Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Repairs at the Holy Sepulcher

12901532_445421729000871_9105502408635285227_o
Jerusalem, March 22

Here is a little good news about Mideast Christians, for a change. Last week, the three principal Christian communities that maintain the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem announced that they have reached agreement on repairs to the Edicule, a nineteenth-century structure that encompasses the Tomb of Christ. At a joint news conference, the leaders of the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, and Roman Catholic communities announced that work on the structure, built a little more than 200 years ago, will start right after Orthodox Easter in May and last several months. The three communities will share the costs–about three million euros–and each appoint architects to help with the project. Pilgrims will continue to have access to the site while renovations are underway.

Readers who don’t know the history might fail to appreciate what an accomplishment this is. The three communities share the church, along with some smaller Christian communions, according to the terms of the Status Quo, a compilation of customs that dates to Ottoman times. The Status Quo governs the relationship among the communities in minute detail: which can use which altars at which times, how many lamps each community is allowed, and so on. Relations are often fractious. Because, under the Status Quo, maintaining or paying for repairs of a structure asserts ownership, each community has an incentive to prevent others from undertaking renovation projects. Needed repairs are often delayed until the situation becomes truly dire—as is the case with the Edicule, which has been held together by scaffolding since the 1940s.As Israeli scholar Raymond Cohen explains in a masterful history, Saving the Holy Sepulchre, it took the communities decades to agree on a plan to fix the church’s dome, and  they reached agreement only when the dome was about to fall down. That project, the last major renovation of the church, was completed about 20 years ago.

Well, relations have improved. The new situation reflects in part what Pope Francis has called the “ecumenism of blood.” The persecution of Mideast Christians does not respect confessional boundaries. When ISIS is slaughtering your people, disputes about lamps do not seem so vital. The Facebook page of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which represents the Armenian Apostolic Church, has pictures of the three happy Christian leaders at the news conference (above). Peace, it’s wonderful. Let’s hope the good feelings last for the upcoming Holy Fire ceremony at Easter, which often occasions conflict. Fistfights are not unknown.

Posted on by

Erie, “China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law”

In May, Cambridge University Press will release “China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law” by Matthew S. Erie (University of Oxford). The publisher’s description follows:

China and Islam examines the intersection of two critical issues of the contemporary world: Islamic revival and an assertive China, questioning the assumption that Islamic law is incompatible with state law. It finds that both Hui and the Party-State invoke, interpret, and make arguments based on Islamic law, a minjian (unofficial) law in China, to pursue their respective visions of ‘the good’. Based on fieldwork in Linxia, ‘China’s Little Mecca’, this study follows Hui clerics, youthful translators on the ‘New Silk Road’, female educators who reform traditional madrasas, and Party cadres as they reconcile Islamic and socialist laws in the course of the everyday. The first study of Islamic law in China and one of the first ethnographic accounts of law in postsocialist China, China and Islam unsettles unidimensional perceptions of extremist Islam and authoritarian China through Hui minjian practices of law.

Posted on by

Jahangir & Abdullatif, “Islamic Law and Muslim Same-Sex Unions”

In May, Lexington Books will release “Islamic Law and Muslim Same-Sex Unions” by Junaid Jahangir (MacEwan University) and Hussein Abdullatif (pediatric endocrinologist, Children’s Hospital of Alabama & University of Alabama Hospital). The publisher’s description follows:

This book is written with the objective of reasonably addressing the need ofLexington-Logo Muslim gays and lesbians for a life which involves intimacy, affection and companionship within the confines of a legal contract. Contemporary conservative Muslim leaders unreasonably promote false marriages with straight spouses, failing which they prescribe the “solution” of permanent celibacy as a “test.” This book delves into an extensive scholarship on the same sources that conservative Muslim leaders draw on—the Qur’an, Hadith and jurisprudence. It is argued that the primary sources of Muslim knowledge addressed sexual acts between the same gender in the context of inhospitality, exploitation, coercion and disease, but not true same-sex unions; past Muslim scholarship is silent on the issue of sexual orientation and Muslim same-sex unions. The arguments of contemporary conservative Muslim leaders are deconstructed and the case for Muslim same-sex unions is made based on jurisprudential principles and thorough arguments from within the Muslim tradition.