Opening Thoughts Regarding Religion

The impact of religion on society is incalculable; from the rise and fall of empires to a sense of purpose and hope of the common person, religion has touched the lives of many throughout time and space. Sometimes religion has encouraged exploring the natural world around us such as during the Age of Exploration while other times, religion has discouraged learning the truths of our world such as the Catholic Church’s negative response to the Scientific Revolution.

Perhaps one of the most interesting ways to study religions is to delve into the topic of New Religious Movements (NRMs). NRMs don’t have a concrete definition and are oftentimes stereotyped into pop culture’s ideas of cults or spin-offs of “traditional” religions. And oftentimes, how academics use the term “cult” is directly contradictory to what the common person thinks of when they hear the term “cult.” Currently, the taxonomy and vocabulary associated with NRMs are not clear, which allows for the spread of negative stereotypes against NRMs and which makes studying NRMs more difficult.

The purpose of my project is to develop a classification system for Islamic NRMs that hopefully can be generalized to NRMs as a whole or inspire change in the classification of NRMs as a whole. By studying a sample of Islamic NRMs and classifying them into categories such as cult (extremist), sect (non-extremist and somewhat conforming), and religion (non-extremist and non-conforming), I hope to also identify factors used to classify Islamic NRMs and ensure my classification improves on the existing taxonomy of NRMs.