Image credit: David Evers, Flickr, Creative Commons. By Daan Beekers, Hansjörg Dilger and Daniel Nilsson DeHanas. In recent decades, the anthropology of religion has produced detailed and diverse insights into the experience of religious groups…
Leave a CommentCategory: Religie & spiritualiteit
By Irene Stengs. Bangkok, Sunday May 5. With hundreds of others, I am queuing to enter the restricted area around the Grand Palace where the Royal Land Procession will start at 4 PM. In this…
Leave a CommentHayate Ait Bouzid is a Master student Anthropology at the VU who did her research about the environmental behaviour of middle-class people in Brunei Darussalam. A country that is often not known by the large public or at best misconceived. She is sharing her story about how the preconceived view of Brunei made her question her trip to this Southeast Asian country.
Being back from my three months fieldwork in Brunei Darussalam, it feels like I have never been there really, it all seems like a dream. With emphasis on the word dream, not nightmare. To be honest, in the beginning I was quite afraid of this country, afraid of the unknown. Especially with having very few people in my surroundings knowing about this country and if they knew about it, the first two things they would say were: ‘Oh yes, it’s located on the Island of Borneo, I have been to Sabah you know’ or ‘Oh.. do you know they have the Sharia there..?’.
The latter really made me question my trip to Brunei. In one way or another I was afraid it would limit my research. So a few weeks before going there I really had this thought: ‘Sh*t, what did I get myself into, by going to this country…?.’ I was searching on YouTube for a few minutes of reassurance, but I couldn’t find much. The feeling got worse, with every news article I read about the restriction of the Sharia law in the country, the negative stories about the Sultan and how Christmas was totally banned in Brunei.
3 Comments
By Peter Versteeg Recently Chris Cornell, singer of the bands Soundgarden and Audio-slave, died. Soundgarden is probably best known for their early nineties song ‘Black Hole Sun’, which is the invocation of a sort of natural disaster which will swallow everything that is ugly and false. It is a cry to be released from a depression that is caused by an awareness that life has become hollow and that the earth has been delivered into the hands of frauds, crooks and idiots. Cornell took his own life. Announcing his tragic death, news shows showed exactly this song as he played it during the last earthly gig he ever played. It is not difficult to feel its ominousness.
By Barbara Arisi The ancient drink ayahuasca or daime is one of the powerful forces that connects the seemingly distant worlds of Amazon and Europe, ‘indigenous’ and ‘metropolitan’. It is born from the encounter and circulation of many traditions such as popular Catholicism, local shamanism and the Afro-Brazilian pantheon. Forest beings such as the snake, the jaguar and the humming bird coexist in rituals with saints, gods and spirits. The result is a unique and powerful experience for those who humbly surrender to learn what ayahuasca, a beverage prepared with the jagube vine and the leaves of the chacrona, has to teach.
Leave a Comment
Door Ferdous Arachid Rituelen en tradities zijn zaken die van essentieel belang zijn voor een samenleving, en de daarbij horende ‘cultuur’. Ik las op 14 april een opiniestuk in het NRC over de wijze waarop de Nederlandse (lees ‘wit-Hollandse’ cultuur) lijdt onder de verschuiving van religieus gewortelde tradities en rituelen, naar het seculier-commerciële domein. Los van de vraag of ik als moslim wel of niet vind dat dit vanuit een min of meer theologisch perspectief in mijn voordeel zou werken, wil ik mijn mening hierover geven vanuit een academisch-antropologisch perspectief.
Deze blog staat ook op Zaman Vandaag.
Thijl Sunier Bij al het mediageweld rond de lange arm van Erdogan, Turkse parallelle structuren, en Marokkaanse radicale jongeren zou je haast vergeten dat er nog meer moslims in Nederland wonen. Moslims met een andere achtergrond. Natuurlijk, Turkse en Marok-kaanse moslims, die bijna 75% van alle moslims in Nederland uitmaken staan het meest in de schijnwerpers. Maar de overige ruim 25% is er ook en niet minder relevant voor het islamitische landschap in Nederland. We vinden onder hen bewegingen die in de media nauwelijks genoemd worden, maar die voor de islam wel degelijk belangrijk zijn en die wereldwijd oneindig veel meer aanhang hebben dan veel bewegingen uit het Midden-Oosten. Ik wil er twee bespreken.
Leave a Comment
Door Freek Colombijn. Van 27-29 maart vond in Nederland de “1st Biennial International Conference on Moderate Islam in Indonesia” plaats. De conferentie was georganiseerd door de Nederlandse afdeling van Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). NU is een traditionele, Soennitische beweging in Indonesië, die claimt 40-90 miljoen leden te hebben (de cijfers verschillen nogal). De eerste dag vond plaats op de Vrije Universiteit, waarna de conferentie zich verplaatste naar Den Haag, Leiden en Badhoevedorp.
De conferentie was deels een interne NU aangelegenheid, maar had vooral op de eerste dag een duidelijke boodschap aan de buitenwereld. De Islam is groter dan het Midden-Oosten en, sterker, de meeste Moslims komen niet uit de Arabische wereld. De Indonesische Islam, of Islam Nusantara, is een tolerante, niet-gewelddadige Islam.
Leave a Comment
By Barbara Arisi
Tëpi Pajé was a powerful shaman of the Matis people. He was called xó’xókit, a word that names the one who cooks xó, the one who carries, owns or works with too much xó. The Xó is the shamanic substance of power for the Matis. Tëpi was the only matis to be called xó‘xókit. On March 7th, Tëpi died.
Leave a Comment