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Religiosity, Nationalism, and Anti-Jewish Politics in Palestine and Poland: Islamic and Catholic Pilgrimages during the Interwar Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2019

Peter Polak-Springer
Peter Polak-Springer*
Affiliation:
Humanities Department, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

This study in comparative global history sheds light on a largely ignored forum for the politics of transition from monarchical empire to nation-state in the Middle East and Central Europe—religious festivals at sacred shrines. It compares the role of key pilgrimage festivals at politically important sacred shrines: (1) the Islamic Nabi Musa (Prophet Moses) pilgrimage to the Haram esh-Sharif and Nabi Musa Tomb near the Dead Sea in Mandatory Palestine and (2) various Catholic pilgrimages to Jasna Góra in Częstochowa in interwar Poland. The author demonstrates how these events served as sacred forums for secular politics, where various political factions contested their partisan ideas of the nation, which included the elite nationalism of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini and the Catholic-Endecja nationalism of Polish clerical leaders. Moreover, I examine the role of these pilgrimage festivals in some of the major conflicts afflicting their respective areas, such as Arab–Jewish violence and hostility in Palestine and wars for borders as well as anti-minority sentiment, especially anti-Semitism, in Poland.

Keywords

religion and nationalismpilgrimages and politicsnational identitycommunal violenceCentral Europe and the Middle Eastinterwar Poland and Mandatory PalestineNabi Musa riotsJasna Góra at CzęstochowaHaram esh-SharifUpper SilesiaJerusalemBalfour DeclarationSykes-Picot AgreementCivil War in Central Europe
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 48 , Special Issue 3: Special Issue on the Soviet Famines of 1930–1933 , May 2020 , pp. 603 - 619
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019

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