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Something Understood

Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: Seeing Mary

Seeing Mary

07/09/2014

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Seeing Mary

John McCarthy explores the role of the Virgin Mary in binding together different faiths.

John McCarthy looks at the role of Virgin Mary for people from different religious backgrounds and asks why millions of Muslims have seen apparitions of her in recent decades.

Something Understood: Seeing Mary

John McCarthy explores the role of the Virgin Mary in binding together different faiths in shared ceremony and respect.

To mark Christian celebrations of the birth of the Virgin Mary on September the 8th John McCarthy looks at her personal significance to people of different faiths. This includes the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Professor Manuel Hassassian who says for him, "Mary symbolises hope, spirituality and love".

Mary, who was a Jew and the mother of the Christian Son of God, is also one of the most revered women in the Muslim tradition. Known in Arabic as Maryam, a chapter of the Qur'an is named after her. Verses from the Quran relating to Mary are frequently inscribed on the mihrab, or niche within a wall of a mosque, denoting the direction of Mecca. But alongside this she is deeply human.

In Colm Tóibín's novel The Testament of Mary he examines the complexity of motherhood. Mary supposes herself to have intimacy with her son; she knows him better than he knows himself (she told him raising Lazarus was dangerous, he wouldn't listen). And yet, as she also acknowledges, he is destined to be at an impossible remove from her.

In 1968 the image of the Virgin Mary was seen above the dome of a Coptic Christian church in the Cairo suburb of Zeitun. The apparitions recurred for five months, for hours on end, and more than a million and a half people claim to have seen Mary during this time. In conversation with Danish scholar Andreas Bandak, John considers how precariousness and ambiguity is embedded in saint worship in the contemporary Middle East.

Producer: Emily Williams
A Whistledown Production for BBC Radio 4.

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