Islam and the cognitive study of colonialism: The case of religious and educational reform at Egypt’s al-Azhar

This article argues that the emerging Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) provides a valuable new perspective on colonialism. CSR argues that humans are innately inclined towards certain types of religious belief (e.g., belief in spirit beings, belief in immortal souls) and certain types of non-utilitarian morality (e.g., belief in an obligation to care for kin, belief in an obligation to avoid ‘disgusting’ substances or behaviours). These innate inclinations underlie many religious and cultural traditions transformed by colonialism, including Islam. The article suggests that colonial power operates not only by suppressing traditional non-Western institutions but also by suppressing the natural inclinations underlying non-Western traditions. This claim is developed through a study of colonial efforts to transform Egypt’s al-Azhar, the world’s most influential institution of Islamic learning and scholarship. These efforts made al-Azhar into the centre of a global Islamic reform movement, which sought to integrate Islam with a colonial scientific-utilitarian worldview.

Rethinking Religious Cognition and Myth: A New Perspective on how Religions Balance Intuitiveness and Interest-Provokingness/Memorability

In his influential work on the cognitive science of religion (CSR), Pascal Boyer argues that the spread of religious ideas involves a tradeoff between their “intuitiveness” and their interest-provokingness/memorability (i.e.,their capacity to provoke interest and be remembered). For Boyer, religious ideas are “intuitive” insofar as they are easy to understand and learn. However, other CSR studies suggest that religious ideas are “intuitive” insofar as they are easy to believe. In analyzing the spread of religious ideas, no study has considered the tradeoff between interest-provokingness/memorability and intuitiveness in the sense of being easy to believe. The present article takes up this task by considering several religious concepts that are intuitively easy to believe (e.g., immortal souls, spirit beings, a Creator God, a just world). It is argued that, in typical religions, such concepts are incorporated into myths. Through incorporation, these concepts lose some of their intuitive believability but gain interest-provokingness/memorability.

Colonial Consecrations, Violent Reclamations, and Contested Spaces in the Spanish Americas

During Spanish colonization in the Americas, Catholic evangelizers often purposefully consecrated spaces that were already sacred to Indigenous Americans. In many regions, however, Indigenous deities, spirits, ancestors, and their devotees, rebelled. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 killed and evicted Spaniards while claiming Christian constructions and objects for native usage. Yet the end result of this revolt was not just the re-consecration of sacred spaces to once again welcome Indigenous spirit beings. Rather, in its wake, the line between the pure and the contaminated cannot be neatly drawn; indeed, such sharp distinctions make little sense within Indigenous epistemologies wherein binary opposition is rarely found. Comparative materials from Mesoamerica and the Andes help complicate the commonplace narrative of conquest and resistance.

Bird Stories from Latin America: Lessons on Change and Adaptation

When people hear bird sounds, they understand them on various levels that are interpreted according to cultural context. Among Indigenous cultures of Latin America, avian voices are understood in relation to group identity, kinship affiliation, and personal experience, such as dreams and vision quests. Birds are recognized as social actors with their own voices that express intentions, desires, needs, and responsibilities. Certain birds may impart messages to specific people, and stories of these personal interactions represent both traditional values as well as individual explanations for what the bird communicated. These experiences are incorporated into the dynamic relationships people have with birds, the ancestors, the landscape, and spirit beings, and assist in addressing both cultural and climatic changes. This essay presents stories from Mexico, Costa Rica, and Peru, and shows how individuals interpret bird communications according to cultural values that relate to their personal situation. These avian messages gain new meaning and urgency during periods of dramatic change, like the current climate crisis. As people seek creative responses to survive, relationships with birds provide resiliency.

Fear and Fortune

Mongolia over the last decade has seen a substantial and ongoing gold rush. The wide-spread mining of gold looks at first glance to be a blessing for a desperately poor and largely pastoralist country. Volatility and uncertainty as well as political and economic turmoil led many people to join the hopeful search for gold. This activity poses an intense moral problem; in the “land of dust,” disturbing the ground and extracting the precious metal is widely believed to have calamitous consequences. With gold retaining strong ties to the landscape and its many spirit beings, the fortune of the precious metal is inseparable from the fears that surround mining. This book considers the results of several years of fieldwork in Mongolia, time spent with the “ninjas,” as the miners are known locally, as well as the people who disapprove of their illegal activities and warn of the retribution that the land and its inhabitants may suffer as a result. As such, the book is a well-structured read on the Mongolian gold rush and the spirit forces that underpin it. It provides a uniquely up-close and personal view onto gold mining and its international circuitry, based on a sensitive study of Mongolian sociality, miners, religious knowledge and practice, and ways of envisioning and experiencing what counts as “value” in the Mongolian gold rush today.

Angered Spirits

This chapter explores how people involved in gold mining rely on more than just knowledge of local geology and mining technologies in their search for gold. They also enter into relationships with new and dangerous spirit beings in order to attract and harness fortune (hishig). However, as they do this, ninjas are said to also come into contact with the misfortune of gold, which can be redirected onto others through ritual practices. With illnesses readily blamed on ninjas, they are subject to much suspicion and enmity. Examining local understandings of a transforming landscape, the chapter shows how the desire for subterranean wealth demands recognition of powerful spirit worlds.