Islam, Modernity, and the Question of Religious Heterodoxy

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-58
Author(s):  
Sadia Saeed
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Sufi Order ◽  
State Responses

This chapter undertakes a comparative and historical inquiry to address the role of sharia in shaping concrete state responses toward managing “heterodox” religious communities across time and space. The aim of this inquiry is, first, to undertake a critique of civilizational analyses that seek to capture supposedly essential features of Muslim societies, and second, to underscore the marginal role of sharia in adjudicating issues related to religious heterodoxy in both early modern empires and modern Muslim states. It analyzes, first, how Muslim rulers in two early modern Muslim empires, Safavid Iran and Mughal India, dealt with the same heterodox group, the Nuqtavi Sufi order. Next, it focuses on how two contemporary Muslim-majority states that emerged from these empires, Iran and Pakistan, have sought to regulate and discipline “heretical” groups in their midst—Baha’is in Iran and the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan. The analysis opens space for formulating alternative accounts of transitions to modernity that are not beholden to teleological Eurocentric notions that normalize notions of unredeemable and non-usable pasts and always-already open and progressive futures.

Confessionalism and Mobility in Early Modern Ireland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
Migratory Experience

This is a book about the intersection between processes of mobility and religious identity and practice in Early Modern Ireland. The period between c.1580 and c.1685 was one of momentous importance in terms of the establishment of different confessional identities in the island, and various typesof mobility played a key role in the development, articulation, and maintenance of separate religious communities. Part I examines the dialectic between migration and religious adherence, paying particular attention to the transnational dimension of clerical formation which played a vital role in shaping the competing Catholic, Church of Ireland, and non-conformist clergies. Part II investigates how more quotidian practices of mobility such as pilgrimage and interparochial communions helped to elaborate religious identities and the central role of figurative images of movement in structuring Christians’ understanding of their lives. The final chapters of the book analyze the extraordinary importance of migratory experience in shaping the lives and writings of the authors of key confessional identity texts. Hitherto underestimated or taken for granted, the book argues that migrants and exiles were of crucial significance in forging the self-understanding of the different religious communities of the island.

Co-optation and Resistance in Thailand's Muslim South: The Changing Role of Islamic Council Elections

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Islamic Organizations

AbstractDuring times of violent conflict, states may closely scrutinize the loyalty of those who lead minority religious communities. November 2005 saw elections for Islamic councils in Thailand's three southern border provinces. The Muslim-majority subregion had experienced escalating political violence since January 2004. Allegations of electoral manipulation were rife; the elections were proxy struggles between the Thai state and potential opponents. This article positions these elections within wider debates about the nature of the relationship between Islam and the state, in Thailand and beyond. It argues that politicizing Islamic organizations may be a dangerous game for states and elite actors to play.

Being a Dissenter

2020 ◽  
pp. 472-494
Author(s):  
Michael Davies ◽  
Anne Dunan-Page ◽  
Joel Halcomb
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Church Members ◽  
Church Discipline ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Church Life ◽  
Before And After

This chapter examines the collective experiences of lay believers in ‘gathered’ churches (both Congregational and Baptist) before and after the 1689 Toleration Act, and the ways they came to experience various forms of empowerment at a time when traditional categories of ‘laity’ and ‘clergy’ were radically renegotiated. Evidence taken from manuscript church records and other archival sources helps to consider Dissent through the corporate experiences of ordinary church members, both men and women, who were constantly engaged in defining what a ‘true’ church was, as well as the role of religious communities in shaping individual trajectories, especially through the exercise of church discipline. Focusing on disciplinary cases noted in the records of a number of gathered churches opens a window not only onto offences that disturbed and yet typified church life for early modern Dissenters, but also onto the daily lives and experiences of the visible saints.

The Role of Women in Pursuing Scottish Criminal Actions, 1580–1650

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-250
Author(s):  
Stephanie Dropuljic
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
The Law ◽  
Role Of Women

This article examines the role of women in raising criminal actions of homicide before the central criminal court, in early modern Scotland. In doing so, it highlights the two main forms of standing women held; pursing an action for homicide alone and as part of a wider group of kin and family. The evidence presented therein challenges our current understanding of the role of women in the pursuit of crime and contributes to an under-researched area of Scots criminal legal history, gender and the law.

Füchsische Poetologie. Zur Spiegelfiktion im Reynke de Vos (1498)

POETICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Hannah Rieger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Ancient Rhetoric ◽  
Wooden Frame ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Middle Low German ◽  
Specific Material

Abstract The Middle Low German Beast Epic Reynke de Vos (1498) is about two legal proceedings against the fox Reynke, who is charged by the other animals with the tricks he played on them. When he is sentenced to death, Reynke defends himself by delivering speeches that are constructed as described in ancient rhetoric. Part of those speeches is Reynke’s lie about his treasure, which he would give to the lion if he pardoned him. Reynke describes three pieces of jewellery as part of this made-up possession, one of which is a mirror. When Reynke describes it, he also tells Aesopic fables that are carved into its wooden frame. His fictional artefact, especially the interplay of its specific material and the content of the fables told, has a poetological level. In his description, Reynke hybridizes the political discourse of the early modern period, in which the virtue of prudentia becomes more and more important, with the rhetorical competence to deliver speeches and tell fables. In his fiction of the mirror he draws up a poetological draft that combines the role of a rhetor in court with his well-known properties of being clever and cunning. By describing the artefact, Reynke shows how to use rhetorical strategies, especially to tell fables, as an instrument to gain acceptance and to acquire political influence.

Healing Touch: Clothed Images of the Virgin in Early Modern Portugal

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-78
Author(s):  
Diana Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Healing Touch ◽  
Devotional Art ◽  
Healing Power ◽  
The Many ◽  
Santa Maria

Over the last decades there was a growing interest in religious materiality, miraculous images, votive practices, and how the faithful engaged with devotional art, as well as a renewed impetus to discuss the long-recognized association between sculpture and touch, after the predominance of the visuality approach. Additionally, the neglected phenomenon of clothing statues has also been increasingly explored. Based on the reading of Santuario Mariano (1707–1723), written by Friar Agostinho de Santa Maria (1642–1728), this paper will closely examine those topics. Besides producing a monumental catalogue of Marian shrines and pilgrimage sites, this source offers a unique insight into the religious experience and the reciprocal relationship between image and devotee in Early Modern Portugal, and is a particularly rich source when describing the believers’ pursuit of physical contact with sculptures. This yearning for proximity is partly explained by the belief in the healing power of Marian sculptures, which in turn seemed to be conveniently transferred to a myriad of objects. When contact with the images themselves was not possible, devotees sought out their clothes, crowns, rosary beads, metric relics, and so forth. Items of clothing such as mantles and veils were particularly used and so it seems obvious they were not mere adornments or donations, but also mediums and extensions of the sculptures’ presence and power. By focusing on the thaumaturgic role of the statues’ clothes and jewels, I will argue how the practice of dressing sculptures was due to much more than stylistic desires or processional needs and draw attention to the many ways believers engaged with religious art in Early Modern Portugal.

Witches, Female Weather Makers, and Poisoners in the Carolingian Empire

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-211
Author(s):  
Christoph Galle
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
General Situation ◽  
Carolingian Empire ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Witch Hunt

<?page nr="201"?>Abstract The question about the role of women within medieval societies associatively makes one think of witches who allegedly were up to mischief by using poison or all kinds of magic to inflict maliciously harm on other people. But this impression results too much from an uncritical reception of such propagandistic conceptions that arose from the later medieval and early modern witch-hunt ideology. This cliché of medieval witches neither does justice to the general situation nor can it be transferred to the entire Middle Ages, as a representative view into the Carolingian empire of the eighth and ninth centuries shows.

TOLERANSI DAN KERUKUNAN ANTARUMAT BERAGAMA (POLA KOMUNIKASI TOKOH AGAMA DESA ANGGRASMANIS, JENAWI, KARANGANYAR)

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Noval Setiawan ◽  
Sarbini Sarbini
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Communication Patterns ◽  
Qualitative Description ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The People ◽  
Direct Feedback ◽  
The Village

The people who live in Anggrasmanis village, consist of various kinds of religions. There are Islam, Christian, and Hinduism. The tolerance between religious communities in Anggrasmanis village was maintained even though it was often tinged with tension and suspicion. This encourages religious figure to build communication. This study aims to describe how the pattern of communication inter-religious figures in Anggrasmanis village, so attitude of tolerance is born. The type of research used  is a qualitative description method with qualitative approach. Data collection techniques using observation, interviews, and documentation. Researchers’ finding communication patterns of religious figures in Anggrasmanis village are linear communication patterns and circular communication patterns that occur in direct conversation between religious figures and direct feedback. The role of religious figures to building tolerance at Anggrasmanis village is by participating in activities at the village such as religious holidays.

Intertheatricality and Propaganda

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Publicover
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Controversial Nature

This chapter analyses the ways in which the collaborative drama The Travels of the Three English Brothers defends the Sherley brothers’ real-world political endeavours across Europe and Persia through its intertheatrical negotiations. Explaining the political background of those endeavours and their controversial nature, it illustrates how the playwrights liken the Sherleys to the heroes of dramas that had been popular on the early modern stage over the preceding twenty years, in particular Tamburlaine and The Merchant of Venice. It also examines the significance of Francis Beaumont’s specific parody, in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, of an episode in Travels in which the Persian Sophy acts as godfather to the child of Robert Sherley. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of playing companies in shaping dramatic output.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

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