Minorities and Majorities in the Middle East and Asia
In Memory of Rudolf Macúch (1919-1993)
The Department of Comparative Religion is honoured to invites to the conference titled “Minorities and Majorities in the Middle East and Asia” which will take place at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava on the days of 14th and 15th of September. The conference is dedicated to the memory of the world-renowned scholar Professor Rudolf Macúch. The talks cover different aspects of the religions and cultures of minorities, especially in today Iran and Iraq, from Mandaeans, Christians, Yezidis, Yārsān (Ahl-e Haq) and Sufīs to Buddhists, ect.
Organizers: Department of Comparative Religion, Comenius University in Bratislava
Slovak Association for the Study of Religions
Venue: Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Arts, 2 Gondova St.
Conference programme (PDF):
Wednesday, 14th September 2016
- Maria Macuch: “Rudolf Macuch – A Life Dedicated to the Study of Minorities”
- Eden Naby: “Modern Assyrian Culture and Prof Rudolf Macuch”
Mahmoud Jaafari-Dehaghi: “Professor Rudolf Macúch at the University of Tehran” - Jiří Gebelt: “Rudolf Macúch’s Contributions to the Mandaean Studies in the Light of Current Research”
PANEL 1: The Mandaeans of Iran
- Muhammad Allahdadi: “Are Mandaeans Men of the Book? A Study of the Evolution of Shi’a Jurists’ Ideas about Mandaeans As Men of the Book”
- Mohsen Jafari: “The Mandaeans: The Lost Tribe of the Iranian Constitution”
- Reza Yarinia: “The Mandaean Cosmological Structure and Its Manifestation in the Purity of Creatures”
- Behnam Eskandari: “The Mandaeans’ Mythical and Religious Communications with Other Religions”
Thursday, 15th September 2016
PANEL 2: Diasporas
- Martin Klapetek: “The Near Orient? The Transfer of “Otherness” to European Contexts”
- Torsten Tschacher: “On Being a Multiple Minority: ‘Indian Muslims’ in Singapore between ‘Race’ and ‘Religion”
- Katarína Šomodiová: “The Iraqi Christian Community in Slovakia”
PANEL 3: Multiplied and fragmented minorities
- Alam Saleh: “The Fragmented Middle East: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Religion”
- Attila Kovács: “Minority-Majority Dynamics and the Public Space in the Old City of Jerusalem: A Visual Approach”
- Dušan Deák: “Emplacing the Saintliness: Rural Muslim Religiosity between Vaishnavas Sufis and Demons”
PANEL 4: Minority policies
- Luboš Bělka: “Minority Religion: The History of Russia´s Policy towards Tibetan Buddhism in Buryatia (1717-2016)”
- Marko Jovanović: “Uyghur Separatism: A Fight for Cultural or Religious Identity?”
- Eszter Spät: “Religion and Nation-Building among the Yezidis of Iraq”
PANEL 5: Minorities and Religious Dogmatics
- Alireza Bahrami: “Exploring Islam’s View about the Men of the Book”
- Lukáš Větrovec: “Present-Day Reflections of the Viewpoints of Ibn Taymiyya on Non-Muslim Communities”
- Qasem Muhammadi: “Religious Minorities ‘the Self’ or ‘the Other’ in the Islamic Government as Presented in the Shi‘a School of Thought”
PANEL 7: Religious fractions and groups
- Seyedeh Behnaz Hosseini: “Yārsān-a religious minority in Iran”
- Mahmoud Jafari-Dehaghi: “Buddhism in the East of Iran”
- Abdolmajid Etesami: “Zayd Ibn Ali Ibn Husayn (a.s.) and the Imamate”
- Matej Karásek: “Christian sannyasis and Christian ashram movement in India: minors amongst Hindus or Christians?”
PANEL 8: Minorities and majorities in literature & writing
- Łukasz Byrski: “Writing Systems and the Minorities”
- Deepra Dandekar: “Popular Islamic Literature and Muslim Minoritization in India”
- Miklós Sárközy: “Wladimir Ivanow and his memoirs about Iranian Ismailis and Gypsies”
- Estiphan Panoussi: “Hungarian Calvinist Church in Budapest Hungary Classifications of Difficulties of Some Verbal Roots and Homonyms the the Senaya Dialect of Neo-Aramaic”