Guests of God : Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World

Guests of God : Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World

Author: Robert R. Bianchi Formerly Associate Professor of Political Science University of Chicago

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2004-09-09

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0198038194

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Each year, more than two million pilgrims from over 100 countries converge on the holy city of Mecca to reenact the ritual dramas that Muslims have been performing for centuries. Making the hajj is one of the most important duties in the life of a Muslim. The pilgrimage-and its impact on international politics-is enormous and growing every year, yet Westerners know virtually nothing about it. What is the hajj and what does it mean? Who are the hajjis? What do they do and say in Mecca and how do they interpret their experiences? Who runs the hajj and what are their political objectives? How does the hajj encourage international cooperation among Muslims and can it also promote harmony between Islam and the West? In Guests of God, Robert R. Bianchi seeks to answer these and many other questions. While it is first and foremost a religious festival, he shows, the hajj is also very much a political event. The Muslim world's leading multinational organization, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has established the first international regime explicitly devoted to pilgrimage. Every large Muslim nation has developed a comprehensive hajj policy and a powerful bureaucracy to enforce it. Yet, Bianchi argues, no authority- secular or religious, national or international-can really control the hajj. Pilgrims believe that they are entitled to travel freely to Mecca as "Guests of God"-not as guests of any nation or organization that might wish to restrict or profit from their efforts to fulfill a fundamental religious obligation. Drawing on his personal experience as a pilgrim and a wealth of data gathered over the course of ten years of research, Bianchi has produced a fascinating look at the hajj filled with personal, candid stories from political and religious leaders and hajjis from all walks of life. A wide-ranging study of Islam, politics, and power, Guests of God is the most complete picture of the hajj available anywhere.


The Hajj

The Hajj

Author: Eric Tagliacozzo

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 110703051X

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Scholars from a range of fields tell the story of the Hajj and explain its significance as one of the key events in the Muslim religious calendar. This volume pays attention to the diverse aspects of the Hajj, as lived every year by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide.


Network Governance of Global Religions

Network Governance of Global Religions

Author: Michel S. Laguerre

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-03-28

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1136775390

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This study seeks to explain three models of network governance embedded in digital practices that the mainstream monotheistic religions—Judaism, Catholic Christianity, and Islam—have used to lead and manage the worldwide distribution of their local nodes, exploring the connection between network governance and its digital embeddedness and showing how the latter enhances the performance of the former.


World History Encyclopedia [21 volumes]

World History Encyclopedia [21 volumes]

Author: Alfred J. Andrea Ph.D.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-03-23

Total Pages: 8025

ISBN-13: 1851099301

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An unprecedented undertaking by academics reflecting an extraordinary vision of world history, this landmark multivolume encyclopedia focuses on specific themes of human development across cultures era by era, providing the most in-depth, expansive presentation available of the development of humanity from a global perspective. Well-known and widely respected historians worked together to create and guide the project in order to offer the most up-to-date visions available. A monumental undertaking. A stunning academic achievement. ABC-CLIO's World History Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive work to take a large-scale thematic look at the human species worldwide. Comprised of 21 volumes covering 9 eras, an introductory volume, and an index, it charts the extraordinary journey of humankind, revealing crucial connections among civilizations in different regions through the ages. Within each era, the encyclopedia highlights pivotal interactions and exchanges among cultures within eight broad thematic categories: population and environment, society and culture, migration and travel, politics and statecraft, economics and trade, conflict and cooperation, thought and religion, science and technology. Aligned to national history standards and packed with images, primary resources, current citations, and extensive teaching and learning support, the World History Encyclopedia gives students, educators, researchers, and interested general readers a means of navigating the broad sweep of history unlike any ever published.


The Great Journeys in History

The Great Journeys in History

Author: Robin Hanbury-Tenison

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 0500775680

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A lively collection of the adventurous stories of the greatest explorers in history. Ferdinand Magellan, Genghis Khan, Thor Heyerdahl, Amelia Earhart, and Neil Armstrong: these are some of the greatest travelers of all time. This book chronicles their stories and many more, describing epic voyages—from early trips through the great port city of Alexandria to the latest journeys into space. In antiquity, we follow Alexander the Great to the Indus and Hannibal across the Alps; in medieval times, we trek beside Genghis Khan and Ibn Battuta. The Renaissance eventually led to Columbus visiting the Americas and to the circumnavigation of the world. In the following centuries, global maps are filled in by Abel Tasman, Vitus Bering, and James Cook. Journeys specifically made for scientific discoveries, most famously by Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin, begin. In modern times, the ends of the earth were reached—including both poles and the world’s highest mountain. Editor Robin Hanbury-Tenison leads an incredible team of fifty-two contributors, including Robert Ballard and Ranulph Fiennes, who relate firsthand experiences with the journeys and places they describe. The Great Journeys in History chronicles the stories of bold, early travelers who explored the unexplored and who set out into the unknown, bringing alive the romance and thrill of adventure.


Muslim Travellers

Muslim Travellers

Author: Dale F. Eickelman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 113611260X

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Pilgrimage, travel for learning, visits to shrines, exile, and labour migration shape the religious imagination and in turn are shaped by it. Some travel, such as pilgrimage, explicitly intended for religious purposes, has equally important economic and political consequences. Other travel, not primarily motivated by religious concerns and thus neglected by many scholars, nonetheless profoundly influences religious symbols, metaphors, practices and senses of community. These studies, encompassing Muslim societies from Malaysia to West Africa, also suggest how encounters with Muslim `others' have been as important in shaping community self-definition as encounters with European 'others'. This volume brings together historians, social scientists and jurists concerned with pilgrimage, scholarly travel and migration in both medieval and contemporary Muslim societies and explores basic issues. Can 'Muslim travel' be regarded as a distinct form of social action? What role does religious doctrine play in motivating travel and how do doctrinal interpretations differ across time and place? What are the strengths and limitations of various approaches to understanding the transnational and local significance of pilgrimage, migration and other forms of travel? An image of Muslim tradition and change in local communities in relation to travel emerges, which competes with the myth of the universality of the Islamic community.


Mahdish Faith & Sudanic Traditio

Mahdish Faith & Sudanic Traditio

Author: Kapteijns

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-05

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1136140107

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First published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Saviours and Survivors

Saviours and Survivors

Author: Mahmood Mamdani

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1789604478

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Saviours and Survivors is the first account of the Darfur crisis to consider recent events within the broad context of Sudan's history, and to examine the efficacy of the world's response to the ongoing violence. Illuminating the deeply rooted causes of the current conflict, Mamdani works from its colonial and Cold War origins to the war's intensification from the 1990s to the present day. Examining how the conflict has drawn in national, regional, and global forces, Mamdani deconstructs the powerful Western lobby's persistent calls for a military response dressed up as "humanitarian intervention". Incisive and authoritative, Saviours and Survivors will radically alter our understanding of the crisis in Darfur.


From the Mountains to the Plains

From the Mountains to the Plains

Author: Leif O. Manger

Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9789171063366

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Through detailed analysis of local processes of interaction between Nuba and Arabic groups it gives new light to concepts such as Islamization and Arabization. The local processes affecting the economic and cultural survival of the Lafofa are presented in the context of the wider political history of the Nuba Mountains, and the position of the Nuba in the Sudanese society.