Religion and Folk Cosmology: Scenarios of the Visible and Invisible in Rural Egypt

Examines Egyptian folk and sanctified cosmology, a system of meanings built on the dynamics of the visible and invisible, which is enacted in different courses of public and private scenarios. Its internal dynamics create a particular sense of identity attached to both the local and global Muslim community (ummah). Provides a holistic interpretation of the interplay between religion and folk cosmology, challenging the stereotypes that relegate traditional people to backwardness and a peripheral space or locality. Within this Muslim society the global/local nexus is one of ongoing creative integration, not separation. The cosmology can best be understood in the context of its totality, encompassing both visible and invisible zones. Muslims articulate personal or private order as well as social order within their cosmology. This cosmological view, endowing people with a unique imaginative sense of engagemenet with a supraphenomenal reality, accentuates the belief that divine cosmic invisible higher power surpasses any other power. Such a belief represents an inexhaustible source of spiritual and emotional empowerment that may be politically mobilized in certain critical moments and depicted as a religious, holy struggle, or jihad.