Markus Dressler
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199969401
- eISBN:
- 9780199346103
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199969401.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
Following a theoretical discussion of the role of religion in the formation of nationalism, arguing against secularist assumptions and pointing in particular to the importance of religion in making ...
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Following a theoretical discussion of the role of religion in the formation of nationalism, arguing against secularist assumptions and pointing in particular to the importance of religion in making nationalism plausible, this chapter then discusses the contributions of selected late Ottoman Muslim thinkers to an ethno-religious Turkish nationalism. The second part of the chapter turns to the concrete politics of nationalism in the last decade of the Ottoman Empire. Influenced by the trauma of the Balkan Wars, notions of ethnic and religious difference became in the later Young Turk period organizing principles of nation-building, reflected in techniques of social and demographic engineering, to which the nationalists increasingly subscribed. It is argued that this politics, which targeted primarily non-Turkish and non-Muslim groups, was motivated by fear of growing separatist movements similar to those that had triggered the implosion of Ottoman rule on the Balkans.Less
Following a theoretical discussion of the role of religion in the formation of nationalism, arguing against secularist assumptions and pointing in particular to the importance of religion in making nationalism plausible, this chapter then discusses the contributions of selected late Ottoman Muslim thinkers to an ethno-religious Turkish nationalism. The second part of the chapter turns to the concrete politics of nationalism in the last decade of the Ottoman Empire. Influenced by the trauma of the Balkan Wars, notions of ethnic and religious difference became in the later Young Turk period organizing principles of nation-building, reflected in techniques of social and demographic engineering, to which the nationalists increasingly subscribed. It is argued that this politics, which targeted primarily non-Turkish and non-Muslim groups, was motivated by fear of growing separatist movements similar to those that had triggered the implosion of Ottoman rule on the Balkans.
Akeel Bilgrami (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231170802
- eISBN:
- 9780231541015
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170802.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
What is the character of secularism in countries that were not pervaded by Christianity, such as China, India, and the nations of the Middle East? To what extent is the secular an imposition of ...
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What is the character of secularism in countries that were not pervaded by Christianity, such as China, India, and the nations of the Middle East? To what extent is the secular an imposition of colonial rule? How does secularism comport with local religious cultures in Africa, and how does it work with local forms of power and governance in Latin America? Has modern secularism evolved organically, or is it even necessary, and has it always meant progress? A vital extension of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, in which he exhaustively chronicled the emergence of secularism in Latin Christendom, this anthology applies Taylor’s findings to secularism’s global migration. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Rajeev Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Sudipta Kaviraj, Claudio Lomnitz, Alfred Stepan, Charles Taylor, and Peter van der Veer each explore the transformation of Western secularism beyond Europe, and the collection closes with Taylor’s response to each essay. What began as a modern reaction to—as well as a stubborn extension of—Latin Christendom has become a complex export shaped by the world’s religious and political systems. Brilliantly alternating between intellectual and methodological approaches, this volume fosters a greater engagement with the phenomenon across disciplines.Less
What is the character of secularism in countries that were not pervaded by Christianity, such as China, India, and the nations of the Middle East? To what extent is the secular an imposition of colonial rule? How does secularism comport with local religious cultures in Africa, and how does it work with local forms of power and governance in Latin America? Has modern secularism evolved organically, or is it even necessary, and has it always meant progress? A vital extension of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, in which he exhaustively chronicled the emergence of secularism in Latin Christendom, this anthology applies Taylor’s findings to secularism’s global migration. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Rajeev Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Sudipta Kaviraj, Claudio Lomnitz, Alfred Stepan, Charles Taylor, and Peter van der Veer each explore the transformation of Western secularism beyond Europe, and the collection closes with Taylor’s response to each essay. What began as a modern reaction to—as well as a stubborn extension of—Latin Christendom has become a complex export shaped by the world’s religious and political systems. Brilliantly alternating between intellectual and methodological approaches, this volume fosters a greater engagement with the phenomenon across disciplines.
Atalia Omer
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226615912
- eISBN:
- 9780226616100
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226616100.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Days of Awe examines the stories of the American-Jewish Palestine solidarity movement and Jewish critics of the occupation. Atalia Omer demonstrates that critical resistance to the Israeli occupation ...
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Days of Awe examines the stories of the American-Jewish Palestine solidarity movement and Jewish critics of the occupation. Atalia Omer demonstrates that critical resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinians enables American Jews to reimagine Jewishness from feminist, gender non-conformist, non-white and other Jewish margins. Through the search for solidarity with Palestinians these activists interrogate privilege, grapple with their complicity, and participate in a broader social movement that intersects multiple sites of struggle for liberation. The book illuminates how narratives about identity and conflict can provide sites for resistance and peacebuilding that enable reimagining religious tradition. It examines the multidirectional interrelations between innovation in religious identity and tradition and social protest. Based on extensive participant observation fieldwork and interviews, the book captures how reimagining identity from the grassroots and the margins involves feedback loops between the experiences of ethical outrage and unlearning ideological formations, neither of which is instinctive but rather reflect complex sociological mechanisms and processes often not examined in scholarship on religion and social change. These sociological processes generative of moral shocks also necessitate engaging with and innovating with tradition, histories, memories, and embodied experiences such as those of Mizrahi, Sephardi and Jews of Color. Days of Awe, therefore, employs the resources of religious studies in conversation with social movement theory to develop a more sociologically robust analysis of religion and change.Less
Days of Awe examines the stories of the American-Jewish Palestine solidarity movement and Jewish critics of the occupation. Atalia Omer demonstrates that critical resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinians enables American Jews to reimagine Jewishness from feminist, gender non-conformist, non-white and other Jewish margins. Through the search for solidarity with Palestinians these activists interrogate privilege, grapple with their complicity, and participate in a broader social movement that intersects multiple sites of struggle for liberation. The book illuminates how narratives about identity and conflict can provide sites for resistance and peacebuilding that enable reimagining religious tradition. It examines the multidirectional interrelations between innovation in religious identity and tradition and social protest. Based on extensive participant observation fieldwork and interviews, the book captures how reimagining identity from the grassroots and the margins involves feedback loops between the experiences of ethical outrage and unlearning ideological formations, neither of which is instinctive but rather reflect complex sociological mechanisms and processes often not examined in scholarship on religion and social change. These sociological processes generative of moral shocks also necessitate engaging with and innovating with tradition, histories, memories, and embodied experiences such as those of Mizrahi, Sephardi and Jews of Color. Days of Awe, therefore, employs the resources of religious studies in conversation with social movement theory to develop a more sociologically robust analysis of religion and change.
Jon Pahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199659289
- eISBN:
- 9780191764752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659289.003.0014
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter explores the conjunctions between sacrifice and apocalyptic thought concerning the ‘end of the world’ in selected American and Scandinavian films. Following a brief theoretical overview ...
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This chapter explores the conjunctions between sacrifice and apocalyptic thought concerning the ‘end of the world’ in selected American and Scandinavian films. Following a brief theoretical overview that distinguishes rhetorical from physical sacrifices (with film clearly falling into the former), and a distinction between triumphal and tragic apocalypses, the chapter argues that American films tend to promote triumphal sacrificial apocalypses that reinforce notions of American exceptionalism in the American civil religion (nationalism). From D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1963), along with Armageddon (1998), and the Left Behind trilogy (2001, 2002, 2005), American films have emphasized how sacrifice ‘saves’ and produces triumph in the midst of apocalyptic cataclysm. Scandianavian films, notably Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Offret (1986), and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), in contrast, stress a tragic sacrificial apocalypse, or an absolute ending.Less
This chapter explores the conjunctions between sacrifice and apocalyptic thought concerning the ‘end of the world’ in selected American and Scandinavian films. Following a brief theoretical overview that distinguishes rhetorical from physical sacrifices (with film clearly falling into the former), and a distinction between triumphal and tragic apocalypses, the chapter argues that American films tend to promote triumphal sacrificial apocalypses that reinforce notions of American exceptionalism in the American civil religion (nationalism). From D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1963), along with Armageddon (1998), and the Left Behind trilogy (2001, 2002, 2005), American films have emphasized how sacrifice ‘saves’ and produces triumph in the midst of apocalyptic cataclysm. Scandianavian films, notably Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Offret (1986), and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), in contrast, stress a tragic sacrificial apocalypse, or an absolute ending.
