This forthcoming series published by Brill, entitled ‘Non-Mainstream Religion in the Middle East’, is great news. It’s about time we have more studies on contemporary, lived and living religions.
The peer-reviewed series Non-Mainstream Religion in the Middle East aims to bring out scholarly monographs, handbooks, and edited volumes on historical, social, comparative, textual, and cultural aspects of the study of groups that are often described as “religious minorities,” in and from the Middle East. The term “non-mainstream” is intended to cover both non-orthodox, self-confessed Muslim traditions (e.g. Ismaili groups from Syria to Tajikistan, Syrian Alawites, and Shiʿite groups in Afghanistan; the Rawshaniya movement among Pashtuns); those whose status as Islamic groups is disputed either by themselves or by the outside world (such as the Yaresan or Ahl-e Ḥaqq of Iran and Iraq, and the Alevis from Turkey); and those who live in mainly Islamic societies without belonging to the mainstream by any definition (e.g. Zoroastrians, Yezidis, Druzes, Mandaeans, Jews outside Israel, and Christian minorities). The diaspora communities of the traditions in question, as well as critical editions and translations of their religious texts, are intended to be part of the remit of the Series.