Reclaiming Sacred Spaces

Nobody imagined that a democratic struggle by ordinary Muslim women would hit patriarchy at its core and yield a great step forward towards gender justice. The ‘Haji Ali Case’ not only challenged the patriarchy within the Muslim community but it also created space for an alternative voice which was desperately trying to speak the language of equality, justice, and democracy. This struggle created space for an open debate on women’s rights and religion. A Muslim woman is a world citizen today. She has all the right to lead the change not just for herself or her community but for all humankind. This book captures the struggle to reclaim sacred spaces from patriarchal forces and hopes to inspire other similar movements led by women.

Claiming Sacred Ground Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona Adrian J. Ivakhiv A study of people and politics at two New Age spiritual sites. In this richly textured account, Adrian Ivakhiv focuses on the activities of pilgrim-migrants to Glastonbury, England and Sedona, Arizona. He discusses their efforts to encounter and experience the spirit or energy of the land and to mark out its significance by investing it with sacred meanings. Their endeavors are presented against a broad canvas of cultural and environmental struggles associated with the incorporation of such geographically marginal places into an expanding global cultural economy. Ivakhiv sees these contested and "heterotopic" landscapes as the nexus of a complex web of interestes and longings: from millennial anxieties and nostalgic re-imaginings of history and prehistory; to real-estate power grabs; contending religious visions; and the free play of ideas from science, pseudo-science, and popular culture. Looming over all this is the nonhuman life of these landscapes, an"otherness" that alternately reveals and conceals itself behind a pagenant of beliefs, images, and place-myths. A significant contribution to scholarship on alternative spirituality, sacred space, and the politics of natural landscapes, Claiming Sacred Ground will interest scholars and students of environmental and cultural studies, and the sociology of religious movements and pilgrimage. Non-specialist readers will be stimulated by the cultural, ecological, and spiritual dimensions of extraordinary natural landscapes. Adrian Ivakhiv teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, and is President of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada. April 2001 384 pages, 24 b&w photos, 2 figs., 9 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append. cloth 0-253-33899-9 $37.40 s / £28.50 Contents I DEPARTURES 1 Power and Desire in Earth's Tangled Web 2 Reimagining Earth 3 Orchestrating Sacred Space II Glastonbury 4 Stage, Props, and Players of Avalon 5 Many Glastonburys: Place-Myths and Contested Spaces III SEDONA 6 Red Rocks to Real Estate 7 New Agers, Vortexes, and the Sacred Landscape IV ARRIVALS 8 Practices of Place: Nature and Heterotopia Beyond the New Age

In this 2005 book, leading historians examine sanctity and sacred space in Europe during and after the religious upheavals of the early modern period.

There are many books that explore actual, physical, sacred space and pilgrimage sites. This is a different kind of book. It introduces seven traditional 'sacred spaces' but then leads readers into a deeper reflection on what such 'sacred space' means in our own lives and experience. The various sacred spaces explored are: the Celtic Cross; the infinite knot; hilltops; wells and springs; causeways and bridges; thresholds and burial grounds; and boundaries. In each chapter, the author introduces a 'sacred space' as the main theme and then illustrates this by associating it with a particular stage of life and a particular sacramental experience. The ideas are then brought together by means of a scripture story.

This is a thought-provoking look at Native American stories, cultural institutions, and ways of knowing, and what they can teach us about living sustainably.

Examine an issue of paramount concern to Native American communities—repatriation—as it relates to sacred sites. This topic is explored in detail from both sides of the ongoing debate.