Belief and Practice
Doors of Hope: Baha'i Western-women Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shay Rozen
Since its beginning, the Baha'i faith saw pilgrimage as one of the rituals that the believer should fulfill, at least once, during his lifetime. According to Kitab-i-Aqdas (the most holy book), the destination of the pilgrims should be the house of the Bab in Shiraz and the house of Bahaullah in Bagdad. However, during the time, especially after Bahaullah passed away, and due to difficulties reaching Iran or Iraq, the focus of Baha'i pilgrimage became the cities of Akko and Haifa (Palestine) that became the Baha'is "holy land." At the end of the 19th century, as the Baha'i faith started to spread around the western world, women became the core and majority of the believers of the new religion that emerge from the east and started to execute pilgrimage to Akko and Haifa. Among those early women pilgrims were Phoebe Hearst, Lady Bloomfield, Genevieve Coy and others. As part of their western culture, some of those women wrote diaries of their journey that became important source for studying Baha'is History, Geography spared and the development of Baha'is pilgrimage tradition, heritage, performance and rituals. Among those aspects will be the development of route and sites of the pilgrimage trail, the traditions and performance that became part of the pilgrimage heritage and the influence of eastern pilgrimage traditions and rituals on the new western believers.
Minorities in Pakistan: Blasphemy Law and the Injustice towards Aasia Bibi
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sulaiman Ahmed
The treatment of minorities in Pakistan is a real life problematic issue. To a certain extent it was highlighted by the incarceration of a poor Christian woman in Pakistan, which was based on ‘Islamic’ blasphemy law. This paper will analyse the blasphemy laws in Pakistan and how this relates to the classical Islamic positions in legal jurisprudence. We will analyse the case of Aasia Bibi, the injustices that are linked to the case, and how the voice of religious fanatics seek to muddy any hope of the re-evaluation the law. The paper will introduce, analyse and compare the various positions within classical Islam in relation to the laws of blasphemy, as well as the treatment of minorities in Muslim majority countries. More recently, we had certain individuals who took the issue of blasphemy a step further my taking the law into their own hands and killing minorities who they claimed had committed blasphemy. These vigilante killings were applauded by some Muslim scholars. The recent appointment of Imran Khan as the prime minister of Pakistan and his vocal support of these archaic blasphemy laws has further compounded the problem. This paper will attempt to show that the treatment of Minorities in Pakistan is anti-Islamic and against the position of Islam.
Ritual and Realism : Mediating the Sacred in Hinduism and Christianity
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sebastian Madathummuriyil
The human quest for experiencing the transcendent lies at the core of every religion. Ritual symbolic celebrations are crucial mediators of this transcendent reality. The worshiping assembly experiences the divine through these ritual symbolic enactments. This paper intends to explore these ritual symbolic dynamics that evoke and embody the divine presence with specific focus on the Sri Vaishnava worship and the Christian/Catholic liturgy. This is done by a comparative engagement of the theology of Arcāvatāra (divine presence in the idol/image) in Sri Vaishnavism and the notion of symbolic efficacy in contemporary Christian/Catholic theology. While the sacramental mediations in different religions take diverse forms of expressions and meaning, there seems to exist a collective identity in the scheme of realizing the divine-human encounter for the believing community. Finally, I will show how studying these various forms of divine-human encounter in a ritual symbolic mode across religious borders can promote better understanding and mutual respect among religious traditions.
Australian Multiculturalism and the Problem of the Religious "Other"
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gregory Macdonald
Whilst Australia is clearly a very successful multicultural society, ironically, a notable feature of its policy is the absence of inclusion as a governing principle. The policy merely provides a neutral space in which the religious "other" has the right to their beliefs and practices, whilst the religious majority has the obligation of tolerance. In an effort to compensate for this absence, well-intentioned state promoters of interfaith dialogue have generally focused on our religious commonalities, in an effort to highlight a "sameness." This is intended to reduce our fear of the "other" and thereby promote greater levels of social cohesion. However this paper will argue that it is ultimately a cosmopolitanist emphasis on our religious differences that will not only be more ideologically aligned with multiculturalist theory, but more importantly, elevate us to an inclusivity that transcends the passivity of mere tolerance.
