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