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2014, Syrian Studies Association Bulletin
“Carnivalesque” is perhaps the best, if not the only way to describe what was going on at the Bab al-Saghir Cemetery that hot summer afternoon in 2008. In front of the graves of the Prophet’s wives, Shi‘i pilgrims could buy Viagra, sex-enhancement creams, and massage oils. Sexual mores were normally strictly guarded in Syria and medicines were usually available only at pharmacies. Yet, there in one of the most historically and religiously significant cemeteries in Damascus, makeshift vendors sold an array of sex-related items. In order to analyze this phenomenon, this article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque.” First, it provides a short background of Twelver Shi‘ism in Syria and explains how Shi‘i religious tourism encouraged the development of black markets. Then, it examines how Shi‘i pilgrimage, which occurred all year around, but peaked during Muharram, fostered an attitude that liberated Shi‘is from prevalent social norms and emphasized “grotesque” imagery and practices, including blood, death, and sex. In short, it follows Michael Taussig’s call for anthropologists to attend to the transgressive aspects of religious ritual.
This chapter examines how the Arab Spring was gradually sectarianized, leading to the emergence of much more rigid and puritanical sect-based identities and inter-communal conflicts across the Middle East and extending even further outside of the region and across the Muslim-majority world. Using the social movement theory concept of ‘framing,’ it considers how the various political and armed actors involved in the Syrian civil war and the conflict in Iraq, including regional actors such as the Iranian government, Hizbullah, Sunni and Salafi actors in the Arab Gulf states, and Sunni rebel and other militant jihadi organizations such as Jabhat al-Nusra/Jabhat Fath al-Sham, Islamic State, Jaysh al-Islam, and Ahrar al-Sham, have drawn on competing historical narratives and memory in combination with contemporary events to produce a thoroughly modern but also selectively ‘historicised’ social mobilization narrative meant to encourage activism from their target audiences. The ways in which clashing historical memory and narratives are deployed in regional conflicts, which constitutes a form of re-fighting the past in the present, are analyzed. Specific historical references, such as the invocation of Shi‘i legendary heroes of Karbala such as Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas, which are today deployed as rhetorical weapons in geopolitical contests over power and political dominance, are also considered in detail. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/jihadism-transformed-9780190650292?cc=us&lang=en&#
Studia Islamica 108
Abdülhamid and the ʿAlids: Ottoman patronage of “Shi’i” shrines in the Cemetery of Bāb al-Ṣaghīr in Damascus2013 •
Journal of Shi'ah Islamic Studies
Beyond the Karbala Paradigm: Rethinking Revolution and Redemption in Twelver Shi‘a Mourning Rituals2013 •
In the mid-90s, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and the Iranian Ayatollah Khamene’i both banned bloody forms of self-flagellation such as tatbir (cutting the forehead with a sword), calling them backward and un-Islamic. They argued that Shi‘a Muslims ought to imitate Husayn by actively fighting against oppressors rather than passively mourning Husayn’s martyrdom. This prohibition has not been unanimously applied in all Muslim countries, including Syria, where such practices persisted until the Arab Spring (when virtually all Shi‘a Muslims left the shrine-town where these practices were performed). By closely reading the linguistic, conceptual, and juridical discourses that circulated in Syria in order to justify this position, the paper shows that the performers of tatbir conceived of these rituals in revolutionary, rather than reactionary, terms. By examining the performance and reception of flagellation processions in terms of differing modalities of affect, the paper opens up spaces for rethinking ‘revolution’ and ‘redemption’ in contemporary Twelver Shi‘ism.
Journal of Comparative Studies of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East
Illustrating an Islamic Childhood in Syria: Pious Subjects and Religious Authority in Twelver Shi'i Children’s Books2012 •
Szanto’s study examines a collection of Twelver Shi’i children’s books from the Syrian shrine-town of Sayyida Zaynab. As there are few Twelver Shi’is and Shi’i publishers in Syria, the Shi’i children’s books are imported from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. As a result, they reflect both local and regional conceptions and concerns. By drawing on the theoretical models offered by Judith Butler and Saba Mahmood, this article analyzes the processes of pious subject cultivation as well as the construction of religious authority through illustrated children’s books. It demonstrates how the nurturing of Shi’i subjects occurs in stages that emphasize affect, openness to authoritative others, and the acquisition and habituation of virtues. Within this general framework, there also exist differences in opinion with respect to precisely what kind of authorities pious Shi’is should relate to, emulate, and follow.
in Politics of Worship in the Contemporary Middle East: Sainthood in Fragile States, edited by Andreas Bandak and Mikkel Bille (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 33-52.
Contesting Fragile Saintly Traditions: Miraculous Healing among Twelver Shi‘is in Contemporary Syria2013 •
In Syria, there are two dominant scholarly opinions on ritual self-flagellation, which rest on different understandings of health and healing, and which form the topic of the first part of this chapter. The second examines miracle stories and ritual practices, which are both symbolic and productive of healing and sustain the legitimacy of the shrine of Sayyida Zaynab. The chapter looks at how Twelver Shi'is in Syria prior to the Arab Spring responded to the ambiguities surrounding the female Shi'is saint Sayyida Zaynab. Proponents of self-flagellation draw on 'traditional' medicine and argue that self-flagellation derives from cupping and constitutes a miraculous healing practice. Donating blood focuses on the community-not on individual devotees and the question of sainthood. The transactional aspect of the relationship between saints and Shi'is is highlighted in the ritual of nidhr (making religious vows) and in the sponsorship of majalis 'aza'.
International Journal of Middle East Studies
Sayyida Zaynab in the State of Exception: Shiʿi Sainthood as “Qualified Life" in Contemporary Syria2012 •
According to Giorgio Agamben, a “state of exception” is established by the sovereign's decision to suspend the law, and the archetypical state of exception is the Nazi concentration camp. At the same time, Agamben notes that boundaries have become blurred since then, such that even spaces like refugee camps can be thought of as states of exception because they are both inside and outside the law. This article draws on the notion of the state of exception in order to examine the Syrian refugee camp cum shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab as well as to analyze questions of religious authority, ritual practice, and pious devotion to Sayyida Zaynab. Though Sayyida Zaynab and many of her Twelver Shiʿi devotees resemble Agamben's figure of homo sacer, who marked the origin of the state of exception, they also defy Agamben's theory that humans necessarily become animal-like, leading nothing more than “bare lives” (or zoē) in states of exception.
2009 •
2010 •
Journal of Islamic Studies
The Other Shiites: From the Mediterranean to Central Asia * Edited by ALESSANDRO MONSUTTI, SILVIA NAEF and FARIAN SABAHI2010 •
Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée
Political Shiisms2019 •
2019 •
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies
Depicting Victims, Heroines, and Pawns in the Syrian Uprising2016 •
Journal of Political Theology
Inter-Religious Dialogue in Syria: Politics, Ethics and Miscommunication2008 •
Terrorism and Political Violence
The Islamic State Attacks on Shia Holy Sites and the "Shrine Protection Narrative": Threats to Sacred Space as a Mobilization Frame2020 •
International Journal of Heritage Studies
Layers of Religious and Political Iconoclasm under the Islamic State: Symbolic Sectarianism and Pre-Monotheistic IconoclasmMamluk Studies Review III (1999), 149-182
Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Makki "al-Shahid al-Awwal" (d. 1384) and the Shi‘ah of Syria1986 •
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 2 (2009), 33-50
The Case of Iranian Cultural Diplomacy in Syria2009 •
The Journal of Interrupted Studies (Brill)
How Intellectuals Censor the Intellect: (Mis-)Representation of Traditional History and its Consequences2019 •
2004 •
Journal of Association of Arab Universities for Tourism and Hospitality
Doctrinal Impact on the Function of Funerary Architecture in Fatimid Egypt2014 •
2019 •
2013 •
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs
Mysticism, Migration and Clerical Networks: Ahmad al-Ahsaʾi and the Shaykhis of al-Ahsa, Kuwait and Basra2014 •
The Graduate Conference of Political Science and International Relations at the Hebrew University in Jeruslaem
Iran's Religious Soft Power in Syria2019 •