Shrines Unyielding: Inter-Asian Networks and the Enduring Power of Sacred Spaces

Abstract This essay examines modern states’ strategic destruction and patronage of Muslim shrines to consolidate majoritarian power. Drawing on Rian Thum’s notion of shrines as “durable sacred geography,” it conceptualizes shrines as active historical agents embedded in expansive transnational networks. Their extensive sacred geography enables shrines to persist as generative fulcrums that sustain meaning by bridging heterogeneous times and spaces despite tumultuous change. Challenging prevalent views of shrines as passive symbols, the essay delineates how the flexible reassembly of tradition across far-reaching networks empowers shrines to endure as pivotal arenas of ritual contestation from the medieval era into modernity. Their astounding continuity relies on mobilizing expansive geographies to creatively reconfigure tradition across eras.