Viagens na Minha Terra. Esplorazioni iberiche della prossimità (cibo e thanaturismo)

The chapter takes as starting point a famous book by Almeida Garrett, Viagens na Minha Terra (1846), one of the first books to explore a nearby reality in the Iberian area, a mixed genre work, fundamental in the construction of the Portuguese national identity through the author’s journey to Portugal. It is an internalised landscape from which many historical or fantastic episodes arise related to themes that the author expresses: the violence of war, the joke of the gothic novel, anti-religious criticism about the parasitism of the friars. The purpose of this article is to reflect on several examples of proximity travel written by Iberian authors: José Pla, Viaje en autobús (1942), Camilo José Cela, Viaje a la Alcarria (1946) and José Saramago, Viagem a Portugal (1981). These travel books take advantage of the travelogue feature: to travel, but also to express opinions, analysis and criticisms with the eyes of the essayist, so that the result is much more than a simple guide, with the advantage that travellers are profound connoisseurs of the reality they visit.

Telaah Kritis terhadap Fungsionalitas Gereja Toraja Berdasarkan Kritik Sosio-Religi Karl Marx

This study aims to critique and evaluate the church's functionality, namely the church in its social function. The Toraja Church is still not here to carry out its real social function. As a result, various kinds of social injustice that are produced from culture settle right within the sphere of the church. The church exists only as a producer of the imagination: directing the imagination, without fixing problems on earth. This study uses a qualitative method with a literature observation approach. As a basis, the theory used in this research is Karl Marx's socio-religious criticism theory. The essence of this criticism is not rejection of religion, but rejection of religious practices which merely produce illusions, so as not to solve the problems experienced by society, especially Christians, as a result, society becomes alienated. The Toraja Church is required not to solve problems through imagined solutions, but instead to bring concrete liberating solutions in society. The church should be a real medicine where there is a sick soul due to the chaos of the world. With the revival of church functionality, the church has become a strong fortress for the community towards peace.

The Idea of Islamic Media: The Qur'an and the Decolonization of Mass Communication

The emergence of Islamic television in the Arab Middle East is usually explained as part of a Saudi media empire fueled by neoliberal petro-dollars. This article, by contrast, takes seriously the role ideas played alongside changing political economies in the origins of the world’s first Islamic television channel, Iqraa. Focusing on the intellectual and institutional career of “Islamic media” (al-i’lām al-Islāmī) as a category from the late sixties onwards in Egypt, I argue that Islamic television is part of a broader decolonization struggle involving the modern discipline of mass communication. Pioneering Arab communication scholars mounted a quest for epistemic emancipation in which the question of how to mediate Islam became inextricable from the question of what made media Islamic. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, I show how the idea of Islamic media involved a radical reconceptualization of the Qur'an as mass communication from God and of Islam as a mediatic religion. This positing of an intimate affinity between Islam and media provoked secular skepticism and religious criticism that continue to this day. I conclude by reflecting on how the intellectual history of Islamic media challenges dominant framings of epistemological decolonization as a question of interrogating oppressive universalisms in favor of liberatory pluralisms.

Backlash

This chapter explores the response of Saudi religious orthodoxy to the challenge of religious criticism and the ways in which it has sought to mobilize society against such a phenomenon and called on the state to repress various actors. It demonstrates through different historical cases in different places, how religious orthodoxy in general has used takfir as both a means to threaten, ostracize even eliminate those who threaten its authority and also as a means to reassert its authority vis-à-vis the state. It presents orthodoxy and heresy as political phenomena shaped by authority rather than by theological ideas and analyzes the methods of control employed by state and informal religious institutions and their underlying sociopolitical motivations. The chapter also discusses the ways social media has empowered religious orthodoxy, the reasons they are able to mobilize social support, and the state’s response to that power. Finally, it points to some of the consequences of that response on stifling public discussions on religion.

Ambivalent Religiosity

This chapter examines the Saudi religious landscape, interrogating the widespread assumption that Saudi society and state are religious. It points to the main religious institutions of the country showing that while the authority they wield on the political and social landscape is much less than is widely thought to be. The chapter validates that Islam is important as a spiritual value, a source of legitimacy and an identity for both the Saudi state and Saudi society, but it also highlights the internal contradictions that have formed into an ambivalence of religiosity in Saudi society where sin is both rejected and accepted, and religion is both revered but also in some form neglected. The chapter demonstrates that those contradictions have created spaces for religious criticism, and that understanding the phenomenon of ambivalence of religiosity allows observers of Saudi Arabia to normalize religious criticism, instead of the widespread assumption that it is an anomaly.

Freedom of Expression, Secularism and Defamation of Religion: The Case of Charlie Hebdo

I argue that under normal circumstances a state that is liberal and secular should not use its legal apparatus to suppress the publication of cartoons like those that triggered the deadly terrorist attack on the premises of Charlie Hebdo in 2015, if it is determined to abide by its core values. These values, which include religious neutrality, religious freedom, and unhindered freedom of criticism, imply that individual citizens are prima facie legally free to express their disapproval of particular religions or religious faith in general, through any non-violent means they consider appropriate, including parody and ridicule. This idea is open to various objections. Those focusing on the protection of religion as such can be easily dismissed, but the charge that defamation of religion causes offence to believers has to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, I defend the view that we need something stronger than taking offense to justifiably ban harsh religious criticism. In particular, I argue that, if the above sort of criticism prevents its recipients from exercising their basic rights or it incites third parties to engage in criminal activities against the above individuals, it should be subject to legal sanctions. However, this is not the case with the cartoons that appeared in Charlie Hebdo, since, as far as I can tell, no basic rights of French Muslims were violated, and no violent actions were committed against them as a result of their publication.

The Coptic Theme

This chapter explores literary engagements with Coptic Christianity in works by Baha’ Tahir, Idwar al-Kharrat, Salwa Bakr and Yusuf Zaydan. It explores Baha’ Tahir’s Khalati Safiyya wa’l-Dayr (1991) as a complex allegory of religious tolerance and reads Idwar al-Kharrat’s Turabuha Zaʿfaran (1986) as an example of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor discourse whilst paying attention to Christian scriptural reference and themes of religious tolerance and Coptic identity. It then examines how Salwa Bakr’s Al-Bashmuri (1998) and Yusuf Zaydan’s ‘Azazil (2008) rewrite history from a Coptic perspective in order to redress the historical marginalisation of Egypt’s Christians and to destabilise certain myths of history and nation. Religious tolerance, religious violence and religious criticism as represented in these works are also examined.