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Abel Ferrara – A New Perspective on a Cult Auteur
Read more: Abel Ferrara – A New Perspective on a Cult Auteurby Florian Zappe Abel Ferrara is one of the most uncompromising and provocative filmmakers of his generation. From his early […]
Lord Kelvin and the Apocalypse: the striking convergence of religion and cosmology
The surprising role of scripture in developing scientific theories of the universe in 19th-century Scotland.
A canonization that caused a diplomatic rift in Europe
Eduardo Ángel Cruz investigates the overlap between the political and the spiritual in canonizations of the Catholic Church
5 things you might not expect of Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East
Drawing on a long history of Christian-Muslim coexistence, Anna Hager explores the nuances and complexities of interfaith relations in the Middle East
Demystifying the role of Ottoman bureaucrats in occupied Western Anatolia at the dawn of ethnic violence and destruction
Umit Eser explores authoritarianism in post-Ottoman geographies by investigating the origins of organised violence and ethnic cleansings at the beginning of the twentieth century
Five Types of Mysticism: Religious Culture in the Age of Modernism
by Jamie Callison Ask for a description of a mystic or a follower of mysticism, and you might be greeted with a portrait of an otherworldly recluse speaking in riddles and perhaps evincing some unusual physical symptoms like those found…
How to Get Banned from Teaching the Quran: Medieval Cairo Edition
by Shuaib Ally, McGill University Around the turn of the 15th century in Cairo, a hadith scholar named Salah al-Din al-Aqfahsi heard Salah al-Din al-Kalai, a scholar associated with the Sufi Shadhili order, teaching the Quran. Part of his teaching…
Emotion, Mission, Architecture: Building Hospitals in Persia and British India, 1865-1914
by Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi How did patients feel when visiting mission hospitals built by British missionaries in Asia and Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? I am preoccupied with this question in my book, Emotion, Mission, Architecture:…
Writing from the margins: Bosnian Hajjis’ understanding of the world
by Dženita Karić As I was doing research on the Hajj discourses in Bosnia from the 16th to the 21st century, I encountered a range of texts, published and unpublished, in Bosnian, Arabic and Ottoman Turkish languages. Some of the…
The destruction of ‘un- Islamic’ edifices by ISIS and the Taliban
by Shivan Mahendrarajah The Taliban are back in power, ushering in renewed fears of destruction of cultural heritages. Their first time in office (1996–2001), the Taliban destroyed edifices on the basis that they were ‘un-Islamic’ and/or ‘beacons’ for polytheists (mushrikin).…