scholarly journals Religious Authority and Political Power in Myanmar

1995 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 320-316
Author(s):  
Koji HIRAKI
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Religious Authority

scholarly journals The Mountain as Mandala: Kūkai’s Founding of Mt. Kōya

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Bushelle
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Social World ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Consideration ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Heian Court

This article considers the sociocultural significance of Kūkai’s understanding of Mt. Kōya as a mandala. Locating the context for his formulation of this understanding in his efforts to found Mt. Kōya in the mid-Kōnin era (809–823), it seeks to elucidate its disclosive function. The interpretation is put forward that Kūkai’s mandalic understanding of the mountains disclosed the possibility of a disembedded form of Buddhist life, one in which the human agent is understood to exist outside the social world of the Heian court and the divine cosmos on which it was believed to be grounded. Particular attention is paid to the sociopolitical effects of this disclosure, suggesting specifically that it contributed to the differentiation of religious authority from political power in Japan. To elucidate this process, Kūkai’s founding of Mt. Kōya is situated in a genealogy of monks who founded mountain temples that operated relatively autonomously vis-à-vis the state. Kūkai’s erstwhile collaborator, Saichō, is given special consideration.

Secular Power and Religious Authority in Muslim Society: the Case of Songhay

1996 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hunwick
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The One ◽  
Secular Power ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between political power and religious authority has been a delicate one in Muslim societies. On the one hand, governments may attempt to silence religious authorities; on the other, they may themselves succumb to revolutions in the name of religion. More often governments have attempted to co-opt religious authorities as allies in exercising control or have worked directly in a power-sharing arrangement with them. In Songhay, as in several other states of pre-colonial Sudanic Africa, a more subtle balance was achieved between the ruling estate and the diverse body of scholars, mystics and holymen who made up the religious estate. The askiyas of sixteenth-century Songhay, while exercising full political power, saw it in their interest to maintain harmonious relations with these men of religion. Gifts in cash and kind, including slaves, grants of land and privilege, especially exemption from taxation, as well as recognition of rights of intercession and sanctuary, ensured their moral support and spiritual services and, importantly, protected rulers from their curse. Such a symbiosis was important for the stability of a large and ethnically diverse empire like Songhay, especially as regards its conquered western reaches, which were ethnically non-Songhay and had a strong Islamic cultural tradition. This delicate balance was upset by the Sacdian conquest of Songhay in 1591. Despite Moroccan assertions of Islamic legitimacy, religious authorities in Timbuktu were unsupportive, and harsh measures against them dealt a lasting blow to the equilibrium which had prevailed under the askiyas.

Political Power, Religious Authority, and the Caliphate in Eighteenth-Century Indian Islamic Thought

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-340
Author(s):  
MUHAMMAD QASIM ZAMAN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Moral Force ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Robust Recognition ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractThis article examines how Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (d. 1762), one of the most prominent scholars of eighteenth-century India whose thought has continued to be influential in many Muslim circles to the present day, conceptualized the interplay of political power and religious authority. Though several of Wali Allah's numerous writings have received considerable scholarly attention, this aspect of his political and religious thought has, oddly, been much neglected. A close reading of Wali Allah's writings reveals him to be keenly interested not just in the immediately relevant issues of the chronic political instability afflicting his age but also in the broader, theoretical, questions of how political power undergirds the moral force of religious norms and institutions. It is his unusually blunt but robust recognition that power is part of what enables a religious tradition to evolve and change that this article explores. That recognition—buried in writings that purport to be about the merits of Islam's first caliphs—has other important implications, too, notably for an understanding of the broad political context in which the sacred law itself undergoes change.

Prayer, Mosque, and Pilgrimage: Mapping Shī'ī Sectarian Identity in 2nd/8th Century Kūfa

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Najam Haider
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Geographical Space ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Sectarian Identity

AbstractI propose a narrative for the emergence of sectarian consciousness rooted in distinctive ritual practice and geographical space. This differs from recent studies of early Imāmī Shī'ism which tend to focus on historical struggles for political power or theological disputes about religious authority (i.e., the imāmate). I conclude that an observable proto-Imāmī identity began to crystallize in early 2nd/8th century Kūfa. In an urban environment characterized by a growing correlation between communal identity and ritual practice, the Imāmīs carved out distinctive sacred spaces in Kūfa, frequenting a set of revered mosques and avoiding others associated with hostile elements. Over time, Imāmīs increasingly emphasized smaller pilgrimages (ziyārāt) to shrines and other locations of historical and religious significance (e.g., 'Alī's shrine and al-Husayn's grave in Karbalā'). By the early 5th/11th century, participation in large processions to holy sites constituted a clear public declaration of communal loyalty.

Militancy, Monarchy and the Struggle to Desacralise Kingship in Arabia

2017 ◽  
pp. 203-218
Author(s):  
Ahmed Dailami
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Economic Capacity

Thirty years of scholarship on Saudi Arabia has assumed a fused relationship between religious and political authority at the helm of a petro-state. This chapter questions the fundamental theoretical assumptions about that relationship both historically and in the contemporary era. By examining the tensions between religious violence, the state’s political authority, and the liberal solutions that have emerged to resolve them, the chapter both draws out the ideological lineage of Saudi reformism for the post-Islamist era, while suggesting new ways to conceptualize political power as distinct from religious authority or economic capacity. In the process, the chapter takes stock of Saudi Arabia’s puritan tradition as its monarchy leads the regional drive against Political Islamism.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Frazer
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Economic Exchanges

This chapter introduces the concepts and problems of political conduct, political power, statecraft, and resistance that Shakespeare treats in his dramas, discussing how they are put into relationship with other forms and kinds of conduct and power: military distinction, intimate and interpersonal connections, religious authority, economic exchanges and circulations. Diverse meanings of ‘politic’ and associated terms—in particular the question of the extent to which political conduct must be open, and the extent to which it is associated with occult or tricky strategy and secrecy—are also dramatized by Shakespeare. The book’s method—which consists of readings of Shakespeare’s dramas in a way that highlights how political power structures plots, and is articulated in texts—is set out, including discussion of the political theory context for Shakespeare’s dramatic art, and its continuing relevance in political thought.

Theology from the Margins: Sīdī Riḍwān al-Januwī and his Community of Outsiders

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 581-612
Author(s):  
Manuela Ceballos
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Jewish Refugee

AbstractThis article will examine how Tuḥfat al-ikhwān wa-mawāhib al-imtinān fī manāqib Sīdī Riḍwān ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Januwī, the biography of the Moroccan Sufi Sīdī Riḍwān al-Januwī (d. 1583), constructs, through the exemplary figure of Sīdī Riḍwān, a theological model where marginality becomes a vehicle for religious authority. Sīdī Riḍwān, unlike other Moroccan Sufis of the period whose claim to legitimacy was partly based on their status as descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad, was the son of a Genoese convert to Islam and a Jewish refugee from Iberia. Perhaps due to his origins, he took up the cause of the poor and the excluded and advocated on their behalf. Biographical dictionaries frequently remark upon Sīdī Riḍwān’s extreme scrupulousness and aversion to praise and political power. Furthermore, he demanded respect for religious minorities, all the while advocating for a strong defense against Portuguese invasion. Through the hagiography, the sheikh emerges as a religious figure whose power and spiritual virtue, paradoxically perhaps, rest in his embrace of marginality—his own and that of others.

scholarly journals Le mal subi, le mal rendu. Une lecture anthropologique des pratiques de lamentations et de malédictions dans le shiʿisme populaire iranien

Oriens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 370-397
Author(s):  
Sepideh Parsapajouh
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Third ◽  
First Category ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Function ◽  
Second Category ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Ritual Practices

Résumé Dans le shiʿisme duodécimain iranien, deux catégories de traditions populaires (comprenant rituels, pratiques et croyances) ont pris forme au cours du temps autour de la question du mal, précisément des souffrances et de la mort subies par les personnes de la famille du Prophète (ahl al-bayt). La première catégorie comprend les expressions poétiques élégiaques (marṯīya) accompagnées de pratiques reflétant la passion et la compassion pour les victimes de la mort injuste, à commencer par le troisième imam Ḥusayn. La seconde catégorie comprend de violentes expressions satiriques de malédiction adressées aux auteurs de ce mal. Cette tradition mobilise aussi la récitation de prières et de formules dévotionnelles tirées du corpus scripturaire sacré, ainsi qu’un ensemble de pratiques particulières appelées ʿUmar-košī (« le meurtre de ʿUmar »). Cet article propose d’analyser la formation et la fonction de ces deux traditions, ainsi que l’évolution de leur forme et de leur signification dans le contexte social du shiʿisme iranien contemporain. Il montrera que ces deux traditions, tout en étant cohérentes avec le double principe shiʿite de tawallāʾ (loyauté et amour pour les imams) et tabarrāʾ (dissociation et haine à l’égard de leurs adversaires), reflètent clairement l’autonomie des croyants vis-à-vis du pouvoir politique comme de l’autorité religieuse institutionnelle. In Iranian Twelver Shiʿism, two categories of popular traditions (including rituals, practices and beliefs) have taken shape over time around the issue of evil, namely the harm and death suffered by the holy figures of the house of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt). The first category includes elegiac poetic expressions (marṯīya), accompanied by ritual practices reflecting passion and compassion for the victims of unjust death – notably the third imam, Ḥusayn. The second category includes violent and satirical expressions of maledictions, addressed to the authors of this evil. This tradition also involves the recitation of prayers and devotional formulas borrowed from the sacred scriptural corpus as well as particular practices called ʿUmar-košī (the murder of ʿUmar). This article offers an analysis of the formation and function of these two traditions, as well as the development of their form and meaning in the social context of contemporary Iranian Shiʿism. It shows that, by being in line with the double Shiʿi principle of tawallāʾ (loyalty and love towards the Imams) and tabarrāʾ (dissociation and hatred towards the enemies of the Imams), these two traditions clearly reflect the autonomy of the believers vis-à-vis both political power and institutional religious authority.

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