Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Religion Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| Qadianis | Majority party among Ahmadis (qv). |
| Qaraism | See Karaites. |
| Qarmatians, Karmatians | A name for Muslims who are Shia Ismailis. |
| quasireligion | Seemingly or partially a religion; or a secular movement which is partly or virtually a religion, but is also either antireligious or nonreligious or pseudo-religious. |
| quasi-religionists | Adherents of quasi-religions. |
| quasi-religions | Secular movements which are partly, or are virtually, religions; divided here into anti-religious quasireligions (atheism, communism, dialectical materialism, Leninism, Maoism, Mantism, scientific materialism, Stalinism, et alia), and non-religious quasi-religions (some forms of agnosticism, fascism, humanism, liberal humanism, nationalism, Nazism, some forms of non-religion, some forms of secularism). |
| Question_Type | Whether religion question was asked as as a one- or two-step question (one step- 'What's your religion, if any?' or two step- 'Do you belong to a religion? If yes, which one?') Two step questions generally result in fewer people identifying a religion. |
| Question_Wording | Wording of religon question. |
| Quran | (Koran). The book of writings in Arabic accepted by Muslims as revelations made to Muhammad by Allah. |
| Quran translations | Languages into which the Quran has been translated: about 200 (25 European) by AD 2000 including Bengali, Chinese, Dutch, English Farsi, French, German, Gujarati, Hausa, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Latin, Punjabi, Spanish, Swahili, Turkish, Urdu, Yoruba. |
| Quranic schools, Koranic schools | Elementary schools teaching only the Quran and memorizing passages. |
| race | Biological grouping or stock, inherited at birth. |
| rationalist | An advocate of rationalism, reliance on reason as the basis for the establishment of any ultimate truth including religious truth. |
| Red Hat (Unreformed) Lamaism | (Dupka or Karmapa). That part of Tibetan Buddhism in which monasteries have resisted the 14th-century reforms of the monk Tsong-khapa. Red Hat Lamaism is the official religion of Bhutan. |
| Reformed Hindus | See Hindu reformist movements. |
| region | UN term for statistical enumeration referring to a subdivision of a major area (continent). |
| relational database | A collection of data items organized as a set of formally-described tables from which data can be accessed or reassembled. |
| religiocluster | A council or association of dissimilar religions which functions as its own religion. |
| religiometrics | The scientific measurement and analysis of religions and adherents, with special reference to description, analysis, trends. |
| religion | A religion is a grouping of persons with beliefs about God or gods, and defined by its adherents’ loyalty to it, by their acceptance of it as unique and superior to all other religions, and by its relative autonomy. |
| religion, comparative | Comparative study of the origin, development, and interrelations of the religious systems of mankind. |
| religionists | Persons professing adherence to any religion, as contrasted with atheists or nonreligious persons. |
| religious Buddhists | Buddhists who profess Buddhism as both a family religion and also a personal religion. |
| religious change | Demographic changes from one religion or religious system to another in the course of a year. |
| religious communities | (1) Religious institutes (qv), orders, congregations, or societies of religious personnel for the religious life, total (for Catholic Church) 1,530. (2) Religious communities in the sense of buildings and centers (large monasteries, abbeys, priories, including monasteries in anti-Christian countries where their presence as legitimate or tolerated institutions is significant, mother houses of religious institutes, ashrams, and the like) number over 5000 |
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