Wikipedia, the Difficulties of Mapping World Religions, and a

Most Bizarre Map

geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/religion/wikipedia-difficulties-mapping-world-religions-bizarre-map

By Martin W. Lewis

In teaching the global geography of religion this term, I have

again been disappointed by the quality of relevant maps that
are readily available on-line. Making a map of this sort is
admittedly a challenge. Many areas contain multiple faiths,
and a few religionsMahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto
even allow their own adherents to follow other religions
simultaneously. Degrees of religiosity and the prevalence of
irreligion also vary tremendously from place to place.
Syncretic belief systems that draw on multiple religions
present a challenge of their own; an anthropologist friend of
mine once described Guinea as 90 percent Muslim and 90
percent animist. Animism itself is a problem, as it is not a faith but rather a catchall category. Another difficulty
concerns divisions of major religions. How finely should one subdivide by sect, and how consistent should one
be across the major religious divisions? If one distinguishes Sunni and Shia Islam, as well as Catholic,
Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, should not Mahayana Buddhism also be distinguished from
Theravada Buddhism? How should one map less-widespread but equally distinctive religious branches, such as
Ibadi Islam (Oman) and Oriental Orthodox Christianity (Armenia and Ethiopia)? Another problem stems from
rapid demographic change in particular places. Most world religion maps, for example, show Xinjiang in
northwestern China as dominated by Sunni Islam, as was indeed the case several decades ago, but Islam is
now a minority faith across the eastern half of this Chinese region, owing to the massive influx of Han Chinese.

As a result of such issues, I do not expect anything approaching perfection in regard to the mapping of religious
communities across the globe. But still, what I encounter when conducting a simple Google search of world
religion map leaves me frustrated. None of the maps in that appeared in the first few screens are adequate to
the task (the top-ranked images from my most recent search are reproduced above). Many of these maps show
all countries as religiously homogenous, a problematic but understandable cartographic expedient. But the maps
that ignore political boundaries are often even more flawed. To show the extent of such problems, I have placed
the top-ranked handful of maps at the bottom of this post, pointing out three major errors in each case. For most
of these maps, it would have been easy to have indicated many more.

After checking out dozens of maps, I tried a different tactic,

this time searching under, world religion map Wikipedia.
This search immediately returned two serviceable maps,
one country-based and the other not. The latter map,
entitled The Religions of the World, is particularly
impressive. To be sure, I still have a few quibbles: why, for
example, does it ignore folk religions (animism) in the
upper Amazon and in the southern half of Africa, and why
does it place generally secular areas (such as the Czech
Republic) and uninhabited zones (such as central
Greenland) in the same no religion category? But note as
well the maps exquisite details, which capture, for example, the Pomak Muslim area of southern Bulgaria, the
Buddhism of Russias Kalmykia, and the Christianity of Mizoram, Nagaland, and Meghalaya in northeastern
India.

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All in all, these Wikipedia maps are so superior to the others
that their low ranking in the initial search makes little sense.
If one considers as well the scope and significance of the
Wikipedia, such failure seems doubly mystifyingalthough I
must admit to my own ignorance of the underlying algorithms
that guide such searches. But I cannot help thinking of the
continual trashing of the Wikipedia found in certain
intellectual and educational quarters. Indeed, I had just
finished reading yet another hit-piece, a Sp!ked article by
Nigel Scott entitled Wikipedia: where truth dies online
which is graced with an even more disdainful tagline: Run
by cliquish, censorious editors and open to pranks and vandalism, Wikipedia is worthless and damaging.
Although I appreciate Sp!ked, especially for its anti-censorship campaign, I must say that I found Scotts article
to be on the worthless and damaging side of things. The Wikipedia is so vast that serious problems are
inevitable, but all told I find it an indispensible compendium of knowledge. As I tell my students: always start
with the Wikipedia; never end with the Wikipedia.

In most of the poor-quality world-religion maps found online,

the errors are basic and relatively similar. But one high-
ranking map, reproduced here to the left, is altogether
different. On first glance, I assumed that this map depicts an
alternative reality in some elaborate realm of fantasy game
playing. I was intrigued, as the cartographer obviously
knows something about interesting but obscure religions,
such as Mazdakism and Mandaeanism, and as I have long
been curious about alternative world mapping. But when I
went to the website on which the map was posted, I was
bewildered, as the site is simply the personal blog of a pro-
Israel Kurdish nationalist living in Sweden who favors liberal
social democracy. Bizarrely, he seems to label this map
Austria-Hungary. Ottoman empire. British, German, French and Russian empires, and he provides no further
explanation. (I have written to him seeking further information, but he has not replied.) Many of the labels on the
map remain mysterious. I can find no information, for example, on Nkisism, and I have no idea what Zuranic
means, although Zuran is a card in the game Magic. Perhaps my initial suspicion was correct.

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