Lak People (Dagestan) - Religion

Religion

Laks belong to the Shafi school of Sunni Islam. Sunni Islam encouraged group solidarity and provided protection from the government apparatus; their members help each other find work and housing, arrange marriages, pay the kalïm, maintain burial societies, resolve disputes, and so forth. Rural Laks still observe many pre-Islamic planting, harvest, animal-breeding cycle, shearing, and rituals.

Read more about this topic:  Lak People (Dagestan)

Famous quotes containing the word religion:

    “In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
    —New Yorker (April 23, 1990)