Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This article analyses the reconfiguration of religious identity in the Druze community in Minas Gerais, south-eastern Brazil, which was formed by the arrival of immigrants from Lebanon in the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The immigrants created ethnic and religious institutions destined to maintain Druze identity and its Islamic character. However, the transmission of religious knowledge to the generations born in Brazil was fragmentary and imperfect. Nevertheless, Druze identity was maintained by many and completely recreated in the religious context of Catholicism and Spiritism, while the connection to Islam faded away. The analysis focuses on how religious authorities and the belief in reincarnation were the main elements that allowed continuity in religious identity together with the transformation of tradition.

Religious experience can be a tool for the constitution of social subjects, the construction of symbolic meanings and values, as well as for shaping the subjectivity and corporality of the faithful. An ethnographic account and analysis of the Sufi ritual, the darb al-shish, as it was performed in the zawiya (Sufi lodge) of shaykh Mahmud in Afrin, Syria, shows how religious experience allows the embodiment of capacities and dispositions that are lived as deriving from the sacred dimensions of existence, producing religious selves endowed with power that can be defined as charisma. The embodied charisma derived from the darb al-shish posed challenges to the power structures of the religious community in which it emerged. The analysis focuses on collective ritual performances as the main arena of incorporation of the various charismas of the disciples into the hierarchical structure of religious power and authority of the Sufi community. This approach to the ritual tackled the connection between religious experiences and the production of embodied forms of power, such as charisma, and posed the question of how religious codification deals with it.

Cassiano Branco (1897-1970) belonged to the pioneer generation of modern Portuguese architects, who worked during the years of the dictatorship. During the 1930s, Cassiano produced an anti-conservative and eloquent architecture, contrasting with the guidelines of the regime. The discomfort about his personality came also from his ideological opposition to the government. Among his peers he has been considered "an exception to the rule", working, mainly for private investors, on programs for rental housing, movie theaters and tourism facilities, which were built along the boulevards of Lisbon or in the natural and intact regional areas of Portugal.

The Arab community in Brazil comprises an estimated 4–6 million immigrants and their descendants and was created by an almost continuous flux of immigrants from the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) since the nineteenth century. While until the 1970s the Arab immigrants were Christians in their great majority, since the 1980s most immigrants from the Middle East are Muslims. The Muslim community in Brazil has about 1 million members today. The Muslim presence is almost exclusively urban, with important communities in São Paulo, Foz do Iguaçu, Curitiba, and, to a lesser extent, Rio de Janeiro. The vast majority of Muslims in Brazil are Arab Middle Eastern immigrants from Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories or their descendants. There are also some African immigrants (from Senegal and Nigeria) and a small but growing number of Brazilian converts without any Muslim or Arab ancestry. Arab Muslim communities and identities in Brazil are formed by very complex articulations between transnational and local interpretations and practices of Islam and Arab identities, which emerge and gain reality within the cultural and sociological framework of each locality. Therefore, this article aims to analyze the constitution of Muslim identities among Arabic-speaking immigrants and their descendants in Brazil, showing how the relation between Arab ethnicity and Muslim identity is shaped by processes that connect local, national, and transnational realities.

Cet article porte sur le rôle des formes de religiosité soufies dans le façonnement des subjectivités religieuses et dans l'inscription de l'islam dans le paysage urbain d'Alep. Dans la seconde ville de Syrie, les identités religieuses revêtent des dimensions civiques et politiques car elles sont constitutives de l'ordre social urbain local, qui contraste avec l'ordre politique et culturel laïc promu par l'État syrien. L'expression des subjectivités soufies dans la sphère publique s'opère par le biais de formes variées de performance morale, c'est-à-dire par l'affirmation publique de principes religieux incorporés en tant que cadres des pratiques sociales. Cette mobilisation continue de principes religieux incorporés par les soufis a pour effet de les inscrire dans les processus qui façonnent et constituent l'identité urbaine de la capitale du Nord en tant que paysage moral défini par l'islam.