areas also tend to support the far left. Latin Christians, quite unlike Syrian Christians, also tend to be associated with a low social position, but the areas in which they are concentrated do not seem to be very electorally distinctive.

Several other intriguing patterns are also evident. Support for the regionalist Kerala Congress Party is strongest in Kottayam, which is often considered the heartland of the Syrian Christian Community. The Wikipedia article on the party contends that it is dominated by Syrian Christian farmers, although it also notes that “leaders from all communities are represented.” In regard to Muslim Population Kerala Mapthe Muslim population, the correlation between geographical distribution and support for the Indian Union Muslim League is clear, although it must be noted that a number of heavily Muslim areas have supported other parties.

Nair Population Kerala MapIn regard to the Nairs, the situation seems to be more complicated. A 2012 blog post on the topic by a “Progressive Hindu Nair” has some interesting observations.  As the author notes:

While the Congress lead front’s support used to come from Christians, Nairs and Muslim population, Left front’s support base was a group consisting of Ezhavas and scheduled castes. A section of economically backward Nairs and Christians also used to support Marxists. Muslim support to left groups has always been minimal generally. Though this is the basic truth, it should be forgotten that the leadership of CPI (M) and its parliamentary face was constituted by upper caste Hindus (Mostly Nairs) the policies of the party were pro-minority and backward community; a complex situation indeed.

Till 1990’s Nairs constituted a major chunk of leadership both in Congress and CPI (M). In a way it had helped Nair community in the sense that Nair leaders often helped many individuals belonging to nair community. But they did not help community as a whole. It should also be noted that individuals of Nair community got help not because of any deliberate strategy of Nair leaders. The leaders helped their acquaintances and friends among whom naturally there were a lot of Nairs and indirectly Nairs have benefited.

Kerala 2014 2019 elections map Yes, a complex situation indeed, which is one reason why Kerala is such a Kerala 2014 Election Mapfascinating and important place. What I find particularly interesting is the combination of high social development and the historical legacy of extreme caste divisions. In earlier times, Kerala not only had “untouchables” but also “unseeables,” unfortunate individuals who were supposed to ring bells as they walked so that members of higher social orders could avoid the visual pollution that came from looking at them.

Wikipedia, the Difficulties of Mapping World Religions, and a Most Bizarre Map

Article-Grid, Cartography, Cultural Geography, Religion, World / By

World Religion MapsIn teaching the global geography of religion this term, I have again been disappointed by the quality of relevant maps that are readily available on-line. Making a map of this sort is admittedly a challenge. Many areas contain multiple faiths, and a few religions—Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto—even allow their own adherents to follow other religions simultaneously. Degrees of religiosity and the prevalence of irreligion also vary tremendously from place to place. Syncretic belief systems that draw on multiple religions present a challenge of their own; an anthropologist friend of mine once described Guinea as “90 percent Muslim and 90 percent animist.” “Animism” itself is a problem, as it is not a faith but rather a catchall category. Another difficulty concerns divisions of major religions. How finely should one subdivide by sect, and how consistent should one be across the major religious divisions? If one distinguishes Sunni and Shia Islam, as well as Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, should not Mahayana Buddhism also be distinguished from Theravada Buddhism? How should one map less-widespread but equally distinctive religious branches, such as Ibadi Islam (Oman) and Oriental Orthodox Christianity (Armenia and Ethiopia)? Another problem stems from rapid demographic change in particular places. Most world religion maps, for example, show Xinjiang in northwestern China as dominated by Sunni Islam, as was indeed the case several decades ago, but Islam is now a minority faith across the eastern half of this Chinese region, owing to the massive influx of Han Chinese.

As a result of such issues, I do not expect anything approaching perfection in regard to the mapping of religious communities across the globe. But still, what I encounter when conducting a simple Google search of “world religion map” leaves me frustrated. None of the maps in that appeared in the first few screens are adequate to the task (the top-ranked images from my most recent search are reproduced above). Many of these maps show all countries as religiously homogenous, a problematic but understandable cartographic expedient. But the maps that ignore political boundaries are often even more flawed. To show the extent of such problems, I have placed the top-ranked handful of maps at the bottom of this post, pointing out three major errors in each case. For most of these maps, it would have been easy to have indicated many more.

Wikipedia World Religion Map 2After checking out dozens of maps, I tried a different tactic, this time searching under, “world religion map Wikipedia.” This search immediately returned two serviceable maps, one country-based and the other not. The latter map, entitled “The Religions of the World,” is particularly impressive. To be sure, I still have a few quibbles: why, for example, does it ignore “folk religions” (animism) in the upper Amazon and in the southern half of Africa, and why does it place generally secular areas (such as the Czech Republic) and uninhabited zones (such as central Greenland) in the same “no religion” category? But note as well the map’s exquisite details, which capture, for example, the Pomak Muslim area of southern Bulgaria, the Buddhism of Russia’s Kalmykia, and the Christianity of Mizoram, Nagaland, and Meghalaya in northeastern India.

Wikipedia World Religions Map 1All in all, these Wikipedia maps are so superior to the others that their low ranking in the initial search makes little sense. If one considers as well the scope and significance of the Wikipedia, such failure seems doubly mystifying—although I must admit to my own ignorance of the underlying algorithms that guide such searches. But I cannot help thinking of the continual trashing of the Wikipedia found in certain intellectual and educational quarters. Indeed, I had just finished reading yet another hit-piece, a Sp!ked article by Nigel Scott entitled “Wikipedia: where truth dies online” — which is graced with an even more disdainful tagline: “Run by cliquish, censorious editors and open to pranks and vandalism, Wikipedia is worthless and damaging.” Although I appreciate Sp!ked, especially for its anti-censorship campaign, I must say that I found Scott’s article to be on the “worthless and damaging” side of things. The Wikipedia is so vast that serious problems are inevitable, but all told I find it an indispensible compendium of knowledge. As I tell my students: “always start with the Wikipedia; never end with the Wikipedia.”

Bizarre World Religion MapIn most of the poor-quality world-religion maps found online, the errors are basic and relatively similar. But one high-ranking map, reproduced here to the left, is altogether different. On first glance, I assumed that this map depicts an alternative reality in some elaborate realm of fantasy game playing. I was intrigued, as the cartographer obviously knows something about interesting but obscure religions, such as Mazdakism and Mandaeanism, and as I have long been curious about “alternative world” mapping. But when I went to the website on which the map was posted, I was bewildered, as the site is simply the personal blog of a pro-Israel Kurdish nationalist living in Sweden who favors “liberal social democracy.” Bizarrely, he seems to label this map “Austria-Hungary. Ottoman empire. British, German, French and Russian empires,” and he provides no further explanation. (I have written to him seeking further information, but he has not replied.) Many of the labels on the map remain mysterious. I can find no information, for example, on “Nkisism,” and I have no idea what “Zuranic” means, although “Zuran” is a card in the game “Magic.” Perhaps my initial suspicion was correct.World Religion Map 2World Religion Map 3World Religion Map 4World Religion Map 5World Religion Map 6

World Religion Map 1