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 Mt./al-Haram al-Sharif, this paper demonstrates how attention to gender and to women's engagement in inter-communal conflict over sacred places is essential for understanding the micro-processes that make a contested sacred site increasingly "indivisible" for parties to the conflict.
Religious Studies/Theology