“Citizens of Heaven” versus “The Islamic Peril”

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Stockdale
Keyword(s):  
Theme Park ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Potential Danger ◽  
Holy War ◽  
A Site

In early 2001, the Holy Land Experience (HLE) theme park opened in Orlando, Florida. Before 9/11, Islam was merely a shadowy figure at the HLE; after 9/11, however, the park has promoted a vision of Islam and Muslims that fosters hate among American Protestant visitors. This paper argues that the HLE is a site of extreme potential danger, for it espouses holy war and dissent between American Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

“Citizens of Heaven” versus “The Islamic Peril”

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Stockdale
Keyword(s):  
Theme Park ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Potential Danger ◽  
Holy War ◽  
A Site

In early 2001, the Holy Land Experience (HLE) theme park opened in Orlando, Florida. Before 9/11, Islam was merely a shadowy figure at the HLE; after 9/11, however, the park has promoted a vision of Islam and Muslims that fosters hate among American Protestant visitors. This paper argues that the HLE is a site of extreme potential danger, for it espouses holy war and dissent between American Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

Amami park and island tourism: Sea, land and islandness at a site of simulation

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-99
Author(s):  
Henry Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Tourism ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Theme Park ◽  
Cultural Meaning ◽  
Tourist Industry ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Domestic Tourism ◽  
Amami Islands ◽  
A Site

Amami Park is a nature and culture centre located in the Amami islands in the southwest of Japan. Objects are displayed on one site and marketed for tourists, whether on-island, in the Amami islands or more distant. This article discusses Amami Park in terms of the themes of sea, land and islandness, which emerged as topics for discussion during the research process with regard to how Amami Park represents itself, and the cultural meaning of such presentation and its relevance in the tourist industry. Amami Park offers a range of media through which to showcase the history, nature and culture of the Amami islands, and it offers numerous objects, audiovisual displays and other types of media with much description, representation and celebration of local and archipelagic identity. In this island setting, the article discusses the objects and their presentation, focussing on theme park analysis, cultural tourism and self-representation. Drawing on theoretical ideas pertaining to the notion of “simulation”, as applied to the recontextualization of disparate items in one location, the article shows how this particular nature and culture centre can be viewed as a microcosm of broader social and touristic themes in Japan, particularly with regard to the process of traveling to “other” locations within the domestic tourism industry. The article divides into three main parts that describe, analyze and discuss Amami Park, respectively through an ethnographic and critical lens.

Palestinian Oral Tradtions and the ‘Sanctity’ of Damascus: A Critical Analysis of a Palestinian Seventeenth-Century Manuscript

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-221
Author(s):  
Ghaleb Anabseh ◽  
Nader Masarwah
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
A Site ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
String Of Pearls

This article explores the concept of the ‘Holy Land’ as reflected in a Palestinian seventeenth-century manuscript: A String of Pearls in Praise of al-Sham, by Muhammad Habib, and in light of the considerable output of works on the ‘virtues of the Holy Land’ by Muslim writers in Palestine and Syria. Although these writers composed their works using materials from traditional sources (religious, historical, geographical), the key issue explored here is the use of Palestinian oral and local traditions which were not always consistent with official or orthodox Islamic thought and thus local traditions which remained outside the bounds of official hadith compilations. This study explore the role played by local or oral traditions in highlighting the sanctity of a city or a site in Palestine and Syria.

scholarly journals Catherine of Siena’s crusade letters: Spirituality and political context

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana L. Villegas
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Political Policy ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
City States

AbstractCatherine of Siena has been credited with original views regarding the crusade as political policy and with influencing Gregory XI to carry this out. In this article, I argued that while Catherine of Siena did not succeed in furthering the crusade – nor did she initiate this policy – her crusade correspondence leaves us a legacy that reveals significant aspects of her spirituality. Over 40 letters to ecclesiastical authorities, Kings, Queens, leaders of city states, knights and her own followers reveal a religious intent, although addressing a policy with both religious and political consequences. The latter were important to Catherine because she considered political-cultural context vital for salvation and transformation; she advocated for the crusade because she considered that the crusade pilgrimage and holy war to recover the Holy Land would be critical for the salvation of many. Her epistles further witness to the prophetic, missionary nature of Catherine’s spirituality, and we see how she crafted her own version of crusade spirituality out of the wisdom on transformation learned through her union with God, fused with early Christian martyr spirituality and early crusade spirituality preached in medieval Europe. This thematisation of Catherine’s crusade letters is based on textual analysis of all crusade related letters in the 2002 critical text, on the most complete dating of Catherine’s letters (finished in 2008); and in dialogue with literary and other historical advances, making it an innovative study.Contribution: Catherine of Siena’s crusade letters reveal significant aspects of her spirituality rather than contributions to crusade politics. The letters evidence her prophetic-missionary spirituality and her conviction that socio-political context is significant for a journey of transformation; as well, this analysis details the importance of early Christian martyr spirituality for Catherine’s crusade spirituality.

scholarly journals Marian Movements and Secessionist Warfare in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 35-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Karina Hermkens
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Revolutionary Movements

This article focuses on the enigma of Catholic Marian revolutionary movements during the decade-long conflict on the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea at the end of the twentieth century. These religious movements embody the legacy of a colonial history as well as people’s responses to poorly monitored resource extraction, social and economic displacement, regional factionalism, and years of fighting by Bougainvilleans against the Papua New Guinea Defence Force. At the same time, the movements’ popularity throve on leaders’ reputations for their religious knowledge and their mobilization of people based on religious faith. During the conflict Bougainville came to be seen by many residents as holy land (Me’ekamui). According to Francis Ona’s Marian Mercy Mission and Peter Kira’s Our Lady of Mercy movements, the covenant land of Bougainville had to be safeguarded from Satan, represented by Papua New Guinea and an Australian copper mining company, in the freedom struggle conceived as a Marian holy war.

Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

1997 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 628-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph T. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Special Relationship ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Holy War ◽  
First Crusade ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Religious Devotion

The First Crusade has been described as a ‘church in procession’ and a ‘military monastery on the move’. The progress of the first crusading armies to the Holy Land was indeed accompanied by regular liturgical practices, acts of devotion and intercessory rites. Before each battle and during sieges the crusaders fasted, prayed, celebrated mass and confessed their sins. They went in processions and sang psalms. This wealth of liturgical practices reported by contemporary commentators provided the rhythm to the crusaders' pilgrimage to Jerusalem and marked the sacred character of their undertaking. At the same time, the liturgy was a rallying point for the crusaders' identity: it represented and reinforced the special relationship between the milites Christi and their God, and gave expression to the spirituality and the ethos of the holy warrior. The crusaders' earnest participation in the liturgy of pilgrimage and holy war no doubt contributed to the image, already observed by contemporaries, of the crusade as a vehicle of piety and a means of salvation parallel to the vocation of the monastic life, which was traditionally considered the highest form of religious devotion.

Situating the Holy Land: Juxtapositions and Circular Paths

2020 ◽  
pp. 120-154
Author(s):  
Rachel May Golden
Keyword(s):  
Holy Land ◽  
Sacred Landscape ◽  
Spiritual Senses ◽  
Spiritual Transcendence ◽  
A Site

In endowing the Holy Land with sanctity, the Crusades established it as an object of territorial desire and a site of spiritual transcendence. Cultivating this desire for the Holy Land involved several interrelated Crusade concepts: the power of pilgrimage traditions, perceptions of the Eastern enemy, fear and curiosity about the unknown, and delineations of the position of the Holy Land within a larger globe. These factors converged to redefine Jerusalem within a sacred landscape, where Crusaders sought to walk in the very steps that Christ had impressed in the sacred terrain. Such concepts were explored in Crusader maps, and articulated in Crusade lyric. The rhetoric of Crusade song variously relied upon circular and linear motions, dualistically juxtaposed nearness and distance, sameness and difference, and yearning and attainment. This chapter demonstrates ways in which Crusade songs, such as Ara pot hom conoisser by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, mapped space, articulated geographic beliefs, and explored physical and spiritual senses of movement.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document