Gender and the (In)divisibility of Contested Sacred Places: The Case of Women for the Temple

In: Politics and religion: official journal of the APSA Organized Section on Religion and Politics, Band 10, Heft 4, S. 812-839

Abstract

Abstract
Contested sacred sites, over which different religious groups assert claims to exclusivity, have drawn scholarly attention to the spatial interaction between religion and politics. However, the gendered dimensions of inter-communal religious-political disputes over sacred space, and women's roles in these site-specific conflicts, have been largely neglected. Using a case study of Orthodox Jewish women's activism for access to Temple Mount al-Haram al-Sharif, this article demonstrates how attention to gender and to women's engagement in inter-communal conflict over sacred places can illuminate unique intra-communal processes that aim to make a contested sacred site increasingly indivisible for parties to the conflict.