Religion Between Commercialization and Political Trade-Offs The Case of Islam

Religion Between Commercialization and Political Trade-offs: The Case of Islam marks the author's 100th published book.

This volume is the product of a conference on Commercialization of Religion convened jointly by the Universities of Vienna and Nicosia, and held in Nicosia, Cyprus, in September 2023, where author Raphael Israeli spoke about Islam.

"I challenged the conventional wisdom, which posited a material and pecuniary interpretation of commercialization of religion in terms of buying and selling deals, but I suggested to expand that interpretation into a wider trade-off of values, assets, and political interests, and I gave examples of those deals of commercialization within the Arab-Israeli dispute, including the horrifying rampage and murder on October 7, 2023, by the Palestinian Hamas terrorists of over 1,500 Israeli innocent civilians, including babies, the elderly, and women at dawn in their beds, and abducting another 240 as hostages to Gaza."

(About the Author)

Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the1970s. He is the author of 100 books and 100 articles.