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A round-up of the week’s religion news. Continue Reading →
Tag: saudi arabia
To Hajj Without an Escort
By Alex Thurston During the week of September 24, Saudi Arabian authorities detained and subsequently deported over 1,000 Nigerian female pilgrims who were on the hajj to Mecca. The incident caused considerable tension between the two countries. Continue Reading →
In the World weekly links, Pandora's Box edition
…most residents of Trivandrum had not been clamoring for the temple’s vaults to be searched. This had initially puzzeled me. In America…it’s inconceivable that a mysterious, locked door would be left alone. (Recall Geraldo Rivera breaking into Al Capone’s vault, in the nineteen-eighties). But in India the wealth stored in the vaults of Hindu temples is viewed in largely spiritual, not monetary, terms…
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…Men and women will carry back to their small villages and towns tales of the Grand Mosque’s splendor, which is the reward sought by every Muslim ruler who alters the mosque…
The New Yorker has been cleaning up in the religion-writing sweepstakes these past few weeks, particularly with two pieces that raise fascinating questions about wealth, expenditure and the preservation—or radical renovation—of sacred sites. If you missed them, it’s worth circling back. The pieces, read together, amount to a tale of two temples and the ripple effects of altering their physical and natural environments. Continue Reading →
In the World weekly links, Pandora’s Box edition
…most residents of Trivandrum had not been clamoring for the temple’s vaults to be searched. This had initially puzzeled me. In America…it’s inconceivable that a mysterious, locked door would be left alone. (Recall Geraldo Rivera breaking into Al Capone’s vault, in the nineteen-eighties). But in India the wealth stored in the vaults of Hindu temples is viewed in largely spiritual, not monetary, terms…
****
…Men and women will carry back to their small villages and towns tales of the Grand Mosque’s splendor, which is the reward sought by every Muslim ruler who alters the mosque…
The New Yorker has been cleaning up in the religion-writing sweepstakes these past few weeks, particularly with two pieces that raise fascinating questions about wealth, expenditure and the preservation—or radical renovation—of sacred sites. If you missed them, it’s worth circling back. The pieces, read together, amount to a tale of two temples and the ripple effects of altering their physical and natural environments. Continue Reading →
Religion, Saudi Arabia's Symbolic Resource
Stephane Lacroix writes for Foreign Policy that the same types of unrest that are taking place across the Middle East have bypassed Saudi Arabia for two reasons, one “material” and the other “symbolic.” The first is most obviously Saudi Arabia’s immense oil reserves and subsequent national wealth. The second is what Lacroix calls the government’s co-option of “the Sahwa, the powerful Islamist network which would have to play a major role in any sustained mobilization of protests.” From the article:
Like the Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sahwa in Saudi Arabia is by far the largest and best organized non-state group, with arguably hundreds of thousands of members. Its mobilizing capacity is huge, far ahead of any other group, including the tribes which have for the last few decades lost a lot of their political relevance. An illustration of this were the 2005 municipal elections, which provided observers with an unprecedented opportunity to measure the ability of Saudi political actors to mobilize their supporters. In most districts of the major cities, Sahwa-backed candidates won with impressive scores.
Religion, Saudi Arabia’s Symbolic Resource
Stephane Lacroix writes for Foreign Policy that the same types of unrest that are taking place across the Middle East have bypassed Saudi Arabia for two reasons, one “material” and the other “symbolic.” The first is most obviously Saudi Arabia’s immense oil reserves and subsequent national wealth. The second is what Lacroix calls the government’s co-option of “the Sahwa, the powerful Islamist network which would have to play a major role in any sustained mobilization of protests.” From the article:
Like the Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sahwa in Saudi Arabia is by far the largest and best organized non-state group, with arguably hundreds of thousands of members. Its mobilizing capacity is huge, far ahead of any other group, including the tribes which have for the last few decades lost a lot of their political relevance. An illustration of this were the 2005 municipal elections, which provided observers with an unprecedented opportunity to measure the ability of Saudi political actors to mobilize their supporters. In most districts of the major cities, Sahwa-backed candidates won with impressive scores.
Religion, Saudi Arabia’s Symbolic Resource
Stephane Lacroix writes for Foreign Policy that the same types of unrest that are taking place across the Middle East have bypassed Saudi Arabia for two reasons, one “material” and the other “symbolic.” The first is most obviously Saudi Arabia’s immense oil reserves and subsequent national wealth. The second is what Lacroix calls the government’s co-option of “the Sahwa, the powerful Islamist network which would have to play a major role in any sustained mobilization of protests.” From the article:
Like the Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sahwa in Saudi Arabia is by far the largest and best organized non-state group, with arguably hundreds of thousands of members. Its mobilizing capacity is huge, far ahead of any other group, including the tribes which have for the last few decades lost a lot of their political relevance. An illustration of this were the 2005 municipal elections, which provided observers with an unprecedented opportunity to measure the ability of Saudi political actors to mobilize their supporters. In most districts of the major cities, Sahwa-backed candidates won with impressive scores.
Know Your Audience (If Not the Story)
In the wake of the U.S. State Department’s report on worldwide religious freedom, which once again condemned Saudi Arabia as a severe violator of religious liberty that only allowed citizens Continue Reading →
Daily Links 03 December 2004
Gods of Nationalism Kalyan Singh, leader of the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), today deposed before theLiberhan Commission, a 12-year old commission investigating the 1992 demolition of theBabri Mosque by a Continue Reading →