Confessional Coexistence in the Habsburg Netherlands

For decades, early modern historians have stressed the religious differences between the Dutch Republic and the Habsburg Netherlands. The former is usually represented as a tolerant Reformed state, while the latter is represented as a repressive Catholic regime. By consequence, the similarities in terms of confessional coexistence have never been considered. This article seeks to fill that gap by reviewing the Geuzenhoek, a small rural Reformed minority group in Flanders. Fortunately, a plethora of available sources allows us to research the interactions between the Protestants and the Catholic majority. This article shows that the divide between public worship and private devotion played a key role in keeping peaceful interreligious relations and that a stable system of connivance dominated the local framework. This situation was very similar to that of the Dutch Republic. As a result, this study concludes that confessional coexistence in the Habsburg Netherlands should be re-evaluated and merits further investigation. Vroegmoderne historici hebben jarenlang vooral de religieuze verschillen tussen de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden en de Habsburgse Nederlanden benadrukt. De een werd gewoonlijk voorgesteld als een tolerante gereformeerde staat, terwijl de andere bekendstond als een repressief katholiek regime. De gelijkenissen op vlak van confessionele co-existentie zijn daarom nooit nader onderzocht. Dit artikel wil dit hiaat opvullen door de Geuzenhoek, een kleine landelijke gereformeerde minderheidsgroep in Vlaanderen, onder de loep te nemen. Dankzij een ruime collectie aan bronnen konden de interacties tussen de protestanten en de katholieken in beeld gebracht worden. Dit artikel toont aan dat de scheiding tussen publieke en private devotie een grote invloed had op het bewerkstelligen van vredige contacten, en dat in deze lokale context een systeem van ‘oogluikendheid’ domineerde. Deze situatie is vergelijkbaar met die in de Republiek. De conclusie van deze studie is dan ook dat de confessionele co-existentie in de Habsburgse Nederlanden een herevaluatie en verder onderzoek verdient. ActualiteitsparagraafVrienden noch vijanden? Katholieken en protestanten in vroegmodern Vlaanderen Over de interacties van protestanten en katholieken in het verleden overheersen ook vandaag nog hardnekkige clichés: ze konden elkaars bloed wel drinken, geweld tussen religieuze groepen kwam vaak voor en verdraagzaamheid was vrijwel onbestaand. Toch was de historische realiteit vaak anders. Roman Roobroeck toont in zijn artikel in BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review over de Geuzenhoek aan dat de verhoudingen tussen katholieken en protestanten in het zeventiende-eeuwse overwegend katholieke Vlaanderen opvallend vreedzaam waren. Tussen de leden van deze rurale protestantse groep nabij Oudenaarde en hun katholieke buren ontsponnen zich conflicten, maar over het algemeen waren hun relaties vreedzaam. De protestantse dorpelingen profiteerden van het afwachtende beleid van de Habsburgers en ontwierpen samen met de lokale katholieken een gedoogsamenleving. Deze vorm van religieuze co-existentie kwam dus niet enkel in de Noordelijke Nederlanden voor, maar ook in de Habsburgse Nederlanden. Misschien was het religieuze klimaat in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden dan toch niet zo rigide als vaak gedacht?

Shrine Politics and Non-Institutional Religiosity

The Mrtvalj spring is an integral part of a more complex sacred landscape, the center of which is the Shrine of St. John the Baptist located in Podmilačje near Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The shrine is a multi-confessional pilgrimage destination that is also very popular within the wider region. The Mrtvalj spring is one of the key stops in pilgrimage itineraries, but it is not only a sacred place within pilgrimage practices. In this paper the conceptualization of the Mrtvalj spring’s sacredness is examined as a reflection of the relationship between the religious and the political. The author analyzes the relationship between the shrine’s politics, which are based on the ideas of a “Bosnian Lourdes” and a shared shrine, and the spring as a focal point for the shared non-institutional practices of believers of various religious affiliations. She aims to show that a shared sacred site does not necessarily have to be controversial, and calls for a revalorization of non-institutional religiosity, which has proved to be a rich phenomenon for the study of interreligious relations

The Understanding of Islamic Moderation (wasatiyyah al-Islam) and the Hadiths on Inter-religious relations in the Javanese Pesantrens

The Wasatiyyah of Islam has been described as the value of moderation in Islam, emphasizing justice, balance, and tolerance. The Quran and al-Hadith contain these values, but they are often misunderstood and misapplied. The pesantren or Islamic boarding school, is an educational institution close to the community and it plays a key role in instilling the moderate values of Islam. This article aims at discussing the moderation of Islam in relation to other religions and religious communities as taught through the hadith and as understood among the teachers and students of three pesantrens in central Java. It investigates the teachers’ and students’ views of Islam as a religion among other religions, and their attitudes as the pesantren community toward other religious believers. It combines textual research employing a mukhtalif al-hadiṡ approach and living or lived hadith research. It argues that the hadiths on inter-religious relationship are understood as a necessity to be just towards faith, which means that one should believe that his own faith is correct but should keep tolerant towards other faiths. This means giving others the right to choose and implement their own faiths, behaving in a balanced way, and conducting healthy competition in various fields, especially the proselytization or dawah. With this textual understanding, the students have generally been quite well informed about the values of Islamic moderation and they seek to apply it in their religious and social life. The students have learned about the hadiths on interreligious relations and the moderate values primarily from their teachers although they have read directly from books and sometimes from social media. Wasatiyyah Islam digambarkan sebagai nilai moderasi dalam Islam, menekankan keadilan, keseimbangan, dan toleransi. Al-Qur'an dan al-Hadis mengandung nilai-nilai ini, tetapi sering disalahpahami dan diterapkan secara salah. Pesantren merupakan lembaga pendidikan yang dekat dengan masyarakat dan berperan penting dalam menanamkan nilai-nilai moderat Islam. Artikel ini bertujuan membahas moderasi Islam dalam kaitannya dengan agama dan umat beragama lain sebagaimana diajarkan melalui hadis dan sebagaimana dipahami para guru dan santri di tiga pesantren di Jawa Tengah. Artikel ini menyelidiki pandangan siswa tentang Islam sebagai agama di antara agama-agama lain, dan sikap mereka sebagai komunitas pesantren terhadap pemeluk agama lain. Ini menggabungkan penelitian tekstual yang menggunakan pendekatan mukhtalif al-hadiṡ dan penelitian hadits hidup (living or lived hadith). Artikel ini berargumen bahwa hadis-hadis tentang hubungan antarumat beragama dipahami sebagai keharusan untuk bersikap adil terhadap keimanan, yang berarti bahwa seseorang harus percaya bahwa imannya sendiri benar tetapi harus tetap toleran terhadap agama lain. Ini artinya memberikan hak kepada orang lain untuk memilih dan menjalankan keyakinannya sendiri, berperilaku seimbang, dan melakukan persaingan yang sehat di berbagai bidang, terutama dakwah. Dengan pemahaman tekstual ini, para santri secara umum telah terinformasi dengan baik tentang nilai-nilai moderasi Islam dan mereka terus menerapkannya dalam kehidupan keagamaan dan sosial mereka. Para siswa telah belajar tentang hadits tentang hubungan antaragama dan nilai-nilai moderat terutama dari guru mereka meskipun mereka telah membaca langsung dari buku dan kadang-kadang dari media sosial.

A Tribute to Gary Bouma

Emeritus Professor Gary Bouma was many things to many people. He was Australia's pre-eminent scholar of the sociology of religion. As an ordained Anglican priest, Gary was noted for his pastoral care of his parishioners and others who sought his counsel and spiritual support. He was a loving husband, father and grandfather. Moreover, his deep commitment to social justice and harmony greatly influenced Gary's participation in interfaith dialogue. Gary contributed so much to scholarship and building bridges between religious communities that he was justly rewarded with an Order of Australia as a Member (AM) in recognition for his services to sociology, to the Anglican Church of Australia, and to interreligious relations in the 2013 Australia Day Honours.

Interreligious Relations in the Structural Da’wah Framework

This paper examines the Medina Charter, the 1945 Constitution, and Aceh Qanun No. 4 of 2016 as a fundamental source of structural da’wah policies. Structural da’wah is a character of da’wah that involves the state directly in regulating policies related to the implementation of da’wah. The primary purpose of this research is to describe the role and position of the Medina Charter, the 1945 Indonesian Constitution, and Aceh Qanun No. 4 of 2016, being the basis for the implementation of structural da’wah and discussed the regulation about the inter-religious correlation in those three regulations. This research is qualitative research using the content analysis method. The results showed that the Medina Charter, the 1945 Indonesian Constitution, and Aceh Qanun No. 4 of 2016 is a state acknowledgment of the structural da’wah implementation in Aceh because the da’wah is under the direct control of the state or government. The Medina Charter, as a result of the Prophet’s ijtihad, contains guidelines for inter-religious relations and the role of the state in regulating people’s lives. The 1945 Constitution of Indonesia is the highest source of law in the Republic of Indonesia, which states the guarantees the independence of citizens to embrace religion according to their beliefs. While Aceh Qanun No. 4 contains the rules for spreading religion amid society.

Interreligious Relations with No Self: A Mystical Path to Omnilogue?

Various models of interreligious relations have been proposed in recent scholarship, including most prominently the several varieties of inclusivism, exclusivism, and pluralism. One abiding presupposition shared across these models takes the religious adherent (or community of adherents) as a unified individual (or collective of such individuals). This assumption overlooks an important feature of the mystical strains of religiosity, which is to negate selfhood. This article seeks to problematize standard scholarly models of interreligious relations by working through and applying to them such mystical understandings of (non-)selfhood, with particular focus on the Islamic mystics Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭamī, Abū l-Qāsem al-Junayd, ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Hawāzin al-Qushayrī, Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār Nayshābūrī, and Muḥyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī. Based on this textual study, I propose an alternative to interreligious dialogue more adequately termed ‘polyglot monologue’ or, in order to avoid pluralistic implications, ‘omnilogue’.