Sacred sites offer believers the possibility of communing with
the divine and achieving deeper insight into their faith. Yet their
spiritual and cultural importance can lead to competition as
religious groups seek to exclude rivals from practicing potentially
sacrilegious rituals in the hallowed space and wish to assert their
own claims. Holy places thus create the potential for military,
theological, or political clashes, not only between competing
religious groups but also between religious groups and secular
actors.
In War on Sacred Grounds, Ron E. Hassner investigates the causes
and properties of conflicts over sites that are both venerated and
contested; he also proposes potential means for managing these
disputes. Hassner illustrates a complex and poorly understood
political dilemma with accounts of the failures to reach settlement
at Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif, leading to the clashes of 2000,
and the competing claims of Hindus and Muslims at Ayodhya, which
resulted in the destruction of the mosque there in 1992. He also
addresses more successful compromises in Jerusalem in 1967 and
Mecca in 1979. Sacred sites, he contends, are particularly prone to
conflict because they provide valuable resources for both religious
and political actors yet cannot be divided.
The management of conflicts over sacred sites requires
cooperation, Hassner suggests, between political leaders interested
in promoting conflict resolution and religious leaders who can
shape the meaning and value that sacred places hold for believers.
Because a reconfiguration of sacred space requires a confluence of
political will, religious authority, and a window of opportunity,
it is relatively rare. Drawing on the study of religion and the
study of politics in equal measure, Hassner's account offers
insight into the often-violent dynamics that come into play at the
places where religion and politics collide.
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