Reading: '"Why Are You Mixing What Cannot Be Mixed?" Shared Devotions in the Monotheisms', by Dionigi Albera

(2008, History and Anthropology, 19, 1, pp.37-59)

A major chunk of this essay is focused on responding to arguments made by R.M. Hayden in his 2002 essay 'Antagonistic tolerance: competitive sharing of religious sites in South Asia and Balkans' (Current Anthropology, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 205–231). Unfortunately, I haven't read this essay, so I don't know how accurate Albera's critique is. So here's an attempt at a third-hand summary: some people argue that if you have a shrine at which people from two different religious traditions worship side by side, then this is evidence of religious tolerance*. Hayden argues that in fact, shared shrines can be vehicles for conflict between the two traditions (he uses the phrases 'competitive sharing' and 'antagonistic tolerance'). For example, shared use of a shrine may be something that happens when one side pragmatically decides that they can't get away with totally repressing the other side's rituals, and so their best bet is just to take control of them themselves (p.39).

Albera thinks that Hayden is overstating his case, to the extent that "syncretism, in his view, is always a more or less disguised form of competition. The tolerance is under no circumstances genuine. [...] From this point of view, even the crossing of the borders between the groups is only tactical ground recognition of another’s domain, a temporary form of compromise tolerated by a weak minority, or accepted by a majority momentarily blocked in its will to dominate. The direction is clear: in the end a group is bound to triumph over the others and to impose its monopoly of the sacred site." (p.39)

Hayden apparently also applies Barth's theories of ethnicity to religion. I assume this means he's arguing that when analysing religions, we should be focusing on the way in which religious groups emically define the borders between themselves and other religions (and asking: under what cirumstances do people try to cross those borders?). This strikes me as a reasonably sensible idea- at least, it seems to work with ethnicity (or at any rate, it seems more productive than, say, trying to make a definitive list of all the key properties of a particular ethnic group). However, Albera argues that it's not necessarily helpful to think of religious groups as having 'borders' in this way (p.39).

Hayden apparently does acknowledge that there are likely to be differences between the way in which ordinary people see the relationship between different religions in their everyday local environment, vs the way in which religious or political leaders talk about these relationships (apparently Nandy called this the distinction between 'religion as faith' and 'religion as ideology', but I'm not convinced I like those terms. 'Ideology' and 'faith' are words that sound conceptually slippery and not especially value-neutral). But Albera thinks Hayden doesn't follow this up enough, leading to the impression that he sees 'Hindus', 'Muslims' etc as undifferentiated blocs (p.39).

Albera also thinks Hayden needs to be clearer about when he's referring to syncretism in the sense that there's one shrine which is used for rituals from multiple religious traditions, or in the sense that the rituals themselves contain elements from more than one tradition (p.39). This seems like an important point. Albera points to Fredrik Hasluck's set of three categories: "conversion, intrusion and identification. The circulation of a series of legends may suggest that a saint belonging to religion A was in fact secretly converted to religion B; that the mausoleum of a saint of religion B also housed the tomb of a saint of religion A; that the holy person of religion A was actually the transfiguration of a saint of religion B." (p.51 in Albera; original reference is Hasluck, F. W. (2000), Christianity and Islam Under the Sultans, ed. Margareth M. Hasluck, The Isis Press, Istanbul (originally published by Clarendon Press, New York, 1929, p.457-8). Albera further stresses that we need to think in terms of "a range that can go from a simple proximity to imitation, borrowing and blending." (p.55)

Albera's decided to illuminate this issue by looking at the Meditteranean. Most people assume that there's a major fault line in this area between Christianity and Islam (cf Huntington's Clash of Civilisations). This view is backed up by obvious examples from places like Kosovo. There's also the fact that both Christianity and Islam are monotheistic and hence relatively exclusivist. Both religions tolerate a certain amount of syncretism between their own rituals and the 'pagan' traditions of convert populations (e.g. by converting formerly worshipped deities into saints), but it's harder to picture a way for either religion to compromise when faced by a rival monotheism (p.40). Having said this, Bahá'í seems to cope ok- but maybe that's a sign that in order to officially syncretise two or more creedal monotheisms, you need to expend a lot of effort on explaining how you intend to integrate their doctrine. Most of the stuff Albera discusses in this essay involves popular religion rather than top-down initiatives (the fact that most Abrahamic syncretisms seem to be local popular worship rather than officially sanctioned stuff may also explain why women often seem to be heavily involved in syncretic worship- see p.52).

There's some evidence for syncretism between Judaism and some early Christian churches (e.g. Christians attending synagogues in Antioch, Thessalonia's Basilica of Saint Anthony attracting Christians, Jews and pagans) (p.41). For some reason, though, later Christians don't seem to have co-worshipped with Jews very much at all- and when they do, Muslims tend to be involved too- e.g. at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. As Albera notes, you'd expect to see more Christian-Muslim syncretism than Christian-Jew or Jew-Muslim even all religions were equally willing to syncretise with each other, purely because the number of Jews in the world is smaller. But this can't be the idea story, because rates of Muslim-Jew syncretism seem relatively high (p.44). There's also the fact that, in general, Islamic nations have been more open to allowing resident communities of religious minorities than Christian nations have been- so the opportunities for closer interactions are higher (p.42).

Having said all this, you still have situations of exclusively Muslim-Christian shared sites, like 15th century Mount Sinai. The Christian pilgrim Felix Fabri records that he and his companions prayed at Sinai chapel in 1483 and found Muslims worshipping in the adjacent mosque. This didn't seem to perturb them, since Fabri calmly notes that “men of all rites and all sects flocked here from all parts of the world” to venerate Moses. However, Fabri further notes that neither Muslims nor Christians would tolerate the presence of Jews at the site (p.45). After the emergence of Islam, churches and mosques sometimes shared the same courtyard (or even the same building- there's evidence that the shift towards more geometric motifs in the mosaics of the Church of St Stephen in Jordan happened so that strongly aniconic Muslims using the building to worship wouldn't be offended by art depicting living beings (p.42).)

Sometimes when historical Muslim writers describe visiting Christian churches, it sounds like they were mainly there as tourists attracted by their hospitality and tranquil gardens. At other times, it sounds like churches represented a kind of forbidden fruit, by offering the opportunity to consume alcohol or "the prospect of establishing relationships with Christian women or with young monks (one of the most famous Muslims poets, Abu Nuwas, who lived between the eighth and the ninth century, sang in his verses of his desire for a young monk)" (p.42). But sometimes they were also drawn to churches for religious reasons- some Muslims attended Christian festivals or even services, worshipped icons and relics, sought healing or made vows.

Random interesting quote: "There is in Algiers, rue Sainte, a small synagogue on an old marabout: when the last Muslim oukil, Sheikh Khider died in the last century, without a successor, he left, by title deed, the local to a rabbi friend, with the clause that Muslims would be allowed to come. The curious fact is that Muslim women continue to come, when a thâleb told them that this could help to cure sterility or avoid repudiation. They revolve seven times around the teba, the podium of the readers of the Torah, which is roughly in the middle of the room and that even during the office, without troubling the assistants and without the latter troubling them." -recorded by Emile Dermenghem, 1954, quoted p.50

"Sometimes homonymy has been the vehicle of assimilation, as in the case of the cult of Saint Thecla in Istanbul, which after the Turkish conquest was replaced by that of Toklu (orDoghlu) Dede (see Hasluck 2000: 66)." (p.51) (quoted because it will amuse Bunny).

A small thing that seemed a bit odd to me- in Albera's conclusion, he makes the offhand remark that "even in their most intransigent constituent—behaviour related to religion—civilizations appear contradictory and inhabited by diversity" (p.54). Is Albera using the word intransigent to mean 'uncompromising'? If so, I'm not sure I understand why he thinks religion is civilisations' most intransigent constituent- there are lots of things civilisations are unwilling to compromise over (e.g. their political and economic systems)- I'm not sure why he seems to be saying that religion is necessarily more fixed and inflexible than anything else.

One other interesting quote: "This inspired the famous observation of Pierre Bayle (1740: 265): “Mohammedans, according to the principles of their faith, are obliged to use violence to destroy other religions, and still they tolerated them for several centuries. Christians have received order to preach and educate, and nevertheless from immemorial time they exterminate by iron and fire those who are not of their religion.” -Pierre Bayle, 1740, from Brunel's Dictionnaire historique et critique (quoted p.56). This strikes me as one of those quotes which are pithy but rather oversimplified- still, it might be interesting to see if there's a proper critique from anyone who knows more about the topic than I do.


* On the surface of things, this seems like a fairly reasonable assumption- I was somewhat confused when Hardacre didn't seem to find it plausible when she was discussing the relationship between Shinto and Buddhist priests at shared shrines in pre-Meiji Japan (she definitely wasn't citing Hayden to support this, because she was writing well before 'Antagonistic tolerance' was published, but she might have been drawing on a similar argument from someone else).