Abstract: Almost 1400 years later, the tragic death of Imam Hussain and his male relatives on 10th Muharram in Karbala in 680 AD continues to be an important religious, political and social symbol of justice and resilience. Every year, as 10th Muharram approaches, millions of Shia Muslims around the world frequent shrine cities of Najaf, Karbala, Kazmain, Samarrah and Balad in Iraq to pay their respects to Shia Imams and to commemorate the tragedy of Karbala by participating in numerous mourning rituals.

This paper focuses on the ways in which ziyarat (visitation) to shrines in Iraq entangles the relationship between gender, religion, nationalism and internationalism. How does ziyarat challenge our very understanding of nationalism and internationalism? How is the story of Karbala as an emblem of justice manifested in rituals conducted in shrines of Shia Imams? In what ways do these rituals complicate hegemony and in turn, how does this convolute our understanding of nationalism and internationalism? How does the presence of women in shrines complicate the relationship between gender,
nationalism, internationalism and practiced religion?

These questions will be addressed through ethnographic study of a group of Pakistani Shia women who will embark on ziyarat to Iraq during July 2024. I’ll be travelling with these women from Karachi and will be staying with them in Iraq during their pilgrimage. Through this rich ethnographic experience, I hope to observe how women claim sacred spaces, how they behave in shrines, how they communicate with each other and the rituals they perform. What does this tell us about the ways in which women navigate their nationalist identity as Pakistani women and transcendental identity as Shia women? By employing an ethnographic methodology, this paper challenges our existing assumptions about the religious, social and political aspects of shrines and shows how the three are not as distinct as they are often considered. In turn, this provides an interesting angle to understand the ways in which personal and public experiences of piety are an integral part of the discourse of religion, nationalism and internationalism.

Abstract: The creation the Jewish state of Israel in 1948 triggered an ongoing conflict that over seventy-five years later still has not been resolved. The reason for this is that a Jewish state (as well as a Palestinian state) is based on ethnic nationalism, which gives state control to an ethnic/religious majority and prioritizes its rights over others. Theodor Herzl, who first called for a Jewish state, based his idea of it on a Christian state, under which Jews had been discriminated. The creation of a Jewish state resulted in the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians. Whereas anyone who is ethnically Jewish in diaspora has “the right of return,” Palestinians who have a more recent connection to Palestine cannot. Jewish settlers in the West Bank have the right to vote in Israeli elections while Palestinians there cannot. My position is that there should be no state religions—that there should be freedom of religion yet the disestablishment of religion (i.e., a separation of church from state)—for to do so otherwise, tramples on the rights of ethnic religious minorities. The ideology that drives the subordination of Palestinians is Zionism, which is Jewish nationalism—the belief that there is the necessity for a Jewish state. In this paper, I will address the Israeli New Historians and Palestinian perspectives. I will examine not only the events that led up to the establishment of the State of Israel but the many conflicts between Israelis and Arabs afterwards. By doing so, I want to carve out a position that not only provides a critique of the inherent problems in the creation of a Jewish state but also the downfalls of a two-state solution should that occur.

Abstract: Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in south-central Java with Muslim members of communities called paguyuban (devoted to Sufi-styled recitations and practices honoring village ancestors), this paper explores how members link their Sufism with a narrative of indigeneity as a way of negotiating identity and belonging as Muslims and Indonesian citizens. I argue that this narrative emerged in response to a hierarchy which pious Sunni Muslims have imposed in Indonesia around belonging to the Muslim community and the nation. Pious government officials use a number of measures – requiring citizens to publicly declare a religion on their ID card, mandatory religious education classes, state surveillance, and anti-blasphemy laws – to pressure paguyuban members into conformity with pious practices (e.g., salat prayer, Qur’anic study) derived from Islamic law and seen as definitive of Muslimness. Paguyuban members respond by performing a degree of public conformity to Sunni piety. Privately, however, they push back by articulating a notion of indigenous personhood oriented around the cultivation of Sufi values (e.g., calmness, compassion, love) argued to be more important than Islamic law and known to their ancestors before missionaries brought Islam to Java in its legalistic form. This argument complicates discussions of identity in the anthropological literature on Islam and suggests that anthropologists may need to attend more closely to how marginalized Muslims negotiate identity and belonging at multiple scales, including communally and nationally. Subversive distinctions between public identity and a private sense of personhood may be critical to navigating hierarchies of power and belonging in Muslim societies.

Abstract: In 2014, ISIS took control over large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria. Iraq’s minority communities and especially Christians were specifically targeted by the group leading to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands. Christian displacement by ISIS was read by Western (and particularly Christian) politicians and policymakers as part of a larger concern over the future of Christianity in the Middle Eastand global Christian persecution. During this onslaught, a new generation of Assyrian diaspora organizations was formed in places like Detroit, Chicago, and Washington DC to aid and advocate for kin back in the homeland, as well as unify an ecclesiastically divided diaspora into a movement for indigenous rights. This paper asks: How is indigenous sovereignty in northern Iraq (espoused by transnational Assyrians) shot through secular mediations of ecclesial forms of kinship and contextualized by colonial legacies and imperial presents? In tracing the shadows of secularity in the geopolitics of concern over Middle Eastern Christian suffering, this paper broadly explores how we may be better able to parse a decolonial approach to the intersections of Christianity and indigeneity in the Middle East, that exceeds Western, neo-colonial instrumentalization.

Abstract: This paper examines the bloody collision that occurred in Côte d’Ivoire between two diametrically opposed conceptions of nationhood. For ten years (2000-2010), a civil war pitted supporters of a nation based on the primacy of soil against those who aspired to erect the nation solely on the pedestal of blood. The second group was largely supported by the Ivorian evangelical community. Evangelical preachers and prophets took up the cause, extolling a spiritually inspired nationalism. “Blood” and “faith in Christ” became interchangeable categories. The natives of Côte d’Ivoire were largely equated with God’s chosen ones while “foreigners” were branded as impious and enemies of God. The war of conceptions of nationhood was explicitly transformed into a war between the Kingdom of God’s defenders and the Kingdom of Law’s subjects. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that, in an African context marked by strong religiosity, certain interpretations of the Bible run the risk of being radical and essentialist. As a result, they fuel conflict by legitimizing violent actions carried out by political actors. In a religious space such as Côte d’Ivoire, where evangelical Christianity has the wind in its sails because of its rapid expansion, the positions taken by religious leaders sometimes contribute to stiffening the political lines of certain government officials. This paper also aims to prove that the nationalism defended by Ivorian evangelicals was a response to the radicalism of liberal nationalists who took up arms to defend an open and strictly legal conception of the nation. In Côte d’Ivoire, the war of nations was waged by radicals on two sides: armed legalists and aggressive autochtonists.

Abstract: Relying on court documents, interviews, and public debates, this paper compares the prosecution of “hurtful speech acts” against a religion in the Western Mediterranean, specifically in Tunisia, Morocco, France and Spain. It examines how these particular nation-states, former colonizers and colonies, explain the contemporary identification and punishment (or non-punishment) of acts seen as violating a “national” religion. How are these acts framed as crossing (or not crossing) a “national” line, when the religious traditions themselves are much bigger than any national border? And, if blasphemy is regularly framed as “hurting” some members of the nation, why does this hurt concern the state? From what kinds of injury do citizens across the Western Mediterranean expect the state to protect them? In so doing, this paper destabilizes the link between blasphemy and Islam, both by examining European blasphemy cases against Christianity and by interrogating European conceptions of blasphemy as a right or duty.

Abstract: Can religion generate social capital and promote the development of civil society? Beyond acknowledging the global prevalence of religious civil society organizations (CSOs) in service provision, the vast literature on civil society has not engaged with the role of religion in fostering social capital. Rather, political scientists have focused on debating the outputs of civil society, especially with regards to democratization. In this paper, we examine the impact of religious practice – specifically religious pilgrimages – on the cultivation of associational life and voluntarism in host cities. We argue that religious pilgrimages can promote civil society development through two mechanisms: first, the “localized pilgrimage” mechanism explains how pro-social values associated with the pilgrimage are continuously reinforced in the local population, resulting in the establishment and promotion of CSOs that promote those values. Second, the “organizational capacity” mechanism explains how locals acquire skills from organizing pilgrimage activities that they later utilize in the off-season. We apply this theory to two cases: the Arba’een pilgrimage in Karbala, Iraq and the Kanwar Yatra pilgrimage in Haridwar, India. We draw on various sources of data – including public opinion polling, NGO data, and interviews – to paint a picture of associational life in each of these cities. In order to isolate the impact of the pilgrimage, we then employ a “most similar” case study design to compare each of Karbala and Haridwar to a city that is similar along most measures, but that does not experience pilgrimage activity, Al-Hillah in Iraq and Kanpur in India.

Abstract: In recent years, scholars and cultural commentators have noted how online wellness and fitness forums have served as an entry point for political radicalization, especially among young men. While many scholars of white Christian nationalism focus their attention on online communities or leaders of the Religious Right, this paper argues that white Christian nationalism is nurtured in seemingly benign spaces like the gym. Using the fitness brand CrossFit as a primary example, this paper shows how the company’s goal of “forging elite fitness” becomes enmeshed with the political project of “the nation.” CrossFit, a functional fitness regimen and global brand, is known for its hardcore workouts and its zealous consumer base. As a company and culture, it has also become known for its patriotism and militarism, offering fitness training for military personnel and honoring deceased combatants in “Hero Workouts.” These commitments have made CrossFit a popular fitness methodology and locus of community for many evangelical Christians who integrate their Christian faith and conservative values with their exercise routine. By examining how Christian nationalism circulates in CrossFit gyms, this paper joins theorists of the body who analyze the correlation between individual treatments of the body as a reflection of the broader body politic to learn about how Christian nationalism, as an ideology, becomes embodied.

Abstract: In the discipline of biblical studies the majority of research tends to focus on understanding the ancient past and the cultural milieu from which biblical religious texts were produced. As of the past few decades attention has expanded to evaluating the afterlives of the Bible and its political, cultural, and religious usage throughout history. This type of research is called reception history: how communities receive and deploy the Bible. Because the Bible is a powerful rhetorical repertoire that performs political, educational, and religious functions both in times of war and in times of relative peace it is important to examine the ways in which the Bible also serves nationalistic functions. In this paper I explore the ways in which biblical texts are being used in the ongoing crisis in I/P and how different groups address the complexities of narratives of violence in religious texts.