CDTR: Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion

photo, L, by Anna Bigelow, R, by Glenn Bowman

What does it mean for a sacred religious site to be shared among different faiths? How do actors at different levels, those who live in direct proximity to the site or who use it every day, national and international governmental figures, religious leaders, and others work together to make a site a functional shared space? How do conflicts develop around these sites, and what can we do to move from conflict to cooperation?

CDTR’s project Sacred Spaces – Religion and Conflict Resolution, headed by Elazar Barkan and Karen Barkey, examines particular sacred sites, primarily in former Ottoman Empire areas, to look at historical as well as present-day issues surrounding shared sacred spaces. By delving into the past more carefully, they show, we can provide the legacy of shared sites and lived experience, informing contemporary events.

Events

Wednesday, November 9, 2011: Sacred Sites Violence: Gujarat and the Challenge of Accountability

and Hindu-Muslim Relations

A workshop with Shabnam Hashmi (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy); Christophe Jaffrelot (CERI, Sciences Po); Elazar Barkan (Columbia); Rajeev Bhargava (Columbia)

The 2002 pogrom in Gujurat, India, which resulted in 2,000–mostly Muslim–casualties. It was exceptional not only because of its magnitude but also because of its spread to the countryside, where a large number of Muslims were attacked by their Hindu neighbours. After the pogrom, NGOs committed themselves to relief work, judicial assistance and attempts at reconciliating Hindus and Muslims. This workshop will engage NGO activists involved in reconciliation work to share their experience and assess the impact of their efforts. The workshop is part of the ongoing Sacred Sites project, organized by Karen Barkey and Elazar Barkan.

Workshop Schedule:

Gujarat Living Memory – Civil Society Advocacy in the Last Decade

Introduction, Elazar Barkan -- Listen here
The Gujarat pogrom, Christophe Jaffrelot -- Listen here

Post-conflict Reconciliation: Engaging with History, Shabnam Hashmi -- Listen here

Discussion -- Listen here

2:15 - 4:00 - Sacred sites, violence and coexistence

Choreography of Violence, Elazar Barkan -- Listen here
Is Reconciliation Possible in Gujarat?, Rajeev Bhargava -- Listen here

Discussion - Listen here

Co-sponsored with The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL), the South Asia Institute, The Columbia University Seminar on History, Redress, and Reconciliation, and the Columbia University Institute for the study of Human Rights.

More Information

In April of 2011, Columbia's Center for Palestine Studies,

part of the Middle East Institute, hosted a conference very

relevant to the work of the Choreography of Sacred Sites

project called Locating Tolerance: The Conflict over the

Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem. Details of the conference

can be found here, and a short description of the situation

being explored by the panelists is below.

A branch of the Los Angeles based Museum of Tolerance is

being built in the heart of Jerusalem on part of the site of the

city's oldest Muslim cemetery. Legal suits, protests, claims

and counter claims have ensued. What does it mean to

build a museum borne of the memory of the Holocaust and

designed to teach lessons about the importance of

"tolerance" over a graveyard in the face of the protests of the descendants of the interred and, moreover, in a country in which it is prohibited to disturb Jewish graves?

~~~~~~

Explore the May 2009 conference, Choreography of Sacred Space: State, Religion and Conflict Resolution, conducted in partnership with Bogaziçi University, Istanbul and Columbia University’s The Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), and The Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR).

View Conference Program | Read Presentation Abstracts | Read Invitee Bios

Listen to Conference Audio

Religious antagonism and shared sanctuaries in Algeria

Dionigi Albera, French National Center for Scientific Research

Sacred Memories, Plural Realities: Remembering and Producing Shared Sacred Spaces

Anna Bigelow, North Carolina State University

Re-consolidating the borders between self and other and between self and the state: Ethnographic explorations of past memories and present struggles between Syrian Christians and Kurds at the margins of contemporary Turkey

Zerrin Ozlem Binar, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Comparative Perspectives on the Balkans and the Middle East

Glenn Bowman, University of Kent at Canterbury

A Rebel, a Saint, and a Contested Shrine: The Türbe of the 16th Century Sheikh Bali Efendi, Its Inauspicious Usurpation by a Notorious Muslim in the 19th Century, and the Stir it Caused in the Forging of the
Bulgarian Nation-State in the 20th Century

Tolga Esmer, Central European University