Religious Minorities Archive

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. In late January, the Department of Tourism in the Philippines announced plans to make the country a significant “religious pilgrimage destination,” especially for Catholic communities in Asia, by restoring old churches and historical shrines. Yet efforts to capitalize on its status as the largest Catholic-majority country in Asia and draw in more tourists could create problems in the Philippines, which has sizeable non-Catholic Christian communities and a Muslim population that has long felt marginalized by a state heavily linked to the […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. On March 6, Sri Lanka’s government declared a nationwide 10-day state of emergency as mob attacks targeted the country’s Muslim minorities. Tensions have been rising over the past year between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority, who are mainly Buddhist, and Muslims, leading to attacks on businesses, homes and places of worship. In an email interview, Neil DeVotta, a professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and an expert on ethnic conflict in South Asia, explains what […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. Last month, an assailant with a sword attacked a church during services in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta, injuring four worshippers, including a priest. The attack appears to be the latest sign of growing religious intolerance in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, which has seen a rise in religious conservatism and flashes of extremism in recent years. In an email interview, Kikue Hamayotsu, an associate professor of political science at Northern Illinois University and faculty associate at the Center for […]