A prophesy by Muhammad that Rome and Europe will be conquered for Islam is being revived and popularized by Muslim clerics, according to a Dec. 6 report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Muslim Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, one of the most influential Sunni clerics, recently wrote that according to Islamic prophesy, Islam will […]

For several decades, Ukrainian Greek Catholics have cultivated the dream of getting their own Patriarchate, a status enjoyed by six other Eastern Churches in union with Rome. This goal has often been expressed in diaspora communities and in Ukraine itself as soon as the Ukrainian Greek Catholics emerged from their clandestine existence in late 1989. […]

A new religious phenomenon based around a select group of gurus proclaiming instant enlightenment has emerged in several Western countries. In the journal Nova Religio (October) Liselotte Frisk writes that by the end of the 1990s, a group of Westerners claiming to have reached enlightenment were touring Asia and the West holding meetings to help others make […]

The question of whether Islamic groups should accept aid from Saudi Arabia is raising debate and divisions in the American Muslim community, reports the Los Angeles Times (Dec. 1). Since Saudi Arabia is increasingly seen as the importer of the militant “Wahhabi” branch of Islam, both the U.S. government and American Muslim groups themselves debating the consequences […]

Although Sept. 11 still reverberated across the American landscape, religious trends emerged from several unexpected places in 2002. As is customary, the following review looks at the trends unfolding from last year’s news that are likely to carry some impact in 2003 and beyond. Some of the trends have received fuller treatment in previous issues […]

Evangelical missionaries s in Central Asia are having a modest rate of success and facing fewer restrictions in some states, according to recent research conducted by French scholar Sébastien Peyrouse. At the conference of the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) in Anchorage, Alaska in early November, which RW attended, Peyrouse presented research from his recently […]

Jewish philanthropy is gradually shifting to serving non-Jews as well as Jews, reports Moment magazine (December). In the new landscape, American Jews and American Jewish organizations are funding “programs to eliminate suffering of all kinds in their own communities, donate to groups that protect the environment, and feed, clothe and find jobs for the poor all over […]

Since Sept. 11, there has been a significant drop in American Muslims running for political office, but there are signs that this may be changing. The Christian Science Monitor (Nov. 7) reports that Muslims only began running for office in significant numbers in the 1990s, hitting a peak in 2000, when about 700 candidates ran and 153 […]

The seemingly bizarre religious views and practices surrounding the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart by the street preacher Brian David Mitchell (known as Immanuel) are not so uncommon in the ultraconservative subcultures existing on the margins of Mormonism, according to an article in the independent Mormon magazine Sunstone magazine (October). John-Charles Duffy writes that although the Church of […]

The growing anti-war views of Eastern Orthodox leaders may be causing new tensions in these churches. Although not featured in much of the media, there was almost unanimous agreement among Orthodox leaders that the war with Iraq was immoral with anti-war pronouncements issuing from the high level of the partiarchates of Moscow and Constantinople to […]