PDF Inside the Muslim Brotherhood: Religion; Identity; and Politics (Religion and Global Politics) by Khalil al-Anani in History

Description

In this study of everyday religious culture in early modern Syria and Palestine; James Grehan offers a social history that looks beyond conventional ways of thinking about religion in the Middle East. The most common narratives about the region introduce us to the separate traditions of Islam; Christianity; and Judaism; highlighting how each one has created its own distinctive traditions and communities. Twilight of the Saints offers a reinterpretation of religious and cultural history in a region which is today associated with division and violence. Exploring the religious habits of ordinary people; from the late seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century; when the region was part of the Ottoman Empire; Grehan shows that members of different religious groups participated in a common; overarching religious culture that was still visible at the beginning of the twentieth century.Most evident in the countryside; though present everywhere; this religious mainstream thrived in a society in which few people had access to formal religious teachings. This older; folk religious culture was steeped in notions and rituals that the modern world; with its mainly theological conception of religion; has utterly repudiated. Indeed; the people of Syria and Palestine today would hardly recognize religion as it was experienced in the not-so-distant past. Only by uncovering this lost lived religion; argues Grehan; can we appreciate the largely unacknowledged revolution in religion that has taken place in the region over the last century.