Pilgrimage, Commodities, and Religious Objectification: The Making of Transnational Shiism between Iran and Syria

Abstract

��� ny visitor to the pilgrimage sites of Lourdes in France, Mashhad in Iran, or Varanasi in India is surely impressed by the crowd of pilgrims coming from various places in order to express their devotion and be in close, intimate contact with a source of sacred power. The same visitor is also sure to be overwhelmed by the market activities that take place near or sometimes inside the sacred shrines. Religious commodities of all sorts are sold in shops and bought by the pilgrims, who are usually avid consumers of religious memorabilia. Notwithstanding the fact that the commoditization of the religious tradition periodically attracts the wrath and condemnation of religious reformers, it is a constant feature of the pilgrimage systems that mobilize massive numbers of pilgrims through vast territories. Pilgrimages are a major feature of world religions, for they connect the local and the global—the particular and the universal—in a complex system of practices and beliefs, which allows them to create shared identities in a multiplicity of social and cultural contexts. This article explores the links among pilgrimage, devotional practices, and the consumption of religious commodities in the production and organization of transnational forms of Shi‘i Islam in the pilgrimage shrines in Syria. The general argument is that a connection exists between pilgrimage processes and the emergence of religious markets, meaning arenas of exchange where religious commodities are produced, sold, and consumed. The consumption of religious commodities structures channels of participation and articulates local identities in the translocal religious community created by pilgrimage. 1 Pilgrimage is a central religious practice in the production of “orthodoxy” and “orthopraxy” in Islam, for it brings together members of different Muslim communities, who might be separated by language, culture, political boundaries, and geographic distance, and mobilizes them into one large ritual and devotional activity. 2 The engagement of each pilgrim in the performance of the collective ritual practices that constitute pilgrimage produces the experience of what Victor Turner defi nes as communitas, meaning a diffuse solidarity that transcends social and cultural differences. 3 However, beyond the creation of a shared sense of belonging to the communitas, the gathering of Muslims of different social and cultural backgrounds in the activities that constitute pilgrimage also reveals the doctrinal or ritual differ