Being (in) a minority. For traditional structures of religious authority, therefore, the internet can be understood both as a means of proselytising and disseminating religious information, as well as a challenge to religiously derived morals and forms of authority. My analysis of Judaism and Islam as minority religious groups in North American is informed by Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx’x argument that ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ are value-laden constructions, rather than natural entities. For Xxxxxxxxxxx, these concepts have developed beyond their popular meanings (drawn from demographic statistics), and are concepts related to European colonial paternalism: For example, they often assumed that their histories contained the majority instances of norms that every other human society should aspire to; compared to them, others were still the “minors” for whom they, the “adults” of the world, had to take charge, and so on. (2000:100) Evidence from the blogs, where many of the bloggers challenge what they perceive as mainstream ‘rescue’ narratives about religiously dressed women (on the basis of insufficient understanding of religion as it is lived, rather than its representation by media or even religious leaders), suggest that traces of such paternalism remain. Many of the bloggers are also multiple minorities – not only in terms of their religion, but also in terms of their racial, sub-cultural or sexual orientation. As Xxxx Xxxxxxx (2004) has shown, being in a minority can influence which religious practices are considered to by adherents to have everyday relevance in their lives. For instance, Xxxxxxx’x discussion of the compliance to food taboos among poor Irish descendants in London, shows that certain religious practices take on greater and different meaning in diasporic conditions than they might have in situations where the religious group form the majority population. The elevated importance of certain religious practices in diasporic conditions appears to be the case with the Muslim bloggers regarding dress itself, a perspective supported by Xxxxx Xxxxx’x (2011) work on the meanings the hijab takes on in different contexts. It is less evident in the Jewish blogs, though being visibly part of their religious community is also a consideration for some of the Jewish bloggers. Even though I agree with Xxxxxxxx (2014) about the limitations of statistics for providing an accurate picture of lived religion, a quick discussion of quantitative surveys of both Judaism and Islam in North Amer...
