Sacred Interests

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Americans increasingly came into contact with the Islamic world, U.S. diplomatic, cultural, political, and religious beliefs about Islam began to shape their responses to world events. In Sacred Interests, Karine V. Walther excavates the deep history of American Islamophobia, showing how negative perceptions of Islam and Muslims shaped U.S. foreign relations from the Early Republic to the end of World War I. Beginning with the Greek War of Independence in 1821, Walther illuminates reactions to and involvement in the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the efforts to protect Jews from Muslim authorities in Morocco, American colonial policies in the Philippines, and American attempts to aid Christians during the Armenian Genocide. Walther examines the American role in the peace negotiations after World War I, support for the Balfour Declaration, and the establishment of the mandate system in the Middle East. The result is a vital exploration of the crucial role the United States played in the Islamic world during the long nineteenth century--an interaction that shaped a historical legacy that remains with us today.

This book discusses the reality of human being by pointing out some of the very fundamental issues that remain hidden from the eyes of the modern and post-modern western thought. By elaborating Mulla Sadra’s concept of Soul’s origination from the body and its survival through the Spirit, this book explains how the human soul develops stage by stage in a gradual manner from a vegetative body in the womb. By using Mulla Sadra’s principles of causality, this book shows how God and his Angels create man and other species on the Earth without denying Darwin’s evolutionary theory. In this reference, the role of metaphysical worlds in actualizing human knowledge is also discussed. This book also shows how the human life is a journey back towards its origin i.e. towards God and how this journey would continue even after death. In this reference, this book also explains the principles on the basis of which human soul would continue its life in the post-humus world. This book also clarifies the benefits of focusing onto the self and how this focus may lead to the realization of the Eternal Self of God. In this way, it shows how it is not impossible to experience the post-humus conditions even before death. It also specifies what kind of lifestyle may possibly ensure the occurrence of such mystic experiences.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (D. Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2004.

Inspired by the work of eminent scholar Richard Kieckhefer, The Sacred and the Sinister explores the ambiguities that made (and make) medieval religion and magic so difficult to differentiate. The essays in this collection investigate how the holy and unholy were distinguished in medieval Europe, where their characteristics diverged, and the implications of that deviation. In the Middle Ages, the natural world was understood as divinely created and infused with mysterious power. This world was accessible to human knowledge and susceptible to human manipulation through three modes of engagement: religion, magic, and science. How these ways of understanding developed in light of modern notions of rationality is an important element of ongoing scholarly conversation. As Kieckhefer has emphasized, ambiguity and ambivalence characterize medieval understandings of the divine and demonic powers at work in the world. The ten chapters in this volume focus on four main aspects of this assertion: the cult of the saints, contested devotional relationships and practices, unsettled judgments between magic and religion, and inconclusive distinctions between magic and science. Freshly insightful, this study of ambiguity between magic and religion will be of special interest to scholars in the fields of medieval studies, religious studies, European history, and the history of science. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume are Michael D. Bailey, Kristi Woodward Bain, Maeve B. Callan, Elizabeth Casteen, Claire Fanger, Sean L. Field, Anne M. Koenig, Katelyn Mesler, and Sophie Page.

The central theme of the symposium was elaborated upon according to various religions, periods and areas, such as North India (historical) by H. Kulke, A. Wink, J. C. Heesterman and H. T. Bakker; South India (historical) by D. Shulman, B. Stein and G. Berkemer; contemporary India by C.J. Fuller, L.P. van den Bosch and J. P. Parry; Sri Lanka by G. Obeyesekere; the Byzantine Empire by A. N. Palmer; the Moroccan Sultanate by H. Beck, and the European Middle Ages by M. Gosman. This systematic approach focusing on a well-defined theme in a widely differentiated context appears to be fruitful. An often little recognized, though essential, universal aspect of important places of pilgrimage is their embedment in political ramifications. Analysis of religious structures and representations which are concentrated and reified in sacred centres, shows remarkable agreement and linkage with political institutions and ideology through a common symbolism. The contributions to the symposium establish that sacred centres are the places par excellence where political authority is legitimized; they help to articulate these systematic aspects by making them the focus of scholarly discourse starting from different disciplines.