Social Ties (Asynchronous Session)
Modern Slavery In Nigeria: An Islamic Perspective View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kabir Olawale Paramole
This paper considers the concept of modern slavery from an Islamic perspective. The study defines the concept and explores its facets in our society, which includes but is not limited to child abuse, child labour, forced marriage, kidnapping, forced prostitution, forced labour among others, and establishes the various Islamic dictates on them. Our study is delimitated to the Nigerian terrain, with view to capturing the statistical data and manifestations available on incidences of modern slavery in our society and analyzing these in the mirror of Islamic viewpoints. This research is carried out with analytical research methodology, using relevant literatures, recent studies and data of findings by agencies. Our findings reveal that modern slavery is still prevalent and taking various forms in Nigeria. Our study recommends compulsory early and affordable continuing education system and a holistic empowerment program, especially for female citizens, with various vocational skills acquisition for non privileged individuals across board. There is also an identified need for the government to create public guidance and counseling centers, social intervention programs, poverty alleviation programs, integration support system for victims of modern slavery in psychological trauma, to strengthen relevant agencies to improve on the existing information and orientation of the populace on modern slavery.
Production of Sacred Place: The Intersection Between Human Innovation and Claims of Transcendent Truth View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sarah Angne Alfaro
Religious communities and institutions often talk about “the sacred” as something eternal and transcendent. Religion itself – the content, values, and teachings of particular traditions – are often taken to be eternally unchanging yet religions are practiced by people, and people exist in history. People come to know and communicate their religious experiences, values, and identities through cultural forms that are historical. This reality is as true for religious architecture as it is for music texts or ritual activities that are beatified into religions cannon. Innovation and creativity within religious traditions highlight the historical nature of religious practices and, at the same time, provide a window into how religious actors negotiate the relationship between the temporal and humanly-created connecting their claims of transcendent and eternal truths. This paper examines how religious actors have approached the intersection between human innovation and claims of transcendent truth, particularly in relation to architecture and the production of sacred place. Potential distinctions between different religious traditions and the meaning of “sacred space” and religious architecture are revealed.
Faith, Filth, Phage: Cosmotechnical Imaginaries of Science and Religion in Allahabad View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rijul Kochhar
In the city of Allahabad—located at the confluence ("sangam") of India's largest rivers, Ganges and Yamuna—ritualistic dips in sacred riverwaters are revered for their believed curative power against infections as well as salvation from karmic cycles of birth and rebirth. The sacred and geographic propensities of the sangam—and its Kumbh Mela pilgrimage—have mythic valences in Hinduism, yet the curative riverwaters also have a basis in microbial physiology: near here, the British bacteriologist Ernest Hanbury Hankin, in 1896, first described the "bactericidal action of the waters of the Jamuna and Ganges rivers on Cholera microbes", predating the "discovery" of bacterial viruses--or bacteriophages--by at least two decades. Pursuing the record of these purificatory waters of the sangam in sacred Sanskrit writings and folklore, and later elaboration in the work of Hankin, this paper traces an 'epistemology of time' that connects the mythic to the post-Hankin modern scientific. I explore how the phage comes to be spoken about amidst a plurality of practitioners, within secular and sacred epistemes of infection and riverine pollution, and in histories arcing from the ancient religious literature to colonial disease control efforts, to today, where bacteriophages are being conceived as potential response to the crisis of planetary antimicrobial-resistance (AMR). Allahabad, thereby, presents a "cosmotechnics" of infection, purity, and memory wherein faith, filth, and phage are inextricably intertwined. In doing so, this paper pursues the technical, yet protean, object of the bacteriophage through multiple slices of particular cosmologies that populate the historico-mytho-scientific arena of Allahabad.
Integration and Translation: A Comparative Study of Caodaism in Vietnam and Yi-Kuan-Tao View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lim Pey Huan
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Vietnam was influenced by Han culture, so there are many similarities in religion and folk beliefs. Again afterwards the acceptance process of the Catholic Church introduced from Europe is quite similar. Therefore, in the spiritual life of Vietnamese civil society, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam and folk beliefs can be said to be the main trend, but in the twentieth century, two indigenous new religions were born: Caodai and He Hao Jiao, both of which are produced and developed in the south, each of which has millions of believers and are becoming important Vietnamese religions. Their political participation has a major impact on the development of the Republic of Vietnam, and their fate is also in the north and south. Caodai was later approved by the colonial authorities and became the third largest religion in Vietnam. The teachings of Caodai teach the ideas of the major religions of the world. The classics used in the teachings also contain important theories of various religions, with particular emphasis on the comprehensiveness of the three sects of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Caodai believers believe that Caodaism is an emerging new religion in Vietnam. This paper presents the author's analysis of the actual process of tutoring in Vietnam's Caodai, and then compares it with the consistent religious experience, trying to explore the Yi-Kuan-Tao and consistent Yi-Kuan-Tao rituals, religious organization, religious teachings, religious life care, funeral rituals, and other comparative studies.
“Secular-Religious Encounters” in Conceptualizing Agency: Interpreting Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s Religious Practices View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Misbah Hyder
What are the possibilities of conceptualizing agency for religious actors beyond secular biases? This paper examines the tensions within secular conceptualizations of resistance, agency, and opposition by studying how religious practices and sociopolitical contexts are intertwined into the religious ethics of a persecuted religious community. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community self-identifies as Muslim but has been condemned by many global Muslim leaders as heretics. I analyze how this community responds to persecution and marginalization across sociopolitical contexts, and specifically how they oppose discourses and violence that delegitimize and harm the community through their practice of Islam. By evoking themselves as the “True Islam,” Ahmadis employ oppositional framing when engaging in “jihad by the pen,” as opposed to “jihad by the sword,” which they allege is practiced by “Other Muslims.” I argue that Ahmadi religious practices encompass an approach to peacebuilding based on their core religious ethics: the perseverance to continue practicing Islam as the way to oppose marginalizing discourses that delegitimize Ahmadis as Muslims. Ahmadiyya religious ethics guides community engagement with sociopolitical environments, and if scholars only study how Ahmadis respond to delegitimization without studying the underlying ethics, crucial elements of their intentionality are lost. Without actively analyzing the intentionality of actors, specifically their notions of morality and ethical action, I argue that studies of agency are incomplete. The intention to oppose claims of heresy for Ahmadis does not rely on repressive superordinate forms of power, but instead an interpretation of sacred obligation to Islam.
Catholic Youth Empowerment in Spain in the Digital Age View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sílvia Pascual, Adriana Chiva Polvillo, Míriam Díez Bosch
Youth is ambitious and dynamic and, in addition, represents the future generations. However, their needs, habits and daily practices are particularly different from previous ones. Emphasizing this generational gap is technology and the current digitalization scenario that this youth has been born in. How, then, is the Catholic Church approaching younger individuals? The objective of this research is therefore to analyze the different practises, initiatives and resources, both offline and online, from religious diocesis with the aim to ultimately understand the current needs of the Catholic youth in the digital era in Spain, mainly accentuated due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The investigation followed a five-step methodology. Initially, a literature review was developed. This was followed by a survey answered by religious entities as well as young people in order to achieve quantitative data. In depth interviews and a focus group were conducted as part of the qualitative data research . Finally, a netnography analysis allowed us to compile and gather all of the mapped initiatives. All in all, religious communities are becoming a bridge to cross gaps by empowering young people and approaching them and their interests under the context of religion and faith formation. The result is in the empowerment of the youth under exceptional circumstances: the digital scenario. At the same time, this state of affairs will provide a tool of communication that has led to an exceptional opportunity for dialogue and new ways of faith transmission between youth and religious communities.
South Louisiana Mardi Gras Celebration: A Link between Religion and Local Folklore View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Luc Guglielmi
In Basile, a small community in Southwest Louisiana, there would not be any Mardi Gras without Ash Wednesday and vice-versa. Most of the people in Basile speak of Ash Wednesday when defining the Mardi Gras. The condition in which they enter the Lenten season is based upon how they ran–that is to say, celebrated–Mardi Gras. It is often said: “If you run a good Mardi Gras, you will be ready for Lent.” There is a reciprocal spiritual relationship between Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday. The people from Basile, therefore, in giving equal spiritual value to those two feasts, give a liturgical value to the Mardi Gras because they need, and will admit this freely, to have a good Mardi Gras in order to enter into the sacred season of Lent. This paper is based on the works of Ancelet, and LaDurie as well as hours of personal fieldwork in Southwest Louisiana.
