Religious Ritual, Injustice, and Resistance: Praying Politically in Israel/Palestine

Abstract

In interfaith meetings in Israel/Palestine, joint symbols and rituals are often included as one of the unifying elements in the common struggle toward coexistence and peace. Such practices are in line with what scholars have identified as areas of transformative potential in interreligious encounters. However, in this contested area, both Palestinians and Israelis also choose prayer as a weapon in their political conflict. Given the religious and political intersections of the conflict especially in Jerusalem, religious acts can thus function as political performances and are acts of contestation rather than conflict transformation, an area of research that has yet to receive scholarly attention.

In this chapter, I analyze Muslim prayer on the streets of Jerusalem especially when Muslims were denied entry to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount and (forbidden) prayers of Jews on this site sacred to both religions. Working from a cultural studies perspective, I argue that such prayers, while religious rituals, are first and foremost political statements against what both groups consider injustices. Palestinians, while praying, are performing belonging and acts of resistance to the Israeli occupation and the power it has over their lives, including the limitation of religious freedom. Right-wing religious Israelis, who refuse to comply with the ban against non-Muslim rituals on what they consider the holiest site of Judaism, are directing their prayers against both Muslims and their own government that upholds the status quo that gives the Islamic waqf authority on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. Both scenarios, through the inclusion of prayer, are interritual, interreligious encounters, rather than solely political statements. But unlike rituals performed in encounters dedicated to dialogue and conflict resolution, these prayers are not transformative in the sense of bringing people together but contrastive and oppositional. In a final step, I examine Pope Francis’ 2014 prayer at the Israeli West Bank Barrier in Bethlehem, which had significant media impact on the representation of the conflict. All three examples of interritual events highlight the need to consider local political contexts of interreligious encounters.

This chapter has been published within the framework of the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art funded LOEWE research hub ‘Religious Positioning: Modalities and Constellations in Jewish, Christian and Muslim Contexts’ at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the Justus Liebig University Giessen. I also want to thank some people for insights that helped me think through the question of political prayers in Israel/Palestine: Dareen Ammouri, Louise Bethlehem, Haia Dakwar, Bacem Dziri, Daniel Feldman, Osama Iliwat, Ariela Jayosi, Ilana Kurshan, Lucy Nusseibeh, Joaquín Paniello Peiró, Natasha Rowland, and my students at the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.