Beyond Sacred Space: The Struggle for al- Aqsa and the Islamic Movement in Israel

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Authors Miller, Kristen

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BEYOND SACRED SPACE: THE STRUGGLE FOR AL-AQSA AND THE ISLAMIC MOVEMENT IN ISRAEL

by

Kristen Miller

______Copyright © Kristen Miller 2020

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

SCHOOL OF MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2020

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THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE

As members of the Master’s Committee, we certify that we have read the thesis prepared by Kristen Miller titled Beyond Sacred Space: The Struggle for al-Aqsa and The Islamic Movement in Israel and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Master’s Degree.

Jul 14 2020 ______Date: ______Maha Nassar

Jul 14 2020 ______Scott C Lucas Jul 00 PDT Date: ______Scott Lucas

Jul 15 2020 ______Date: ______Yaseen Noorani

Final approval and acceptance of this thesis is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the thesis to the Graduate College.

I hereby certify that I have read this thesis prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the Master’s requirement.

Jul 14 2020 ______Date: ______Maha Nassar Master’s Thesis Committee Chair School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To begin, I would like to acknowledge and thank the wonderful professors at the University of

Aiona fo oing me hogh he Mae ogam. I old eeciall like o hank D.

Yaseen Noorani and Dr. Scott Lucas for encouraging me in their courses and serving on my thesis committee. The opportunity to discuss my research with them was an invaluable experience. Most of all, I am grateful for Dr. Maha Nassar who provided greatly appreciated advice and support throughout the entire thesis process, without which this thesis would not be possible.

I also would like to express my appreciation for all of my classmates who inspired me to explore new ideas and engage in meaningful discussions. I am especially thankful for Alainna

Liloia who was always a willing sounding board and friend throughout my two years in Tucson.

Finally, I would like to thank Alex Cheung and my parents, Dean and Lee Ann Miller, for their continuous support and proofreading skills.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... 5

INTRODUCTION...... 6

CHAPTER 1: RETHINKING SACRED SPACE ...... 14

Religion and Embodiment ...... 17 Religion and the Production of Space ...... 24 Spatial Politics of Control ...... 34 Secularizing Logics of Space ...... 39 Conclusion ...... 46

CHAPTER 2: A GENEALOGY OF SPATIAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN PALESTINE ...... 50

Palestinian Shrine Landscapes ...... 50 Islamic Transformations under the Late Ottoman Empire ...... 55 The British Mandate, the Status Quo, and the Holy Places ...... 60 Conflict and Transformation in Jerusalem ...... 65 The United Nations and the Creation of the Israeli State ...... 71

CHAPTER 3: AL-AQSA AND THE ISLAMIC MOVEMENT IN ISRAEL ...... 78

A Brief History and Overview of the Islamic Movement in Israel ...... 82 Al-Aqsa is in Danger ...... 85 The Ilamic Moemen Saial Reiance...... 91

CONCLUSION ...... 103

REFERENCES ...... 106

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ABSTRACT

The Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif, also known as al-Aqsa, has been a site of continuous conflict between Palestinian Muslims and Israeli security forces in the past several decades.

Violent flareups and tense relations have made it one of the most analyzed sites to understand conflict at religious space. Many studies have taken either the approach that religions are inherently destined to clash at sites of deep spiritual significance, or that religion has been commandeered by political and national agendas producing the conflict. This thesis looks past these opposing narratives and argues that the conflict produced at al-Haram al-Sharif results from the stae aem o de-spatialize Islam at the site. By this I mean that bodily practices in space are critical to Islam and the cultivation of Islamic piety. I argue that the spatial ordering of space, particularly religious space, is disciplined by the state with the express purpose of reducing its affective capacity and ability to shape the potentialities of subject formation.

Therefore, modernizing and secularizing logics of the state produce religious space as a representation of a belief system or identity that can be semantically and cognitively translated.

The reduction of religious space to a mental space divorced from embodied knowledge and practice reduces the threat of religious space to cultivate subjects with dispositions, ethics, and capacities ha ma no align ih he ae aim. The final chae of hi hei n o analyze the Islamic Movement in Israel. I conceptualize the Islamic Movement as a mode of resistance against the Isaeli ae aial conol, by re-establishing Islamic practices and asserting the primacy of Islamic authority rather than state authority. 6

INTRODUCTION

The Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif is one of the most fraught sites in the world. It is a space saturated with a plurality of truths and an overlay of histories. From all perspectives, the past seems to bear down on the space with great urgency and import. Yet, the space can only be experienced synchronically in the present.

While the space is a location on the map that can be identified and physically circumscribed, it is also a mental and social space a sacred space, a national space, a tourist space. It is a medium and method for knowledge and power. The Temple Mount/al-Haram al-

Sharif is a palimpsest,1 a layered space of interlocking and competing narratives, pathways, and structures. The technical definition of a palimpsest is a writing material (e.g. paper, vellum) that has been written upon more than once. The original text is rubbed off or removed in some way to be replaced with a newer text. Although the underlying text is erased, remnants may exist that can still be deciphered underneath the overlying text.2 At the most basic level, the Temple

Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif is an archaeological palimpsest; traces of a Jewish temple and Roman city remain but Muslim structures have been built on top and a modern Israeli city has been superimposed on the space.

The palimpsest is a useful frame to deconstruct linear histories and narratives of evolution and progress. The palimpsest points to a series of oppressions and displacements that create its layers. Those layers are not independent of each other but become interwoven and constitutive of each other. The current status of the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif cannot be

1 Even the name I am using to denote the site (Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif) is an example of the Palimpsest; it is a layering of multiple meanings and narratives of the site. 2 Saah Dillon, Reincibing De Qince Palime: The Significance of he Palimpsest in Contemporary Liea and Clal Sdie, Textual Practice 19, no. 3 (January 1, 2005), 244. 7 reduced to its Jewish history or its Muslims history or its contemporary political conflict. Many approaches to studying the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif seek to extricate the layers of meaning at the site and decode them. However, I advocate for a palimpsestuous reading, as described by Sarah Dillon, that does not seek to uncover underlying layers by unraveling the palimpsest but looks for the points of relation between the layers and seeks a holistic approach to the complex embodied space of the site today.3

This thesis asks the question why does conflict occur at sites of religious significance, specifically the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif? The Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif is unfortunately one of the most critical flashpoints between Palestinians and Israeli security forces.

Currently, only Muslims have the right to worship at the site, although a limited number of

Jewish visitors and tourists are allowed to visit daily as long as they do not pray or worship. The security arrangements around the site are extensive, delicately balancing the authority of

Jodanian emloed gad and Iaeli olice. Aiel Shaon ii o he ie on Seember 28,

2000 sparked the second intifada, indicating the volatility and centrality of the site. One of the most tragic examples of the potential for violence at the site occurred in October 1990. The

Temple Mount Faithful, an Orthodox Jewish group devoted to attaining Jewish control of the

Temple Mount and rebuilding the Jewish temple, had plans to lay the cornerstone of their envisioned temple on the site. In response, mass riots broke out where Israeli police stormed the site and seventeen Muslim demonstrators were killed.4 Unfortunately, tensions have not eased in the past three decades.

The Islamic Movement in Israel developed with one of its core concerns being the

3 Ibid., 254. 4 Motti Inbari, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 80. 8 defense of al-Haram al-Sharif, also called al-Aqsa Mosque. The Movement, led by Shaykh Raed

Salah and composed of Palestinian citizens of Israel, organized efforts to raise awareness about the occupation of the site and revived the importance of the bond between Muslims and al-Aqsa.

The Movement was banned from Israel in 2015 even though its activities were nearly always non-violent.

I argue that the conflict produced at al-Haram al-Shaif el fom he ae aem to de-spatialize Islam at the site. By this I mean that bodily practices in space are critical to Islam and the cultivation of Islamic piety. Following thinkers like Michel Foucault, I argue that the spatial ordering of space, particularly religious space, is disciplined by the state with the express purpose of reducing its affective capacity and ability to shape the potentialities of subject formation. Therefore, modernizing and secularizing logics of the state produce religious space as a representation of a belief system or identity that can be semantically and cognitively translated.

The reduction of religious space to a mental space divorced from embodied knowledge and practice reduces the threat of religious space to cultivate subjects with dispositions, ethics, and caaciie ha ma no align ih he ae aim. Theefoe, I concealie he Ilamic

Movement as a mode of eiance again he Iaeli ae aial conol, by re-establishing

Islamic practices and asserting the primacy of Islamic authority rather than state authority.

The first chapter of this thesis explores the theoretical underpinning of space, embodiment, and secularism that I will be drawing on to analyze conflict at religious spaces. My conceptualization of religious space does not rely on any distinction between the sacred and profane, but rather, I contend that the physical, social, and mental aspects of religious space are produced and reproduced through embodied practices, like all space. Instead of treating religious space as a representation of faith or identity, this chapter discusses the importance of the 9 embodied production of space and religious knowledge.

The second chapter traces how de-spatializing projects at Islamic space unfolded in the case of Palestine. Beginning with early reforms under the Ottoman Empire until 1967 when

Israel acquired the Old City of Jerusalem, the chapter explores the emerging discourses and

acice a Paleine Ilamic ie. I age ha Islamic space became increasingly subsumed under state control and disciplinary mechanisms. The state became transcendent of religious space and by doing so, controlled the production and reproduction of space. Through this process of spatial control, the state produces docile subjects that are disciplined to cooperate with the aims and institutions of the state rather than submit to the authority of Islam.

The final chapter focuses on the Islamic Movement in Israel as a mode of resistance again Iael attempts at securing spatial control over al-Aqsa Mosque. The Islamic Movement resists the de-spatialization of Islam and reinstates the importance of Islamic practice and physical engagement with al-Aqsa. For the Islamic Movement, defense of al-Aqsa and strengthening the bond between Muslims and the site is not optional, or a political strategy, but crucial to being Muslim.

Before analyzing the conflict at the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif, it is important to establish both Jewish and Islamic historical narratives of the site and provide a general historical timeline. In a sense, I will attempt to unravel the palimpsest to read its layers with the purpose of later finding the points of relation and legacies of those layers in the present.

Jerusalem first became significant to Jews under the reigns of King David and King

Solomon. Solomon built the original temple on the supposed location of the Temple Mount today. That temple was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonians in 586 B.C.E and many people of the

Kingdom of Judah were forced into exile in Babylon. The temple was able to be rebuilt in 516 10

B.C.E. and it is that version of the temple of which the Western Wall remains today and is considered to be archaeologically verifiable by most experts even though it too was destroyed in

70 C.E. by the Romans. Currently, the Western Wall is the dominant site of Jewish prayer and commemoration of the temple.

The significance of the temple and Jerusalem as a whole in Judaism is difficult to capture without specialized knowledge because, as Antti Laato traces in detail, different books of the

Hebrew Bible have different perspectives depending on the time they were written (in exile, post-exile, etc.). For example, Isaiah 6 depicts Zion (in this case a synonym for Jerusalem) as the dwelling-place of Yahweh and the temple as the seat of His throne where He manifests His power.5 But, in Psalm 11 the earthly temple is thought only to be a replica of the greater heavenly one.6 In any case, Zion and the temple hold great significance, especially for eschatological narratives.

After the second temple was destroyed, Jews were forced into diaspora and the city was reconstituted as a pagan city name Aelia Capitolina by the Romans and the province of Judea was renamed Palestina.7 Under the Emperor Constantine, the city was restored as Hierusalem but he had no intentions of rebuilding the temple, and instead built the Church of the Holy

Sepulchre.8 The site of the temple ruins were used as essentially a garbage dump until the

Muslim conquest of the city in 638 C.E. under the second Muslim caliph, Uma.

Accoding o Mlim, Uma iied Jealem himelf and had he fi al-Aqsa

5 Antti Laato, ed., Understanding the Spiritual Meaning of Jerusalem in Three Abrahamic Religions (Leiden; Boston: BRILL, 2019), 8. 6 Ibid., 28. 7 Erik Freas, Nationalism and the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount: The Exclusivity of Holiness, Palgrave Pivot (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 17. 8 Milka Levy-Rbin, Wh Wa he Dome of he Rock Bil? A New Perspective on a Long-Diced Qeion, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. University of London; Cambridge 80, no. 3 (October 2017), 445. 11

Mosque structure built, which was relatively simple and small.9 The Dome of the Rock was built several decades lae b Abd al-Malik, the fifth caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate. Some scholars have argued that the construction of the Dome of the Rock was an attempt to sanctify the Temple

Mount and respect the legacy of the Jewish temple. For example, many of the ritual Abd al-

Malik instituted resemble Jewish temple rituals, although they were practiced only briefly.10

Despite interesting overlaps between Jewish and Muslim narratives, the main reason

Muslims revere the site is the Prophet Mhammad Nigh Jone o he site and his ascension to heaven, known as al-I a al-Mij. Thi een i biefl aeed o in he Qan iho many details but is significantly expanded upon in hadith literature. Muhammad was transported from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night on a winged creature, the B, and then accompanied to heaven by the angel Gabriel where he met many of the Prophets and ultimately,

God. Muhammad is said to have tied the B to the Western Wall, granting that site significance in Islam as well.

Furthermore, Jerusalem was the first direction of Muslim prayer, or the first qibla, before i a changed o Mecca. A Hadih aibed o he Pohe Mhammad a, The addle should be tied only to three mosques: the sacred mosque (of Mecca) this mosque of mine (al-

Madina), and al-Aqsa Mosque.11 Thi Hadith has spawned a long legacy that considers al-Aqsa to be the third holiest place in Islam.

Ultimately, Islamic rule was maintained over al-Haram al-Sharif for nearly 1,400 years with only brief interruptions during the crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.12 It was

9 Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths by Karen Armstrong, Reprint edition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), 231. 10 Milka Levy-Rbin, Wh Wa he Dome of he Rock Bil?, 454. 11 Yitzhak Reiter, Jerusalem and Its Role in Islamic Solidarity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 16. 12 Caig Lakin and Michael Dme, In Defene of Al-Aqsa: The Islamic Movement inside Israel and the Battle fo Jealem, Middle East Journal 66, no. 1 (2012), 34. 12 not until World War I and the British conquest in 1917 that Jerusalem fell out of Muslim hands.

It then briefly came under Jordanian Muslim control in 1948 until 1967, when it was effectively annexed by Israel, as it remains to this day.

Under Islamic rule of the city, Jews mainly traveled to the Mount of Olives outside of the

Old City to commemorate the destruction of the temple. It was not until the sixteenth century under Ottoman Sultan Suleiman that Jews began to visit the Western Wall in significant numbers.13 Then in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of

Jews immigrated to Palestine. Jewish immigrants developed a growing affinity to the Western

Wall and would make repeated attempts to purchase the area, first from the Ottomans, and later from the British.14 In 1914 Nahum Goldman explained:

The great wall [Western Wall] all of a sudden became for me the symbol of our eternal eienceand he e stones appeared to me to announce the promise of our eternal future: like them, which none is able to remove, which endured despite destructions hogh he cenie, o oo ill hei eole ei o all eeni As I stand sunk in these thoughts, sensing an inward calm, my soul once again filled with consolation and hope and faith, there suddenly rings out behind me the offensive, grunting cry of a donkey. In great shock, I turn around to see an Arab driving two donkeys through the alleyway. In the first moment I was seized with such rage that I could have struck this stupid, hulking fellow dead to the ground.15

Although Jewish interest in the Western Wall has existed for centuries, Zionist attention towards the Temple Mount drastically increased at the end of the twentieth century and persists through the present day. Since 1967, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel has officially forbidden Jews from visiting the Temple Mount on the grounds of halacha (Jewish law) pertaining to issues of purity and sanctity. Most Israeli Jews accepted these religious arguments and adhered to the Chief

13 Rena Baaka, Thaa Al -Buraq in British Mandate Palestine: Jerusalem, Mass Mobilization and Colonial Politics, 19281930 (PoQest Dissertations Publishing, 2007), 107. 14 Ibid., 127-129. 15 Gudrun Krämer, A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel, trans. Graham Harman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 226-227. 13

Rabbinates decision. Only a few Jews visited the temple mount in the 70s and 80s and were considered fringe extremists by most Israelis. Various groups cropped up in the late 80s petitioning to allow Jews to enter the Temple Mount, but their support base remained limited until the late 90s. Soon ultra-Orthodox groups and Zionist-nationalist groups began espousing visits to the Temple Mount with competing interpretations of halacha than the Chief

Rabbinate.16 In 1996, The Committee of Yesha Rabbis, a group of Orthodox rabbis, ruled that

Jews were permitted and encouraged to enter the Temple Mount.17 Interestingly, this was the

ame ea of he Nohen Banch of he Ilamic Moemens split, the ascendancy of Salah, and increased Islamic rhetoric surrounding the site.

Motti Inbari has conducted an extensive study into the shifting Jewish relationships to the

Temple Mount question and the increasing prominence of religious, as opposed to secular,

Zionism. Various movements to build a third temple at the site as part of apocalyptic messianism are the culmination of increased Jewish attention to the Temple Mount. While these movements are certainly not the majority of Israeli society or necessarily the majority of Orthodox Jews, these movements do have a prominent voice and cannot be overlooked when analyzing the current political landscape concerning the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif. Unfortunately, a detailed discussion of Jewish motivations and relations to the Temple Mount is outside of the scope of this thesis but, it is always important to keep in mind these evolving Jewish trends as they relate to Israeli policies and Islamic responses.

16 Saina Chen, Viiing he Temle MonTaboo o Miah, Modern Judaism 34, no. 1 (February 1, 2014), 29. 17 Motti Inbari, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 1. 14

CHAPTER 1: RETHINKING SACRED SPACE

Lily Kong and Orlando Wood have rightfully identified two strains of scholarship in thinking abo eligio o aced ie. The fi he call inide o banial hich conide

acedne o be an ininic ali of aced ace, i i an embedded and wholly integrated quali, and canno be changed o emoed.18 This approach was most prominently theorized by

Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade. Otto explains that the sacred is irrational. By this he does not intend to offend religion or identify religion as a fallacy but rather, he understands religion to transcend rational comprehension on a higher plane. Otto coins several terms to elaborate his ideas namely numinosen, a diine oe o omehing holl ohe, hich ha he oe o induce mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinosum, awe-inspiring and fascinating mystery.19 Mircea Eliade directly cites Otto as his main source of influence and expands upon the concept of the sacred:

Man becomes aware of the sacred because it itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane. To designate the act of manifestation of the sacred, we have proposed the term hierophony. It is a fitting term, because it does not imply further; it expresses no more than is implicit in its etymological content, i.e., that something sacred shows itself to us.' It could be said that the history of religions from the most primitive to the most highly developed is constituted by a great number of hierophanies, by manifestations of sacred realities. From the most elementary hierophany e.g., manifestation of the sacred in some ordinary object, a stone or a tree to the supreme hierophany (which, for a Christian, is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ) there is no solution of continuity. In each case we are confronted by the same mysterious act the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural "profane" world.20

18 Lily Kong and Orlando Woods, Religion and Space: Competition, Conflict and Violence in the Contemporary World, 1 edition (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 5. 19 Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige (Philipps-Universität Marburg, 1917). 20 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 11. 15

For Eliade, the sacred and the profane are defined in opposition to each other and both categories exist as transhistorical concepts across all religions.

A conemoa eamle of hi aoach i Ron Hane War on Sacred Grounds.21

This work has been widely cited by both scholars incorporating its analysis and also others critiquing its premises. Hassner definitively argues that many sacred sites cannot be shared and coexistence can never exist. For Hassner the centrality and prominence of the site is critical in determining whether parties are willing to compromise. Other studies have supported the theory that sharing of sites is more likely to take place on the periphery of society rather than in urban cene. One of Hane mo diced idea ha been ha aced ie ae indiiible and the nature of their indivisibility is what leads to conflict.

Anohe ominen ok ha o hi aoach i Robe Haden Antagonistic

Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces.22 Hayden argues that different religious group can never truly be tolerant of each other because their core values are incommensurable. However, unlike Hassner, Hayden is relatively optimistic about the possibility of ha he em comeiie haing o anagoniic oleance. He age ha hen there is a power imbalance, there is actually a possibility for more peaceful relations. If the dominant group does not feel threatened by the presence of an equally-matched competitor, then they are likely to allow the weaker group to worship without hostility.

The second strain of scholarship identified by Kong and Wood critiques the first aoach a eeniali and inead ake an oide o iaional aoach. Thi i a ocial constructivist approach, which claims that meaning is projected onto space and there is no

21 Ron E. Hassner, War on Sacred Grounds, Reprint edition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013). 22 Robert Hayden, Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces, 1 edition (London; New York: Routledge, 2016). 16 inherently sacred space. Claude Lévi-Sa ha aged ha he aced i a ale of indeterminate signification, in itself empty of meaning and therefore susceptible to the reception of any meaning whatsoever.23 Chidee and Linenthal in 1995 argued along the same lines that nothing is inherently sacred and thus, sacred space is a site of conflict between the

eneeneial, ocial, oliical, and ohe ofane foce ha conie he concion of sacred space.24

Applying this approach to the context of Israel and Palestine, Marshall Breger, Leonard

Hammer, and Yitzhak Reiter have contended that holy places are coopted into nationalist discourses and recruited for political ends. For example, an ethnic group might stake a claim to a holy place in order to enhance their claim to a larger political territory. These scholars have discussed the imminent need to deconstruct nationalist claims and perceptions of difference.

Thus, they defer to secular state authority and legal protections as a durable solution. They also argue that international involvement to induce legal protections is warranted.25 Reiter argues that if ruling governments implement conflict resolution strategies and impose equitable division of space (through both military and administrative means), then religious groups involved will come to terms with the new, more peaceable reality eventually.26 Many other thinkers have echoed the need for a strong secular state, observing that when a state remains neutral and actively mediates the conflict, there is a higher probability for coexistence than when a state promotes the needs of one group over another.

I argue that neither of the two approaches identified by Kong and Woods is sufficient for

23 Cied in Lil Kong, Maing Ne Geogahie of Religion: Poliic and Poeic in Modeni, Progress in Human Geography, July 1, 2016, 213 24 Cited in Ibid., 213. 25 Marshall J. Breger, Yitzhak Reiter, and Leonard Hammer, eds., Sacred Space in Israel and Palestine: Religion and Politics, 1 edition (London; New York: Routledge, 2012). 26 Yitzhak Reiter, Contested Holy Places in IsraelPalestine: Sharing and Conflict Resolution, 1 edition (Routledge, 2017). 17 a holistic analysis of religious space. In this chapter, I explore the production of space and its inextricable link to the body. My conceptualization of religious space does not rely on any distinction between the sacred and profane, but rather, I contend that the physical, social, and mental aspects of religious space are produced and reproduced through embodied practices, like all space. Instead of focusing on conflict at religious sites as competing, incommensurable meanings or belief systems about that space, I argue that there is an underlying spatial politics of control over the body. The ability for religious space to instill dispositions in its subjects and the potential for those subjects then, to submit to an authority external to the state, presents an immense threat to state authority. Thus, the state subsumes religious space under disciplinary mechanisms. The modernizing and secularizing logic of the state seeks to control bodily knowledge of its population and therefore, attempts to strip religious space of its affective capacities.

Religion and Embodiment

Much has been written about the body in recent anthropological and sociological scholarship.

The centuries old Cartesian separation of mind and body has been roundly challenged, bringing the importance of the physical body back into view as essential for understanding society and subject formation. In the following section, I present a very brief sketch of the relevant and formative components of this scholarship in order to understand how the body is intrinsically part of Muslim worship and practice.

An early contributor to the study of bodily practice is Pierre Bourdieu, particularly in his work, The Logic of Practice. For Bourdieu, human behavior or practice results from the habitus, a concept which is elucidated by Loïc Wacquant:

Habitus is a mediating construct that helps us revoke the common-sense duality 18

beeen he indiidal and he ocial b caing he inenaliaion of eenali and he eenaliaion of inenali, ha i, he a in hich the sociosymbolic structures of society become deposited inside persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and patterned propensities to think, feel and act in determinate ways, which in turn guide them in their creative responses to the constraints and solicitations of their extant milieu.27

The body is crucial for Bodie heo of habi becae he bod ac a a liing memo

ad ha he habi i ecoded on and h, hen childen lean abo he old, i i leaned through the body.28 Bodily movements translate into how one thinks and feels. For example, he argues that difference in gestures, walking, posture, and even speech between men and women is a result of the habitus and informs how men and women think.29 Bourdieu has been criticized for claiming that embodied practice is merely an index of social status or habitus. He has also been critiqued for neglecting the ability of embodied practice to cultivate certain capacities and dispositions.30

Michel Foucault, on the other hand, explicitly explores both of those identified shortcomings in the conce of echnologie of he elf, hich emi indiidal o effec b their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a ceain ae of haine, i, idom, efecion, o immoali.31 Foucault specifically explores asceticism in early Christianity to understand how monks undertook practices that renounced the self in order to cultivate complete obedience. For Foucault, it is through these

27 Loc Wacan, A Concie Genealog and Anaom of Habi, The Sociological Review 64, no. 1 (February 2016), 65. 28 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, 1 edition (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1992), 68. 29 Ibid., 70. 30 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Reissue edition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2011), 26. 31 Michel Focal, Technologie of he Self, in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, 1 edition (New York: The New Press, 1998), 225. 19

echnologie of he elf efomed on he bod ha one i able o anfom heelf ino he subject of a particular ethical discourse.

Michael Jackson, writing more recently on knowledge of the body, explains that the body i no edcible o cogniie and emanic oeaion. Bodil knoledge canno neceail be explained intellectually but constitutes its own form knowledge.32 Kirsten Simonsen explores this concept further, drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

I shall see the body as part of a pre-discursive social realm based on perception, practice and bodily motility (Merleau-Ponty 1962). Lived experience, then, is located in the mid-oin beeen mind and bod, o beeen bjec and objec an intersubjective space of perception and the body. In that, perception is based on practice; on looking, listening and touching etc. as acquired, cultural, habit-based forms of conduct. It is an active process relating to our ongoing projects and practices, and it concerns the whole sensing body. This means that the human body takes up a dual role as both the vehicle of perception and the object perceived, as a body-in-the-world a lived body which kno ielf b ie of i acie elaion o hi old. Thi elaion migh be taken even further, Merleau-Ponty (1968) suggests, by meshing the body (subject- object) into the perceptible world. His term for this extended conception of the body is flesh; a generative body of being and becoming that touches, sees, hears, smells and ae boh ielf and ohe fleh and become aae of ielf in he oce. The fleh of the body belongs to the flesh of the world, where the flesh of the world refers to the perceptibility that characterizes all worldly reality. In this way Merleau-Ponty is blurring the body-world boundary.33

In turning to think about religion and embodied practice, ritual emerges as a central concept in much of the scholarship. Notably, Talal Asad explains that religious ritual, like other embodied practices and technologies of the self, is a means to teach the body capacities, skills, and virtues.

Ritual has a practical function of developing aptitudes in its practitioners and is not merely a symbolic performance. In fact, bodily practices are a precondition for a variety of other religious

32 Michael Jackson, Lifeworlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology (University of Chicago Press, 2012), 55. 33 Kien Simonen, Enconeing O/Ohe Bodie: Pacice, Emoion and Ehic, in Taking-Place: Non- Representational Theories and Geography, ed. Ben Anderson and Paul Harrison (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010), 223. 20 experiences, including belief.34

Despite this conceptualization that I have presented, there is a long scholarly legacy that discue eligion a if i i a belief em onl. Talal Aad ie, moden anhopologists writing on ritual have tended to see it as the domain of the symbolic in contrast to the inmenal.35 If ritual is purely symbolic (rather than a technology of the self or an enactment of bodily knowledge) then it is neutered of constituting power and forming subjects.

Aad e he a amon of lieae abo ial ha denie ial acical ale except to evoke emotion in its practitioners. Although I ill no eodce Aad e, I hink it is important to list some of the formative anthropologists analyzed by Asad who subscribe to such an approach: Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, E. E. Evans-

Pritchard, Clifford Geertz, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, among others. For many of these scholars, ritual commnicae a meage ha can be decoded o ead. One a ha Aad e hi understanding apart from these scholars is that he is skeptical that ritual encodes a special meaning and can be the object of a general theory.36 Instead, ritual is a form of bodily practice like any other, that has the potential not only to evoke emotions but restructure subjectivities, train particular emotion, and form a new basis on which choices are to be made.37

In order to demonstrate his understanding of ritual and bodily practice, Asad traces the reasoning of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, an influential Muslim theologian, jurist, and mystic.

According to Ghazali, the soul is only a set of potentialities at birth that are realized gradually with the help of others. The ultimate purpose of all exercises, such as prayer and fasting, is

34 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 72-77. 35 Ibid., 126. 36 Ibid., 134. 37 Ibid., 135. 21 orientation towards God. Even though many actions in Islam are mandatory (jib) or forbidden

(am) and others are approved (maabb) or disapproved (makh), Ghazali concerns himself even with the most banal everyday actions like proper eating manners and other practices that are supposedly mb, or freely permitted or indifferent. The reason Ghazali would take an interest in mb activities is because Ghazali understands that all practices shape desires and dispositions and therefore, can become a means to orient toward God or to become distanced from God. Furthermore, for Ghazali, a reprehensible practice cannot become acceptable because the performer had a benign intention. It is the practice itself that cultivates vice or virtue, not prior cognitive activity. Thus, Ghazali contends that it is through certain exercises of the body that the potentialities of the soul can be realized and oriented towards God.38

Saba Mahmood ok, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, provides an excellent ethnography of the body and subject formation as part of the omen mosque movement in Egypt. In studying women of this movement who choose to wear the veil,

Mahmood concludes that for them, the veil is not a symbol of an identity nor a habit out of local custom and history. Instead, the veil is the bodily means through which Muslim women develop the virtue of modesty. She elain, The da, heefoe, an inelcable elaionhi beeen the norm (modesty) and the bodily form it takes (the veil) such that the veiled body becomes the necessary means through which he ie of mode i boh ceaed and eeed.39 Thus, it is through the practice of veiling, among many other crucial Islamic practices, that the self is endoed ih ceain caaciie ha oide he bance fom hich he old i aced upon.40 Sch an ndeanding eflec no onl Ghaali desire to orient towards God but also

38 Talal Asad, Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 69-70. 39 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 23. 40 Ibid., 26. 22 the creation of the self as an Islamic subject, in which Islam informs everyday behavior and perspectives.

In a similar vein, Charles Hirschkind in The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and

Islamic Counterpublics studies the prevalence of Islamic cassette sermons in contemporary

Egyptian society. Rather than focusing on clothing or the bodily activity, as Mahmood does,

Hirschkind explores the effects of sound and sensory experience on bodily knowledge. He elain, Beyond the cognitive task of learning rules and procedures, listeners hone those affective-oliional dioiion, a of he hea, ha boh ane he hea o God od and incline the body towad moal condc.41 Although the content of cassette sermons is significant, the efficacy and purpose of the sermons goes beyond communication of thoughts through words from the speaker to the listener, but instead, is realized through a collective sensory performance which molds affects and desires. It is equally important how a sonorous experience is created as much as what is being conveyed.

Mahmood and Hichkind die oide o alable eamle of he bod a a central means for realizing Islamic experiences and forming the self as an Islamic subject. Blaise

Pascal theorized a similar relationship between habits of the body and the cultivation of religious piety:

For we must make no mistake about ourselves: we are as much automaton as mind. As a result, demonstration is not the only instrument for convincing us. How few things can be demonstrated! Proofs only convince the mind; habit provides the strongest proofs and those that are most believed. It inclines the automaton, which leads the mind unconsciously along with it. Who ever proved that it will dawn tomorrow, and that we shall die? And what is more widely believed? It is, then, habit that convinces us and makes so many Christians. It is habit that makes Turks, heathen, trades, soldiers, etc. . . . In short, we must resort to habit once the mind has seen where the truth lies, in order to steep and stain ourselves in that belief which constantly eludes us, for it is too much

41 Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 9. 23

trouble to have the proofs always present before us. We must acquire an easier belief, which is that of habit. With no violence, art or argument it makes us believe things, and so inclines all our faculties to this belief that our soul falls naturally into it.42

For Pascal, the decision to believe is only the first step, after which one must develop habits, both bodily and mental, that over time ingrain that belief and train the soul beyond the capacity of a single abstracted intellectual decision. For Pascal, those habits in a Christian context include kneeling and prayer but just as easily could include donning certain attire or listing to certain affective sounds as Mahmood and Hirschkind highlight in an Islamic context.

Ye, Bodie ighfll challenge Pacal logic in aging ha he iniial olna decision to believe cannot be the cause of practice or developing habits. Bourdieu strongly argues against existentialist subjectivism which allows any antecedent-less action on the part of a rational actor. Instead, he argues that Pascal falls into a paradox in which Pascal cannot identify the cause of the initial decision to believe and thus, enters into a regressive loop of the decision to decide.43 Likewise, Talal Asad argues against the necessity of belief as a precondition for action. He contends that it is a modern idea that one cannot know how to live religiously without being able to articulate that knowledge.44 In other words, religion becomes instilled in bodily knowledge rather than existing as an a priori cognitive belief. Theology rarely has the affective capacity alone to induce dispositions and inspire bodily techniques. Per Asad, belief is the conclusion of a knowledge process. Similarly, Saba Mahmood argues that the women of the mosque movement do not implement corporeal techniques as a result of an individuated concione. On he cona, bod acices are the terrain upon which the subject comes to be maed.45

42 Cited in Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 48-49. 43 Ibid., 49. 44 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 36. 45 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 119. 24

If belief is not a precondition of religious practice and experience, then how does one come o cae fo he elf? Accoding o Ghaali, he self cannot realize itself on its own, but rather, the self is formed through time and depends on others for completing its potentialities.

Augustine theorized a similar relationship in which there is no essential self that can guide itself, but only potentialities that can be realized through or against a living tradition. The mind does not move spontaneously to religious truth. Instead, the body is disciplined through systems of power working through laws, institutions, and sanctions.46

In understanding bodily practices and knowledge, it is simultaneously essential to consider the space in which the body is situated. In the following section, I turn to scholarship on the production of space and its relationship to religious experience and the body.

Religion and the Production of Space

Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space47 and other works reconceptualized the study of space. He critiques the prevailing perspectives of his day which either consider space to be a mae of geome o o be a menal hing. The geomeical eecive claims that space is an absolute, empty area. This claim does not account for how space is socially and mentally conceived or how practices operate in space. On the opposite end of the spectrum are theories that propose tha ace i el a menal hing. Thi line of hinking odce conle mental spaces, including dream spaces, ideological spaces, literary spaces, and so on. Yet,

Lefebe idenifie a ga beeen menal conceion of ace and eal ace.

Therefore, Lefebvre seeks a unitary theory of space that brings in the physical, mental,

46 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 35. 47 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, 1 edition (Malden, Mass.: Wiley- Blackwell, 1992). 25 and social aspects of space. The status of space cannot be reduced to a message so that inhabiting space is reduced to reading that message. Instead, any theory of space must account for logico- epistemological space, the space of social practice, and the space occupied by sensory phenomena on top of which imagination, projects, and symbols are superimposed. Crucial to understanding space is the notion that space is not a passive container for objects and relations but space is infused with knowledge and power.

A he name of Lefebe ok gge, ace i odced, o in other words social space is a social product. Space is not created in a moment from any single idea rather the creation of space is a process. Space is produced and reproduced and scholars should be attuned to the transitions between the modes of production of space to reveal how space is transformed.

The notion of the social production of space often overlaps with a social constructivist

eecie of ace. Seha Lo elain, A ocial concion conceal fame ame ha space and place are abstractions not a set of physical properties made up of shared understandings and social structural differences such as race, class and gender. Thus they cannot be ed a lace-as-mae o elain he old.48 As such, this approach seeks to challenge many of the mental assumptions embedded in space to deconstruct oppressive systems of race, class, and gender. Constructivism is clearly a useful analytical frame for understanding that naional bondaie and eio make ae ocial conc ahe han nieal o eal designations of land and space. The social construction of space is a lens often used in the study of conflict and contestation because it exposes the various political and ideological meanings ascribed to space and how those constructs of space interact to produce conflict.

However, this form of constructivist approach to understanding conflict over space, I

48 Setha Low, Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place, 1 edition (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 68. 26 age, diffe ih Lefebe idea of he odcion of ace. An aoach ha look a competing meanings of space assumes space to be an empty vessel which ideologies can be projected onto. This understanding of space is especially common in scholarship on conflict over sacred or religious sites. As I mentioned in the introduction, Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that the

aced i a ale of indeeminae ignificaion, in ielf em of meaning and heefoe susceptible to the reception of any meaning whaoee.49 Chidester and Linenthal in 1995 argued along the same lines that nothing is inherently sacred and thus, sacred space is a site of conflic beeen he eneeneial, ocial, oliical, and ohe ofane foces that constitute the construcion of aced ace.50 I will argue later that this line of thinking reflects a specific project that reduces the role of religion in space. Putting that argument aside for now, the claim that sacred space is empty of any inherent meaning has the clear potential to be objectionable to a religious practitioner at the space.

As explained by Lefebvre, a production of space approach, on the contrary, challenges claims to an inherently empty space:

The pre-existence of an objective, neutral and empty space is simply taken as read, and only the space of speech (and writing) is dealt with as something that must be created. These assumptions obviously cannot become the basis for an adequate account of social/spatial practice. They apply only to an imaginary society, an ideal type or model of society which this ideology dreams up and then arbitrarily identifies with all 'real' societies.51

Scholars of non-representational theory have likewise critiqued a constructivist approach in that it draws too heavily upon representation and symbolic meaning. The problem with this approach i ha acion i no in he bodie, habi, acice of he indiidal o he collecie (and een

49 Cied in Lil Kong, Maing Ne Geogahie of Religion, 213 50 Cited in Ibid., 213. 51 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 36. 27 less in their surroundings), but rather in the ideas and meanings cited by and projected onto those bodie, habi, acice and behaio (and onding).52 Therefore, it is not that religious space has no inherent meaning and thus, can be suffused with any political or social meaning.

Rather, it is important to study how the meaning of a religious space is impressed upon religious practitioners, how that meaning comes to be authoritative, how that meaning is reproduced and transmitted through generations, and how the meaning or the mode of production of the meaning responds to social change over time - all of which involve physical, social, and mental aspects of space, and most importantly, involve the body and practices.

The odcion of ace and he bod ae ineicabl linked. Lefebe ie, fo i i by means of the body that space is perceived, lived, - and odced.53 At the most basic level, the body orients the self in space. For example, the symmetry of our bodies produces our understanding of left and right, one of the most fundamental aspects of space. At a larger scale,

Bourdieu writes about the house as a space of hierarchies and divisions, which inform bodily experiences. In his field research on Kabyle men and women, he found that the house was a space that established gendered divisions, which infomed each gende bodil acion and hei conceptions of self. This gendered space was not created in a moment but continuously reproduced as a space for children to observe, mimic, and ultimately embody a gendered identity and role within the house.

Michel De Certeau has explored the relationship between walking as a basic bodily practice and space. He explains that the spatial order presents possibilities and interdictions for movement of the body. Sidewalks present opportunities for a pedestrian to walk unimpeded

52 Ben Anderson and Paul Harrison, eds., Taking-Place: Non-Representational Theories and Geography (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010), 5. 53 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 162. 28

heea all limi he alke ange of moion. In hi a, ace infom bodil acice.

Simultaneously, walking is a process of appropriation of space by the pedestrian. A pedestrian may subvert walking conventions or improvise a path.54 Therefore, the act of walking contributes to the process of producing the space physically, socially, and mentally.

For example, an experienced hiker may repeatedly tread a path through the woods and create a physical trail cleared of vegetation. Her act of walking on that particular path may set a precedent for more hikers, creating a social activity that takes place in the space of the woods.

Furthermore, that path may become associated and embedded within the larger mental space of hiking trails, which are conceived of as spaces of nature, tranquility, exercise, etc. Thus, bodily movement and practice produce space and it is only through the body that one can understand and orient themselves in that space. At the same time, the space of a hiking trail can inform bodily knowledge. Choosing to go on a hike can be understood as a technology of the self. The bodily practice of hiking may train the self to acquire an appreciation for nature and solitude or possibly to develop confidence and determination. However, hiking is not a culturally universal activity in which people across time and place would recreationally forge through the woods to acquire such traits. In the United States, hiking is a popular activity because there are physical trails, because there are social spaces like hiking clubs, and because there are mental associations with the space of the woods as tranquil and beautiful rather than dangerous and dirty. Therefore, just as the body is instrumental in producing space, space produces the range of potentialities for bodily practices and thus, for bodily knowledge and subject formation. This dialectical relationship between the body and space holds true in religious contexts, particularly in the case of Islam.

54 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (University of California Press, 1984), 98. 29

Before discussing the relationship between Islam and space, I digress to discuss Shahab

Ahmed concealiaion of Ilam in hi ok, What is Islam?

Islam is a shared language by and in which people express themselves so as to communicate meaningfully in all their variety. And, by fact of being idiom that is, by fact of being a means by and a language in which people give meaning to experience in the self, and communicate that meaning to each other Islam stakes an experiential claim o being moe han idiom: i become, in a ene, he eali of eeience ielf.Ilam i in ohe od, boh mean and meaning. Ilam i h loc ated in the nexus, the relationship, the field and the process of engagement with and between [1] the source of meaning, [2] the mode of production of meaning from the sources, and [3] the end-odc of meaning.Meaning/Ilam, o meaning made in em of Islam, or meaning as Islam, is thus itself a means by which to constitute things and by which to relate things to each other; Islam is points, terms and frames of reference; it is the components of a complex of relationality by which an actor or subject orients and constitutes his or her Self in and by an environment full of other things; it is a means of ordering the world by which the Self is also ordered.55

In order to fully understand the quote above, Ahmed introduces the concepts of Pre-Text and

Text. He argues that the act of revelation to Muhammad and the resulting text of revelation does not encompass the full reality of revelation. The revelatory premise is such that there is an unseen reality or truth that lies beyond the text of revelation. The text attests to this reality and as such, its existence is agreed upon by nearly all Muslims. A practical example of this unknowable reality beyond the scoe of he e i he iming of he Da of Jdgmen. The Qan affim that the time is known only to God and was not revealed to Muhammad nor discernable by humans through other means.56 Yet, Ahmed argues that this unseen reality, which he calls Pre-

Text, is not limited to certain details but is ontologically prior to and alethically larger than the

55 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton University Press, 2015), 323-325. Ahmed ndeanding of Ilam ege on a noion of Ilam a a oal ocial fac o in ohe od, Islam as everything or Islam as equivalent to all-encompassing culture, which has become popular in recent scholarly discourse. Yet, Ahmed is careful to avoid this totalizing discourse. He argues that a totalizing discourse fails to account for the ways in which diverse aspects of Islam relate to each other coherently as still all Islam or communicate with mutual meaning. Similarly, Islam as a total social fact fails to understand how the Islamic is produced and the agency of Muslims See pages 242 and 257. 56 See Sa al-Ni ee 42-45. 30 text from Muhammadan Revelation. While all Muslims agree on the existence of such an unseen reality or truth, they differ in their answers to the following qeion: can Th-in-the Pre-Text be accessed and known without the Text, or via the Text, or only in he Te?57

Ahmed additionally explores the concept of Con-Te, hich he define a he bod of meaning that is the product and outcome of previous hemeneical engagemen ih eelaion o he enie accmlaed leicon of mean and meaning of Islam that has been historically geneaed.58 Con-Text is a source of revelation itself with which Muslims engage, not merely a biproduct of revelation. Con-Text, for many Muslims, is a means of accessing or getting closer to the unseen reality of the Pre-Te. Ahmed definiion of Ilam i hen, meaning-making for the self in terms of hermeneutical engagement with revelation to Muhammad as Pre-Text, Text, and

Con-Te.59

Following this conceptualization of Islam from Ahmed, Islamic space produces and is a product of Islamic Con-Te. Theeb, Mlim engagemen ih Ilamic ace i an engagement with Islamic revelation. Islamic space serves as a source of meaning, which informs the possibilities of the mode of production through the body of Islamic meaning, which ultimately creates the Muslim subject. At the same time, Muslim bodily practice in space is the mode of production of an Islamic space. Islamic space as a crucial component of Con-Text shapes the potentialities of Islamic discipline and technologies of the self and ultimately,

Mlim cloene o God. A Ahmed ihil a, Mlim make Ilam j a Ilam make

Mlim,60 which correlates to the idea that Muslims make Islamic space just as Islamic space makes Muslims.

57 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 347. 58 Ibid., 356-357. 59 Ibid., 405. 60 Ibid., 329. 31

Najam Haider conducted an inighfl d on Shii conceion and aangemen of space in eighth century Kufa (present day Iraq), which reveals processes of the production of

Islamic space and Muslim subjects. The eighth century was a time when sectarian differences and identity markers were still in formation, especially in Kufa where these emerging groups lived side-by-ide. Haide elain ha Imami Shia deignaed moe in the city into two go: bleed and acced.61 These designations were based on the historical significance of the mosques and their acceptance of Imami ritual practices as opposed to enforcement of only

Zaydi or Sunni practices. For example, one of he deignaed bleed moe a conideed to be a location were Ali led fajr prayer.62 At one of the most significant mosques in the city,

Masjid al-Sahla, a single two-ccle ae cold oedl add o ea o a lican life.63

Mosques a hi ime ee cloel linked o aicla ial acice. Imami Shia claimed that the n prayer was essential, even though it was disapproved of by other sects.

Rituals such as this overwhelmingly defined sectarian affiliation rather than differing theological beliefs. For example, Sulayman al-Amah a claified b hi conemoaie as Sunni based on hi obeed ial acice een hogh he affimed Ali ineceion on he Da of

Jdgmen (icall a Shii belief). One Imami ji Shaik b. Abd Allah a aked, Wha i your opinion regarding a man who rejects the n but foge and efom i? He laghed and eonded, Thi man foge and heeb hi he mak!64 Although this exchange may have been lighthearted, it points to a deeper concern with practice and discipline, which

61 Najam Haider, The Origin of he Sha: Ideni, Rial, and Saced Sace in Eighh-Cen Kfa (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 236. 62 Ibid, 237. 63 Ibid., 239. 64 Ibid., 235. 32 supersedes the importance of prior cognitive belief in a particular theology. Such concerns were deeply tied to space because Muslims preferred to pray in mosques that looked favorably upon their preferred form of ritual, i.e. reciting the n or not. Therefore, in determining whether a mosque a bleed o acced mch conideaion en ino ial, oibl moe o han particular beliefs.

Thi cae d demonae ha bodil ial odced Shii o Snni deignaed spaces and developed new modes of Islamic Con-Text in Kufa. At the same time, these

bleed o acced ace ceaed ne mode of ideni and diffeence among Mlim and shaped the potentialities of experience depending on sectarian affiliation.

Although it is perhaps easiest to understand Islamic space as particular places or sites, such as mosques or monuments, Islamic space is not necessarily geographically bound.

Rening o Hichkind d of caee emon, i i eming o age ha hee new modes of Islamic experience are de-spatializing since they are de-localizing - they do not depend on moe o an aicla locale. Hoee, Hichkind a choice of he em ondcae in the title of his work suggests that through acoustics, cassette sermons produce new spaces of

Islamic experience which overlay the bustling streets of Cairo. For example, cassette sermons have the potential to transform a regular taxi into a space of Islamic piety. Thus, the bodily knowledge and dispositions acquired through the sensory experience of cassette sermons is just as dependent on a particular spatial order - that is physical, social, and mental space - as activity at a particular place like a mosque.

Unfortunately, many studies of space and embodiment treat religion as a distinct domain of life that acts as an overlay of mental space in the form of religious belief. Although I have drawn on the work of Lefebvre as an instrumental source to understand the production of space, 33 man of Lefebe concealizations reduce religion to a legacy of historical symbols that continue to hold mental sway over religious practitioners.

Daing heail on Lefebe, Kim Kno The Location of Religion explicitly seeks to reflect on space as a medium for religion, develop a spatial strategy for examining religion, and consider the spaces produced by religion. In her introduction, Knott expounds upon the link between the body and social space and argues that one cannot understand space without attending to the role of the bod and acice. Fo all of Kno omiing idea, as she delves further into her writing, the importance of bodily knowledge recedes. For example, she cites

Veikko Anonen ho claim, eole aiciae in aced-making aciiieaccoding o paradigms given by the belief systems to which they are committed, whether they be religious, naional o ideological.65 In this sense, sacred-making activity relies on previous cognitive belief rather than disciplining the body or forms of pre-cognitive bodily knowledge.

Furthermore, Knott studies how religion can act as a mode of resistance, opposition, and alterity against dominant society - an important avenue of study. Yet, in doing so, she argues that religion forms spaces of representation (a reference o one dimenion of Lefebe iad) and

eiance. Thee ace hae he caaci o be eeaedl eied b individuals and groups

eeking o lie mbolicall in ooiion o ha hich i nomaie and dominan.66 My question is why Knott specifies that they live symbolically in opposition instead of just in opposition. Knott does not account for the ways religious practice and knowledge produce space or in turn, how that space produces religious subjects. Instead, she presents religion as a single mental and symbolic dimension of space that individuals may choose to inhabit based on their

65 Cited in Kim Knott, The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (Sheffield, UNITED KINGDOM: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005), 88. 66 Ibid., 52. 34 personal beliefs.

Spatial Politics of Control

In the previous sections, I outlined a general theory of space and the body that I will draw on to understand conflict over religious or sacred space. Space is almost always the object of competing aims and political projects. Since the potentialities created by space ultimately form subjects who may range from revolutionary to docile, power and knowledge over space become a necessary means of realizing political aims. By this, I do not intend to say that the intellectual or ideological meaning of space - or mental space - is contested solely. That is only one aspect and perhaps, not the most significant. Instead, there exists a politics of control over the architecture of space, the sensory experiences of space, the movement of bodies within space, and so on.

I argue that the modern liberal state engages in a spatial politics of control. The potential for religion to produce spaces that shape practice and ultimately form subjects with certain dispositions, ethics, and motives that ma o ma no align ih he ae goal i an inheen threat to state authority. I will attempt to demonstrate that the state controls space such that religion becomes a mental aspect of space solely. In other words, religion is merely a belief or interior, intellectual choice that may be symbolically (i.e. mentally) projected onto spaces. The state controls spaces in such a way that religious bodily knowledge is prevented from producing and reproducing space. Spaces that were formerly places of religious practice, techniques of the self, and the embodiment of religious knowledge are stripped of their practical and bodily function. Thus, subjects of the state are largely prevented from molding themselves into subjects of a particular religious discourse but instead, may only maintain religion as a belief system 35 divorced from worldly power.

Talal Asad provides a clear example of the uneasiness on behalf of the state that is generated by religious practice.

Reciting the Qur'an in the original especially in a liturgical context is thought to be a particular (physical-emotional-cognitive) attitude, that its nontranslatability has a special significance intrinsic to this enei i he ac of ohi (no he Q'anic text) that is nontranslatable, whose full sene i no gien in a dicionab one ha eie cliaion The nontranslatability of the Qur'an in a liturgical context makes it difficult for political as well as ecclesiastical authority to control Qur'anic meaning. The original is always present, generating unlimited possibilities of meaning. Qur'anic texts translated into national languages for use in liturgy both grows out of and reinforces the primacy of he "naional commni" and he ahoi of he ae ha eeen i Nontranslatability sits uneasily with the ambition of state power and the pervasiveness of capitalist exchange.67

Th, he anlaion of he Qan i an eecie in binging he Qan ino he domain of he cognitive and semantic realm at the expense of its ritual value. States often promote such projects becae i edce he abili of he Qan o indce dioiion beond he conol of he tate.

I old like o emhaie ha eading he Qan in anlaion i, of coe, ill an engagemen with Islam but one that centers on conscious belief in the text. This mode of reading has diminished capacity to create affective experiences compared to listening to or participating in

he eciaion of he Qan.

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault famously argue ha diciline odce bjeced and acied bodie, docile bodie. Diciline inceae he foce of he bod (in economic terms of ili) and diminihe hee ame foce (in oliical em of obedience).68 Foucault idenifie a machine of oe ha conanl coece and eie he bod. Fhemoe,

67 Talal Asad, Secular Translations, 60-61. 68 Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 138. 36

diciline oceed fom he diibion of indiidal in ace o that disciplinary methods impose partitioning and cellular arrangements to increase surveillance and control. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault is most interested in analyzing disciplinary power of institutions like schools, prisons, the military, and hospitals. Timothy Mitchell in Colonising Egypt provides an excellent account of disciplining structures in colonial Egypt. For example, schools became the domain of strict disciplining techniques based on time-tables, the layout of classrooms, examinations, and andadied book. School ee a ccial echnie of he ae o ciilie individuals and mold them into efficien a of he odcie oce.69

In aling Focal idea abo diciline o eligion, i become aaen ho he state attempts to create docile bodies by eliminating religious bodily knowledge. For example,

Benjamin Fortna argues that in the Hamidian era (1876 - 1909, a key time period for Ottoman modeniaion and ae cenaliaion) Ooman chool, ofen called ecla chool b contemporary scholars, were actually deeply tied to promoting Islamic morality and teaching

Islamic principles. Far from being spaces absent of religion, these schools taught Arabic, biographies of the Prophets, and Islamic jurisprudence, among other Islamic subjects. Fortna explains that one of the goals in expanding state-sponsored education in the Hamidian period was to increase Islamic morality, which in turn would help counter Western encroachment and miiona acii. He ie, Ilam cannot be reduced to the role of merely playing a part in an inherently secular agenda. As we shall see, there are important signs that Ottoman officials hoped that Islam - hen oked ih a moden delie em - would play a more transformative role in he lie of i den, and heefoe in he fe of he emie.70

69 Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 75. 70 Benjamin C. Fona, Ilamic Moali in Lae Ooman Secla School, International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, no. 3 (2000): 36993. 37

I age ha hi moden delie em i a mode of bodil acice. Alhogh Ilam remained essential to Ottoman education as a belief system or individual morality system, it no longer remained crucial as a guiding mode of practice and form of embodied knowledge.71 Islam was communicated to students through intellectual information about history and texts. The technologies of discipline implemented in school were not Islamic modes of practice that oriented the subject towards God but rather technologies that trained students in state beacaic mehod and obedience o ae ahoi. Rening o Ghaali aenion o mb practices, it seems that the activities in these schools, such as following time-tables, would fall under the category of mb. Ghazali, however, understood that mb practices cultivate desires and dispositions. As such, they are not truly indifferent activities but have the potential to shape subjects with desires that orient them away from God.

It is also important to note that religious instruction, under the modern school system, had its own designated time according to the time-table, which was distinct from the time allotted for ostensibly secular subjects like learning French. In a related but different example, Mitchell explains that colonialists in Egypt sought to make order out of (what they identified as) disorder by structuring urban space by, for instance, constructing wide boulevards.72 Urban spaces were partitioned, classified, and ordered. As a result, the activities of religious spaces like mosques were less likely to spill out onto the street. Disciplining techniques, thereby, demarcated spaces as either religious or as secular with clearly defined borders to confine the domain of religion and impose state authority.

This brings me to the concept of secularism. Secularism is most commonly considered

71 Fortna discusses the importance of daily prayers and other forms of Islamic conduct at these schools. Therefore, Islamic practices were present but embedded within new practices of discipline and schooling. In other words, the schools cannot be categorized in a binary of secular or religious, but I argue, were in the process of secularizing. 72 Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 70. 38 the separation of church and state, which in some cases is translated as the absence of religion in the public domain and in other cases as the freedom of religion from government interference and regulation. But, Saba Mahmood radically reconceptualizes how secularism actually functions:

Following Talal Asad, I conceptualize political secularim a he moden ae sovereign power to reorganize substantive features of religious life, stipulating what religion is or ought to be, assigning its proper content, and disseminating concomitant subjectivities, ethical frameworks, and quotidian practices. Secularism, in this understanding, is not simply the organizing structure for what are regularly taken to be a priori elements of social organization public, private, political, religious but a discursive operation of power that generates these very spheres, establishes their boundaries, and suffuses them with content, such that they come to acquire a natural quality for those living within its terms.73

Secularism grants the state the power to define religious and secular, prescribe its meaning, and organize society around the arbitrary binary. In doing so, the state determines which spaces are designated as religious and which spaces are purely the domain of the secular and therefore, what practices are allowed in each space.

Talal Asad understands secularism as the transcendence of citizenship in the nation-state over other practices and articulations of the self. Under this framework, secularism asks the individual to defer to the state in conceptualizing the categories of religion, politics, and ethics and how those categories pervade various spaces. The state becomes transcendent over all other possible categories of identification and grouping.74

In drawing on Mahmood and Asad, I argue that secularism is a mode of production of space such that the state transcends all spatial orders. The state secures the power to organize space into the categories of religious and secular and shape the bodily practices that take place

73 Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press, 2015), 3. 74 Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, 1 edition (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2003), 5. 39 therein. Religion, for the most part, is stripped of its ability to produce meaningful space and bodily knowledge. Rather, religion is assigned to the domain of mental space exclusively as an interior belief system. It is important to note that secularism is neither an accurate description of reality nor a binary mode of governance between secular and religious. In fact, I argue that many governments that espouse a specific religion are in fact secularizing even though they are not secular. By that I mean they put in place the same modes of power and regulation of religion - including assigning religion to the category of cognitive belief alone rather than embodied knowledge and dispositions - as governments that are avowedly secular even though they may incorporate elements of religious discourse and intellectual thought into public and political life.

Thus, secularism is directly tied and arguably constitutive of modern governmentality and discipline. Secularism, like modernity, is a particular political project.75 Therefore, as I turn to thinking about modernizing and secularizing logics of control over religious space, it is important to recognize that these are not necessarily completed achievements but projects that are in the piecemeal process of becoming and are often met with resistance.

Secularizing Logics of Space

Although all forms of religious space are met with a spatial politics of control, I now turn to the specific focus of this thesis, which is sacred sites contested by multiple religious groups, such as the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif. At these sites, I identify three forms of modernizing and/or secularizing logic that seeks to undermine the religious production of space through the body and therefore, diminish the potentialities created by space to mold a religious subject.

These three types of logic are merely examples of the many overlapping projects of spatial

75 Ibid., 13. 40 control.

Before turning to these particular modernizing logics, I would like to qualify my discussion of religious sites. By choosing a frame of analysis of religious sites, an automatic division or boundary beeen he eligio ie and i ecla onding i imagined.

Much of the secondary literature on sacred or religious space argue that this clear separation of religious and secular spaces is an intrinsic and essential aspect of religious space. For example,

Lily Kong and Orlando Wood write:

Religious spaces typically constitute 'a space distinguished from other spaces' (Brereton 1987, 526). Such distinctions meant that religious spaces are demarcated, marked out in such a way that the perimeter forms an important gateway to the sacred. Boundaries emphasize the dichotomy between religious and secular spaces, a distinction that enables space to be conceived of as either sacred or profane.76

Several scholars, in a similar vein, have discussed religious place-making as processes of sacralization and desacralization to create boundaries between the sacred and profane. I argue that this line of thinking is not a universal or intrinsic description of religious space (although certain sites may exemplify these qualities), but rather it reflects the secularizing project of the state.

Although I will analyze religious sites, it is important to keep in mind that these spaces are not confined. Of course, the physical, architectural boundaries of a site often have great significance but, the social and mental - and sometimes even the physical - space of the site can extend beyond its geographical boundaries. For example, activities that occur at a religious site may spill out onto the streets around them or even more significantly, may inspire action that extends far beyond the boundaries of the site.

The first modernizing logic that I will explore is the concept of religious freedom, in

76 Lily Kong and Orlando Woods, Religion and Space, 18. 41 which people are free to choose to believe in whatever religion including no religion. The state, in protecting religious freedom, seeks to ensure that religious regulations and particularities are not imposed on any individual. Thereby, the state imposes regulations of its own, such as free exercise laws, with the purpose of allowing free choice to take place. In other words, religious freedom laws are necessary to allow people to supposedly make natural and self-interested choices in regard to religious belief. This concept echoes the religious economies model:

Religious vibrancy can be explained as the outcome of a free religious market, one made possible by (or perhaps better put, revealed within) the separation of church and state. Where state regulation is absent and in explicit contrast to what they ndeand a he Eoean iaion of naional chche religious groups are free to organize as they wish and rise or fall based on their abilities to appeal to religious consumers. The religious economies model borrows explicitly from the Chicago School of economics; in this model, a rational, voluntary, religious actor will consistently seek out the religious option with the compensatory system that best suits her. Individual religious freedom is maximized in a religious marketplace where multiple firms exist. Competition has the effect of increasing religious vitality, religious options, and religious fervor rather than marking their decline.77

But Courtney Bender presents a clear critique of this model:

As Harcourt argues, the concept of the naturally regulating, universal free market recurs in multiple generations of free market economic thought. Where the market is concealied a naall eiing, eglaion become an enem: he ae meddling poses a threat to the naturally developing and self-regulating equilibrium. But this is not all, of course, for, as Harcourt notes, the self-regulating free market is also threatened by those economic actors who are not able to self-regulate those who are not free and rational. Whether such actors refuse to act as proper self-regulating economic actors or whether they cannot do so, they become understood as unnatural actors that interrupt the natural freedom of the market. Even as regulation threatens market equilibrium, it nonetheless plays an important role in policing and regulating those actors who also threaten its freedom. Harcourt argues, in short, that one of the effects of the logic of the free market is to designate those economic actors who are free of the need for regulation and those who are not so free, thus providing impetus for their regulation and surveillance (and perhaps reform and rehabilitation) by the

77 Cone Bende, The Poe of Plali Thinking, in Politics of Religious Freedom, ed. Winnifred Fallers Sullivan et al., 1 edition (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 69. 42

ae. We can ake an analogical e o conide ho Haco obeaion ma elae to the current sociological understanding of the free market religion. The religious economies model views the failures of various religious groups to participate in the market as problems inherent in the groups themselves failures, for example, to cast off religious peculiarities so that they can participate in the thriving religious commerce of modern democracies and in eal, fee eligioi. The model ael if ee oin to problems that might be inherent in the market itself: that it might not be as free as imagined, or that it might in fact be regulated or regulating.78

The religious economies model relies on the assumption that individuals, as autonomous rational actors, can make self-interested choices to believe. But, I have already critiqued that notion of belief in arguing that there is no such thing as a truly autonomous actor who is not shaped by their affective experiences and context within a spatial ordering, which then informs the potentialities of practices available to the individual in molding religious experience (possibly including belief but not limited to belief.)

The modern liberal state relies on the notion of a disembodied mind so that all citizens should come to political decisions through uncoerced, free thinking rather than embodied dispositions. Religious judgments developed through bodily knowledge and visceral experience are considered to eeen an immene hea o democaic acice of oliical delibeaion79 because they could ostensibly lead to intolerance, incommensurable values, and populist suasion.

These analyses of religious freedom have been discussed thoroughly in the secondary literature. However, as it applies to religious space has been less discussed. I argue that the notion of religious freedom, and therefore, free choice and open exercise of religion, leads to the production of spaces as transient objects of consumption and circulation. By this I mean that anyone, of any religion including no religion, is promised access to these spaces. Spaces are

78 Ibid., 70. 79 Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape, 31. 43 supposed to be open to anyone who chooses to go there, rather than monopolized or regulated by a single religion. This opens up spaces to multiple religions but also to tourism and industry. This free movement of bodies in out of spaces without regard for the particulars of religious discipline and acquiring religious bodily knowledge transform the space through fleeting body movements and behaviors. The opening up of spaces prevents religious practitioners from producing and reproducing space in a meaningful way. Although those practitioners may continue to inhabit or use the space, they are forced to inhabit it as a mental space for their beliefs since their practices, social activities, and physical pathways are interrupted.

The second modernizing logic is the concept of universality of religion, which is most clearly explored by Tomoko Masuzawa in The Invention of World Religions: Or How European

Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Masuzawa impressively traces the genealog of he conce Wold Religion, hich he age did no ei io o he nineteenth century, and not merely as a matter of semantics. The emergence of the category

Wold Religion, and a going bod of Eoean lieae ino he d of eligion, ceaed a particular ethos, a pluralist ideology, a logic of classification, and a fom of knoledge.80

Prior to the nineteenth century, Europeans roughly identified four types of religion:

Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedism (Islam), and Idolatry (Heathenism, Paganism).81 For a modern observer, these categories did not necessarily map onto what we would call religions today, but also included many mundane differences in practices between Europeans and others.82

The nineteenth century saw an expansion of European engagement with other peoples and a

80 The Inenion of Wold Religion, The Uniei of Chicago Pe Book, https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo3534198.html. 81 Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, 4/15/05 edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 59. 82 Ibid., 61. 44 proliferation of studying diverse ways of life. The initial catalyst for forming the concept of

World Religions came from the European encounter with Buddhism and the need to make

Buddhism legible within a European framework. Buddhism, like Christianity, was most popular in a geographic region separate from its origin and had appeal across a variety of ethno-national groups (the idea of nations and nationalism was also in formation in the nineteenth century).

Consequently, some European theorists developed the term World Religions to mean a religion that transcends its ethno-national boundaries and one that cannot be studied from its purely genealogical context. These religions have universal qualities, applicable to all peoples, transcendent of the subjectivities and cultural peculiarities of any single people. This universal conceptualization of religion was contrasted with a national religion, which is relativist, historically specific, and particular to a single people, such as Arabs or Semitic groups.83

While Maaa acing of he hioical development of the term is significantly more detailed, this brief sketch can be applied to understand a spatial politics of Islamic space. If to qualify as a World Religion instead of a national religion, Islam must be universal and divorced from any particular locality, then the concept of universality is inherently de-localizing.

Commniie aachmen o local ie like shrines is unacceptable and illogical under a universal framework. The logic goes, how can a site be truly significant if not all Muslims can access it or even know about it? On the other hand, certain sites are attested to in Islamic texts and thus, maintain their meaningfulness to Muslims across the globe regardless of proximity

(such as al-Haram al-Sharif). Even so, under a universalizing framework, locals should not care about physical engagement with the site if all Muslims do not have access to it - what is required or beneficial for one Muslim should be the same for all Muslims. As a result, the physicality or

83 Ibid., Chapter 3. 45 social aspect of these sites is considered unimportant and only the mental space is retained, which can be commemorated by Muslims across the world from anywhere. Thus, a universalizing framework is not only de-localizing but also de-spatializing. Mecca and the mandate of Hajj for all Muslims clearly presents a strong foil to this conceptualization. The

hical ace of he Kaba i ccial o Islam. Thus, the attempt to universalize Islam and other religions (producing mental space and relinquishing the necessity of physical and social space) is an incomplete project of secular modernity, which is met with clear roadblocks and objections.

The third and final modernizing logic I will explore is an emphasis on textual sources of

eligion. Rening o Shahab Ahmed conces of Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text, Ahmed argues that modernity largely fixates on textual evidence and exclusive engagement with the text. In the case of Islam, knowing the Pre-Text through Con-Text is deprioritized, and beliefs and practices are based on the Text only.84 This emphasis on the text makes it difficult to adjudicate between diffeen eligio go claim o a ie if they each depend on textual reference. One group may have significantly more context and historical legacy at the site but that legacy is neglected compared to textual claims. And, as all religions are supposedly equal according to ideas of secularism and religious freedom, two competing claims to belief based on a text must be treated eall. The elaie eigh of one go claim to context, history, and tradition is rendered meaningless. This emphasis on textual evidence reduces the conflict at the site to two competing scriptural claims.

In the case of the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif, both Jews and Muslims have textual claims to the site. Arguably, the Jewish claim in the text is much stronger; Jerusalem and the temple are foregrounded in scripture as essential to the Israelites.85 On the other hand, Al-Aqsa is

84 Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam?, 515. 85 Although undoubtedly Jerusalem and the temple are mentioned dozens of times in the text, different strains of 46 onl biefl menioned in he Qan and hadih, hich old theoretically make the Islamic claim to the site relatively weaker than the Jewish claim. Yet, when considering Islamic Con-

Te, Mlim claim o he ie oe he a 1400 ea ae he Jeih claim, alhogh there are small but significant Jewish legacies at the site even as it was under Muslim rule. By only examining the projected meanings based on texts, conflict over space seems entirely intractable. But, an analysis of centuries of production of space and the legacies of bodily practice reveals a different understanding of the space.

Conclusion

The three modernizing and secularizing logics I have outlined (religious freedom, universality, and textual dominance) all represent means of stripping religious space of its potential to form religious subjects. I do not intend to say that religion, in the abstract sense, diminishes in these spaces. These spaces relegate religion to a cognitive, mental domain that is projected onto space or represented by space rather than constituting and producing the space and subsequently, producing bodies and religious subjects.

In response to this claim, one might argue that many religious sites continue to be managed by religious practitioners and are places where rituals, such as prayer, are free to take place. This is, of course, true. It is important to remember that secular modernity is a project in becoming rather than a completed state of society. I do not assume the teleological position that one day complete secularization (if such a thing exists) will eventually be accomplished, as subscribers to the secularization narrative would suggest. Instead, I argue that it is important to be attuned to how an incomplete and nonlinear secularizing project is implemented and the new

Judaism have different opinions about the importance of the temple in Jewish life. 47 forms of knowledge and lifestyles it produces as well as the modes of resistance that are generated in response. While many sites are the domain of unimpeded religious ritual, I argue that there are also some religious spaces that have been taken to the near limits of secularization and de-spatialization, specifically, religious spaces turned into museums. For instance, Rabia

Hamanah, Tba Tanei-Erdemir, and Robert Hayden have written an interesting chapter on

he memificaion of he hine comlee of Hac Beka Veli and Mevlana Jalal ad-Din

Rumi in Turkey. The authors note that turning religious sites into museums is not only a common practice in Turkey but was also common in the former Soviet Union. I would additionally argue that even though many cathedrals in Western Europe are in active use as places of Christian worship, in many ways, they are de-facto museums and serve as major tourist destinations. In the case of the Turkish shrines-turned-museums, the state runs them as purely secular sites and imposes security policies that prohibit ritual activity, even though many Alevis still travel to these museums as important pilgrimage destinations.86

I conend ha memificaion i he clminaion of a ange of olicie and aide that explicitly seek to control space and wrest it away from religious orderings. The spatial organization of the space is entirely disciplined by the state (mediated through the institution of the museum) and organized to reduce affective experiences. Museums often have strict spatial orderings where visitors must walk in prescribed directions, hear regulated sounds at designated times, and refrain from touching objects, making noise, or having any spontaneous response to stimuli. Even as these museums often commemorate religious history, they do so through the communication of verbal and textual information. The consumption of religious knowledge

86 Rabia Hamanah, Tuba Tanyeri-Erdemir, and Robert M. Hayden, Secularizing the Unsecularizable: A Comparative Study of the Hac Beka and Mevlana Mem in Tke, in Choreographies of Shared Sacred Sites: Religion, Politics, and Conflict Resolution, ed. Elazar Barkan and Karen Barkey (Columbia University Press, 2015), 33668. 48 becomes an exercise in reading and learning facts.

These secularizing processes are often met with resistance by religious practitioners who

oe he ae conol of ace and knoledge. Fo eamle, he omen Mahmood decibe in the Egian omen moe moemen esist these secularizing projects:

Accoding o aician, he omen moe moemen emeged in eone o he perception that religious knowledge, as a means for organizing daily life, had become increasingly marginalized under modern structures of secular governance. Many of the mosque participants criticized what they considered to be an increasingly prevalent form of religiosity in Egypt, one that accords Islam the status of an abstract system of beliefs that has no direct bearing on how one lives, on what one actually does in the coe of a da. Thi end, all efeed o b he moemen aician a eclaiaion (almana or almnia) o eeniaion (tagharrub), is understood to have reduced Islamic knowledge (both as a mode of conduct and as a set of incile) o he a of com and folkloe (da a flkl)."87

As I will explore in detail in the third chapter, the Islamic Movement in Israel is another moemen ha ei Ilam marginalization. More so than the omen moe moemen, the Islamic Movement in Israel focuses on spatial politics and refuses to acquiesce to spatial odeing ha limi Ilam imoance.

These groups that resist by re-establishing Islamic practices are often blamed for the conflict and are seen as the perpetrators of intolerance. Many observers view them as uncooperative and unwilling to accept the premises of religious freedom. Mahmood, in analyzing secularism and religious based conflict, developed an interesting model of secularim

inecaable chaace88 or self-generating cycle. When conflict occurs between two religious groups and one or both of the groups seems intolerant and stubborn, the modern answer is to turn to secular governance to mediate the conflict and ensure the protection of equal rights, security, and neutrality. Yet, Mahmood argues that secularism exacerbates religious difference and

87 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 44. 88 Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference, 2. 49 intensifies religious conflict. Along those lines, I argue that secularism diminishes religious practice, prompting religious movements to resist. Nevertheless, with increased resistance the answer continues to be increased secular intervention along with the discourses of pluralism and tolerance. In this way, the promise of secularism is a never-ending cycle that regenerates itself with the conflict it produces.

50

CHAPTER 2: A GENEALOGY OF SPATIAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN PALESTINE

This chapter focuses on modernizing developments in Palestine, beginning with the late Ottoman

Empire, through the British Mandate period, and ultimately, under the nascent Israeli state. I argue that the changes that gradually took place across these periods of modern Palestinian history subsumed Islamic space under increasing state control and disciplinary mechanisms. The state became transcendent of religious space and by doing so, controlled the production and reproduction of space. As a result, Islamic space is increasingly seen as an empty container that belief and meaning systems can be projected onto with a disregard for the importance of embodied knowledge, technologies of the self, and affective experiences. Through this process of spatial control, the state produces docile subjects that are disciplined to cooperate with the aims and institutions of the state rather than submit to the authority of Islam.

Palestinian Shrine Landscapes

Prior to the twentieth century, there were hundreds of Islamic structures across Palestine, including shrines, mosques, and mausoleums. As Andrew Petersen points out in his thorough work, Bones of Contention: Muslim Shrines in Palestine, it is often difficult to discern the difference between shrines, mosques, and mausoleums and in many cases there is overlap.89 I will not focus on the precise definition of these structures; as I explain later on, colonialists and orientalist scholars became preoccupied with precise categorization. Instead, it is important to note that many Muslims engaged with these overlapping forms of space in diverse ways prior to the British Mandate.

89 Andrew Petersen, Bones of Contention: Muslim Shrines in Palestine, Heritage Studies in the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 8. 51

Shrines marking the grave of a prominent Muslim historical figure or historic event in

Palestine existed prior to the Crusades but rose in significance under the Mamluk Sultanate

(1260 -1516) and were officially sponsored by the Mamluks. When Ibn Battuta (1304 - 1369) traveled to Palestine, he visited and wrote about numerous shrines in addition to those in

Jerusalem and al-Haram al-Sharif.90 For example, Ibn Battuta recorded over 300 shrines in the city of Ramla and largely structured his journal around visits to shrines throughout Palestine. He includes accounts of shrines not only in Jerusalem but also in Hebron, Nablus, and Acre, extending up the coast to Beirut in modern-day Lebanon with no distinction between the cities of modern-day Palestine and those in Lebanon.91

An examle of a common hine a ha of aan al-R nea he hine of Nab M

(Prophet Moses). An inscription in the shrine read:

The eablihmen of he dome of aan al-R ancified [fom he oo -d-s] the secret of the doer of good, Mohammad Basha, when he [Mohammad Basha] returned from receiving Muslim pilgrims. He proceeded in building but was not delivered water. With high importance, God Almighty protected him, and water was transported to the land from the village of Jericho and he obtained he ead. Rab I 1110 [c. September 1698 C.E].92

This inscription represents an authorizing discourse within Islam that provides a source of meaning for the space. At the shrine, embodied practices, in turn, become generative of Islamic meaning, including belief. The inciion e langage fom he Qan like he od ead, thawab, indicating the use of the Text as a means of accessing the unseen Pre-Text. However, the activities that most likely took place at this shrine and others like it, including supplications

90 There is historical debate if Ibn Battuta actually traveled to any of these sites. There is strong evidence to indicate he booed hi infomaion fom ohe aele. See Amikam Elad, The Deciion of he Tael of Ibn Baa in Paleine: I I Oiginal?, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2 (1987): 25672. 91 Andrew Petersen, Bones of Contention, 20. 92 Arabic text cited in Tawfiq Canaan, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine (London: Luzac & Co., 1927), 20. 52 to aan al-R fo aiance o bleing, ae no eiced o meel ha i ecibed in he Te, but indicate an engagement with the site that extends beyond the domain of Textual Islam. Muslims who engaged with the site would not only have emotional experiences but would also have practical experiences in forming themselves as Muslims subjects.

The popularity of shrines continued through the end of the Ottoman period. Johann

Büssow provides an account of the popularity of dozens of shrines in the town of Dayr

Ghanah a lae a he Hamidian eiod. A hee hine, familie efomed imoan

Islamic rituals including the haircut of a firstborn son and collective circumcision.93 Of course, mosques were also always prevalent spaces across Palestine for Muslims to engage in a variety of Islamic activities. Therefore, shrines and mosques, including the Dome of the Rock and al-

Aqsa Mosque, were part of a broader network of Islamic spaces and embodied practices.

During the late Ottoman period, the shrine of Nab M a he mo ola pilgrimage site, rather than al-Haram al-Shaif. Moe bial lace is considered to be at Mount

Nebo in modern-day Jordan by most Muslims around the world but there is a uniquely Levantine tradition that locates the burial place of Moses just South of Jericho and encourages pilgrimages from the greater Syria region.94 Pilgrimages to shrines and annual festivals at shrines were important means of Islamic ritual. Shrines were not auxiliary to Palestinian Muslim life nor were they purely otherworldly, divorced from earthly concerns. Instead, shrines provided important sources of knowledge and fostered the development of particular skills, morality, and sensibilities crucial to society.

93 Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem, 1872-1908 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), 123. 94 Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate: Colonialism and the Supreme Muslim Council, Sew edition (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 77. 53

When Europeans began to have increased contact with Palestine, they identified shrines as a prominent feature of religious life. Claude Condor was one of the first scholars to publish a study of Palestinian shrines in 1877. He encountered hundreds of shrines while mapping and surveying the country using trigonometrical observations. From his observations, he divided shrines into seven distinct categories of his own invention.95 Condor represents a larger stream within European imperialist ideology to apply concepts from the enlightenment-based natural sciences, such as quantitative methods and classification, to understand and ultimately, govern colonized populations. Thus, Islamic shrines were systematically brought under the colonial gaze.

Subsequently, various scholars published further studies on shrines in Palestine. Many of these studies took an interest in shrines from a Christian biblical perspective. Since many shrines claimed to mark the grave of a biblical figure or a biblical event, orientalists saw the study of shrines as an opportunity to uncover Christian history. In these studies, shrines were often forced to conform to Christian expectations and models with little regard for practices at shrines or understandings of those shrines that differed from European, Christian thought.

Another scholar, Paul Kahle published a series of articles between 1910 and 1912 that traced the evolution of particular Islamic shrines. He argued that the original stories surrounding shrines were often forgotten over time and new stories, possibly including a new name for the shrine, took their place, which disregarded historical accuracy. He also linked many shrines to pre-Islamic nature veneration and discredited their Islamic authenticity.96 Een if Kahle finding were to be accurate, which is historically tenuous, he disregarded the role of Islamic Con-Text as

95 Andrew Petersen, Bones of Contention, 32. 96 Ibid., 33-35. 54 a genuine source of revelation. The origins of shrines need not be rooted in the text or an exact historical record for the shrine to be a formative Islamic space.

Yet, the ideas of these scholars were not remembered merely as misguided studies with no practical use. On the contrary, the British Mandatory government incorporated these ideas into their governing policies regarding shrines and what they called holy places. Furthermore,

Palestinians consumed these ideas and, in some cases, understand and engage with shrines through these novel lenses. For example, Tawfik Canaan, a Christian Palestinian from Beit Jala who had been educated as a doctor in Western-style schools, wrote one of the most prominent works on Palestinian shrines in 1927 titled, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine. In this work, Canaan directly cites the work of Condor and Kahle among other orientalists,97 demonaing edcaed Paleinian familiai ih hee emeging concepts.

As a true Western-trained scientist, Canaan refrains from inserting many overt personal opinions into hi deailed accon of hine and aociaed aciiie. Neehele, Canaan brief preface reveals his general orientation and underlying assumptions in approaching shrines.

Canaan uses the term holy places, designating shrines as other than the secular world with particularly religious features. He believes shrines to be unchanged for thousands of years as time capsules for primitive religion. He also considers practices like curing diseases and incurring blessings to be magical and superstitious practices, disproven by the wonders of

Western science.98 Canaan is enamored with scientific disenchantment and considers no Islamic practices o hae a acical oe in he enieh cen. He fhe age, The aio ideas described in the following pages are common to both Mohammedans and Christians among

97 See, for example, pages 278 and 280 in Tawfiq Canaan, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries. 98 Ibid., v-vi. 55 the Palestinian peasantry; where the two groups differ the differences are only eficial.99

Thus, for Canaan, differences in space do not produce different potentialities of the self that need to be cultivated with the help of a living tradition for Canaan, all religions have the same essence.

Canaan ok cleal eflec emerging ideas about religion and sacred space in the early twentieth century. He equates religion with belief and describes all superstitious practices as following from belief. He ie, I i ondefl ha a ofond belief in he oe of he saints still ei in he Oien.100 For Canaan, engagement with shrines is an enactment or response to belief in the otherworldly instead of a form of discipline that incurs morality or has practical purpose. Therefore, by 1927 it is apparent that new relationships with space have already emerged in Palestinian discourse.

Islamic Transformations under the Late Ottoman Empire

New ideas about religion and space in Palestine were not purely European imports. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, there were many transformations occurring internal to the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire embarked on several modernizing reforms spanning the Tanzimat period, through the Hamidian period, to the Young Turks era. During these periods, the relationship between the individual and the state was radically transformed.

Whereas in the premodern period individuals outside of the capital could have minimal interaction with state, in the nineteenth century the state began to interact with its subjects directly. The clearest examples of increased interaction are direct taxation and conscription.

99 Ibid., vi. 100 Ibid., 106. 56

The application of these sweeping transformations in regard to Islam under Sultan

Abdlhamid II ha been ccincl olined b Selim Deingil in hi aicle Legiimacy

Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909). Deingil elain that Abdulhamid revitalized and emphasized the title of caliph of all Muslims, which had previously been less significant for the image of the sultan.101 Additionally, the Ottomans began to emphasize the importance of the Hajj and enhance their legitimacy from control and protection of Mecca and Medina. They began a project to build a railway to the Hijaz in order to unite Islamic cities, facilitate the Hajj, and project Islamic power.102 Moreover, in the Hamidian period, the state began appointing khatibs, who performed a number of Islamic duties, including preaching, leading prayers, signing marriage contracts, washing the dead, and acting as schoolmasters. Gradually, state-sponsored khatibs began to receive government salaries.103 This increasing involvement of the state in Islamic personnel and practice demonstrates growing centralization of Islam under a standard, official state-sponsored framework. Local Palestinians no longer had the means to appoint whomever they wanted and therefore, could not fully act out a local expression of Islam. The state increasingly brought Islam under its control.

There is some historical debate about the significance of Jerusalem and al-Haram al-

Sharif to global Muslims prior to the twentieth century. Yitzhak Reiter firmly argues that the

anci of Jealem a agmened in he enieh cen fom ha i had been befoe. He

ie, A aced ace ha i cagh in he cofire of a conflict between two religious communities will tend to be gaded and eleaed in he ee of he ooing aie. In response to Reiter, I ask what does greater sanctification mean? I argue that comparing relative

101 Selim Deingil, Legiimac Sce in he Ooman Sae: The Reign of Abdlhamid II (1876-1909), International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, no. 3 (1991), 346. 102 Ibid., 352. 103 Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 262. 57 importance or sacredness is a futile project. Reiter points to new practices that emphasize the centrality of Jerusalem, such as the celebration of al-I a al-Mij Day, which he claims was not prominently commemorated until after the 1920s.104 However, he neglects to mention several practices that were discontinued around the same time, such a he annal Nab M

Festival. Instead of trying to compare relative significance, I intend to identify a number of changing (not necessarily increasing) engagements with the space, which I think are instructive to understand the shifting spatial control of the Jerusalem.

For example, Sultan Mahmud II devoted some of his attention to the Islamic sites in

Jerusalem. In 1816, he initiated several restoration projects on al-Haram al-Sharif. Notably, he had a new roofed prayer niche (in) constructed which faced al-Aqsa Mosque as well as

Mecca, uniting the historically first and second directions of Islamic prayer (qibla). In many ways, Mahmud II marks the beginning of radical reforms within the Ottoman Empire since he embarked on many transformative, centralizing policies, including destroying the janissaries, attempting to create a modern army, and attacking the an, or local notables. I argue that it is possible that Mahmud II marks the beginning of state centralizing policies to ensure proper engagement with al-Haram al-Sharif and impose Ottoman authority as transcendent over the site.

Therefore, it is not that the site necessarily became more important, but that it was subsumed under the centralizing, disciplining machinery of the state.

Yet only a few years later, when Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt occupied Jerusalem in 1831, there was no indication that the city held any particular Islamic significance to him. No khedival literature emphasized the Islamic sanctity of the city or a preference to rule Jerusalem over any

104 Yitzhak Reiter, Jerusalem and Its Role in Islamic Solidarity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 30. 58 other city of its relative size and economic importance.105 Contrary to elevating Jerusalem as an

Islamic city, Ibrahim Pasha seemed to favor non-Muslims; he allowed non-Muslims to renovate their buildings while he confiscated the Khasseki Sultan Waqf and quartered troops in mosques.106 This is not to say that Jerusalem and al-Haram al-Sharif were not significant in

Islam, but they were not significant to khedival state ambitions.

Yet, at the beginning of the twentieth-century, Ekrem Bey, the governor of Jerusalem at the time, wrote about competing spatial claims to religious spaces. European powers had staked out strong spheres of influence in Jerusalem, largely under the pretext of supporting specific

Christian groups and protecting particular Christian holy sites. Ekrem Bey was sincerely worried about a comparable problem occurring with Egyptian influence concerning Islamic holy sites.

Le han a cen afe Ibahim Paha inaion, Egian ee acced of inalling candle and lamps in Islamic shrines and obtaining land to increase Egyptian influence. Ekrem Bey considered this problem to be so serious that he had all activities of Egyptian officials monitored and their purchases limited.107 This apparent change in Egyptian attitudes towards Jerusalem indicates a broader transformation. Jerusalem and al-Haram al-Sharif had begun to come under the sites of state ambitions and, like many of the non-Muslim religious sites in the city, was subject to intense vying for spatial control by various state powers.

Many of the transformations occurring in late Ottoman Palestine not only subsumed

Islamic spaces under state control but also functioned to reduce the embodied capacities of

Islamic practice in those spaces. Ami Ayalon in Reading Palestine documents the vast expansion

105 Gudrun Krämer, A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel, trans. Graham Harman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 64. 106 Ibid., 66-67. 107 Daid Khne, Ali Ekem Be, Goeno of Jealem, 1906-1908, International Journal of Middle East Studies 28, no. 3 (1996), 352. 59 of bookstores, lending libraries, and social club reading rooms in Jerusalem.108 Texts written in a multitude of languages were circulating throughout the empire and certainly reaching Palestinian intellectuals. Palestinians were integrated into a distinctly Ottoman network of Print Capitalism.

During this integration into literary networks, Ayalon notes a transition from orality to textuality:

It is quite clear that in pre-twentieth-century Arab societies, illiteracy, the paucity of written texts, and the centrality of religious rituals performed vocally combined to make oral forms of communication predominant. Most often the circulation of messages of any kind was conducted without the actual presence of a written text. At other times, writings were at hand and read or cited by one individual to an audience. A time-honored norm, it served the society satisfactorily to the extent of rendering any other means including printing rather superfluous. By the onset of the modern phase, as written information began to arrive in unprecedented quantities, the old channels, long proven effective, were in place to contain the flood. At first there was no alternative anyway. But the massive inflow of information in print was followed by the arrival of organized education, whose fruits always taking a generation or two to ripen would put into the societ hand moe ool fo handling he ealh of ien texts.109

As discussed in the previous chapter in drawing on the work of Charles Hirschkind, textual forms of communication dominate oral forms in the modern era. The purpose of Islamic texts is to transmit information rather than create affective ritual experiences. Since access to Islamic texts expanded in the late Ottoman period with the establishment of new Islamic libraries and reading rooms, the overall import of Islam was not diminished, in fact, it was possibly enhanced.

However, oral and ritual spaces of Islam were transformed into mental spaces of theological information only.

In a similar example, Hamidian-era Ottoman authorities attempted to impose Islamic uniformity, especially in places like Iraq, which had a plethora of heeical ec. A book called the Book of Beliefs or kib al-akayd was written and distributed to spread an official version of

108 Ami Ayalon, Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900-1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 94. 109 Ibid., 132. 60

Islam.110 Perhaps, the Book of Beliefs best demonstrates the novel role of government in actively shaping quotidian aspects of Islam and individual sensibilities. The Book of Beliefs also demonstrates the attempt to teach Islam through the communication of discrete information instead of cultivated practices.

Furthermore, in 1907 Sultan Abdulhamid II built a clock tower in Jerusalem. This event could easily be interpreted as a secular act and a European import. However, Ekrem Bey claimed that the purpose of the new clock tower was to help Muslims better abide by the ritual prayer times.111 In a sense, the clocktower represented a reinvigoration of Islam, but a version of Islam that was regimented and precise. The introduction of the clocktower therefore, represents a state disciplining mechanism over Islamic practice and the space of Jerusalem.

The British Mandate, the Status Quo, and the Holy Places

When the British seized Jerusalem, on December 11, 1917, they arrived with preexisting notions about religious space. British authorities, even before stepping foot in Palestine, assumed that the population was divided among communal lines into three groups, Muslims, Jews, and Christians, regardless of the reality on the ground. Thus, the British instantly decided that they needed to gain control over what they called holy places to prevent communal unrest; yet, they needed to appear secular and accommodating to prevent anti-colonial unrest, which they had suffered in

India.112 General Edmund Allenby, leading the capture of Jerusalem, immediately declared:

Since your city is regarded with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of mankind, and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pilgrimages of devout people of those three religions for many centuries, therefore, do I make known to you that every sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine, traditional site, endowment,

110 Selim Deingil, Legiimac Sce in he Ooman Sae, 349. 111 Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 427. 112 Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate. 61

pious bequest or customary place of prayer, of whatsoever form of the three religions, will be maintained and protected according to the existing customs and beliefs of those faiths are sacred.113

This seemingly benign proclamation was aimed at reassuring the population that the British would not impose radical Christian changes, nor would they let religious strife run rampant.

British assumptions about communal divisions, however, did not reflect lived realities under the preceding Ottoman Empire, which has been thoroughly analyzed in the secondary literature. I argue that not only did the British see Palestine as divided among communal lines and inform their policies based on this flawed assumption, but the British saw religious differences as competing belief-systems that were projected onto space. By this I mean that the

British did not recognize the quotidian ways Islam, Judaism, and Christianity produced space or how that space shaped the potentialities of embodied knowledge and the cultivation of certain dispositions often in overlapping ways between the three religions. Instead, the British saw religious spaces as empty vessels for religious claims and competing ideologies to be projected onto, which would inevitably result in conflict and incommensurable claims to spaces.

The British immediatel began ing he em hol lace114 and claimed to uphold the

a o inheied fom he Ooman. In fac, he em a o did fi come ino e under the Ottomans in two successive decrees in 1757 and 1852. Most of the religious-based conflict in Ottoman Jerusalem resulted from in-fighting between Christian groups regarding management and use of spaces like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. These Ottoman decrees addressed these disputes by freezing in place existing arrangements to prevent further dispute.

This policy was not necessarily an internal Ottoman invention; as Michael Dumper points out, it

113 Cited in Rena Barakat, Thaa Al -Buraq in British Mandate Palestine: Jerusalem, Mass Mobilization and Colonial Politics, 19281930 (PoQe Dieaion Pblihing, 2007), 105. 114 I ndeand he Biih e of he em hol in hi cone o be inechangeable ih he em aced.. 62 arose largely as a result of strong Russian influence in favor of the Greek Patriarchate. Thus, it did not result in a fair and balanced solution between Christian groups. Nor did it specify particular details about exact worship times or spaces. Its language was ultimately vague as not to anger any group explicitly. As a result, minor disputes and encroachments persisted.115

When the British adopted this term, they saw it as applying to a larger number of sites, which they termed holy places. Specifically, the British extended it to the Western Wall,

Rachel Tomb, and he Cenacle on Mon Zion.116 Lionel Archer Cust, who worked for High

Commissioner Herbert Samuel, produced an internal report in 1925 detailing the holy places according to the Status Quo. This report was tremendously detailed; it outlined not only room use and worship times, but also lamp ownership among other details. Although Cust was intending to document the existing status of holy places, when a site was in dispute, as was often the case, he arbitrarily adjudicated which group had rights moving forward and thus, ordered the space according to British interests.117

By identifying holy places corresponding to Jews, Muslims and Christians respectively, the British implicitly treated Judaism, Islam, and Christianity as being categorically equivalent they all had the same relationship to space; that is, they attributed meaning to a finite list of identifiable holy places that symbolized their beliefs and could be used for symbolic ritual.

However, a study of the production of space reveals that Judaism, Islam, and Christianity implement different modes of production of space and as a result, how they conceptualize and engage with space varies significantly. For example, mosques, churches, and synagogues are not categorically equivalent spaces that simply correspond to different belief systems; they serve

115 Michael Dumper, The Politics of Sacred Space: The Old City of Jerusalem in the Middle East Conflict (Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner Pub, 2001), 108. 116 Ibid., 20. 117 Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate. 53. 63 different purposes and exemplify different spatial orderings. Nevertheless, the British assumed there were three distinct but analogous belief systems competing for representation of spaces in

Jerusalem and thereby, the British reorganized and reconstituted Jerusalem life and engagement with space to reflect this assumption.

Interestingly, the British did not extend their list of holy places under the Status Quo to al-Haram al-Sharif and other major Islamic sites (unlike the United Nations, which would attempt to do so in 1949). Nicholas Roberts argues that this withholding is due to the fact that the

British linked the Status Quo system to the Ottoman millet system, which governed religious minorities. Since Muslims were a majority under the Ottoman Empire, they were not part of a designated millet and did not have the same relationship with the state. Cust was aware of this dynamic and wary to govern the Muslims as a quasi-millet right away. Yet, the British would functionally come to govern Muslims as a quasi-millet through various mechanisms like the co, comaable o he Je and Chiian. Thi eemlifie Biain conciion of Islam into their paradigm of religion and religious governance even though that project was not yet tenable from the onset of British rule.

It is important to note that although the British outwardly sponsored religious freedom and protection of Islamic holy places and practices, during the Mandate period, a number of key disruptions to Islamic practice took place. Even before the British conquest in 1917, World War I caused the unintentional destruction of many mosques and shrines in Palestine.118 Following the

a, he e of hine a in ead decline de o inceaing dienchanmen of oedl superstitious religion. Mosques would eventually become the dominant, and for some communities, only places of prayer and communal Islamic activity outside of Jerusalem. In this

118 Andrew Petersen, Bones of Contention, 124. 64 sense, the promise of religious freedom was freedom of belief only regardless of changing spatial orders.

Additionally, British impediments to Islamic practice were clearly evident in many of the discontinuations of Sufi practices. Multiple Sufi orders previously operated in Palestine and they were known for celebrating highly attended annual festivals (maim). As previously mentioned, the largest pilgrimage was not, in fact, to al-Haram al-Shaif b o he hine of Nab

M, hich de hoand of ilgim ding i annal eek-long festival.119 Additionally,

Sufis often performed aa or gatherings for the practice of dhikr (remembrance) at many shrines across Palestine, including at al-Haram al-Sharif. After the British seized control of

Jerusalem in 1917, aa ceased to be held at al-Haram al-Sharif and in 1930, aa became prohibited near the Western Wall. Although the British continuously sided with Muslim claims to the Wall over Jewish claims, cessation of aa was aimed at reducing tensions. Due to an ob of iolence a he 1920 Nab M feial, he Biih inceaed hei eglation of not only the festival for future years but also of Islam at large. Roberts attributes this event to the inception of the Supreme Muslim Council a body created by the British but led by a Muslim which, as a result, was able to pose as an Islamic body120 and the majority of British policies

egading Ilam ding ciilian le. In hi cae, he Biih inceaingl adjdicaed oe

Islam and determined what spaces were acceptable for Islamic use.121 At the onset of World War

II, he Nab M festival was discontinued.122

119 Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 180. 120 I have refrained from discussing the Supreme Muslim Council in length because its creation, function, and outcomes have been extensively studied, most notably by Nicholas Roberts. Although the Supreme Muslim Council is tangentially relevant to a number of issues regarding Islamic space, I argue that it is not the main agent of change for Islamic landscapes and thus, outside of the scope of this thesis. 121 Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate, 91. 122 F. De Jong, The Sfi Ode in Nineeenh and Tenieh-Century Palestine: A Preliminary Survey Concerning Their Identity, Organiaional Chaaceiic and Conini, Studia Islamica, no. 58 (1983): 149181, 178. 65

Conflict and Transformation in Jerusalem

Unfortunately, the Mandatory period witnessed periodic bouts of clashes between Arab

Palestinians and Zionists. Most notably, Muslims and Jew clahed a he 1920 Nab M festival, in which nine people died, and even more consequently, 113 Jews and 116 Arabs were killed in the 1929 Revolt. This revolt, known as ha al-b (Revolution of the Buraq123) in

Arabic, erupted over mounting tensions and Jewish encroachments at the Western Wall. Most of the violence against Jews occurred at the hands of Arabs while most of the Arab casualties resulted from British police countermeasures.124

These incidents have often been analyzed as a nexus between religion and politics, or in other words, religion and nationalism. Some have argued that it was incommensurable religious difference that produced violent flare-ups, which was the original explanation provided by the

British. However, a much more common and respected explanation relates these incidents to emerging nationalist struggles that used religious rhetoric and events as springboards to express their grievances. The British would eventually come to this more nuanced conclusion in their investigations and reports following the incidents. For example, the Palin Commission tasked

ih ndeanding he Nab M Riots concluded that Arabs were apprehensive about the

Balfo Declaaion, hich omied a naional home fo he Jeih eole. The Biih failed to fulfill promises to the Arabs and allowed disproportionate Zionist influence in the administration. The commission, surprisingly, recognized political agency of Arabs.125 Likewise, in the aftermath of the 1929 Revolt, the British tasked the Shaw Commission with uncovering

123The Ba a Mhammad inged eed ha anoed him on hi Nigh Jone. See he Inodcion of hi thesis for more details. 124 Gudrun Krämer, A History of Palestine, 232. 125 Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate, 84-85 66 the causes of the revolt. Although it was clear that Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the President of the

Supreme Muslim Council, was a key aggressor in escalating events, the Commission rightly concluded that the causes of the revolt were significantly more complex, including the clear evidence that Zionists had politicized the Wall. The Commission dismissed the role of religious clashes and instead, bemoaned the untenability of British rule over two competing nationalisms.126

Nicholas Roberts articulately navigates a middle path between religious and political motivations causing the violence:

It is important to note the difficulty of separating the religious from the political in this struggle over the Western Wall. To designate an action or motivation as religious or political is nearly impossible because the Western Wall issue brought together religious and nationalist longings for the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount on both sides of the struggle. It is for this reason that purely religious and purely political explanations of he iolence of 1929 ae inadeae Fo in eeking o elain he iolenc e as a product of a conflict between Islam and Judaism over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, the religious explanation ahistorically assumes that the two religions are bound to be in conflict over religious space, thus ignoring the political context of the events of 1929 At the same time, as [Alex] Winder points out, a concentration on the immediate political events of 1928-29 ignores the deeper social structures that contributed to longer term tensions between the two communities, such as the growing physical and social separation between religious communities in Jerusalem, which as we have seen a encoaged b he Paleine goenmen commnalist policies, as well as British urban planning practices, which I have explored elsewhere. As Winder rightly conclde, in he een of 1929, oliic and eligion ee ineined, laing on eiing diiion and alliance.127

While Roberts clearly presents the problems with either a purely religious or purely political explanation, I argue that his analysis of the tensions between the religious communities is still only part of the explanation. While the British certainly exacerbated differences between

126 Ibid., 147. 127 Ibid., 120-121. 67

Muslims and Jews through their policies, I argue that a more fundamental shift in spatial orderings took place at the hands of the British. By eliminating the practical role of space and instead, treating religious space as a vessel for competing religious claims, conflict inevitably ensued.

Inead of analing he Nab M Rio o he 1929 Reol, boh of which have a countless number of moving parts and actors, I will analyze the renovation efforts of the Dome of the Rock in the mid-1920s, which more succinctly exemplifies the transforming nature of

Islam and ultimately, the causes of the violence in 1929.

In 1920, the British commissioned a study of the Dome of the Rock, led by architect

Ernest Richmond. Richmond concluded that the structure of the Dome of the Rock was sound, b he kin needed ignifican ok. The ooed eai ee eeced o be expensive, and the British Mandatory government originally planned on financing the project but, Herbert

Samuel was warned by his counterparts in India that such a project might appear as if the British were seizing the site from Muslim control. Therefore, Samuel delegated the project to the

Supreme Muslim Council.

In 1923 and 1924, delegations led by Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Supreme Muslim

Council were sent across the Muslim world to Egypt, the Hijaz, India, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and

Bahrain to raise funds. On these trips, Hajj Amin outwardly promoted the project as a means to

oec a eae, ecio ile, and gif moaic b, i a moed ha Hajj Amin also warned Muslims that al-Haram al-Sharif was in danger of a proposed Jewish takeover.128 At this time, concerns over the Western Wall were growing but Jewish claims to the entire complex

128 Ibid., 125-126. 68 were marginal, albeit existent. In that sense, Hajj Amin exaggerated and arguably generated conflict over the site to garner international support, which served as a precursor to 1929.

Hajj Amin successfully raised £84,000 to complete the restoration.129 For the restoration,

Richmond wanted historically authentic tiles, but the originals were no longer produced in

Jerusalem or anywhere else. Therefore, he brought in an Armenian tile maker and staff who experimented to recreate the same tiles for four months until they were deemed close enough.130

While it was a seemingly benign, if not beneficial, project on the part of the British, the restoration demonstrates a novel engagement with Islamic space. The restoration was entirely divorced from Islamic practice. It did not take into account the active needs of the Muslim community, but instead, prioritized historical preservation and what would benefit the site according to non-Muslim observers. Demonstrated by the emphasis on historically authentic tiles and the language used by Hajj Amin to officially fundraise for the project, the Dome of the Rock was not represented as a living, evolving space, but an artifact of a former time or a static art piece. The site was not treated as a part of the infrastructure of Islamic Con-Text and an ongoing embodiment of Islam. Furthermore, all of the funds came from Muslims who did not physically engage with the Dome of the Rock. They were not integrated in the local Muslim community that actually used the Dome of the Rock for Islamic activity and practice. Although the Dome of the Rock has significance for all Muslims, it is not surprising that Hajj Amin would resort to embellishing the threat to the site to secure funding since the project was not a project internal to

Islamic meaning, but an art history project.

Almost every ruling dynasty over Jerusalem would attempt a restoration project for the

Dome of the Rock or al-Haram al-Sharif more broadly. When comparing the restoration under

129 Ibid., 127. 130 Clai Pice, Molem Hel o Peee Dome Aboe Abaham Rock, The New York Times, October 26, 1924. 69 the British Mandate to the projects under the Mamluk Sultanate, the differences become apparent. Oleg Grabar explains that the Mamluks embarked on many innovative construction projects at al-Haram al-Sharif with the newest construction technology and designs. They hired skilled Palestinian masons and architects to develop and execute the projects. Grabar explains,

The Haram itself became cluttered with all sorts of new buildings which detract by their very multiplicity from the main sanctuaries, inasmuch as many of them were for private or restricted use as places of prayer or for public charity rather than for the formal expression of the faith's beliefs. What seems to be involved is at the same time a different far more practical and more pluralistic piety, and also a different taste, no longer the imperial taste of the Umayyads nor probably that of the Fatimids, but the taste of a wider social order which sought individual salvation through works rather than through monumental glorification of the faith.131

Thus, for the Mamluks, al-Haram al-Sharif was a dynamic, living space in the contemporary moment. It was a practical space for the expression of piety and the embodiment of Islamic practice.

The Ottomans, particularly under Sultan Suleyman I, would also undertake restoration and construction projects at al-Haram al-Sharif for imperial glorification and solidification of the

Ottoman Empire as the seat of Islamic power.132 At first, such imperial projects may appear only to have used al-Haram al-Shaif a a oliical mbol. In eali, he Ooman elaionhip with

Islamic space was significantly more intricate. Islam, including Islamic landscapes and structures, were the source of meaning and legitimacy for the Ottoman Empire. Through Islamic construction projects, Islamic meaning was produced and instilled. Recall my argument that belief and acceptance of Islamic authority is not a precondition but the conclusion of a knowledge process. One aspect of that knowledge process includes monumental construction and

131 Oleg Gaba, Al-Kd, Monmen, in Jerusalem, vol. IV, Constructing the Study of Islamic Art (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005), 127. 132 Ibid., 127. 70 the production and celebration of space for Islamic purposes. Through these projects, Ottoman subjects and the empire as a whole could orient towards God.

The British project, on the other hand, reduced the Dome of the Rock to a static monument of a previous age. Neither the British nor, in actuality, the Supreme Muslim Council treated the restoration of the Dome of the Rock as a space to shape the potentialities of embodied

Islamic knowledge and dispositions. Instead, Islam was equated with doctrinal belief, which was symbolized and preserved in the Dome of the Rock. Muslims across the world were expected to donate funds in demonstration of their faith to support a universal Islamic symbol.

Interestingly, as conflict periodically flared up at shared sites like the Western Wall, the solution was often greae eclaiaion. Thi enimen i echoed in Winde oe fom above: politics and religion were intertwined, playing on existing divisions and alliances.133 It is a common conclusion to blame the violence on an interplay of religion and politics, when the two should have remained separate. Roberts argues that British policies created new notions of communal identity and competition, imposing religion onto politics in unprecedented ways.

However, I argue that it is precisely the opposite secularizing policies produced interreligious conflict and as conflict persisted, further secularization was seen as an answer, creating a self- sustaining cycle of secularization and intensifying conflict.

Although British policies do not outwardly appear as secularizing since it is apparent that the government was involving itself in religious affairs, I argue that the British approach was intrinsically secularizing. As explained in the previous chapter, secularism always entails state regulation of the role of religion in public life. The restoration of the Dome of the Rock was secularizing in that it relegated the Dome of the Rock to art history and a matter of personal

133 Cited in Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate, 121. 71

Islamic belief. For the British, the Dome of the Rock was not an integral component of public life and imperial infrastructure, pervading all political, economic, and social meaning. Despite

British sponsorship of the restoration, during the Mandate, Islam was denied sovereign power and Islamic spaces ceased to be sources of Islamic embodied experience. Islamic space was a personal matter for Muslims and the British wanted to appear benevolent by supporting Islamic sites, but Islam certainly was not a guiding authority for British decisions.

It is this form of secularization and reduction of Islamic meaning through Islamic space that transformed the Islamic community in Palestine. Actors like Hajj Amin politicized Islamic space because the depths of the Islamic meaning were in the process of being stripped away, leaving only a political symbol. Yet, when Muslims erupted into violent conflict over sacred space the answer among the international community was further secularization and the construction of Islam into the modern paradigm of religion. Interestingly, the British rarely called for greater secularization but rather identified problems external to Islam, like the displacement of Arab peasants from their land. Instead, the call for secularism and religious freedom and rights would be triumphed by the United Nations and the international community in years to come.

The United Nations and the Creation of the Israeli State

The creation of the Israeli state in 1948 produced new modes of engagement with Islamic space, as well as reflected continuities with the Mandatory period. Before examining Israeli policies

egading hol lace, I ill biefl decibe Iael eligious policies in general. Natan Lerner explains:

That State is neither a theological state nor a completely secular political entity. It is neither free from the influence of the Halakha (Jewish religious law), nor does religious 72

law play in it a predominant role, except in the area of personal status. The Rabbinical courts have jurisdiction over all Jewish inhabitants in matters of marriage and divorce, and settle these matters on the basis of Halakha. The Chief Rabbinate is a State institution and so are, at the local level, the Religious Councils. State religious schools, existing outside the general education system, are funded by the State. The now disbanded Ministry of Religious Affairs had the power, since the establishment of the State, to regulate and fund the religious needs of the Jewish and the other religious communities.134

Alhogh Iael a fonded a a Jeih ae, i i no officiall a heocac and Iael doe not technically have an official established religion. In 1998 Israel produced the First Periodic

Report on the implementation of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,

hich elained ha Iael a fonded a a home fo he Jeih eole, in hich feedom of religious worship and conscience would be guaraneed o membe of all faih.135 Additionally, feedom of eligion and concience a gaaneed in Iael Declaaion of Indeendence in

1948.

Israel to this day does not have a constitution, and therefore, many of their policies pertaining to religion are ambiguous and have developed piecemeal over the decades. Israel is obviously not secular in the sense that Judaism or for that matter, Islam or Christianity are entirely separated from the state. The state funds projects for all three religious groups. However,

Israel constantly tries to appear respectful of all religions and as a protector of religious freedom.

Regardless, Israel imposes many of the same forms of secularizing logic as more explicitly secular states, as I discussed in the previous chapter. In the rest of this chapter, I explore how these contradictions unfold as it pertains to religious sites.

134 Natan Lerner, Religion, Secular Beliefs and Human Rights: Second Revised Edition, 2nd ed. edition (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012), 207. 135 Cited in ibid., 202. 73

Alisa Rubin Peled has argued that Israel, as early as 1948, had a policy to protect Islamic holy places, although in practice this was not ala he cae. She elain ha Iael aempts to attain international recognition hinged on their promise to protect the holy places. Thus, protecting holy places largely became an international policy issue between 1948 and 1955, promoted by the Foreign Ministry.136

The United Nations strongly prioritized the protection of holy places and made it a condition of UN admission. The UN initially proposed the internationalization of Jerusalem in

Resolution 181. I argue that this was an attempt to place the most prominent holy places under secular control as a solution to interreligious conflict. The UN Conciliation Committee on

Palestine established in 1949 expanded the list of holy places from the British list to include several additional sites, among them the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as a vague definition of what constitutes a holy place, even if not included on the list.137 In order to secure UN recognition, Israel compromised to functionally internationalize the holy places, although not cede any territory, which was particularly attractive to Israel considering Jordan conolled he Old Ci of Jealem hol lace. Iael alo omied feedom of eligion, security of religious institutions in the exercise of their functions, and a commitment to repair damages to holy sites from the war.138 In 1949, the UN admitted Israel on those conditions even

hogh Iael definiion of hol lace a cleal moe eiced han he UN definiion.139

Iael ak of oecing hol lace a designated to the Ministry of Religious Affairs and specifically, the Muslim Affairs Department within the ministry. The Ministry of Religious

136 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy Toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 75. 137 Michael Dumper, The Politics of Sacred Space, 21. 138 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State, 77. 139 Ibid., 80. See Peled fo a longe dicion of he diffeence beeen Iael and he UN definiion. 74

Affairs clashed with the Foreign Ministry in purpose and motivation. Unlike the Foreign

Ministry, which was concerned with protection of Islamic holy places to garner international acclaim, the Ministry of Religious Affairs was instead, devoted to promoting Jewish interests and sought to turn abandoned Islamic sites into Jewish sites whenever possible.140 Thereby, they disproportionately directed funds away from Islamic projects towards Jewish ones and arguably neglected to protect Islamic holy places to the extent just short of an international incident.141

Both of the conflicting policies 1) to protect Islamic holy places and 2) to promote

Jewish holy places or Israeli enterprises at the expense of Islamic holy places had far-reaching ramifications for Islamic space. The two opposing approaches are often viewed as a binary set of solutions to address Islamic holy places. However, neither policy takes into account Muslim opinions and historical legacies. Rather, both efforts by the state put into reduce the capacity of the space to engender meaningful Islamic practice, albeit in contrasting ways.

The negative consequences for Muslims of the latter policy to repurpose or erase

Islamic sites are more readily apparent. After the 1948 War, shrines and mosques often fell into disuse. As the Palestinian population was bifurcated, many Palestinians could no longer access shrines they once visited. Likewise, many shrines and mosques had once been used by

Palestinians who would flee and become refugees in the war, leaving those sites with significantly fewer visitors and possibly no caretakers. In the 1948 War itself, many shrines and mosques were destroyed. It is unclear if during the war and after there was a deliberate effort to destroy such sites or if it incidentally happened in the course of conflict.142For example, the

hine of Han head (he gandon of the Prophet Muhammad) was blown up by the Israeli

140 Ibid., 76. 141 Ibid., 85. 142 Andrew Petersen, Bones of Contention, 124. 75 army in 1950. Israel at first claimed that it had been a mistake but later, it was revealed to have been odeed b Mohe Daan, he commande of Iael Sohen Command.143

Furthermore, archaeological excavations often encouraged and operated in tandem with the destruction of Islamic sites. In 1948, large amounts of the city of Tiberias, which contained mosques and shrines, as well as Palestinian residences, were demolished to conduct excavations.

In the city of Ramla, ten of sixteen shrines were destroyed and six of fifteen mosques were destroyed as well. One British Mandate account describes a shrine marked with an inscription dating it to 1607, which presented a frustrating obstacle to British archaeologists but was later destroyed sometime between 1948 and 1967 by Israeli-sponsored excavations.144

The destruction of traditional shrine networks dislocated Palestinian citizens of Israel from earlier Islamic networks. It is easy to see how the physical destruction of Islamic spaces prevents and disrupts Islamic practice. Without these spaces of subject formation, many

Palestinian citizens in Israel would adopt more privatized forms of Islam and embody publicly secular lifestyles.

In contrast, Israeli policies to protect Islamic holy places would, then, seem as a beneficial coecie o decie olice ha dilaced Paleinian Mlim connecion o

Islamic space. The protection of holy places remains to this day a point of significant international attention, as it was for most of the twentieth century. Supposed liberal benefactors of peace, stability, and justice continue to tout the protection of holy places as the answer to interreligious strife. However, the Israeli protection of Islamic holy places transformed Islamic

acice. The Sae of Iael Mlim Affai Deamen had hee oeaching goal: 1) ake care of any buildings with historic or aesthetic value, 2) support the maintenance of any mosques

143 Ibid., 125. 144 Ibid., 128. 76 in active use, and 3) provide a provisional solution for abandoned mosques with no aesthetic or historical value.145

To achieve their first and second goals, the Muslim Affairs Department formed a

Committee for the Preservation of Muslims Religious Monuments in November of 1948. This

Committee produced a report in 1950, predominantly written by the orientalist scholars L.A.

Mayer and J. Pinkerfield called Some Principal Muslim Religious Buildings in Israel. This report listed a number of buildings requiring maintenance of artistic or historical value, according to

Mae and Pinkefield jdgmen. Alhogh he oad pose was to maintain buildings in active use by Muslim communities, those with artistic and historical value were given greater weight regardless of Muslim practice. No input was provided by Muslim practitioners of any of these sites.146 In this way, the Israeli state prioritized historical record and Western aesthetics over Muslim practice. Such a mindset stems from the notion that belief is the base unit of religion. All the sites selected by Mayer and Pinkerfield were equivalent in terms of Islamic belief, if not more significant because of their historical status, and it was assumed that religious activity could follow from any of the sites they selected, regardless of previous practice. As was the case for the restoration of the Dome of the Rock under the Mandate, the Muslim Affairs

Department treated many Islamic sites as historical artifacts rather than living embodiments of

Islamic practice.

For shrines and mosques that had been abandoned, the Muslim Affairs Department faced a conundrum about what to do with the buildings. To destroy them or turn them into Jewish buildings or modern developments would seem like an affront to Islamic holy places. However, their abandonment left them vulnerable to the elements and abuse. Resultingly, the Department

145 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State, 84. 146 Ibid., 83. 77 of Muslim Affairs decided to lock and seal all abandoned mosques and shrines that had no historical or aesthetic value.147 Thus, these buildings remained indefinitely like decaying time capsules of a previous era.

These sealed off Islamic sites perfectly represent the production of Islamic spaces into symbols or representations of Islam rather than spaces of active engagement and embodiment.

Whether Islamic sites were destroyed or converted for other uses, or they were preserved, restored, or sealed off, both trends within Israeli policy take away the embodied aspect of Islamic space, in which Islamic practice should be given primacy over cultural heritage or aesthetic and symbolic value.

147 Ibid., 84. 78

CHAPTER 3: AL-AQSA AND THE ISLAMIC MOVEMENT IN ISRAEL

On April 11th, 2015 over twenty thousand children and their parents visited al-Aqsa Mosque for the thirteenth annual Festival of the Children of al-Aqsa, coordinated by the Islamic Movement in Israel. Hundreds of buses were dispatched across Israel and transported Muslim Palestinian citizens of Israel to the Old City of Jerusalem for the festival. Every child was encouraged to connect to al-Aqsa and take part in activities celebrating the site. For example, there were drawing, singing, and poetry competitions throughout the day. As children learned about al-Aqsa and celebrated Islamic history, they also learned about the tragedy of its current state under

Israeli occupation. The purpose of the festival was for children to renew their bond to al-Aqsa annually and have the chance to visit. Throughout the year, children were encouraged to save their pocket change to donate to al-Aa defene in ode o a conneced een fom afa.148

This festival is just one example of the myriad of activities conducted by the Islamic

Movement in Israel aimed at defending al-Aa and enghening he Paleinian eole bond

o he ie. Thi chae ill anale he Ilamic Moemen aciiie in elaion o al-Aqsa to understand why al-Aqsa has become a particular focal point of both religious renewal and conflict in the past couple decades.

In general, the Islamic Movement has been understudied and the literature that exists mainl foce on he Moemen oigin and deelomen and does not capture the

Moemen moe ecen aciiies and their position within contemporary Israeli society and politics. Craig Larkin and Michael Dumper have written one of the more exhaustive articles on the Islamic Movement titled In Defense of Al-Aqsa: The Islamic Movement inside Israel and the

Battle for Jerusalem. Based on my reading, I suggest that their analysis of the Movement

.Al Jazeera, April 12, 2015 طفل ا.. اف ف رحاب ا 148 79 represents the most common currents of thought in the secondary literature. Therefore, I will briefly summarize their conclusions and explain how my approach differs.

Larkin and Dme age ha al-Aqsa mosque has been employed, particularly by

Shakh Raid Salah [he leade of he Nohen Banch] a a mbol fo oliical emoemen, a cene of blic coneaion and a focus for religious renewal.149 Jealem in geneal, is the object of conflicting and competing ethno-national and eschatological visions. There is an ongoing bale fo he aced ha ha become cenal o naionali dicoe in hich he

Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif is politicized as a dynamic symbol by both Israeli-Zionists and Palestinian-Muslims.150 The Islamic Movement uses heritage as resistance by restoring holy places across Israel and seeking to gain political control over Islamic institutions. The Movement capitalizes on Islamic sites to vie for dominance and mobilize a political support base.

The main question Larkin and Dumper ask is if the Islamic Movement should be perceived as an Islamizing strategic threat or the political consequence of weak Israeli leadership that fails to provide social services and politically disenfranchises their Muslim minority. Their answer seems to be a combination of the two so that in the presence of weak, divisive policies, the threat of Islamism can thrive.151 Ulimael, Lakin and Dme elain, Thi case again

ndecoe he ne bale oe Jealem clal heiage and he IM [Ilamic

Moemen] abili o e al-Aqsa to propagate Islamist positions, bolster their position in

Jerusalem, and consolidate their support within Israel.152

I presen o baic ciie of Lakin and Dme conclion. The fi i ha he,

149 Craig Lakin and Michael Dme, In Defene of Al-Aqsa: The Islamic Movement inside Israel and the Battle fo Jealem, Middle East Journal 66, no. 1 (2012), 33. 150 Ibid., 32. 151 Ibid., 33. 152 Ibid., 41. 80 like much of the secondary literature, immediately assume the Islamic Movement is a negative development, upon which they base their analysis. The movement is either an unfortunate and troublesome consequence of the flaws of Israeli politics or part of a larger regional trend towards supposedly dangerous political Islam. Both assumptions start from the biased notion that the

Islamic Movement is a disturbing or undesirable current of Israeli society, which I argue is not a tenable position for understanding the Movement and the motivations of its followers.

Second, Larkin and Dumper have a tendency to assume the intentions of the leadership of the Islamic Movement. For example, they assume that leaders of the movement explicitly use rhetoric about al-Aqsa to mobilize a political support base. While of course leaders of any movement are interested in gaining supporters and their rhetoric is used to persuade people to their position, there is no reason to suggest that their use of al-Aqsa is purely strategic and does not contain a genuine component. Larkin and Dumper among most Western and Israeli observers assume that the Islamic Movement exploits the symbol of al-Aqsa for political gain. This approach assumes the intentions of the leadership and ignores the motivations of the

Moemen folloe, ece o ame ha he ae aed b inflammao heoic. Fo instance, using their approach to analyze the Festival of Children of al-Aqsa, the conclusion is that the festival is a tool to recruit children at a young age into the Movement. Instead of looking at al-Aqsa as a symbol that is strategically deployed by the Islamic Movement, I examine what the Movement says about its reasonings for focusing on al-Aqsa, which is a deep concern for al-

Aa afe and he imoance of he bond beeen al-Aqsa and Palestinian Muslims.

Therefore, even as festivals are mobilizing strategies, they also embody real experiences of

Palestinian Muslims and produce new modes of space.

In hi chae, I age ha he Ilamic Moemen ei Iael aial dominance b 81 producing and reproducing Islamic space at al-Aqsa. As I discussed in the previous chapter,

Iael olicie on eligion and holy places disrupt Islamic production of space and bodily practices. The state controls space such that Islam becomes a mental aspect of space only based on belief and ascribed meaning to the site. The Islamic Movement resists the de-spatialization of

Islam and reinstates the importance of Islamic practice and physical engagement with al-Aqsa. It is only through a living tradition, the help of others, and the existence of certain modes of space, that the potentialities of the self can be realized. Engagement with al-Aqsa is a form of technology of the self through which an individual can transform herself into a Muslim subject with particular ethics, dispositions, skills, and desires. For the Islamic Movement, defense of al-

Aqsa and strengthening the bond between Muslims and the site is not optional, or a political strategy, but crucial to being Muslim.

Tawfiq Muhammad, the Chief Editor of the official journal of the Northern Branch of the

Islamic Movement wrote:

It [the state] aims to try to change our original Islamic concepts with new concepts encalaed in Ilam i.e. a ne Ilam ha i oimied o mach Iaeli and American aspirations and is commensurate with their vision of the universe and its laws. They are trying to overturn Islam, doctrine and law, little by little, by discontinuing ecific conce o ceain ee fom he gea Qan o a ling fom he oiion of Hi la he o deic i a a mall a of a hge ce that is not harmed by removing it.153

Muhammad goes on to explain that Islam is indivisible and an attack on one precept of Islam is an attack on all of Islam. This sentiment embodies the Islamic Movement. Israel chips away at

Islamic practices at al-Aqsa little by little, which are considered by Israel as well as international

egime o be maginal and inignifican o Ilam and Mlim oeall feedom of eligion. B

.Sawt Al-Haqq Wa al-Hurriyya, January 7, 2005 حرب ـل اسـم الربـ ,Tafi Mhammad 153 82 the Islamic Movement refuses to succumb to the de-spatialization of Islam and contends that all aspects of Islamic worship and practice are essential.

The information about the Islamic Movement in this chapter is derived from a combination of secondary articles about the movement and primary research. I used speeches and interviews publicly available online, predominantly by Shaykh Raed Salah but occasionally by other movement leaders as well. I also obtained access to full issues of a al-a a al-

ia (Voice of Truth and Freedom), the official journal of the Northern Branch of the

Islamic Movement in Israel. Unfortunately, my access was limited only to issues from 2004 and

2005 and a d old benefi fom a comlee anali of all of he jonal ie.

This chapter will begin by sketching a brief history and overview of the Islamic

Movement followed by a discussion of he moemen aciiie concening Ilamic ie and al-Aa. The moemen aciiie ae a and eend beond he ealm of oecing Ilamic sites but, for the most part, I have restricted the topic of this chapter to only that aspect of the moemen. Ne, I ill ace he a he Ilamic Moemen ei he ae aem a spatial dominance and produces and reproduces Islamic space and embodied practice at al-Aqsa.

A Brief History and Overview of the Islamic Movement in Israel

The establishment of the Islamic Movement in Israel at the end of the twentieth century and its continued prominence in the twenty-first century was not a foregone conclusion prior to 1967.

Under the nascent Israeli state, Islam was not a dominant political force for Palestinian citizens of Israel. One reason is that Israel lacked Islamic higher education opportunities and as a result,

Israel lacked qualified Islamic leaders. After 1967, Muslims in Israel were, to an extent, reunited with Muslims in the occupied Palestinian territories who had greater access to Islamic 83 resources.154 Yet, neither the Occupied Palestinian Territories nor Israel in 1967 contained strong

Ilami end b oda andad. Beginning a eal a he 1970s, a general revival of Islam aco he Middle Ea conibed o a going eence of Ilam in Iael oliical landcae.

Additionally, growing internal dissatisfaction with the Israeli government and dissatisfaction with standard Palestinian responses emboldened an increasing number of Palestinian citizens of

Israel to seek Islam for solutions.

By 1979 Abdullah Nimr Darwish, who later became the founder of the Islamic

Movement in Israel, was already an active Islamic leader. His ideology inspired Farid Abu Mukh who established a paramilitary organization called Usrat al-Jihd. Abu Mukh promoted armed struggle against Israel to create an independent Arab and Islamic state within the borders of modern-day Israel. Israel arrested the leaders of the group in 1981 including Abdullah Nimr

Darwish. It is unclear if Darwish was an active participant in the organization or merely inspired

Abu Mukh. Nevertheless, when Darwish was released from prison two years later, he founded

aak al-Shabb al-Muslim (The Muslim Youth Movement) and committed to purely nonviolent tactics through grassroots Islamic education. He espoused activism within Israeli law and ceased claims to a separatist state. This movement evolved into the early Islamic Movement in Israel with Darwish as its uncontested leader.155 In the early years, the movement was

ained hogh Daih eonal commimen and chaima b lacked a ob organizational structure. Darwish strategically focused on education and wanted to promote daa, which in this case meant the spreading of Islamic piety among Muslims.

The movement soon expanded through the 1980s and 1990s and tackled significant

154 Saah Salen, Inide he Bohehood: Elaining he Saegic Choice of he Mlim Bohe in Eg and Jodan and he Ilamic Moemen in Iael (Uniei of Pennlania, 2012), 325. 155 Ibid., 329. 84 charitable services that the Israeli government or other organizations failed to provide. The

Islamic Movement established mosques, kindergartens, schools, and health clinics to aid

Paleinian ciien of Iael. A an added el, he moemen effo ceaed Ilamic commnal neok and eanded he moemen olai.156 For example, the Islamic

Movement established six Islamic kindergartens in 1984 and by 1992 was operating fifteen kindergartens.157

Throughout this time period, increased markers of Islamic activity were visible across

Iael Mlim olaion. Ilamic aie ch a hijab fo women and jalabiya for men were becoming increasingly common158 and the number of mosques increased from 80 mosques in

1988 o 363 in 2003. Thee anfomaion ee al a el of he Ilamic Moemen daa aciiie, b alo al a eone o the greater Islamic revival, which in turn inspired the expansion of the Islamic Movement in Israel. Interestingly, of the total mosques in 2003, 149 were staffed by the Islamic Movement whereas only 140 were staffed by the Israeli Ministry of

Religious Affairs. This figure demonstrates a shift to greater autonomy of Islamic institutions from Israeli dependence.159

The Islamic Movement in Israel also participated in local politics and attained elected positions at the municipal level. In the 1990s, their political efforts expanded to the national stage to advocate for Palestinian citizens of Israel.160 Ultimately, in 1996 the movement split into two branches: the Northern Branch and the Southern Branch. Although the differences between

156 Issam Abaia, The 1996 Sli of he Ilamic Moemen in Iael: Beeen he Hol Te and Iaeli- Paleinian Cone, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 17, no. 3 (2004), 444. 157 Saah Salen, Inide he Bohehood, 329. 158 Elie Rekhess, Ilamiaion of Aab Ideni in Iael: The Ilamic Moemen, 19721996, in Muslim Minorities in Non-Muslim Majority Countries: The Test Case of the Islamic Movement in Israel, ed. Elie Rekhess and A. Rudnitzky (The Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation, 2013), 59. 159 Yai Einge, The Ilamic Moemen Won: Oeae Moe Moe and Imam han he Sae, Haaretz, December 3, 2003 (Hebrew). 160 Iam Abaia, The 1996 Sli of he Ilamic Moemen in Iael, 445. 85 the two factions were multifaceted, a dispute over the 1996 Knesset elections precipitated the

li. The Sohen Banch leadehi, inclding Daih,161 wished to participate in Knesset elections and advance anti-Zionist coalitions, whereas the Northern Branch, led by Shaykh Raed

Salah, decided to abstain from the elections.162

The newly formed Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement became increasingly interested in protecting al-Aqsa Mosque. For the Islamic Movement, al-Aqsa Mosque refers to the entire 36-acre area, which includes the covered mosque building with the same appellation.

The movement claimed tens of thousands of supporters, largely oriented towards al-Aqsa under

Salah leadehi, nil he Iaeli goenmen eenall banned i in 2015. The official eaon for the ban was supposed incitement to violence and affiliation ih eoi oganiaion, such as Hamas.163 However, observers on all sides of the political spectrum have suggested that domestic Israeli political maneuvering may have motivated the ban more so than security considerations.

Al-Aqsa is in Danger

It is clear that there is an apparent absence of leadership at al-Aqsa which is filled by the Islamic

Movement. Jordan is supposed to be in charge of the Awqaf (Islamic endowments) but does not provide much motivating leadership, especially since it is not internal to Palestine. First the

Palestinian Liberation Organization and subsequently the Palestinian Authority were nearly entirely excluded from decisions concerning al-Aqsa. Both Israel and international actors deny

161 Following the elections, Darwish soon stepped down as the leader of the Southern Branch and was succeeded by Ibahim Sa. See Saah Salen, Inide he Bohehood, 349. 162 N Mano Naaa, The Poliic of Claiming and Reeenaion: The Ilamic Moemen in Iael, Journal of Islamic Studies 29, no. 1 (January 1, 2018), 57. 163 Neither branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel claims affiliation to any other Islamic movement. However, Darwish has admitted that the movement is inspired by the efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood, albeit not an official offshoot. See ibid., 49. 86 organizations from the Occupied Palestinian Territories as legitimate representatives in negotiations over the site, creating a vacuum of leadership addressing the concerns of Muslims in

Israel and Jerusalemites in particular.164

The Islamic Movement founded the al-Aqsa Association165 in 1990 with the goal of preserving Islamic sites and regaining Islamic autonomy over them. Specifically, the association developed a project to map and document all Islamic sites and repair those that had fallen into disuse.166 The 1996 Knesset platform of the Southern Branch focused on developing a list of

Islamic sites and regaining control of them, as well as obtaining money from the government to maintain sites and build new mosques.167 Although interest in a variety of local Islamic sites has always been of importance to the Islamic Movement, attention towards al-Aqsa eclipsed other causes after the split of the two branches.

The movement claims that Muslims possess the legitimate right to al-Aqsa, as demonstrated in he Qan.168 The movement strongly worries about Jewish settlers and increasing Israeli control over the site. As mentioned in the introduction of this thesis, ultra-

Orthodox groups and Zionist-naionali go (e.g. The Temle Inie, The Chai Vekaam movement, The Temple Mount Faithful, and The Movement for the Establishment of the

Temple) have begun supporting visits to the Temple Mount and even the construction of a new

Jeih emle, hich i in diec ooiion o he Chief Rabbinae ban on Jewish ascension to

164 Ibid., 60. 165 After the Southern and the Northern Branches split, Salah created a competing parallel organization in 2000 called the al-Aa Fondaion. See Laence Rbin, Wh Iael Olaed he Nohern Branch of the Islamic Moemen, Brookings (blog), December 7, 2015, 9. This is not to be confused with the al-Aqsa Foundation that was founded in Germany and conducts international operations. 166 Alia Rbin Peled, Toad Aonom? The Ilami Moemen Qe fo Conol of Ilamic Iniion in Iael, Middle East Journal 55, no. 3 (2001), 396. 167 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy Toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 135. .Sawt Al-Haqq wa al-Hurriyya, April 7, 2005 ,دا الرحال ال المسد ا 168 87 the Temple Mount.169

The Islamic Movement often uses the term Judaization (ahd) to describe their concern over a loss of Muslim sovereignty and identity at al-Aqsa. Nearly every issue of a al-a warns of Jewish violations and incursions at al-Aqsa ranging from specific instances to general predictions. On a daily basis, leaders of the Islamic Movement fear that policy will shift to allow

Jews to pray at the site and increasingly allow more Jewish visitors beyond the current restrictions.170 These fears are not unfounded considering significantly more Jews have been allowed to enter the site on specific occasions, such as on May 13, 2018 when 1,620 Jews entered the site, a record number since 1967, inevitably resulting in Palestinian clashes with

Israeli police.171 a al-a also regularly reports the more routine activities of Jews that visit the site daily and their inappropriate and hostile behavior, in the eyes of the movement.

Not only does the Islamic Movement worry about an increase in Jewish visitors but a al-a articles also report on the potential for severe threats from radical Third Temple groups that include the destruction of al-Aqsa either through violent means or through influencing official Israeli policy. For example, one article warned of possible explosives being planted in al-

Aqsa, shots being fired at Muslims from the Mount of Olives, and even suicide plane crashes on the site.172 Avi Dichter, the former head of the Israeli Ministry of Public Security, has conceded that the possibility of Jewish extremists attacking the Temple Mount is a serious threat facing

Israel, and that it is right to be significantly worried about the possibility.173 Extremist Jews have

169 Saina Chen, Viiing he Temle MonTaboo o Miah, Modern Judaism 34, no. 1 (February 1, 2014), 29. .Sawt Al-Haqq wa al-Hurriyya, October 21, 2005 ,أا المترن إن ا آ ف كتاب 170 171 Ni Haon, Police, Paleinian Clah a Temle Mon a Recod Nmbe of Je Vii Hol Sie, Haaretz, May 13, 2018. .Sawt Al-Haqq wa al-Hurriyya, April 7, 2005 ,م اـ ,Tawfi Mhammad 172 173 Motti Inbari, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 16. 88 attacked Islamic sites before, most notably when Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Muslim worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994, killing 29 people. Thus, the Movement repeatedly accuses Jewish settlers and Israeli police of storming of al-Aqsa, termed iim.

The desire to build the Third Temple by demolishing the Dome of the Rock is not limited to a small sect of radical Jews who may launch an attack. Some supporters of the Third Temple discuss its construction as a matter of policy that Israel should reasonably undertake. In fact, many Third Temple groups have strong links to the Israeli state and mainstream society. For instance, Motti Inbari explains that the Temple Institute is closely linked to the state and maineam Jeih hogh. The inie i ecognied a an official iniion by the Ministry of Education, which sends thousands of students from state-religious schools to its programs;

IDF soldiers visit the institute in a large number of organized groups; dozens of young religious women performing national service volunteer in its programs; and, on occasion, the institute has een eced he o of he Iaeli Chief Rabbinae.174 Although the Temple Institute officially claims to only propagate knowledge about the history and practice of the Temple

Mount, Inbari argues that it is possibly one of the most influential institutions in promoting the building of a third temple on the site. The close association between these groups and the state creates an even more credible threat in the eyes of the Islamic Movement. Such fears of violence or radical policy shifts at al-Aa hae led he Ilamic Moemen o begin he camaign Al-

Aa i in Dange (al-a f khaa).

One of the most prominent and fascinating offshoots of the Islamic Movement in Israel is the Mbin and Mbi, the male and female versions respectively of an Islamic group active at al-Aqsa until they were banned in 2015, slightly prior to the banning of the entire

174 Ibid., 31. 89

Islamic Movement. The Murabitat are the much more prominent of the two groups considering the restrictions on young men at al-Aqsa and men geae likelihood fo ae, alhogh man leaders of the Murabitat have been banned and arrested as well. According to the New York

Times, the Murabitat were founded in 2012175 and many claim that they were directly established by the Islamic Movement. However, the exact relationship between the Murabitat and the

Islamic Movement i nclea. Een if he Ilamic Moemen a eonible fo he go inception, the Murabitat do not seem beholden to a higher authority within the movement and

Salah discusses the Murabitat as if they are an independent movement he has great respect for, but no direct control over.

The Mabia aciiie lagel coni of eaching and aing oide of he al-Aqsa

Mosque when possible, and outside of the entire complex when they are barred from entry. They participate in a three-tiered Islamic education system: 1) teaching to read and write in Arabic, mainly directed at older women who are illiterate; 2) teaching more advanced courses on the history of Islam, particularly of al-Aqsa, and other Islamic principles; and 3) learning Islamic tajwid, or chaning Qanic ee.176 Thus, they participate in a type of communal female led and oganied Ilamic leaning and daa.

What has caused so much controversy surrounding the Murabitat is not their teaching activities but their harassment of any Jews who visit al-Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. The women will set up plastic chairs near one of the entrances, most commonly the Mughrabi Gate since it is the only entrance that Jews may enter through. As Jews enter the complex, the

Mabia ill chan Qanic ee and ho Allahu Akbar o God i Gea.177 Conflicting

175 Diaa Hadid, Paleinian Women Join Effo o Kee Je Fom Coneed Hol Sie, The New York Times, April 16, 2015. 176 Daod Kab, Al-Aa Women Rei, Al-Monitor, October 27, 2014. 177 Ibid. 90 accounts have claimed that the women have shoved Jewish worshippers, thrown non-lethal items, and spat at them, although the frequency of this behavior is unknown. Nonetheless, it is clear that the Murabitat are successful in making Jewish visitors feel uncomfortable.

Many of the women of the Murabitat participate in these activities every day. Their ages range from twenty-years old to over seventy. Some of them have young children that they may bring with them while others are grandmothers who no longer need to provide daily childcare.

Almost all of them wear conservative Islamic dress and follow the highest standards of Islamic piety. Some Israeli news sites have claimed that the women are being paid to show up on a daily basis and harass Jews.178 Although there have been other Islamic groups who have provided monetary incentives to its members, I would argue that it is unlikely that the Murabitat are being paid.179 Many of these women express sincere commitments to the al-Aqsa and face potential arrest, beatings, and even death for their actions, making it unlikely that their motivation is financial profit.

It is important to mention that the Murabitat refer to all Jewish visitors to the site as

ele iho diffeeniaion. I age ha hi i eemel elling of hei eecie of

Jewish visitors. In the larger Israeli-Palestinian struggle, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are a major point of contention. Settlements are the epitome of Israeli control of space such that new facts on the ground are established that are extremely difficult to reverse. Settlers establish quotidian practices that produce space as Israeli rather than Palestinian.

By referring to Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount as settlers, the Murabitat are clearly referencing the larger Israeli agenda to annex territory and erase Palestinian space through

178 Lee Gancman, Jealem Woman Aeed on Sicion of Ilamic Moemen Tie, The Times of Israel, December 11, 2015. 179 It is possible that the Murabitat received some form of financial assistance but only so that their activities were sustainable. The monetary incentives were arguably not worth the risk. 91 ostensibly innocuous activities like building homes and constructing municipal infrastructures.

Therefore, Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount are part and parcel of Israeli spatial control and the erosion of Palestinian, Muslim space. As I will explain in more detail later on, it is not Jewish worship alone that the Murabitat find offensive, it is Jewish worship sponsored by the Israeli state as a means of spatial control and discipline.

Of note, the Jerusalem Post reported that Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount had increased 15% in 2016 and 2017, which they largely attributed to the ban of the Murabitat in

2015.180 This statistic demonstrates three interrelated things. First, with a lessening of obstructions, Jews are increasingly interested in visiting the Temple Mount. Second, the

Mabia acic ee ccefl a emming a lea ome Jewish visitors. And third, the

Islamic Movement was right to predict increased Judaization of the site unless they advocated against it, regardless of whether one considers Judaization a positive or negative trajectory.

The Islamic Moemens Spaial Resistance

I will begin my discussion of the spatial competition over al-Aqsa with the most clear and literal example: the control of architecture and the physical construction of space. Both Palestinians and

Israel have undertaken construction projects to transform the physical landscape of the site. Most notably, Israel demolished the Mughrabi Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem after they acquired the area in the 1967 War. The neighborhood was one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and home to many Muslim Palestinian residences. Israel dramatically transformed the space into an open plaza to facilitate access for Jewish prayer and tourism at the Western Wall. More recently, in 2007, the Israeli government unilaterally began construction on the bridge to the Mughrabi

180Jeem Shaon, Jeih Viio o Temle Mon Jm 15% Thi Yea, The Jerusalem Post, August 1, 2017. 92

Gate (the entrance that allows access for Jewish visitors and tourists) while simultaneously conducting excavations under the Western Wall Plaza. Members of the Islamic Movement have claimed that these excavations and others are designed solely to weaken the foundation of al-

Aqsa so that the Third Temple can eventually be built.181 A previous Israeli project to build a tunnel along the outer edge of the Western Wall was argued by Jordan to be destabilizing the foundation of al-Aqsa. As a result, UNESCO put al-Haram al-Shaif on he li of Wold

Heiage Sie in Dange in 1982.182

The Islamic Movement likewise has undertaken construction projects to transform the architecture of the site and create new space. One prominent example is the renovations of the subterranean chambers beneath al-Aqsa called the Marwani Mosque, known to Jews as

Solomon Sable, fom Ag of 1996 o Mach 2001. Alhogh emissions to maintain the space were technically granted to the Awqaf authorities, the Islamic Movement led the initiative to secure funding and supply volunteers.183 Michael Dumper suggests that this was the largest undertaking at al-Aqsa since the Ottoman period. The mosque has been expanded to approximately 4,000 square meters.184

Both Israel and the Islamic Movement through direct construction projects seek to control the physical layout and appearance of the space and as a result, shape the social activities and mental association with the space. Both accuse the other of weakening the foundations of the comle in an effo o dicoage hei concion aciiie. Iael ojec ae ofen aimed at expanding Jewish space and tourist accessibility while he Ilamic Moemen ojec ei

181 Yitzhak Reiter, Jerusalem and Its Role in Islamic Solidarity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 105. 182 Reiter contested 28. 183 Wendy Pullan et al., The Sggle fo Jealem Hol Place, 1 edition (Routledge, 2013), 35. 184 Michael Dme, Mala Al-Marwani: An Unrecognied Paleinian Timh?, University of Exeter: Power, Piety and People (blog), accessed July 8, 2020. 93 this transformation of the space. By restoring a space like the Marwani Mosque beneath al-Aqsa, the Islamic Movement is expanding the sites capacity to hold worshipers and producing new modes of Islamic engagement with the space. For the Islamic Movement, construction efforts are not merely aimed at preserving the site as an artefact of cultural heritage as Israel may claim to do or UNESCO supports, but the Islamic Movement seeks to make the site an active place of

Islamic worship and experience.

In an effort to defend al-Aqsa, the Islamic Movement organizes major festivals to raise awareness and promote their cause. The annual al-Aqsa is in Danger Festival in Umm al-Fahm, started in 1996, attracted 30,000 visitors in 2000, predominantly Palestinian citizens of Israel but also delegations from several Muslim countries.185 Additionally, the movement encourages all

Palestinian citizens of Israel to make regular trips to al-Aqsa, especially on Friday, but also on a daily basis. The movement subsidizes and coordinates buses to assist people living in all parts of the country to reach al-Aqsa. Between 2001 and 2012, these buses roughly transported 2 million visitors in the course of 600 bus trips per month.186 Not only do trips to al-Aqsa increase Islamic piety and help people connect to the site, but the movement has recognized the added benefit of supporting the economy of the Old City of Jerusalem for local Arabs. As Muslims visit al-Aqsa, they support local shops and restaurants and revitalize Arab, Islamic life in the Old City.187

These large-scale gatherings and continuous trips to al-Aqsa produce al-Aqsa as a space of active

Islamic experience and encourage individual Muslims to form themselves based on the traditions at al-Aqsa. They actively resist de-spatialization of the site and physically create Islamic bodily movements and practices in the space.

185 Saah Salen, Inide he Bohehood, 365. 186 Craig Larkin and Michael Dumpe, In Defene of Al-Aa, 48. 187 Hillel Cohen, The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem, 1 edition (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, England; New York: Routledge, 2011), 77. 94

Een hogh mo of he Ilamic Moemen aciiie ae ageed a encoaging

Palestinian citizens of Israel to connect with al-Aqsa, the Movement also devotes efforts to attaining the support of the wider Muslim community. For example, when Salah spoke on Al

Jazeera and was addressing a broad Arabic-speaking audience beyond Palestine, he implored all

Muslims to defend al-Aqsa without exception.188 Importantly, the Islamic Movement secures funding from donations received from Muslims across the globe. This may seem like a de- localizing and de-spatializing strategy aimed at securing global support for the Palestinian cause by using al-Aqsa as a rallying symbol. However, I place the Islamic Movement within a historical legacy of celebrating and defending Jerusalem. Many a al-a articles extol the wonders of Jerusalem and praise the city, much like historical Faail al-Quds (merits of

Jerusalem) literature. According to Von Emmanuel Sivan, this literature originated among

Jerusalemite authors during the crusades and coincided with other faail literature being composed in and about other major Islamic cities (e.g. Mecca, Medina, Baghdad, Isfahan, etc.).189

It is clear that historical Faail al-Quds literature aimed at garnering wider support for the defense of Jerusalem against the Christian crusaders just as the Islamic movement today aims at gaining support from the wider Muslim world against the Israeli Occupation of the city. Yet, just because the city and its holy sites are celebrated as part of a larger political, territorial struggle, does not mean that Islamic space is exploited as a symbol for purely political ends. At the same time, this body of literature coinciding with contemporary struggles demonstrates that

Jerusalem and al-Aqsa are not purely imagined symbols that Muslims across the world should

,(Al Jazeera, 2017) ب حدد - راد ح: حرب إسرال ل ا 188 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ4K9xsMFRE&t=1797s. 189 E. Sian, The Beginning of he Fadail al Qd Lieae, Der Islam; Zeitschrift Für Geschichte Und Kultur Des Islamischen Orients; Berlin [Etc.] 48 (January 1, 1972): 100110. 95 hold in their hearts. During the crusades and today, Palestinian Muslims are calling other

Muslims to action and engagement with the site instead of interiorized belief. Although most

Muslims around the world do not have the opportunity to physically visit the 36-acre complex, recalling Lefebvre, space is not just a Cartesian location on top of which meaning is overlaid.

The Islamic Movement produces the mental and social space of al-Aqsa far beyond its physical boundaries. By asking other Muslims to donate money, urge their national leadership to take action, or even start conversations in their communities about the defense of al-Aqsa, the space of al-Aqsa is produced and in turn, produces Muslim subjects committed to it beyond its physical location.

As the Islamic Movement reaches out to a global Muslim audience for engagement with al-Aqsa, it simultaneously champions a specifically Palestinian bond with the site. This is why, as I mentioned previously, that the Movement regularly buses in Palestinian citizens of Israel to

Jerusalem. The Islamic Movement defies secularizing logics that suggest that all practices should be universal across adherents. Instead, the Islamic Movement embraces the localization of

Palestinian Islam and the importance for local Muslims to engage with al-Aqsa. One such example of this, is the significance of congregational prayer at al-Aqsa for local Muslims.

An article in a al-a discusses the necessity of congregational prayer (ala al- jama): congegaional ae i of he geae feae of hi e faih.190 The article cites

Hadith and Islamic history to argue that privatized, individual prayer is insufficient, and congregational prayer is essential for Islam and even more valued at al-Aqsa. The act of lining up in rows, prostrating oneself towards Mecca, and participating in prayer with others, led by an

Imam is not merely symbolic of faith or representative of a Muslim identity. It plays a crucial

,Sawt Al-Haqq wa al-Hurriyya, April 29 ,مالم ف الطر ال المسد ا المبارك ,Abu Muhammad Al-Najida 190 2005. 96 role in cultivating Islamic piety and instilling Islamic dispositions. Specifically, congregational prayer at al-Aqsa is made significant through centuries of authorizing Islamic discourse that have formed al-Aqsa as an important site of Islamic Con-Text. Moreover, congregational prayer is not only a verbal communication between a supplicant and God, because that could be completed alone. The importance of congregational prayer stems from the affective experience and cultivation of pre-discursive bodily knowledge in community with other Muslims.

Salah also regularly discusses the problems with either a temporal or spatial division of the site. He argues that the entire area of 37 acres between the surrounding walls is part of al-

Aa Moe. An deecaion o a o in i i a diec deecaion of al-Aa Moe.191

Whereas some Israelis and international actors alike have called for separate designated times for

Jewish prayer and Muslim prayer, or different spaces on the complex carved out for each group,

Salah rejects any arrangement that denies Muslims either time or space at al-Aqsa. In fact, Salah contends there can be no coexistence with the Israeli Occupation and therefore, under the occupation, there can be no coexistence between designated Jewish times for worship and

Mlim ime fo ohi. I i nclea ha Salah ance old be if al-Aqsa were to be under full Islamic control without the presence of the Israeli government, whether he believes

Jews should have access to the site or not. Although it is worth mentioning that Salah has been criticized for anti-Semitic statements, and I would agree that his rhetoric occasionally verges on racist remarks, most his rhetoric is strategically targeted at the occupation and not at Jews or

Israelis who are not involved in the government or settlements. Yet, Salah is unwavering in his denunciation of Jewish prayer at al-Aqsa under the current circumstances.

Either a temporal or spatial divide would leave the representation of al-Aqsa in the minds

,(Al Jazeera, 2017) ب حدد - راد ح: حرب إسرال ل ا 191 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ4K9xsMFRE&t=1797s. 97 of Muslims intact. If the site is an empty container for meaning to be projected onto, a spatial or temporal divide presents a possible solution for multiple meaning systems to coexist in a single space. Each group can have their designated time or place to commemorate the meaning of the site and represent their belief. However, both temporal and spatial divisions intrinsically interrupt practices at the site. If space and embodied practices are crucially linked, then temporal and spatial divisions are a means to strip Islam of production of space and embodiment.

Overall, the Islamic Movement strongly opposes the Israeli Occupation over the site. In

he a majoi of Salah eeche and iing, hi ie ae no ih Jewish visitors or construction projects but the overall occupation. The ability for Israel to control the production and reproduction of space is ultimately, the root of the problem. Salah explains:

The thing that frightens me the most is not the excavations. Briefly, the thing that frightens me the most is simply the existence of the Israeli Occupation. The most dangerous thing to Jerusalem, the most dangerous thing to al-Aqsa Mosque is the Iaeli OccaionThe olion i he demie of he occaion over Jerusalem and al-Aa MoeThe hing ha oie me he mo, in acali, i hi occaion that still continues and still tries to impose its legitimacy through force of arms.192

Furthermore, Salah argues:

The most dangerous achievement of the Israeli Occupation is that it attempts to impose occupational sovereignty, sole sovereignty to decide events of daily affairs at al-Aqsa Mosque and cut off the will of the Awqaf body at al-Aqsa Mosque.193

Thus, for Salah, the occupation over al-Aqsa is unacceptable and prevents proper Muslim engagement with the site and Muslim sovereignty over the site.

Furthermore, the Islamic Movement rejects plans for internalization of al-Aqsa, interfaith conferences and dialogues aimed at finding solutions, and plans for coexistence at the site. The

.Al Jazeera, 2010), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPHE3FNC0lg) بحدد - ال راد ح 192 ,(Al Jazeera, 2017) ب حدد - راد ح: حرب إسرال ل ا 193 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ4K9xsMFRE&t=1797s. 98 cae of he moemen nillingne o aiciae in hee dicsions stems primarily from the importance of unimpeded Islamic engagement and practice described above. This is not to say Muslims could not share the site with Jews peaceably under any conditions. But the Islamic

Movement contends that the Israeli Occupation or any control that is not Islamic, including international regimes doe no egad Mlim need. Fo eamle, Salah i clea in hi understanding that the entirety of al-Haram al-Sharif is important to Muslims and spatial divisions imposed by non-Muslims disregard this understanding. Likewise, the presence of

Israeli police and weapons as well as a neglect of Islamic history at the site in favor of Jewish narratives all produce a space that precludes Islamic practice from attaining full efficacy. The presence of Jewish worshipers is not the problem; the presence of Jewish worshipers in accordance with the Israeli Occupation and what Salah considers to be a state of ongoing war is the problem.

For example, a 2005 a al-a article reported on statements by the former Grand

Mufti of Jerusalem, Ekrima Sabri, who claimed that international protection of al-Aqsa, which is promoted by many Arab officials, is an unacceptable outcome.194 Furthermore, an article in a al-a explains the problems with interfaith conferences. When these conferences claim to reject violence on all sides, promote coexistence, and advocate for compromise at shared spaces, the Islamic Movement responds that those discourses are in reality a concession to the Israeli

Occupation and a normalization of the occupation.195 I argue that this line of thinking is not uncooperative but rather identifies and critiques an intentional spatial politics to reduce the role of religious practice. Although modern defenders of religious freedom claim to celebrate pluralism and tolerance, they implicitly preference forms of religion that comply with their

.Sawt Al-Haqq wa al-Hurriyya, April 21, 2005 ,مؤتمر الؤن اسم تال المسد ا 194 .Sawt Al-Haqq wa al-Hurriyya, April 28, 2005 ,حار ادـان ف المـزان ,A. D. Ibahim Ab Jabi 195 99 modern expectations and exclude or condemn religions that behave differently.196 Interfaith conferences promote a particular form of religion that is tied to the predominance of belief over experience and view space as an object of symbolic representations, thus prioritizing privatized religion. It neglects the role of public practice at particular sites as essential to the Islamic

Movement. As a result, Islam is demonized as intolerant while in reality, interfaith discussions are often intolerant of varying articulations of religion and subjectivities that do not comply with modern norms. Discussions of interfaith and coexistence become trapped within the self- generating cycle of secularism, in which their appeal to the coexistence of belief systems at conflict sites (at the expense of unimpeded practice) creates renewed conflict, but the continued answer to the conflict is greater secular coexistence.

Banning of individuals from the site is another large issue that the movement must contend with. Hanady Halawani, one of the most prominent women of the Murabitat, was personally banned from the site due to her outspoken activism in the movement. Despite her inability to pass through the gates of al-Haram al-Sharif, Halawani still participated in Raman

If (he eening meal ha beak he da faing) ih he famil diecl oide of al-Bb al-Silsila, one of the Muslim-only gates to the complex. She has done this every Ramadan for several years.197 For her it is important to be as close as possible to al-Aqsa and maintain a presence there instead of allowing herself to be silenced and weakening her bond. If al-Aqsa was merely a symbol or mental space to Halawani, then she could advocate on behalf of it from any location. However, visiting al-Aqsa and performing essential Islamic practices like If there is

196 For a more detailed discussion ino he moden caegoiaion of good and bad eligion, ee Eliabeh Shakman Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion, Reprint edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). ,(Kubbe Medya, 2019) برنام كأنك ف الدس - 9 - المرابطات المبدات ن المسد ا .. ناد حلان 197 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHupmR-ZJj4&t=101s. 100 the means through which she forms her connection to the site and in turn realizes her Islamic experience.

When Israel bans individuals from the site, in their view, they are not preventing that individual from being Muslim because they still have freedom of belief, privatized worship, and access to Islamic texts. Israel does not recognize the pivotal role of Islamic space to cultivate

Islamic subjects. Protecting access and belief in the text are sufficient forms of religious freedom according to state secularist projects. As explained in the first chapter, secularism prescribes the proper role of religion, of which individual belief is accepted but public enactment of religious authority is denied. But, in the case of someone like Halawani, embodied practices at the specific site of al-Aqsa are essential for cultivating Islamic ethics, dispositions, and skills, all of which are concomitant with being a good Muslim and for her, cannot be replaced by alternative activity at an alternative location. Halawani subscribes to the authority of Islam and emphasizes the importance of Islamic space, which challenges the transcendence of state authority and the ability of the state to regulate and discipline all space. When viewed from this perspective, it is clear why the banning of individuals and the prevention of all Muslims, or at least all young men, from entering the site in certain times of supposed security concerns is entirely unacceptable to the Islamic Movement and one of the dominant reasons they so vehemently oppose the occupation of the site.

After the official ban of the Murabitat, Salah argued that if the Israeli Occupation conide he Mabia o be illegal, hen Ilamic ohi like ae, faing, Zaka, and Hajj

[four of the five pilla of Ilam] become, in hei ie, illegal.198 By this statement, I argue that Salah is linking these fundamental Islamic practices to the effort to defend al-Aqsa and have

,(Al Jazeera, 2017) ب حدد - راد ح: حرب إسرال ل ا 198 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ4K9xsMFRE&t=1797s. 101 unimpeded worship and sovereignty over the site. Again, Israel would most likely argue that banning hee omen aciiie i no a iolaion of eligious freedom. It does not impede any indiidal abili o hold he fie illa of Ilam o an ohe Ilamic belief. Ye, Salah i claiming ha he ban imede Mlim engagement with the site. It is thus, a generalized affront to the importance of specific embodied practice, tied to particular localities, as authorized in Islam. Ultimately, the banning of the Murabitat and the entire Islamic Movement is the culmination of a spatial politics to control the production and reproduction of space. Although the site is still an Islamic site where Muslims are free to worship, by banning the Islamic

Movement, Israel neutralized one of the strongest modes of resistance to state control over

Islamic space. With the ban of the Islamic Movement, al-Aqsa is one step closer to a mental representation of Islamic space instead of a space of embodied Islamic practice and knowledge.

The Ilamic Moemen eiance o he ae aial conol and he Moemen production of its own Islamic space have the capacity not only to induce Islamic piety but

oliical jdgemen, hich ae eha cona o Iael goal. Along hoe line, Hichkind

ie, Daa, fo hi eaon, conie an obacle o he ae aem o ece a ocial domain where national citizens are free to make modern choices, as it repoliticizes those choices, subjecting them to a public scrutiny oriented around the task of establishing the conditions for the pracice of Ilamic ie.199 I added emhai o he em fee and moden becae

he ae celebae feedom, o long a naional ciien choice ae moden and libeal.

Citizens are supposed to be rational, autonomous actors who are not coerced by experiential practices endorsed by extremist leaders and instead, acquiesce to the authority of the state. As

Wendy Brown explains, religious freedom or tolerance as configured by the liberal, secularized

199 Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 112. 102

ae, i eall he ae conen fo he indiidual to submit to an alternative authority in private, but not in public.200 The Ilamic Moemen claim o al-Aqsa immediately blurs the private-public distinction and makes their submission to the authority of Islam rather than the state inherently challenging o Iael ahoi.

For example, Salah emphasizes the inability of the Islamic Movement to be silenced deie Iael conined effo. Alhogh Iael effo o ilence he moemen ae mo obvious in arrests, bans from the site, and ultimately declaring the movement illegal, discussions of coexistence and interfaith are, in a sense, other methods of silencing the movement. By inhibiting Muslim practice, the power of al-Aqsa to cultivate divergent political and social ideas among Muslims is limited. As the formerly mentioned a al-a article contends, the creation of liberal subjects in favor of coexistence and interfaith effectively normalizes the Israeli

Occupation. Embodied practice and engagement with Islamic space threatens these modern ideals by producing illiberal, Islamic subjects and challenges the political norms within the state of Israel.

As a result, the Islamic Movement is seen as dangerous and intolerant, evidently leading to it being outlawed. In reality, the Movement challenges the disciplinary mechanisms of the state by refusing to flatten the site into a mere symbol that could be relocated, shared, or abandoned altogether. Al-Aqsa remains a crucial space of Islamic practice which serves a precondition for a variety of Islamic experiences and an orientation towards God.

200 Wend Bon, Religio Feedom Omoonic Edge, in Politics of Religious Freedom, ed. Winnifred Fallers Sullivan et al., 1 edition (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press 2015), 326. 103

CONCLUSION

This thesis has been indebted to the vast body of scholarship available on religious theory and

Palestinian history. I am fortunate to have been able to analyze primary sources in Arabic from videos of speeches and interviews to a al-a articles. However, a complete study of the

Islamic Movement in Israel would require an in-depth ethnography of the movement with extensive field work in cities such as Jerusalem and Umm al-Fahm. One of the limitations of my methodology is that my research has been mainly focused on the leadership of the movement and top-down rhetoric. Fortunately, many online videos interviewing women of the Murabitat gave me a moe holiic ie of odina membe of he moemen eecie. Hoee, a detailed ethnography would be able to probe the motivations and perspectives of followers of the movement much more extensively.

Furthermore, my study has been limited by the ban on the Islamic Movement and the paucity of online resources concerning the activities of Muslims in Israel after 2015. It is unclear to what extent the movement is still active despite legal restrictions. In-person fieldwork would certainly be necessary to investigate how the outlawing of the movement impacted its followers and their relationship to the ideas explored in this thesis. Of note, tensions at al-Aqsa flared up significantly in the Summer of 2017 when mass protests took place spanning several weeks

egading Iael inallaion of ne eci meae, namel eci cameras and metal detectors. For a speech made in July of that summer, Shaykh Raed Salah was brought up on charges of incitement to terror and was sentenced to 28 months in prison in February of 2020.201

It is clear that attitudes and dynamics concerning al-Aqsa continue to develop and warrant further study.

201 Iael Sentences Islamic Moemen Leade Raed Salah o 28 Monh, Al Jazeera, February 10, 2020. 104

In conclusion, it may be difficult to see how my reconceptualization of Islamic space and

he Ilamic Moemen engagemen ih al-Aqsa has been productive in finding solutions to the conflict. For the most part, I have refrained from recommendations or even suggestions for minor changes. Even though I hope to have explained some of the reasoning behind the Islamic

Moemen choice and h hei elaionhi ih al-Aqsa takes the form it does, one might claim that this undeanding ill doe no ece he moemen behaio, hich i obcie to coexistence and peaceable sharing of the site. One of my goals with this thesis has been not only to reconsider how Muslims may engage with Islamic sites but to reimagine what the end goals of the conflict should be. Concepts like tolerance, coexistence, and secularism seem to be universally accepted goals without any qualification by the international community. Yet, it is clear that the Islamic Movement rightfully challenges some of the loaded assumptions and power configurations behind supposedly benign projects like interfaith conferences. The Islamic

Movement is not unwilling to coexist with Jews at the site in an abstract sense, but rather the occupation, involving the state sponsorship of Third Temple groups and settlement projects, is a fom of aial conol on behalf of he Iaeli ae o edce Ilam affecie caaci, hich the Islamic Movement vehemently resists.

Even though I am not able to provide recommendations or solutions to alleviate the conflict, my hope is that this thesis may help to expose some of the assumptions inherent to current approaches to understanding conflict at religious sites. Calls for coexistence and inclusion are not impartial appeals to the common good, but instead they preference a de- spatialized version of religious space that is subordinated to state control. Therefore, I hope that re-centering the role of the production of space and embodied practice to understand the conflict 105 and the motivations of the Islamic Movement will be a step towards a still un-envisioned solution.

106

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