• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.231-256
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• 2016

This paper presents a case study of the Muslim diaspora through comparative analysis of Islamic tombstones from the Southeast Coast of China under Mongol rule. The locations of the nisbas in the Islamic tombstones are widely dispersed, covering Xinjiang, Transoxiana, Iran, Khorasan, Khwarazm, Armenia, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia. Unexpectedly, we did not find a single named location from India or Southeast Asia. It is well known that notable descendants of distinguished families traditionally produced officials, intellectuals, and wealthy merchants, and surrendered to the Mongols during the war against the Qara Khitai Khanate and the Khwarazm Empire. There were a great number of appointed officials with Muslim names in the Jianghuai (around Lower Yangtze) and Fujian regions. This is consistent with the concentration of epitaphs written in Arabic on the southeast coast of China. The frequent use of the specific tradition of the prophet Muhammad associating the death of the exile with martyrdom in Islamic tombstones in Quanzhou, Hangzhou, and Yangzhou indicates that the Muslims in these port cities eventually established an interregional or diasporic identity of Muslim foreighners whoimmigrated into the region.

• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.66
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• pp.9-33
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• 2017

This study emphasized on the facts of the preparation for monk military with the confucian Jungbong Joheon against the invasion of Japanese military in the time of Japanese invasion of Korea and the martyrdom in the combat of Cheongju fortress and the 1st, the 2nd combats of Geumsan fortress. Especially, tens of thousands of Monk soldiers under the reverend general Yeonggyu at the very first time uprisen in the Buddhist world and let the rebellion continue nationwide as relying on his teacher Cheongheo Hyujeong and his co-monks. The record related to such monk military was found in 'Jinsanmirukchohongi (珍山彌勒寺招魂記)': the reverend general Yeonggyu and monk military officers (義兵將 判官僧 1 person, 義兵將僧 8 persons, 從事官僧 2 persons, 軍官僧 1 person), but in the record of the Jongyong monastery, it is said, 'the reverend Yeonggyu and his soldiers'. The soldiers of the reverend Yeong'gyu are right the monk troop, the existence of about 20 persons is confirmed in the chronicles and other sorts of literary collections. However, other information was hardly found in those sources, so I look forward to having further researches on the details of other monk solders with their dharma names and conducts which they did with patriotism.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.539-565
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• 2009

T. S. Eliot attempted the combining of the liturgy of Anglican Church and a drama in Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and created a modern verse drama which comes most close to the regular tragedy like Greek tragedy today. Eliot chose the drama to deliver his religious insight because of its ritualistic origin and its potentiality to deliver a dramatic world which can contain a complete order. The central theme of this play is the martyrdom. The dramatic action of killing the archbishop Thomas Beckett in this play, however, is not treated as important event enough to be a dramatic climax. He is portrayed as a witness to the reality of God's will rather than a man who wills to give up his own life for any religious belief or cause. In Eliot, a martyr is nothing but "a witness" in its ancient sense. This paper purposes to review the language of this play. The various and new meters and rhythms of the language of this play function enough to bring its playwright to encounter 'the real audience' in 'a living theatre'. The interactions between different verbal models also play a big role to make this play a living theatre. Eliot found the poetry which crosses the various classes and levels of the tastes of audience is the most useful poetry. And the poetry of this play proves as the very thing which intensifies the theme of the play and gives the most powerful force to the play. Especially Eliot's poetry succeeds smost in the various and free meters of chorus, which makes Eliot the first playwright since Aeschylus, who could bring the chorus to undertake the function of extending the dramatic action of the play into the universal meaning. In the theatre the real audience identifies themselves with chorus. And the chorus leads the audience to respond to peace which passeth understanding beyond words and sounds of this play, which is the desired response in Eliot's conception of drama.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.43
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• pp.37-65
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• 2015

There has been discussions and investigation on the nexus between religion and citizen's supports for suicide attacks and terrorist groups conducting such acts. In terms of the relationship, there were two potent hypotheses attempting to explain the process and mechanism of the relationship: religious belief hypothesis and coalitional commitment hypothesis. previous studies examined these hypotheses have been carried out across different cultural, religious, and political contexts. Until today, however, there are still lack of concrete evidence, which is generated from empirical studies, supportive evidence for any of these hypotheses. Therefor this study aims to investigate the association between religion and popular support for suicide attacks by using a survey data collected from three middle east countries, Egypt, Morocco, and Pakistan. In analysis, a step-wised regression analysis conducted with a set of variety of variables considered to be related with the association. This study found that variables reflecting religious belief hypothesis, such as prayer to God, religious devotion were unrelated to support for suicide attacks. Yet, prayer time predicted reduced supports for suicide attacks. Further, attendance at religious services, thought to enhance coalitional commitment, predicted support for suicide attacks. Yet, it showed negative association with support for suicide attacks. These findings suggest that regular attendance at religious services and regular prayer have combined effects reducing on the willing to support for suicide martyrdom. However, this study findings affirmatively support for neigher religious belief hypothesis nor coalitional commitment hypothesis. Instead, it suggests the needs for further research examination on the relationship as well as corrections of these hypotheses. Finally, Implications for the research findings for preventing suicide attacks are discussed.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.73-97
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• 2010

Representation of destitution may be considered as an expression of a social desire toward forging a bond or solidarity with the impoverished. However, political and ethical demands of the solidarity force the formulaic framework structuring the form of representation to its limits. The thesis aims to examine the responses to such demands within the tradition of modernist literature that can be traced from Charles Baudelaire, Knut Hamsun to Franz Kafka and that somehow culminates with Samuel Beckett, and to analyze how the issue of destitution that weaves through Beckett's works criticizes and inherits such a heritage. Whereas destitution in 19th century Realism is structurally fixed and its potential for change is inherently excluded, for these writers, destitution is no longer the state of rigid reality in which any possibility is limited. It is destitution as an imperative that calls for exploitation of possibilities that can be recuperated from the impoverished condition of destitution. What these writers consistently resist against is destitution that leads to compensation and reward. Since occupying a superior position toward the other as the subject of description or sympathy can be seen as one form of profit or reward, they have persistently pursued absolute solitariness and austere conditions rather than prematurely simulating a sense of solidarity and community. The ultimate goal of destitution as an imperative is to pursue destitution in order to worsen it by identifying and then excluding and expending possessions and assets to a state of penury. This is a paradoxical process that opens up the realm of possibilities of destitution and redefines it as abundance and wealth. Destitution for Beckett as seen in the writers above is the objective of literature. But, what he focuses on is to amplify the shreds of economic world that still remain in a state of poverty and to reveal extreme poverty as a state of odd affluence and to transform it into a pursuit of accumulation and profit. One of his famous axioms, "less is more", contains the essence of such a paradoxical strategy. In a sense, such approach is a twist on the strategy that identifies and uses any remaining potential hidden in destitution as was pursued by other writers. It also expands on the imagination of the destitute described by Hamsun. But Hamsun and Beckett are diametrical opposites. Unlike Hamsun, Beckett does not link imagination with a sense of guilt. Imagination is not intended to overcome the destitute reality nor to culminate in artistic martyrdom as in the case of Kafka's hunger artist. The imagination of the impoverished in Beckett is simply a hilarious game and not an escape that ends in a sense of guilt. This game formulates a "rhetorical question" or derision at the ironical situation where the pursuit of hunger and art as the disinterestedness has been turned into symbolic capital. It is inherently a fundamental critique at the aestheticization of destitution that has been pursued by Modernism. Beckett's efforts at divulging falsehood inherent in non-profit acts such as charity, donation and hospitality are dissections of social fictions in which aestheticization of destitution remains a part of the whole.