The Victim and Its Masks

Download or read book The Victim and Its Masks written by Abdellah Hammoudi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1993-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year, in a solemn Sunni Muslim feast, the Ait Mizane of southern Morocco reenact the story of Abraham as a ritual sacrifice, a symbolic observance of their submission to the divine. After this sober ceremony comes a bacchanalian masquerade which seems to violate every principle the sacrifice affirmed. Because of the apparent contradiction between sacrifice and masquerade, observers have described the two as entirely separate events. This book reunites them as a single ritual process within Islamic tradition.