BACKGROUND Social scientists have suggested that cultural diversity in a nation leads to societal instability. However, societal instability may be affected not only by within-nation or alpha diversity, but also diversity between a nation and its neighbours or beta diversity. It is also necessary to distinguish different domains of diversity, namely linguistic, ethnic and religious, and to dist...

Bangladesh hosts religious minorities that reflect the diverse faith traditions that have been influential in the historical region of Bengal over the millennia. Hindus, at 9.1 percent of the national population, are Bangladesh’s largest religious minority, though the Hindu population has declined significantly over the past 60 years since Partition (see figure 4). Buddhist communities, concent...

The unification of a strong and authoritarian state with religious laws and institutions after the 1979 revolution in Iran has resulted in the creation of a dualistic state structure in which non-elected and non-accountable state authorities and institutions-the majority of whom have not accepted either the primacy of democracy nor the premise of equality between men and women (or Muslims and n...

Moving beyond approaches that emphasise the influence of national ideologies and transnational frameworks on the governance of religious diversity in Western Europe, recent scholarship has underlined the importance of analysing the impact of concrete institutional settings such as hospitals, schools and prisons on the public incorporation of religious minorities. Building on this approach, the ...

Legislatures and courts are debating whether businesses can deny services to same-sex couples for religious reasons. Yet, little is known about public views on this issue. In a national survey experiment, Americans (n = 2035) responded to an experimental vignette describing a gay or interracial couple refused service. Vignettes varied the reason for refusal (religion/nonreligious) and by busine...