CENTRE for RELIGIOUS PLURALISM in the MIDDLE EAST

Abstract

Some of the oldest Christian communities in the world are disappearing in the very lands where their faith was born and first took root. During the past decade,Christians around the Middle East have been subject to vicious murders at the hands of terrorist groups, forced out of their ancestral lands by civil wars, suffered societal intolerance fomented by Islamist groups, and subjected to institutional discrimination found in the legal codes and

Abstract

This paper asks the question: Are the GCC Shi‘a engaged in their own “Shi‘a Spring movement”, and, if so, what does this mean for the future of Shi‘a communities in the Arabian Gulf? While the “Arab Spring” is a movement that is shared among an entire ethno-linguistic group, Shi‘a protesters belong to a group that have be both politically and religiously marginalized in the modern GCC states. Shi‘a protesters face discrimination not only from GCC political authorities, but

Plans to build churches in Kuwait have been rejected by MPs because they "contradict Islamic Sharia law". The Gulf country's government, which is unelected and seperate from the elected MPs in parliament, initially accepted the church building proposals and allocated a number of sites for construction.