[maxbond]

There's also .va for the Vatican and .lds for the Mormon faith (and .mormon), and more generic Christian ones like .church. I didn't find any for other religions on a casual search, perhaps because many of them don't have the same degree of centralization.

[dc396]

.VA is a country code TLD, assigned because it is listed in ISO-3166. The others are "generic top-level domains" which had to go through ICANN's new gTLD program, which has a lot of rules (338 pages of them for the 2012 round) and costs a lot of money (US$185K to start with recurrent fees dependent upon the number of registrations). I suspect it isn't about centralization, but rather about perceived cost/benefit ratios.

[mikestorrent]

The Vatican is a country, so it gets a ccTLD.

[skissane]

I am wondering if the Albanian government’s plan to give independence to the Tirana HQ of the Bektashi Sufi Order is ever actually going to happen. If it does, then they’ll be the world’s second country dedicated to a religion… well, currently Iran is a Twelver Shi’a theocracy, but Iran had a long history before it was theocracy, and maybe one day won’t be one anymore; Vatican City and the proposed “Bektashi Muslim Vatican” are countries whose existence is inseparable from being HQ of a religious group.

The odd thing about giving the Bektashis a “Muslim Vatican”, is they are a tiny minuscule sect within Islam, and many conservative Muslims will say “they aren’t Muslims at all”

[riffraff]

Tibet was a theocracy with a religious leader for a while until recent times.

Also I think the Albanian plan is more on the lines of Mount Athos: it is technically an in independent administration with independent (monastic) government but still part of the Greek state

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastic_community_of_Mount_...

[skissane]

> Tibet was a theocracy with a religious leader for a while until recent times.

Yes, but it was still like contemporary Iran - a country which happened to have a theocratic system of government, not a country whose sole raison d'être was to endow a religious group with the trappings of statehood.

> Also I think the Albanian plan is more on the lines of Mount Athos: it is technically an in independent administration with independent (monastic) government but still part of the Greek state

I don’t believe that is true - if you read Albanian PM Edi Rama’s statements on the topic, he always cites the Vatican as his inspiration, not Mount Athos - which makes sense given Rama himself is Catholic, not Orthodox. He isn’t proposing this idea out of any personal belief in Bektashi Islam… a cynic would say he is doing it because it is good PR both for his country and for him personally… he’d surely give more high-minded explanation, in terms of the Albanian state giving a magnanimous gift to the cause of interfaith tolerance and religious moderation… but definitely the model is the Vatican not Mount Athos

[maxbond]

True but I don't think the distinction matters to the overall point that it's perfectly ordinary for religious institutions to operate a TLD, regardless of the mechanism that allows for it.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Vatican City is a theocracy, not a religion. You'd technically have to add .uk and many more to the list if you're broadening to all nations with a state religion.

[maxbond]

It's the central bureaucratic/theocratic function of a major world religion which, it just so happens, is organized as a micronation instead of as a foundation or something like that. The primary function of the UK is not to run the Anglican church, nor is their king generally thought of as their primary leader.

[jkaplowitz]

Interestingly, legally, the Holy See and the Vatican City State are not the same thing.

The one which is the global seat of the Roman Catholic Church, which has existed since ancient times including for a time without any territory after the Papal States were lost, which is internationally sovereign, and the one to which ambassadors to the "Vatican" are accredited is the Holy See, not the Vatican City State.

The one that has .va is Vatican City State, which was created only in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the (then-)Kingdom of Italy. That treaty was signed to return a certain degree of independent territorial authority to the Holy See, including the Vatican City State where it has full sovereignty, to give financial compensation to the Church / the Holy See for the loss of the Papal States, and to address a few other matters.

Yes, the Vatican City State is under the governance of the Holy See as a sovereign entity, but it's the Holy See that's sovereign, not the Vatican City State - and the Holy See would remain legally intact if the Vatican City State were to be physically conquered by a foreign power.

ISO country codes which lead to ccTLD domain names like .va are often given more on the basis of internationally recognized/relevant territorial definition than on the basis of international recognized/relevant sovereignty where those two things diverge. After all, the British Indian Ocean Territory has never itself been sovereign under that name, and Taiwan's international sovereignty is a controversial question, but .io and .tw ccTLDs were still assigned and are universally recognized. it's for the same reason that .va goes with the territory and not with the global church.

[PeterWhittaker]

.uk was one of the first!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.uk

(Or did I miss an "/s"?)

[pests]

I think they mean in the context of a a TLD related to a religious entity. Since uk has a state religion, they meant “add it to the list of religious tlds” along with .va and others mentioned in this thread.

[PeterWhittaker]

Oh, that I got. Just made me laugh, since .uk is one of the oldest CC TLDs.

[os2warpman]

I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country, besides as a quirk of history.

It is smaller than high school campus nearest my house, is not a UN member, and seems to exist solely as a tax haven.

It also has no native citizens. No person has been born in Vatican City in a century and even if you pop out a baby in Vatican City and are you yourself a Vatican City resident and citizen, the baby is not a citizen until made so by legal decree, citizenship which ends the second your employment ends, of course, because citizenship is tied to employment.

It doesn't make sense.

It isn't a country.

It is a tax dodge.

My perspective may be skewed. I value "quirky quirks of quirktastic history" very little.

[jdietrich]

>I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country

It isn't a country and nobody says that it is. The Holy See is sovereign entity with unique status under international law; the status of the Vatican City is derived from the status of the Holy See. It enjoys that status because practically all countries believe that it should do so.

All relevant parties believe that the Vatican City should be treated as if it's a state, therefore it enjoys the rights and responsibilities of a state, even though it technically isn't one. That is fundamentally how international law works - it's a system of agreements between countries and practice established by historical precedent. The status of the Holy See and the Vatican City is quirky, but that doesn't make it illegitimate.

[skissane]

> It isn't a country and nobody says that it is.

Well, the CIA says it is: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/holy-see-va...

> The Holy See is sovereign entity with unique status under international law; the status of the Vatican City is derived from the status of the Holy See. It enjoys that status because practically all countries believe that it should do so.

I am only an amateur international lawyer, ask a real one for a more confident answer: but my own understanding is this-the subjects of international law are (1) sovereign states, (2) international organisations established by treaty, (3) sui generis entities; Vatican City is technically an instance of (1) and the Holy See is an instance of (3), and they are technically two distinct subjects of international law, despite having a common sovereign - at least, that’s what I’m pretty sure the Vatican’s own international lawyers will argue… as subjects of international law, both are capable of being parties to treaties, but (generally speaking) the Holy See joins treaties of global interest, Vatican City joins treaties regarding matters of local concern to its own territory. As to where they get this status from, the answer is-customary international law

[dragonwriter]

> I don't understand why the Vatican is considered a country, besides as a quirk of history.

It is considered an independent state because some time after the Papal States (a much larger set of holdings that were ruled by the Pope) were annexed by Italy, the Vatican was subsequently granted independence (recognized in a treaty between the Holy See and Italy). Which is pretty typical of why independent states are considered independent states.

[franciscop]

What is a country for you? How do you define it? Is the land size that important?

[os2warpman]

A country must have a people.

Who are the people of the Vatican? The only persons who live there are temporary government employees and not even all of them are citizens because that is optional.

You cannot own property, vote for your government, start your own business, go to school, buy anything except what is stocked in the small canteen, or go to the hospital if you are a Vatican citizen and odds are pretty good you live in Italy anyways.

Imagine if a bank drew a boundary around its Manhattan skyscraper headquarters and declared itself a country called Bankistan whose only residents were janitors, financial analysts, and management-- and most of its citizens live in Brooklyn. Except for the C-suite and senior vice presidents who live in penthouses and the janitors who live in tiny rooms in the basement.

Also the second the bank fires you or you quit or retire, you're no longer a citizen of Bankistan.

At a minimum, a capital-see (heh) Country is something that belongs to you if but in a very, insignificantly, small part.

So my definition of "country" is ill-defined but does not include the Vatican.

[johnecheck]

Your definition ignores international recognition.

Ultimately, whether you get to act like a country (go to the UN, engage in diplomacy, hold territory) is in large part based on whether other countries recognize you as such. I don't know that it defines country-hood but it's part of the puzzle.

The Vatican is a fascinating example since it's clearly a very different sort of entity than the rest of the countries, yet is still recognized by most of the world's nations.

[bombcar]

Historically the Vatican is also a way to allow the Papal States to “give up” their claim on, well, the Papal States.

It works out pretty well for everyone, so it continues.

[franciscop]

As johnecheck points out, in a certain level of abstraction, the main way of defining a country is whether other countries consider you a country or not. Even when other countries do consider you a country, what the borders are exactly might not be clearly recognized.

Since countries are political divisions, I'd also argue that this is the main and most important definition.

BTW, even "continents" suffer from this where in the US, Europe and Asia they are defined differently.

[gerikson]

.islam is proposed but contested: https://icannwiki.org/.islam

[xp84]

I struggled to find a non-sarcastic, non-flippant way to say it so I'll just go with factual: I am not surprised that there are entities willing to fight over such an important name.