Baal St George And Khidr

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Baal, St. George, and Khidr

Author : Robert D. Miller II
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 1646020219
Total Pages : 107 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis Baal, St. George, and Khidr by : Robert D. Miller II

Download or read book Baal, St. George, and Khidr written by Robert D. Miller II and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Western tradition, St. George is known as the dragon slayer. In the Middle East, he is called Khidr (“Green One”), and in addition to being a dragon slayer, he is also somehow the prophet Elijah. In this book, Robert D. Miller II untangles these complicated connections and reveals how, especially in his Middle Eastern guise, St. George is a reincarnation of the Canaanite storm god Baal, another “Green One” who in Ugaritic texts slays dragons. Combining art history, theology, and archeology, this multidisciplinary study demystifies the identity of St. George in his various incarnations, laying bare the processes by which these identifications merged and diverged. Miller traces the origins of this figure in Arabic and Latin texts and explores the possibility that Middle Eastern shrines to St. George lie on top of ancient shrines of the Canaanite storm god Baal. Miller examines these holy places, particularly in modern Israel and around Mount Hermon on the Syrian-Lebanese-Israeli border, and makes the convincing case that direct continuity exists from the Baal of antiquity to the St. George/Khidr of Christian lore. Convincingly argued and thoroughly researched, this study makes a unique contribution to such diverse areas as ancient Near Eastern studies, Roman history and religion, Christian hagiography and iconography, Quranic studies, and Arab folk religion.

Baal, St. George, and Khidr

Author : Robert D. Miller II
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 1646020235
Total Pages : 105 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis Baal, St. George, and Khidr by : Robert D. Miller II

Download or read book Baal, St. George, and Khidr written by Robert D. Miller II and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Western tradition, St. George is known as the dragon slayer. In the Middle East, he is called Khidr (“Green One”), and in addition to being a dragon slayer, he is also somehow the prophet Elijah. In this book, Robert D. Miller II untangles these complicated connections and reveals how, especially in his Middle Eastern guise, St. George is a reincarnation of the Canaanite storm god Baal, another “Green One” who in Ugaritic texts slays dragons. Combining art history, theology, and archeology, this multidisciplinary study demystifies the identity of St. George in his various incarnations, laying bare the processes by which these identifications merged and diverged. Miller traces the origins of this figure in Arabic and Latin texts and explores the possibility that Middle Eastern shrines to St. George lie on top of ancient shrines of the Canaanite storm god Baal. Miller examines these holy places, particularly in modern Israel and around Mount Hermon on the Syrian-Lebanese-Israeli border, and makes the convincing case that direct continuity exists from the Baal of antiquity to the St. George/Khidr of Christian lore. Convincingly argued and thoroughly researched, this study makes a unique contribution to such diverse areas as ancient Near Eastern studies, Roman history and religion, Christian hagiography and iconography, Quranic studies, and Arab folk religion.

Prophet Al-Khidr

Author : Irfan A. Omar
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1498595928
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Prophet Al-Khidr by : Irfan A. Omar

Download or read book Prophet Al-Khidr written by Irfan A. Omar and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-09-02 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work situates the Qur’anic story of Moses’ meeting with Khiḍr (Sūrat al-Kahf, 18:60-82) in an ever-expanding network of intercultural and interreligious ideas about knowledge, humility, and spiritual excellence, where Moses and Khiḍr are seen as representing the ẓāhir (exoteric) and the bāṭin (esoteric), respectively.

Saint George Between Empires

Author : Heather A. Badamo
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271095946
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Saint George Between Empires by : Heather A. Badamo

Download or read book Saint George Between Empires written by Heather A. Badamo and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2023-08-25 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines Saint George’s intertwined traditions in the competing states of the eastern Mediterranean and Transcaucasia, demonstrating how rival conceptions of this well-known saint became central to Crusader, Eastern Christian, and Islamic medieval visual cultures. Saint George Between Empires links the visual cultures of Byzantium, North Africa, the Levant, Syria, and the Caucasus during the Crusader era to redraw our picture of interfaith relations and artistic networks. Heather Badamo recovers and recontextualizes a vast body of images and literature—from etiquette manuals and romances to miracle accounts and chronicles—to describe the history of Saint George during a period of religious and political fragmentation, between his “rise” to cross-cultural prominence in the eleventh century and his “globalization” in the fifteenth. In Badamo’s analysis, George emerges as an exemplar of cross-cultural encounter and global translation. Featuring important new research on monuments and artworks that are no longer available to scholars as a result of the occupation of Syria and parts of Iraq, Saint George Between Empires will be welcomed by scholars of Byzantine, medieval, Islamic, and Eastern Christian art and cultural studies.

Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean

Author : Erica Ferg
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429594496
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (295 download)

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Book Synopsis Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean by : Erica Ferg

Download or read book Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean written by Erica Ferg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean explores the influence of geography on religion and highlights a largely unknown story of religious history in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the Levant, agricultural communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims jointly venerated and largely shared three important saints or holy figures: Jewish Elijah, Christian St. George, and Muslim al-Khiḍr. These figures share ‘peculiar’ characteristics, such as associations with rain, greenness, fertility, and storms. Only in the Eastern Mediterranean are Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr shared between religious communities, or characterized by these same agricultural attributes – attributes that also were shared by regional religious figures from earlier time periods, such as the ancient Near Eastern Storm-god Baal-Hadad, and Levantine Zeus. This book tells the story of how that came to be, and suggests that the figures share specific characteristics, over a very long period of time, because these motifs were shaped by the geography of the region. Ultimately, this book suggests that regional geography has influenced regional religion; that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not, historically or textually speaking, separate religious traditions (even if Jews, Christians, and Muslims are members of distinct religious communities); and that shared religious practices between members of these and other local religious communities are not unusual. Instead, shared practices arose out of a common geographical environment and an interconnected religious heritage, and are a natural historical feature of religion in the Eastern Mediterranean. This volume will be of interest to students of ancient Near Eastern religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, sainthood, agricultural communities in the ancient Near East, Middle Eastern religious and cultural history, and the relationships between geography and religion.

Water Beings

Author : Veronica Strang
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1789147506
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

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Book Synopsis Water Beings by : Veronica Strang

Download or read book Water Beings written by Veronica Strang and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2023-04-19 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking to the vast human history of water worship, a crucial study of our broken relationship with all things aquatic—and how we might mend it. Early human relationships with water were expressed through beliefs in serpentine aquatic deities: rainbow-colored, feathered or horned serpents, giant anacondas, and dragons. Representing the powers of water, these beings were bringers of life and sustenance, world creators, ancestors, guardian spirits, and lawmakers. Worshipped and appeased, they embodied people’s respect for water and its vital role in sustaining all living things. Yet today, though we still recognize that “water is life,” fresh- and saltwater ecosystems have been critically compromised by human activities. This major study of water beings and what has happened to them in different cultural and historical contexts demonstrates how and why some—but not all—societies have moved from worshipping water to wreaking havoc upon it and asks what we can do to turn the tide.

Cities as Palimpsests?

Author : Elizabeth Key Fowden
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789257697
Total Pages : 710 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (892 download)

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Book Synopsis Cities as Palimpsests? by : Elizabeth Key Fowden

Download or read book Cities as Palimpsests? written by Elizabeth Key Fowden and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The metaphor of the palimpsest has been increasingly invoked to conceptualize cities with deep, living pasts. This volume seeks to think through, and beyond, the logic of the palimpsest, asking whether this fashionable trope slyly forces us to see contradiction where local inhabitants saw (and see) none, to impose distinctions that satisfy our own assumptions about historical periodization and cultural practice, but which bear little relation to the experience of ancient, medieval or early modern persons. Spanning the period from Constantine’s foundation of a New Rome in the fourth century to the contemporary aftermath of the Lebanese civil war, this book integrates perspectives from scholars typically separated by the disciplinary boundaries of late antique, Islamic, medieval, Byzantine, Ottoman and modern Middle Eastern studies, but whose work is united by their study of a region characterized by resilience rather than rupture. The volume includes an introduction and eighteen contributions from historians, archaeologists and art historians who explore the historical and cultural complexity of eastern Mediterranean cities. The authors highlight the effects of the multiple antiquities imagined and experienced by persons and groups who for generations made these cities home, and also by travelers and other observers who passed through them. The independent case studies are bound together by a shared concern to understand the many ways in which the cities’ pasts live on in their presents.

Antiguo Oriente - Volume 16 (2018)

Author : Romina Della Casa
Publisher : CEHAO
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Antiguo Oriente - Volume 16 (2018) by : Romina Della Casa

Download or read book Antiguo Oriente - Volume 16 (2018) written by Romina Della Casa and published by CEHAO. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antiguo Oriente (abbreviated as AntOr) is the annual, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal published by the Center of Studies of Ancient Near Eastern History (CEHAO), Catholic University of Argentina.

The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies

Author : Pamela J. Stewart
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030768252
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies by : Pamela J. Stewart

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies written by Pamela J. Stewart and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual Studies have achieved prominence since the 1980s, when interest in ritual as an object of inquiry was established, bridging over a number of humanities and social science disciplines. Both connected with religious studies and independent of it; overlapping with social and cultural anthropology, but also with history; related to science and health practices and ranging across the life course to education, Ritual Studies has come to encompass studies of change and dynamism in social life. Rituals are determinate in form, but not static. They enunciate distinctive social values within specific contexts that frame them; and they relate to the wider concerns and issues of their practitioners. Due to this broad and wide-ranging scope, it is often difficult to find a single resource on Ritual Studies, and even more so to find one which moves beyond the beginnings of anthropological theorizing to grapple with the present-day contexts of ritual. Bringing together recent ethnographies of ritual practice and ritualization from across the globe, this Handbook provides case study of ritual in the light of Emotion and Cognition, Identity, Religious Power, Performance and Literature, Ecology and Ecological Disaster, Media, and other topics. While each chapter provides a deep ethnography of a specific society, ritual, or ritualized practice, each also engages with current theoretical and substantive approaches to the relevant topic. The scholars collected here provide original synoptic and indicative pieces as guideposts and pathways through the complex, varied and cross-disciplinary, and vast landscape of scholarship that constitutes Ritual Studies today and points to developments in the future.

Iconotropy and Cult Images from the Ancient to Modern World

Author : Jorge Tomás García
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000574210
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Iconotropy and Cult Images from the Ancient to Modern World by : Jorge Tomás García

Download or read book Iconotropy and Cult Images from the Ancient to Modern World written by Jorge Tomás García and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-04-06 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines the process of symbolic and material alteration of religious images in antiquity, the middle ages and the modern period. The process by which the form and meaning of images are modified and adapted for a new context is defined by a large number of spiritual, religious, artistic, geographical or historical circumstances. This book provides a defined theoretical framework for these symbolic and material alterations based on the concept of iconotropy; that is, the way in which images change and/or alter their meaning. Iconotropy is a key concept in religious history, particularly for periods in which religious changes, often turbulent, took place. In addition, the iconotropic process of appropriating cult images brought with it changes in the materiality of those images. Numerous accounts from antiquity, the middle ages and the modern period detail how cult images were involved in such processes of misinterpretation, both symbolically and materially. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture and religious history.

Finding Beauty in the Bible

Author : Robert D. Miller
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1666736643
Total Pages : 141 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (667 download)

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Book Synopsis Finding Beauty in the Bible by : Robert D. Miller

Download or read book Finding Beauty in the Bible written by Robert D. Miller and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-08-31 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We approach Raphael’s “Agony in the Garden” or Fra Angelico’s “Crucifixion” for their beauty and not primarily to learn about fifteenth-century fashion or even to decode the iconography. Yet the many books on the Song of Songs, whether they try to read the book as an ancient Near Eastern love song or a Christian allegory, miss the main point of this book: its aesthetic elements. “Aesthetics” is the appreciation of beauty. Aesthetics examines literary form as a response to content, the way poetics works with contents, the use of loaded semantic terms, even the sound created by words and what cognitive science tells us it does to listeners. This book uses the commentary format to accompany an individual’s reading of the Song of Songs, focusing on these neglected aspects of the text. It both reads the book as it is meant to be read and opens up a new vista on this magnificent biblical text.

Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel

Author : Philip Zhakevich
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 1646021037
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel by : Philip Zhakevich

Download or read book Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel written by Philip Zhakevich and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Philip Zhakevich examines the technology of writing as it existed in the southern Levant during the Iron Age II period, after the alphabetic writing system had fully taken root in the region. Using the Hebrew Bible as its corpus and focusing on a set of Hebrew terms that designated writing surfaces and instruments, this study synthesizes the semantic data of the Bible with the archeological and art-historical evidence for writing in ancient Israel. The bulk of this work comprises an in-depth lexicographical analysis of Biblical Hebrew terms related to Israel’s writing technology. Employing comparative Semitics, lexical semantics, and archaeology, Zhakevich provides a thorough analysis of the origins of the relevant terms; their use in the biblical text, Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Hebrew inscriptions; and their translation in the Septuagint and other ancient versions. The final chapter evaluates Israel’s writing practices in light of those of the ancient world, concluding that Israel’s most common form of writing (i.e., writing with ink on ostraca and papyrus) is Egyptian in origin and was introduced into Canaan during the New Kingdom. Comprehensive and original in its scope, Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel is a landmark contribution to our knowledge of scribes and scribal practices in ancient Israel. Students and scholars interested in language and literacy in the first-millennium Levant in particular will profit from this volume.

Camels in the Biblical World

Author : Martin Heide
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 164602169X
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis Camels in the Biblical World by : Martin Heide

Download or read book Camels in the Biblical World written by Martin Heide and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Camels are first mentioned in the Bible as the movable property of Abraham. During the early monarchy, they feature prominently as long-distance mounts for the Queen of Sheba, and almost a millennium later, the Gospels tell us about the impossibility of a camel passing through a needle’s eye. Given the limited extrabiblical evidence for camels before circa 1000 BCE, a thorough investigation of the spatio-temporal history of the camel in the ancient Near and Middle East is necessary to understand their early appearance in the Hebrew Bible. Camels in the Biblical World is a two-part study that charts the cultural trajectories of two domestic species—the two-humped or Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) and the one-humped or Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius)—from the fourth through first millennium BCE and up to the first century CE. Drawing on archaeological camel remains, iconography, inscriptions, and other text sources, the first part reappraises the published data on the species’ domestication and early exploitation in their respective regions of origin. The second part takes a critical look at the various references to camels in the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels, providing a detailed philological analysis of each text and referring to archaeological data and zoological observations whenever appropriate. A state-of-the-art evaluation of the cultural history of the camel and its role in the biblical world, this volume brings the humanities into dialogue with the natural sciences. The novel insights here serve scholars in disciplines as diverse as biblical studies, (zoo)archaeology, history, and philology.

Early High Christology

Author : Christopher M. Blumhofer
Publisher : Fortress Press
ISBN 13 : 1506491022
Total Pages : 526 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (64 download)

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Book Synopsis Early High Christology by : Christopher M. Blumhofer

Download or read book Early High Christology written by Christopher M. Blumhofer and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2024-10-01 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The application of theological and literary approaches to the study of the New Testament in recent years has enabled a seismic shift in our understanding of the identity of Jesus as the New Testament presents him. In terms of the Gospel of John, these theological and literary explorations have resulted in a richer understanding of what it means to identify Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, the one who bears unique witness to the God of Israel, and the one whose life fulfills and embodies numerous symbols that were significant within biblical texts and the traditions of Second Temple Judaism. This volume gathers many of today's most significant interpreters of the Bible as they examine John's Gospel and its distinctive theology, in relation to the wider canon of Scripture. Pastors, theologians, and biblical scholars will find studies of individual texts as well as broader biblical themes. Readers will come to appreciate anew the emphases that make John stand out among the New Testament writings. Readers will also develop a richer understanding of the deep theological connections that unite John with the Old Testament's vision of God and other New Testament portrayals of Jesus and his enduring significance.

Political Change and Material Culture in Middle to Late Bronze Age Canaan

Author : Shlomit Bechar
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 1646022041
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis Political Change and Material Culture in Middle to Late Bronze Age Canaan by : Shlomit Bechar

Download or read book Political Change and Material Culture in Middle to Late Bronze Age Canaan written by Shlomit Bechar and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do shifts in material culture instigate administrative change, or is it the shifting political winds that affect material culture? This is the central question that Shlomit Bechar addresses in this book, taking the transition from the Middle to Late Bronze Age (seventeenth–fourteenth centuries BCE) in northern Canaan as a test case. Combining archaeological and historical analysis, Bechar identifies the most significant changes evident in architectural and ceramic remains from this period and then explores how and why contemporary political shifts may have influenced, or been influenced by, these developments. Bechar persuasively argues that the Egyptian conquest of the southern Levant—enabled by local economic decline following the expulsion of the Hyksos and the fall of northern Syrian cities—was the impetus for these changes in ceramics and architecture. Using a macro-typological approach to examine the ceramic assemblages, she also discusses the impact of the influx of Aegean imports, suggesting that while “attached specialists” were primarily responsible for ceramic production in the Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age ceramics were increasingly made by “independent specialists,” another important result of the new administrative system created following Thutmose III’s campaign. An important contribution to our understanding of the transition between the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, this original and insightful book will appeal to specialists in the Bronze Age Levant, especially those interested in using ceramic assemblages to examine social and political change.

Judges 1

Author : Mark S. Smith
Publisher : Fortress Press
ISBN 13 : 1506480497
Total Pages : 924 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (64 download)

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Book Synopsis Judges 1 by : Mark S. Smith

Download or read book Judges 1 written by Mark S. Smith and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking volume presents a new translation of the text and detailed interpretation of almost every word or phrase in the book of Judges, drawing from archaeology and iconography, textual versions, biblical parallels, and extrabiblical texts, many never noted before. Archaeology also serves to show how a story of the Iron II period employed visible ruins to narrate supposedly early events from the so-called "period of the Judges." The synchronic analysis for each unit sketches its characters and main themes, as well as other literary dynamics. The diachronic, redactional analysis shows the shifting settings of units as well as their development, commonly due to their inner-textual reception and reinterpretation. The result is a remarkably fresh historical-critical treatment of 1:1-10:5.

Journey to the End of Islam

Author : Michael Muhammad Knight
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1593765525
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (937 download)

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Book Synopsis Journey to the End of Islam by : Michael Muhammad Knight

Download or read book Journey to the End of Islam written by Michael Muhammad Knight and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2009-12-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Journey to the End of Islam, Michael Muhammad Knight — whose work has led to him being hailed as both the Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson of American Islam — wanders through Muslim countries, navigating between conflicting visions of his religion. Visiting holy sites in Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, Knight engages both the puritanical Islam promoted by Saudi globalization and the heretical strands of popular folk Islam: shrines, magic, music, and drugs. The conflict of “global” and “local” Islam speaks to Knight’s own experience approaching the Islamic world as a uniquely American Muslim with his own sources: the modern mythologies of the Nation of Islam and Five Percenters, as well as the arguments of Progressive Muslim thinkers for feminism and reform. Knight’s travels conclude at Islam’s spiritual center, the holy city of Mecca, where he performs the hajj required of every Muslim. During the rites of pilgrimage, he watches as all variations of Islam converge in one place, under the supervision of Saudi Arabia’s religious police. What results is a struggle to separate the spiritual from the political, Knight searching for a personal relationship to Islam in the context of how it's defined by the external world.