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- Convenor:
-
Soraya Tremayne
(Oxford University)
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- Track:
- Life and Death
- Location:
- Roscoe 1.001
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 6 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The correct performance of the rituals associated with death is of utmost importance in the Middle East. While beliefs surrounding the rituals have remained intact in essence, the rituals themselves have altered in form to adjust to change. Papers addressing these changes are invited for this panel.
Long Abstract:
Beliefs surrounding death and its associated rituals remain elaborate and form an important part of everyday life in the Middle East. The treatment of the dead and burial are based on concepts of life after death, with the ultimate aim of facilitating the passage from this world to the next. Reverence for the dead is a deeply ingrained feature of cultural practices and it is essential that the body of the deceased undergo the correct procedures to be able to make its journey to the afterlife. While the core beliefs about death and after life remain conformist in essence throughout the Middle Eastern countries, the procedures to achieve them have altered due to a number of unpredictable events and challenges. These range, inter alia, from an increase in population and rapid urbanisation, requiring the involvement of authorities to deal with the need for larger spaces and more efficient burial services, to an unexpectedly high number of deaths based on wars and political crisis, which have taken place in many parts of the Middle East, during the past few decades. Modernity and globalisation have also affected the performance of the death rituals and provoked different responses among different ethnic and religious groups. While some societies have adjusted to change by, for example, resorting to modern technologies to speed up procedures and maintain control of death rituals, others continue with their traditional practices. Death rituals are also increasingly used to highlight social, economic, ethnic and political differences in unprecedented ways.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 6 August, 2013, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the beliefs, experiences, and practices surrounding the death of Muslim immigrants in Athens, Greece, an area in which there is no Muslim cemetery. By tracing the social life of the corpse to the morgue, the border patrol, the customs office, the airport, and the cemetery, this study investigates the increasingly challenging dilemma of where and how to bury the bodies of men, women, and children Muslim migrants who have died on Greek soil or have arrived dead on its shores.
Paper long abstract:
What does the death of an immigrant subject reveal about "personhood" or "humanness" with regard to religion, law, human rights, and the state in the 21st century? How have funerary practices and notions of death among Muslims been affected by globalization? This paper explores these questions through a case study of the beliefs, experiences, and practices surrounding the death of Muslim immigrants in Athens, Greece. Currently, there are no Muslim cemeteries in Athens or its environs. Consequently, Muslims (nationals and immigrants) who die in Greece are either (1) falsely presented as Christian in order to be buried locally (by friends, family or strangers); (2) sent to northern Greece to be buried in Thrace where there is a protected Muslim minority; (3) repatriated to their countries of origin, or (4) buried in unmarked graves. By tracing the social life of the corpse to the morgue, the border patrol, the customs office, the airport, and the cemetery, this study investigates the increasingly challenging dilemma of where and how to bury the bodies of men, women, and children Muslim migrants who have died on Greek soil or have arrived dead on its shores. The study of death and immigration from this perspective reveals the ways that law, religion, and the state create particular notions of personhood that are embedded within complex power relations, culturally specific notions of morality, and the presumed temporality of the modern liberal subject.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the ways cosmologies and death rituals become embedded in changing political discourses and social landscapes of the Syrian Druze and Australian Anangu, and how reincarnation may serve to constitute powerful political claims in times of crises.
Paper long abstract:
One of the striking similarities between the Druze communities in the Levant and the Anangu of the Western Desert in Australia is that their beliefs in reincarnation set them apart from their historically related neighbours. By comparing cosmologies and ritual practices, we explore the ways in which these become embedded in political discourses that articulate the changing social, economic and political demands of their communities vis-à-vis other communities, the state, and during crises.
Reincarnation in relation to the Druze is analysed in terms of their history, theosophy, and their contemporary practices. Ethnographic examples detail the practices of death, recollection stories of past lives, and the role of reincarnation in reproducing but also in subverting endogamy. These ethnographic instances underline the social and political spectrum in which reincarnation is not only a religious metaphysical belief, outside of social action and political realities, but rather an active discourse in and through which social, economic and political claims are articulated, negotiated, and contested.
For the Anangu of the Western Desert, reincarnation becomes a complex platform onto which metaphysical ideas about the cosmos are mapped, and connections between the past and the future embodied. The association of land, birth, and kinship provides a powerful framework for claims to land, band membership, and for the definition of the Anangu vis-a-vis their neighbours and the Australian state. In this way, similarities in the context of religious belief, ritual practices and politics in the two cultures that may explain why belief in reincarnation persists in both.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will study the variety of mourning ceremonies in the public space of Tehran, Iran. It will attempt to show similarities and differences between the rituals of mourning among different classes and ethnic groups in the capital.
Paper long abstract:
The mourning ceremony taking place at mosques in the 22 areas of Tehran can show the diversity of class in a city which is divided into the north and the south, the rich and the poor areas. All ethnic groups of Iran are living within Tehran, and we could observe their presence in various mosques during the time of rituals of mourning. Eastern Tehran has migrants from Eastern Iran, and equally Western Tehran has occupants from Western provinces of Iran.We should not forget that Northern Tehran as well as Western and Southern Tehran consisted of many villages whose inhabitants are also locals of the areas. Can we observe the differences in ethnic origin in a ritual which is common to all Iranians in mosques with specific rules and regulations? Ritual of mourning does not begin nor does it end in a mosque, it can be observed in daily newspapers where a death is announced and the location of ritual is indicated. The number of such announcements for a person, its length, the number of signatures announcing it, and afterwards the number of condolensces in the newspaper indicate the status of the person: political, social and economic.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the transformation of Zahra’s Paradise cemetery in Tehran, one of the largest cemeteries in the world, into a modern centre making use of digital technology to ensure that the burial of the dead is dealt with immediately and efficiently, to uphold the Islamic values.
Paper long abstract:
Beliefs surrounding death and its associated rituals remain elaborate and form an important part of everyday life in Iran. The treatment of the dead and burial are based on Islamic concepts of life after death, with the ultimate aim of facilitating the passage from this world to the next. While the core beliefs about death and after life remain conformist in essence, the procedures to achieve them have had to alter due to the unforeseen challenges. The emerging situations stem from a rapid population growth and an increased rate of urbanisation. The need for effective burial facilities in Iran was also greatly aggravated by the unusual number of deaths due to the Islamic Revolution and an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. But, nowhere was this pressure felt more than in Tehran, with a population of over 10 millions and where a great number of the war martyrs are buried.
This paper discusses how the main cemetery in Tehran, Zahra's Paradise (Beheshte Zahra) has been transformed into a modern institution making use of digital technology to ensure that all stages of the journey from death to the final burial are performed thoroughly and with utmost efficiency. Zahra's Paradise has evolved from a mere burial place to embody every aspect of social, cultural and political life, accommodating the worldly needs of the living as well as the safeguarding of the spiritual well-being of the dead.