In the half century or so preceding World War I, Palestine, represented by a number of flourishing urban centres, witnessed a real cultural renaissance which, in terms of social configuration and content, largely reproduced what was going on in other major cities in the region such as Beirut and Cairo. This is a study of some aspects of Palestine’s cultural revival, analyzing in depth the role played therein by a number of Palestinian Christian intellectuals.
The Sudan’s current religious confrontation began in the nineteenth century, first with the establishment of Egyptian colonial rule, which made a political distinction between Egypt’s Sudanese Muslim and non-Muslim subjects and then with the introduction of the organizing principles of the jihadic state under the Mahdiyya. Post-World War II Sudanese nationalism has attempted to build a national identity around the spread of Islam and Arabism, and this has made the Sudan’s large pagan population the particular focus of religious conversion and oppression. This paper describes the different ways in which some Sudanese pagan societies have confronted, accommodated, or evaded Islam in the twentieth century. It also briefly discusses the different relations which exist between the Sudanese Christian churches and paganism, since the use of vernacular languages in the propagation of Christianity means that pagans and Christians have entered into a dialogue, based on a shared language of spirituality.